Naked Empire (64 page)

Kahlan rushed through the maze of rejoicing people crowded into the open area of the fortification. Men cheered her, thrilled that she, too, had been liberated. Many of the men wanted to talk to her, but she kept running to get to Richard.

He stood to the side, leaning against the wall, Cara helping to hold him up. He still gripped his blood-slicked sword in his fist, the blade’s tip resting on the ground.

Owen, too, made his way over to Richard.

“Mother Confessor! I’m so relieved and thankful to have you back!” He looked over at a smiling Richard. “Lord Rahl, I would like you to meet Marilee.”

This woman, who only a short time ago had savagely stabbed the corpse of her captor now seemed too shy to speak. She dipped her head in greeting.

Richard straightened and smiled that smile Kahlan so loved to see, a smile filled with the sheer pleasure of life. “I’m very happy to meet you, Marilee. Owen has told us all about you, and about how much you mean to him. Through all that happened, you were always first in his mind and heart. His love for you moved him to act to change his entire empire for the better.”

She seemed to be overwhelmed by it all, and by his words.

“Lord Rahl came to us and did something more important than saving us all,” Owen told Marilee. “Lord Rahl gave me the courage to come and fight for you, to fight to save you—for all of us to fight for our own lives and the lives of those we love.”

Beaming, Marilee leaned in and kissed Richard on the cheek. “Thank you, Lord Rahl. I never knew my Owen could do such things.”

“Believe me,” Cara said, “we had our doubts about him, too.” She clapped Owen on the back of the shoulder. “But he did well.”

“I, too, have come to understand the value of what he has done,” Marilee said to Richard, “of the things you seem to have taught our people.”

Richard smiled at the two of them, but then he could no longer hold back the coughing that so hurt him. The mood of joyous liberation suddenly changed. People rushed in around them, helping to hold him up. Kahlan saw blood running down his chin.

“Richard,” she cried. “No…”

They eased him to the ground. He clutched at Kahlan’s sleeve, wanting to have her close. Kahlan saw tears running down Cara’s cheek.

It seemed that he had spent all the strength he had left. He was slipping into the fatal grasp of the poison, and there was nothing they could do for him.

“Owen,” Richard said, panting to catch his breath when the spell of coughing stopped. “How far to your town?” His voice was getting hoarse.

“Not far—only hours, if we hurry.”

“The man who made the poison and the antidote…he lived there?”

“Yes. His place is still there.”

“Take me there.”

Owen looked puzzled, but he nodded eagerly. “Of course.”

“Hurry,” Richard added, trying to get up. He couldn’t.

Tom appeared in the crowd. Jennsen was there, too.

“Get some poles!” Tom commanded. “And some canvas, or blankets. We’ll make a litter. Four men at a time can carry him. We can run and get him there quickly.”

Men rushed to the buildings, searching for what they would need to make a litter.

Kahlan hurriedly pulled the tin off the shelf and opened the lid. The tin contained a yellowish powder. It was the right color. She leaned down and showed it to Richard as he lay in the litter. He reached in and took a pinch.

He smelled it. He put his tongue to it and then nodded.

“Just a little,” he whispered, lifting it out to her. Kahlan held out her palm while he dribbled some of the crushed powder in her hand. He threw the rest on the floor, too weak to bother returning it to the tin. Kahlan added the small portion on her palm to one of the pots of boiling water.

Cloth bags of herbs steeped in other pots of hot water. Alkaloids from dried mushrooms were soaking in oil. Richard had other people grating stalks of plants.

“Lobella,” Richard said. His eyes were closed.

Owen bent down. “Lobella?”

Richard nodded. “It will be a dried herb.”

Owen turned to the shelves and started looking. There were hundreds of little square cubbyholes in the wall of the place where the man who had made Richard’s poison, and the antidote, used to work. It was a small, simple, single-room building with little light. It was not nearly as well equipped as the herbalist places Kahlan had seen before, but the man had an extensive collection of things. More than that, he had once made the antidote, presumably from what was there.

“Here!” Owen said, holding a bag down for Richard to see. “It says lobella on the tag.”

“Grind a little pile half the size of your thumbnail, sift out the fibers and discard them, then add what’s left to the bowl with the darker oil.”

Richard knew about herbs, but he didn’t know anywhere near enough about herbs to concoct the cure for the poison he had been given.

His gift seemed to be guiding him.

Richard was in a near trance, or nearly unconscious; Kahlan wasn’t exactly sure which. He was having difficulty breathing. She didn’t know what else to do to help him. If they didn’t do something, he was going to die, and soon. As long as he lay quietly on the litter he was resting more comfortably, but that was not going to make him recover.

It had been a short run to Witherton, but it had taken too long as far as Kahlan was concerned.

“Yarrow,” Richard said.

Kahlan leaned down. “What preparation?”

“Oil,” Richard said.

Kahlan fumbled through the shelves of small bottles. She found one labeled
YARROW OIL
. She squatted down and held it before Richard.

“How much?”

She lifted one of his hands and put the bottle in it, closing his fingers around it so he could tell its size. “How much?”

“Is it full?”

