Naked Empire (Sword of Truth 8)

When he turned back to the Keep, he thought he saw three more of the same kind of large black birds flying together, high above the Keep. He decided that they had to be ravens. Ravens were big. He must simply be misjudging the distance—probably from lack of food. Concluding that they had to be ravens, he tried to adjust his estimation of their distance, but they were already gone. He glanced down, but didn’t see the other two, either.

As he passed under the iron portcullis, feeling the warm embrace of the Keep’s spell, Zedd felt a wave of loneliness. He so missed Erilyn, his long-dead wife, as well as his long-passed daughter, Richard’s mother, and, dear spirits, he missed Richard. He smiled then, thinking of Richard being with his own wife, now. It was still sometimes hard for him to think of Richard as grown into a man. He had had a wondrous time helping to raise Richard. What a time that had been in his life, off in Westland, away from the Midlands, away from magic and responsibility, with just that ever curious boy and a whole world of wonders to explore and show him. What a time indeed.

Inside the Keep, lamps along the wall obediently sprang to flame as First Wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander made his way along passageways and through grand rooms, deeper into the immense mountain fortress. As he passed the webs he’d placed, he checked the texture of their magic to find that they were undisturbed. He sighed in relief. He didn’t expect that anyone would be foolish enough to try to enter the Keep, but the world had fools to spare. He didn’t really like leaving such dangerous webs cast all about the place, in addition to the often dangerous shields already guarding the Keep, but he dared not relax his guard.

As he passed a long side table in a towering gathering hall, Zedd, as he had done since he was a boy, ran his finger along the smooth groove in the edge of the variegated chocolate-brown marble top. He stopped, frowning down at the table, and realized that it contained something he suddenly felt the want of: a ball of fine black cord left there years ago to tie ribbons and other decorations on the lamp brackets in the gathering hall to mark the harvest festival.

Sure enough, in the center drawer, he found the ball of fine cord. He snatched it up and slipped it into a pocket long emptied of its load of berries. From the wall bracket beside the table, he lifted a wand with six small bells. The wand, one of hundreds if not thousands throughout the Keep, was once used to summon servants. He sighed inwardly. It had been decades since servants and their families last lived in the Wizard’s Keep. He remembered their children running and playing in the halls. He remembered the joy of laughter echoing throughout the Keep, bringing life to the place.

Zedd told himself that one day children would again run and laugh in the halls. Richard and Kahlan’s children. Zedd’s broad smile stretched his cheeks.

There were windows and openings in the stone that let light spill into many halls and rooms, but there were other places less well lit. Zedd found one of those darker places that was dim enough to satisfy him. He stretched a piece of the black cord, strung with one of the bells, across the doorway, winding it around coarse stone molding to each side. Moving deeper through the labyrinth of halls and passageways, he stopped and strung more strings with a bell at places where it would be hard to see. He had to collect several more of the servant wands for a supply of bells.

Although there were shields of magic laced everywhere, there was no telling what powers some of the Sisters of the Dark possessed. They would be looking for magic, not bells. It couldn’t hurt to take the extra precaution.

Zedd made mental notes of where he strung the fine black cord—he would have to let Adie know. He doubted, though, that with her gifted sight she would need the warning. He was sure that with her blind eyes she could see better than anyone.

Following the wonderful aroma of ham stew, Zedd made his way to the comfortable room lined with bookshelves they used most of the time. Adie had hung spices to dry from the low beams carved with ancient designs. A leather couch sat before a broad fireplace and comfortable chairs beside a silver-inlaid table placed in front of a diamond-patterned leaded window with a breathtaking view overlooking Aydindril.

The sun was setting, leaving the city below bathed in a warm light. It almost looked like it always did, except there was no telltale smoke curling up from cooking fires.

Zedd set his burlap sack loaded with his harvest on piles of books atop a round mahogany table behind the couch. He shuffled closer to the fire, all the while taking deep breaths to inhale the intoxicating aroma of the stew.

“Adie,” he called, “this smells delightful! Have you looked outside today? I saw the oddest birds.”

