Naked Empire (31 page)

Ann knew that Nathan would not exaggerate about something of this nature. While she was in the dark about precisely what he was talking about, the essence of it gave her the cold sweats.

“What can we do about it?”

Nathan threw up his arms. “We have to go in there and get him. We have to bring him back into the world that exists.”

“You mean, the world that prophecy says exists.”

Nathan’s scowl was back. “That’s what I said, isn’t it? We have to somehow get him back on the thread of prophecy where he shows up.”

Ann cleared her throat. “Or?”

Nathan snatched up the lamp, then her pack. “Or, he will cease to be part of viable lines of prophecy, never to be involved with matters of this world again.”

“You mean, if we don’t get him back from wherever his is, he will die?”

Nathan gave her a curious look. “Have I been talking to the walls? Of course he will die! If that boy isn’t in prophecy, if he breaks all the links to prophecy where he plays a role, then he voids all those lines of prophecy where he exists. If he does that, then they become false prophecy and those branches with word of him will never come to pass. None of the other links contain any reference to him—because in the origin of those links, he dies, first.”

“And what happens on those links that don’t contain him?”

Nathan took up her hand as he pulled her toward the door. “On those links, a shadow falls over everyone. Everyone who lives, anyway. It will be a very long and very dark age.”

“Wait,” Ann said, pulling him to a halt.

She returned to the stone bench and placed the Rada’Han in the center. “I don’t have the power to destroy this. I think maybe it should be locked away.”

Nathan nodded his approval. “We will lock the doors and instruct the guards that it is to remain in here, behind the shields, for all time.”

Ann held a warning finger up before him. “Don’t get the idea that just because you’re not wearing a collar I will tolerate misbehavior.”

Nathan’s grin returned. He didn’t come right out and agree. Before he went through the door, he turned back to her.

“By the way, have you been talking to Verna through your journey book?”

“Yes, a little. She’s with the army and pretty busy, right now. They’re defending the passes into D’Hara. Jagang has begun his siege.”

“Well, from what I’ve been able to gather from military commanders here, at the palace, the passes are formidable and will hold for a while, at least.” He leaned toward her. “You have to send a message to her, though. Tell her that when an empty wagon rolls into their line, to let it through.”

Ann made a face. “What does that mean?”

“Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened. Just tell her.”

“All right,” Ann said with breathless difficulty as Nathan pulled her through the tight doorway. “But I’d best not tell her you’re the one who said it, or she will likely ignore the advice. She thinks you’re daft, you know.”

“She just never got a chance to come to know me very well, that’s all.” He glanced back. “What with me being unjustly locked away, and all.”

Ann wanted to say that perhaps Verna knew Nathan all too well, but decided better of it right then. As Nathan started to turn toward the outer door, Ann snatched his sleeve.

“Nathan, what else about this prophecy you found aren’t you telling me? This prophecy where Richard disappears into oblivion.”

She knew Nathan well enough to know by his agitation that he hadn’t told her everything, that he thought he was being gallant by sparing her worry. With a sober expression, he gazed into her eyes for a time before he finally spoke.

“There is a Slide on that fork of prophecy.”

Ann frowned as she turned her eyes up in thought. “A Slide. A Slide,” she muttered to herself, trying to recall the name. It sounded familiar. “A Slide…” She snapped her fingers. “A Slide.” Her eyes went wide. “Dear Creator.”

“I don’t think the Creator had anything to do with this.”

Ann impatiently waved in protest. “That can’t be. There has to be something wrong with this new prophecy you found. It has to be defective. Slides were created in the great war. There couldn’t be a Slide on this link of prophecy—don’t you see? The prophecy must be out of phase and long ago expired.” Ann chewed her lower lip as her mind raced.

“It isn’t out of phase. Don’t you think that was my first thought, too? You think me an amateur at this? I worked through the chronology a hundred times. I ran every chart and calculation I ever learned—even some I invented for the task. They all came out with the same root. Every link came out in order. The prophecy is in phase, chronology, and all its aspects are aligned.”

“Then it’s a false link,” Ann insisted. “Slides were conjured creatures. They were sterile. They couldn’t reproduce.”

“I’m telling you,” Nathan growled, “there is a Slide on this fork with Richard and it’s a viable prophetic link.”

“They couldn’t have survived to be here.” Ann was sure of what she was saying. Nathan knew more about prophecy than she, there was no doubt of that, but this was one area where she knew exactly what she was talking about—this was her area of expertise. “Slides weren’t able to beget children.”