Kahlan hurriedly wiggled out the whittled wooden stopper. “Yes.”

“Half,” Richard said. “In with any of the other oils.”

“I found the feverfew,” Jennsen said as she hopped down from the stool.

“Make a tincture,” Richard told her.

Kahlan replaced the stopper in the bottle and squatted down beside Richard. “What next?”

“Make an infusion of mullein.”

“Mullein, mullein,” Kahlan mumbled as she turned to the task.

As Richard gave them instructions, half a dozen people worked at boiling, blending, crushing, grating, filtering, and steeping. They added some of the preparations together as they were completed, and kept others separate as they worked on them. As they worked, the number of various tasks were combined and reduced at specified points.

Richard gestured for Owen. Owen brushed his hands clean on his trouser legs as he bent down to await instruction.

“Cold,” Richard said, his eyes closed. “We need something cold. We need a way to cool it.”

Owen thought a moment. “There’s a stream not far.”

Richard pointed to various stations where people labored. “Pour those bowls of preparations and powders into the boiling water in the kettle, there. Then take it to the stream. Hold the kettle down in the water to cool it.” Richard held up a finger in caution. “Don’t put it in too deep and let the water from the stream run in over the top, or it will be ruined.”

Owen shook his head. “I won’t.”

He stood impatiently as Kahlan poured the contents of shallow bowls into the boiling pot of water. She didn’t know if any of this made sense, but she knew that Richard had the gift, and he certainly had figured out and eliminated the problem he had been having with it. If his gift could guide him in making the antidote, it might save his life.

Kahlan didn’t know anything else that would.

She handed the kettle to Owen. He ran out the door to put it in the stream to cool it. Cara followed him out to make sure that nothing happened to what might be the only thing that could save Richard’s life.

Jennsen sat on the floor on the other side of him, holding his hand. With the back of her wrist, Kahlan pushed her hair off her face. She sat beside Richard and took his free hand to wait for Owen and Cara to return.

Betty stood in the doorway, her ears pricked forward, her tail intermittently going into a hopeful blur of wagging whenever Jennsen or Kahlan looked her way.

It seemed like hours until Owen came running back with the kettle, although Kahlan knew it really hadn’t been all that long.

“Filter it through a cloth,” Richard said, “but don’t squeeze the cloth at the end; just let the liquid run through until you have half a cup of it. Once you’ve done that, then add the oils to the liquid you collected in the cup.”

Everyone stood watching Kahlan work, snatching up what she needed, tossing it away when she was finished with it. When she had enough liquid from the kettle collected in the cup, she poured in the oils.

“Stir it with a stick of cinnamon,” Richard said.

Owen climbed up on the stool. “I remember seeing cinnamon.”

He handed a stick down to Kahlan. She stirred the golden liquid, but it didn’t seem to be working.

“The oil and water don’t want to mix,” she told Richard.

His head was rolled to the side away from her. “Keep mixing. A moment will come when they suddenly come together.”

Dubious, Kahlan kept stirring. She could see that the oils were sticking together in globs and not mixing with the water she had filtered through the cloth. The more it cooled, the less and less it looked like it was going to work.

Kahlan felt a tear of desperation run down her cheek and drip off her jaw.

The contents of the cup stiffened. She kept stirring, not wanting to tell Richard that it wasn’t working. She swallowed past the growing lump in her throat.

The contents in the cup began to melt. Kahlan gasped. She blinked. Everything in the cup suddenly went together into a smooth, syrupy liquid.

“Richard!” She wiped the tear from her cheek. “It worked. It mixed together. Now what?”

He held his hand out. “It’s ready. Give it to me.”

Jennsen and Cara helped him to sit up. Kahlan held the precious cup in both hands and carefully put it to his mouth. She tipped it up to help him drink. It took a while to get it down. He had to stop from time to time as he sipped, trying not to cough.

It was a lot more than had been in any of the little square-sided bottles, but Kahlan figured that maybe he needed more, since he was so late to be taking it.

When he was finished, she reached up and set the cup on the counter. She licked a drop of the liquid off her finger. The antidote had the slight aroma of cinnamon and a sweet, spicy taste. She hoped that was right.

Richard worked at recovering his breath after the effort of drinking. They gently laid him back down. His hands were trembling. He looked miserable.

“Just let me rest, now,” he murmured.

Betty, still standing in the doorway, watching intently, bleated her wish to come in.

“He will be all right,” Jennsen said to her friend. “You just stay out there and let him rest.”

Betty pulled softly and then lay down in the doorway to wait along with the rest of them. It was going to be a long night. Kahlan didn’t think she was going to be able to sleep until she knew if Richard would be all right.

Zedd pointed. “There’s another one, there, that needs to be cleaned up,” he said to Chase.

Chase wore a chain-mail shirt over a tan leather tunic. His heavy black trousers held a black belt set with a large silver buckle emblazoned with the emblem of the boundary wardens. Beneath his black cloak, strapped everywhere—legs, waist, upper arms, over the backs of his shoulders—was a small arsenal of weapons, everything from small thin spikes held in the fist and used to puncture the skull to a crescent-shaped battle-axe used to divide a skull cleanly with one blow. Chase was deadly with any of them.

