Naked Empire

  Richard smiled and gently smoothed down the boy’s blond hair. “Sorry I had to frighten you to show you that what you were saying didn’t really make any sense. I needed to show you that the words you’ve been taught can’t serve you well—you can’t live by them because they are devoid of reality and reason. You look to me like a boy who cares about living. I was like that when I was your age, and I still am. Life is wonderful; take delight in it, look around with the eyes you have, and see it in all its glory.”

  “No one has ever talked to me about life in this way. I don’t get to see much. I have to stay inside all the time.”

  “Tell you what, maybe, before I go, I can take you for a walk in the woods and show you some of the wonders of the world around you—the trees and plants, birds, maybe we’ll even see a fox—and we’ll talk some more about the wonders and joy of life. Would you like that?”

  The boy’s face lit up with a grin. “Really? You would do that for me?”

  Richard smiled one of those smiles that so melted Kahlan’s heart. He playfully pinched the boy’s nose. “Sure.”

  Owen came forward and ran his fingers affectionately through the boy’s hair. “I was once like you—a Wise One—until I got a little older than you.”

  The boy frowned up at him. “Really?”

  Owen nodded. “I used to think that I had been chosen because I was special and somehow only I was able to commune with some glorious otherworldly dominion. I believed that I was gushing great wisdom. Looking back, I am ashamed to see how foolish it all was. I was made to listen to lessons. I was never allowed to be a boy. The great speakers praised me for repeating back the things I had heard, and when I spoke then with great scorn to people, they told me how wise I was.”

  “Me, too,” the boy said.

  Richard turned back to the men. “This is what your people have been reduced to as a source of wisdom—listening to children repeating meaningless expressions. You have minds in order to think and understand the world around you. This self-imposed blindness is a dark treason to yourselves.”

  The men in front, that Kahlan could see from where she sat holding the boy, all hung their heads in shame.

  “Lord Rahl is right,” Anson said, turning back to the men. “Until today, I never actually questioned it or thought about how foolish it really is.”

  One of the speakers shook his fist. “It is not foolish!”

  Another, the one with the pointed chin, leaned in and snatched Anson’s knife from the sheath at his belt.

  Kahlan could hardly believe what she had just seen. It felt as if she were watching a nightmare suddenly unfold, a nightmare she wasn’t able to stop or even slow. It seemed she knew what was going to happen before she saw it.

  With an enraged cry, the speaker suddenly struck out, stabbing Anson before he could react. Kahlan heard the blade hit bone. Driven by blind rage, the speaker swiftly drew back the fist holding the now bloody knife to stab Anson again. Anson’s face twisted in shock as he began going down.

  Points of candlelight reflecting off the polished length of razor-sharp steel blurred into streaks as Richard’s sword flashed past Kahlan. Even as the sword swept around, the unique ring of steel as it had been drawn accompanied its terrifying arc toward the threat. Driven by Richard’s formidable strength, the tip of the sword whistled through the air. As the speaker’s arm reached the apex of its swing, as it once more began a deadly journey down, Richard’s blade slammed into the side of the speaker’s neck and without seeming to slow in the least ripped through flesh and bone, cleaving off the man’s head and one shoulder along with the arm holding high the knife. The lightning slash threw long strings of blood against the stone wall of the foundation of the palace of the Bandakar Empire.

  As the speaker’s head and the one shoulder with the arm attached tumbled through the air in an odd, wobbling spiral, his body collapsed in a heap. The head smacked the floor with a sickening thud and bounced across the carpets, leaving a trail of blood as it tumbled.

  Richard swept the crimson blade around, directing it toward the potential threat of the other speakers. Kahlan pressed the boy’s face to her shoulder, covering his eyes.

  Some of the men fell in around Anson. Kahlan didn’t know how badly he was hurt—or if he was even still alive.

  Not far away, the gory head and arm of the dead speaker lay before a table set with candles. The fist still held the knife in a death grip. The sudden carnage lying there before them all, the blood spreading across the floor, was horrifying. Everyone stared in stunned silence.

