Naked Empire

Chapter 37

Dragged to an abrupt halt, Zedd, at last, stood shackled before the intent glower of the dream walker himself, Emperor Jagang.

Enthroned in an ornately carved high-backed chair behind a grand dining table, Jagang leaned on both elbows, a goose leg spanning his fingers as he chewed. Points of candlelight reflecting off the sides of his shaved head danced as the tendons all the way up through his temples rippled with his chewing. A thin mustache, growing down from the corners of his mouth and at the center under his lower lip, moved rhythmically in time with his jaw, as did the fine chain connected to gold loops in his ear and nose. Greasy goose fat covering his meaty, ringed fingers glistened in the candlelight and ran down his bare arms.

From his place behind his table, Jagang casually studied his latest captives.

Despite the candles set about the table and on stands to either side, the inside of the tent had the murky feel of a dungeon.

To each side of him on the broad table sat plates of food, goblets, bottles, candles, bowls, and, here and there, books and scrolls. There being no room for all of the silver platters among the multitude, some of them had to be strategically balanced atop small decorated pillars. There looked to be enough food for a small army.

For all the Order’s talk of sacrifice for the betterment of mankind being their noble cause, Zedd knew that such abundance at the emperor’s table was meant to send a contradictory message, even when there was no one but the emperor himself to see it.

Slaves stood lined up along the wall behind Jagang, some holding additional platters, some in stiff poses, all awaiting command. Some of those in back were young men—young wizards, from what Zedd had heard—dressed in loose-fitting white trousers and nothing else. This was where wizards in training at the Palace of the Prophets had ended up, along with the captured Sisters who had been their teachers. All were now captives of the dream walker. The most accomplished of men, men with enormous potential, were used as houseboys to perform menial tasks. This, too, was a message sent by the emperor of the Imperial Order to show everyone that the best and the brightest were to be used to clean chamber pots, while brutes ruled them.

The younger women, Sisters of both the Dark and the Light, Zedd assumed, wore outfits that ran from neck to wrist to ankle, but were so transparent that the women might as well have been naked. This, too, was meant to show that Emperor Jagang thought little of these women’s talents, and valued them only for his pleasure. The older, less attractive women standing off to the sides wore drab clothes. These were probably Sisters who served the emperor in other menial ways.

Jagang delighted in having under his control, as slaves, some of the most gifted people in the world. It suited the nature of the Order to demean those with ability, rather than to celebrate them.

Jagang watched Zedd taking in the house slaves, but showed no emotion.

The dream walker’s bull neck made him look almost other than human. The muscles of his chest, as well as his massive shoulders, were displayed by an open, sleeveless lamb’s-wool vest. He was as powerful and brawny a man as Zedd had seen, an intimidating presence even at rest.

As Zedd and Adie stood mute, Jagang’s teeth tore off another chunk of meat from the goose leg. In the tense silence, he watched them as he chewed, as if deciding what he might do with his newest plunder.

More than anything, it was his inky black eyes, devoid of any pupils, irises, or whites, that threatened to halt the blood in Zedd’s veins. The last time he had seen those eyes, Zedd had not been shackled, but that ungifted girl had prevented Zedd from finishing the man. That was going to turn out to be the missed opportunity that Zedd would most regret. His chance to kill Jagang had slipped through his fingers that day, not because of the vast power of all the skilled Sisters and troops arrayed against him, but all because of a single ungifted girl.

Those black eyes, the eyes of a mature dream walker, glistened in the candlelight. Across their dark voids, dim shapes shifted, like clouds on a moonless night.

The directness of the dream walker’s gaze was as obvious as was Adie’s when she looked at Zedd with her pure white eyes. Under Jagang’s direct glare, Zedd had to remind himself to relax his muscles, and remember to breathe.

The thing about those eyes that most terrified him, though, was what he saw in them: a keen, calculating mind. Zedd had fought against Jagang long enough to have come to understand that one underestimated this man at great peril.

“Jagang the Just,” the Sister said, holding an introductory hand out to the nightmare before them. “Excellency, this is Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander, First Wizard, and a sorceress by the name of Adie.”

“I know who they are,” Jagang said in a deep voice as heavy with threat as with distaste.

He leaned back, hanging one arm over the back of the chair and one leg over a carved arm. He gestured with the goose leg.

“Richard Rahl’s grandfather, as I hear told.”

Zedd said nothing.

Jagang tossed the partially eaten leg on a platter and picked up a knife. With one hand he sawed a chunk of red meat off a roast and stabbed it. Elbow on the table, he waved the knife as he spoke. Red juice ran down the blade.

“Probably not the way you had hoped to meet me.”

He laughed at his own joke, a deep, resonating sound alive with menace.

With his teeth, Jagang drew the chunk of meat off the knife and chewed as he watched them, as if unable to decide on a wealth of delightfully terrible options parading through his thoughts.

He washed the meat down with a gulp from a jeweled silver goblet, his gaze never leaving them. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you have come to visit me.”

His grin was like death itself. “Alive.”

He rolled his wrist, circling the knife. “We have a lot to talk about.”

His laugh died out, but the grin remained. “Well, you do, anyway. I’ll be a good host and listen.”

Zedd and Adie remained silent as Jagang’s black-eyed gaze went from one to the other.

“Not so talkative, just yet? Well, no matter. You will be babbling soon enough.”

Zedd didn’t waste the effort telling Jagang that torture would gain him nothing. Jagang would not believe any such boast, and even if he did, it would hardly stay his wish to see it done.

Jagang fingered a few grapes from a bowl. “You are a resourceful man, Wizard Zorander.” He popped several grapes in his mouth and chewed as he spoke. “All alone there in Aydindril, with an army surrounding you, you managed to gull me into thinking I had trapped Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor. Quite a trick. I must give you credit where credit is due.

