Naked Empire (47 page)

Kahlan saw small birds flitting past, looking to roost for the night. The sky, the icy fog, was getting darker. She scanned the sky, ever watchful for black-tipped races. With the weather in the pass so dreadful, she doubted they would be around. The fog, at least, was comforting for that reason.

Richard looked exhausted. She knew how hard it was for her to breathe in the high, thin air, so it had to be far worse for him; she feared how, because of the poison, the thin air robbed Richard of his strength. They needed to be down out of the high pass.

“I have told you the truth and all I can for now,” Richard told the men. “Your future is now up to each of you.”

He quietly asked Cara, Jennsen, and Tom to collect their things. He put a gentle hand on Kahlan’s back as he turned to the men and gestured down the hill.

“We’re going back down to our camp in those woods. You men decide what you will do. If you are with us, then come down there in the protection of the trees, where the races won’t be able to spot us when the weather lifts. We will need to finish making the weapons you will carry.

“If any of you choose not to join us, then you’re on your own. I plan not to be here, at this camp, for long. If the Order captures you they will likely torture you and I don’t want to be anywhere nearby when you scream your lungs out as you reveal where our camp was.”

The forlorn men stood huddled in a group.

“Lord Rahl,” Owen asked, “you mean we must choose now?”

“I’ve told you all I can. How much longer can those being tortured, raped, and murdered wait for you? If you wish to join us and be part of life, then come down to our camp. If you choose not to be on our side, then I wish you luck. But please don’t try to follow us or I’ll have to kill you. I was once a woods guide; I will know if any of you follow us.”

One of the men, the one who had been the first to show Richard two pebbles to say that he would reveal the location of the antidote, stepped forward, away from the rest of the men.

“Lord Rahl, my name is Anson.” Tears filled his blue eyes. “I wanted you to know that, to know who I am. I am Anson.”

Richard nodded. “All right, Anson.”

“Thank you for opening my eyes. I’ve always had some of the thoughts that you explained. Now I understand why, and I understand the darkness kept over my eyes. I don’t want to live like that anymore. I don’t want to live by words that don’t mean anything and I don’t want the men of the Order to control my life.

“My parents were murdered. I saw my father’s body hanging from a pole. He never hurt anyone. He did nothing to deserve such a murder. My sister was taken. I know what those men are doing to her. I can’t sleep at night thinking about it, thinking about her terror.

“I want to fight back. I want to kill these evil men. They’ve earned death. I want to grind them into dust, as you have said.

“I choose to join with you and fight to gain my freedom. I want to live free. I want those I love to live free.”

Kahlan was stunned to hear one of them say such things, especially without first consulting with the rest of the men. She had watched the eyes of the other men as Anson spoke. They all listened keenly to everything Anson said.

Richard smiled as he placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Welcome to D’Hara, Anson. Welcome home. We can use your help.” He pointed off at Cara and Tom picking up the weapons they’d brought to show the men. “Why don’t you help them take those things back down to our camp.”

Anson grinned his agreement. The soft-spoken young man had broad shoulders and a thickly muscled neck. He was genial, but looked determined. If she were in the Imperial Order, Kahlan would not want to see such a powerfully built man coming after her.

Anson eagerly tried to take the load from Cara’s arms. She wouldn’t relinquish it, so he picked up the rest of the things and followed Tom down the hill. Jennsen went along, too, pulling Betty behind by her rope, tugging for the first few steps because Betty wanted them to stay with Richard and Kahlan.

The other men watched as Anson started down the hill with Cara, Tom, and Jennsen. They then moved off to the side, away from the statue, while they whispered among themselves, deciding what they would do.

Richard glanced at the figure of Kaja-Rang before starting down the hill. Something seemed to catch his eye.

“What’s the matter?” Kahlan asked.

Richard pointed. “That writing. On the face of the pedestal, below his feet.”

Kahlan knew there had been no writing in that spot before, and she was still too far away to really tell if she could see writing in the flecked granite. She glanced back to see the others making their way down the hill, but instead followed Richard when he started toward the statue. The men were still off to the side, busily engaged in their discussion.

She could see the spot on the face of the pedestal where the warning beacon had shattered. The sand from inside the statue representing Richard was still splattered across the face of the pedestal.

As they got closer, she could hardly believe what she was beginning to see. It looked as if the sand had eroded the stone to reveal lettering. The words had not been there before; that much she was sure of.

