Naked Empire

Chapter 54

Verna paused when the sentry rushed up in the dark. She moved her hands up on the reins, closer to the bit, to keep her horse from spooking.

“Prelate—I think it might be an attack of some sort,” the soldier said in breathless worry.

She frowned at the man. “What might be an attack? What is it?”

“There’s something coming up the road.” He pointed back toward Dobbin Pass. “A wagon, I think.”

The enemy was always sending things at them—men sneaking through the darkness, horses encased in spells designed to blow a breach in their shields running wildly toward them, innocent enough wagons with archers hiding inside, powerful spell-driven winds laced with magic conjuring of every sort.

“Since it’s dark, the commander thinks it’s suspicious and we shouldn’t take any chances.”

“Sounds wise,” Verna said.

She had to get back to their camp. She had made the rounds herself to get a good look at their defenses, to see the men at the outposts, before their nightly meeting back at camp to go over the day’s reports.

“The commander wants to destroy the wagon before it gets too close. I’ve checked, Prelate—there are no other Sisters at hand. If you don’t want to see to this, we can have the men up above drop a rockslide on the wagon and crush it.”

Verna had to get back to meet with the officers. “You had better tell your commander to take care of it in whatever manner he sees fit.”

The soldier saluted with snap of a fist to his heart.

Verna pulled her horse around and put a foot into the stirrup. Why would the Imperial Order think they could get a wagon through, especially at night? Certainly, they weren’t foolish enough to think it wouldn’t be seen in the dark. She paused and looked at the soldier hurrying away.

“Wait.” He stopped and turned. “I changed my mind. I’ll go with you.”

It was foolish to use the rocks they had ready overhead; they might need them if a full-scale attack suddenly charged up this pass. It was silly to waste such a defense.

She followed the man up the trail to the lookout point where his company waited. The men were all watching through the trees. The road out ahead and below them looked silver in the light of the rising moon.

Verna inhaled the fragrance of balsam firs as she watched the wagon making its way up the silvery road, being pulled by a single, plodding horse. Tense archers waited at the ready. They had a shielded lantern standing by to light fire arrows in order to set the wagon ablaze.

Verna didn’t see anyone in the wagon. An empty wagon seemed pretty suspicious. She recalled the strange message from Ann, warning her to let an empty wagon through.

But they had already done that. Verna recalled that the girl with the message from Jagang had come in by this route and method. Verna’s heart pounded in worry at the thought of what new message Jagang might be sending, now.

Perhaps it was Zedd’s and Adie’s heads.

“Hold,” she called to the archers. “Let it through, but stand at the ready in case it’s a trick.”

Verna made her way down the narrow path between the trees. She stood behind a screen of spruce, watching. When the wagon was close enough, she opened a small gap in the weave of the vast shield she and the Sisters had spun across the pass. The pattern of magic was barbed with every nasty sort of magic they could conjure. This pass was small enough that the shields alone could hold it, and if the enemy did come, it was too small for any numbers to come all at once. Even without the formidable shield, the pass was relatively easy to hold.

When the wagon passed through the shield, Verna closed the hole. When it rolled close enough, one of the men ran out of the trees and took control of the horse. As the wagon drew to a halt, dozens of archers behind him and on the other side, behind Verna, drew their weapons. Verna had spun a web of magic and she was prepared to unleash it at the slightest provocation.

The tarp in the bed of the wagon eased back. A little girl sat up. It was the child who had brought the message the last time. Her face lit up at seeing Verna, someone she recognized.

Verna’s heart skipped a beat at the thought of what the message might be, this time.

“I brought some friends,” the girl said.

People lying in the back of the wagon pulled the tarp aside and started sitting up. They looked like parents with their frightened children.

Verna blinked in shock when she saw some of the people help Adie up.

The sorceress looked to be exhausted. Her black and gray hair was no longer parted neatly in the middle, but was in as much disarray as Zedd’s usually was.

Verna rushed over, leaning in to help the woman. “Adie! Oh, Adie, am I ever glad to see you!”

The old sorceress smiled. “I be awfully happy to see you, too, Verna.”

Verna’s gaze swept over the people in the wagon, her heart still pounding with apprehension. “Where’s Zedd?”

“He escaped as well.”

Verna closed her eyes with a silent prayer of gratitude.

Her eyes popped open. “If he escaped, then where is he?”

“He be on his way back to the Keep, in Aydindril,” Adie said in her raspy voice. “The enemy has captured it.”

“We heard.”

“That old man intends to have his Keep back.”

“Knowing Zedd, I feel sorry for anyone who gets in his way.”

“Rikka be with him.”