He smiled as he inhaled another whiff.

“Adie—I think it must be done by now,” he called toward the doorway to the side pantry room. “I think we ought to taste it, at least. Can’t hurt to check, you know.”

Zedd glanced back over his shoulder. “Adie? Are you listening to me?”

He went to the doorway and peered into the pantry, but it was empty.

“Adie?” he called down the stairs at the back of the pantry. “Are you down there?”

Zedd’s mouth twisted with discontentment when she didn’t answer.

“Adie?” he called again. “Bags, woman, where are you?”

He turned back, peering at the stew bubbling in the kettle hung on the crane over the fire.

Zedd scooped up a long wooden spoon from a pantry cupboard.

Spoon in hand, he stopped and leaned back toward the stairs. “Take your time, Adie. I’ll just be up here…reading.”

Zedd grinned and hurried for the stew.

Chapter 13

Richard rose up in a rush when he saw Cara marching up a ravine toward camp, pushing ahead of her a man Richard vaguely recognized. In the failing light, he couldn’t make out the man’s face. Richard scanned the surrounding flat washes, rocky hills, and steep tree-covered slopes beyond, but didn’t see anyone else.

Friedrich was off to the south and Tom to the west, checking the surrounding country, as Cara had been, to be sure there was no one about and that it was a safe place to spend the night; they were exhausted from picking a sinuous route through the increasingly rugged country. Cara had been checking north—the direction they were headed and the direction Richard considered potentially the most dangerous. Jennsen turned from the animals, waiting to see who the Mord-Sith had with her.

Once on his feet, Richard wished he hadn’t gotten up quite so quickly—doing so made him light-headed. He couldn’t seem to shake the odd, disconnected sensation he felt, as if he were watching someone else react, talk, move. When he concentrated, forcing himself to focus his attention, the feeling would sometimes drift at least partly away and he would begin to wonder if it was only his imagination.

Kahlan’s hand slipped up on his arm, gripping him as if she thought he might fall.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

He nodded as he watched Cara and the man as he also kept an eye on the surrounding countryside. By the end of their ride earlier that afternoon to discuss the book, Kahlan had become even more worried about him. They were both troubled about what he’d read, but Kahlan was far more concerned, at the moment, anyway, about him.

Richard suspected that he might be coming down with a slight fever. That would explain why he was feeling so cold when everyone else was hot. From time to time, Kahlan would feel his forehead or place the back of her hand against his cheek. Her touch warmed his heart; she ignored his smiles as she fretted over him. She thought that he might be slightly feverish. Once she had Jennsen feel his forehead to see if she thought he might be warmer than he should be. Jennsen, too, thought that, if he did have a fever, it was minor. Cara, so far, had been satisfied by Kahlan’s report that he didn’t feel feverish, and hadn’t deemed it necessary to see for herself.

A fever was just about the last thing Richard needed. There were important…important, something. He couldn’t seem to recall at the moment. He concentrated on trying to remember the young man’s na

me, or at least where he’d seen him before.

The last rays of the setting sun cast a pink glow across the mountains to the east. The closer hills were dimming to a soft gray in the gathering dusk. As darkness approached, the low fire was beginning to tint everything close around it a warm yellow-orange. Richard had kept the cook fire small, not wanting it to signal their location any more than necessary.

“Lord Rahl,” the man said in a reverent tone as he stepped into camp. He dipped his head forward in a hesitant bow, apparently not sure if it was proper to bow or not. “It’s an honor to see you again.”

He was perhaps a couple of years younger than Richard, with curly black hair that brushed the broad shoulders of his buckskin tunic. He wore a long knife at his belt but no sword. His ears stuck out to the sides of his head as if he were straining to listen to every little sound. Richard imagined that as a boy he’d probably endured a lot of taunts about his ears, but now that he was a man his ears made him look rather intent and serious. As muscular as the man was, Richard doubted that he still had to contend with taunts.

“I’m…I’m sorry, but I can’t quite seem to recall…”