Naked Empire

Chapter 7

Around midafternoon, as they were walking across the scorching desert, Kahlan noticed Richard carefully watching his shadow stretched out before him.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

He gestured at the shadow before him. “Races. Ten or twelve. They just glided up behind us. They’re hiding in the sun.”

“Hiding in the sun?”

“They’re flying high and in the spot where their shadow falls on us. If we were to look up in the sky we wouldn’t be able to see them because we’d have to look right into the sun.”

Kahlan turned and, with her hand shielding her eyes, tried to see for herself, but it was too painful to try to look up anywhere near the merciless sun. When she looked back, Richard, who hadn’t turned to look with her, again flicked his hand toward the shadows.

“If you look carefully at the ground around your shadow, you can just make out the distortion in the light. It’s them.”

Kahlan might have thought that Richard was having a little fun with her were it not about a matter as serious as the races. She searched the ground around their shadows until she finally saw what he was talking about. At such a distance, the races’ shadows were little more than shifting irregularities in the light.

Kahlan glanced back at the wagon. Tom was driving, with Friedrich sitting up on the seat beside him. Richard and Kahlan were giving the horses a rest from being ridden, so they were tethered to the wagon.

Jennsen sat on blankets in the back of the wagon, comforting Betty as she bleated in misery. Kahlan didn’t think the goat had been silent for more than a minute or two all day. The gash wasn’t bad; Betty’s suffering was from other pain. At least the poor goat had Jennsen for solace.

From what Kahlan had learned, Jennsen had had Betty for half her life.

Moving around as she and her mother had, running from Darken Rahl, hiding, staying away from people so as not to reveal themselves and risk word drifting back to Darken Rahl’s ears, Jennsen had never had a chance to have childhood friends. Her mother had gotten her the goat as a companion. In her constant effort to keep Jennsen out of the hands of a monster, it was the best she could offer.

Kahlan wiped the stinging sweat from her eyes. She took in the four black feathers Richard had bundled together and strung on his upper right arm. He had taken the feathers when he’d retrieved the arrows that were still good. Richard had given the last feather to Tom for killing the fifth race with his knife. Tom wore his single feather like Richard, on his arm.

Tom thought of it as a trophy, of sorts, awarded by the Lord Rahl.

Kahlan knew that Richard wore his four feathers for a different reason: it was a warning for all to see.

Kahlan pulled her hair back over her shoulder. “Do you think that was a man below the races? A man watching us?”

Richard shrugged. “You know more about magic than me. You tell me.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” She frowned over at him. “If it was a man . . . or something like that, why do you think he finally decided to reveal himself?”

“I don’t think he did decide to reveal himself.” Richard’s intent gray eyes turned toward her. “I think it was an accident.”

“How could it be an accident?”

“If it’s someone using the races to track us, and he can somehow see us—”

“See us how?”

“I don’t know. See us through the eyes of the races.”

“You can’t do that with magic.”

Richard fixed her with a trenchant look. “Fine. Then what was it?”

Kahlan looked back at the shadows stretching out before them on the buckskin-colored rock, back at the small bleary shapes moving around the shadow of her head, like flies around a corpse. “I don’t know. You were saying? . . . About someone using the races to track us, to see us?”

“I think,” Richard said, “that someone is watching us, through the races or with their aid—or something like that—and they can’t really see everything. They can’t see clearly.”

“So?”

“So, since he can’t see with clarity, I think maybe he didn’t realize that there was a sandstorm. He didn’t anticipate what the blowing sand would reveal. I don’t think he intended to give himself away.” Richard looked over at her again. “I think he made a mistake. I think he showed himself accidentally.”

Kahlan let out a measured, exasperated breath. She had no argument for such a preposterous notion. It was no wonder he hadn’t told her the full extent of his theory. She had been thinking, when he said the races were tracking them, that probably a web had been cast and then some event had triggered it—most likely Cara’s innocent touch—and that spell had then attached to them, causing the races to follow that marker of magic. Then, as Jennsen had suggested, someone was simply watching where the races were in order to get a pretty good idea of where Richard and Kahlan were. Kahlan had thought of it in terms of the way Darken Rahl had once hooked a tracer cloud to Richard in order to know where they were. Richard wasn’t thinking in terms of what had happened before; he was looking at it through the prism of a Seeker.

There were still a number of things about Richard’s notion that didn’t make sense to her, but she knew better than to discount what he thought simply because she had never heard of such a thing before.

