The torches lit the sprawling camp with a kind of flickering light that made everything seem imaginary. The campfires, spread as far as he could see, looked like a star field lying across the ground, as if the world had turned upside down.
“Wait,” the Sister said to the guards.
Zedd was jerked to a halt as the Sister ducked inside the tent. Adie cried out as the man holding her wrenched her arm in the act of stopping her.
Zedd swayed on his feet, wondering if he might pass out. The whole nighttime camp wavered in his vision.
As he looked at one of the girls held captive across the way, he stared, astonished, thinking he recognized her. Zedd looked up at the emperor’s elite guard in the distance holding the child. Zedd blinked his blurred vision. The guard, in leather and mail armor, with a belt full of weapons, looked like a man Zedd used to know. Zedd turned away at the memory, only to see a Sister, making her way among the tents not far away, who also looked like someone else he knew. He looked around at soldiers going about their business. Elite soldiers guarding the emperor’s compound looked like men he thought he remembered.
Zedd truly was terrified, then. He was sure that he was losing his mind. He couldn’t possibly be seeing the people he thought he saw.
His mind was all he had. He didn’t want to be some babbling old man sitting by the side of a road begging.
He knew that people sometimes became irrational—lost their mind—when they got old or were pressed past their endurance. He had known people who had snapped, who had gone insane, and saw things that weren’t really there. That’s what he was doing. He was having visions of people from his past who weren’t really there. That was a sure sign of insanity—seeing your past come to life, thinking you were back with long-lost loved ones.
His mind was the most important thing he had.
Now he was losing that, too.
He was losing his sanity.
Chapter 50
Nicholas heard an annoying noise back in another place.
A disturbance of some sort, back where his body waited.
He ignored it, watching the streets, watching the buildings go by. The sun had just set. People, wary people, moved past. Color. Sound. Activity.
It was a dingy place, with buildings crowded close. Watch, watch. Alleyways were dark and narrow. Strangers stared. The street smelled. None of the buildings were more than two stories; he was sure of it. Most were not even that.
Again, he heard the noise back where his body waited. It was forceful, calling his attention.
He ignored the thump, thump, thump back somewhere else as he watched, trying to see where they were going. What’s this? Watch, watch, watch. He thought he knew, but he wasn’t positive. Look, look. He wanted to be sure. He wanted to watch.
He so enjoyed watching.
More noise. Obnoxious, demanding, thumping noise.
Nicholas felt his body around him as he slammed back to where it waited, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor. He opened his eyes, blinking, trying to see in the dim room. Slivers of dusk leaking in around the edges of the closed shutters lent only somber light to the room.
He stood, wavering on his feet for a moment, not yet used to the strange feeling of being back in his own body. He started walking across the room, looking down, watching as he lifted each foot out ahead, shifted his weight with every step. He had been gone so much lately, day and night, that he was not used to having to do such things on his own. He had been so often in another place, another body, that he had difficulty adjusting to his own.
Someone was banging on the door, yelling for him to open it. Nicholas was furious at the uninvited caller, at such a rude intrusion.
With wobbly gait, he made his way to the door. It felt so confining being back in his own body. It moved in such an odd manner. He rolled his shoulders, resisting the urge to bend forward. He pulled and stretched his neck one way, then the other.
It was bothersome to have to move himself about, to use his own muscles, to feel himself breathe, to see, hear, smell, feel with his own senses.
The door was barred by a heavy bolt to prevent unwelcome callers from entering while he was off to other places. It wouldn’t do to have someone messing with his body while he wasn’t there using it himself. Wouldn’t do at all.
Someone pounding on the other side of the door bellowed his name and demanded to be let in. Nicholas lifted the heavy bolt and heaved it over. He threw open the thick door.
A young soldier stood just outside in the hall. A common, grubby soldier. A nobody.
Nicholas stared in stunned fury at the lowly man who would just walk up the stairs to the room everyone knew was off-limits and pound on the forbidden door. Where was Najari’s flat, crooked nose when he needed it? Why wasn’t someone guarding the door?
