Naked Empire (55 page)

“Do you have access to lily of the valley, oleander, yew, monkshood, hemlock?”

The man blinked in surprise. “Common enough, I guess, especially just to the north in the wooded areas.”

Richard turned to his men standing at the fore of the crowd. “We must eliminate the men of the Order. The less fighting we have to do, the better.

“While it’s still dark, we need to slip out of the city and go collect the things we need.” He lifted a hand to the woman who had spoken about cooking for the soldiers. “You show us where you’re going to do all the cooking of tomorrow’s evening meal. We’ll bring you some extra ingredients.

“With what we put in the stew, the soldiers will be getting violently sick within hours. We will put different things in different kettles, so the symptoms will be different, to help create confusion and panic. If we can get enough of the poisons into the stew, most of them will die within hours, suffering everything from weakness and paralysis to convulsions.

“Late in the night, we’ll go in and finish any who aren’t yet dead, or who may not have eaten. If we prepare carefully, Northwick will be free of the Imperial Order without having to fight them. It will be swiftly ended without any of us being hurt.”

The room was silent for a moment; then Kahlan saw smiles breaking out among the people. A ray of light had come into their lives.

With the heady thought of imminent freedom, some began to weep as they suddenly felt the need to come forward and tell brief accounts of those they loved who had been raped, tortured, taken away, or murdered.

Now that these people had been given a chance to live, none wanted to turn back. They saw salvation, and were willing to do what had to be done to gain it.

“This will destroy our way of life,” someone said, not in bitterness, but in wonder.

“Redemption is at hand,” one of the other people in the crowd added.

Standing in dusty streamers of late-day sunlight, Zedd wavered on his feet as he waited not far from the tent where Sister Tahirah had just taken a small crate. While she was inside carefully unpacking and preparing the item of magic for inspection, the guards stood not far off, talking among themselves about their chances of having ale that night. They were hardly worried about a skinny old man with a Rada’Han around his neck and his arms shackled behind his back causing them any trouble or running off.

Zedd used the opportunity to lean against the cargo wagon’s rear wheel. He wanted only to be allowed to lie down and go to sleep. Without being obvious, he looked over his shoulder at Adie. She gave him a brief, brave smile.

The wagon he leaned against was full of items looted from the Keep that had yet to be identified. For all Zedd knew, he could be leaning against a wagon full of simple magic meant to entertain and teach children, or something so powerful that it would hand Jagang victory in one blinding instant.

Some of the items brought from the Keep were unknown to Zedd. They had been locked behind shields that he had never been able to breach. Even in his childhood the old wizards at the Keep had not been able to get at what was behind many of the shields.

But the men who had assaulted and taken the Wizard’s Keep were untouched by magic and apparently had no trouble getting through shields that had been in place for thousands of years. Everything Zedd knew had been turned upside down. In some ways, it seemed like this was not only the end of the Wizard’s Keep as it had been intended and envisioned, but the end of a way of life as well, and the death of an era.

The items brought from the Keep that Zedd had so far identified were of no great value to Jagang in winning the war. There were a few things, now back in protective crates, that were a mystery to Zedd; for all he knew, they could be profoundly dangerous. He wished that they could all be destroyed before one of the Sisters of the Dark discovered how to use them to create havoc.

Zedd looked up when he saw one of the elite soldiers in leather and mail pause not far away, his attention keenly focused on something. His right ear had a big V-shaped notch taken out of the upper portion, the way some farmers marked their swine. Although he wore the same kind of outfit as the rest of the elite soldiers, his boots weren’t the same. Zedd saw, when the man looked around, that his left eye didn’t open as wide as his right, but then he moved off into the bands of patrolling soldiers.

As Zedd watched the constantly churning press of soldiers, Sisters, and others moving past, he kept having the disconcerting visions of people from his past, and others he knew. It was disheartening to be having such will-o’-the-wisps—illusions spawned by a mind that from lack of sleep, and perhaps the constant tension, was failing him. The faces of some of the elite guards looked hauntingly familiar. He guessed he had been seeing the men for days and they were beginning to look familiar.

In the distance he saw a Sister walking past who looked like someone he knew. He had probably met her recently, was all. He’d met a number of Sisters recently, and it was never congenial. Zedd admonished himself that he had to keep a grasp on his wits.

One of the little girls not far away, being held prisoner by a big guard standing over her, was watching Zedd and when he glanced up at her, she smiled. He thought it the oddest thing a frightened child—amid such chaos of soldiers, prisoners, and military activity—could do. He supposed that such a child could not possibly understand that she was there to be tortured, if necessary, to make sure Zedd told all he knew. He looked away from her long blond hair cascading down around her shoulders, her beautiful, oddly familiar face. This was madness—in more ways than one.

