Naked Empire

Chapter 20

The sprawling corridors of the People’s Palace, seat of power in D’Hara, were filled with the whisper of footsteps on stone. Ann pushed herself back a little on the white marble bench where she sat stuffed between three women on one side and an older couple on the other, all gossiping about what people were wearing as they strolled the grand halls, or what other people did while they were here, or what they most wanted to see. Ann supposed that such gossip was harmless enough and probably meant to take people’s minds off the worries of the war. Still, it was hard to believe that at such a late hour people would rather be out gossiping than in a warm bed asleep.

Ann kept her head down and pretended to be pawing through her travel bag while at the same time keeping a wary eye on the soldiers passing not too far away as they patrolled. She didn’t know if her caution was necessary, but she would rather not find out too late that it was.

“Come from far?” the closest woman beside her asked.

Ann looked up, realizing that the woman had spoken to her. “Well, yes, I guess it has been a bit of a journey.”

Ann put her nose back in her bag and rummaged in earnest, hoping to be left alone.

The woman, middle-aged with her curls of brown hair just starting to carry a bit of gray, smiled. “I’m not all that far from home, myself, but I do so like to spend a night at the palace, now and then, just to lift my spirits.”

Ann glanced around at the polished marble floors, the glossy red stone columns below arches, decorated with carved vines, that supported the upper balconies. She gazed up at the skylights that allowed the light to flood in the place during the day, and peered off at the grand statues that stood on pedestals around a fountain with life-sized stone horses galloping forever through a shimmering spray of water.

“Yes, I see what you mean,” Ann murmured.

The place didn’t lift her spirits. In fact, the place made her as nervous as a cat in a doghouse with the door closed. She could feel that her power was frighteningly diminished in this place.

The People’s Palace was more than any mere palace. It was a city all joined together and under countless roofs atop a huge plateau. Tens of thousands of people lived in the magnificent structure, and thousands more visited it daily. There were different levels to the palace itself, some where people had shops and sold goods, others where officials worked, some that were living quarters. Many sections were off limits to those who visited.

Sprawled around the base of the plateau were informal markets where people gathered to buy, sell, and trade goods. On the climb all the way up through the interior of the plateau to reach the palace itself, Ann had passed many permanent shops. The palace was a center of trade, drawing people from all over D’Hara.

More than that, though, it was the ancestral home of the House of Rahl.

As such, it was grand for arcane reasons beyond the awareness or even understanding of most of the people who called it home or visited it. The People’s Palace was a spell—not a place spelled, as had been the Palace of the Prophets where Ann had spent most of her life. The place itself was the spell.

The entire palace had been built to a careful and precise design: that of a spell drawn on the face of the ground. The outer fortified walls contained the actual spell form and the major congregations of rooms formed significant hubs, while the halls and corridors themselves were the drawn lines—the essence of the spell itself, the power.

Like a spell being drawn in the dirt with the point of a stick, the halls would have had to have been built in the sequence required by the specific magic the spell was intended to invoke. It would have been enormously expensive to build it in that manner, ignoring the typical requirements of construction and accepted methods of the trade of building, but only by doing so would the spell work, and work it did.

The spell was specific. It was a place of safety for any Rahl. It was meant to give a Rahl more power in the place, and to leach power away from anyone else who entered. Ann had never been in a place where she felt such a waning of her Han, the essence of life and the gift within. She doubted that in this place her Han would for long be vital enough to light a candle.

Ann’s jaw dropped in astonishment as another element of the spell abruptly occurred to her. She looked out at the halls—part of the lines of the spell—filled with people.

Spells drawn with blood were always more effective and powerful. But when the blood soaked into the ground, decomposed, and dissipated, the power of the spell would often fade as well. But this spell, the drawn lines of the spell itself—the corridors—were filled with the vital living blood of all the people moving through them. Ann was struck dumb with awe at such a brilliant concept.

“So, you’re renting a room, then.”

Ann had forgotten the woman beside her, still staring at her, still holding the smile on her painted lips. Ann forced herself to close her mouth.

