Naked Empire

by Terry Goodkind

  No. This was wrong. He didn’t see them.

  He had to find them.

  He willed his charges up from the gory feast, to search. Nicholas felt a pang of urgency. This was his future that had slipped away from him—his treasure slipping through his grasp. He had to find them. Had to.

  He spurred his charges onward.

  This way, that way, over there. Look, look, look. Find them, find them. Look. Must find them. Look.

  This was not supposed to be. There had been enough men. No one could escape that many experienced men. Not when they came by stealth and attacked with surprise. They had been selected for their talents. They knew their business.

  Their bodies lay sprawled all about. Beak and claw ripped at them. Screeches of excitement. Hunger.

  No. Must find them.

  Up, up, up. Find them. He had to find them.

  He had suffered the agony of a new birth in those dark woods, those terrible woods, with those terrible women. He would have his reward. He would not be denied. Not now. Not after all that.

  Find them. Look, look, look. Find them.

  On powerful wings, he soared into the night. With eyes that saw in the dark, he searched. With creatures that could catch the scent of prey at great distance, he tried for a whiff of them.

  Through the night they went, hunting. Hunting.

  There, there he saw their wagon. He recognized their wagon. Their big horses. He had seen it before—seen them with it before. His minions circled in close on nearly silent wings, dropping in closer to see what Nicholas sought.

  Not there. They weren’t there. A trick. It had to be a trick. A diversion. Not there. They had sent the wagon away to trick him, to send him off their trail.

  With wings powered by anger, he soared up, up, up to search the countryside. Hunt, hunt. Find them. He flew with his five in an ever wider pattern to search the ground beneath the night. They flew on, searching, searching. His hunger was their hunger. Hunt for them. Hunt.

  The wings grew weary as he drove them onward. He had to find them. He would not allow rest. Not allow failure. He hunted in expanding swaths, searching, hunting, hunting.

  There, among the trees, he saw movement.

  It was only just dark. They wouldn’t see their pursuers—not in the dark—but he could see them. He forced the five down, circling, circling, forced them in close. He would not fail this time to see them, to get close enough. Circling, holding him there, circling, watching, circling, watching, seeing them there.

  It was her! The Mother Confessor! He saw others. The one with red hair and her small four-legged friend. Others, too. He must be there, too. Had to be there, too. He would be there, too, as the small group moved west.

  West. They moved west. They had traveled to the west of where he had seen them last.

  Nicholas laughed. They were coming west. The captors sent for them all lay dead, but here they came anyway. They were coming west.

  Toward where he waited.

  He would have them.

  He would have Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.

  Jagang would have them.

  It came to him, then—his reward. What he would have in return for the prizes he would deliver.

  D’Hara.

  He would have the rule of D’Hara in return for these two paltry people. Jagang would reward him with the rule of D’Hara, if he wanted those two. He would not dare deny Nicholas the Slide what he wanted. Not when he had what Jagang wanted most, more than any other prize. Jagang would pay any price for these two.

  Pain. A scream. Shock, terror, confusion raged through him. He felt the wind, the wind that carried him so effortlessly, now ripping at him like fists snatching at feathers as he tumbled in helpless pain.

  One of the five falling at blinding speed smacked the ground.

  Nicholas screamed. One of the five spirits had been lost with its host. Back somewhere distant, in some far-off room with wooden walls and shutters and bloody stakes, back, back, back in another place he had almost forgotten existed, back, back, back far away, a spirit was ripped from his control.

  One of the five back there had died at the same instant the race had crashed to the ground.

  Scream of hot pain. Another tumbled out of control. Another spirit escaped his grasp into the waiting arms of death.

  Nicholas struggled to see in the confusion, forcing the remaining three to hold his vision in place so he could see. Hunt, hunt, hunt. Where was he? Where was he? Where? He saw the others. Where was Lord Rahl?

  A third scream.

  Where was he? Nicholas fought to hold his vision despite the hot agony, the bewildering plummet.

  Pain ripped through a fourth.

  Before he could gather his senses, hold them together, force them with the power of his will to do his bidding, two more spirits were yanked away into the void of the underworld.

  Where was he?

  Talons at the ready, Nicholas searched.

  There! There!

  With violent effort, he forced the race over into a dive. There he was! There he was! Up high. Higher than the rest. Somehow up high. Up on a ledge of rock above the rest. He wasn’t down there with them. He was up high.

  Dive for him. Dive down for him.

  There he was, bow drawn.

  Ripping pain tore through the last race. The ground rushed up at him. Nicholas cried out. He tried frantically to stop the spinning. He felt the race slam into the rock at frightening speed. But only for an instant.

  With a gasp, Nicholas drew a desperate breath. His head spun with the burning torture of the abrupt return, an uncontrolled return not of his doing.

  He blinked, his mouth open wide in an attempt to let out a cry, but no sound came. His eyes bulged with the effort, but no cry came. He was back. Whether or not he wanted to be, he was back.

  He looked around at the room. He was back, that was the reason no cry came. No screech of a race joined his own. They were dead. All five.

