Naked Empire (Sword of Truth 8)

The directness of the dream walker’s gaze was as obvious as was Adie’s when she looked at Zedd with her pure white eyes. Under Jagang’s direct glare, Zedd had to remind himself to relax his muscles, and remember to breathe.

The thing about those eyes that most terrified him, though, was what he saw in them: a keen, calculating mind. Zedd had fought against Jagang long enough to have come to understand that one underestimated this man at great peril.

“Jagang the Just,” the Sister said, holding an introductory hand out to the nightmare before them. “Excellency, this is Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander, First Wizard, and a sorceress by the name of Adie.”

“I know who they are,” Jagang said in a deep voice as heavy with threat as with distaste.

He leaned back, hanging one arm over the back of the chair and one leg over a carved arm. He gestured with the goose leg.

“Richard Rahl’s grandfather, as I hear told.”

Zedd said nothing.

Jagang tossed the partially eaten leg on a platter and picked up a knife. With one hand he sawed a chunk of red meat off a roast and stabbed it. Elbow on the table, he waved the knife as he spoke. Red juice ran down the blade.

“Probably not the way you had hoped to meet me.”

He laughed at his own joke, a deep, resonating sound alive with menace.

With his teeth, Jagang drew the chunk of meat off the knife and chewed as he watched them, as if unable to decide on a wealth of delightfully terrible options parading through his thoughts.

He washed the meat down with a gulp from a jeweled silver goblet, his gaze never leaving them. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you have come to visit me.”

His grin was like death itself. “Alive.”

He rolled his wrist, circling the knife. “We have a lot to talk about.” His laugh died out, but the grin remained. “Well, you do, anyway. I’ll be a good host and listen.”

Zedd and Adie remained silent as Jagang’s black-eyed gaze went from one to the other.

“Not so talkative, just yet? Well, no matter. You will be babbling soon enough.”

Zedd didn’t waste the effort telling Jagang that torture would gain him nothing. Jagang would not believe any such boast, and even if he did, it would hardly stay his wish to see it done.

Jagang fingered a few grapes from a bowl. “You are a resourceful man, Wizard Zorander.” He popped several grapes in his mouth and chewed as he spoke. “All alone there in Aydindril, with an army surrounding you, you managed to gull me into thinking I had trapped Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor. Quite a trick. I must give you credit where credit is due.

“And the light spell you ignited among my men, that was remarkable.” He put another grape in his mouth. “Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of them were caught up in your wizardry?”

Zedd could see the corded muscles in the man’s hairy arm draped over the back of the chair stand out as he flexed the fist. He relaxed the hand then and leaned forward, using his thumb to gouge out a long chunk of ham.

He waved the meat as he went on. “It’s that kind of magic I need you to do for me, good wizard. I understand, from the stupid bitches I have who call themselves the Sisters of the Light, or the Sisters of the Dark, depending on who they’ve decided can offer better favors in the afterlife, that you probably didn’t conjure that little bit of magic on your own, but, rather, you used a constructed spell from the Wizard’s Keep and simply ignited it among my men with some kind of trick, or trigger—probably some small curiosity that one of them picked up and in the act of having a look, they set it off.”

Zedd was somewhat alarmed that Jagang had been able to learn so much. The emperor took a big bite off the end of the piece of ham as he watched them. His indulgent look was beginning to wear thin.

“So, since you can’t do such marvelous magic yourself, I’ve had a few items brought from the Keep so you can tell me how they work, what they do. I’m sure there must be a great number of intriguing items among the inventory. I’d like to have some of those conjured spells so they can blow open a few of the passes into D’Hara for us. It would save me some time and trouble. I’m sure you can understand my eagerness to be into D’Hara and have this petty resistance finally over with.”

Zedd heaved a deep breath and finally spoke. “For most of those items, you could torture me to the end of time and I still wouldn’t be able to tell you anything because I don’t have any knowledge of them. Unlike you, I know my own limits. I simply don’t know what such a spell might look like. Even if I did, that doesn’t mean I would know how to work it. I was simply lucky with that one I used.”