“Well . . .” Ann finally admitted, “I haven’t actually made arrangements yet as to where I will sleep.”

The woman’s smile persisted, but it looked as if it was taking more and more effort all the time. “You can’t curl up on a bench, you know. The guards won’t allow it. You have to rent a room, or be put out at night.”

Ann understood, then, what the woman was driving at. To these people, most dressed in their finest clothes for their visit to the palace, Ann must look like a beggar in their midst. After all the gossip about what people were wearing, this woman must have been disconcerted to find herself beside Ann.

“I have the price of a room,” Ann assured her. “I just haven’t found where they are, yet, that’s all. After such a long journey, I meant to go there right away and get myself cleaned up, but I just needed to rest my weary feet for a bit, first. Could you tell me where to find the rooms to rent?”

The smile looked a little easier. “I’m off to my own room and I could take you. It isn’t far.”

“That would be kind of you,” Ann said as she rose now that she saw the guards moving off down the corridor.

The woman stood, bidding her two benchmates a good night.

If Ann was tired, it was only from being caught up in the afternoon devotion to the Lord Rahl. A bell in an open square had tolled, and everyone had moved to gather there and bow down. Ann had noticed then that no one missed the devotion. Guards moved among the crowd watching people gather.

She felt like a mouse being watched by hawks so she joined with the other people moving toward the square.

She had spent nearly two hours on her knees, on a hard clay tile floor, bowed down with her forehead touching the ground like everyone else, repeating the devotion in concert with all the other somber voices.

Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.

Twice a day, those in the palace were expected to go to the devotion.

Ann didn’t know how people endured such torture.

Then she remembered the bond between the Lord Rahl and his people that prevented the dream walker from entering their minds, and she knew how they could endure it. She, herself, had briefly been a prisoner of Emperor Jagang. He murdered a Sister right before her eyes, just to make a point.

In the face of brutality and torture, she guessed that she knew how people endured a mere devotion.

For her, though, such a spoken devotion to the Lord Rahl, to Richard, was hardly necessary. She had been devoted to him for nearly five hundred years before he had even been born.

Prophecy said that Richard was their only chance to avoid catastrophe.

Ann peered carefully around the halls. Now she just needed the prophet himself.

“This way,” the woman said, tugging at Ann’s sleeve.

The woman gestured for Ann to follow her down a hallway to the right.

Ann pulled her shawl forward, covering the pack she carried, and hugged her travel bag closer as she followed along the wide corridor. She wondered how many people sitting on benches and low marble walls around fountains were gossiping about her.

The floor had a dizzying pattern of dark brown, rust, and pale tan-colored stone running across the hall in zigzag lines meant to look three-dimensional. Ann had seen such traditional patterns before, down in the Old World, but none of this grand scale. It was a work of art, and it was but the floor. Everything about the palace was exquisite.

Shops were set back under a mezzanine to each side. Some of them looked to sell items travelers might want. There was a variety of small food and drink stands, everything from hot meat pies, to sweets, to ale, to warm milk. Some places sold nightclothes. Others sold hair ribbons. Even at this late hour, some of the shops were still open and doing brisk business. In a place such as this, there would be people who worked at night and would have need of such shops. The places that offered to do up a woman’s hair, or paint her face, or promised to do wonders with her fingernails, were all closed until morning. Ann doubted they could pull off wonders with her.

The woman cleared her throat as they strolled down the broad corridor, gazing at the shops to each side. “And where have you traveled from?”

“Oh, far to the south. Very far.” Ann took note of the woman’s focused attention as she leaned in a bit. “My sister lives here,” Ann said, giving the woman something more to chew on. “I’m here to visit my sister. She advises Lord Rahl on important matters.”

The woman’s eyebrows lifted. “Really! An advisor to Lord Rahl himself. What an honor for your family.”

“Yes,” Ann drawled. “We’re all proud of her.”

“What does she advise him on?”

“Advise him on? Oh, well, matters of war.”