A broken bone jutted from the back of the bloody fist the man had been hammering against the door.
Nicholas craned his neck, peering past the soldier out into the dimly lit hall, and saw the bodies of guards sprawled in pools of blood.
Nicholas ran his fingernails back through his hair, shivering with delight at the silken smooth feel of oils gliding against his palm. He rolled his shoulders with the pleasure of the sensation.
Opening his eyes, he fixed his gaze on the wide-eyed, common soldier whom he was about to kill. The man was dressed like many of the Imperial Order soldiers, at least the better-outfitted soldiers, with leather chest armor, a sleeve of protective mail on his right arm, and a number of leather straps and belts holding a variety of weapons from a short sword to a mace with a spiked metal head to knives. Despite how deadly all his gear appeared, the expression on his face was one of startled terror.
Nicholas puzzled for a moment at what such a meaningless man could possibly have to say that would be worth his life.
“What is it, you insipid fool?”
The man lifted an arm, then the hand, then a single finger in a manner that reminded Nicholas of nothing so much as a puppet having its strings pulled. The finger tipped to one side, then the other, then back again, the way someone might waggle a finger in admonition.
“Ah, ah, ah.” The finger twitched side to side again. “Be polite. Be awfully polite.”
The soldier, his eyes wide, seemed surprised by his own haughty words. The voice sounded too deep—too mature—to belong to this young man.
The voice, in fact, sounded dangerous in the extreme.
“What is this?” Nicholas frowned at the soldier. “What’s this about?”
The man started into the room, his legs moving in a most peculiar, stilted manner. In some ways it reminded Nicholas of how it must look when he used his own legs after not being in his body for a long spell. He stepped aside as the man walked woodenly into the center of the dim room and turned. Blood dripped from the hand that had been pounding against the door, but the man, his eyes still wide with fear, seemed not to notice what had to be painful injuries.
His voice, though, came out anything but afraid. “Where are they, Nicholas?”
Nicholas approached the man and cocked his head. “They?”
“You promised them to me, Nicholas. I don’t like it when people don’t keep their word. Where are they?”
Nicholas drew his brow down even farther, leaned in even more. “Who?”
“Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor!” the soldier bellowed in unrestrained rage.
Nicholas backed away a few paces. He understood, now. He had heard the stories, heard that the man could do such things. Now he was seeing it for himself.
This was Emperor Jagang, the dream walker himself.
“Remarkable,” Nicholas drawled. He approached the soldier who was not a soldier and tapped a finger against the side of the man’s head. “That you in there, Your Excellency?” He tapped the man’s temple again. “That’s you, isn’t it, Excellency.”
“Where are they, Nicholas?” It was as dangerous-sounding a question as Nicholas had ever heard.
?
??I told you that you would have them, and you shall.”
“I think you’re lying to me, Nicholas,” the voice growled. “I don’t think you have them, as you promised you would.”
Nicholas flipped a hand dismissively as he strolled off a few paces. “Oh, foo. I have them by a string.”
“I think otherwise. I have reason to believe that they aren’t down here at all. I have reason to believe that the Mother Confessor herself is far to the north…with her army.”
Nicholas frowned as he approached the man, leaning in close, peering into the eyes. “Do you completely lose your senses when you go cavorting into another man’s mind like that?”
“Are you saying it isn’t so?”
Nicholas was losing patience. “I was just watching them when you barged in here to pester me. They were both there—Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.”
“Are you sure?” came the deep gravelly voice out of the young soldier’s mouth.
Nicholas planted his fists on his hips. “Are you questioning me? How dare you! I am Nicholas the Slide. I will not be questioned by anyone!”
The soldier took an aggressive step forward.
Nicholas held his ground and lifted a finger in warning. “If you want them, then you had better be awfully careful.”
The soldier watched with wide eyes, but Nicholas could see more in those eyes: menace.