Naked Empire

Chapter 65

Kahlan hurriedly pulled the tin off the shelf and opened the lid. The tin contained a yellowish powder. It was the right color. She leaned down and showed it to Richard as he lay in the litter. He reached in and took a pinch.

He smelled it. He put his tongue to it and then nodded.

“Just a little,” he whispered, lifting it out to her. Kahlan held out her palm while he dribbled some of the crushed powder in her hand. He threw the rest on the floor, too weak to bother returning it to the tin. Kahlan added the small portion on her palm to one of the pots of boiling water.

Cloth bags of herbs steeped in other pots of hot water. Alkaloids from dried mushrooms were soaking in oil. Richard had other people grating stalks of plants.

“Lobelia,” Richard said. His eyes were closed.

Owen bent down. “Lobelia?”

Richard nodded. “It will be a dried herb.”

Owen turned to the shelves and started looking. There were hundreds of little square cubbyholes in the wall of the place where the man who had made Richard’s poison, and the antidote, used to work. It was a small, simple, single-room building with little light. It was not nearly as well equipped as the herbalist places Kahlan had seen before, but the man had an extensive collection of things. More than that, he had once made the antidote, presumably from what was there.

“Here!” Owen said, holding a bag down for Richard to see. “It says lobelia on the tag.”

“Grind a little pile half the size of your thumbnail, sift out the fibers and discard them, then add what’s left to the bowl with the darker oil.”

Richard knew about herbs, but he didn’t know anywhere near enough about herbs to concoct the cure for the poison he had been given.

His gift seemed to be guiding him.

Richard was in a near trance, or nearly unconscious; Kahlan wasn’t exactly sure which. He was having difficulty breathing. She didn’t know what else to do to help him. If they didn’t do something, he was going to die, and soon. As long as he lay quietly on the litter he was resting more comfortably, but that was not going to make him recover.

It had been a short run to Witherton, but it had taken too long as far as Kahlan was concerned.

“Yarrow,” Richard said.

Kahlan leaned down. “What preparation?”

“Oil,” Richard said.

Kahlan fumbled through the shelves of small bottles. She found one labeled YARROW OIL. She squatted down and held it before Richard.

“How much?”

She lifted one of his hands and put the bottle in it, closing his fingers around it so he could tell its size. “How much?”

“Is it full?”

Kahlan hurriedly wiggled out the whittled wooden stopper. “Yes.”

“Half,” Richard said. “In with any of the other oils.”

“I found the feverfew,” Jennsen said as she hopped down from the stool.

“Make a tincture,” Richard told her.

Kahlan replaced the stopper in the bottle and squatted down beside Richard. “What next?”

“Make an infusion of mullein.”

“Mullein, mullein,” Kahlan mumbled as she turned to the task.

As Richard gave them instructions, half a dozen people worked at boiling, blending, crushing, grating, filtering, and steeping. They added some of the preparations together as they were completed, and kept others separate as they worked on them. As they worked, the number of various tasks were combined and reduced at specified points.

Richard gestured for Owen. Owen brushed his hands clean on his trouser legs as he bent down to await instruction.

“Cold,” Richard said, his eyes closed. “We need something cold. We need a way to cool it.”

Owen thought a moment. “There’s a stream not far.”

Richard pointed to various stations where people labored. “Pour those bowls of preparations and powders into the boiling water in the kettle, there. Then take it to the stream. Hold the kettle down in the water to cool it.” Richard held up a finger in caution. “Don’t put it in too deep and let the water from the stream run in over the top, or it will be ruined.”

Owen shook his head. “I won’t.”

He stood impatiently as Kahlan poured the contents of shallow bowls into the boiling pot of water. She didn’t know if any of this made sense, but she knew that Richard had the gift, and he certainly had figured out and eliminated the problem he had been having with it. If his gift could guide him in making the antidote, it might save his life.

Kahlan didn’t know anything else that would.

She handed the kettle to Owen. He ran out the door to put it in the stream to cool it. Cara followed him out to make sure that nothing happened to what might be the only thing that could save Richard’s life.

Jennsen sat on the floor on the other side of him, holding his hand.

With the back of her wrist, Kahlan pushed her hair off her face. She sat beside Richard and took his free hand to wait for Owen and Cara to return.

Betty stood in the doorway, her ears pricked forward, her tail intermittently going into a hopeful blur of wagging whenever Jennsen or Kahlan looked her way.

