Naked Empire (16 page)

She regarded the man before her with cold calculation, ready for that violence.

As he had charged in on her, time had belonged to this man.

Now time belonged to her.

She could feel the thread count of the fabric of his shirt, feel his woolly chest hairs beneath it.

The heart-pounding shock of the sudden attack, the violence of it, was gone now. Now there was only this man and her, forever linked by what was to happen. This man had consciously chosen his own fate when he chose to attack them. Her certainty of what was called for carried her beyond the need for the assessment of emotion, and she felt none—no joy, not even relief; no hate, not even aversion; no compassion, not even sorrow.

Kahlan shed those emotions to make way for the rush of power, to give it free run.

Now he had no chance.

He was hers.

The man’s face was contorted with the intoxicated, gloating glee of his certitude that he was the glorious victor who would have her, that he was now the one to decide what was to become of her life, that she was but his to plunder.

Kahlan unleashed her power.

By her deliberate intent, the subordinate state of her birthright instantly altered into overpowering force able to alter the very nature of consciousness.

In the man’s dark eyes had come the spark of suspicion that something which he could not comprehend had irrevocably begun. And then there came the lightning recognition that his life, as he had known it, was over. Everything he wanted, thought about, worked toward, hoped for, prayed for, possessed, loved, hated…was ended.

In her eyes he saw no mercy, and that, more than anything, brought him stark terror.

Thunder without sound jolted the air.

In that instant, the violence of it was as pristine, as beautiful, as exquisite, as it was horrific.

That heartbeat of time Kahlan had before he was on her had still not yet begun.

She could see in the man’s eyes that even thought itself was too late for him, now. Perception itself was being outpaced by the race of brutal magic tearing through his mind, destroying forever who this man had been.

The force of the concussion jolted the air.

The stars shuddered.

Sparks from the fire lashed along the ground as the shock spread outward in a ring, driving dust before its passing. Trees shook when hit by the blow, shedding needles and leaves as the raging wave swept past.

He was hers.

His full weight flying forward knocked Kahlan back a step as she twisted out of the way. The man flew past her and crashed to the ground, sprawling on his face.

Without an instant of hesitation, he scrambled up onto his knees. His hands came up in prayerful supplication. Tears flooded his eyes. His mouth, which only an instant before was so warped with perverted expectation, now distorted with the agony of pure anguish.

“Please, Mistress,” he wailed, “command me!”

Kahlan regarded him, for the first time in his new life, with an emotion: contempt.

Only the sound of Betty’s soft, frightened bleating drifted out over the otherwise silent campsite. Bodies lay sprawled haphazardly across the ground. The attack appeared to be over. Richard, sword in hand, rushed through the carnage to get to Kahlan. Jennsen stood near the edge of the fire’s light, while Cara checked the bodies for any sign of life.

Kahlan left the man she had just touched with her power kneeling in the dirt, stalking past him toward Jennsen. Richard met her halfway there, his free arm sweeping around her with relief.

“Are you all right?”

Kahlan nodded, quickly appraising their camp, on the lookout for any more attackers, but saw only the men who were dead.

“What about you?” she asked.

Richard didn’t seem to hear her question. His arm slipped from her waist. “Dear spirits,” he said, as he rushed to one of the bodies lying on its side.

It was Sabar.

Jennsen stood not far away, trembling with terror, her knife held up defensively in a fist, her eyes wide. Kahlan gathered Jennsen in her arms, whispering assurance that it was over, that it was ended, that she was all right.

Jennsen clutched at Kahlan. “Sabar—he was—protecting me—”

“I know, I know,” Kahlan comforted.

She could see that there was no urgency in Richard’s movements as he laid Sabar on his back. The young man’s arm flopped lifelessly to the side. Kahlan’s heart sank.

Tom ran into camp, gasping for air. He was streaked with blood and sweat. Jennsen wailed and flew into his arms. He embraced her protectively, holding her head to his shoulder as he tried to regain his breath.

Betty bleated in dismay from beneath the wagon, hesitantly emerging only after Jennsen called repeated encouragement to her. The puling goat finally rushed to Jennsen and huddled trembling against her skirts. Tom kept a wary watch of the surrounding darkness.

Cara calmly walked among the bodies, surveying them for any sign of life. With most, there could be no question. Here and there she nudged one with the toe of her boot, or with the tip of her Agiel. By her lack of urgency, there was no question that they were all dead.