The woman’s mouth fell open. “A woman? Advising Lord Rahl on warfare?”

“Oh yes,” Ann insisted. She leaned over and whispered, “She’s a sorceress. Sees into the future, you know. Why, she wrote me a letter and told me she saw me coming to the palace for a visit. Isn’t that amazing?”

The woman frowned a bit. “Well, that does seem rather remarkable, since here you are and all.”

“Yes, and she told me that I’d meet a helpful woman.”

The woman’s smile returned, it again looked forced. “She sounds to be quite talented.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Ann insisted. “She is so specific in her forecasts about the future.”

“Really? Had she anything else to say about your visit, then? Anything specific?”

“Oh yes indeed. Why, do you know that she told me I would meet a man when I came here?”

The woman’s gaze flicked around the halls. “There are a lot of men here. That hardly seems very specific. Surely, she must have said more than that . . . I mean, if she is so talented, and an advisor to Lord Rahl and all.”

Ann put a finger to her lip, frowning in feigned effort at recollection. “Why, yes, she did, now that you mention it. Let’s see if I can remember . . .” Ann laid a hand on the woman’s arm in a familiar manner.

“She tells me about my future all the time. My sister is always telling me so many things about my future in her letters that I sometimes feel as if I’m having trouble catching up with my own life! I sometimes have trouble remembering it all.”

“Oh do try,” the woman said, eager for the gossip. “This is so fascinating.”

Ann returned the finger to her lower lip as she gazed at the ceiling, pretending to be engaged in deep thought, and noticed for the first time that the ceiling was painted like the sky, with clouds and all. The effect was quite clever.

“Well,” Ann finally said when she was sure she had the woman’s full attention, “my sister said that the man I would meet was old.” She returned the hand to the woman’s arm. “But very distinguished. Not old and decrepit, but tall—very tall—with a full head of white hair that comes all the way down to his broad shoulders. She said that he would be clean-shaven, and that he would be ruggedly handsome, with penetrating dark azure eyes.”

“Dark azure eyes . . . my, my,” the woman tittered, “but he does sound handsome.”

“And she said that when he looks at a woman with those hawklike eyes of his, their knees want to buckle.”

“That is precise,” the woman said, her face getting flushed. “Too bad she didn’t know this handsome fellow’s name.”

“Oh, but she did. What kind of advisor to the Lord Rahl would she be if she wasn’t talented enough to know such things.”

“She told his name, too? She can really do such tellings of the future?”

“Oh my yes,” Ann assured her.

She strolled along for a time, watching people making their way up and down the hall, stopping at some of the shops that were still open, or sitting on benches, gossiping.

“And?” the woman asked. “What is the name your sister foretold? The name of this tall distinguished gentleman.”

Ann frowned up at the ceiling again. “It was N something. Nigel or Norris, or something. No, wait—that wasn’t it.” Ann snapped her finger and thumb. “The name she said was Nathan.”

“Nathan,” the woman repeated, looking almost as if she had been ready to pluck the name off Ann’s tongue if she didn’t spit it out. “Nathan.”

“Yes, that’s it. Nathan. Do you know anyone here at the palace by that name? Nathan? A tall fellow, older, with long white hair, broad shoulders, azure eyes?”

The woman peered up at the ceiling in thought. This time it was Ann leaning in, waiting for word, watching intently for any reaction.

A hand seized Ann’s dress at her shoulder and brought her to an abrupt halt. Ann and the woman turned.

Behind them stood a very tall woman, with a very long blond braid, with very blue eyes, wearing a very dark scowl and an outfit of very red leather.

The woman beside Ann went as pale as vanilla pudding. Her mouth fell open. Ann forced her own mouth to stay shut.

“We’ve been expecting you,” the woman in red leather said.

Behind her, back up the hallway a short distance, spread out to block the hall, stood a dozen perfectly huge men in perfect leather armor carrying perfectly polished swords, knives, and lances.

“Why, I think you must have me mistaken for—”

“I don’t make mistakes.”

