Naked Empire

Chapter 13

Richard rose up in a rush when he saw Cara marching up a ravine toward camp, pushing ahead of her a man Richard vaguely recognized. In the failing light, he couldn’t make out the man’s face. Richard scanned the surrounding flat washes, rocky hills, and steep tree-covered slopes beyond, but didn’t see anyone else.

Friedrich was off to the south and Tom to the west, checking the surrounding country, as Cara had been, to be sure there was no one about and that it was a safe place to spend the night; they were exhausted from picking a sinuous route through the increasingly rugged country. Cara had been checking north—the direction they were headed and the direction Richard considered potentially the most dangerous. Jennsen turned from the animals, waiting to see who the Mord-Sith had with her.

Once on his feet, Richard wished he hadn’t gotten up quite so quickly—doing so made him light-headed. He couldn’t seem to shake the odd, disconnected sensation he felt, as if he were watching someone else react, talk, move. When he concentrated, forcing himself to focus his attention, the feeling would sometimes drift at least partly away and he would begin to wonder if it was only his imagination.

Kahlan’s hand slipped up on his arm, gripping him as if she thought he might fall.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

He nodded as he watched Cara and the man as he also kept an eye on the surrounding countryside. By the end of their ride earlier that afternoon to discuss the book, Kahlan had become even more worried about him. They were both troubled about what he’d read, but Kahlan was far more concerned, at the moment, anyway, about him.

Richard suspected that he might be coming down with a slight fever.

That would explain why he was feeling so cold when everyone else was hot.

From time to time, Kahlan would feel his forehead or place the back of her hand against his cheek. Her touch warmed his heart; she ignored his smiles as she fretted over him. She thought that he might be slightly feverish.

Once she had Jennsen feel his forehead to see if she thought he might be warmer than he should be. Jennsen, too, thought that, if he did have a fever, it was minor. Cara, so far, had been satisfied by Kahlan’s report that he didn’t feel feverish, and hadn’t deemed it necessary to see for herself.

A fever was just about the last thing Richard needed. There were important . . . important, something. He couldn’t seem to recall at the moment.

He concentrated on trying to remember the young man’s name, or at least where he’d seen him before.

The last rays of the setting sun cast a pink glow across the mountains to the east. The closer hills were dimming to a soft gray in the gathering dusk. As darkness approached, the low fire was beginning to tint everything close around it a warm yellow-orange. Richard had kept the cook fire small, not wanting it to signal their location any more than necessary.

“Lord Rahl,” the man said in a reverent tone as he stepped into camp.

He dipped his head forward in a hesitant bow, apparently not sure if it was proper to bow or not. “It’s an honor to see you again.”

He was perhaps a couple of years younger than Richard, with curly black hair that brushed the broad shoulders of his buckskin tunic. He wore a long knife at his belt but no sword. His ears stuck out to the sides of his head as if he were straining to listen to every little sound. Richard imagined that as a boy he’d probably endured a lot of taunts about his ears, but now that he was a man his ears made him look rather intent and serious. As muscular as the man was, Richard doubted that he still had to contend with taunts.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry, but I can’t quite seem to recall . . .”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t remember me, Lord Rahl. I was only—”

“Sabar,” Richard said as it came to him. “Sabar. You loaded the furnaces in Priska’s foundry, back in Altur’Rang.”

Sabar beamed. “That’s right. I can’t believe you remember me.”

Sabar had been one of the men at the foundry able to have work because of the supplies Richard hauled to Priska when no one else could. Sabar had understood how hard Priska worked just to keep his foundry alive under the oppressive, endless, and contradictory mandates of the Order. Sabar had been there the day the statue Richard carved had been unveiled; he had seen it before it was destroyed. He had been there at the beginning of the revolution in Altur’Rang, fighting close alongside Victor, Priska, and all the others who had seized the moment when it was upon them. Sabar had fought to help gain freedom for himself, his friends, and for his city.

That had been a day everything had changed.

Even though this man, like many others, had been a subject of the Imperial Order—one of the enemy—he wanted to live his own life under just laws, rather than under the dictates of despots who extinguished any hope of bettering oneself under the crushing burden of the cruel illusion of a greater good.

Richard noticed, then, that everyone was standing in tense anticipation, as if they had expected this to be trouble.

Richard smiled at Cara. “It’s all right. I know him.”

“So he told me,” Cara said. She put a hand on Sabar’s shoulder and pushed him down. “Have a seat.”

“Yes,” Richard said, glad to see that Cara had been fairly amiable about it. “Sit down and tell us why you’re here.”

“Nicci sent me.”

Richard rose again in a rush, Kahlan coming up right beside him.