“And the light spell you ignited among my men, that was remarkable.” He put another grape in his mouth. “Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of them were caught up in your wizardry?”

Zedd could see the corded muscles in the man’s hairy arm draped over the back of the chair stand out as he flexed the fist. He relaxed the hand then and leaned forward, using his thumb to gouge out a long chunk of ham.

He waved the meat as he went on. “It’s that kind of magic I need you to do for me, good wizard. I understand, from the stupid bitches I have who call themselves the Sisters of the Light, or the Sisters of the Dark, depending on who they’ve decided can offer better favors in the afterlife, that you probably didn’t conjure that little bit of magic on your own, but, rather, you used a constructed spell from the Wizard’s Keep and simply ignited it among my men with some kind of trick, or trigger—probably some small curiosity that one of them picked up and in the act of having a look, they set it off.”

Zedd was somewhat alarmed that Jagang had been able to learn so much.

The emperor took a big bite off the end of the piece of ham as he watched them. His indulgent look was beginning to wear thin.

“So, since you can’t do such marvelous magic yourself, I’ve had a few items brought from the Keep so you can tell me how they work, what they do. I’m sure there must be a great number of intriguing items among the inventory. I’d like to have some of those conjured spells so they can blow open a few of the passes into D’Hara for us. It would save me some time and trouble. I’m sure you can understand my eagerness to be into D’Hara and have this petty resistance finally over with.”

Zedd heaved a deep breath and finally spoke. “For most of those items, you could torture me to the end of time and I still wouldn’t be able to tell you anything because I don’t have any knowledge of them. Unlike you, I know my own limits. I simply don’t know what such a spell might look like. Even if I did, that doesn’t mean I would know how to work it. I was simply lucky with that one I used.”

“Maybe, maybe, but you do know about some of the items. You are, after all, as I hear told, First Wizard; it is your Keep. To claim ignorance of the things in it is hardly credible. Despite your claim of luck, you managed to know enough about that constructed light web to ignite it among my men, so you obviously have knowledge about the most powerful of the items.”

“You don’t know the first thing about magic,” Zedd snapped. “You have a head full of grand ideas and you think all you have to do is command they be done. Well, they can’t. You’re a fool who doesn’t know the first thing about real magic or its limits.”

An eyebrow lifted over one of Jagang’s inky eyes. “Oh, I think I know more than you might think, wizard. You see, I love to read, and I, well, I have the advantage of perusing some of the most remarkably gifted minds you can imagine. I probably know a great deal more about magic than you give me credit for.”

“I give you credit for bold self-delusion.”

“Self-delusion?” He spread his arms. “Can you create a Slide, Wizard Zorander?”

Zedd froze. Jagang had heard the name; that was all. The man liked to read. He’d read that name somewhere.

“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.

“I’d never heard such a thing. I told him that I didn’t think that such things mattered in my life because I was only a thief. He said that I was only striking back from the injustice of my lot in life. He said that mankind was evil for making me the way I was and only through sacrifice and helping those like me could man hope to be redeemed in the afterlife. He opened my mind to man’s sinful ways.

“Before he left, he turned back and asked me if I knew how long eternity was. I said no. He said that our miserable time in this world was but a blink before we entered the next world. That really made me think, for the first time, about our greater purpose.

“Over the next months, Brother Narev took the time to talk to me, to tell me about Creation and eternity. He gave me a vision of a possible better future where before I had none. He taught me about sacrifice and redemption. I thought I was doomed to an eternity of darkness until he showed me the light.

“He took me in, in return for helping him with life’s chores.

“For me, Brother Narev was a teacher, a priest, an advisor, a means to salvation”—Jagang’s gaze rose to Zedd—“and a grandfather, all rolled into one.

“He gave me the fire of what mankind can and should be. He showed me the true sin of selfish greed and the dark void of where it would lead mankind. Over time, he made me the fist of his vision. He was the soul; I was the bone and muscle.

“Brother Narev allowed me the honor of igniting the revolution. He placed me at the fore of the rise of mankind over the oppression of sinfulness. We are the new hope for the future of man, and Brother Narev himself allowed me to be the one to carry his vision in the cleansing flames of mankind’s redemption.”

Jagang leaned back in his chair, fixing Zedd with as grim a look as Zedd had ever seen.

“And then this spring, while carrying Brother Narev’s noble challenge to mankind, to those who had never had a chance to see the vision of what man can be, of the future without the blight of magic and oppression and greed and groveling to be better than others, I came to Aydindril . . . and what do I find?

“Brother Narev’s head on a pike, with a note, ‘Compliments of Richard Rahl.’

“The man I admired most in the world, the man who brought to us all the hallowed dream of mankind’s true purpose in this life as charged by the Creator himself, was dead, his head stuck on a pike by your grandson.

“If ever there was a greater blasphemy, a greater crime against the whole of mankind, I don’t know of it.”

Sullen shapes shifted across Jagang’s black eyes. “Richard Rahl will be dealt justice. He will suffer such a blow, before I send him to the Keeper. I just wanted you to know your fate, old man. Your grandson will know something of that kind of pain, and the additional torment of knowing that I have his bride and will make her pay dearly for her own crimes.” A ghost of the grin returned. “After he has paid this price, then I will kill him.”

Zedd yawned. “Nice story. You left out all the parts where you slaughter innocent people by the tens of thousands because they don’t want to live under your vile rule or Narev’s sick, twisted vision.

“On second thought, don’t bother with the sorry excuses. Just cut off my head, put it on a pike, and be done with it.”

Jagang’s smile returned in its full glory. “Not as easily as that, old man. First you have some talking to do.”