While their spring march north was not yet swift, their advance was inexorable. Sebastian said that once the men smelled their prey, their pulse, and their pace, would quicken.
It was a terrible shame that Lord Rahl’s greed for conquest and rule made this all necessary, that such a peaceful valley should be given over to men at war. With spring, the grasses were at last coming back to life, so that the hills rising up to each side of the valley looked as if they were covered in living green velvet. Forests took over on the steeper slopes beyond the hills. In the distance, off to the west and north, stone peaks still wore heavy mantles of snow. Headwaters swollen with the snowmelt roared down the rocky slopes, and, farther to the east, emptied into a mighty river that meandered out into a great, lush plain. The dirt there was so black, so fertile, that Jennsen imagined even rocks planted there might sprout roots and grow.
Before she and Sebastian had come upon the vast stain of the army, the land had been as beautiful as any Jennsen had seen in all her life. She longed to explore those enchanting forests, and fancied she could contentedly spend the rest of her life among such timber. It was hard for her to cast the Midlands as a place of evil magic.
Sebastian had told her that those woods were dangerous places where beasts roamed, and where those who wielded magic lurked. With the things she was learning, she was almost tempted to risk it. She knew, though, that even in those trackless and seemingly endless forests, Lord Rahl would still find her. His men had already demonstrated their ability to locate her in even the most remote areas; her mother’s murder was only the first proof of that. Ever since that terrible day, his merciless assassins had somehow been able to hound her up through D’Hara and halfway across the Midlands.
If Lord Rahl’s men caught her, they would take her back to the dungeons where Sebastian had been held, and then Lord Rahl would have her tortured endlessly before he granted her a slow, agonizing death. Jennsen could have no safety, no peace, as long as Lord Rahl pursued her. She intended to catch him, instead, and seize a life for herself.
Another clot of sentries spotted her and Sebastian riding over the open ground and moved down the slope from their observation post at the top of a hill to intercept them. When she and Sebastian were closer, and the men saw his spikes of white hair and the casual salute he gave them, they turned and swarmed back up the hill to their campfire and cooking their dinner.
Like the rest of the Imperial Order army she had seen, the men were a rough-looking lot, in tattered clothes, furs, and hides. Down in the broad valley, many sat around small campfires outside little tents made of hides or oiled canvas. Most looked to have been set up wherever their owners had found enough space, rather than to any order. Randomly set among the tents were local command centers, mess tables, arms stockpiles, supply wagons, paddocks packed with livestock or horses, tradespeople laboring, and even blacksmiths working at transportable forges. Scattered here and there were small trading markets where men gathered to barter or buy small goods.
There were even agitated, angry, rawboned men standing among the throngs preaching to smatterings of vacant onlookers. What exactly the men were preaching, Jennsen couldn’t hear, but she had seen men preach before. According to her mother, the tempestuous body language prophesying doom and proselytizing salvation was as unmistakable as it was unchanging.
As they rode closer in to the immense encampment, she saw men at their tents occupied with everything from laughing and drinking to working at cleaning weapons and gear. Some men stood in crooked lines, arms thrown over the next fellow’s shoulders, singing songs together. Others cooked by themselves, while still others crowded around mess areas, waiting to be fed. Some men were occupied with chores and tending animals. She saw some men gambling and arguing. The entire place was dirty, smelly, noisy, and frighteningly confusing.
As uncomfortable as she had always felt around crowds, this looked more terrifying even than a fevered nightmare. Descending toward the churning mass of humanity, she wanted to run in the opposite direction. Only her single, burning reason for being there, and nothing else, kept her from doing so.
She had reached the brink within, and crossed over. She had embraced the need to kill and resolved with cold deliberate calculation to do it. There could be no turning back.