He was giving her one of those looks she didn’t like. “I’m telling you, a Slide walks the world again.”

Ann tsked. “Nathan, soul stealers can’t reproduce.”

“The prophecy says he wasn’t born, but born again a Slide.”

Ann’s flesh began to tingle. She stared at him a time before finding her voice. “For three thousand years there have been no wizards born with both sides of the gift but Richard. There is no way anyone…”

Ann paused. He was watching her, watching her finally realize what had to be. “Dear Creator,” she whispered.

“I told you, the Creator had nothing to do with this. The Sisters of the Dark mothered him.”

Shaken to her core, Ann could think of nothing to say.

There was no worse news she could have heard.

There was no defense against a Slide.

Every soul was naked to a Slide’s attack.

Outside the second door, Nyda waited in the hall, her face as grim as ever, but not as grim as Ann’s. The hall was dark but for the dim light coming from the still flames of a few candles. No breath of wind ever made it this deep into the palace. The only color among the dark rock soaking up that small bit of light was the blood red of Nyda’s red leather.

Being pulled along by the hand, feeling a jumble of emotions, Ann leaned toward the woman and vented a pent-up fiery scowl. “You told him what I said to tell him, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Nyda answered as she fell into step behind the two of them.

Turning halfway around, Ann shook a finger at the Mord-Sith. “I’ll make you sorry you told him.”

Nyda smiled. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

Ann rolled her eyes and turned back to Nathan. “By the way, what are you doing wearing a sword? You, of all people—a wizard. Why are you wearing a sword?”

Nathan looked hurt. “Why, Nyda thinks I look dashing with a sword.”

Ann fixed her eyes on the dark passageway ahead. “I just bet she does.”

Standing at the edge of a narrow rim of rock, Richard looked down on the ragged gray wisps of clouds below. Out in the open, the cool damp air that drifted over him carried the aromas of balsam trees, moss, wet leaves, and saturated soil. He inhaled deeply the fragrant reminders of home. The rock, mostly granite, cracked and weather-worn into pillowed blocks, looked much the same as that in his Hartland woods. The mountains, however, were far larger. The slope rising up behind him was dizzying.

To the west before him, far below, lay a vast stretch of fractured ground and ever-rising rugged hills carpeted in forests. To his left and right, because he knew what he was looking for, he could just make out the strip of ground, devoid of trees, where the boundary had been. Farther off to the west rose up the lesser mountains, mostly barren, that bordered the wasteland. That wasteland, and the place called the Pillars of Creation, was no longer visible. Richard was happy to have left it far behind.

The sky was empty of black-tipped races—for the moment, anyway. The huge birds most likely knew that Richard, Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and Owen were heading west.

Richard had shot the last five races as they had begun gathering in their circling behavior, surprising them by being high up the side of the mountain above the others in his group, closer to where the races flew. After killing the races, Richard had led the rest of his small company into denser woods. He didn’t think that the races they’d been seeing up until then had spotted them since. Now that they were traveling through forests of towering trees Richard thought that, if he was careful, they might be able to lose their watchers.

If this man, Nicholas, had seen them through the eyes of those five races, then he knew they had been headed west. But, now that they were hidden, he couldn’t assume that they would continue west. If Richard could disappear from where the birds would look for him, and failed to appear where they would expect him, then Nicholas might have second thoughts. He might realize they could have changed direction and gone north, or south. Nicholas might then begin to realize that they had used that period of confusion to run away somewhere else, to flee him.

It was possible that Richard could keep them hidden under the cover of the trees and in so doing keep Nicholas from discovering them. Richard didn’t want the man to know where they’d gone, or to have any idea where they were at any given time. It was hardly a certainty that he could deceive Nicholas in this way, but Richard intended to try.

Shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand, Richard scanned the rise of dense forest before them in order to get the lay of the land fixed in his mind before he headed back in under the thick vegetation where the others waited. The trailers of clouds below were but the tattered castoffs of the churning blanket of gloom above them. The mountainside ascended sharply into that wet overcast.

As Richard evaluated the rock, the slope, and the trees, he finally found what he sought. He studied the ascent of the mountain one last time before scanning the sky again to make sure it was clear. Seeing no races—or any other birds, for that matter—he headed in to where the others waited. He knew that just because he didn’t see any birds didn’t mean that they weren’t there watching him. There could be a few dozen races sitting in trees where he would likely never spot them. But, for the moment, he was still where they would expect him, so he wasn’t greatly concerned.

