Naked Empire tsot-8 Read online

  Richard put his hands on his hips as he stared back at the remarkable stretch of rock he’d found. “Tell me, then, what characterized the rock in the place where we were before—a few days ago, back closer to the Pillars of Creation?”

  Kahlan looked over at an expressionless Cara and then frowned at Richard. “Characterized it? Nothing. It was a dead place. Nothing grew there.”

  Richard waved his hand around, indicating the land through which they were now traveling. “And this?”

  “Now things are growing,” Cara said, becoming increasingly disinterested in his study of flora and fauna.

  Richard held a hand out. “And there?”

  “Nothing is growing there, yet,” Cara said in an exasperated sigh. “There are a lot of spots around where nothing is growing yet. It’s still a wasteland. Just have patience, Lord Rahl, and we will soon enough be back among the fields and forests.”

  Kahlan wasn’t paying attention to what Cara was saying; she was frowning as she leaned closer.

  “The place where things begin to grow seems to start all at once,” Kahlan said, almost to herself. “Isn’t that curious.”

  “I certainly think so,” Richard said.

  “I think Lord Rahl needs to drink more water,” Cara sniped.

  Richard smiled. “Here. Stand over here,” he told her. “Stand over by me and look again.”

  Cara, her curiosity aroused, did as he asked. She looked down at the ground, and then frowned at the places where things grew.

  “The Mother Confessor is right.” Cara’s voice had taken on a decidedly businesslike tone. “Do you think it’s important? Or somehow a danger?”

  “Yes—to the first, anyway,” Richard said.

  He squatted down beside Kahlan. “Now, look at this.”

  As Kahlan and Cara knelt down beside him, leaning forward, looking closely at the rock, Richard had to push a curious Betty back out of the way. He then pointed out a patch of yellow-streaked lichen.

  “Look here,” he said. “See this medallion of lichen? It’s lopsided. This side is round, but this side, near where nothing grows, is flatter.”

  Kahlan looked up at him. “Lichen grows on rocks in all kinds of shapes.”

  “Yes, but look at how the rock over where there is lichen and brush growing is spotted all over with little bits of growth. Here, beyond the stunted side of the lichen, there is nearly nothing. The rock almost looks scoured clean.

  “If you look closely there are a few tiny things, things that have started to grow only in the last couple of years, but they have yet to really begin to take hold.”

  “Yes,” Kahlan said in a cautious drawl, “it is odd, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “Look at where things are growing, and where they aren’t.”

  “Well, yes, on that side there’s nothing growing, and over here there is.”

  “Don’t just look down.” Richard lifted her chin. “Look out at the boundary between the two—look at the whole pattern.”

  Kahlan frowned off into the distance. All of a sudden, the color drained from her face.

  “Dear spirits . . .” she whispered.

  Richard smiled that she finally saw what he was talking about.

  “What are you two mooning over?” Cara complained.

  Richard put his hand behind Cara’s neck and pulled her head in to look at what he and Kahlan were seeing.

  “That’s odd,” she said, squinting off into the distance. “The place where things are growing seem to stop in a comparatively clean line—like someone had made an invisible fence running east.”

  “Right,” Richard said as he got up, brushing his hands clean.

  “Now, come on.” He started walking north. Kahlan and Cara scrambled to their feet and followed behind as he marched across the lifeless rock. Betty bleated and trotted after them.

  “Where are we going?” Cara asked as she caught up with him.

  “Just come on,” Richard told her.

  For half an hour they followed his brisk pace as he headed in a straight line to the north, across rocky ground and gravelly patches where nothing at all grew. The day was sweltering, but Richard almost didn’t notice the heat, so focused was he on the lifeless expanse they were crossing. He hadn’t yet gone to see what lay at the other side, but he was convinced of what they would find once they reached it.

  The other two were sweating profusely as they chased behind him. Betty bleated occasionally as she brought up the rear.

  When they finally reached the place he was looking for, the place where lichen and scraggly brush once again began to appear, he brought them to a halt. Betty poked her head between Kahlan and Cara for a look.

  “Now, look at this,” Richard said. “See what I mean?”

  Kahlan was breathing hard from the brisk walk in the heat. She pulled her waterskin off her shoulder and gulped water. She passed the waterskin to Richard. He watched Cara study the patch of ground as he drank.

  “The growing things start again over here,” Cara said. She absently scratched behind Betty’s ears when the goat rubbed the top of her head impatiently against Cara’s thigh. “They start to appear in the same kind of line as the other side, back there, where we were.”

  “Right,” Richard said, handing Cara the waterskin. “Now, follow me.”

  Cara threw up her arms. “We just came from that way!”

  “Come on,” Richard called back over his shoulder.

  He headed south again, back toward the center of the lifeless patch of rock, the small group in tow. Betty bleated her displeasure at the pace of the hot dusty excursion. If Kahlan or Cara shared Betty’s opinion, they didn’t voice the complaint.

  When Richard judged they were back somewhere in the middle, he stood with his feet spread, his fists on his hips, and looked east again. From where they stood, they couldn’t make out the sides of the lifeless stretch, the places where growth began.