Ann wasn’t nearly as tall as the blond woman in red leather. She hardly came up past the yellow crescent and star across her stomach.

“No, I don’t suppose you do. What’s this about?” Ann asked, losing the timid innocent tone.

“Wizard Rahl wanted us to bring you in.”

“Wizard Rahl?”

“Yes. Wizard Nathan Rahl.”

Ann heard a gasp from the woman beside her. She thought the woman was going to faint, and so took hold of her arm.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

She stared, wide-eyed, at the woman in red leather glowering down at her. “Yes. I have to go. I’m late. I must go. Can I go?”

“Yes, you had better go,” the tall blonde said.

The woman dipped a quick bow and muttered “Good night” before scurrying off down the hall, looking over her shoulder only once.

Ann turned back to the scowl. “Well I’m glad you found me. Let’s be off to see Nathan. Excuse me . . . Wizard Rahl.”

“You won’t be having an audience with Wizard Rahl.”

“You mean, not tonight, I won’t be having an . . . audience with him tonight.”

Ann was being as polite as she could be, but she wanted to clobber that troublesome man, or wring his neck, and the sooner the better.

“My name is Nyda,” the woman said.

“Pleased to meet—”

“Do you know what I am?” She didn’t wait for Ann to answer. “I am Mord-Sith. I give you this one warning as a courtesy. It is the only warning, or courtesy, you will receive, so listen closely. You came here with hostile intent against Wizard Rahl. You are now my prisoner. Use of your magic against a Mord-Sith will result in the capture of that magic by me or one of my sister Mord-Sith and its use as a weapon against you. A very, very unpleasant weapon.”

“Well,” Ann said, “in this place my magic is not very useful, I’m afraid. Hardly worth a hoot, as a matter of fact. So, you see, I’m quite harmless.”

“I don’t care how useful you find your magic. If you try to so much as light a candle with it, your power will be mine.”

“I see,” Ann said.

“Don’t believe me?” Nyda leaned down. “I encourage you to try to attack me. I haven’t captured a sorceress’s magic for quite a while. Might be . . . fun.”

“Thank you, but I’m a bit too tired out—from my travels and all—to be attacking anyone just now. Maybe later?”

Nyda smiled. In that smile Ann could see why Mord-Sith were so feared.

“Fine. Later, then.”

“So, what is it you intend to do with me in the meantime, Nyda? Put me up in one of the palace’s fine rooms?”

Nyda ignored the question and gestured with a tilt of her head. Two of the men a short way back up the hall rushed forward. They towered over Ann like two oak trees. Each grasped her under an arm.

“Let’s go,” Nyda said as she marched off down the hall ahead of them.

The men started out after her, pulling Ann along with them. Her feet seemed to touch the floor only every third or fourth step. People in the hall parted for the Mord-Sith. Passersby pressed themselves up against the walls to the side, a goodly distance away. Some people disappeared into the open shops, from where they peered out windows. Everyone stared at the squat woman in the dark dress being hauled along by the two palace guards in burnished leather and gleaming mail. Behind she could hear the jangle of metal gear as the rest of the men followed along.

They turned into a small hall to the side going back between columns holding a projecting balcony. One of the men rushed forward to unlock the door. Before she knew it, they’d all swept through the little door like wine through a funnel.

The corridor beyond was dark and cramped—nothing like the marble-lined hallways most people saw. Not far down the hall, they turned down a stairway. The oak treads creaked underfoot. Some of the men handed lanterns forward so Nyda could light her way. The sound of all the footsteps echoed back from the darkness below.

At the bottom of the steps, Nyda led them through a maze of dirty stone passageways. The seldom-used halls smelled musty, and in places damp. When they reached another stairwell, they continued down a square shaft with landings at each turn, descending into the dark recesses of the People’s Palace. Ann wondered how many people in the past were taken by routes such as this, never to be seen again. Richard’s father, Darken Rahl, and his father before him, Panis, were rather fond of torture. Life meant nothing to men such as those.