“Rikka! What was she doing over there? I ordered her not to do that!”

Verna realized how that must have sounded. “We thought it would be pointless, that she wouldn’t have a chance and we would just lose her for nothing.”

“Rikka be Mord-Sith. She has a mind of her own.”

Verna shook her head. “Well, even though she wasn’t supposed to do that, now that I see you again and know Zedd has escaped as well, I’m glad that that obstinate woman didn’t listen to me.”

“Captain Zimmer be on his way back as well.”

“Captain Zimmer!”

“Yes, he and some of his men decided to come to rescue us as well. They be coming back the way they travel, unseen in the night.” Adie gestured to the surrounding trees. “They be up around us, protecting the wagon on our way in. The captain feared that some of the enemy might stop the wagon and capture us all over again. He wanted to make sure we be safe.”

The captain and his men had special signals that allowed them to move through the pass without being attacked by their own men, or the Sisters, by mistake. The nature of the way Captain Zimmer and his men worked was that they were, for the most part, outside regular command. Kahlan had set it up that way so they could act on their own initiative. While it could at times be aggravating, those men accomplished more than anyone ever expected.

“Zedd wanted me to help these people escape.” Adie gave Verna a meaningful look. “There be others we could not help.”

Verna glanced over at the people huddling together at the back of the wagon. “I can only imagine what Jagang has been doing with people like that.”

“No,” Adie said. “I doubt you can.”

Verna changed to an even more horrifying subject. “Has Jagang been able to find anything from the Keep, so far, that he will use against us?”

“Thankfully, no. Zedd set a spell that destroyed the things stolen from the Keep. There be a big explosion in the middle of their camp.”

“Like the one back in Aydindril that killed so many of them?”

“No, but it still caused much destruction and killed some important people—even some of Jagang’s Sisters, I believe.”

Verna never thought she would see the day that she would be pleased to hear that Sisters of the Light had died. Those women were controlled by the dream walker, and even when they had been offered freedom, they had been too afraid to believe those trying to rescue them. They had chosen to remain Jagang’s slaves.

With a sudden thought, Verna grabbed a fistful of Adie’s robes. “Could the spell Zedd ignited possibly have taken out Jagang?”

With her completely white eyes, Adie looked back up Dobbin Pass toward the Imperial Order camp. “I wish I had better news, Prelate, but Captain Zimmer, on the way out, told me that just as we were about to be rescued, an assassin managed to get deep into the inner camp.”

“An assassin? Who was it? Where was he from?”

“None of us knows. He appeared much like others from the Old World. The intruder be driven by a single-minded determination to get to Jagang and kill him. He somehow made it into the inner defenses, killed some people, and took the uniform of the elite guards so he might get to Jagang. The guards somehow recognized he not be one of their own. They hacked the man to pieces before he could get close to the emperor.

“Jagang left the area until his men could check over their defenses and make sure there be no more assassins about. Many of the Sisters went with him, helping with his safeguards. That be when Zedd set off the sunset spell. We did not know Jagang had left the area, but it would have make no difference. Zedd had to use the spell when it be put before him. The spell be triggered by the sun setting.”

Verna nodded. For a moment, she had been hoping . . .

“Still, you and Zedd escaped, and that’s what matters for now. Thank the Creator.”

“A surprising number of people showed up all at once to rescue us.” Adie lifted an eyebrow. “I do not recall seeing the Creator among them.”

The warm breeze ruffled Verna’s curly hair. “I suppose not, but you know what I mean.”

The crickets in the woods kept up their steady chirping. Life seemed to be a little sweeter, their situation a little less hopeless.

She let out a sigh. “I hope the Creator will at least help Zedd and Rikka take back the Keep.”

“Zedd will not need the Creator’s help,” Adie said. “Another man showed up to help get us out. Chase be an old friend of Zedd, me, and Richard. Chase will have those holding the Keep praying for the protection of the Creator.”

“Then we can look forward to the day the Keep is back in our hands and Jagang is denied help in breaking through the passes into D’Hara.”

Verna waved her arm, signaling, and the four couples standing at the back of the wagon shuffled forward with their children.

“Welcome to D’Hara,” Verna told them. “You will be safe, here.”

“Thank you for helping get us out,” one of the men said with a bow of his head to Adie. “I feel ashamed, now, of the terrible things I had been thinking of you.”

Adie smiled to herself as she tightened her thin fingers on his shoulder. “True. But I could not blame you.”

The girl who had brought the message the last time tugged on Verna’s dress. “This is my mother and father. I told them how nice you were to me, before.”

Verna squatted down and hugged the girl. “Welcome back, child. Welcome back.”