Naked Empire

"His hand waved, dismissing the rest of us. The soldiers moved between the five people this man had pointed out and the rest of us. They started pushing us toward the door, but just then, before we could be ushered out, a commander with a nose that had been flattened to the side, as if from being broken repeatedly, came in and said that the messenger had arrived. The man with the black hair ran his black nails back through his black hair and told the commander to tell the messenger to wait, that by morning he would have the latest information.

"I was then led out and down the stairs along with the rest of the people. We were taken outside and told to go away, that our services wouldn't be needed. The soldiers laughed when they said this. I left with the others, so as not to make the men angry. The people all whispered about having seen the great man himself. I could think only of what the latest information might be.

"Later, after dark, I sneaked back, and in the rear of the building I discovered, behind a gate through a high wooden fence, a narrow alleyway. In the dark, I entered the alley and hid myself inside a doorway entrance to the back hall of the building. There were passageways beyond, and, in the candlelight, I recognized one passage as the place I had been earlier.

"It was late and there was no one in the halls. I moved deeper into the passageways. Rooms and recesses lined each side of the hall, but with the late hour no one came out. I sneaked up the stairs and crept to the big thick door to the room where I had been taken.

"It was there, in that dark hall before the big door, that I heard the most horrifying cries I have ever heard. People were begging and weeping for their lives, crying for mercy. One woman pleaded endlessly to be put to death to end her suffering.

"I thought I would vomit, or faint, but one thought kept me still and hidden, kept me from running as fast as my legs would carry me. That was the thought that this was the fate of all my people if I did not help them by bringing Lord Rahl.

"I stayed there all night, in a dark recess in a hall across from the big door, listening to those poor people in unimaginable agony. I don't know what the man was doing to them, but I thought I would die of sorrow for their slow suffering. The whole of the night, the moans of agony never ceased.

"I shivered in my hiding place, weeping, and told myself that it wasn't real, that I shouldn't be afraid of what was not real. I imagined the people's pain, but told myself that I was putting my imagination on top of my senses-the very thing I had been taught was wrong. I put my thoughts to Marilee, the times we had been together, and ignored the sounds that were not real. I could not know what was real, what these sounds really were.

"Early in the morning the commander I had seen before returned. I peeked carefully out from my dark hiding place. The man with the black hair came to the door. I knew it was him because when his arm came out of the room to hand the man a scrolled paper, I saw his black fingernails.

"The man with the black hair said to the commander with the flattened, crooked nose, he called him 'Najari, that he had found them. That's what he said-'them. Then he said, 'They've made it to the east edge of the wasteland and are now heading north. He told the man to give the messenger the orders right away. Najari said, 'Shouldn't be long, then, Nicholas, and you will have them and we'll have the power to name our price. »

CHAPTER 25

Richard spun around. "Nicholas? You heard him say that name?"

Owen blinked in surprise. "Yes. I'm sure of it. He said Nicholas."

Kahlan felt a weary hopelessness settle over her, like the cold, wet mist.

Richard gestured urgently. "Go on."

"Well, I wasn't sure that they were talking about you-about the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor-when the commander said 'them, but by the grim excitement in their voices I had the impression that it was so. Their voices reminded me of the first time the Order came, at the way Luchan smiled at me in a way I had never seen before, like he might eat me.

"I thought that this information was my best chance to find you. So I started out at once."

Borne on a light gust, drizzle replaced the morning mist. Kahlan realized that she was shivering with the cold.

Richard pointed at the man sitting on the ground not far away, the man with the notch in his right ear, the man Kahlan had touched. Some of the storm within Richard boiled to the surface.

"There is the man the orders from Nicholas were sent to. He brought with him those men you saw at our last camp. Had we not defended ourselves, had we put our own sincere hatred of violence above the nature of reality, we would be as lost as Marilee."

Owen stared at the man. "What is his name?"