“Maybe it’s not a ‘he,’ ” she finally said. “Maybe it’s a she. Maybe a Sister of the Dark.”

Richard gave her another look, but this one was more worry than anything else. “Whoever it is—whatever it is—I don’t think it can be anything good.”

Kahlan couldn’t argue that much of it, but still, she couldn’t reconcile such a notion. “Well, let’s say it’s like you think it is—that we spotted him spying on us, by accident. Why did the races then attack us?”

Dust rose from Richard’s boot as he casually kicked a small stone. “I don’t know. Maybe he was just angry that he’d given himself away.”

“He was angry, so he had the races kill Betty’s kids? And attack you?”

Richard shrugged. “I’m just guessing because you asked; I’m not saying I think it’s so.” The long feathers, bloodred at their base, turning to a dark gray and then to inky black at the tip, ruffled in the gusts of wind.

As he thought it over, his tone turned more speculative. “It could even be that whoever it was using the races to watch us had nothing at all to do with the attack. Maybe the races decided to attack on their own.”

“They simply took the reins from whoever it was that was taking them for the ride?”

“Maybe. Maybe he can send them to us so he can have a peek at where we are, where we’re going, but can’t control them much more than that.”

In frustration, Kahlan let out a sigh. “Richard,” she said, unable to hold back her doubts, “I know a good deal about all sorts of magic and I’ve never heard of anything like this being possible.”

Richard leaned close, again taking her in with those arresting gray eyes of his. “You know about all sorts of things magic from the Midlands. Maybe down here they have something you never encountered before. After all, had you ever heard of a dream walker before we encountered Jagang? Or even thought such a thing was possible?”

Kahlan pulled her lower lip through her teeth as she studied his grim expression for a long moment. Richard hadn’t grown up around magic—it was all new to him. In some ways, though, that was a strength, because he didn’t have preconceived notions about what was possible and what wasn’t.

Sometimes, the things they’d encountered were unprecedented.

To Richard, just about all magic was unprecedented.

“So, what do you think we should do?” she finally asked in a confidential tone.

“What we planned.” He glanced over his shoulder to see Cara scouting a goodly distance off to their left side. “It has to be connected to the rest of it.”

“Cara only meant to protect us.”

“I know. And who knows, maybe it would have been worse if she hadn’t touched it. It could even be that by doing what she did, she actually bought us time.”

Kahlan swallowed at the feeling of dread churning in her. “Do you think we still have enough time?”

“We’ll think of something. We don’t even know yet for sure what it could mean.”

“When the sand finally runs out of an hourglass, it usually means the goose is cooked.”

“We’ll find an answer.”

“Promise?”

Richard reached over and gently caressed the back of her neck.

“Promise.”

Kahlan loved his smile, the way it sparkled in his eyes. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that he always kept his promises. His eyes held something else, though, and that distracted her from asking if he believed the answer he promised would come in time, or even if it would be an answer that could help them.

“You have a headache, don’t you,” she said.

“Yes.” His smile had vanished. “It’s different than before, but I’m pretty sure it’s caused by the same thing.”

The gift. That’s what he meant.

“What do you mean it’s different? And if it’s different, then what makes you think the cause is the same?”

He thought about it a moment. “Remember when I was explaining to Jennsen about how the gift needs to be balanced, how I have to balance the fighting I do by not eating meat?” When she nodded he went on. “It got worse right then.”

“Headaches, even those kind, vary.”

“No . . .” he said, frowning as he tried to find the words. “No, it was almost as if talking about—thinking about—the need not to eat meat in order to balance the gift somehow brought it more to the fore and made the headaches worse.”

Kahlan didn’t at all like that concept. “You mean like maybe the gift within you that is the cause of the headaches is trying to impress upon you the importance of balance in what you do with the gift.”

Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “I don’t know. There’s more to it. I just can’t seem to get it all worked out. Sometimes when I try, when I go down that line of reasoning, about how I need to balance the fighting I do, the pain starts to get so bad I can’t dwell on it.

“And something else,” he added. “There might be a problem with my connection to the magic of the sword.”

“What? How can that be?”

“I don’t know.”

Kahlan tried to keep the alarm out of her voice. “Are you sure?”

He shook his head in frustration. “No, I’m not sure. It just seemed different when I felt the need of it and drew the sword this morning. It was as if the sword’s magic was reluctant to rise to the need.”

Kahlan thought it over a moment. “Maybe that means that the headaches are something different, this time. Maybe they aren’t really caused by the gift.”

“Even if some of it is different, I still think its cause is the gift,” he said. “One thing they do have in common with the last time is that they’re gradually getting worse.”