Kahlan knew a number of languages, but she didn’t know this one. She recognized it, though. It was High D’Haran.

She hugged her arms to herself in the chill wind that had come up. The somber clouds stirred restlessly. She peered around at the imposing mountains, many hidden by a dark shroud of fog. Swirling curtains of snow obscured other slopes in the distance. Through a small, brief opening in the wretched weather, the valley she could see off through the pass offered the promise of green and warmth.

And the Imperial Order.

Kahlan, close beside Richard, wished he would put a warm arm around her. She watched as he stared at the faint letters in the stone. He was being far too quiet for her peace of mind.

“Richard,” she whispered, leaning close to him, “what does it say?”

Transfixed, he ran his fingers slowly, lightly over the letters, his lips soundlessly pronouncing the High D’Haran words.

“Wizard’s Eighth Rule,” Richard whispered in translation. “Talga Vassternich.”

Following behind the messenger, Verna stepped aside as a tight pack of horses raced by. Their bellies were caked with mud, their nostrils flared with excitement. The eyes of the cavalry soldiers bent over their withers showed grim determination. With the constant level of activity of recent weeks, she had to maintain a careful vigil whenever she stepped out of a tent lest she be run down by one thing or another. If it wasn’t horses charging through camp, it was men at a run.

“Just up ahead,” the messenger said over his shoulder.

Verna nodded to his young face as he glanced back. He was a polite young man. His curly blond hair and his mannerly behavior combined to remind her of Warren. She was defenseless against the wave of pain that cut through her with the memory of Warren being gone, at the emptiness of each day.

She couldn’t remember this messenger’s name. There were so many young men; it was hard to recall all their names. Though she tried her best, she couldn’t keep track of them. At least for a while now they hadn’t been dying at a terrifying rate. As harsh as the winters were up in D’Hara, such weather had at least been a respite from the battles of the previous summer, from the constant fighting and dying. With summer again upon them, she didn’t think that the relative quiet was going to last much longer.

For now the passes held against the Imperial Order. In such narrow and confined places, the enemy’s weight of numbers didn’t mean so much. If only one man would fit through a narrow hole in a stone wall, it meant little that there were a hundred waiting behind him to go through, or a thousand. Defending against one man, as it were, was not the impossible task that it was trying to fight the onslaught of Jagang’s entire force.

When she heard the distant thunder, felt it rolling through the ground, she glanced up at the sky. The sun had not made an appearance in two days. She didn’t like the looks of the clouds building against the slopes of the mountains. It looked like they could be in for a nasty storm.

The sound might not have been thunder. It was possible that it was magic the enemy hammered against the shields across the passes. Such battering would do them no good, but it made for uneasy sleeping, so, if for no other reason, they kept at it.

Some of the men and the officers passing in the other direction gave her a nod in greeting, or a smile, or a small wave. Verna didn’t see any Sisters of the Light. Many would be at the passes, tending shields, making sure none of the Imperial Order soldiers could get through. Zedd had taught them to consider every possibility, no matter how outlandish, and guard against it. Day and night Verna ran every one of those places through her mind, trying to think if there was anything they had overlooked, anything they had missed, that might allow the enemy forces to flood in upon them.

If that happened, if they broke through, then there was nothing to stop their advance into D’Hara except the defending army, and the defending army was no match for the numbers on the other side of those mountains. She couldn’t think of any chink in their armor, but she worried constantly that there might be one.

It seemed that the final battle might be on them at any moment. And where was Richard?

Prophecy said that he was vital in the battle to decide the future course of mankind. With it appearing that they very well could be one battle from the end of it all, of freedom’s final spark, the Lord Rahl ran the very real risk of missing the moment of his greatest need. She could hardly believe that for centuries Prophecy foretold of the one who would lead them, and when the time finally arrives, he’s off somewhere else. Lot of good Prophecy was doing them.

Verna knew Richard’s heart. She knew Kahlan’s heart. It wasn’t right to doubt either of them, but Verna was the one staring into the eyes of Jagang’s horde and Richard was nowhere to be found.

From what little information Verna had gleaned from Ann’s messages in the journey book, there was trouble afoot. Verna could detect in Ann’s writings that the woman was greatly troubled by something. Whatever the cause, Ann and Nathan were racing south, back down through the Old World. Ann avoided explaining, possibly not wanting to burden them with anything else, so Verna didn’t press. She had enough trouble conceiving of why Ann would have joined with the prophet rather than collaring him. Ann said only that a journey book was not a good place to explain such things.