He was about to do what they would not expect.

Richard climbed back up the slick bank of moss, leaves, and wet roots. If he fell, he would have only the one chance to grab the small ledge where he’d been standing before he would tumble out into the clear air and a drop of several thousand feet. The thought of that drop made him hold tighter to the roots to help him climb, and made him test carefully every score in the rock where he placed his boot before committing his weight to it.

At the top of the bank he ducked under overhanging branches of scrawny mountain maple that grew in the understory of hardwoods leaning out beside the towering pines in an effort to capture the light. Leaves of the ash and birch rising above the mountain maple collected the drizzle, until their leaves had as much as they could hold and released it to patter down in fat drops that slapped the lower leaves above Richard’s head. When a light breeze caught those upper leaves, they released their load to rain down in sudden but brief torrents.

Stooping under low-spreading branches of fir trees, Richard followed his track back through thickets of huckleberry into the more open ground of the hushed woods beneath the thick canopy of ancient evergreens. Pine needles had been woven by the wind into sprawling mats that cushioned his steps. Spiraling webs hung by spiders to catch the small bugs that zigzagged all about had instead netted the mist and were now dotted with shimmering drops of water, like jeweled necklaces on display.

Back in the sheltering cover of rock and the thick growth of young spruce, Kahlan stood when she saw Richard coming. When she stood, everyone else then saw him, and came to their feet as well. Richard ducked in under the wispy green branches.

“Did you see any races, Lord Rahl?” Owen asked, clearly nervous about the predators.

“No,” Richard told him as he picked up his pack and slung it over a shoulder. He slipped his other arm beneath the second strap as he pulled the pack up onto his back. “That doesn’t mean they didn’t see me, though.”

Richard hooked his bow over the back of his left shoulder, along with a waterskin.

“Well,” Owen said, wringing his hands, “we can still hope they won’t know where we are.”

Richard paused to look at the man. “Hope is not a strategy.”

As the rest of them all started collecting their things from the brief break, hooking gear on belts and shouldering packs, Richard drew Cara by the arm out of the cover of small trees and pulled her close.

“See that rise through there?” he asked as he held her near him so she could see where he was pointing. “With the strip of open ground that passes in front of the young oak with the broken dead limb hanging down?”

Cara nodded. “Just after where the ground rises and goes over that trickle of water running down the face of the rock, staining it green?”

“That’s the spot. I want you to follow up over that area, then cut to the right, taking that cleft up—that one there beyond the split in the rock, there—and see if you can scout a trail up to the next shelf up above these trees here.”

Cara nodded. “Where will you be?”

“I’m going to take the rest of us up to the first break in the slope. We’ll be there. Come back and tell us if you find a way over the projection.”

Cara hoisted up her pack onto her back and then picked up the stout staff Richard had cut for her.

“I didn’t know that Mord-Sith could cut trails,” Tom said.

“Mord-Sith can’t,” Cara said. “I, Cara, can. Lord Rahl taught me.”

As she vanished into the trees, Richard watched her walk. She moved gracefully, disturbing little as she made her way into the trackless woods. She moved with an economy of effort that would conserve her energy. It had not always been so; she had learned well the lessons he had given her. Richard was pleased to see that the lessons had stuck and his efforts had not been wasted.

Owen came forward, looking agitated. “But Lord Rahl, we can’t go that way.” He waggled a hand back over his shoulder. “The trail goes that way. That is the only way up and through the pass. There lies the way down, and with it the way back up, now that the boundary is gone. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way.”

“It’s the only way you know of. By how well that trail looks to be traveled, I think it’s the only way Nicholas knows of as well. It appears to be the way the Order troops move in and out of Bandakar.

“If we go that way the races will be watching. If, on the other hand, we don’t show up, then he won’t know where we went. I want to keep it that way from now on. I’m tired of playing mouse to his owl.”

Richard let Kahlan lead them up through the woods, following the natural route of the land when the way ahead was reasonably evident. When she was in doubt she would glance back at him for direction. Richard would look where she was to go, or nod in the direction he wanted her to take, or, in a few cases, he needed to give her instruction.

By the lay of the land, Richard was pretty sure that there was an ancient trail up through the mountain pass. That pass, that from afar looked like a notch in the wall of mountains, was in reality no mere notch but a broad area twisting as it rose back up between the mountains. Richard didn’t think that the path that the Bandakar people used to banish people through the boundary was the only way through that pass. With the boundary in place it may well have been, but the boundary was no longer there.

