Naked Empire

The statue was not all amber, though, as Kahlan's had been. Near the middle, obscuring the narrowing where the sand dribbled through, the translucent amber of the bottom began darkening. The higher up the figure, the darker it became.

The top-the shoulders and head-were as black as a night stone.

A night stone was an underworld thing, and Richard remembered all too well what that wicked object had looked like. The top of the statue looked to be made of the same sinister material, all glossy and smooth and so black that it looked as if it might suck the light right out of the day.

Richard's heart sank at seeing himself represented in such a way, as a talisman touched by death.

"She made it," Owen said, shaking an accusatorial finger at Jennsen still sheltered under Richard's right arm. "She made it with magic. I told you she could. She spun it of evil magic back in that cave when she wasn't thinking. The magic took over and came out of her, then, when she wasn't thinking about how she couldn't do magic."

Owen didn't have any idea what he was talking about. This was not a statue Jennsen made.

This was the second warning beacon, meant to warn the one who could seal the breach.

"Lord Rahl…"

Richard looked up. It was Cara's voice.

She was standing off a ways, her back to them, looking up at a small spot of sky off through the trees. Jennsen turned in his arms to see what had put the odd tone in Cara's voice. Holding his sister close, he stepped up behind Cara and peered up through the trees where she was looking.

Through a thin area in the canopy of pine, he could see the rim of the mountain pass above them. Silhouetted against iron gray clouds stealing past was something man-made.

It looked like a huge statue sitting atop the pass.

CHAPTER 34

Icy wind tore at Richard's and Kahlan's clothes as they huddled close together at the edge of a thick stand of spruce trees. Low, ragged clouds raced by as if to escape the colossal, dark, swirling clouds building above them. Fat flakes of snow danced in the cold gusts. Richard's ears burned in the numbing cold.

"What do you think?" Kahlan asked.

Richard shook his head. "I don't know." He glanced behind them, back into the shelter of the trees. "Owen, are you sure you don't know what it is? You don't have any idea at all?"

The roiling clouds made an ominous backdrop for the imposing statue sitting up on the ridge.

"No, Lord Rahl. I've never been here before; none of us ever traveled this route. I don't know what it could be. Unless.. " His words trailed off into the moan of the wind.

"Unless what?"

Owen shrank back, twisting the button on his coat as he glanced to the Mord-Sith on one side of him and Tom and Jennsen on the other. "There is a foretelling-from the ones who gave us our name and protected us by sealing the pass. It is taught that when they gave our empire its name, they also told us that one day a savior would come to us."

Richard wanted to ask the man just what exactly it was he thought they needed saving from-if they had lived in such an enlightened culture where they were safe from the unenlightened «savages» of the rest of the world.

Instead, he asked a simpler question he thought Owen might be able to answer.

"So you think that maybe that's a statue of him, your savior?"

Owen fidgeted, his shoulders finally working into a shrug. "He is not just a savior. The foretelling also says that he will destroy us."

Richard frowned at the man, hoping this was not going to be another of his convoluted beliefs. "This savior of yours is going to destroy you. That makes no sense."

Owen was quick to agree. "I know. No one understands it."

"Maybe it's meant to say that someone will come to save your people,"

Jennsen suggested, "but he will fail and so only end up destroying them in the attempt."

"Maybe." Owen's face twisted with the displeasure of having to contemplate such an outcome.

"Maybe," Cara suggested in a grim tone, "it means this man will come, and after seeing your people, decide they aren't worth saving"- she leaned toward Owen-"and decide to destroy them instead."

Owen, as he stared up at Cara, seemed to be considering her words as a real possibility, rather than the sarcasm Richard knew them to be.

"I don't think that is the meaning," Owen finally told her after earnest consideration. He turned back to Richard. "The foretelling, as it has been taught to us, you see, says, first, that a man will come who will destroy us. It then goes on to say that he is the one who will save us.

'Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you, " Owen quoted. "That is how we have been taught the words, how they were told to my people when we were put here, beyond this pass."

" 'Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you, " Richard repeated. He took a patient breath. "Whatever it originally said has probably been confused and all jumbled up as it's been passed down. It probably no longer resembles the original saying."