Despite the good work the man sometimes did, Verna considered Nathan dangerous in the extreme. A thunderstorm brought life-giving rain, but if you were the one struck by its lightning, it didn’t do you much good. For Ann and Nathan to join forces, as it were, must be indicative of the trouble they were all in.

Verna had to remind herself that not everything was going against them, not everything was hopeless and dismal. Jagang’s army had, after all, suffered a stunning blow at the hands of Zedd and Adie, losing staggering numbers of soldiers in an instant and suffering vast numbers of casualties. As a result the Imperial Order had turned away from Aydindril, leaving the Wizard’s Keep untouched. Despite the dream walker’s covetous hands, the Keep remained out of his reach.

Zedd and Adie had the defense of the Keep well in hand, so it was not all trouble and strife; there were valuable assets on the side of the D’Haran Empire. The Keep might yet prove decisive in helping to stop the Imperial Order. Verna missed that old wizard, his advice, his wisdom, though she would never admit it aloud. In that old man she could see where Richard got many of his best qualities.

Verna halted when she saw Rikka striding across in front of her. Verna snatched the Mord-Sith’s arm.

“What is it, Prelate?” Rikka asked.

“Have you heard what this is about?”

Rikka gave her a blank look. “What what’s about?”

The messenger stopped on the other side of the intersection of informal roads. Horses trotted past in both directions, one pulling a cart of water barrels. Fully armed men crossed on the side road. The encampment, one of several, surrounded by a defensive berm, had evolved into a city of sorts, with byways through its midst for men, horses, and wagons.

“Something is going on,” Verna said.

“Sorry, I haven’t heard anything.”

“Are you busy?”

“Nothing urgent.”

Verna took a good grip on Rikka’s arm and started her walking. “General Meiffert sent for me. Maybe you’d best come along. That way if he wants you, too, we won’t have to send someone looking for you.”

Rikka shrugged. “Fine by me.” The Mord-Sith’s expression turned suspicious. “Do you have any idea what’s wrong?”

As Verna kept an eye on the messenger ahead of her weaving his way among men, tents, wagons, horses, and repair stations, she glanced over at Rikka. “Nothing that I know of.” Verna’s expression contorted a bit as she tried to put her queazy mood into words. “Did you ever wake up and just feel like there was something wrong, but you couldn’t explain why it seemed like it was going to be a bad day?”

“If it’s to be a bad day, I see to that it’s someone else’s, and I’m the cause of it.”

Verna smiled to herself. “Too bad you’re not gifted. You would make a good Sister of the Light.”

“I would rather be Mord-Sith and be able to protect Lord Rahl.”

The messenger stopped at the side of the camp road. “Back there, Prelate. General Meiffert said to bring you to that tent by the trees.”

Verna thanked the young man and made her way across the soft ground, Rikka at her side. The tent was away from the main activity of the camp, in a quieter area where officers often met with scouts just back from patrols. Verna’s mind raced, trying to imagine what news scouts could have brought back. There was no alarm, so the passes still held. If there was trouble, there would be a flurry of activity in the camp, but it seemed about the same as any other day.

Guards saw Verna coming and ducked into the tent to announce her arrival. Almost immediately, the general stepped out of the tent and rushed to meet her. His blue eyes reflected iron determination. The man’s face, though, was ashen.

“I saw Rikka,” Verna explained as General Meiffert dipped his head in a hurried greeting. “I thought I ought to bring her just in case you needed her, too.”

The tall, blond-headed D’Haran glanced briefly at Rikka. “Yes, that’s fine. Come in, please, both of you.”

Verna snatched his sleeve. “What’s this about? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

The general’s eyes moved to Rikka and back to Verna. “We’ve had a message from Jagang.”

Rikka leaned in, her voice taking on an edge. “How did a messenger from Jagang get through without someone killing them?”

It was standard practice that no one came through for any reason. They didn’t want so much as a mouse making it through. There was no telling if it might be some kind of trick.

“It was a small wagon, pulled by a single horse.” He tilted his head toward Verna. “The men thought the wagon was empty. Remembering your instructions, they let it through.”

