Naked Empire

Chapter 39

“They aren’t far,” Richard said as he stepped back in among the trees.

He stood silently watching as Kahlan straightened the shoulders of her dress.

The dress showed no ill effects from its long confinement in their packs. The almost white, satiny smooth fabric glistened in the eerie light of the churning overcast. The flowing lines of the dress, cut square at the neck, bore no lace or frills, nothing to distract from its simple elegance.

The sight of Kahlan in that dress still took his breath away.

She looked out through the trees when they heard Cara’s whistle. The warning signal Richard had taught Cara was the plaintive, high, clear whistle of a common wood pewee, although Cara didn’t know that’s what it was. When he’d first told Cara that he wanted to teach her a pewee birdcall as a warning signal, she said she wasn’t going to learn the call of any bird named a pewee. Richard gave in and told her that he would instead teach her the call of the small, fierce, short-tailed pine hawk, but only if she would be willing to work hard at getting it right, since it was more difficult.

Satisfied to have her way, Cara had agreed and readily learned the simple whistle. She was good at it and used it often as a signal. Richard never told her that there was no such thing as a short-tailed pine hawk, or that hawks didn’t make whistles like that.

Out through the screen of branches, the dark form of the statue stood guard over an area of the pass that for thousands of years had been deserted. Richard wondered again why the people back then would have put such a statue in a pass no one was likely to ever again visit. He thought about the ancient society that had placed it, and at what they must have thought, sealing people away for the crime of not having a spark of the gift.

Richard brushed pine needles off the back of the sleeve of Kahlan’s dress. “Here, hold still; let me look at you.”

Kahlan turned back, arms at her sides, as he smoothed the fabric at her upper arms. Her unafraid green eyes, beneath eyebrows that had the graceful arch of a raptor’s wings in flight, met his gaze. Her features seemed to have only grown more exquisite since he had first met her. Her look, her pose, the way she gazed at him as if she could see into his soul, struck a chord in him. Clearly evident in her eyes was the intelligence that had from the first so captivated him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Despite everything, he couldn’t hold back his smile. “Standing there like that, in that dress, your long hair so beautiful, the green of the trees behind you . . . it just suddenly reminded me of the first time I saw you.”

Her special smile, the smile she gave no one but him, spread radiantly through her bewitching eyes. She put her wrists on his shoulders and locked her fingers behind his neck, pulling him into a kiss.

As it always did, her kiss so completely consumed him with his need of her that he momentarily lost track of the world. She melted into his embrace. For that moment there was no Imperial Order, no Bandakar, no D’Haran Empire, no Sword of Truth, no chimes, no gift turning its power against him, no poison, no warning beacons, no black-tipped races, no Jagang, no Nicholas, no Sisters of the Dark. Her kiss made him forget everything but her. In that moment there was nothing but the two of them.

Kahlan made his life complete; her kiss reaffirmed that bond.

She pulled back, gazing up into his eyes again. “Seems like you’ve had nothing but trouble ever since that day you found me.”

Richard smiled. “My life is what I’ve had since that day I found you. When I found you, I found my life.”

Holding her face in both hands, he kissed her again.

Betty nudged his leg and bleated.

“You two about ready?” Jennsen called down the hill. “They’ll be here, soon. Didn’t you hear Cara’s whistle?”

“We heard,” Kahlan called up to Jennsen. “We’ll be right there.”

Turning back, she smiled as she looked him up and down. “Well, Lord Rahl, you certainly don’t look the way you did the first time I saw you.”

She straightened the tooled leather baldric lying over the black tunic banded in gold. “But you look exactly the same, too. Your eyes are the same as I saw that day.” She cocked her head as she smiled up at him. “I don’t see the headache of the gift in your eyes.”

“It’s been gone for a while, but after that kiss, it would be impossible to have a headache.”

“Well, if it comes back,” she said with intimate promise, “just tell me and I’ll see what I can do to make it go away.”

Richard ran his fingers through her hair and gazed one last time into her eyes before slipping his arm around her waist. Together they walked through the cathedral of trees that was their cover off to the side near the crown of the ridge, and out toward the open slope. Between the trunks of the pines, he could see Jennsen running down the hill, leaping from rock to rock, avoiding the patches of snow. She rushed in to meet them just within the small cluster of trees.

“I spotted them,” she said, breathlessly. “I could see them down in the gorge on the far side. They’ll be up here soon.” A grin brightened her face. “I saw Tom leading them.”

Jennsen took in the sight of both of them, then—Kahlan in the white dress of the Mother Confessor and Richard in the outfit he had in part found in the Keep that had once been worn by war wizards. By the surprise on Jennsen’s face, he thought she might curtsy.

