Naked Empire

Chapter 34

Icy wind tore at Richard’s and Kahlan’s clothes as they huddled close together at the edge of a thick stand of spruce trees. Low, ragged clouds raced by as if to escape the colossal, dark, swirling clouds building above them. Fat flakes of snow danced in the cold gusts. Richard’s ears burned in the numbing cold.

“What do you think?” Kahlan asked.

Richard shook his head. “I don’t know.” He glanced behind them, back into the shelter of the trees. “Owen, are you sure you don’t know what it is? You don’t have any idea at all?”

The roiling clouds made an ominous backdrop for the imposing statue sitting up on the ridge.

“No, Lord Rahl. I’ve never been here before; none of us ever traveled this route. I don’t know what it could be. Unless . . .” His words trailed off into the moan of the wind.

“Unless what?”

Owen shrank back, twisting the button on his coat as he glanced to the Mord-Sith on one side of him and Tom and Jennsen on the other. “There is a foretelling—from the ones who gave us our name and protected us by sealing the pass. It is taught that when they gave our empire its name, they also told us that one day a savior would come to us.”

Richard wanted to ask the man just what exactly it was he thought they needed saving from—if they had lived in such an enlightened culture where they were safe from the unenlightened “savages” of the rest of the world.

Instead, he asked a simpler question he thought Owen might be able to answer.

“So you think that maybe that’s a statue of him, your savior?”

Owen fidgeted, his shoulders finally working into a shrug. “He is not just a savior. The foretelling also says that he will destroy us.”

Richard frowned at the man, hoping this was not going to be another of his convoluted beliefs. “This savior of yours is going to destroy you. That makes no sense.”

Owen was quick to agree. “I know. No one understands it.”

“Maybe it’s meant to say that someone will come to save your people,” Jennsen suggested, “but he will fail and so only end up destroying them in the attempt.”

“Maybe.” Owen’s face twisted with the displeasure of having to contemplate such an outcome.

“Maybe,” Cara suggested in a grim tone, “it means this man will come, and after seeing your people, decide they aren’t worth saving”—she leaned toward Owen—“and decide to destroy them instead.”

Owen, as he stared up at Cara, seemed to be considering her words as a real possibility, rather than the sarcasm Richard knew them to be.

“I don’t think that is the meaning,” Owen finally told her after earnest consideration. He turned back to Richard. “The foretelling, as it has been taught to us, you see, says, first, that a man will come who will destroy us. It then goes on to say that he is the one who will save us. ‘Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you,’ ” Owen quoted. “That is how we have been taught the words, how they were told to my people when we were put here, beyond this pass.”

“ ‘Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you,’ ” Richard repeated. He took a patient breath. “Whatever it originally said has probably been confused and all jumbled up as it’s been passed down. It probably no longer resembles the original saying.”

Rather than disagree, as Richard expected, Owen nodded. “Some believe, as you say, that over the time since we were protected and given our name, maybe the true words have been lost, or confused. Others believe that it has been passed down intact and must have important meaning. Some believe that the foretelling was meant to say only that a savior will come. Others think it means only that a destroyer will come.”

“And what do you believe?” Richard asked.

Owen twiddled the button on his coat until Richard thought it might come off. “I believe that the foretelling is meant to say that a destroyer will come—and I believe that he is this man Nicholas, of the Order—and then that a savior will come and save us. I believe that man is you, Lord Rahl. Nicholas is our destroyer. You are our savior.”

Richard knew from the book that prophecy didn’t function with these people, with pillars of Creation.

“What your people think is a foretelling,” Richard said, “is probably nothing more than an old adage that people have gotten mixed up.”

Owen held his ground, if hesitantly. “We are taught that this is a foretelling. We are taught that those who named us told us this foretelling and that they wanted it passed down so all might know of it.”

Richard sighed, the wind pulling out a long cloud of his breath. “So you think that up there is a statue of me, put there thousands of years ago by the ones who protected you behind the boundary? How would they know, long before I was born, what I would look like in order to make a statue of me?”

“The true reality knows everything that will be,” Owen said by rote. He forced a half smile as he shrugged again. “After all, it made that little statue that you found look like you.”

Unhappy to be reminded of that, Richard turned away from the man. The small figure had been made to look like him by magic tied to the boundary, and, possibly, to a dead wizard in the underworld.