It had been a while now since they needed the skills of a boundary warden. Chase seemed to be a man without a mission.

The big man walked across the rampart and bent to pull a knife from beneath the body.

He grunted in recognition. “There it is.” He held the walnut-handled knife up to the light as he inspected it. “I was worried I’d lost it.”

He slipped the knife into an empty sheath without having to look. With one hand, he grabbed the waistband of the trousers and picked up the stiff body. He stepped into an opening in the crenellated wall and heaved the body out into the air.

Zedd looked over the edge. It was a drop of several thousand feet before the rock of the mountain flared enough for anything falling to make contact. It was several thousand more feet down a granite cliff before the forest began.

The golden sun was getting low in the mountains. The clouds had taken on streaks of gold and orange. From this distance, the city below was as beautiful as ever, except Zedd knew that it was an empty place without the people to bring it life.

“Chase, Zedd,” Rachel called from the doorway, “the stew is ready.”

Zedd threw his skinny arms into the air. “Bags! It’s about time! A man could starve waiting for stew to cook.”

Rachel planted her fist with the wooden spoon on her hip and shook a finger of her other hand at him. “If you keep saying bad words, you’ll not get any dinner.”

Chase let out a sigh as he glanced over at Zedd. “And you think you have troubles. You wouldn’t think that a girl who doesn’t come up to my belt buckle could be such a trial.”

Zedd followed Chase to the doorway through the thick stone wall. “Is she always this much trouble?”

Chase mussed Rachel’s hair on the way past. “Always,” he confided.

“Is the stew good?” Zedd asked. “Worth watching my language for?”

“My new mother taught me how to make it,” Rachel said in a tempting singsong. “Rikka had some before she went out, and she said it was good.”

Zedd smoothed back his unruly white hair. “Well, Emma can cook better than any woman I ever met.”

“Then be good,” Rachel said, “and I’ll give you biscuits to go with the stew.”

“Biscuits!”

“Sure. Stew wouldn’t be stew without biscuits.”

Zedd blinked at the child. “Why, that’s what I always thought, too.”

“You’d better let me see if she made it right, first,” Chase said as they passed through the tapestry lined halls of the Keep. “I’d hate you to go making any firm commitments before we even know if the stew is edible.”

“Friedrich helped me with the heavy parts,” Rachel said. “He says it’s good.”

“We’ll see,” Chase said.

Rachel turned and shook her wooden spoon at him. “You have to wash your hands, first, though. I saw you throwing that dead man over the wall. You have to wash your hands before you come to the table and eat.”

Chase gave Zedd a look of strained forbearance. “Somewhere, there’s a boy enjoying himself right now, probably carrying around a dead frog, oblivious to the sorry fact that he’s someday going to be married to little-miss-wash-your-hands-before-you-eat.”

Zedd smiled. When Chase had taken Rachel in to be his daughter, it was just about the best thing Zedd could ever have wished for. Rachel thought so, too, and it looked like she still did. She was fiercely devoted to the man.

As they sat at the table, before the cheery fire in the hearth, Zedd enjoying his third bowl of stew, he couldn’t recall the Keep being such a wonderful place. It was because there was a child, along with friends, once again in the halls of the Keep.

Friedrich, the man who had come on Richard’s orders to warn Zedd of the impending attack on the Keep, had realized he had not been in time. The man used his head and had sought out Chase, the old friend he had heard Richard talk about.

While Chase had gone to rescue Zedd and Adie, Friedrich had returned to the Keep to spy on the people who had taken it. By watching carefully and staying out of sight of a Sister, Friedrich had been able to provide Chase and Zedd invaluable information about the number of people occupying the Keep, and their routines. He then helped take the place back.

Zedd liked the man. He was not only frightfully handy with a knife, but entertaining at conversation. Friedrich, since he had been married to a sorceress, was able to converse with Zedd without being intimidated as some were of wizards. Having lived in D’Hara all his life, Friedrich was also able to fill in pieces of information.

Rachel held up a carving of a hawk. “Look what Friedrich made for me, Zedd. Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you ever did see?”

Zedd smiled. “It certainly is.”

“It’s nothing,” Friedrich scoffed. “If I had some gold leaf, then I could gild it for you. That used to be what I did for a living.” He leaned back and smiled to himself. “Until Lord Rahl made me a boundary warden.”

“You know,” Zedd drawled offhandedly to both men, “the Keep is even more vulnerable, now, to those who might come and don’t have magic than to those who do. I’m just fine protecting against those who are affected by magic, but not the other kind.”

Chase nodded. “Seems so.”

“Well, the thing is,” he went on, “I was thinking that since there’s no boundary any longer, and what with all the trouble about, perhaps you two would like to take on the responsibility of helping to protect the Wizard’s Keep. I’m not nearly so fit for the task as would be someone trained in such things.” Zedd leaned in, his brow lowering. “It’s vitally important.”

Elbows on the table, Chase chewed a bite of biscuit as he watched Zedd. Finally, he stirred his spoon around in his bowl.