Naked Empire (30 page)

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.

Ann rushed to the door to her small room, to the faint square of light that was the opening in the iron door. She grabbed hold of the bars and pulled her face up close, trying to see who was out there, what they were doing.

Light blinded her. She staggered back a few steps, rubbing her eyes. She was so used to the dark that the harsh lantern light felt as if it had burned her vision with blazing light.

Ann backed away from the door when she heard a key clattering in the lock. The bolt threw back with a reverberating clang. The door grated open. Cool air, fresher than the stale air she was used to breathing, poured in. Yellow light flooded around the room as the lantern was thrust into the room at the end of an arm encased in red leather.

Mord-Sith.

Ann squinted in the harsh glare as the Mord-Sith stepped over the sill and ducked in through the doorway into the room. Unaccustomed to the lantern light, Ann at first could only discern the red leather outfit and the blond braid. She didn’t like to contemplate why one of the Lord Rahl’s elite corps of torturers would be coming down to the dungeon to see her. She knew Richard. She could not imagine that he would allow such a practice to continue. But Richard wasn’t here. Nathan seemed to be in charge.

Squinting, Ann at last realized that it was the woman she had seen before: Nyda.

Nyda, appraising Ann with a cool gaze, said nothing as she stepped to the side. Another person was following her in. A long leg wearing brown trousers stepped over the sill, followed by a bent torso folding through the opening. Rising up to full height, Ann saw with sudden surprise who it was.

“Ann!” Nathan held his arms open wide, as if expecting a hug. “How are you? Nyda gave me your message. They are treating you well, I trust?”

Ann stood her ground and scowled at the grinning face. “I’m still alive, no thanks to you, Nathan.”

She of course remembered how tall Nathan was, how broad were his shoulders. Now, standing before her, the top of his full head of long gray hair nearly touching the stone chisel marks in the ceiling, he looked even taller than she remembered. His shoulders, filling up so much of the small room, looked even broader. He wore high boots over his trousers and a ruffled white shirt beneath an open vest. An elegant green velvet cape was attached at his right shoulder. At his left hip a sword in an elegant scabbard glimmered in the lamplight.

His face, his handsome face, so expressive, so unlike any other, made Ann’s heart feel buoyant.

Nathan grinned as no one but a Rahl could grin, a grin like joy and hunger and power all balled together. He looked like he needed to sweep a damsel into his powerful arms and kiss her without her permission.

He waved a hand casually around at her accommodations. “But you are safe in here, my dear. No one can harm you while under our care. No one can bother you. You have fine food—even wine now and again. What more could you want?”

Fists at her side, Ann stormed forward at a pace that brought the Mord-Sith’s Agiel up into her fist, even though she stayed where she was. Nathan held his ground, held his smile, as he watched her come.

“What more could I want!” Ann screamed. “What more could I want? I want to be let out! That’s what more I could want!”

Nathan’s small, knowing smile cut her to her core. “Indeed,” he said, a single word of quiet indictment.

Standing in the stony silence of the dungeon, she could only stare up at him, unable to bring forth an argument that he would not throw back at her.

Ann turned a glare on the Mord-Sith. “What message did you give him?”

“Nyda said that you wanted to see me,” Nathan answered in her place. He spread his arms. “Here I am, as requested. What is it you wanted to see me about, my dear?”

“Don’t patronize me, Nathan. You know very well what I wanted to see you about. You know why I’m here, in D’Hara—why I’ve come to the People’s Palace.”

Nathan clasped his hands behind his back. His smile had finally lost its usefulness.

“Nyda,” he said, turning to the woman, “would you leave us alone for now. There’s a good girl.”

Nyda appraised Ann with a brief glance. No more was needed; Ann was no threat to Nathan. He was a wizard—no doubt he had told her that he was the greatest wizard of all time—and was within the ancestral home of the House of Rahl. He had no need to fear this one old sorceress—not anymore, anyway.

Nyda gave Nathan a if-you-need-me-I’ll-be-right-outside kind of look before contorting her perfect limbs through the doorway with fluid grace, the way a cat went effortlessly through a hedge.

Nathan stood in the center of the cell, hands still clasped behind his upright back, waiting for Ann to say something.