Kahlan put a tender hand to Richard’s back as he crouched beside Sabar’s body.

“How many people must die,” he asked in a low, bitter voice, “for the crime of wanting to be free, for the sin of wanting to live their own life?”

She saw that he still held the Sword of Truth in a white-knuckled fist. The sword’s magic, which had come out so reluctantly, still danced dangerously in his eyes.

“How many!” he repeated.

“I don’t know, Richard,” Kahlan whispered.

Richard turned a glare toward the man across the camp, still on his knees, his hands pressed together in a beseeching gesture begging to be commanded, fearing to speak.

Once touched by a Confessor, the person was no longer who they had once been. That part of their mind was forever gone. Who they were, what they were, no longer existed.

In its place the magic of a Confessor’s power placed unqualified devotion to the wants and wishes of the Confessor who had touched them. Nothing else mattered. Their only purpose in life, now, was to fulfill her commands, to do her bidding, to answer her every question.

For one thus touched, there was no crime they wouldn’t confess, if she asked it of them. It was for this alone that Confessors had been created. Their purpose, in a way, was the same as the Seeker’s—the truth. In war, as in all other aspects of life, there was no more important commodity for survival than the truth.

This man, kneeling not far away, cried in abject misery because Kahlan had asked nothing of him. There could be no agony more ghastly, no void more terrifying, than to be empty of knowing her wish. Existence without her wish was pointless. In the absence of her command, men touched by a Confessor had been known to die.

Anything she now asked of him, whether it be to tell her his name, confess his true love’s name, or to murder his beloved mother, would bring him boundless joy because he would finally have a task to carry out for her.

“Let’s find out what this is all about,” Richard said in a low growl.

In exhaustion, Kahlan stared at the man on his knees. She was so weary she could hardly stand. Sweat trickled down between her breasts. She needed rest, but this problem was more immediate and needed to be attended to first.

On their way to the man waiting on his knees, his eyes turned expectantly up toward Kahlan, Richard halted. There, in the dirt before his boots, was the remains of the statue Sabar had brought to them. It was broken into a hundred pieces, none of them any longer recognizable except that those pieces were still a translucent amber color.

Nicci’s letter had said that they didn’t need the statue, now that it had given its warning—a warning that Kahlan had somehow broken a protective shield sealing away something profoundly dangerous.

Kahlan didn’t know what the seal protected, but she feared that she knew all too well what she had done to break it.

She feared even more that, because of her, the magic of Richard’s sword had begun to falter.

As Kahlan stood staring down at the amber fragments ground into the dirt, despair flooded into her.

Richard’s arm circled her waist. “Don’t let your imagination get carried away. We don’t know what this is about, yet. We can’t even be certain that it’s true—it could even be some kind of mistake.”

Kahlan wished that she could believe that.

Richard finally slid his sword back into its scabbard. “Do you want to rest first, sit a bit?”

His concern for her took precedence over everything. From the first day she met him, it always had. Right then, it was his well-being that concerned her.

Using her power sapped a Confessor of strength. It had left Kahlan feeling not only weak, but, this time, nauseated. She had been named to the post of Mother Confessor, in part, because her power was so strong that she was able to recover it in hours; for others it had taken a day or sometimes two. At the thought of all those other Confessors, some of whom she’d dearly loved, being long dead, Kahlan felt the weight of hopelessness pulling her even lower.

To fully recover her strength, she would need a night’s rest. At the moment, though, there were more important considerations, not the least of which was Richard.

“No,” she said. “I’m all right. I can rest later. Let’s ask him what you will.”

Richard’s gaze moved over the campsite littered with limbs, entrails, bodies. The ground was soaked with blood. The stench of it all, along with the still smoldering body beside the fire, was making Kahlan sicker by the second. She turned away from the man on his knees, toward Richard, into the protection of his arms. She was exhausted.

“And then let’s get away from this place,” she said. “We need to get away from here. There might be more men coming.” Kahlan worried that if he had to draw the sword again, he might not have the help of its magic. “We need to find a more secure camp.”

Richard nodded his agreement. He looked over her head as he held her to his chest. Despite everything, or perhaps because of everything, it felt wonderful simply to be held. She could hear Friedrich just rushing back into camp, panting as he ran. He stumbled to a halt as he let out a moan of astonishment mixed with revulsion at what he saw.

“Tom, Friedrich,” Richard asked, “do you have any idea if there are any more men coming?”

