Naked Empire

  Richard knew that with everyone evacuated from Aydindril, the Imperial Order would now turn its swords on D’Hara. Despite the competence of the D’Haran troops, they would be overwhelmed by the numbers that Jagang would throw at them. If the Order was not diverted from its cause, or at least divided into smaller forces, D’Hara would fall under the shadow of the Order. The D’Haran Empire, forged to unite the New World against tyranny, would end before it had really gotten started.

  Richard had to get back to Victor and Nicci so that they could all continue what they had begun—devising the most effective strategy to overthrow the Imperial Order.

  But they were running out of time to resolve another problem, a problem they didn’t yet understand.

  “I’m glad you found us, Sabar. You can tell Victor and Nicci that we need to see to something first, but as soon as we do, we’ll be able to help them with their plans.”

  Sabar looked relieved. “Everyone will be happy to hear this.”

  Sabar hesitated, then tilted his head, gesturing north. “Lord Rahl, when I came to find you, following the directions Nicci gave me, I went past the area where she was to meet with you, and then I continued coming south.” Worry stole into his expression. “Not many days ago, I came to a place, miles wide, that was dead.”

  Richard looked up. He realized that his headache seemed to be suddenly gone. “What do you mean, dead?”

  Sabar waved his hand out toward the evening gloom. “The area where I was traveling was much like this place; there were some trees, clumps of grass, thickets of brush.” His voice lowered. “But then I came to a place where everything that grew ended. All at the same place. There was nothing but rock beyond. Nicci had not told me that I would come to such a place. I admit, I was afraid.”

  Richard glanced to his right—to the east—to the mountains that lay beyond. “How long did this dead place last?”

  “I walked, leaving life behind, and I thought I might be walking into the underworld itself.” Sabar looked away from Richard’s eyes. “Or into the jaws of some new weapon the Order had created to destroy us all.

  “I came to be very afraid and I was going to turn back. But then I thought about how the Order made me afraid my whole life, and I didn’t like that feeling. Worse, I thought about how I would stand before Nicci and tell her I turned around rather than go to Lord Rahl as she asked of me, and that thought made me ashamed, so I went on. In several miles I came again to growing things.” He let out a breath. “I was greatly relieved, and then I felt a little foolish that I had been afraid.”

  Two. That now made two of the strange boundaries.

  “I’ve been to places like that, Sabar, and I can tell you that I, too, have been afraid.”

  Sabar broke into a grin. “Then I was not so foolish to be afraid.”

  “Not foolish at all. Could you tell if this dead area was extensive? Could you tell if it was more than just a patch of open rock in that one place? Could you see if it ran in a line, ran in any direction in particular?”

  “It was like you say, like a line.” Sabar flicked his hand toward the east. “It came down out of the far mountains, north of that depression.” He held his hand flat like a cleaver, and sliced it downward in the other direction. “It ran off to the southwest, into that wasteland.”

  Toward the Pillars of Creation.

  Kahlan leaned close and spoke under her breath. “That would be almost parallel to the boundary we crossed not far back to the south. Why would there be two boundaries so close together? That makes no sense.”

  “I don’t know,” Richard whispered to her. “Maybe whatever the boundary was protecting was so dangerous that whoever placed it feared that one might not be enough.”

  Kahlan rubbed her upper arms but didn’t comment. By the look on her face, Richard knew how she felt about such a notion—especially considering that those boundaries were now down.

  “Anyway,” Sabar said with a self-conscious shrug, “I was happy I did not turn back, or I would have had to face Nicci after she had asked me to help Lord Rahl—my friend Richard.”

  Richard smiled. “I’m glad, too, Sabar. I don’t think that place you went through is a danger any longer, at least not a danger the way it was once.”

  Jennsen could contain her curiosity no longer. “Who is this Nicci?”

  “Nicci is a sorceress,” Richard said. “She used to be a Sister of the Dark.”

  Jennsen’s eyebrows went up. “Used to?”

