Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Richard swallowed a mouthful of egg before he answered. "Probably. But I'd rather be playing a game and get warm than sit here freezing all day."

"I suppose," Johnrock said.

"Besides," Richard told him, "the sooner we can start defeating the teams come for the tournaments, the sooner we work our way up in the standings, and the sooner we get to play the emperor's team." Johnrock grinned at that prospect.

Richard was starving, but he forced himself to slow down and savor the meal. As they peeled shells and ate in silence, he kept an eye on the activity in the distance. Even in the rain, men were busy at every sort of work. The sound of hammers at forges rang through the drone of rain and clamor of conversation, yelling, arguing, laughing, and orders being shouted.

The vast encampment spread across the flat Azrith Plain to what Richard could see of the horizon. Sitting on the ground it was hard to see a great deal of the larger camp out beyond. He could see wagons and a little farther away the larger tents in the middle distance. Horses rode past while wagons pulled by mules made their way through the milling masses. Men on foot, looking miserable in the rain, stood in lines waiting for food at cook tents.

In the distance the People's Palace, sitting on a high plateau, towered over everything. Even in the murk of the gray day, the magnificent stone walls, grand towers, and tiled roofs of the palace stood out above the grimy army come to destroy it. With the steamy vapor rising from the Imperial Order camp, along with the rain and the overcast, the plateau and the palace atop it looked like a distant, noble apparition. There were times when cloud and mist drew across like a curtain and the entire plateau vanished in the gray gloom, as if it had seen enough of the seething horde come to defile it.

There was no easy way for any enemy to attack the palace high on the plateau. The road up the side of the cliff walls was far too narrow for any kind of meaningful assault. Besides that, there was a drawbridge that Richard was certain would have already been raised and, even if it weren't, there were massive walls at the top that were formidable in their own right and little space outside of them to gather any sizable assault force.

Except in times of war, the People's Palace drew commerce from all over D'Hara. Supplies for all the people living there were constantly being brought in. Because it was a trade center, great numbers of people came to the palace to buy and sell goods. For all those people, the primary way up to the city palace was through the inside of the plateau itself. Stairs and walkways accommodated the large number of visitors and vendors. There were also wide ramps for horses and wagons. Because so many people traveled up the inside of the plateau, there were shops and stands all along the way. Large numbers of people came for those market stands and never made the journey all the way up to the city at the top.

The entire inside of the plateau was honeycombed with rooms of every sort. Some of the interior spaces were public, but some were not. There were large numbers of soldiers of the First File-the palace guard- barracked there.

The problem, from the perspective of the Imperial Order, was that the great doors to those inner access areas were closed. Those doors had been made to stand against any kind of attack, and there were enough supplies stored inside for a long siege.

Outside, the Azrith Plain was not at all a hospitable place for forces to gather for a siege. While deep wells inside the plateau provided water for the inhabitants, outside on the Azrith Plain there was no steady supply of water nearby, except the occasional rain, and there was no close source of firewood. On top of that, the weather out on the plain was harsh.

The Imperial Order did have plenty of gifted with them, but they couldn't be much help in breaching the palace defenses. The very construction of the palace was in the form of a protection spell that magnified the power of the ruling Lord Rahl while at the same time hindering the power of others. Inside that plateau, and in the city atop it, the ability of any gifted but a Rahl was severely blunted by that spell.

Because he was a Rahl, such a spell would ordinarily be a benefit for Richard, if it were not for the fact that he had somehow been cut off from his gift. He was pretty sure how that had been accomplished. Chained to a wagon, in the middle of an enemy force numbering in the millions, though, he couldn't do a whole lot about it.