“Maybe, maybe, but you do know about some of the items. You are, after all, as I hear told, First Wizard; it is your Keep. To claim ignorance of the things in it is hardly credible. Despite your claim of luck, you managed to know enough about that constructed light web to ignite it among my men, so you obviously have knowledge about the most powerful of the items.”

“You don’t know the first thing about magic,” Zedd snapped. “You have a head full of grand ideas and you think all you have to do is command they be done. Well, they can’t. You’re a fool who doesn’t know the first thing about real magic or its limits.”

An eyebrow lifted over one of Jagang’s inky eyes. “Oh, I think I know more than you might think, wizard. You see, I love to read, and I, well, I have the advantage of perusing some of the most remarkably gifted minds you can imagine. I probably know a great deal more about magic than you give me credit for.”

“I give you credit for bold self-delusion.”

“Self-delusion?” He spread his arms. “Can you create a Slide, Wizard Zorander?”

Zedd froze. Jagang had heard the name; that was all. The man liked to read. He’d read that name somewhere.

“Of course not, and neither can anyone else alive today.”

“You can’t create such a being, Wizard Zorander. But you have no idea how much I know about magic. You see, I’ve learned to bring lost talents back to life—arts that have long been believed to be dead and vanished.”

“I give you the grandiosity of your dreaming, Jagang, but dreaming is easy. Your dreams can’t be made real just because you dream them and decide that you wish them to come alive.”

“Sister Tahirah, here, knows the truth of it.” Jagang gestured with his knife. “Tell him, darlin. Tell him what I can dream and what I can bring to life.”

The woman hesitantly stepped forward several paces. “It is as His Excellency says.” She looked away from Zedd’s frown to fuss with her wiry gray hair. “With His Excellency’s brilliant direction, we were able to bring back some of the old knowledge. With the expert guidance of our emperor, we were able to invest in a wizard named Nicholas an ability not seen in the world for three thousand years. It is one of His Excellency’s greatest achievements. I can personally assure you that it is as His Excellency says; a Slide again walks the world. It is no fancy, Wizard Zorander, but the truth.

“The spirits help me,” she added under her breath, “I was there to see the Slide born into the world.”

“You created a Slide?” Fists still bound behind his back, Zedd took an angry stride toward the Sister. “Are you out of your mind, woman!” She retreated to the back wall. Zedd turned his fury on Jagang. “Slides were a catastrophe! They can’t be controlled! You would have to be crazy to create one!”

Jagang smiled. “Jealous, wizard? Jealous that you are unable to accomplish such a thing, can’t create such a weapon against me, while I can create one to take Richard Rahl and his wife from you?”

“A Slide has powers you couldn’t possibly control.”

“A Slide is no danger to a dream walker. My ability is quicker than his. I am his better.”

“It doesn’t matter how quick you are—it isn’t about being quick! A Slide can’t be controlled and he isn’t going to do what you want!”

“I seem to be controlling him just fine.” Jagang

leaned in on an elbow. “You think magic is necessary to control those you would master, but I don’t need magic. Not with Nicholas nor with mankind.

“You seem to be obsessed with control, I am not. I managed to find a people those like you didn’t want to walk freely among their fellow man, a people cast out by the gifted, a people reviled for not having any spark of your precious gift of magic—a people hated and banished because your kind wasn’t able to control them. That was their crime: being outside the control of your magic.”

Jagang’s fist slammed the table. The slaves all jumped with the platters.

“This is how your kind wants mankind’s future to be; your kind wants only those with a spark of the gift to be allowed to walk free. This, so you can use your gift to control them! Like that collar around your neck, your lust is to collar all of mankind with magic.

“I found those outcast ungifted people and have brought them back into the fold of their fellow man. Much to your disapproval and the loathing of your kind, they can’t be touched by your vile magic.”

Zedd couldn’t imagine where Jagang had found such people. “And so now you have a Slide to control them for you.”