  Looking to the east, though, the pattern was evident. A clearly defined strip—miles wide—ran off into the distance.

  Nothing grew within the bounds of the straight strip of lifeless desert, whether going over rock or sandy ground. To either side the ground with widely spaced brush and lichen growing on the rock was darker. The place where nothing grew was a lighter tan. In the distance the discrepancy in the color was even more apparent.

  The lifeless strip ran straight for mile after mile toward the far mountains, gradually becoming but a faint line following the rise of the ground until, finally, in the hazy distance, it could no longer be seen.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Kahlan asked in a low, troubled voice.

  “What?” Cara asked. “What are you thinking?”

  Richard studied the confused concern on the Mord-Sith’s face. “What kept Darken Rahl’s armies in D’Hara? What prevented him, for so many years, from invading the Midlands and taking it, even though he wanted it?”

  “He couldn’t cross the boundary,” Cara said as if he must be having heat stroke.

  “And what made up the boundary?”

  At last, Cara’s face, framed by the black desert garb, went white, too.

  “The boundary was the underworld?”

  Richard nodded. “It was like a rip in the veil, where the underworld existed in this world. Zedd told us about it. He put the boundary up with a spell he found in the Keep—a spell from those ancient times of the great war. Once up, the boundary was a place in this world where the world of the dead also existed. In that place, where both worlds touched, nothing could grow.”

  “But are you so sure things wouldn’t still grow there?” Cara asked. “It was still our world, after all—the world of life.”

  “It would be impossible for anything to grow there. The world of life was there, in that spot—the ground was there—but life couldn’t exist there on that ground because it shared that same space with the world of the dead. Anything there would be touched by death.”

 
Cara looked out at the straight, lifeless strip running off into the wavering distance. “So you think what? . . . This is a boundary?”

  “Was.”

  Cara looked from his face, to Kahlan, and again out to the distance.

  “Dividing what?”

  Overhead a flight of black-tipped races came into sight, riding the high currents, turning lazy circles as they watched.

  “I don’t know,” Richard admitted.

  He looked west again, back down the gradual slope running away from the mountains, back to where they had been.

  “But look,” Richard said, gesturing out into the burning wasteland from where they had come. “It runs back toward the Pillars of Creation.”

  As the things growing thinned and eventually ceased to be back that way, so too did the lifeless strip. It became indistinguishable from the surrounding wasteland because there was no life to mark where the line had been.

  “There’s no telling how far it runs. For all I know,” Richard said, “it’s possible that it runs all the way back to the valley itself.”

  “That part makes no sense to me,” Kahlan said. “I can see what you mean about it maybe being like the boundaries up in the New World, the boundaries between Westland, the Midlands, and D’Hara. That much I follow. But the spirits take me, I don’t get why it would run to the Pillars of Creation. That part just strikes me as more than odd.”

  Richard turned and gazed back to the east, where they were headed, to the rumpled gray wall of mountains rising steeply up from the broad desert floor, studying the distant notch that sat a little north of where the boundary line ran toward those mountains.

  He looked south, to the wagon making its way toward those mountains.

  “We better catch up with the others,” Richard finally said. “I need to get back to translating the book.”

  Chapter 9

  The spectral spires around Richard glowed under the lingering caress of the low sun. In the amber light, as he scouted the forsaken brink of the towering mountains beyond, long pools of shadow were darkening to the blue-black color of bruises.

  The pinnacles of reddish rock stood like stony guardians along the lower reaches of the desolate foothills, as if listening for the echoing crunch of his footsteps along the meandering gravel beds.

  Richard had felt like being alone to think, so he had set out to scout by himself. It was hard to think when people were constantly asking questions.

  He was frustrated that the book hadn’t yet told him anything that would in any way help explain the presence of the strange boundary line, much less the connection of the book’s title, the place called the Pillars of Creation, and those ungifted people like Jennsen. The book, in the beginning that he’d so far translated, anyway, appeared mostly to be an historical record dealing with unanticipated matters involving occurrences of “pillars of Creation,” as those like Jennsen were called, and the unsuccessful attempts at “curing” those “unfortunates.”

  Richard was beginning to get the clear sense that the book was laying a careful foundation of early details in preparation for something calamitous.

  The nearly quaking care of the recounting of every possible course of action that had been investigated gave him the feeling that whoever wrote the book was being painstaking for reasons of consequence.

  Not daring to slow their pace, Richard had been translating while riding in the wagon. The dialect was slightly different from the High D’Haran he was used to reading, so working out the translation was slow going, especially sitting in the back of the bouncing wagon. He had no way of knowing if the book would eventually offer any answers, but he felt a gnawing worry over what the unfolding account was working up to. He would have jumped ahead, but he’d learned in the past that doing so often wasted more time than it saved, since it interfered with accurately grasping the whole picture, which sometimes led to dangerously erroneous conclusions. He would just have to keep at it.