  Nicholas turned to the four impaled on stakes behind him. All four were slumped. The fifth man lay slouched in the far corner. All five limp and still. All five dead. Their spirits gone.

  The room was as silent as a crypt. The bowl before him glowed only with the fragment of his own spirit. He drew it back in.

  He sat in the stillness for a long time, waiting for his head to stop spinning. It had been a shock to be in a creature as it was killed—to have a spirit of a person in him as they died. As five of them died. It had been a surprise.

  Lord Rahl was a surprising man. Nicholas hadn’t thought, back that first time, that he would be able to get all five. He had thought it was luck. A second time was not luck. Lord Rahl was a surprising man.

  Nicholas could cast his spirit out again if he wanted, seek out new eyes, but his head hurt and he didn’t feel up to it; besides, it didn’t matter. Lord Rahl was coming west. He was coming to the great empire of Bandakar.

  Nicholas owned Bandakar.

  The people here revered him.

  Nicholas smiled. Lord Rahl was coming. He would be surprised at the kind of man he found when he arrived. Lord Rahl probably thought he knew all manner of men.

  He did not know Nicholas the Slide.

  Nicholas the Slide, who would be emperor of D’Hara when he gave Jagang the prizes he sought most: the dead body of Lord Rahl, and the living body of the Mother Confessor.

  Jagang would have them both for himself.

  And in return, Nicholas would have their empire.

  Chapter 29

  Ann heard the distant echo of footsteps coming down the long, empty, dark corridor outside the far door to her forgotten vault under the People’s Palace, the seat of power in D’Hara. She was no longer sure if it was day or night. She’d lost track of time as she sat in the silent darkness. She saved the lamp for times when they brought food, or the times she wrote to Verna in the journey book. Or the times she felt so alone that she needed the company of a small flame, if nothing else.

 
In this place, within this spell of a palace for those born Rahl, her power was so diminished that it was all she could do to light that lamp.

  She feared to use the little lamp too often and run out of oil; she didn’t know if they would give her more. She didn’t want to run out and only then find they would give her no more. She didn’t want not to have at least the possibility of that small flame, that small gift of light.

  In the dark she could do nothing but consider her life and all she had worked so hard to accomplish. For centuries she had led the Sisters of the Light in their effort to see the Creator’s light triumph in the world, and see the Keeper of the underworld kept where he belonged, in his own realm, the world of the dead.

  For centuries she had waited in dread of the time that prophecy said was now upon them.

  For five hundred years she had waited for the birth of the one who had the chance to succeed in leading them in the struggle to see the Creator’s gift, magic, survive against those who would cast that light out of the world. For five hundred years she had worked to insure that he would have a chance to do what he must if he was to have a chance to stop the forces that would extinguish magic.

  Prophecy said that only Richard had the chance to preserve their cause, to keep the enemy from succeeding in casting a gray pall over mankind, the only one with a chance to prevent the gift from dying out. Prophecy did not say that he would prevail; prophecy said only that Richard was the only one to have a chance to bring them victory. Without Richard, all hope was lost—that much was sure. For this reason, Ann had been devoted to him long before he was born, before he rose up to become their leader.

  Kahlan saw all of Ann’s efforts as meddling, as tinkering with the lives of others. Kahlan believed that Ann’s efforts were in fact the cause of the very thing she feared most. Ann hated that she sometimes thought that maybe Kahlan was right. Maybe it was meant to be that Richard would be born and by his free will alone would choose to do those things that would lead them to victory in their battle to keep the gift among men. Zedd certainly believed that it was only by Richard’s mind, by his free will, but his conscious intent, that he could lead them.

  Maybe it was true, and Ann, in trying to direct those things that could not be and should not be directed, had brought them all to the brink of ruin.

  The footsteps were coming closer. Maybe it was time to eat and they were bringing dinner. She wasn’t hungry.

  When they brought her food, they put it on the end of a long pole and then threaded that pole through the little opening in the outer door, all the way across the outer shielded room, through the opening in the second, inner door, and finally in to Ann. Nathan would risk no chance for escape by having her guards have to open her cell door merely to give her food.

  They passed in a variety of breads, meats, and vegetables along with waterskins. Although the food was good, she found no satisfaction in it. Even the finest fare could never be satisfying eaten in a dungeon.

  At times, as Prelate, she had felt as if she were a prisoner of her post. She had rarely gone to the dining hall where the Sisters of the Light had eaten—especially in the later years. It put everyone on edge having the Prelate among them at dinner. Besides, done too often it took the edge off their anxiety, their discomposure, around authority.

  Ann believed that a certain distance, a certain worried respect, was necessary in order to maintain discipline. In a place that had been spelled so that time slowed for those living there, it was important to maintain discipline. Ann appeared to be in her seventies, but with her aging process slowed dramatically while living under the spell that had covered the Palace of the Prophets, she had lived close to a thousand years.