Ann went to her pack, sitting on the far end of the stone bench that had been her bed, her table, her chair. She flipped back the flap and reached inside, feeling around. Her fingers found the cold metal of the object she sought. Ann drew it out and stood over it, her shadow hiding it.

Finally, she turned. “Nathan, I have something for you.”

She lifted out a Rada’Han she had intended to put around his neck. Right then, she didn’t quite know how she had thought she could accomplish such a feat. She would have, though, had she put her mind to it; she was Annalina Aldurren, Prelate of the Sisters of the Light. Or, at least, she once had been. She had given that job to Verna before feigning her and Nathan’s death.

“You want me to put that collar around my neck?” Nathan asked in a calm voice. “That’s what you expect?”

Ann shook her head. “No, Nathan. I want to give this to you. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking while I’ve been down here. Thinking about how I’d probably never leave my place of confinement.”

“What a coincidence,” Nathan said. “I used to spend a great deal of time thinking that very same thought.”

“Yes,” Ann said, nodding. “I expect you did.” She handed him the Rada’Han. “Here. Take this. I never want to see one of these again. While I did what I thought best, I hated every minute of it, Nathan. I hated to do it to you, especially. I’ve come to think that my life has been a misguided mess. I’m sorry I ever put you behind those shields and kept you a prisoner. If I could live my life over again, I’d not do it the same way.

“I expect no leniency; I showed you none.”

“No,” Nathan said. “You didn’t.”

His azure eyes seemed to be looking right into her. He had a way of doing that. Richard had inherited that same penetrating Rahl gaze.

“So, you are sorry you kept me a prisoner all my life. Do you know why it was wrong, Ann? Are you even aware of the irony?”

Almost against her better judgment, she heard herself ask, “What irony?”

“Well,” he said as he shrugged, “what is it we’re fighting for?”

“Nathan, you know very well what we’re fighting for.”

“Yes, I do. But do you? Tell me, then, what it is we’re struggling to protect, to preserve, to insure remains alive?”

“The Creator’s gift of magic, of course. We fight to see that it continues to exist in the world. We struggle for those who are born with it to live, for them to learn to use their ability to its full extent. We fight for each to have and to celebrate their unique ability.”

“I think that’s kind of ironic, don’t you? The very thing you think is worth fighting for is what you feared. The Imperial Order proclaims that it’s not in the best interest of mankind for a gifted individual to possess magic, so that unique ability must be stripped away from them. They claim that, since all do not have this ability in identical and equal measure, it’s dangerous for some to have it—that man must cast aside the belief that a man’s life is his own to live. That those who were born with magic must therefore be expunged from the world in order to make the world a better place for those who don’t have such ability.

“And yet, you worked under that very premise, acted on those same wicked beliefs. You locked me away because of my ability. You saw what I am able to do, that others cannot do, as an evil birthright that could not be allowed to be among mankind.

“And yet, you work to preserve that very thing which you fear in me—my unique ability—in others. You work to allow everyone born with magic to have the inalienable right to their own life, to be the best of what they can be with their own ability…and yet you locked me away to deny me that very same right.”

“Just because I want the Creator’s wolves to run free to hunt, as they were intended, doesn’t mean that I want to be their dinner.”

Nathan leaned toward her. “I am not a wolf. I am a human being. You tried, convicted, and sentenced me to life in your prison for being who I was born, for what you feared I might do, simply because I had the ability. You then soothed your own inner conflict by making that prison plush in an attempt to convince yourself that you were kind—all the while professing to believe that we must fight to allow future people to be who they are.

“You qualified your prison as right because it was lavish, in order to mask from yourself the nature of what you were advocating. Look around, Ann.” He swept his arm out at the stone. “This is what you were advocating for those you decided did not have the right to their own life. You decided the same as the Order, based on an ability you did not like. You decided that some, because of their greater potential, must be sacrificed to the good of those less than they. No matter how you decorated your dungeon, this is what it looks like from the inside.”

Ann gathered her thoughts, as well as her voice, before she spoke. “I thought I had come to understand something like that while I sat all alone down here, but I realize now that I hadn’t, really. All those years I felt bad for locking you away, but I never really examined my rationale for doing so.

“You’re right, Nathan. I believed you held the potential for great harm. I should have helped you to understand what was right so you could act rationally, rather than expect the worst from you and lock you away. I’m sorry, Nathan.”