Richard had changed all that.

But Richard wasn’t at the palace, now. Nathan was.

Ann had known Nathan for a very long time—for nearly a thousand years.

For most of that time, as Prelate, she had kept him locked in his apartments. Prophets could not be allowed to roam free. Now, though, this one was free. And, worse, he had managed to establish his authority in the palace—the ancestral home of the House of Rahl. He was an ancestor to Richard. He was a Rahl. He was a wizard.

Ann’s plan suddenly started to seem very foolish. Just catch the prophet off guard, she’d thought. Catch him off guard and snap a collar back around his neck. Surely, there would be an opening and he would be hers again.

It had seemed to make sense at the time.

At the bottom of the long descent, Nyda swept to the right, following a narrow walk with a stone wall soaring up on the right and an iron railing on the left. Ann gazed off over the railing, but the lantern light showed nothing but inky darkness below. She feared to think how far it might drop—not that she had any ideas of a battle with her captors, but she was beginning to worry that they just might heave her over the edge and be done with her.

Nathan had sent them, though. Nathan, as irascible as he could sometimes be, wouldn’t order such a thing. Ann considered, then, the centuries she had kept him locked away, considered the extreme measures it had sometimes taken to keep that incorrigible man under control. Ann glanced over the iron rail again, down into the darkness.

“Will Nathan be waiting for us?” she asked, trying to sound cheerful. “I’d really like to talk to him. We have business we must discuss.”

Nyda shot a dark look back over her shoulder. “Nathan has nothing to talk to you about.”

At an uncomfortably narrow passageway tunneling into the stone on the right, Nyda led them into the darkness. The way the woman rushed lent a frightening aspect to an already frightening journey.

Ann at last saw light up ahead. The narrow passageway emptied into a small area where several halls converged. Ahead and to the right they all funneled down steep stairs that twisted as they descended. As she was prodded down the stairs, Ann gripped the iron rail, fearful of losing her footing, although the big hand holding a fistful of her dress at her right shoulder would probably preclude any chance of falling, to say nothing of running off.

In the passageway at the bottom of the stairs, Nyda, Ann, and the guards came to a halt under the low-beamed ceiling. Wavering light from torches in floor stands gave the low area a surreal look. The place stank of burning pitch, smoke, stale sweat, and urine. Ann doubted that any fresh air ever penetrated this deep into the People’s Palace.

She heard a hacking cough echoing from a dim corridor to the right. She peered into that dark hall and saw doors to either side. In some of the doors fingers gripped iron bars in small openings. Other than the coughing, no sound came from the cells holding hopeless men.

A big man in uniform waited before an iron-bound door to the left. He looked as if he might have been hewn from the same stone as the walls. Under different circumstances, Ann might have thought that he was a pleasant enough looking fellow.

“Nyda,” the man said by way of greeting. When his eyes turned back up after a polite bow of his head, he asked in his deep voice, “What have we here?”

“A prisoner for you, Captain Lerner.” Nyda seized the empty shoulder of Ann’s dress and hauled her forward as if showing off a pheasant after a successful hunt. “A dangerous prisoner.”

The captain’s appraising gaze glided briefly over Ann before he returned his attention to Nyda. “One of the secure chambers, then.”

Nyda nodded her approval. “Wizard Rahl doesn’t want her getting out. He said she’s no end of trouble.”

At least half a dozen curt responses sprang to mind, but Ann held her tongue.

“You had better come with us, then,” Captain Lerner said, “and see to her being locked in behind the shields.”

Nyda tilted her head. Two of her men dashed forward and pulled torches from stands. The captain finally found the right key from a dozen or so he had on a ring. The lock sprang open with a strident clang that filled the surrounding low corridors. It sounded to Ann like a bell being tolled for the condemned.

With a grunt of effort, the captain tugged the heavy door, urging it to slowly swing open. In the long hallway beyond, Ann saw but a couple of candles bringing meager light to the small openings in doors to each side.