The uniforms the soldiers wore were not that—uniform—but seemed to be a mismatched collection of leather set with spikes, fur, chain mail, wool cloaks, hides, and filthy tunics. Almost all the burly men she saw were unshaven, grimy, grim. It was readily apparent why Sebastian was so easily recognized and why no one ever challenged him, yet she remained awed at how, without fail, every man who laid eyes on him gave him a salute. Sebastian stood out like a swan among maggots.
Sebastian had explained how difficult it was to amass a huge army to defend their homeland and what an arduous undertaking it was to send them on such a long journey. He said that they were men far from home with a grisly job to do; they couldn’t be expected to look presentable for womenfolk or pause in their life-and-death battles to be mannerly and make tidy camps. These were fighting men.
So were D’Haran soldiers. These men certainly didn’t look anything like D’Haran soldiers looked, nor were they as disciplined, but she didn’t say so.
Jennsen could understand, though. As hard as she and Sebastian had been traveling, all the while taking precautions to evade Lord Rahl’s men by riding until they nearly dropped with exhaustion, often backtracking and working hard at making false trails, she had little time to worry about looking her best. Added to that, it had been a long and difficult journey across mountains in winter. It often rankled her that Sebastian should see her with her hair all tangled, when she was as filthy and sweaty as her horse and smelling no better. Still, he never seemed fazed by her all too often unkempt appearance. Rather, he usually seemed ignited by the mere sight of her, and often wanted nothing so much as to do whatever he could to please her.
The previous day they had taken a shorter route across hill country in order to make their way toward the head of the army, and had come across an abandoned farmhouse. Sebastian had indulged her wish to stay there for the night, even though it was early to make camp. After bathing and washing her long hair in the old tub in the tiny washroom, she put the water to use to wash out her clothes. Sitting before the warm fire Sebastian had built in the hearth, Jennsen brushed her hair as it dried. She was nervous about meeting the emperor and wanted to look presentable. Sebastian, leaning back on an elbow, watching her before the flickering glow of flames, had smiled that wonderful smile of his and said that even if she went unwashed and with tangled hair, she would be the most beautiful woman Emperor Jagang had ever seen.
Now, as they rode along the fringes of the Imperial Order encampment, her stomach was in knots, even if her hair was not. From the looks of the turbulent clouds moving in past the mountains to the west, a spring storm would be on them before long. Off above distant valleys, lightning flickered through the dark clouds. She hoped the rain didn’t arrive to drench her hair and dress right before meeting the emperor.
“There,” Sebastian said, leaning forward in his saddle to point. “Those are the emperor’s tents, and those of his important advisors and officers. Not far beyond, up the valley, will be Aydindril itself.” He looked over with a grin. “Emperor Jagang hasn’t moved to take the city yet. We’ve made it in time.”
The huge tents were an imposing sight. The largest was oval, its tripeaked roof pierced by three lofty center poles. The tent’s sides bore brightly colored panels. Standards and tassels hung from the eaves. High atop the three poles, colorful yellow and red banners flapped in the gusty wind, while long pennants streamed out, undulating like airborne serpents. The emperor’s congregation of tents stood out among the drab little quarters of the regular soldiers the way a king’s palace towered over surrounding huts.
Jennsen’s heart raced as they urged their horses down into the thick of the encampment. Both Rusty and Pete, their ears aler
t, snorted their misgivings about entering such a noisy and busy place. She urged Rusty ahead in order to take Sebastian’s hand when offered it.
“Your hand is all sweaty,” he said, smiling. “You aren’t nervous, are you?”
She was water at a boil, a horse at a gallop. “Maybe a little,” she said.
But her purpose stiffened her will.
“Well, don’t be. Emperor Jagang will be the one to be nervous, meeting such a beautiful woman.”
Jennsen could feel her face heat. She was about to meet an emperor. What would her mother think of such a thing? As she rode, she considered how her mother, as a young servant girl on the palace staff—a nobody—must have felt when she met Darken Rahl himself. Jennsen could, for the first time, truly begin to empathize with the enormity of such an event in her mother’s life.