Richard scanned the sky, the rocky slopes all around, the tree line. He didn’t see any sign of life. The statue—they still couldn’t quite make out what it was—sat distant up a treeless, rocky rise. It was yet quite a climb up to that rim of the pass, to that statue.

Richard was not going to like it if it did indeed turn out to be a statue of him beneath the gathering gloom.

He already didn’t like it one bit that the second warning beacon was meant for him. It bound him to a responsibility, a duty, he neither wanted nor could accomplish.

He had no idea how to restore the seal on Bandakar. Zedd had once created boundaries that were probably similar to the one that had been down here in the Old World, but even Zedd had used constructed magic he had found in the Keep. Such constructed spells had been created by ancient wizards with vast power and knowledge of such things. Zedd had told him that there were no more such spells.

Richard certainly had no idea how to call forth a spell that could create such a boundary. More to the point, he didn’t see how it would do any good even if he knew how. What had really been freed from Bandakar when the boundary failed was the trait of being born without any trace of the gift—that was why they had all been banished here in the first place. The Imperial Order was already breeding women from Bandakar in order to breed the gift out of mankind. There was no telling how far that trait had already spread. Breeding the women, as it sounded like they were doing, now, would gain them more children who were pristinely ungifted, children who would be indoctrinated in the teachings of the Order.

When they started using the men for breeding, the number of such children would vastly increase. A woman could have a child every year. In the same time, a man could sire a great number of children bearing his pristinely ungifted trait.

Despite the Order’s creed of self-sacrifice, they had not yet, it would seem, been willing to sacrifice their women to such an undertaking. Raping the women in Bandakar and proclaiming it for the good of mankind was fine with the men of the Order. For the men ruling the Imperial Order to give over their own women to be bred, however, was quite another matter.

Richard had no doubt that they eventually would start using their own women to this purpose, but that would come later. In the meantime, the Order would probably soon start using all the women captured and held as slaves for this purpose, breeding them to men from Bandakar. The Order’s conquest of the New World would provide them with plenty more women for breeding stock.

Whereas in ancient times those in the New World tried to limit the trait from spreading in man, the Imperial Order would do whatever they could to accelerate it.

“Richard,” Kahlan asked in a low voice, so the others farther back in the trees wouldn’t hear, “what do you think it means that the second warning beacon, the one for you, is turning black like the night stone? Do you think it means to show you the time you have left to get the antidote?”

Since he had only just found it, he hadn’t given it much thought. Even so, he could interpret it only as a dire warning. The night stone was tied to the spirits of the dead—to the underworld.

It could be, as Kahlan suggested, that the darkening was meant to show him how the poison was taking him, and that he was running out of time. For a number of reasons, though, he didn’t believe that was the explanation.

“I don’t know for sure,” he finally told her, “but I don’t think it’s a warning about the poison. I think that the way the statue is turning black is meant to represent, materially, how the gift is failing in me, how it’s slowly beginning to kill me, how the underworld, the world of the dead, is slowly enshrouding me.”

Kahlan’s hand slipped up on his arm, a gesture of comfort as well as worry. “That was my thought, too. I was hoping you would argue against it. This means that the gift might be more of a problem than the poison—if, after all, this dead wizard used the beacon to warn you about it.”

Richard wondered if the statue up on the ridge of the pass would hold any answers. He certainly didn’t have any. To make it up there and see, they would have to leave the shelter of the forest and travel out in the open.

Richard turned and signaled the others forward.

“I don’t think the races would be expecting us here,” he said as they gathered around him. “If we really did manage to lose them they won’t know where we went, what direction, so they won’t know to look for us, here. I think we can make it up there without the races, and therefore Nicholas, knowing.”

“Besides,” Tom said, “with those low clouds hugging most of the mountains, they may not be able to search.”

“Maybe,” Richard said.

It was getting late. In the distant mountains a wolf howled. On another slope across a deep cleft in the mountains, a second wolf answered. There would be more than two.

Betty’s ears perked toward the howls as she crowded against Jennsen’s legs.

“What if Nicholas uses something else?” Jennsen asked.

Cara gripped the blond braid lying over the front of her shoulder as she scanned the woods to the sides. “Something else?”

Jennsen pulled her cloak tighter around herself as the wind tried to lift it open. “Well, if he can look through a race’s eyes, then maybe he can look through the eyes of something else.”

“You mean a wolf?” Cara asked. “You think that wolf you heard might be him.”

“I don’t know,” Jennsen admitted.