“I don’t think so,” Tom said. “I think they were together. I caught them coming up a gully. I was going to try to make it back here to warn you, but four of them came over a rise and jumped me while the rest ran for our camp.”

“I didn’t see anyone, Lord Rahl,” Friedrich said, catching his breath. “I came running when I heard the yelling.”

Richard acknowledged Friedrich’s words with a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder. “Help Tom get the horses hitched. I don’t want to spend the night here.”

As the two men sprang into action, Richard turned to Jennsen.

“Please lay out some bedrolls in the back of the wagon, will you? I’d like Kahlan to be able to lie down and rest when we move out.”

Jennsen patted Betty’s shoulder, urging the goat to follow her. “Of course, Richard.” She hurried off to the wagon, Betty trotting along close at her side.

As everyone rushed as quickly as possible to get their things together, Richard went by himself to an open patch of ground nearby to dig a shallow grave. There was no time for a funeral pyre. A lonely grave was the best they could do, but Sabar’s spirit was gone, and wouldn’t fault the necessity of their hurried care for his body.

Kahlan reconsidered her thought. After the letter from Nicci and learning the meaning of the warning beacon, she now had even more reason to doubt that many things, including spirits, were still true. The world of the dead was connected to the world of the living by links of magic. The veil itself was magic and said to be within those like Richard. They had learned that without magic those links themselves could fail, and that, since those other worlds couldn’t exist independent of the world of life, but only existed in a relational sense to the world of life, should the links fail completely, those other worlds might very well cease to exist—much as, without the sun, the concept of daytime would not exist.

It was now clear to Kahlan that the world’s hold on magic was slipping, and had been slipping for several years.

She knew the reason.

Spirits, the good and the bad, and the existence of everything else that depended on magic, might soon be lost. That meant that death would become final, in every sense of the word. It could even be that there was no longer the possibility of being with a loved one after death, or of being with the good spirits. The good spirits, even the underworld itself, might be passing into nothingness.

When Richard was finished, Tom helped him gently place Sabar’s body in the ground. After Tom spoke quiet words asking the good spirits to watch over one of their own, he and Richard covered the body over.

“Lord Rahl,” Tom said in a low voice when they were finished, “while some of the men began the attack on you, here, others slit the horses’ throats before joining their fellows to come after you four.”

“All the horses?”

“Except mine. My draft horses are pretty big. The men were probably worried about getting trampled. They left some men to take care of me, so these here thought they had me out of the way. They probably figured they could worry about the draft horses later, after they had the rest of you.” Tom shrugged his broad shoulders. “Maybe they even planned to capture you, tie you up, and take you in the wagon.”

Richard acknowledged Tom’s words with a single nod. He wiped his fingers across his forehead. Kahlan thought he looked worse than she felt. She could see that the headache had returned and was crushing him under the weight of its pain.

Tom looked around their camp, his gaze playing over the fallen men. “What should we do with the rest of the bodies?”

“The races can have the rest of them,” Richard said without hesitation.

Tom didn’t look to have any disagreement with that. “I’d better go help Friedrich finish getting the horses hitched to the wagon. They’ll be a handful with the scent of blood in their nostrils and the sight of the others dead.”

As Tom went to see to his horses, Richard called to Cara. “Count the bodies,” he told her. “We need to know the total.”

“Richard,” Kahlan asked in a confidential tone after Tom was out of earshot and Cara had started stepping over some of the bodies and between others, going about the task of taking a count, “what happened when you drew the sword?”

He didn’t ask what she meant or try to spare her from worry. “There’s something wrong with its magic. When I drew the sword, it failed to heed my call. The men were rushing in and I couldn’t delay in what I had to do. Once I met the attack, the magic finally reacted.

“It’s probably due to the headaches from the gift—they must be interfering with my ability to join with the sword’s magic.”

“The last time you had the headaches they didn’t interfere with the sword’s power.”

“I told you, don’t let your imagination get carried away. This has only happened since I’ve started getting the headaches again. That has to be the reason.”

Kahlan didn’t know if she dared believe him, or if he really even believed it himself. He was right, though. The problem with the sword’s magic had only recently developed—after he started getting the headaches.

“They’re getting worse, aren’t they?”

He nodded. “Come on, let’s get what answers we can.”

Kahlan let out a tired sigh, resigned to that part of it. They had to use this chance to find out what information was now available to them.

Kahlan turned to the man still on his knees.