“Nicci? We’re on our way to meet her.”

Sabar nodded, rising into a half crouch, seeming not to be sure if he was supposed to stand, since Richard and Kahlan had, or stay seated. Cara hadn’t sat down; she stood behind Sabar like an executioner. Cara had been there when the revolution in Altur’Rang had started and might remember Sabar, but that would make no difference. Cara trusted no one where the safety of Richard and Kahlan was concerned.

Richard gestured for Sabar to remain seated. “Where is she,” Richard asked as he and Kahlan sat down again, sharing a seat on a bedroll. “Is she coming soon?”

“Nicci said to tell you that she waited as long as she could, but there have been some urgent developments and she could wait no longer.”

Richard let out a disappointed sigh. “Some things came up for us, too.”

Kahlan had been captured and taken to the Pillars of Creation as bait to lure Richard into a trap. Rather than go into all that, he kept the story short and to the point. “We were trying to get to Nicci, but needed to go elsewhere. It was unavoidable.”

Sabar nodded. “I was worried when she returned to us and said that you had not shown up at your meeting place, but she told us that she was sure you were busy taking care of something important and that was the reason you had not come.

“Victor Cascella, the blacksmith, was very worried, too, when Nicci told us this. He was thinking you would be returning with Nicci. He said that other places he knows, places he and Priska have dealings with for supplies and such, are on the verge of revolt. These people have heard about Altur’Rang, how the Order has been overthrown there, and how people are beginning to prosper. He said that he knows free men in these places who struggle to survive under the oppression of the Order as we once did, and they hunger to be free. They want Victor’s help.

“Some of the Brothers in the Fellowship of Order who escaped from Altur’Rang have gone to these other places to insure that such revolt does not spread there. Their cruelty in punishing any they suspect of insurrection is costing the lives of many people, both the innocent and those valuable to the cause of overthrowing the Imperial Order.

“In order to insure their control of the gears of governance and to ready the Order’s defense against the spread of the revolt, Brothers of the Order have gone to all the important cities. Surely, some of these priests have also gone to report to Jagang the fall of Altur’Rang, of the loss of so many officials in the fighting there, and of the deaths of Brothers Narev and many of his close circle of disciples.”

“Jagang already knows of the death of Brother Narev,” Jennsen said, offering him a cup of water.

Sabar smiled his satisfaction at her news. He thanked her for the water, then leaned forward toward Richard and Kahlan as he went on with his story.

“Priska thinks the Order will want to sweep away the success of the revolt in Altur’Rang—that they can’t afford to let it stand. He said that instead of worrying about spreading the revolt, we must prepare, make defenses, and have every man stand ready because the Order will return with the intent of slaughtering every last person in Altur’Rang.”

Sabar hesitated, clearly worried about Priska’s warning. “Victor, though, said we should hammer the iron while it is hot and create a just and secure future for ourselves, rather than wait for the Order to gather their strength to deny us that future. He says that if the revolt is spreading everywhere, the Order will not so easily stamp it out.”

Richard ran a weary hand across his face. “Victor is right. If those in Altur’Rang try to sit alone as a singular place of freedom in the heart of hostile enemy territory, the Order will sweep in and cut out that heart. The Order can’t survive on its perverted ideals and they know it; that’s why they must use force to sustain their beliefs. Without that bully of force, the Order will crumble.

“Jagang spent twenty years creating a system of roads to knit a diverse and fractured Old World together into the Imperial Order. That was but part of the means of how he succeeded. Many resisted the rantings of his priests. With roads to swiftly respond to any dissent, though, Jagang was able to react quickly, to sweep in and kill those who openly opposed his new Order.

“More importantly, after eliminating those who resisted the Order’s teachings, he filled the minds of children, who didn’t know any better, with blind faith in those teachings, turning them into zealots eager to die for what they were taught was a noble cause—sacrifice to some all-consuming greater good.

“Those young men, their minds twisted with the teachings of the Order, are now off to the north conquering the New World, butchering any who will not take up their altruistic tenets.

“But while Jagang and that vast army are to the north, that strength there leaves the Order weak here. That weakness is our opportunity and we must capitalize on it. Now, while Jagang and his men are absent, those same roads he built down here will be our means of rapidly spreading the struggle for freedom far and wide.

“The torch of freedom has been lit by the will of those like you, those in Altur’Rang who seized liberty for themselves. The flames of that torch must be held high, giving others the chance to see its light. If hidden and insulated, such flames will be extinguished by the Order. There may never be another chance in our lifetimes, or our children’s lifetimes, to seize control of our own lives. That torch must be carried to other places.”

