Naked Empire (Sword of Truth 8)

“This is one of those times. Richard is getting sicker by the day. He’s dying. If he doesn’t get the antidote, he has no chance and will soon be dead. That’s the truth of the way things are.

“How can we let this chance slip away from us? There are no more opportunities after this. Our chances to save him will forever be lost. It will be the end. I don’t want to live without him. I don’t want the rest of our people to live without him.

“If I do this, then Richard will live. If Richard lives, then there will still be a chance for me, too. I can touch Nicholas with my power, or Richard and the rest of you can think of something to do to save me.

“But if Richard dies, then our chances end.”

“But, Mother Confessor,” Jennsen sobbed, “if you do this, then we’ll lose you….”

Kahlan looked to each face, her anger rising. “If any of you have a better idea, then put words to it. Otherwise, you are risking me losing the only chance left.”

No one had anything to say. Kahlan was the only one with a realistic plan of action. The rest of them had only wishes. Wishing would not save Richard.

Kahlan started out once again, hurrying her pace to get there in time.

Chapter 57

Kahlan paused in the quiet darkness not far from the bridge. She could just make out what appeared to be a burly man standing on the other side. He was all alone. She couldn’t see his face, or tell what he looked like. She scanned the far bank of the river, along with the trees and buildings she could make out in the moonlight, looking for soldiers, or anyone else.

Jennsen clutched her arm. “Kahlan…please.” Her voice was choked with tears.

Kahlan felt oddly calm. There were no options for her to weigh, so she suffered no gnawing indecision; there was only one choice. Richard lived, or he died. It was as simple as that. The choice was clear.

Her mind was made up, and with that came clarity and determination. She could now focus on what she was to do.

The river through the city was larger than Kahlan had expected. The steep banks to each side, in this area, anyway, were a few dozen feet high and lined with stone blocks. The bridge itself, wide enough for wagons to pass each other, had two arches to make the span and side rails with simple stone caps. The waters below were dark and swift. It was not a river she would want to have to try to swim.

Kahlan approached as far as the foot of the bridge and stopped. The man on the other side watched her.

“Do you have the antidote?” she called over to him.

He lifted what looked like a little bottle high above his head. He lowered the arm and pointed to the bridge. He wanted her to come across.

“Mother Confessor,” Owen pleaded, “won’t you reconsider?”

She gazed into his wet eyes. “Reconsider what? If I will have Richard live rather than let him succumb to the poison? If I will try to kill Nicholas in order to make it possible to defeat them and for your people to have a better chance to free themselves? How would I ever live with myself if Richard died without the antidote and I knew there was something I could have done that would have saved him and also have given me a chance to get close enough to Nicholas to eliminate him?

“I couldn’t live with myself if I failed to do this.

“We are fighting this war to stop people like this, people who bring death upon us, people who want us dead because they cannot stand that we live our lives as we wish, that we are successful and happy. These people hate life; they worship death. They demand that we do the same and join them in their misery.

“As Mother Confessor, I decreed vengeance without mercy against the Imperial Order. Changing from our course is suicide. I will not reconsider.”

“What would you have us tell Lord Rahl?” Tom asked.

She smiled. “That I love him, but he knows that.”

Kahlan unbuckled her sword belt and handed it to Jennsen. “Owen, come with me.”

Kahlan started out, but Jennsen threw her arms around her and hugged her fiercely. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “We’ll get the antidote to Richard, and then we’ll come back for you.”

Kahlan hugged Jennsen briefly, whispered her thanks, and then started onto the bridge. Owen walked at her side, saying nothing.

The man on the far side watched, but stayed where he was.

In the center of the bridge, Kahlan stopped. “Bring the bottle,” she called across.

“Come over here and you can have it.”

“If you want me, you will come to the center of the bridge and give the bottle to this man to take back, as Nicholas offered.”

The man stood for a time, as if considering. He looked like a soldier. He didn’t match the description of Nicholas that Owen had given her. Finally, he started onto the arch of the bridge. Owen whispered that it looked like the commander he had seen with Nicholas. Kahlan waited, watching the man walk through the moonlight. He wore a knife at one side and a sword at his other hip.