“For that matter,” Richard said, “if he can look through the black eyes of the races, maybe he could just as easily look through the eyes of a mouse.”

Tom swiped his windblown blond hair back from his forehead as he cast a wary glance at the sky. “Why do you think he always seems to use the races, then?”

“Probably because they’re better able to cover great distances,” Richard said. “After all, he’d have a lot of trouble finding us with a mouse.

“More than that, though, I think he likes the imagery of being with such creatures, likes thinking of himself as being part of a powerful predator. He is, after all, hunting us.”

“So you think we only have to worry about the races, then?” Jennsen asked.

“I think he would prefer to watch through the races, but that isn’t his end, only the means,” Richard said. “He’s after Kahlan and me. Since getting us is his end, I think he will turn to whatever means he must, if necessary. He very well might look through even the eyes of a mouse if it would help him get us.”

“If his end is having you,” Cara said, “then Owen is helping his ends by bringing you right to him.”

Richard couldn’t argue with that. For the moment, though, he had to go along with Owen’s wishes. Soon enough, Richard intended to start doing things his own way.

“For now,” Richard said, “he’s still trying to find us, so I expect that he will stick to the races, since they can cover great distances. But, since I’ve killed races with arrows, he must realize that we at least suspect someone is watching us through their eyes. As we get closer to him, I see no reason that in the future he might not use something else so we won’t know he’s watching us.”

Kahlan looked to be alarmed by the idea. “You mean, something like a wolf, or, or . . . I don’t know, maybe an owl?”

“Owl, pigeon, sparrow. If I had to guess, then I’d guess that at least until he finds us he will use a bird.”

Kahlan huddled close beside him, using his body to block the wind. They were up high enough in the mountains that they were just beginning to encounter snow. From what Richard had seen of the Old World, it generally appeared too warm for snow. For there to be snow this time of year it could only be in the most imposing of mountains.

Richard gestured to the icy flakes swirling in the air. “Owen, does it get cold in winter in Bandakar? Do you get snow?”

“Winds come down from the north, following down our side of the mountains, I believe. In winter it gets cold. Every couple of years, we get a bit of snow, but it does not last long. Usually in the winter it rains more. I do not understand why it snows here, now, when it is summer.”

“Because of the elevation,” Richard answered idly as he studied the rising slopes to each side.

Higher yet, the snowpack was thick, and in places, where the wind blew drifts into overhangs, it would be treacherous. Trying to cross such precipitous, snow-covered slopes would be perilous, at best. Fortunately, they were nearing the highest point they would have to climb to make it over the pass, so they wouldn’t have to traverse heavy snow. The bitterly cold wind, though, was making them all miserable.

“I want to know what that thing is,” Richard finally said, gesturing up at the statue on the rise. He looked around at the others to see if anyone objected. No one did. “And, I want to know why it’s there.”

“Do you think we should wait for dark?” Cara asked. “Darkness will hide us better.”

Richard shook his head. “The races must be able to see pretty well in the dark—after all, that’s when they hunt. If given a choice, I’d rather be in the open during the daylight, when I can see them coming.”

Richard hooked his bow under his leg and bent it enough to attach the bowstring. He drew an arrow from the leather quiver over his shoulder and nocked it, holding it at rest against the bow with his left hand. He scanned the sky, checking the clouds, and looking for any sign of the races. He wasn’t entirely sure about the shadows among the trees, but the sky was clear of races.

“I think we’d better be on our way.” Richard’s gaze swept across all their faces, first, making sure they were paying attention. “Walk on the rocks if at all possible. I don’t want to leave a trail behind in the snow that Nicholas could spot through the eyes of the races.”

Nodding their understanding, they all followed after him, in single file, out onto the rocks. Owen, in front of the ever-watchful Mord-Sith, kept a wary eye toward the sky. Jennsen and Betty watched the woods to the sides. In the strong gusts, they all hunched against the wind and the stinging bite of icy crystals hitting their faces. In the thin air it was tiring climbing up the steep incline. Richard’s legs burned with the effort.

His lungs burned with the poison.

By the look of the sheer walls of rock rising up into broken clouds to either side, Richard didn’t see any way, other than the pass, for people to make it over the imposing mountains, at least, not without a journey of tremendous difficulty, hardship, and probably a great loss of life. Even then, he wasn’t really certain that it was even possible.

In places, as they trudged up the edge of the steep rise, he could see back through gaps in the rock walls of the mountains, under the dark bottom of clouds, to sunlight beyond the pass.