It seemed like hours until Owen came running back with the kettle, although Kahlan knew it really hadn’t been all that long.

“Filter it through a cloth,” Richard said, “but don’t squeeze the cloth at the end; just let the liquid run through until you have half a cup of it. Once you’ve done that, then add the oils to the liquid you collected in the cup.”

Everyone stood watching Kahlan work, snatching up what she needed, tossing it away when she was finished with it. When she had enough liquid from the kettle collected in the cup, she poured in the oils.

“Stir it with a stick of cinnamon,” Richard said.

Owen climbed up on the stool. “I remember seeing cinnamon.”

He handed a stick down to Kahlan. She stirred the golden liquid, but it didn’t seem to be working.

“The oil and water don’t want to mix,” she told Richard.

His head was rolled to the side away from her. “Keep mixing. A moment will come when they suddenly come together.”

Dubious, Kahlan kept stirring. She could see that the oils were sticking together in globs and not mixing with the water she had filtered through the cloth. The more it cooled, the less and less it looked like it was going to work.

Kahlan felt a tear of desperation run down her cheek and drip off her jaw.

The contents of the cup stiffened. She kept stirring, not wanting to tell Richard that it wasn’t working. She swallowed past the growing lump in her throat.

The contents in the cup began to melt. Kahlan gasped. She blinked.

Everything in the cup suddenly went together into a smooth, syrupy liquid.

“Richard!” She wiped the tear from her cheek. “It worked. It mixed together. Now what?”

He held his hand out. “It’s ready. Give it to me.”

Jennsen and Cara helped him to sit up. Kahlan held the precious cup in both hands and carefully put it to his mouth. She tipped it up to help him drink. It took a while to get it down. He had to stop from time to time as he sipped, trying not to cough.

It was a lot more than had been in any of the little square-sided bottles, but Kahlan figured that maybe he needed more, since he was so late to be taking it.

When he was finished, she reached up and set the cup on the counter. She licked a drop of the liquid off her finger. The antidote had the slight aroma of cinnamon and a sweet, spicy taste. She hoped that was right.

Richard worked at recovering his breath after the effort of drinking.

They gently laid him back down. His hands were trembling. He looked miserable.

“Just let me rest, now,” he murmured.

Betty, still standing in the doorway, watching intently, bleated her wish to come in.

“He will be all right,” Jennsen said to her friend. “You just stay out there and let him rest.”

Betty pulled softly and then lay down in the doorway to wait along with the rest of them. It was going to be a long night. Kahlan didn’t think she was going to be able to sleep until she knew if Richard would be all right.

Zedd pointed. “There’s another one, there, that needs to be cleaned up,” he said to Chase.

Chase wore a chain-mail shirt over a tan leather tunic. His heavy black trousers held a black belt set with a large silver buckle emblazoned with the emblem of the boundary wardens. Beneath his black cloak, strapped everywhere—legs, waist, upper arms, over the backs of his shoulders—was a small arsenal of weapons, everything from small thin spikes held in the fist and used to puncture the skull to a crescent-shaped battle-axe used to divide a skull cleanly with one blow. Chase was deadly with any of them.

It had been a while now since they needed the skills of a boundary warden. Chase seemed to be a man without a mission.

The big man walked across the rampart and bent to pull a knife from beneath the body.

He grunted in recognition. “There it is.” He held the walnut-handled knife up to the light as he inspected it. “I was worried I’d lost it.”

He slipped the knife into an empty sheath without having to look. With one hand, he grabbed the waistband of the trousers and picked up the stiff body. He stepped into an opening in the crenellated wall and heaved the body out into the air.

Zedd looked over the edge. It was a drop of several thousand feet before the rock of the mountain flared enough for anything falling to make contact. It was several thousand more feet down a granite cliff before the forest began.

The golden sun was getting low in the mountains. The clouds had taken on streaks, of gold and orange. From this distance, the city below was as beautiful as ever, except Zedd knew that it was an empty place without the people to bring it life.

“Chase, Zedd,” Rachel called from the doorway, “the stew is ready.”

Zedd threw his skinny arms into the air. “Bags! It’s about time! A man could starve waiting for stew to cook.”

Rachel planted her fist with the wooden spoon on her hip and shook a finger of her other hand at him. “If you keep saying bad words, you’ll not get any dinner.”

