Naked Empire

His laugh died out, but the grin remained. "Well, you do, anyway. I'll be a good host and listen."

Zedd and Adie remained silent as Jagang's black-eyed gaze went from one to the other.

"Not so talkative, just yet? Well, no matter. You will be babbling soon enough."

Zedd didn't waste the effort telling Jagang that torture would gain him nothing. Jagang would not believe any such boast, and even if he did, it would hardly stay his wish to see it done.

Jagang fingered a few grapes from a bowl. "You are a resourceful man, Wizard Zorander." He popped several grapes in his mouth and chewed as he spoke. "All alone there in Aydindril, with an army surrounding you, you managed to gull me into thinking I had trapped Richard Rahl and the Mother.

Confessor. Quite a trick. I must give you credit where credit is due.

"And the light spell you ignited among my men, that was remarkable." He put another grape in his mouth. "Do you have any idea how many hundreds of thousands of them were caught up in your wizardry?"

Zedd could see the corded muscles in the man's hairy arm draped over the back of the chair stand out as he flexed the fist. He relaxed the hand then and leaned forward, using his thumb to gouge out a long chunk of ham.

He waved the meat as he went on. "It's that kind of magic I need you to do for me, good wizard. I understand, from the stupid bitches I have who call themselves the Sisters of the Light, or the Sisters of the Dark, depending on who they've decided can offer better favors in the afterlife, that you probably didn't conjure that little bit of magic on your own, but, rather, you used a constructed spell from the Wizard's Keep and simply ignited it among my men with some kind of trick, or trigger-probably some small curiosity that one of them picked up and in the act of having a look, they set it off."

Zedd was somewhat alarmed that Jagang had been able to learn so much.

The emperor took a big bite off the end of the piece of ham as he watched them. His indulgent look was beginning to wear thin.

"So, since you can't do such marvelous magic yourself, I've had a few items brought from the Keep so you can tell me how they work, what they do.

I'm sure there must be a great number of intriguing items among the inventory. I'd like to have some of those conjured spells so they can blow open a few of the passes into D'Hara for us. It would save me some time and trouble. I'm sure you can understand my eagerness to be into D'Hara and have this petty resistance finally over with."

Zedd heaved a deep breath and finally spoke. "For most of those items, you could torture me to the end of time and I still wouldn't be able to tell you anything because I don't have any knowledge of them. Unlike you, I know my own limits. I simply don't know what such a spell might look like. Even if I did, that doesn't mean I would know how to work it. I was simply lucky with that one I used."

"Maybe, maybe, but you do know about some of the items. You are, after all, as I hear told, First Wizard; it is your Keep. To claim ignorance of the things in it is hardly credible. Despite your claim of luck, you managed to know enough about that constructed light web to ignite it among my men, so you obviously have knowledge about the most powerful of the items."

"You don't know the first thing about magic," Zedd snapped. "You have a head full of grand ideas and you think all you have to do is command they be done. Well, they can't. You're a fool who doesn't know the first thing about real magic or its limits."

An eyebrow lifted over one of Jagang's inky eyes. "Oh, I think I know more than you might think, wizard. You see, I love to read, and I, well, I have the advantage of perusing some of the most remarkably gifted minds you can imagine. I probably know a great deal more about magic than you give me credit for."

"I give you credit for bold self-delusion."

"Self-delusion?" He spread his arms. "Can you create a Slide, Wizard Zorander?"

Zedd froze. Jagang had heard the name; that was all. The man liked to read. He'd read that name somewhere.

"Of course not, and neither can anyone else alive today."

"You can't create such a being, Wizard Zorander. But you have no idea how much I know about magic. You see, I've learned to bring lost talents back to life-arts that have long been believed to be dead and vanished."

"I give you the grandiosity of your dreaming, Jagang, but dreaming is easy. Your dreams can't be made real just because you dream them and decide that you wish them to come alive."

"Sister Tahirah, here, knows the truth of it." Jagang gestured with his knife. "Tell him, darlin. Tell him what I can dream and what I can bring to life."