"Of course not, and neither can anyone else alive today."

"You can't create such a being, Wizard Zorander. But you have no idea how much I know about magic. You see, I've learned to bring lost talents back to life-arts that have long been believed to be dead and vanished."

"I give you the grandiosity of your dreaming, Jagang, but dreaming is easy. Your dreams can't be made real just because you dream them and decide that you wish them to come alive."

"Sister Tahirah, here, knows the truth of it." Jagang gestured with his knife. "Tell him, darlin. Tell him what I can dream and what I can bring to life."

The woman hesitantly stepped forward several paces. "It is as His Excellency says." She looked away from Zedd's frown to fuss with her wiry gray hair. "With His Excellency's brilliant direction, we were able to bring back some of the old knowledge. With the expert guidance of our emperor, we were able to invest in a wizard named Nicholas an ability not seen in the world for three thousand years. It is one of His Excellency's greatest achievements. I can personally assure you that it is as His Excellency says; a Slide again walks the world. It is no fancy, Wizard Zorander, but the truth.

"The spirits help me," she added under her breath, "I was there to see the Slide born into the world."

"You created a Slide?" Fists still bound behind his back, Zedd took an angry stride toward the Sister. "Are you out of your mind, woman!" She retreated to the back wall. Zedd turned his fury on Jagang. "Slides were a catastrophe! They can't be controlled! You would have to be crazy to create one!"

Jagang smiled. "Jealous, wizard? Jealous that you are unable to accomplish such a thing, can't create such a weapon against me, while I can create one to take Richard Rahl and his wife from you?"

"A Slide has powers you couldn't possibly control."

"A Slide is no danger to a dream walker. My ability is quicker than his. I am his better."

"It doesn't matter how quick you are-it isn't about being quick! A Slide can't be controlled and he isn't going to do what you want!"

"I seem to be controlling him just fine." Jagang leaned in on an elbow.

"You think magic is necessary to control those you would master, but I don't need magic. Not with Nicholas nor with mankind.

"You seem to be obsessed with control, I am not. I managed to find a people those like you didn't want to walk freely among their fellow man, a people cast out by the gifted, a people reviled for not having any spark of your precious gift of magic-a people hated and banished because your kind wasn't able to control them. That was their crime: being outside the control of your magic."

Jagang's fist slammed the table. The slaves all jumped with the platters.

"This is how your kind wants mankind's future to be; your kind wants only those with a spark of the gift to be allowed to walk free. This, so you can use your gift to control them! Like that collar around your neck, your lust is to collar all of mankind with magic.

"I found those outcast ungifted people and have brought them back into the fold of their fellow man. Much to your disapproval and the loathing of your kind, they can't be touched by your vile magic."

Zedd couldn't imagine where Jagang had found such people. "And so now you have a Slide to control them for you."

"Your kind condemned and banished them; we have welcomed them among us.

In fact, we wish to model man himself after them. Our cause is theirs by their very nature-purity of mankind without any taint of magic. In this way the world will be one and at last at peace.

"I have the advantage over you, wizard; I have right on my side. I don't need magic to win; you do. I have mankind's best future in mind and have set our irreversible course.

"With the help of these people, I took your Keep. With their help, I have recovered invaluable treasures from within. You couldn't do a thing to stop them, now could you? Man will now set his own course, without the curse of magic darkening his struggle.

"I now have a Slide to help us to that noble end. He is working with those people for the benefit of our cause. In doing so, Nicholas has already proved invaluable.

"What's more, that Slide, which your kind could never control, has vowed to deliver to me the two I want most: your grandson and his wife. I have great things planned for them-well, for her, anyway." His red-faced rage melted into a grin. "For him, not so great things."

Zedd could hardly contain his own rage. Were it not for the collar stifling his gift, he would have reduced the entire place to ash by now.

"Once this Nicholas becomes adept at what he can do, you will find that he will want revenge of his own, and a price you may find far too high."

Jagang spread his arms. "There, you are wrong, wizard. I can afford whatever Nicholas wants for Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor. There is no such thing as a price too high.

"You may think me greedy and selfish, but you would be wrong. While I enjoy the spoils, I most relish the role I play in bringing heathens to heel. It is the end that truly concerns me, and in the end I will have mankind bow as they should to our just cause and the Creator's ways."

Jagang seemed to have spent his flash of intensity. He leaned back and scooped walnuts from a silver bowl.

"Zedd be wrong," Adie finally spoke up. "You have shown us that you know what you be doing. You will be able to control your Slide just fine.

May I suggest you keep him close, to aid you in your efforts."

Jagang smiled at her. "You, too, my dried-up old sorceress, will be telling me all you know about what is in those crates."

"Bah," Adie scoffed. "You be a fool with worthless treasures. I hope you pull a muscle carrying them with you everywhere."

"Adie's right," Zedd put in. "You are an incompetent oaf who is only going to-"

"Oh, come, come, you two. Do you think you will throw me into a fit of rage and I'll slaughter the both of you on the spot?" His wicked grin returned. "Spare you the proper justice of what is to come?"

Zedd and Adie fell silent.

"When I was a boy," Jagang said in a quieter tone as he stared off into the distance, "I was nothing. A street tough in Altur'Rang. A bully. A

thief. My life was empty. My future was the next meal.

"One day, I saw a man coming down the street. He looked like he might have some money and I wanted it. It was getting dark. I came up silently behind him, intending to bash in his head, but just then he turned and looked me in the eye.

"His smile stopped me in my tracks. It wasn't a kindly smile, or a weak smile, but the kind of smile a man gives you when he knows he can kill you where you stand if it pleases him.

"He pulled a coin from his pocket and flipped it to me, and then, without a word, turned and went on his way.

"A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, I woke up in an alley, where I slept under old blankets and crates, and I saw a shadowy form out by the street. I knew it was him before he flipped me the coin and moved off into the darkness.

"The next time I saw him, he was sitting on a stone bench at the edge of an old square that some of the less fortunate men of Altur'Rang frequented. Like me, no one would give these men a chance in life. People's greed had sucked the life out of these men. I used to go there to look at them, to tell myself I didn't want to grow up to be like them, but I knew I would, a nobody, human refuse waiting to pass into the shadow of oblivion in the afterlife. A soul without worth.

"I sat down on the bench beside the man and asked him why he'd given me money. Instead of giving me some answer that most people would give a boy, he told me about mankind's grand purpose, the meaning of life, and how we are here only as a brief stop on the way to what the Creator has in store for us-if we are strong enough to rise to the challenge.