Sabar smiled, filled with quiet pride that he had been a part of it all coming to be. “I know that Victor would like for others, like Priska, to be reminded of such things, of what the Lord Rahl would say about what we must do. Victor wants to talk to you before he goes to these places to ‘pump the bellows,’ as he put it. Victor said that he awaits your word on how you would move next, on how best to ‘put the white-hot iron to them’—again, his words.”

“So Nicci sent you to find me.”

“Yes. I was happy to go to you when she asked me. Victor will be happy, too, not only that you are well but to hear what the Lord Rahl would say to him.”

While Victor was awaiting word, Richard also knew that absent such word, Victor would act. The revolution did not revolve around Richard—it couldn’t to be successful—but around the hunger of people to have their lives back. Still, Richard needed to help coordinate the spreading revolt in order to be sure it was as effective as possible, not just at bringing freedom to those who sought it, but at crumbling the foundation of the Order in the Old World. Only if they were successful in toppling the rule of the Order in the Old World would Jagang’s attention—and many of his men—be pulled away from conquering the New World.

Jagang intended to conquer the New World by first dividing it. Richard had to do the same if he was to succeed. Only dividing the Order’s forces could defeat it.

Richard knew that with everyone evacuated from Aydindril, the Imperial Order would now turn its swords on D’Hara. Despite the competence of the D’Haran troops, they would be overwhelmed by the numbers that Jagang would throw at them. If the Order was not diverted from its cause, or at least divided into smaller forces, D’Hara would fall under the shadow of the Order. The D’Haran Empire, forged to unite the New World against tyranny, would end before it had really gotten started.

Richard had to get back to Victor and Nicci so that they could all continue what they had begun—devising the most effective strategy to overthrow the Imperial Order.

But they were running out of time to resolve another problem, a problem they didn’t yet understand.

“I’m glad you found us, Sabar. You can tell Victor and Nicci that we need to see to something first, but as soon as we do, we’ll be able to help them with their plans.”

Sabar looked relieved. “Everyone will be happy to hear this.”

Sabar hesitated, then tilted his head, gesturing north. “Lord Rahl, when I came to find you, following the directions Nicci gave me, I went past the area where she was to meet with you, and then I continued coming south.” Worry stole into his expression. “Not many days ago, I came to a place, miles wide, that was dead.”

Richard looked up. He realized that his headache seemed to be suddenly gone. “What do you mean, dead?”

Sabar waved his hand out toward the evening gloom. “The area where I was traveling was much like this place; there were some trees, clumps of grass, thickets of brush.” His voice lowered. “But then I came to a place where everything that grew ended. All at the same place. There was nothing but rock beyond. Nicci had not told me that I would come to such a place. I admit, I was afraid.”

Richard glanced to his right—to the east—to the mountains that lay beyond. “How long did this dead place last?”

“I walked, leaving life behind, and I thought I might be walking into the underworld itself.” Sabar looked away from Richard’s eyes. “Or into the jaws of some new weapon the Order had created to destroy us all.

“I came to be very afraid and I was going to turn back. But then I thought about how the Order made me afraid my whole life, and I didn’t like that feeling. Worse, I thought about how I would stand before Nicci and tell her I turned around rather than go to Lord Rahl as she asked of me, and that thought made me ashamed, so I went on. In several miles I came again to growing things.” He let out a breath. “I was greatly relieved, and then I felt a little foolish that I had been afraid.”

Two. That now made two of the strange boundaries.

“I’ve been to places like that, Sabar, and I can tell you that I, too, have been afraid.”

Sabar broke into a grin. “Then I was not so foolish to be afraid.”

“Not foolish at all. Could you tell if this dead area was extensive? Could you tell if it was more than just a patch of open rock in that one place? Could you see if it ran in a line, ran in any direction in particular?”

“It was like you say, like a line.” Sabar flicked his hand toward the east. “It came down out of the far mountains, north of that depression.” He held his hand flat like a cleaver, and sliced it downward in the other direction. “It ran off to the southwest, into that wasteland.”

Toward the Pillars of Creation.

Kahlan leaned close and spoke under her breath. “That would be almost parallel to the boundary we crossed not far back to the south. Why would there be two boundaries so close together? That makes no sense.”

“I don’t know,” Richard whispered to her. “Maybe whatever the boundary was protecting was so dangerous that whoever placed it feared that one might not be enough.”

Kahlan rubbed her upper arms but didn’t comment. By the look on her face, Richard knew how she felt about such a notion—especially considering that those boundaries were now down.

“Anyway,” Sabar said with a self-conscious shrug, “I was happy I did not turn back, or I would have had to face Nicci after she had asked me to help Lord Rahl—my friend Richard.”