  After working all day, focused intently on the book, he’d ended up with a fierce headache. He’d had days without them, but now when they came it seemed they were worse each time. He didn’t tell Kahlan how concerned he was that he wouldn’t make it to the sliph’s well in Tanimura. Besides working at translating, he racked his brain trying to find a solution.

  While he had no idea what the key to the headaches brought on by the gift was, he had the nagging feeling that it was within himself. He feared it was a matter of balance he was failing to see. He had even resorted when out alone, once, to sitting and meditating as the Sisters had once taught him in order to try to focus on the gift within. It had been to no avail.

  It would be dark soon and they would need to stop for the night. Since the terrain had changed, it was no longer a simple task to see if the area all around them was clear. Now there were places where an army could lie in wait. With the races shadowing them, there was no telling who might know where to find them. Besides simply wanting a break to think about what he’d read and what he might find within himself to answer the problem of his headaches, Richard wanted to check the surrounding area himself.

  Richard paused for a moment to watch a family of quail, the juveniles fully grown, hurry across an open patch of ground. They trotted across the exposed gravel in a line while the father, perched atop a rock, stood lookout. As soon as they melted into the brush, they were again invisible.

  Small scraggly pine trees dotted the sweep of irregular hills, gullies, and rocky outcroppings at the fringe of the mountains. Up higher, on the nearby slopes, larger conifers grew in greater abundance. In low, sheltered places clumps of brush lay in thick clusters. Thin grasses covered some of the open ground.

  Richard wiped sweat from his eyes. He hoped that with the sun going down the air might cool a little. As he made his way along the concealment of the base of a runoff channel in a fold of two hills, he reached for the strap of his waterskin, about to take a long drink, when movement on a far hillside caught his attention.

  He slipped behind the screen of a long shelf of rock to stay out of sight. Taking a careful peek, he saw a man making his way down the loose scree on the side of the hill. The sound of the rock crunching underfoot and sliding down the slope sent a distant echo through the rocky canyons.

  Richard had expected that as they left the forbidding wasteland they might at any time begin encountering people, so he had had everyone change out of the black outfits of the nomadic desert people and back into their unassuming traveling clothes. While he was in black trousers and simple shirt, his sword was hardly inconspicuous. Kahlan, as well, had put on simple clothes that were more in keeping with the impoverished people of the Old World, but on Kahlan they didn’t seem to make much difference; it was hard to hide her figure and her hair, but most of all her presence. Once those green eyes of hers fixed on people, they usually had an urge to drop to a knee and bow their head. Her clothes made little difference.

  No doubt Emperor Jagang had spread their description far and wide and had offered a reward large enough that even his enemies would find it hard to resist. For many in the Old World, though, the price of continued life under the brutal rule of the Imperial Order was too high. Despite the reward, there were many who hungered to live free and were willing to act to gain that goal.

  There was also the problem of the bond the Lord Rahl had with the D’Haran people; through that ancient bond forged by Richard’s ancestors, D’Harans could sense where the Lord Rahl was. The Imperial Order could discover where Richard was by that bond, too. All they had to do was torture the information out of a D’Haran. If one person failed to talk under torture, they would not be shy about trying others until they learned what they wanted.

  As Richard watched, the lone man, once he reached the bottom of the hill, made his way along the gravel beds lining the bottom of the rocky gullies. Off to Richard’s right the wagon and horses were lifting a long trail of dust. That was where the man seemed to be headed.

  At such a distance it was hard to
tell for sure, but Richard doubted that the man was a soldier. He wouldn’t likely be a scout, not in his own homeland, and they weren’t near the hotbeds of the revolt against the rule of the Imperial Order. Richard didn’t think there would be any reason for soldiers to be going this way, through such uninhabited areas. That was, after all, why he had picked this route, heading east to the shadow of the mountains before turning to a more northerly route back to where they had been.

  There was also the possibility that the bond had inadvertently revealed Richard’s whereabouts and an army was out looking for him. If the man was a soldier, there could shortly be many more, like ants, swarming down out of the hills.

  Richard climbed the back side of a short rocky prominence and lay on his stomach, watching over the top. As the man got closer, Richard could see that he looked young, under thirty years, a bit scrawny, and was dressed nothing at all like a soldier. By the way he stumbled, he was not used to the terrain, or maybe just not used to traveling. It was tiring walking over ground of loose, sharp, broken rock, especially if it was on a slope, since it never provided any solid place for a steady stride.

  The man stopped, stretching his neck to peer at the wagon. Panting from the effort of making it down the slope, he combed his fine blond hair back repeatedly with his fingers, then bent at the waist and rested a hand on a knee while he caught his breath.

  When the man straightened and started out once more, crunching through the gravel at the bottom of the wash, Richard slid back down the rock. He used the intervening lay of the land and patches of scraggly pine to screen himself from sight. He paused from time to time, as he moved closer, to listen for the heavy footsteps and labored breathing, checking his dead-reckoning estimation of where the man would be.

  From behind a freestanding wall of rock a good sixty feet tall, Richard carefully peered out for a look. He had managed to close most of the distance without the man being aware of his presence. Richard moved silently from tree to rock to the back side of slopes, until he was out ahead of the man and in his line of travel.