Chase let out a sigh as he glanced over at Zedd. “And you think you have troubles. You wouldn’t think that a girl who doesn’t come up to my belt buckle could be such a trial.”

Zedd followed Chase to the doorway through the thick stone wall. “Is she always this much trouble?”

Chase mussed Rachel’s hair on the way past. “Always,” he confided.

“Is the stew good?” Zedd asked. “Worth watching my language for?”

“My new mother taught me how to make it,” Rachel said in a tempting singsong. “Rikka had some before she went out, and she said it was good.”

Zedd smoothed back his unruly white hair. “Well, Emma can cook better than any woman I ever met.”

“Then be good,” Rachel said, “and I’ll give you biscuits to go with the stew.”

“Biscuits!”

“Sure. Stew wouldn’t be stew without biscuits.”

Zedd blinked at the child. “Why, that’s what I always thought, too.”

“You’d better let me see if she made it right, first,” Chase said as they passed through the tapestry lined halls of the Keep. “I’d hate you to go making any firm commitments before we even know if the stew is edible.”

“Friedrich helped me with the heavy parts,” Rachel said. “He says it’s good.”

“We’ll see,” Chase said.

Rachel turned and shook her wooden spoon at him. “You have to wash your hands, first, though. I saw you throwing that dead man over the wall. You have to wash your hands before you come to the table and eat.”

Chase gave Zedd a look of strained forbearance. “Somewhere, there’s a boy enjoying himself right now, probably carrying around a dead frog, oblivious to the sorry fact that he’s someday going to be married to little-miss-wash-your-hands-before-you-eat.”

Zedd smiled. When Chase had taken Rachel in to be his daughter, it was just about the best thing Zedd could ever have wished for, Rachel thought so, too, and it looked like she still did. She was fiercely devoted to the man.

As they sat at the table, before the cheery fire in the hearth, Zedd enjoying his third bowl of stew, he couldn’t recall the Keep being such a wonderful place. It was because there was a child, along with friends, once again in the halls of the Keep.

Friedrich, the man who had come on Richard’s orders to warn Zedd of the impending attack on the Keep, had realized he had not been in time. The man used his head and had sought out Chase, the old friend he had heard Richard talk about.

While Chase had gone to rescue Zedd and Adie, Friedrich had returned to the Keep to spy on the people who had taken it. By watching carefully and staying out of sight of a Sister, Friedrich had been able to provide Chase and Zedd invaluable information about the number of people occupying the Keep, and their routines. He then helped take the place back.

Zedd liked the man. He was not only frightfully handy with a knife, but entertaining at conversation. Friedrich, since he had been married to a sorceress, was able to converse with Zedd without being intimidated as some were of wizards. Having lived in D’Hara all his life, Friedrich was also able to fill in pieces of information.

Rachel held up a carving of a hawk. “Look what Friedrich made for me, Zedd. Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you ever did see?”

Zedd smiled. “It certainly is.”

“It’s nothing,” Friedrich scoffed. “If I had some gold leaf, then I could gild it for you. That used to be what I did for a living.” He leaned back and smiled to himself. “Until Lord Rahl made me a boundary warden.”

“You know,” Zedd drawled offhandedly to both men, “the Keep is even more vulnerable, now, to those who might come and don’t have magic than to those who do. I’m just fine protecting against those who are affected by magic, but not the other kind.”

Chase nodded. “Seems so.”

“Well, the thing is,” he went on, “I was thinking that since there’s no boundary any longer, and what with all the trouble about, perhaps you two would like to take on the responsibility of helping to protect the Wizard’s Keep. I’m not nearly so fit for the task as would be someone trained in such things.” Zedd leaned in, his brow lowering. “It’s vitally important.”

Elbows on the table, Chase chewed a bite of biscuit as he watched Zedd.

Finally, he stirred his spoon around in his bowl.

“Well, it could be a disaster if Jagang were to use those ungifted men to get his hands on the place again.” He thought about it. “Emma will understand.”

Zedd shrugged. “Bring her here.”

Chase frowned. “Bring her here?”

Zedd gestured around. “The Keep is certainly big enough.”

“But what would we do with our children?” Chase leaned back. “You don’t want all my children here in the Keep, Zedd—they’d be running up and down, playing in the halls. It would drive you batty. Besides,” Chase added, peering with one scowling eye at Rachel, “each one’s uglier than the next.”

Rachel hid her giggle behind a biscuit.