  Richard nodded. “She worked to further Jagang’s cause, but she finally came to see how wrong she had been and joined our side.” It was a story he didn’t really feel like going into. “She now fights for us. Her help has been invaluable.”

  Jennsen leaned in, even more astonished. “But can you trust someone like that, someone who had labored on behalf of Jagang? Worse, a Sister of the Dark? Richard, I’ve been with some of those women, I know how ruthless they are. They may have to do as Jagang makes them, but they’re devoted to the Keeper of the underworld. Do you really think you can trust with your life that she will not betray you?”

  Richard looked Jennsen in the eye. “I trust you with a knife while I sleep.”

  Jennsen sat back up. She smiled, more out of embarrassment than anything else, Richard thought. “I guess I see your point.”

  “What else did Nicci say,” Kahlan asked, keen to get back to the matter at hand.

  “Only that I must go in her place and meet you,” Sabar said.

  Richard knew that Nicci was being cautious. She didn’t want to tell the young man too much in case he was caught.

  “How did she know where I was?”

  “She said that she was able to tell where you were by magic. Nicci is as powerful with magic as she is beautiful.”

  Sabar said this in a tone of awe. He didn’t know the half of it. Nicci was one of the most powerful sorceresses ever to have lived. Sabar didn’t know that when Nicci was laboring toward the ends sought by the Order, she was known as Death’s Mistress.

  Richard surmised that Nicci had somehow used the bond to the Lord Rahl to find him. That bond was loyalty sworn in the heart, not by rote, and its power protected those so sworn from the dream walker entering their minds. Full-blooded D’Harans, like Cara, could tell through the bond where the Lord Rahl was. Kahlan had confided to him that she found it unnerving the way Cara always knew where Richard was. Nicci wasn’t D’Haran, but she was a sorceress and she was bonded to Richard, so she might have been able to manipulate that bond to tell where he was.

  “Sabar, Nicci must have sent you to us for a reason,” Richard said, “other than to say that she couldn’t wait for us at our meeting place.”

  “Yes, of course,” Sabar said as he nodded hastily, as if chagrined to have to be reminded. “When I asked her what I was to say to you, she told me that she had put it all in a letter.” Sabar opened the leather flap of the pouch at his belt. “She said that when she realized how far away you really were, she was distraught and couldn’t take the time to journey to you. She told me that it was important for me to be sure I found you and gave you her letter. She said the letter would explain why she could not wait.”

  With one finger and a thumb, Sabar lifted out the letter, looking as if he were handling a deadly viper instead of a small roll sealed with red wax.

  “Nicci told me that this is dangerous,” he explained, looking up into Richard’s eyes. “She said that if anyone but you opened it, I should not be standing too close or I would die with them.”

  Sabar carefully laid the rolled letter on Richard’s palm. It warmed appreciably in his hand. The red wax brightened, as if lit by a ray of sunlight even though it was getting dark. The glow spread from the wax to envelop the whole length of the rolled letter. Fine cracks raced all across the red wax, like autumn ice on a pond breaking up under the weight of a foot placed on it. The wax suddenly shattered and crumbled away.

  Sabar swallowed. “I hate to think of what would have happened ha
d anyone but you tried to open it.”

  Jennsen leaned in again. “Was that magic?”

  “Must have been,” Richard told her as he started to unroll the letter.

  “But I saw it fall apart,” she said in a confidential tone.

  “Did you see anything else?”

  “No, it just all of a sudden crumbled.”

  With a thumb and finger, Richard lifted some of the disintegrated wax from his palm. “She probably put a web of magic around the letter and keyed that spell to my touch. If anyone else had tried to break that web to open the letter it would have ignited the spell. I guess that my touch unlocked the seal. You saw the result of the magic—the broken seal—not the magic itself.”

  “Oh, wait!” Sabar smacked his forehead with the flat of his palm. “What am I thinking? I’m supposed to give you this, too.”