The hump-nosed Sister emerged from the tent. “Bring them in,” she snapped.

The four guards jumped into action, two seizing Adie, the other two taking Zedd. The men were big enough that Zedd’s weight was trivial to them. The way they held him up by his arms prevented half his steps from touching the ground. They horsed him into the tent, advanced him around the table, spun him around, and dropped him into the chair with such force that it drove the wind from his lungs in a grunt.

Zedd closed his eyes as he grimaced in pain. He wished they would just kill him so that he wouldn’t ever have to open his eyes again. But when they killed him, they would send his head to Richard. Zedd hated to think of the anguish that would cause Richard.

“Well?” Sister Tahirah asked.

Zedd opened his eyes and peered at the object sitting before him in the center of the table.

His breath caught.

He blinked at what he saw, too astonished to let out the breath.

It was constructed magic called a sunset spell.

Zedd swallowed. Surely, none of the Sisters had opened it. No, they wouldn’t have opened it. He wouldn’t be sitting there if they had.

Before him on the table sat a small box, the size of half his palm. The box was shaped like the upper half of a stylized sun—a half disc with six pointed rays coming out from it, meant to represent the sun setting at the horizon. The box was lacquered a bright yellow. The rays were also yellow, but with lines of orange, green, and blue along their edges.

“Well?” Sister Tahirah repeated.

“Ahh…”

She was looking in her book, not at the small yellow box. “What is it?”

“I’m…not sure I remember,” he said, stalling.

The Sister wasn’t in a patient mood. “Do you want me to—”

“Oh, yes,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant, “I recall, now. It’s a box with a spell that produces a little tune.”

That much was true. The Sister was still reading in her book. Zedd glanced back over his shoulder at Adie sitting on the bench. He could see in her eyes that she knew by his demeanor that something was up. He hoped the Sister couldn’t detect the same thing.

“It’s a music box, then,” Sister Tahirah murmured, more interested in her catalog of magic.

“Yes, that’s right. A box that contains a spell for music. When you remove the lid, it produces a melody.” Sweat trickled down from his neck, down between his shoulder blades. Zedd swallowed and tried not to let his trembling carry in his voice. “Take the lid off—you’ll see.”

She peered suspiciously over the top of the book. “You take the lid off.”

“Well…I can’t. My hands are shackled behind my back.”

“Use your teeth.”

“My teeth?”

The Sister used the back end of her pen to push the yellow half-sun box closer to him. “Yes, your teeth.”

He had been counting on her suspicion, but he dared not overplay it. He worked his tongue in his mouth, desperately trying to work up some saliva. Blood would be better, but he knew that if he bit the inside of his lip the Sister would get suspicious. Blood was too common a catalyst.

Before the Sister got leery, Zedd leaned forward and tried to stretch his lips around the box. He worked to get his bottom teeth at the bottom of the sun and his top teeth hooked over a pointed ray. The box was a hair too big. With a hand on the back of his head, Sister Tahirah pushed him down on it. That was all he needed and he captured the lid with his teeth.

He lifted the lid, but the whole box came up off the table. He shook his head and, at last, the top came free. He set the lid aside.

If not opened by a party to the theft of items preserved at the Keep, a sunset spell had to be activated by a wizard whom the spell would recognize. Quickly, before she saw what he was doing, he let some saliva drop into the box in order to activate the spell.

Zedd felt giddy as the music started. It worked. It was still viable. He glanced through the narrow slit of the tent flap. The sun would be down soon.

He wanted to jump up and dance to the merry tune. He wanted to let out a whoop. Even though he didn’t have long to live, he still felt exhilarated. The ordeal was almost over. In a short time, all the things of magic that were stolen would be destroyed, and he would be dead. They would never get anything out of him. He would not betray their cause.

He felt bad that the captured families who were being used to help gain his cooperation would also die, but at least they would no longer have to suffer. He felt a sudden pang of sadness that Adie, too, would die. He hated the thought of that nearly as much as the thought of her suffering.

The Sister reached in and replaced the lid. “Very cute.”

The music stopped. It didn’t matter, though. The spell had been activated. The music was simply confirmation—and a warning to get out of range. No chance of that.

It didn’t matter.

Sister Tahirah scooped the yellow box off the table. “I’m going to put this back.” She leaned down toward Zedd. “While I’m gone, I’m going to have the guards bring in the next child and let you have a good look at her, let you think about what those men in the next tent are going to do to her—without hesitation—if you stall and waste our time like that again.”