Richard smiled. “I’m glad, too, Sabar. I don’t think that place you went through is a danger any longer, at least not a danger the way it was once.”

Jennsen could contain her curiosity no longer. “Who is this Nicci?”

“Nicci is a sorceress,” Richard said. “She used to be a Sister of the Dark.”

Jennsen’s eyebrows went up. “Used to?”

Richard nodded. “She worked to further Jagang’s cause, but she finally came to see how wrong she had been and joined our side.” It was a story he didn’t really feel like going into. “She now fights for us. Her help has been invaluable.”

Jennsen leaned in, even more astonished. “But can you trust someone like that, someone who had labored on behalf of Jagang? Worse, a Sister of the Dark? Richard, I’ve been with some of those women, I know how ruthless they are. They may have to do as Jagang makes them, but they’re devoted to the Keeper of the underworld. Do you really think you can trust with your life that she will not betray you?”

Richard looked Jennsen in the eye. “I trust you with a knife while I sleep.”

Jennsen sat back up. She smiled, more out of embarrassment than anything else, Richard thought. “I guess I see your point.”

“What else did Nicci say,” Kahlan asked, keen to get back to the matter at hand.

“Only that I must go in her place and meet you,” Sabar said.

Richard knew that Nicci was being cautious. She didn’t want to tell the young man too much in case he was caught.

“How did she know where I was?”

“She said that she was able to tell where you were by magic. Nicci is as powerful with magic as she is beautiful.”

Sabar said this in a tone of awe. He didn’t know the half of it. Nicci was one of the most powerful sorceresses ever to have lived. Sabar didn’t know that when Nicci was laboring toward the ends sought by the Order, she was known as Death’s Mistress.

Richard surmised that Nicci had somehow used the bond to the Lord Rahl to find him. That bond was loyalty sworn in the heart, not by rote, and its power protected those so sworn from the dream walker entering their minds.

Full-blooded D’Harans, like Cara, could tell through the bond where the Lord Rahl was. Kahlan had confided to him that she found it unnerving the way Cara always knew where Richard was. Nicci wasn’t D’Haran, but she was a sorceress and she was bonded to Richard, so she might have been able to manipulate that bond to tell where he was.

“Sabar, Nicci must have sent you to us for a reason,” Richard said, “other than to say that she couldn’t wait for us at our meeting place.”

“Yes, of course,” Sabar said as he nodded hastily, as if chagrined to have to be reminded. “When I asked her what I was to say to you, she told me that she had put it all in a letter.” Sabar opened the leather flap of the pouch at his belt. “She said that when she realized how far away you really were, she was distraught and couldn’t take the time to journey to you. She told me that it was important for me to be sure I found you and gave you her letter. She said the letter would explain why she could not wait.”

With one finger and a thumb, Sabar lifted out the letter, looking as if he were handling a deadly viper instead of a small roll sealed with red wax.

“Nicci told me that this is dangerous,” he explained, looking up into Richard’s eyes. “She said that if anyone but you opened it, I should not be standing too close or I would die with them.”

Sabar carefully laid the rolled letter on Richard’s palm. It warmed appreciably in his hand. The red wax brightened, as if lit by a ray of sunlight even though it was getting dark. The glow spread from the wax to envelop the whole length of the rolled letter. Fine cracks raced all across the red wax, like autumn ice on a pond breaking up under the weight of a foot placed on it. The wax suddenly shattered and crumbled away.

Sabar swallowed. “I hate to think of what would have happened had anyone but you tried to open it.”

Jennsen leaned in again. “Was that magic?”

“Must have been,” Richard told her as he started to unroll the letter.

“But I saw it fall apart,” she said in a confidential tone.

“Did you see anything else?”

“No, it just all of a sudden crumbled.”

With a thumb and finger, Richard lifted some of the disintegrated wax from his palm. “She probably put a web of magic around the letter and keyed that spell to my touch. If anyone else had tried to break that web to open the letter it would have ignited the spell. I guess that my touch unlocked the seal. You saw the result of the magic—the broken seal—not the magic itself.”

“Oh, wait!” Sabar smacked his forehead with the flat of his palm. “What am I thinking? I’m supposed to give you this, too.”

Shrugging the straps off his shoulders and down his arms, he pulled his pack around onto his lap. He quickly undid the leather thongs and reached inside, then carefully lifted out something wrapped in black quilted material. It was only about a foot tall but not very big around. By the way Sabar handled it, it appeared to be somewhat heavy.

Sabar set the wrapped object on the ground, upright, in front of the fire. “Nicci told me that I should give this to you, that the letter would explain it.”