  Shrugging the straps off his shoulders and down his arms, he pulled his pack around onto his lap. He quickly undid the leather thongs and reached inside, then carefully lifted out something wrapped in black quilted material. It was only about a foot tall but not very big around. By the way Sabar handled it, it appeared to be somewhat heavy.

  Sabar set the wrapped object on the ground, upright, in front of the fire. “Nicci told me that I should give this to you, that the letter would explain it.”

  Jennsen leaned in a little, fascinated by the mystery of the tightly wrapped object. “What is it?”

  Sabar shrugged. “Nicci didn’t tell me.” He made a face that suggested he was somewhat uncomfortable with the way he was in the dark about much of the mission he’d been sent on. “When Nicci looks at you and tells you to do something, it goes out of your head to ask questions.”

  Richard smiled to himself as he began to unroll the letter. He knew all too well what Sabar meant.

  “Did Nicci say anything about who could unwrap that thing?”

  “No, Lord Rahl. She just said to give it to you, that the letter would explain it.”

  “If it had a web around it, like the letter, she would have warned you.” Richard looked up. “Cara,” he said, gesturing at the bundled package sitting before the fire, “why don’t you unwrap it while Kahlan and I read the letter.”

  As Cara sat cross-legged on the ground and started working on the knots in the leather thongs around the black quilted wrap, Richard held the letter sideways a bit so that Kahlan could read it silently along with him.

  Dear Richard and Kahlan,

  I am sorry that I cannot tell you everything right now that I would have you know, but there are urgent matters I must see to and I dare not delay. Jagang has initiated something I considered impossible. Through his ability as a dream walker, he has forced Sisters of the Dark he controls to attempt to create weapons out of people, as was done during the great war. This is dangerous enough in itself, but because Jagang does not have the gift, his understanding of such things is very crude. He is a blundering bull trying to use his horns to knit lace. They are using the lives of wizards as the fodder for his experiments. I don’t yet know the exact extent of their success, but I fear to discover the results. More of this in a moment.

  First, the object I sent. When I picked up your trail and began tracking it to where we were to meet, I discovered this. I believe you have already come across it because it has been touched by a principal involved in the matter or involved with you.

  The object is a warning beacon. It has been activated—not by this touch, but by events. I cannot overstate the danger it represents.

  Such objects could only be made by the wizards of ancient times; the creation of such an object required both Additive and Subtractive Magic, and required the gift of both to be innate. Even then, they are so rare that I have never actually seen one.

  I have, however, read about them down in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets. Such warning beacons are kept viable by a link to the dead wizard who created them.

  Richard sat back and let out a troubled breath.

  “How can such a link be possible?” Kahlan asked.

  He hardly had to read between the lines to be able to tell that Nicci was warning him in the gravest possible terms.

  “It has to be linked somehow to the underworld,” Richard whispered back.

  Little points of firelight danced in her green eyes as she stared at him.

  Kahlan glanced again at Cara as she worked at the knots, pulling off one of the leather thongs around an object linked to a dead wizard in the underworld. Kahlan held up the edge of the letter as she urgently read along with him.

  From what I know of such warning beacons, they monitor powerful and vital protective shields created to seal away something profoundly dangerous. They are paired. The first beacon is always amber. It is meant to be a warning to the one who caused the breach of the seal. The touch of a principal or one involved with a principal kindles it so it may be recognized for what it is and serve as it was intended—as a warning to those involved. Only after alerting the one it is meant to warn can it be destroyed. I send it to be absolutely certain you have seen it.

  The precise nature of the second beacon is unknown to me, but that beacon is meant for the one able to replace the seal.

  I don’t know the nature of the seal or what it was protecting. Without doubt, though, the seal has been breached.

  The source of the breach, while not the specific cause activating this beacon, is self-evident.

  “Oh, now wait a minute,” Cara said, standing, backing away as if she had released a deadly plague from the black quilting, “it isn’t my fault this time.” She pointed down at it. “You told me to, this time.”

