Naked Empire tsot-8 Read online

  “Owen, what do you mean when you say that you think I give people freedom?”

  Owen took a tiny bite of his biscuit as he glanced around at the others. He squirmed his shoulders in a self-conscious shrug. Finally, he cleared his throat.

  “Well, you, you do what the Imperial Order does—you kill people.” He waved his biscuit awkwardly, as if it were a sword, stabbing the air. “You kill those who enslave people, and then you give the people who were enslaved their freedom so that peace can return.”

  Richard took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure if Owen meant it the way it came out, or if it was just that he was having difficulty explaining himself in front of people who made him nervous.

  “That’s not exactly the way it is,” Richard said.

  “But that’s why you came down here. Everyone knows it. You came down here to the Old World to give people freedom.”

  Elbows on his knees, Richard leaned forward rubbing his palms together as he thought about how much he wanted to explain. He felt a wave of calmness when Kahlan draped a gentle, comforting hand over the back of his shoulder. He didn’t want to go into the horror of how he had been taken prisoner and taken from Kahlan, thinking he would never see her again.

  Richard put the whole weight of emotion over that long ordeal aside and took another approach. “Owen, I’m from up in the New World—”

  “Yes, I know,” Owen said as he nodded. “And you came here to free people from—”

  “No. That’s not the truth of it. We lived in the New World. We were once at peace, apparently much like your people were. Emperor Jagang—”

  “The dream walker.”

  “Yes, Emperor Jagang, the dream walker, sent his armies to conquer the New World, to enslave our people—”

  “My people, too.”

  Richard nodded. “I understand. I know what a horror that is. His soldiers are rampaging up through the New World, murdering, enslaving our people.”

  Owen turned his watery gaze off into the darkness as he nodded. “My people, too.”

  “We tried to fight back,” Kahlan told him. “But there are too many. Their army is far too vast for us to drive them out of our land.”

  Owen nibbled his biscuit again, not meeting her gaze. “My people are terrified of the men of the Order—may the Creator forgive their misguided ways.”

  “May they scream in agony for all eternity in the darkest shadow of the Keeper of the underworld,” Cara said in merciless correction.

  Owen stared slack-jawed at such a curse spoken aloud.

  “We couldn’t fight them like that—simply drive them back to the Old World,” Richard said, bringing Owen’s gaze back to him as he went on with the story. “So I’m down here, in Jagang’s homeland, helping people who hunger to be free to cast off the shackles of the Order. While he’s away conquering our land, he has left his own homeland open to those who hunger for freedom. With Jagang and his armies away, that gives us a chance to strike at Jagang’s soft underbelly, to do him meaningful harm.

  “I’m doing this because it’s the only way we can fight back against the Imperial Order—our only means to succeed. If I weaken his foundation, his source of men and support, then he will have to withdraw his army from our land and return south to defend his own.

  “Tyranny cannot endure forever. By its very nature it rots everything it rules, including itself. But that can take lifetimes. I’m trying to accelerate that process so that I and those I love can be free in our lifetimes—free to live our own lives. If enough people rise up against the Imperial Order’s rule, it may even loosen Jagang’s grip on power and bring him and the Order down.

  “That’s how I’m fighting him, how I’m trying to defeat him, how I’m trying to get him out of my land.”

  Owen nodded. “This is what we need, too. We are victims of fate. We need for you to come and get his men out of our land, and then to withdraw your sword, your ways, from our people so we may live in tranquility again. We need you to give us freedom.”

  The driftwood popped, sending a glowing swirl of sparks skyward.

  Richard, hanging his head, tapped his fingertips together. He didn’t think the man had heard a word he’d said. They needed rest. He needed to translate the book. They needed to get to where they were going. At least he didn’t have a headache.

  “Owen, I’m sorry,” he finally said in a quiet voice. “I can’t help you in so direct a manner. But I would like you to understand that my cause is to your advantage, too, and that what I’m doing will also cause Jagang to eventually pull his troops out of your homeland as well, or at least weaken their presence so that you can throw them out yourselves.”

  “No,” Owen said. “His men will not leave my land until you come and . . .” Owen winced. “And destroy them.”

  The very word, the implication, looked sickening to the man.

  “Tomorrow,” Richard said, no longer bothering to try to sound polite, “we have to be on our way. You will have to be on your way as well. I wish you success in ridding your people of the Imperial Order.”

  “We cannot do such a thing,” Owen protested. He sat up straighten “We are not savages. You and those like you—the unenlightened ones—it is up to you to do it and give us freedom, I am the only one who can bring you. You must come and do as your kind does. You must give our empire freedom.”

  Richard rubbed his fingertips across the furrows of his brow. Cara started to rise. A look from Richard sat her back down.

  “I gave you water,” Richard said as he stood. “I can’t give you freedom.”

  “But you must—”

  “Double watch tonight,” Richard said as he turned to Cara, cutting Owen off.

  Cara nodded once as her mouth twisted with a satisfied smile of iron determination.

  “In the morning,” Richard added, “Owen will be on his way.”

  “Yes,” she said, her blue-eyed glare sliding to Owen, “he certainly will be.”