As she and Sebastian trotted their horses into camp, men everywhere peered Jennsen’s way. Mobs of men crowded closer to see the woman riding in. She saw that there were a number of soldiers with pikes forming a rough line along their route, holding back the press of men. She realized that the guards were clearing the way and preventing any of the more celebratory men from getting too close.
Sebastian watched her as she took note of the way the soldiers opened a clear path for them.
“The emperor knows we’re coming,” he told her.
“But how?”
“When we encountered scouts a few days ago, and then sentries this morning as we got closer, they would have sent runners on ahead to inform Emperor Jagang that I’ve returned, and that I’m not alone. Emperor Jagang would want to insure the safety of any guest I would bring.”
It appeared to Jennsen that the guards were meant to keep the great mass of regular soldiers away from the two of them. She thought it an odd thing to do, but by the drunken nature of some of the soldiers, and the rough looks and leering grins of others, she couldn’t say that she was sorry about it.
“The soldiers look so . . . I don’t know . . . brutish, I guess.”
“And as you are about to plunge your knife into Richard Rahl’s heart,” Sebastian said without pause, “do you intend to curtsy and say please and thank you so that he will see how well mannered you are?”
“Of course not, but—”
He turned his halting blue eyes on her. “When those brutes came into your house and butchered your mother, what sort of men would you have wished were there to protect her?”
Jennsen was taken aback. “Sebastian, I don’t know what that has to do—”
“Would you trust dressy soldiers with polished leather and polite manners—like some pompous king would have at a fancy dinner party—to be the ones to make a desperate last stand protecting your beloved mother against the onslaught of vicious killers? Or would you want men even more brutish to be the ones to stand before your mother, protecting her life? Wouldn’t you want men steeped in the most brutal traditions of combat, to be the ones standing between her and those savage men intent on killing her?”
“I guess I see what you mean,” Jennsen admitted.
“These men are serving in that role for all their loved ones back in the Old World.”
The unexpected encounter with that terrible memory was so chilling, so painful, that she had to work at putting it out of her mind. She felt humbled, too, by Sebastian’s heated words. She was here for a reason. That reason was all that mattered. If the men arrayed against Lord Rahl’s forces were tough and mean, so much the better.
It wasn’t until they reached the heavily defended compound around the emperor’s tents that Jennsen saw other women. They were an odd mix, from young-looking to some who were stooped with age. Most peered curiously, some frowned, and a few even appeared alarmed, but all watched as Jennsen rode, closer.
“Why do the women all have rings through their lower lip?” she whispered to Sebastian.
His gaze swept the women near the tents. “As a sign of loyalty to the Imperial Order, to Emperor Jagang.”
Jennsen thought it not just a strange way to show loyalty, but disquieting. Most of the women wore drab dresses, most had unkempt hair. Some were dressed a little better, but only a little.
Soldiers took the horses when they dismounted. Jennsen stroked Rusty’s ear and whispered reassuringly to the nervous animal that it was all right to go with the stranger. Once Rusty was calmed, Pete contentedly followed her toward the stable area. Parting from her constant companion of so long unexpectedly reminded Jennsen of how she missed Betty.
The women moved farther into the background as they watched, as if fearing to get too close. Jennsen was used to such behavior; people feared her red hair. It was a rare warm spring day, and it had intoxicated Jennsen with the promise of more such days. She had forgotten to put her hood up as they came close to the encampment. She started, then, to put it up, but Sebastian’s hand stayed her arm.
“It’s not necessary.” With a tilt of his head, he indicated the women. “Many of them are Sisters of the Light. They don’t fear magic, only strangers entering the emperor’s compound.”
Jennsen realized then the reason for the strange looks from a number of the women; they were gifted and saw her as a hole in the world. Their eyes were seeing her, but their gift was not.