  “The first blood drawn by you great speakers,” Richard said in a quiet voice to the cluster of cringing speakers, “is not against those who come to murder your people, but against a man who committed no violence against you—one of your own who simply stood up and told you that he wanted to be free of the oppression of terror, free to think for himself.”

  Kahlan stood, and saw then that there were far more people in the room than there had been before. Most were not their men. When Cara made her way through the silent throng to Kahlan’s side, Kahlan took her by the arm and leaned close.

  “Who are all those people?”

  “The people from the city. Runners brought them the news that the town of Witherton had been freed. They heard about our men being here to see the Wise One and wanted to witness what would happen. The stairs and halls upstairs are full of them. The words that have been spoken down here have spread up through the whole crowd.”

  Cara was obviously concerned about being close enough to protect Richard and Kahlan. Kahlan knew that many of the people had been swayed by what Richard had been saying, but now she didn’t know what they would do.

  The speakers seemed to have lost their conviction. They didn’t want to be associated with the one among them who had done such a thing. One of them finally left his fellow speakers and made the lone walk over to the boy standing beside the curtain-draped platform, and under Kahlan’s protective arm.

  “I am sorry,” he said in a sincere voice to the boy. He turned to the people watching. “I am sorry. I don’t want to be a speaker any longer. Prophecy has been fulfilled; our redemption is at hand. I think we would do best to listen to what these men have to say. I think I would like to live without the fear that the men of the Order are going to murder us all.”

  There were no cheers, no wild ovation, but, rather, silent agreement as all the people Kahlan could see nodded with what looked like expectant hope that their secret wish to be free of the brutality of the Imperial Order was not a sinful, secret thought after all, but was really the right thing.

  Richard knelt beside Owen as other men worked at tying a strip of cloth around Anson’s upper arm. He was sitting up. His whole arm was soaked in blood, but it looked like the bandage was slowing the bleeding. Kahlan sighed in relief at seeing that Anson was alive and not seriously hurt.

  “It looks like it will need to be stitched,” Richard said.

  Some of the men agreed. An older man pushed his way through the crowd and stepped forward.

  “I do such things. I also have herbs with which to make a poultice.”

  “Thank you,” Anson said as his friends helped him stand. He looked light-headed and the men had to steady him. Once sure of his feet, he turned to Richard.

  “Thank you, Lord Rahl, for answering the call in the words of the devotion I spoke: ‘Master Rahl, protect us.’

  “I never thought I would be the first to bleed for what we have set out to do, or that the blood would be drawn by one of our own people.”

  Richard gently clapped Anson on the back of his good shoulder, showing his appreciation for Anson’s words.

  Owen looked around at the crowd. “I think we have all decided to be free again.” When the crowd nodded their agreement, Owen turned to Richard. “How will we get rid of the soldiers in Northwick?”

  Richard wiped his sword clean on the cloth of the dead speaker’s trouser leg. His gaze turned up to the crowd. “Any
idea how many soldiers there are here in Northwick?”

  There was no anger in his voice. Kahlan had seen, since the moment he had drawn his sword, that his eyes had been absent of the Sword of Truth’s attendant magic. There was no spark of the sword’s rage in the Seeker’s eyes, no magic dangerously dancing there, no fury in his demeanor. He had simply done what was necessary to stop the threat. While it was a relief that he had swiftly succeeded, it was gravely worrisome that the sword’s magic had not come out along with the sword itself.

  What had always been there to help him before had apparently finally failed him. That absence of his sword’s magic left Kahlan feeling icy apprehension.

  People in the crowd looked around at others and then spoke of hundreds of men of the Order they had seen. Another man said there were several thousand.

  An older woman lifted her hand. “Not that many, but approaching it.”

  Owen turned to Richard. “That’s a lot of men for us to take on.”