“What do you want to do?”

He lifted his arms out to the sides and let them fall back. “For now, we don’t have much of a choice—we have to do what we planned.”

“We could go to Zedd. If it is the gift, as you think, then Zedd would know what to do. He could help you.”

“Kahlan, do you honestly believe that we have any chance in Creation of making it all the way to Aydindril in time? Even if it weren’t for the rest of it, if the headaches are from the gift, I’d be dead weeks before we could travel all the way to Aydindril. And that’s not even taking into account how difficult it’s bound to be getting past Jagang’s army all throughout the Midlands and especially the troops around Aydindril.”

“Maybe he’s not there now.”

Richard kicked at another stone in the path. “You think Jagang is just going to leave the Wizard’s Keep and all it contains—leave it all for us to use against him?”

Zedd was First Wizard. For someone of his ability, defending the Wizard’s Keep wouldn’t be too difficult. He also had Adie there with him to help. The old sorceress, alone, could probably defend a place such as the Keep. Zedd knew what the Keep would mean to Jagang, could he gain it. Zedd would protect the Keep no matter what.

“There’s no way for Jagang to get past the barriers in that place,” Kahlan said. That much of it was one worry they could set aside. “Jagang knows that and might not waste time holding an army there for nothing.”

“You may be right, but that still doesn’t do us any good—it’s too far.”

Too far. Kahlan seized Richard’s arm and dragged him to a halt. “The sliph. If we can find one of her wells, we could travel in the sliph. If nothing else, we know there’s the well down here in the Old World—in Tanimura. Even that’s a lot closer than a journey overland all the way to Aydindril.”

Richard looked north. “That might work. We wouldn’t have to make it past Jagang’s army. We could come right up inside the Keep.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “First, though, we have to see to this other business.”

Kahlan grinned. “All right. We take care of me first, then we see to taking care of you.”

She felt a heady sense of relief that there was a solution at hand. The rest of them couldn’t travel in the sliph—they didn’t have the required magic—but Richard, Kahlan, and Cara certainly could. They could come up right in the Keep itself.

The Keep was immense, and thousands of years old. Kahlan had spent much of her life there, but she had seen only a fraction of the place. Even Zedd hadn’t seen it all, because of some of the shields that had been placed there ages ago by those with both sides of the gift, and Zedd had only the Additive side. Rare and dangerous items of magic had been stored there for eons, along with records and countless books. By now it was possible that Zedd and Adie had found something in the Keep that would help drive the Imperial Order back to the Old World.

Not only would going to the Keep be a way to solve Richard’s problem with the gift, but it might provide them with something they needed to swing the tide of the war back to their side.

Suddenly, seeing Zedd, Aydindril, and the Keep seemed only a short time away.

With a renewed sense of optimism, Kahlan squeezed Richard’s hand. She knew that he wanted to keep scouting ahead. “I’m going to go back and see how Jennsen is doing.”

As Richard moved on and Kahlan slowed, letting the wagon catch up with her, another dozen black-tipped races drifted in on the air currents high above the burning plain. They stayed close to the sun, and well out of range of Richard’s arrows, but they stayed within sight.

Tom handed a waterskin down to Kahlan when the bouncing wagon rattled up beside her. She was so dry that she gulped the hot water without caring how bad it tasted. As she let the wagon roll past, she put a boot in the iron rung and boosted herself up and over the side.

Jennsen looked to be happy for the company as Kahlan climbed in. Kahlan returned the smile before sitting beside Richard’s sister and the puling Betty.

“How is she?” Kahlan asked, gently stroking Betty’s floppy ears.

Jennsen shook her head. “I’ve never seen her like this. It’s breaking my heart. It reminds me of how hard it was for me when I lost my mother. It’s breaking my heart.”

As she sat back on her heels, Kahlan squeezed Jennsen’s hand sympathetically. “I know it’s hard, but it’s easier for an animal to get over something like this than for people to do the same. Don’t compare it to you and your mother. Sad as this is, it’s different. Betty can have more kids and she’ll forget all about this. You or I never could.”

Before the words were out, Kahlan felt a sudden stab of pain for the unborn child she had lost. How could she ever get over losing her and Richard’s child? Even if she ever had others, she would never be able to forget what was lost at the hands of brutes.

She idly turned the small dark stone on the necklace she wore, wondering if she ever would have a child, wondering if there would ever be a world safe for a child of theirs.

“Are you all right?”

Kahlan realized that Jennsen was watching her face.