Men began hooting and howling, like animals, calling vile curses at who might be entering their world. Arms reached out, clawing the air, hoping to net a touch of a passing person.

The two men with torches swept into the hall right behind Nyda, the firelight illuminating her in her red leather so all those faces pressed up against the openings in their doors could see her. Her Agiel, hanging on a fine chain at her wrist, spun up into her fist. She glared at the openings in the doors to each side. Filthy arms drew back in. Voices fell silent. Ann could hear men scurry to the far recesses of their cells.

Nyda, once certain there would be no misbehavior, started out again.

Big hands shoved Ann ahead. Behind, Captain Lerner followed with his keys.

Ann pulled the corner of her shawl over her mouth and nose, trying to block the sickening stench.

The captain took a small lamp from a recess, lit it from a candle to the side, and then stepped forward to unlock another door. In the low passageway beyond, the doors were spaced closer together. A hand covered with infected lesions hung limp out of one of the tiny openings to the side.

The hall beyond the next door was lower, and no wider than Ann’s shoulders. She tried to slow her racing heart as she followed the rough, twisting passageway. Nyda and the men had to stoop, arms folded in, as they made their way.

“Here,” Captain Lerner said as he came to a halt.

He held up his lantern and peered into the small opening in the door.

On the second try, he found the right key and unlocked the door. He handed his small lamp to Nyda and then used both hands to pull the lever. He grunted and tugged with all his weight until the door grated partway open.

He squeezed around the door and disappeared inside.

Nyda handed in the lamp as she followed the captain in. Her arm, sheathed in red leather, came back out to seize a fistful of Ann’s dress and drag her in after.

The captain was opening a second door on the other side of the tiny room. Ann could sense that this was the room containing the shield. The second door grated open. Beyond was a room carved from solid bedrock. The only way out was through the door, and the outer room that contained the shield, and then the second door.

The House of Rahl knew how to build a secure dungeon.

Nyda’s hand gripped Ann’s elbow, commanding her into the room beyond.

Even Ann, as short as she was, had to duck as she stepped over the high sill to get through the doorway. The only furniture inside was a bench carved from the stone of the far wall itself, providing both a seat and a bed off the floor. A tin ewer full of water sat on one end of the bench. At the opposite end was a single, folded, brown blanket. There was a chamber pot in the corner. At least it was empty, if not clean.

Nyda set the lamp on the bench. “Nathan said to leave you this.”

Obviously it was a luxury the other guests weren’t afforded.

Nyda stepped one leg over the sill, but paused when Ann called her name.

“Please give Nathan a message for me? Please? Tell him that I would like to see him. Tell him that it’s important.”

Nyda smiled to herself. “He said you would say those words. Nathan is a prophet, I guess he would know what you would say.”

“And will you give him that message?”

Nyda’s cold blue eyes looked to be weighing Ann’s soul. “Nathan said to tell you that he has a whole palace to run, and can’t come running down to see you every time you clamor for him.”

Those were almost the exact words she had sent down to Nathan’s apartments countless times when a Sister had come to her with Nathan’s demands to see the Prelate. Tell Nathan that I have a whole palace to run and I can’t go running down there every time he bellows for me. If he has had a prophecy, then write it down and I will look it over when I have the time.

Until that moment, Ann had never truly realized how cruel her words had been.

Nyda pulled the door shut behind her. Ann was alone in a prison she knew she could not escape.

At least she was near the end of her life, and could not be held as a prisoner for nearly her entire life, as she had held Nathan prisoner for his.

Ann rushed to the little window. “Nyda!”

The Mord-Sith turned back from the second door, from beyond the shield Ann could not cross. “Yes?”

“Tell Nathan . . . tell Nathan that I’m sorry.”

Nyda let out a brief laugh. “Oh, I think Nathan knows you’re sorry.”

Ann thrust her arm through the door, reaching toward the woman. “Nyda, please. Tell him . . . tell Nathan that I love him.”

Nyda stared at her a long moment before she pushed the outer door closed.