  Having never been in a real battle, he didn’t know the half of it. Richard didn’t seem to hear Owen. He slid his sword back into the scabbard hidden under his black cloak.

  “How do you know?” he asked the woman.

  “I am one of the people who help prepare their meals.”

  “You mean you people cook for the soldiers?”

  “Yes,” the old woman said. “They do not wish to do it for themselves.”

  “When do you next have to cook?”

  “We have large kettles we are just starting to get ready for tomorrow’s meal. It takes us all night to prepare the stew so that we can cook it tomorrow for their evening meal. Besides that, we also have to work all night making biscuits, eggs, and porridge for their morning meal.”

  Kahlan imagined that the soldiers were probably pleased to have such a ready supply of pliant slaves. Richard paced in a short track between her and Owen. He pinched his lower lip as he considered the problem. With such a small force of their own, nearly two thousand armed men was a lot to take on, especially considering how inexperienced the men were. Kahlan recognized that Richard was scheming something.

  He took the arm of the older man tightening the bandage around Anson’s wound. “You said you had herbs. Do you know about such things?”

  The man shrugged. “Not a great deal, just enough to make simple remedies.”

  Kahlan’s mood sank. She had thought that maybe this man might know something about making more of the antidote.

  “Do you have access to lily of the valley, oleander, yew, monkshood, hemlock?”

  The man blinked in surprise. “Common enough, I guess, especially just to the north in the wooded areas.”

  Richard turned to his men standing at the fore of the crowd. “We must eliminate the men of the Order. The less fighting we have to do, the better.

  “While it’s still dark, we need to slip out of the city and go collect the things we need.” He lifted a hand to the woman who had spoken about cooking for the soldiers. “You show us where you’re going to do all the cooking of tomorrow’s evening meal. We’ll bring you some extra ingredients.

  “With what we put in the stew, the soldiers will be getting violently sick within hours. We will put different things in different kettles, so the symptoms will be different, to help create confusion and panic. If we can get enough of the poisons into the stew, most of them will die within hours, suffering everything from weakness and paralysis to convulsions.

  “Late in the night, we’ll go in and finish any who aren’t yet dead, or who may not have eaten. If we prepare carefully, Northwick will be free of the Imperial Order without having to fight them. It will be swiftly ended without any of us being hurt.”

  The room was silent for a moment; then Kahlan saw smiles breaking out among the people. A ray of light had come into their lives.

  With the heady thought of imminent freedom, some began to weep as they suddenly felt the need to come forward and tell brief accounts of those they loved who had been raped, tortured, taken away, or murdered.

  Now that these people had been given a chance to live, none wanted to turn back. They saw salvation, and were willing to do what had to be done to gain it.

  “This will destroy our way of life,” someone said, not in bitterness, but in wonder.

  “Redemption is at hand,” one of the other people in the crowd added.

  Chapter 53

  Standing in dusty streamers of late-day sunlight, Zedd wavered on his feet as he waited not far from the tent where Sister Tahirah had just taken a small crate. While she was inside carefully unpacking and preparing the item of magic for inspection, the guards stood not far off, talking among themselves about their chances of having ale that night. They were hardly worried about a skinny old man with a Rada’Han around his neck and his arms shackled behind his back causing them any trouble or running off.

  Zedd used the opportunity to lean against the cargo wagon’s rear wheel. He wanted only to be allowed to lie down and go to sleep. Without being obvious, he looked over his shoulder at Adie. She gave him a brief, brave smile.

  The wagon he leaned against was full of items looted from the Keep that had yet to be identified. For all Zedd knew, he could be leaning against a wagon full of simple magic meant to entertain and teach children, or something so powerful that it would hand Jagang victory in one blinding instant.

  Some of the items brought from the Keep were unknown to Zedd. They had been locked behind shields that he had never been able to breach. Even in his childhood the old wizards at the Keep had not been able to get at what was behind many of the shields.