Kahlan forced herself to put on a smile. “I’m just sad for Betty.”

Jennsen ran a tender hand over the top of Betty’s head. “Me too.”

“But I know that she’ll be all right.”

Kahlan watched the endless expanse of ground slowly slide by to either side of the wagon. Waves of heat made the horizon liquid, with detached pools of ground floating up into the sky. Still, they saw nothing growing.

The land was slowly rising, though, as they came ever closer to distant mountains. She knew that it was only a matter of time until they reached life again, but right then it felt like they never would.

“I don’t understand about something,” Jennsen said. “You told me how I shouldn’t do anything rash, when it came to magic, unless I was sure of what would happen. You said it was dangerous. You said not to act in matters of magic until you can be sure of the consequence.”

Kahlan knew what Jennsen was driving at. “That’s right.”

“Well, that back there pretty much seemed like one of those stabs in the dark you warned me about.”

“I also told you that sometimes you had no choice but to act immediately. That’s what Richard did. I know him. He used his best judgment.”

Jennsen looked to be satisfied. “I’m not suggesting that he was wrong. I’m just saying that I don’t understand. It seemed pretty reckless to me. How am I supposed to know what you mean when you tell me not to do anything reckless if it involves magic?”

Kahlan smiled. “Welcome to life with Richard. Half the time I don’t know what’s in his head. I’ve often thought he was acting recklessly and it turned out to be the right thing, the only thing, he could have done. That’s part of the reason he was named Seeker. I’m sure he took into account things he sensed that even I couldn’t.”

“But how does he know those things? How can he know what to do?”

“Oftentimes he’s just as confused as you, or even me. But he’s different, too, and he’s sure when we wouldn’t be.”

“Different?”

Kahlan looked over at the young woman, at her red hair shining in the afternoon sunlight. “He was born with both sides of the gift. All those born with the gift in the last three thousand years have been born with Additive Magic only. Some, like Darken Rahl and the Sisters of the Dark, have been able to use Subtractive Magic, but only through the Keeper’s help—not on their own. Richard alone has been born with Subtractive Magic.”

“That’s what you mentioned last night, but I don’t know anything about magic, so I don’t know what that means.”

“We’re not exactly sure of everything it means ourselves. Additive Magic uses what is there, and adds to it, or changes it somehow. The magic of the Sword of Truth, for example, uses anger, and adds to it, takes power from it, adds to it until it’s something else. With Additive, for example, the gifted can heal.

“Subtractive Magic is the undoing of things. It can take things and make them nothing. According to Zedd, Subtractive Magic is the counter to Additive, as night is to day. Yet it is all part of the same thing.

“Commanding Subtractive, as Darken Rahl did, is one thing, but to be born with it is quite another.

“Long ago, unlike now, being born with the gift—both sides of the gift—was common. The great war then resulted in a barrier sealing the New World off from the Old. That’s kept the peace all this time, but things have changed since then. After that time, not only have those born with the gift gradually become exceedingly rare, but those who have been born with the gift haven’t been born with the Subtractive side of it.

“Richard was born of two lines of wizards, Darken Rahl and his grandfather Zedd. He’s also the first in thousands of years to be born with both sides of the gift.

“All of our abilities contribute to how we’re able to react to situations. We don’t know how having both sides contributes to Richard’s ability to read a situation and do what’s necessary. I suspect he may be guided by his gift, perhaps more than he believes.”

Jennsen let out a troubled sigh. “After all this time, how did this barrier come to be down, anyway?”

“Richard destroyed it.”

Jennsen looked up in astonishment. “Then it’s true. Sebastian told me that the Lord Rahl—Richard—had brought the barrier down. Sebastian said it was so that Richard could invade and conquer the Old World.”

Kahlan smiled at such a grandiose lie. “You don’t believe that part of it, do you?”

“No, not now.”

“Now that the barrier is down, the Imperial Order is flooding up into the New World, destroying or enslaving everything before them.”

“Where can people live that’s safe? Where can we?”

“Until they’re stopped or driven back, there is no safe place to live.”

Jennsen thought it over a moment. “If the barrier coming down let the Imperial Order flood in to conquer the New World, why would Richard have destroyed it?”

With one hand, Kahlan held on to the side of the wagon as it rocked over a rough patch of ground. She stared ahead, watching Richard walking through the glaring light of the wasteland.

“Because of me,” Kahlan said in a quiet voice. “One of those mistakes I told you about.” She let out a tired sigh. “One of those stabs in the dark.”