“But I—”

His words were cut off as she used the Rada’Han around his neck to send a shock of searing pain from the base of his skull down to his hips. His back arched as he cried out, nearly losing consciousness. He slumped back in his chair, his head hanging back, unable to lift it for the moment.

“Come with me,” Sister Tahirah said to the guards. “I’ll need some help. The guard who brings in the next child can watch them for a few minutes.”

Panting from the lingering pain, tears filling his eyes, Zedd stared at the ceiling of the tent. He saw light as the flap was opened. Shadows moved across the canvas as the Sister and the four men left and she sent in the guard with the child. Zedd stared up at the ceiling, not wanting to look at the face of another child.

Finally, recovered from the bout of pain, he sat up.

One of the big elite guards, dressed in their leather, mail, and a broad belt holding an assortment of weapons, stood to the side with a blond-headed girl held before him. It was the girl who had smiled. Zedd closed his eyes a moment in the agony of what they would do to this poor child who reminded him so much of someone he knew.

When he opened his eyes, she smiled again. Then she winked.

Zedd blinked. She lifted up her flower print dress just enough so that Zedd could see two knives strapped to each of her thighs. He blinked again at what he was seeing. He looked up into her smiling face.

“Rachel…?” he whispered.

Her smile widened into a beaming grin.

Zedd looked up at the face of the big man standing guard behind her.

“Dear spirits…” Zedd whispered.

It was the boundary warden.

“I hear you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of trouble,” Chase said.

For an instant, Zedd thought that for sure he must be seeing things. Then he realized why Rachel looked so familiar, yet different; she was more than two and a half years older than the last time he’d seen her. Her blond hair, once chopped short, was now long. She had to be nearly a foot taller.

Chase hooked his thumbs behind the broad leather belt. “Adie, as levelheaded as you are, I imagine it had to be Zedd who got you into this fix.”

Zedd looked over his shoulder. Adie wore a beautiful, tearful smile. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her smile.

“He be nothing but trouble,” she told the boundary warden.

It had been two and a half years since he’d seen Chase. The boundary warden was an old friend. He was the one who had taken them to meet Adie back then so she could show Richard the way through the boundary before Darken Rahl had brought it down. Chase was older than Richard, but one of his dearest and most trusted friends.

“An older boundary warden, Friedrich, came looking for me,” Chase explained. “He said that ‘Lord Rahl’ had sent him to the Keep to warn you about some trouble. He said that Richard had told him about me, and since you were gone and the Keep had been captured, he came to Westland looking for me. Boundary wardens can always count on one another.

“Rachel and I decided to come pull your scrawny hide out of the fire.”

Zedd glanced at the sunlight coming through the tent’s narrow opening. “You have to get out of here. Before the sun sets—or you’ll be killed. Hurry, get out of here while you can.”

Chase lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve come all this way and I don’t intend to leave without you.”

“But you don’t understand—”

A knife poked through the side of the tent and ran a slit down through the canvas. One of the elite guards pushed his way in through the slit. Zedd stared in astonishment. The man looked familiar, but he didn’t look right.

“No!” Zedd called to Chase as the big man went for the axe hanging at his hip.

“Stay where you are,” the man who came in through the slit in the side of the tent said to Chase. “There’s a man right outside who will put a sword through you if you move.”

Zedd’s jaw dropped. “Captain Zimmer?”

“Of course. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

“But, but, you have black hair.”

The captain flashed one of his infectious smiles. “Soot. Not a good idea to have blond hair in the middle of Jagang’s camp. I’ve come to rescue you.”

Zedd was incredulous. “But you all have to get out of here. Hurry, before the sun sets. Get out!”

“Do you have any more men?” Chase asked the captain.

“A handful. Who are you?”

“An old friend,” Zedd told him. “Now, look here—”

At that, cries and shouts came from outside. Captain Zimmer rushed to the tent’s opening. A man poked his head in.

“It’s not us,” he said in answer to the captain’s unspoken question.

In the distance, Zedd could hear the shouts of “Assassin!”

Captain Zimmer rushed behind Zedd and worked a key in the manacles. They broke open. Zedd’s arms were suddenly free. The captain hurried to undo Adie’s as she stood and turned her back to him.

“Sounds like our chance,” Rachel said. “Let’s use the commotion to get you out of here.”

“The brains of the group,” Chase said with a grin.

The first thing Zedd did when his arms were free was fall to his knees and hug the girl. He couldn’t bring forth words, but they weren’t needed. To feel her spindly arms around his neck was better than any words.