“Wow,” she said. “That sure is some dress.” She looked Richard up and down again. “You two look like you should rule the world.”

“Well,” Richard said, “let’s hope Owen’s people think so.”

Cara pushed a spruce bough aside as she ducked in under the limbs of trees. Dressed again in her skintight red leather outfit, she looked as intimidating as she had the first time Richard had seen her in the grand halls of the People’s Palace in D’Hara.

“Lord Rahl once confided in me that he intended to rule the world,” Cara said, having heard Jennsen’s pronouncement.

“Really?” Jennsen asked.

Richard sighed at her awe. “Ruling the world has proven more difficult than I thought it would be.”

“If you would listen more to the Mother Confessor and to me,” Cara advised, “you would have an easier time of it.”

Richard ignored Cara’s cockiness. “Would you get everything together? I want to be up there with Kahlan before Tom arrives with Owen and his men.”

Cara nodded and started collecting the things they’d been working so hard to make, stacking some and taking a count of others. Richard laid a hand on Jennsen’s shoulder.

“Tie Betty up so that she’ll stay here for now. All right? We don’t need her in the way.”

“I’ll see to it,” Jennsen said as she fussed with ringlets of her red hair. “I’ll make sure she won’t be able to bother us or wander off.”

It was plainly evident how eager she was to see Tom again. “You look beautiful,” Richard assured her. Her grin returned to overpower the anxious expression.

Betty’s tail was a blur as she peered up at them, eager to go wherever the rest of them were going. “Come on,” Jennsen said to her friend, “you’re staying here for a while.”

Jennsen snatched Betty’s rope, holding her back, as Richard, with Kahlan close at his side, made his way out past the last of the trees and onto the open ledge. Somber clouds hung low against the face of surrounding mountains. With the towering snowcapped peaks hidden by the low, ominous clouds, Richard thought it felt like they were near the roof of the world.

The wind down at the ground had died, leaving the trees motionless and, by contrast, making the boiling movement of the cloud masses seem almost alive. The flurries of the day before had ended and then the sun had made a brief appearance to shrink the patches of snow on the pass. He didn’t think there was much chance of seeing the sun this day.

The towering stone sentinel waited at the top of the trail, watching forever over the pass and out toward the Pillars of Creation. As they approached it, Richard scanned the surrounding sky but saw only some small birds—flycatchers and white-breasted nuthatches—flitting among the nearby stand of spruce trees. He was relieved that the races had remained absent ever since they had taken this ancient trail up through the pass.

The first night up in the pass, farther back down the slope in the heavier forests, they had worked hard to build a snug shelter, just managing to get it done as darkness had settled into the vast woods. Early the next day, Richard had cleared snow off the statue and all around the ledges of the base.

He had discovered more writing.

He now knew more about this man whose statue had been placed there in the pass. Another small flurry had since dusted snow over the writing, burying again the long-dead words.

Kahlan placed a comforting hand on his back. “They will listen, Richard. They will listen to you.”

With every breath, pain pulled at him from deep inside. It was getting worse. “They’d better, or I’ll have no chance to get the antidote to this poison.”

He knew he couldn’t do it alone. Even if he knew how to call upon his gift and command its magic, he still would not be able to wave a hand or perform some grand feat of conjuring that would cast the Imperial Order out of the Bandakaran Empire. He knew that such things were beyond the scope of even the most powerful magic. Magic, properly used, properly conceived, was a tool, much like his sword, employed to accomplish a goal.

Magic was not what would save him. Magic was not a panacea. If he was to succeed, he had to use his head to come up with a way to prevail.

He no longer knew if he could even depend on the magic of the Sword of Truth. Nor did he know how long he had before his own gift might kill him.

At times, it felt as if his gift and the poison were in a race to see which could do him in first.

Richard led Kahlan the rest of the way up and around to the back of the statue, to a small prominence of rock at the very top of the pass where he wanted to wait for the men. From that spot they could see through the gaps in the mountains and back into Bandakar. Out at the edge of the level area, Richard spotted Tom down below leading the men through the trees and up the switchback trail.

Tom peered up as he ascended the trail and spotted Richard and Kahlan.

He saw how they were dressed, where they stood, and gave no familiar wave, realizing that doing so would be inappropriate. Through breaks in the trees, Richard could see men following Tom’s gaze up above them.

Richard lifted his sword a few inches, checking that it was clear in its scabbard. Overhead, the dark, towering clouds all around seemed to have gathered, as if they were all crowding into the confines of the pass to watch.

Standing tall as he gazed off to the unknown land beyond, to an unknown empire, Richard took Kahlan’s hand.

Hand in hand, they silently awaited what would be the beginning of a challenge that would change forever the nature of the world, or would be the end of his chance at life.