When he had almost reached her, he came to a halt and waited.

Kahlan held her hand out. “The note said we were to trade. Me for what Nicholas has.”

The man, his crooked nose flattened to the side, smiled. “So we were.”

“I am the Mother Confessor. Either give me the bottle or you die here, now.”

He pulled the square-sided bottle from his pocket and placed it in her hand. Kahlan saw that it was full of clear liquid. She pulled the cork and smelled it. It had the slight aroma of cinnamon, as had the other bottles of the antidote.

“He goes back with this,” Kahlan said to the grim-looking man as she handed Owen the bottle.

“And you come with me,” the man said as he grabbed her wrist. “Or we all die on this bridge. He may go, as agreed, but if you try to run you will die.”

Kahlan glanced to Owen. “Go,” she growled.

Owen looked over at the man with black hair, then back to her. He looked like he had a lot to say, but he nodded and then ran back over the bridge to where Tom and Jennsen stood waiting, watching.

When Owen reached the other two, the man said, “Let’s go, unless you’d like to die here.”

Kahlan yanked her arm back. When he turned and started out, she followed behind him as they crossed the rest of the way over the bridge. She scanned the shadows among the trees on the far side of the river, the thousand hiding places among buildings beyond, the streets in the distance. She didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t really make her feel any better.

Nicholas was there, somewhere, hiding in the darkness, waiting to have her.

Suddenly, the night lit up from behind. Kahlan spun and saw the bridge enveloped in a boiling ball of flame. The fire turned black as it billowed up. Stones sailed into the air above the inferno. As the luminous cloud rose, she could see the bridge beneath the roaring fireball crumpling. The arches caved in on themselves and the entire structure began the long drop into the river.

With icy dread, Kahlan wondered if there were any more bridges across the river. How would she get back to Richard if she succeeded? How was help going to get to her if she didn’t?

On the far side, Kahlan could see Tom, Jennsen, and Owen running back up the road toward where Richard slept. They were not about to waste time watching a bridge being destroyed. At the thought of Richard, Kahlan almost let out a sob.

The man unexpectedly shoved her. “Move.”

She glared at him, at his self-satisfied smile, at the smug confidence she saw in his eyes.

As she walked ahead of this man and he occasionally shoved her, Kahlan’s temper was on a low boil. She had the urge to use her power and take out the despicable brute, but she had to concentrate on the task at hand: Nicholas.

Walking up the street leading away from

the river, she was just able to make out soldiers hanging back in the shadows on the dark side streets, blocking every escape route. It didn’t matter. At the moment, she wasn’t interested in escape, but in her objective. The man behind her, as arrogantly as he was behaving, was also wary and treated her with cautious contempt.

The farther she walked into the city on the far side of the river, the closer the clusters of small buildings were packed together. Side streets of narrow twisting warrens ran off among the ramshackle structures. What trees there were grew crowded in close to the street. Their branches hung out over her like arms raised to snatch her in their claws. Kahlan tried not to think about how deep she was getting into enemy territory, and how many men were surrounding her.

The last time she had been surrounded and trapped by such savage men she had been beaten and had come perilously close to dying. Her unborn child had died. Her child. Richard’s child.

She had also lost a kind of innocence that day, a simplistic sense of her invincibility. In its place had come the understanding of how frail life was, how frail her own life was, and how easily it could be lost. She knew how much it had hurt Richard to fear he might lose her. She remembered the terrible agony in his eyes every time he had looked at her. It was completely different from the pain she saw in his eyes from his gift. It had been a helpless suffering for her. She hated the thought of that pain returning to haunt him.

From the shadows to the right side, a man stepped out from behind a building. He wore black robes, covered in layers of what looked like strips of cloth, almost as if he were covered in black feathers. They lifted in the breeze created by his stride, lending him an unsettling, floating fluidity as he moved.

His hair was slicked back with oils that glistened in the moonlight. Close-set, small black eyes rimmed in red peered out at her from an altogether unwholesome face. He held his wrists to his chest, as if he were holding back claws tipped with black fingernails.