From what he’d seen so far, Richard suspected that there once had been a route that in ancient times had been the main way in and out. Here and there he was able to discern depressions that he believed were remnants of that ancient, abandoned route.

While it was always possible that the old passage had been abandoned for good reason, such as a landslide that made it impassable, he wanted to know if that once traveled way was still usable. It would, at the least, since it was in a different part of the mountains than the known path, take them away from where the races were likely to be looking for them.

Jennsen walked up close beside Richard when the way through towering pines was open enough. She tugged Betty along by her rope, keeping her from stopping to sample plants along the way.

“Sooner or later the races will find us, don’t you think?” Jennsen asked. “I mean, if we don’t show up where they expect to find us, then don’t you think they will search until they do find us? You were the one who said that from the sky they could cover great distances and search us out.”

“Maybe,” Richard said. “But it will be hard to spot us in the woods if we use our heads and stay hidden. In forests they can’t search nearly as much area as they could in the same amount of time out in the wasteland. In open ground they could spot us miles away. Here, they will have a hard time of it unless they’re really close and we are careless.

“By the time we don’t show up where the known trail makes it up into Bandakar, they will have a vast area they suddenly will need to search and they won’t have any idea which direction to look. That compounds the problem for them in finding us.

“I don’t think that the viewing Nicholas gets through their eyes can be very good, or he wouldn’t need to gather the races now and again to circle. If we can stay out of sight long enough, then we’ll be among the people up in Bandakar and then Nicholas, through the eyes of the races, will have a hard, if not impossible, time picking us out from others.”

Jennsen thought it over as they entered a stand of birch. Betty went the wrong way around a tree and Jennsen had to stop to untangle her rope. They all hunched their shoulders against the wet when a breeze brought down a soaking shower.

“Richard,” Jennsen asked in a voice barely above a whisper as she caught back up with him, “what are you going to do when we get there?”

“I’m going to get the antidote so I don’t die.”

“I know that.” Jennsen pulled a sodden ringlet of red hair back from her face. “What I mean is, what are you going to do about Owen’s people?”

Each breath he drew brought a slight stitch of pain deep in his lungs. “I’m not sure, yet, just what I can do.”

Jennsen walked in silence for a moment. “But you will try to help them, won’t you?”

Richard glanced over at his sister. “Jennsen, they’re threatening to kill me. They’ve proven that it isn’t an empty threat.”

She shrugged uncomfortably. “I know, but they’re desperate.” She glanced ahead to make sure that Owen wouldn’t hear. “They didn’t know what else to do to save themselves. They aren’t like you. They never fought anyone before.”

Richard took a deep breath, the pain pulling tight across his chest when he did so. “You’d never fought anyone before, either. When you thought I was trying to kill you, as our father had, and you believed that I was responsible for your mother’s death, what did you do? I don’t mean were you correct about me, but what did you do in response to what you believed was happening?”

“I resolved that if I wanted to live I would have to kill you before you killed me.”

“Exactly. You didn’t poison someone and tell them to do it or they would die. You decided that your life was worth living and that no one else had the right to take it from you.

“When you are willing to meekly sacrifice your ultimate value, your life, the only one you will ever have, to any thug who on a whim decides to take it from you, then you can’t be helped. You may be able to be rescued for one day, but the next day another will come and you will again willingly prostrate yourself before him. You have placed the value of the life of your killer above your own.

“When you grant to anyone who demands it the right of life or death over you, you have already become a willing slave in search of any butcher who will have you.”

She walked in silence for a time, thinking about what he’d said. Richard noticed that she moved through the woods as he had taught Cara to move. She was nearly as at home in the woods as he was.

“Richard.” Jennsen swallowed. “I don’t want those people to be hurt any more. They’ve already suffered enough.”

“Tell that to Kahlan if I die from their poison.”

When they reached the meeting place, Cara wasn’t there yet. They all were ready for a brief rest. The spot, a break in the slope back against granite that rose up steeply to the next projection in the mountain, was protected high overhead by huge pines and closer down by brush. After so long out in the heat of the desert, none of them were yet accustomed to the wet chill. While they spread out to find rocks for seats so they wouldn’t have to sit in the wet leaf litter, Betty happily sampled the tasty weeds. Owen sat to the far side, away from Betty.

Kahlan sat close to Richard on a small lump of rock. “How are you doing? You look like you have a headache.”