  Chapter 11

  “What is it?” Kahlan asked as she rode up beside the wagon.

  Richard looked to be furious about something. She saw then that he had the book in one hand; his other was a fist. He opened his mouth, about to speak, but when Jennsen, up on the seat beside Tom, turned back to see what was going on, Richard said to her instead, “Kahlan and I are going to check the road up ahead. Keep your eye on Betty so she doesn’t jump out, will you, Jenn?”

  Jennsen smiled at him and nodded.

  “If Betty gives you any trouble,” Tom said, “just let me know and I’ll take her to a lady I know and have some goat sausages made up.”

  Jennsen grinned at their private joke and gave Tom a good-natured elbow in his ribs. As Richard climbed over the side of the wagon and dropped to the ground, she snapped her fingers at the tail-wagging goat.

  “Betty! You just stay there. Richard doesn’t need you tagging along every single time.”

  Betty, front hooves on the chafing rail, bleated as she looked up at Jennsen, as if asking for her to reconsider.

  “Down,” Jennsen said in admonishment. “Lie down.”

  Betty bleated and reluctantly hopped back down into the wagon bed, but she would settle for no less than a scratch behind the ears as consolation before she would lie down.

  Kahlan leaned over from her seat in the saddle and untied the reins to Richard’s horse from the back of the wagon. He stepped into the stirrup and gracefully swung up in one fluid motion. She could see that he was agitated about something, but it made her heart sing just to look at him.

  He shifted his weight forward slightly, urging his horse ahead. Kahlan squeezed her legs to the side of her own horse to spur her into a canter to keep up with Richard. He rode out ahead, rounding several turns in the flatter land among the rough hillsides, until he caught up with Cara and Friedrich, patrolling out in the lead.

  “We’re going to check out front for a while,” he told them. “Why don’t you fall back and check behind.”

  Kahl
an knew that Richard was sending them to the back because if he took Kahlan to the back under the pretense of watching anything that might come up on them from behind, Cara would keep falling back to check on them.

  If they were out front, Cara wouldn’t worry about them dropping back and getting lost.

  Cara laid her reins over and turned back. Sweat stuck Kahlan’s shirt to her back as she leaned over her horse’s withers, urging her ahead as Richard’s horse sprang away. Despite the clumps of tall grass dotting the foothills and occasional sparse patches of woods, the heat was still with them. It cooled some at night, now, but the days were hot, with the humidity increasing as the clouds built up against the wall of mountains to their right.

  Up close, the barrier of rugged mountains to the east was an intimidating sight. Sheer rock walls rose up below projecting plateaus heaped to their very edge with loose rock crumbled from yet higher plateaus and walls, as if the entire range was all gradually crumbling. With drops of thousands of feet at the fringe of overhanging shelves of rock, climbing such unstable scree would be impossible. If there were passes through the arid slopes, they were no doubt few and would prove difficult.

  But making it past those gray mountains of scorching rock, they could now see, was hardly the biggest problem.

  Those closer mountains spreading north and south in the burning heat at the edge of the desert partially hid what lay to the other side—a far more daunting range of snowcapped peaks rising up to completely block any passage east. Those imposing mountains were beyond the scale of any Kahlan had ever seen. Not even the most rugged of the Rang’Shada Mountains in the Midlands were their match. These mountains were like a race of giants. Precipitous walls of rock soared thousands of feet straight up. Harrowing slopes rose unbroken by any pass or rift and were so arduous that few trees could find a foothold. Lofty snow-packed peaks that ascended majestically above windswept clouds were jammed so close together that it reminded her more of a knife’s long jagged edge than separate summits.

  The day before, when Kahlan had seen Richard studying those imposing mountains, she had asked him if he thought there was any way across them. He had said no, that the only way he could see to get beyond was possibly the notch he’d spotted before, when he had found the place where the strange boundary had once been, and that notch still lay some distance north.

  For now, they skirted the dry side of the closer mountains as that range made its way north along the more easily traversed lowlands.

  Along the base of a gentle hill covered in clumps of brown grasses, Richard finally slowed his horse. He turned in his saddle, checking that the others were still coming, if a goodly distance behind.

  He pulled his horse close beside her. “I skipped ahead in the book.”

  Kahlan didn’t like the sound of that. “When I asked you before why you didn’t skip ahead, you said that it wasn’t a wise thing to do.”

  “I know, but I wasn’t really getting anywhere and we need answers.” As their horses settled into a comfortable walk, Richard rubbed his shoulders. “After all that heat I can’t believe how cold it’s getting.”

  “Cold? What are you—”

  “You know those rare people like Jennsen?” The leather of his saddle squeaked as he leaned toward her. “Ones born pristinely ungifted—without even that tiny spark of the gift? The pillars of Creation? Well, back when this book was written, they weren’t so rare.”

  “You mean it was more common for them to be born?”

  “No, the ones who had been born began to grow up, get married, and have children—ungifted children.”

  Kahlan looked over in surprise. “The broken links in the chain of the gift that you were talking about, before?”

