Naked Empire

Following the Sister, they walked past the standing row of wagons in front of the one that had brought them. There were well over a dozen freight wagons all lined up before the cordoned-off area with the larger tents. None of the wagons were empty, but all were loaded with crates.

With sinking realization, Zedd understood. These were wagons with goods looted from the Wizard's Keep. These were all wagons that had made the journey with them. They were all full of the things those ungifted men, at the Sister's orders, had taken out of the Keep. Zedd feared to think what priceless items of profound danger sat in these crates. There were things in the Keep that became hazardous to anyone should they be removed from the shields that guarded them. There were rare items that, if removed from their protective environment, such as darkness, for even a brief time, would cease to be viable.

Guards in layered hides, mail, leather, and armed with pikes set with long steel points flanked by sharpened winged blades, huge crescent axes, swords, and spiked maces prowled the restricted area. These grim soldiers were bigger and more menacing-looking than the regular men out in the camp-and those were fearsome enough. While the special guards patrolled, ever watchful, the unconcerned regular soldiers just outside the perimeter carried on with their business.

The guards led the Sister, Zedd, and Adie through an opening in a line of spiked barricades. Beyond were the smaller of the special tents. Most were round and the same size. Zedd thought that these were probably the tents of the staff the emperor would keep close, his attendants and personal slaves. Zedd wondered if the Sisters were all held within the emperor's compound.

Up ahead, the palatial vision of the grand tents of an emperor and his entourage rose up in the late-afternoon light. No doubt some of these comfortable tents set about the center compound, within the ring of tents for servants and attendants, were accommodations for high-ranking officers, officials, and the emperor's most trusted advisors.

Zedd wished he had a light spell and the ability to ignite it. He could probably decapitate the Imperial Order right then and there.

But he knew that such confusion and turmoil would only be a temporary setback for the Imperial Order. They would provide another brute to enforce their message. It would take more than killing Jagang to end the threat of the Order. He wasn't even sure anymore just what it would take to free the world of the oppression and tyranny of the Imperial Order.

Despite the seductively simplistic notions held by most people, the Emperor Jagang was not the driving force of this invasion. The driving force was a vicious ideology. To exist, it could not permit successful lives to be lived in sight of the suffering masses produced as a result of the beliefs and dictates of the Imperial Order. The freedom and resulting success of the people living in the New World put the lie to all the Order preached. It was blasphemy to succeed on your own; since the Order taught that it could not be done, it could only be sinful. Sin had to be eliminated for the greater good. Therefore, the freedom of the New World had to be crushed.

"These the ones?" a guard with short-cropped hair asked. The rings hanging from his nose and ears reminded Zedd of a prized pig decorated for the summer fair. Of course, prized pigs would have been washed and clean and would have smelled better.

"Yes," the Sister said. "Both of them, as instructed."

With deliberate care the man's dark-eyed gaze took in Adie and then Zedd. By his scowl, he apparently thought himself a righteous man who was displeased with what he saw: evil. After noting the collars they both wore, showing that they would be no danger to the emperor, he stepped aside and lifted a thumb, directing them through a second barricade beyond the tents of the attendants, servants, and slaves. The guard's glare followed the sinners on their way to meet their proper fate.

Other men, from inside the inner compound, swept in to surround them.

Zedd saw that these men wore more orderly outfits. They were layered in similar leather and mail, wearing heavy leather weapon belts, their chests crisscrossed with studded straps. There was a uniformity to them, a sameness, that showed these were special guards. The weapons hung on those wide belts were better made, and they carried more of them. By the way they moved, Zedd knew that these were not typical men rounded up to be soldiers, but trained men with highly developed talents for warfare.

These were the emperor's elite bodyguards.

Zedd looked longingly at the nearly full water bucket set out for the men standing guard in the heat. It wouldn't do, if you were an emperor, to have your elite guards falling over from lack of water. Knowing what the response was likely to be, Zedd didn't ask for a drink. A sidelong glance showed Adie licking her cracked lips, but she, too, remained silent.