  Of course, a lot of good her discipline had done her. Under her watch as Prelate the Sisters of the Dark had infested her flock. There were hundreds of Sisters, and there was no telling just how many of them had taken dark oaths to the Keeper. The lure of his promises were obviously effective. Such promises were an illusion, but try to tell that to one so pledged. Immortality was seductive to women who watched everyone they knew outside the palace grow old and die while they remained young.

  Sisters who had children saw those children sent out of the palace to be raised where they could have a normal life, saw those children grow old and die, saw their grandchildren grow old and die. To a woman who saw such things, saw the constant withering and death of those she knew while she herself all the time seemed to remain young, attractive, and desirable, the offer of immortality grew increasingly tempting when her own petals began to wilt.

  Growing old was a final stage, the end of a life. Growing old in the Palace of the Prophets was a very long ordeal. Ann had been old for centuries. Being young for a very long time was a wonderful experience, but being old for a very long time was not—at least it was not for some. For Ann, it was life itself that was wonderful, not so much her age, and all she had learned. But not everyone felt that way.

  Now that the palace had been destroyed, they would all age at the same rate as everyone else. What had only a short time ago been a future of maybe another hundred years of life for Ann was suddenly perhaps no more than a blink of a decade—certainly not much more.

  But she doubted she would live all that long in such a dank hole, away from light and life.

  Somehow, it didn’t seem as if she and Nathan were close to a thousand years old. She didn’t know what it felt like to age at the normal rate outside the spell, but she believed she felt little different than those outside the palace felt as they aged. She believed that the spell that slowed their aging also altered their perception of time—to a degree, anyway.

  The footsteps were getting closer. Ann wasn’t looking forward to another meal in this place. She was beginning to wish they would let her starve and get it over with. Let her die.

  What good had her life been? When she really thought about it, what good had she really accomplished? The Creator knew how she tried to guide Richard in what needed to be done, but in the end it seemed that it was Richard’s choice to act as he did, in most cases against what she thought needed to be done, that turned out to be correct. Had she not tried to guide events, bring him to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World, maybe nothing would have changed and that would have been the way he was to save them all—by not having to act and letting Jagang and the Imperial Order eventually wither and die in the Old World, unable to spread their virulent beliefs beyond. Maybe she’d brought it all to ruin with her efforts alone.

  She heard the door at the end of the passageway to her cell scrape open. She decided that she wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t eat again until Nathan came to speak with her, as she had requested.

  Sometimes, with the food, they sent in wine. Nathan sent it in to vex her, she was sure of that. From his confinement in the Palace of the Prophets, Nathan had sometimes requested wine. Ann always saw the report when such a request was made; she declined every such request.

  Wizards were dangerous enough, prophets—who were wizards with the talent of prophecy—were potentially vastly more dangerous, and drunken prophets were the most dangerous of all.

  Prophecy given out willy-nilly was an invitation to calamity. Even simple prophecy escaping the confines of the stone walls of the Palace of the Prophets had started wars.

  Nathan had sometimes requested the company of women. Ann hated those requests the most, because she sometimes granted them. She felt she had to. Nathan had little of life, confined as he was to his apartments, his only real crime being the nature of his birth, his abilities. The palace could easily afford the price of a woman to sometimes visit him.

  He made a mockery of that, often enough—giving out prophecy that sent the woman fleeing before they could speak with her, before they could silence her.

  Those without the proper training were not meant to see prophecy. Prophecy was easily misinterpreted by those without an understanding of its intricacies. To divulge prophecy to the uninitiated was like casting fire into
dry grass.

  Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened.

  At the thought of the prophet being loose, Ann’s stomach tightened into a knot. Even so, she had sometimes secretly taken Nathan out herself, to go on important journeys with her—mostly journeys having to do with guiding some aspect of Richard’s life, or, more accurately, trying to insure that Richard would be born and have a life. Besides being trouble on two feet, Nathan was also a remarkable prophet who did have a sincere interest in seeing their side triumph. After all, he saw in prophecy the alternative, and when Nathan saw prophecy, he saw it in all its terrible truth.

  Nathan always wore a Rada’Han—a collar—that enabled her, or any Sister, to control him, so taking him on those journeys wasn’t actually putting the world at risk of the man. He had to do as she said, go where she said. Whenever she had taken him out on a mission with her, he was not really free, since he wore a Rada’Han and she could thus control him.

  Now he was without a Rada’Han. He was truly free.

  Ann didn’t want any supper. She resolved to turn it away when they passed the pole in to her. Let Nathan fret that she might refuse food altogether and die while under his fickle control. Ann folded her arms. Let him have that on his conscience. That would bring the man down to see her.

  Ann heard the footsteps come to a halt outside the far door. Muffled voices drifted in to her. Had she ready access to her Han, she would have been able to concentrate her hearing toward those voices and easily hear their words. She sighed. Even that ability was useless to her here, in this place, under the power invoked by the spell form of the layout of the palace. It would hardly make sense to create such elaborate plans to curtail another’s magic and allow them to hear secrets whispered inside the walls.

  The outer door squealed in protest as it was pulled open. This was new. No one had opened the outer door since the day they shut her in the place.