  Richard nodded. “They were children of the Lord Rahl. Back then, it wasn’t like it has been in recent times with Darken Rahl, or his father. From what I can tell, all the children of the Lord Rahl and his wife were part of his family, and treated as such, even though they were born with this problem. It seems that the wizards tried to help them—both the direct offspring, and then their children, and their children. They tried to cure them.”

  “Cure them? Cure them of what?”

  Richard lifted his arms in a heated gesture of frustration. “Of being born ungifted—of being born without even that tiny spark of the gift like everyone else has. The wizards back then tried to restore the breaks in the link.”

  “How did they think they would be able to cure someone of not having even the spark of the gift?”

  Richard pressed his lips together as he thought of a way to explain it. “Well, you know the wizards who sent you across the boundary to find Zedd?”

  “Yes,” Kahlan said in a suspicious drawl.

  “They weren’t born with the gift—born wizards, that is. What were they—second or third wizards? Something like that? You told me about them, once.” He snapped his fingers as it came to him. “Wizards of the Third Order. Right?”

  “Yes. Just one, Giller, was the Second Order. None were able to pass the tests to be a wizard of the First Order, like Zedd, because they didn’t have the gift. Being wizards was their calling, but they weren’t gifted in the conventional sense—but they still had that spark of the gift that everyone has.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Richard said. “They weren’t born with the gift to be wizards—just the spark of it like everyone else. Yet Zedd somehow trained them to be able to use magic—to be wizards—even though they weren’t born that way, born with the gift to be wizards.”

  “Richard, that was a lifetime of work.”

  “I know, but the point is that Zedd was able to help them to be wizards—at least wizards enough to pass his tests and conjure magic.”

  “Yes, I suppose. When I was young they taught me about the workings of magic and the Wizard’s Keep, about those people and creatures in the Midlands with magic. They may not have been born with the gift, but they had worked a lifetime to become wizards. They were wizards,” she insisted.

  Richard’s mouth turned up with the kind of smile that told her that she had just framed the essence of his argument for him. “But they had not been born with that aspect, that attribute, of the gift.” He leaned toward her. “Zedd, besides training them, must have used magic to help them become wizards, right?”

  Kahlan frowned at the thought. “I don’t know. They never told me about their training to become wizards. That was never germane to their relationship with me or my training.”

  “But Zedd has Additive Magic,” Richard pressed. “Additive can change things, add to them, make them more than they are.”

  “All right,” Kahlan cautiously agreed. “What’s the point?”

  “The point is that Zedd took people who weren’t born with the gift to be wizards and he trained them but—more importantly—he must have also used his power to help them along that path by altering how they were born. He had to have added to their gift to make them more than they were born to be.” Richard glanced over at her as his horse stepped around a small, scraggly pine. “He altered people with magic.”

  Kahlan let out a deep breath as she looked away from Richard and ahead at the gentle spread of grassy hills to either side of them, as she tried to fully grasp the concept of what he was saying.

  “I never considered that before, but all right,” she finally said. “So, what of it?”

  “We thought that only the wizards of old could do such a thing, but, apparently, it’s not a lost art nor would it be entirely so far-fetched as I had imagined for the wizards back then to believe they could change what was, into what they thought it ought to be. What I’m saying is that, like what Zedd did to give people that with which they were not born, so too did the wizards of old try to give people born as pillars of Creation a spark of the gift.”

  Kahlan felt a chill of realization. The implication was staggering. Not just the wizards of old, but Zedd, too, had used magic to alter the very nature of people, the very nature of
what they were, how they were born.

  She supposed that he had only helped them to achieve what was their greatest ambition in life—their calling—by enhancing what they already had been born with. He helped them to reach their full potential. But that was for men who had the innate potential. While the wizards of long ago probably had done similar things to help people, they had also sometimes used their power for less benevolent reasons.

  “So,” he said, “the wizards back then, who were experienced in altering people’s abilities, thought that these people called the pillars of Creation could be cured.”

  “Cured of not having been born gifted,” she said in a flat tone of incredulity.

  “Not exactly. They weren’t trying to make them into wizards, but they thought they could at least be cured of not having that infinitesimal spark of the gift that simply enabled them to interact with magic.”

  Kahlan took a purging breath. “So then what happened?”

  “This book was written after the great war had ended—after the barrier had been created and the Old World had been sealed away. It was written after the New World was at peace, or, at least, after the barrier kept the Old World contained.

  “But remember what we found out before? That we think that during the war Wizard Ricker and his team had done something to halt Subtractive Magic’s ability to be passed on to the offspring of wizards? Well, after the war, those born with the gift started becoming increasingly uncommon, and those who were being born were being born without the Subtractive side.”

  “So, after the war,” she said, “those who were born with the gift of both Additive and Subtractive were rapidly becoming nonexistent. We already knew that.”

  “Right.” Richard leaned toward her and lifted the book. “But then, when there are fewer wizards being born, all of a sudden the wizards additionally realize that they have all these pristinely ungifted—breaks altogether in the link to magic—on their hands. Suddenly, on top of the problem of the birth rate of those with the gift to be wizards dropping, they were faced with what they called pillars of Creation.”