Verna was somewhat surprised that Ann’s warning to let an empty wagon through had been so correct. “A wagon came of its own accord? An empty wagon drove itself in?”

“Not exactly. The men who saw it thought it was empty. The horse appears to be a workhorse that is used to walking roads, so it plodded along the road as it had been trained.” General Meiffert pressed his lips together at the confusion on Verna’s face and then turned away from the tent. “Come on, and I’ll show you.”

He led them to the third tent down the line and held the flap aside. Verna ducked in, followed by Rikka and the general. On a bench inside sat a young novice, Holly, with her arm around a very frightened-looking girl no more than ten years old.

“I asked Holly to stay with her,” General Meiffert whispered. “I thought it might make her less nervous than a soldier standing over her.”

“Of course,” Verna said. “Very wise of you. She’s the one who brought the message, then?”

The young general nodded. “She was sitting in the back of the wagon, so the men seeing it coming at first thought it was empty.”

Verna now understood why such a messenger got through. Soldiers weren’t nearly so likely to kill a child, and the Sisters could test her to insure she was no threat. Verna wondered if Zedd would have something to say about that; threat often came in surprising packages. Verna approached the pair on the bench, smiling as she bent down.

“I’m Verna. Are you all right, young lady?” The girl nodded. “Would you like something to eat?”

Trembling slightly as her big brown eyes took in the people looking at her, she nodded again.

“Prelate,” Holly said, “Valery already went to get her something.”

“I see,” Verna said, holding the smile in place. She knelt down and gently patted the girl’s hands in her lap to reassure her. “Do you live around here?”

The girl’s big brown eyes blinked, trying to judge the danger of the adult before her. She calmed just a little at Verna’s smile and kind touch. “A bit of travel to the north, ma’am.”

“And someone sent you to see us?”

The big brown eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t cry. “My parents are back there, down over the pass. The soldiers there have them. As guests, they said. Men came and took us to their army. We’ve had to stay there for the last few weeks. Today they told me to take a letter over the pass to the people here. They said that if I did as I was told, they would let my mother and father and me go home.”

Verna again patted the girl’s small hands. “I see. Well, that’s good of you to help your parents.”

“I just want to go home.”

“And you shall, child.” Verna straightened. “We’ll get you some food, dear, so you have a full tummy before you go back to your parents.”

The girl stood and curtsied. “Thank you for your kindness. May I go back after I eat, then?”

“Certainly,” Verna said. “I’ll just go read the letter you brought while you have a nice meal, and then you can return to your parents.”

As she sat back up on the bench, squirming her bottom back beside Holly, she couldn’t help keeping a wary eye on the Mord-Sith.

Trying not to show any apprehension, Verna smiled her good-bye to the girl before leading the others out of the tent. She couldn’t even imagine what Jagang was up to.

“What’s in the letter?” Verna asked as they hurried to the command tent.

General Meiffert paused outside the tent, his thumb burnishing a brass button on his coat as he met Verna’s gaze. “I’d just as soon you read it for yourself, Prelate. Some of it is plain enough. Some of it, well, some of it I’m hoping you can explain to me.”

Stepping into the tent, Verna saw Captain Zimmer waiting off to the side. The square-jawed man was absent his usual infectious smile. The captain was in charge of the D’Haran special forces, a group of men whose job it was to go out and spend their days and nights sneaking around in enemy territory killing as many of the enemy as possible. There seemed to be an endless supply. The captain seemed determined to use up the supply.

The men in Captain Zimmer’s corps were very good at what they did. They collected strings of ears they took from the enemies they killed. Kahlan used to always ask to see their collection whenever they returned. The captain and his men dearly missed her.

They all glanced up at a flash of lightning. The storm was getting closer. After a moment’s pause, the ground shook with the rolling rumble of thunder.

General Meiffert retrieved a small folded paper from the table and handed it to Verna.

“This is what the girl brought.”

Looking briefly to the two men’s grim expressions, Verna unfolded the paper and read the neat script.

I have Wizard Zorander and a sorceress named Adie. I now hold the Wizard’s Keep in Aydindril and all it contains. My Slide will soon present me with Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.

Your cause is lost. If you surrender now and open the passes, I will spare your men. If you do not, I will put every one of them to death.

Signed, Jagang the Just.

The arm holding the paper in her trembling fingers lowered.

“Dear Creator,” Verna whispered. She felt dizzy.