  The translucent statue Cara had touched before now stood in the center of its unfolded black quilted wrapping.

  It was the same statue: a statue of Kahlan.

  The statue’s left arm was pressed to its side, the right arm was raised, pointing. The statue, in an hourglass shape, looked as if it were made of transparent amber, allowing them to see inside.

  Sand trickled out of the top half of the hourglass, through the narrowed waist, into the bottom of the full dress of the Mother Confessor.

  The sand was still trickling down, just as it had been the last time Richard had seen the thing. At that time, the top half had been more full than the bottom half. Now, the top held less sand than the bottom.

  Kahlan’s face had gone ashen.

  When he’d first seen it, Richard wouldn’t have needed Nicci to tell him how dangerous such a thing was. He hadn’t wanted any of them to touch it. When they had first come across it, in a recess of rock beside the trail, looking almost like part of the rock itself, the thing was opaque, with a dull, dark surface, yet it was clearly recognizable as Kahlan. It was lying on its side.

  Cara wasn’t pleased to find such a thing and didn’t want to leave a representation of Kahlan lying about for anyone to find and to pick up for who-knew-what. Cara snatched it up, then, even though Richard started to yell at her to leave such a thing be.

  When she picked it up, it started turning translucent.

  In a panic, Cara set it back down.

  That was when the right arm had lifted and pointed east.

  That was when they could begin to see through the thing, to see the sand inside trickling down.

  The implied danger of the sand running out had them all upset. Cara wanted to pick it up again and turn it over, to stop the sand from falling. Richard, not knowing anything about such an object and doubting that so simple a solution would have any beneficial effect, hadn’t allowed Cara to touch it again. He had piled rocks and brush around it so no one else would know it was there. Obviously, that hadn’t worked.

  He knew now that Cara’s touch had nothing to do with what was happening, except to initiate the warning, so he thought to confirm his original belief. “Cara, put it down.”

  “Down?”

  “On its side—like you wanted to do the last time—to see if that will stop the sand.”

  Cara s
tared at him for a moment and then used the toe of her boot to tip the figure over on its side.

  The sand continued to run as if it still stood upright.

  “How can the sand do that?” Jennsen asked, sounding quite shaken. “How can the sand still fall—how can it fall sideways?”

  “You can see it?” Kahlan asked. “You can see the sand falling?”

  Jennsen nodded. “I sure can, and I have to tell you, it’s giving my goose bumps goose bumps.”

  Richard could only stare at her staring at the statue of Kahlan lying on its side. If nothing else, the sand running sideways through the statue had to be magic. Jennsen was a pillar of Creation, a hole in the world, a pristinely ungifted offspring of Darken Rahl. She should not be able to see magic.

  And yet, she was seeing it.

  “I have to agree with the young lady,” Sabar said. “That’s even more frightening than those big black birds that I’ve seen circling for the last week.”

  Kahlan straightened. “You been seeing—”

  When he heard Tom’s urgent warning yell, Richard rose up in a rush, drawing his sword in one swift movement. The unique sound of ringing steel filled the night air.

  The magic did not come out with the sword.

  Chapter 14

  Kahlan ducked to the side, out of harm’s way, as Richard pulled his sword free. The distinctive ring of steel being drawn in anger fused with Tom’s warning yell still echoing through the surrounding hills to send a flash of fright tingling across her flesh. As she stared out into the empty blackness of the surrounding night, her instinct was to reach for her own sword, but she had packed it in the wagon rather than wear it, so as not to raise suspicions about who they might be—women in the Old World did not carry weapons.

  By the light of the fire, Kahlan could clearly see Richard’s face. She had seen him draw the Sword of Truth countless times and in a variety of situations, from that very first time when Zedd, after giving him the sword, commanded him to draw it and Richard tentatively pulled it from its scabbard, to times he pulled it free in the heat of battle, to times like this when he drew it suddenly in defense.