Sebastian wouldn’t be aware of that. She had never told him exactly what Althea had explained about the gifted and the offspring of a Lord Rahl. Sebastian had, on more than one occasion, shown a condescending disgust in the details of magic. Jennsen had never felt entirely comfortable talking to him about the specifics of what she had learned from the sorceress, and the even more important things she had figured out on her own. It was all difficult enough for her to reconcile in her own mind, and seemed too personal to reveal to him unless the time and circumstances were right. They never seemed to be.
Jennsen forced a smile at the women watching from the shadows of the tent. They stared back.
“Why is the emperor insulated from his men, and guarded?” she asked Sebastian.
“With this many men, you can never be absolutely certain that one isn’t an infiltrator, or even a deranged madman, who might try to make a name for himself by harming Emperor Jagang. Such a foolish act would deprive us all of our great leader. With so much at risk, we have to take precautions.”
Jennsen supposed she could understand. After all, Sebastian himself had been an infiltrator in the People’s Palace. Had he come across an important man there, he could have done harm. The D’Harans were troubled by such a threat. They had even arrested the right man.
Fortunately, Jennsen had been able to get him out. How she had been able to accomplish such a thing was part of what she had finally come to terms with, but could never find the right time to share with Sebastian. She didn’t think he would understand, anyway. He probably wouldn’t even believe such a far-fetched notion.
Sebastian’s arm circled her waist and drew her onward toward two huge, silent men standing guard outside the emperor’s tent. Stepping between the two after they bowed their heads to him, Sebastian lifted aside a heavy doorway curtain covered with gold and silver medallions.
Jennsen had never even imagined, much less seen, such a lavish tent, but what she saw as she stepped inside was far more opulent than even the outside suggested. The ground was entirely covered with a variety of rich carpets laid every which way. An assortment of woven hangings decorated with exotic scenes and elaborate designs defined the space. Delicate glass bowls, fine pottery, and tall painted vases sat on the polished tables and chests around the room. To the side there was even a tall glass-fronted bureau filled with painted plates displayed on stands. Colorful pillows in a variety of sizes rimmed the floor. Overhead, openings covered with sheer silk let in muted light. Scented candles shimmered everywhere, while all the carpets and hangings imposed a quiet hush to the air. The place felt sacred.
There were women inside, each wearing the ring through her lower lip, busily going about duties. While most appeared absorbed in their wor
k, one of the women, polishing a collection of tall, delicate vases in a measured, methodical manner, coolly watched Jennsen out of the corner of her eye. She was middle-aged, broad shouldered, and wore a simple floorlength dark gray dress buttoned to her neck. Her gray and black hair was loosely tied back. For the most part, she appeared unremarkable, except for the knowing, self-satisfied smirk that seemed enduringly etched in her face. That look gave Jennsen pause.
As their eyes met, the voice stiffed, calling Jennsen’s name in that haunting, dead whisper, calling for her to suffender. For some reason, Jennsen was momentarily suffused with the icy sense that the woman knew that the voice had spoken. Jennsen dismissed the odd notion, deciding that it was merely due to the woman’s expression, which exuded a demeanor of stark superiority.
Another woman busied herself brushing at the carpets with a small hand broom. Yet another was replacing candles that had guttered. Other women—some sure to be Sisters of the Light—hurried in and out of rooms beyond, tending to the collection of pillows, lamps, and even flowers in vases. One thin young man wearing only baggy cotton trousers worked with a comb ordering the fringe of the carpets set before openings into back rooms. Except for the brown-eyed woman polishing the tall vases, they were focused on their work and none paid any particular notice that visitors had entered the emperor’s tent.
Sebastian’s arm held her securely as he guided her deeper into the dimly lit room. The walls and ceiling moved and billowed slightly in the wind. Jennsen’s heart could have pounded no harder were she being led to her own execution. When she realized that her fingers were tightening around the hilt of her knife to check if it was clear in its scabbard, she forced herself to let her hand drop away from it.
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