None of them spoke as they climbed. From time to time they had to pause to catch their breath. They all kept an eye to the churning sky.

Richard spotted a few small birds in the distance, but nothing of any size.

As they approached the top, following a zigzagging course so they could more easily make it up without having to scale rock faces of jutting ledges, Richard caught glimpses of the statue sitting on a massive base of granite.

From the high vantage point in the pass, he could now see that the rock on either side of the rise fell away in precipitous drops. The gorge at the bottom of either side dead-ended at vertical climbs of what would have to be thousands of feet. Whatever routes might have branched off lower down, they would have to converge before going up this rise; by the lay of the land, it became clear to him that this was the only way to make it through this entire section of the pass.

He realized that anyone approaching Bandakar by this route would have to climb this ridge in the rise, and they would unavoidably come upon the monument.

As he mounted the final cut between the snow-dusted boulders standing twice his height, Richard was able at last to take in the entire statue guarding the pass.

And guarding the pass it was. This was a sentinel.

The noble figure sitting atop a vast stone base was seated as he watchfully guarded the pass. In one hand the figure casually held a sword at the ready, its point resting on the ground. He appeared to be wearing leather armor, with his cape resting over his lap. The vigilant pose of the sentinel gave it a resolute presence. The clear impression was that this figure was set to ward what was beyond.

The stone was worn by centuries of weather, but that weathering failed to wear away the power of the carving. This figure was carved, and it was placed, with great purpose. That it was out in the middle of nowhere, at the summit of a mountain pass no longer traveled and a trail possibly abandoned after this was set here, made it, to Richard, all the more arresting.

He had carved stone, and he knew what had gone into this. It was not what he would call fine work, but it was powerfully executed. Just looking at it gave him goose bumps.

“At least it doesn’t look like you,” Kahlan said.

At least there was that.

But this thing being there all alone for what very well might have been thousands of years was worrisome.

“What I’d like to know,” Richard said to her, “is why this second beacon was down there, down the hill, in that cave, and not up here.”

Kahlan shared a telling look with him. “If Jennsen hadn’t done what she did, you would never have found it.”

Richard walked around the base of the statue, searching—for what he didn’t know. Almost as soon as he started looking, he saw, on the front of the base, on the top of one of the decorative moldings, an odd void in the snow. It looked as if something had been sitting there and had then been taken away. It was a track, of sorts, a telltale.

Richard thought the barren spot looked familiar. He pulled the warning beacon from his pack and checked the shape of the bottom. His thought confirmed, he placed the figure of himself in the void in the snow collected on the rim of the base. It was a perfect fit.

The little figure had been here, with this statue.

“How do you think it came to be down in the cave?” Cara asked in a suspicious voice.

“Maybe it fell,” Jennsen offered. “It’s pretty windy up here. Maybe the wind blew it off and it tumbled down the hill.”

“And just managed to roll through the woods without being stopped by a tree, and then, neat as can be,” Richard said, “roll right into the small opening of the cave, and then just happened to come to be stuck in the rock right near where you, by coincidence, ended up stuck. Stuck, I might add, in a terrifying place you aren’t terrified of.”

Jennsen blinked in wonder. “When you put it like that . . .”

Standing at the crown of the pass, in front of the statue right where the warning beacon would have rested, and now again rested, Richard could see that the spot held a commanding view of the approach to Bandakar. The mountains blocking off the view to either side were as formidable as anything he’d ever seen. The rise where the sentinel sat overlooked the approach into the pass back between those towering, snowcapped peaks. As high as they were, they were still only at the foothills of those mountains.

The statue was not looking ahead, as might be expected of a guardian, but rather, its unflinching gaze was fixed a little to the right. Richard thought that was a bit odd. He wondered if maybe it was meant to show this sentinel keeping a vigilant eye on everything, on every potential threat.

Standing as he was, directly in front of the statue’s base, in front of where the warning beacon sat, Richard looked to the right, in the direction the man in the statue was looking.

He could see the approach of the pass up through the mountains. Farther out, in the distance, he could see vast forests to the west, and beyond that, the low, barren mountains they had crossed.

And, he could see a gap in those mountains.

The eyes of the man in the statue were resolutely fixed upon what Richard now saw.

“Dear spirits,” he whispered.

“What is it?” Kahlan asked. “What do you see?”

“The Pillars of Creation.”