Jennsen leaned in a little, fascinated by the mystery of the tightly wrapped object. “What is it?”

Sabar shrugged. “Nicci didn’t tell me.” He made a face that suggested he was somewhat uncomfortable with the way he was in the dark about much of the mission he’d been sent on. “When Nicci looks at you and tells you to do something, it goes out of your head to ask questions.”

Richard smiled to himself as he began to unroll the letter. He knew all too well what Sabar meant.

“Did Nicci say anything about who could unwrap that thing?”

“No, Lord Rahl. She just said to give it to you, that the letter would explain it.”

“If it had a web around it, like the letter, she would have warned you.” Richard looked up. “Cara,” he said, gesturing at the bundled package sitting before the fire, “why don’t you unwrap it while Kahlan and I read the letter.”

As Cara sat cross-legged on the ground and started working on the knots in the leather thongs around the black quilted wrap, Richard held the letter sideways a bit so that Kahlan could read it silently along with him.

Richard sat back and let out a troubled breath. “How can such a link be possible?” Kahlan asked.

He hardly had to read between the lines to be able to tell that Nicci was warning him in the gravest possible terms.

“It has to be linked somehow to the underworld,” Richard whispered back.

Little points of firelight danced in her green eyes as she stared at him.

Kahlan glanced again at Cara as she worked at the knots, pulling off one of the leather thongs around an object linked to a dead wizard in the underworld. Kahlan held up the edge of the letter as she urgently read along with him.

“Oh, now wait a minute,” Cara said, standing, backing away as if she had released a deadly plague from the black quilting, “it isn’t my fault this time.” She pointed down at it. “You told me to, this time.”

The translucent statue Cara had touched before now stood in the center of its unfolded black quilted wrapping.

It was the same statue: a statue of Kahlan.

The statue’s left arm was pressed to its side, the right arm was raised, pointing. The statue, in an hourglass shape, looked as if it were made of transparent amber, allowing them to see inside.

Sand trickled out of the top half of the hourglass, through the narrowed waist, into the bottom of the full dress of the Mother Confessor.

The sand was still trickling down, just as it had been the last time Richard had seen the thing. At that time, the top half had been more full than the bottom half. Now, the top held less sand than the bottom.

Kahlan’s face had gone ashen.

When he’d first seen it, Richard wouldn’t have needed Nicci to tell him how dangerous such a thing was. He hadn’t wanted any of them to touch it.

When they had first come across it, in a recess of rock beside the trail, looking almost like part of the rock itself, the thing was opaque, with a dull, dark surface, yet it was clearly recognizable as Kahlan. It was lying on its side.

Cara wasn’t pleased to find such a thing and didn’t want to leave a representation of Kahlan lying about for anyone to find and to pick up for who-knew-what. Cara snatched it up, then, even though Richard started to yell at her to leave such a thing be.

When she picked it up, it started turning translucent.

In a panic, Cara set it back down.

That was when the right arm had lifted and pointed east.

That was when they could begin to see through the thing, to see the sand inside trickling down.

The implied danger of the sand running out had them all upset. Cara wanted to pick it up again and turn it over, to stop the sand from falling.

Richard, not knowing anything about such an object and doubting that so simple a solution would have any beneficial effect, hadn’t allowed Cara to touch it again. He had piled rocks and brush around it so no one else would know it was there. Obviously, that hadn’t worked.

He knew now that Cara’s touch had nothing to do with what was happening, except to initiate the warning, so he thought to confirm his original belief. “Cara, put it down.”

“Down?”

“On its side—like you wanted to do the last time—to see if that will stop the sand.”

Cara stared at him for a moment and then used the toe of her boot to tip the figure over on its side.

The sand continued to run as if it still stood upright.

“How can the sand do that?” Jennsen asked, sounding quite shaken. “How can the sand still fall—how can it fall sideways?”

“You can see it?” Kahlan asked. “You can see the sand falling?”

Jennsen nodded. “I sure can, and I have to tell you, it’s giving my goose bumps goose bumps.”

Richard could only stare at her staring at the statue of Kahlan lying on its side. If nothing else, the sand running sideways through the statue had to be magic. Jennsen was a pillar of Creation, a hole in the world, a pristinely ungifted offspring of Darken Rahl. She should not be able to see magic.

And yet, she was seeing it.

“I have to agree with the young lady,” Sabar said. “That’s even more frightening than those big black birds that I’ve seen circling for the last week.”

Kahlan straightened. “You been seeing—”

When he heard Tom’s urgent warning yell, Richard rose up in a rush, drawing his sword in one swift movement. The unique sound of ringing steel filled the night air.

The magic did not come out with the sword.