Zedd remembered the sounds of children’s laughter in the Keep, the sounds of joy and love.

“Well, it would be a burden,” he agreed, “but this is, after all, about the protection of the Keep. What sacrifice wouldn’t it be worth making to protect the Keep?”

Rachel looked from Chase to Zedd. “My new sister, Lee, could bring Cat back to you, Zedd.”

“That’s right!” Zedd said, throwing his hands up. “I haven’t seen Cat for ages! Is Lee treating Cat well?”

Rachel nodded earnestly. “Oh, yes. We all take good care of Cat.”

“What do you think, Rachel?” Chase finally asked. “Would you want to live here in this dusty old place with Zedd?”

Rachel ran over and hugged Chase’s leg. “Oh, yes, can we, please? It would be ever so grand.”

Chase sighed. “Then I guess it’s settled. But you’ll have to behave and not bother Zedd by being too loud.”

“I promise,” Rachel said. She frowned up at Zedd. “Will Mother have to crawl into the Keep through that little tunnel, like we did?”

Zedd chuckled. “No, no, we’ll let her come in the proper way, like the lady she is.” He turned to Friedrich. “How about it, boundary warden? Would you be willing to continue doing Lord Rahl’s bidding and stay to help guard the Keep?”

Friedrich slowly spun the bird carving by the tip of one wing, thinking.

“You know,” Zedd added, “while you’re waiting for some fearsome attack, there are any number of old gilded things here at the Keep that are in terrible need of repair. Perhaps you would consider taking on the job of being the Keep’s official gilder? We have plenty of gold leaf. And, someday, when the people return to Aydindril, you would have a steady supply of customers.”

Friedrich stared down at the table. “I don’t know. This one adventure was all well and good, but since my wife, Althea, died, I don’t seem to be interested in much.”

Zedd nodded. “I know how it is. I used to have a wife. I think it would do you good to get paid to do something needed.”

Friedrich smiled. “All right, then. I will take your job, wizard.”

“Good,” Chase said. “I’ll have someone to help me when I need to lock troublesome children in the dungeon.”

Rachel giggled as he set her on the ground.

Chase pushed his chair back and stood. “Well, Friedrich, if we’re going to be Keep wardens, then I think we ought to make some rounds and satisfy ourselves about the security of a few things. As big as this place is, Rikka could use the help.”

“Just mind the shields,” Zedd reminded them as they headed for the door.

After the two men had gone off, Rachel got Zedd another biscuit to go with the rest of his stew. Her little brow bunched together earnestly.

“When we live here, we’ll try to be real quiet for you, Zedd.”

“Well, you know, Rachel, the Keep is a big place. I doubt you would bother me much if you and your brothers and sisters wanted to play a little bit.”

“Really?”

Zedd pulled the leather-covered ball painted with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines all around it out of his pocket and set it on the table.

Rachel’s eyes lit up in astonishment.

“I found this old ball,” he said, gesturing with his biscuit. “I think a ball has a much better time if it has someone to play with it. Do you think you and your brothers and sisters might like to play with this when you live here? You can bounce it down the halls to your heart’s content.”

Her mouth fell open. “Really, Zedd?”

Zedd grinned at the look on her face. “Really.”

“Maybe I can bounce it in the dark hall that makes the funny noises. Then it wouldn’t bother you any more than now.”

“This old place is full of funny noises—and a bouncing ball isn’t liable to cause too much trouble.”

She climbed up in his lap and put her little arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.

“It’s a lot better hugging you now that you found those things to get that awful collar off your neck.”

Zedd rubbed her back as she hugged him. “Yes, it is, little one; yes, it is.”

She leaned back and looked at him. “I wish Richard and Kahlan could be here to play with the ball, too. I miss them something fierce.”

Zedd smiled. “Me, too, little one. Me, too.”

She frowned at him. “Don’t get tears, Zedd. I won’t make a lot of noise to bother you.”

Zedd shook a bony finger at her. “I’m afraid you have a lot to learn about playing with a ball.”

“I do?”

“Of course. Laughing goes with playing with a ball like biscuits go with stew.”

She frowned at him, not sure if he was telling the truth.

He set her on the floor. “Tell you what. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll show you.”

“Really, Zedd?”

Zedd stood up and mussed her hair. “Really.”

He scooped the ball off the table. “Let’s see if you can show this ball how to have a good time.”