  But the men who had assaulted and taken the Wizard’s Keep were untouched by magic and apparently had no trouble getting through shields that had been in place for thousands of years. Everything Zedd knew had been turned upside down. In some ways, it seemed like this was not only the end of the Wizard’s Keep as it had been intended and envisioned, but the end of a way of life as well, and the death of an era.

  The items brought from the Keep that Zedd had so far identified were of no great value to Jagang in winning the war. There were a few things, now back in protective crates, that were a mystery to Zedd; for all he knew, they could be profoundly dangerous. He wished that they could all be destroyed before one of the Sisters of the Dark discovered how to use them to create havoc.

  Zedd looked up when he saw one of the elite soldiers in leather and mail pause not far away, his attention keenly focused on something. His right ear had a big V-shaped notch taken out of the upper portion, the way some farmers marked their swine. Although he wore the same kind of outfit as the rest of the elite soldiers, his boots weren’t the same. Zedd saw, when the man looked around, that his left eye didn’t open as wide as his right, but then he moved off into the bands of patrolling soldiers.

  As Zedd watched the constantly churning press of soldiers, Sisters, and others moving past, he kept having the disconcerting visions of people from his past, and others he knew. It was disheartening to be having such will-o’-the-wisps—illusions spawned by a mind that from lack of sleep, and perhaps the constant tension, was failing him. The faces of some of the elite guards looked hauntingly familiar. He guessed he had been seeing the men for days and they were beginning to look familiar.

  In the distance he saw a Sister walking past who looked like someone he knew. He had probably met her recently, was all. He’d met a number of Sisters recently, and it was never congenial. Zedd admonished himself that he had to keep a grasp on his wits.

  One of the little girls not far away, being held prisoner by a big guard standing over her, was watching Zedd and when he glanced up at her, she smiled. He thought it the oddest thing a frightened child—amid such chaos of soldiers, prisoners, and military activity—could do. He supposed that such a child could not possibly understand that she was there to be tortured, if necessary, to make sure Zedd told all he knew. He looked away from her long blond hair cascading down around her shoulders, her beautiful, o
ddly familiar face. This was madness—in more ways than one.

  The hump-nosed Sister emerged from the tent. “Bring them in,” she snapped.

  The four guards jumped into action, two seizing Adie, the other two taking Zedd. The men were big enough that Zedd’s weight was trivial to them. The way they held him up by his arms prevented half his steps from touching the ground. They horsed him into the tent, advanced him around the table, spun him around, and dropped him into the chair with such force that it drove the wind from his lungs in a grunt.

  Zedd closed his eyes as he grimaced in pain. He wished they would just kill him so that he wouldn’t ever have to open his eyes again. But when they killed him, they would send his head to Richard. Zedd hated to think of the anguish that would cause Richard.

  “Well?” Sister Tahirah asked.

  Zedd opened his eyes and peered at the object sitting before him in the center of the table.

  His breath caught.

  He blinked at what he saw, too astonished to let out the breath.

  It was constructed magic called a sunset spell.

  Zedd swallowed. Surely, none of the Sisters had opened it. No, they wouldn’t have opened it. He wouldn’t be sitting there if they had.

  Before him on the table sat a small box, the size of half his palm. The box was shaped like the upper half of a stylized sun—a half disc with six pointed rays coming out from it, meant to represent the sun setting at the horizon. The box was lacquered a bright yellow. The rays were also yellow, but with lines of orange, green, and blue along their edges.

  “Well?” Sister Tahirah repeated.

  “Ahh…”

  She was looking in her book, not at the small yellow box. “What is it?”

  “I’m…not sure I remember,” he said, stalling.

  The Sister wasn’t in a patient mood. “Do you want me to—”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant, “I recall, now. It’s a box with a spell that produces a little tune.”

  That much was true. The Sister was still reading in her book. Zedd glanced back over his shoulder at Adie sitting on the bench. He could see in her eyes that she knew by his demeanor that something was up. He hoped the Sister couldn’t detect the same thing.