He put his hands on his hips. “Do you really mean it, Ann?”

She nodded, unable to look up at him, as her eyes filled with tears. She always expected honesty from everyone else, but she had not been honest with herself. “Yes, Nathan, I really do.”

Confession over, she went to her bench and slumped down. “Thank you for coming, Nathan. I’ll not trouble you to come down here again. I will take my just punishment without complaint. If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to be alone right now to pray and consider the weight on my heart.”

“You can do that later. Now get up off your bottom, on your feet, and pick up your things. We have matters to attend to and we have to get going.”

Ann looked up with a frown. “What?”

“We have important things to do. Come on, woman. We’re wasting time. We need to get going. We’re on the same side in this struggle, Ann. We need to act like it and work together toward preserving our causes.” He leaned down toward her. “Unless you’ve decided to retire to sit around the rest of your life. If not, then let’s be on our way. We have trouble.”

Ann hopped down from the stone bench. “Trouble? What sort of trouble.”

“Prophecy trouble.”

“Prophecy? There is trouble with a prophecy? What trouble? What prophecy?”

Fists on his hips, Nathan fixed her with a scowl. “I can’t tell you about such things. Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened.”

Ann pursed her lips, about to launch into scolding him up one side and down the other, when she caught the smile working at the edges of his mouth. It caught her up in a smile of her own.

“What’s happened?” she asked in the tone of voice friends used when they had decided that past wrongs were recognized and matters now set on a correct path.

“Ann, you’ll not believe it when I tell you,” Nathan complained. “It’s that boy, again.”

“Richard?”

“What other boy do you know who can get in the kind of trouble only Richard can get into.”

“Well, I no longer think of Richard as a boy.”

Nathan sighed. “I suppose not, but it’s hard when you’re my age to think of one so young as a man.”

“He’s a man,” Ann assured him.

“Yes, I guess he is.” Nathan grinned. “And, he’s a Rahl.”

“What sort of trouble has Richard gotten himself into this time?”

Nathan’s good humor evaporated. “He’s walked off the edge of prophecy.”

Ann screwed up her face. “What are you talking about? What’s he done?”

“I’m telling you, Ann, that boy has walked right off the edge of prophecy itself—walked right off into a place in prophecy where prophecy itself doesn’t exist.”

Ann recognized that Nathan was sincerely troubled, but he was making no sense. In part, that was why some people were afraid of him. He often gave people the impression he was talking gibberish when he was talking about things that no one but he could even understand. Sometimes no one but a prophet could truly understand completely what he grasped. With his eyes, the eyes of a prophet, he could see things that no one else could.

She had spent a lifetime working with prophecy, though, and so she could understand, perhaps better than most, at least some of his mind, some of what he could grasp.

“How can you know of such a prophecy, Nathan, if it doesn’t exist? I don’t understand. Explain it to me.”

“There are libraries here, at the People’s Palace, that contain some valuable books of prophecy that I’ve never had a chance to see before. While I had reason to suspect that such prophecies might exist, I was never certain they actually did, or what they might say. I’ve been studying them since I’ve been here and I’ve come across links to other known prophecy we had down in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets. These prophecies, here, fill in some important gaps in those we already know about.

“Most importantly, I found an altogether new branch of prophecy I’ve never seen before that explains why and how I’ve been blind to some of what’s been going on. From studying the forks and inversions off of this branch, I’ve discovered that Richard has taken a series of links that follow down a particular pathway of prophecy that leads to oblivion, to something that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t even exist.”

One hand on a hip, the other tracing invisible lines in the air, Nathan paced the small room as he talked. “This new link alludes to things I’ve never seen before, branches that I’ve always known must be there, but were missing. These branches are exceedingly dangerous prophecies that have been kept here, in secret. I can see why. Even I, had I seen them years ago, might have misinterpreted them. These new branches refer to voids of some sort. Since they are voids, their nature can’t be known; such a contradiction can’t exist.

“Richard has gone into this area of void, where prophecy can’t see him, can’t help him, and worse, can’t help us. But more than not seeing him with prophecy, it’s as if where he is and what he is doing do not exist.

“Richard is dealing in something that is capable of ending everything we know.”