Naked Empire

Pain. A scream. Shock, terror, confusion raged through him. He felt the wind, the wind that carried him so effortlessly, now ripping at him like fists snatching at feathers as he tumbled in helpless pain.

One of the five falling at blinding speed smacked the ground.

Nicholas screamed. One of the five spirits had been lost with its host.

Back somewhere distant, in some far-off room with wooden walls and shutters and bloody stakes, back, back, back in another place he had almost forgotten existed, back, back, back far away, a spirit was ripped from his control.

One of the five back there had died at the same instant the race had crashed to the ground.

Scream of hot pain. Another tumbled out of control. Another spirit escaped his grasp into the waiting arms of death.

Nicholas struggled to see in the confusion, forcing the remaining three to hold his vision in place so he could see. Hunt, hunt, hunt. Where was he?

Where was he? Where? He saw the others. Where was Lord Rahl?

A third scream.

Where was he? Nicholas fought to hold his vision despite the hot agony, the bewildering plummet.

Pain ripped through a fourth.

Before he could gather his senses, hold them together, force them with the power of his will to do his bidding, two more spirits were yanked away into the void of the underworld.

Where was he?

Talons at the ready, Nicholas searched.

There! There!

With violent effort, he forced the race over into a dive. There he was!

There he was! Up high. Higher than the rest. Somehow up high. Up on a ledge of rock above the rest. He wasn't down there with them. He was up high.

Dive for him. Dive down for him.

There he was, bow drawn.

Ripping pain tore through the last race. The ground rushed up at him.

Nicholas cried out. He tried frantically to stop the spinning. He felt the race slam into the rock at frightening speed. But only for an instant.

With a gasp, Nicholas drew a desperate breath. His head spun with the burning torture of the abrupt return, an uncontrolled return not of his doing.

He blinked, his mouth open wide in an attempt to let out a cry, but no sound came. His eyes bulged with the effort, but no cry came. He was back.

Whether or not he wanted to be, he was back.

He looked around at the room. He was back, that was the reason no cry came. No screech of a race joined his own. They were dead. All five.

Nicholas turned to the four impaled on stakes behind him. All four were slumped. The fifth man lay slouched in the far corner. All five limp and still. All five dead. Their spirits gone.

The room was as silent as a crypt. The bowl before him glowed only with the fragment of his own spirit. He drew it back in.

He sat in the stillness for a long time, waiting for his head to stop spinning. It had been a shock to be in a creature as it was killed-to have a spirit of a person in him as they died. As five of them died. It had been a surprise.

Lord Rahl was a surprising man. Nicholas hadn't thought, back that first time, that he would be able to get all five. He had thought it was luck. A second time was not luck. Lord Rahl was a surprising man.

Nicholas could cast his spirit out again if he wanted, seek out new eyes, but his head hurt and he didn't feel up to it; besides, it didn't matter. Lord Rahl was coming west. He was coming to the great empire of Bandakar.

Nicholas owned Bandakar.

The people here revered him.

Nicholas smiled. Lord Rahl was coming. He would be surprised at the kind of man he found when he arrived. Lord Rahl probably thought he knew all manner of men.

He did not know Nicholas the Slide.

Nicholas the Slide, who would be emperor of D'Hara when he gave Jagang the prizes he sought most: the dead body of Lord Rahl, and the living body of the Mother Confessor.

Jagang would have them both for himself.

And in return, Nicholas would have their empire.

CHAPTER 29

Ann heard the distant echo of footsteps coming down the long, empty, dark corridor outside the far door to her forgotten vault under the People's Palace, the seat of power in D'Hara. She was no longer sure if it was day or night. She'd lost track of time as she sat in the silent darkness. She saved the lamp for times when they brought food, or the times she wrote to Verna in the journey book. Or the times she felt so alone that she needed the company of a small flame, if nothing else.

In this place, within this spell of a palace for those born Rahl, her power was so diminished that it was all she could do to light that lamp.

She feared to use the little lamp too often and run out of oil; she didn't know if they would give her more. She didn't want to run out and only then find they would give her no more. She didn't want not to have at least the possibility of that small flame, that small gift of light.