Goodkind, Terry - Sword of Truth 08 - Naked Empire

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2024-12-05 0 0 1.05MB 733 页 5.9玖币
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NAKED EMPIRE - Terry Goodkind
CHAPTER1
You knew they were there, didn't you?" Kahlan
asked in a hushed tone as she leaned closer.
Against the darkening sky, she could just make
out the shapes of three black-tipped races taking
to wing, beginning their nightly hunt. That was why
he'd stopped. That was what he'd been watching as
the rest of them waited in uneasy silence.
"Yes," Richard said. He gestured over his
shoulder without turning to look. "There are two
more, back there."
Kahlan briefly scanned the dark jumble of rock,
but she didn't see any others.
Lightly grasping the silver pommel with two
fingers, Richard lifted his sword a few inches,
checking that it was clear in its scabbard. A last
fleeting glimmer of amber light played across his
golden cape as he let the sword drop back in place.
In the gathering gloom of dusk, his familiar tall,
powerful contour seemed as if it were no more than
an apparition made of shadows.
Just then, two more of the huge birds shot by
right overhead. One, wings stretched wide, let out
a piercing scream as it banked into a tight gliding
turn, circling once in assessment of the five
people below before stroking its powerful wings to
catch its departing comrades in their swift journey
west.
This night they would find ample food.
Kahlan expected that as Richard watched them he
was thinking of the half brother that until just
recently he hadn't known existed. That brother now
lay a hard day's travel to the west in a place so
naked to the burning sun that few people ever
ventured there. Fewer still ever returned. The
searing heat, though, had not been the worst of it.
Beyond those desolate lowlands, the dying light
silhouetted a remote rim of mountains, making them
look as if they had been charred black by the
furnace of the underworld itself. As dark as those
mountains, as implacable, as perilous, the flight
of five pursued the departing light.
Jennsen, standing to the far side of Richard,
watched in astonishment. "What in the world ... ?"
"Black-tipped races," Richard said.
Jennsen mulled over the unfamiliar name. "I've
often watched hawks and falcons and such," she said
at last, "but I've never seen any birds of prey
that hunt at night, other than owls---and these
aren't owls."
As Richard watched the races, he idly gathered
small pebbles from the crumbling jut of rock beside
him, rattling them in a loose fist. "I'd never seen
them before, either, until I came down here. People
we've spoken with say they began appearing only in
the last year or two, depending on who's telling
the story. Everyone agrees, though, that they never
saw the races before then."
"Last couple of years ..." Jennsen wondered aloud.
Almost against her will, Kahlan found herself
recalling the stories they'd heard, the rumors, the
whispered assertions.
Richard cast the pebbles back down the hardpan
trail. "I believe they're related to falcons."
Jennsen finally crouched to comfort her brown
goat, Betty, pressing up against her skirts. "They
can't be falcons." Betty's little white twins,
usually either capering, suckling, or sleeping, now
huddled mute beneath their mother's round belly.
"They're too big to be falcons— they're bigger than
hawks, bigger than golden eagles. No falcon is that
big."
Richard finally withdrew his glare from the
birds and bent to help console the trembling twins.
One, eager for reassurance, anxiously peered up at
him, licking out its little pink tongue before
deciding to rest a tiny black hoof in his palm.
With a thumb, Richard stroked the kids spindly
white-haired leg.
A smile softened his features as well as his voice.
"Are you saying you choose not to see what you've
just seen, then?"
Jennsen smoothed Betty's drooping ears. "I
guess the hair standing on end at the back of my
neck must believe what I saw."
Richard rested his forearm across his knee as
he glanced toward the grim horizon. "The races
have sleek bodies with round heads and long pointed
wings similar to all the falcons I've seen. Their
tails often fan out when they soar but otherwise
are narrow in flight."
Jennsen nodded, seeming to recognize his
description of relevant attributes. To Kahlan, a
bird was a bird. These, though, with red streaks on
their chests and crimson at the base of their
flight feathers, she had come to recognize.
They're fast, powerful, and aggressive," Richard
added. "I saw one easily chase down a prairie
falcon and snatch it out of midair in its taons."
Jennsen looked to be struck speechless by such
an account. Richard had grown up in the vast
forests of Westland and had gone on to be a woods
guide. He knew a great deal about the outdoors and
about animals. Such an upbringing seemed exotic to
Kahlan, who had grown up in a palace in the
Midlands. She loved learning about nature from
Richard, loved sharing his excitement over the
wonders of the world, of life. Of course, he had
long since come to be more than a woods guide. It
seemed a lifetime ago when she'd first met him in
those woods of his, but in fact it had only been
little more than two and a half years.
Now they were a long way from Richard's simple
boyhood home or Kahlan's grand childhood haunts.
Had they a choice, they would choose to be in
either place, or just about anywhere else, other
than where they were. But at least they were
together.
After all she and Richard had been through—the
dangers, the anguish,the heartache of losing
friends and loved ones—Kahlan jealously savored
every moment with him, even if it was in the heart
of enemy territory.
In addition to only just finding out that he had a
half brother, they had also learned that Richard
had a half sister: Jennsen. From what they had
gathered since they'd met her the day before, she,
too, had grown up in the woods. It was heartwarming
to see her simple and sincere joy at having
discovered a close relation with whom she had much
in common. Only her fascination with her new big
brother exceeded Jennsen's wide-eyed curiosity
about Kahlan and her mysterious upbringing in the
Confessors' Palace in the far-off city of
Aydindril.
Jennsen had had a different mother than Richard,
but the same brutal tyrant, Darken Rahl, had
fathered them both. Jennsen was younger, just past
twenty, with sky blue eyes and ringlets of red hair
down onto her shoulders. She had inherited some of
Darken Rahl's cruelly perfect features, but her
maternal heritage and guileless nature altered them
into bewitching femininity. While Richard's raptor
gaze attested to his Rahl paternity, his
countenance, and his bearing, so manifest in his
gray eyes, were uniquely his own.
"I've seen falcons rip apart small animals,"
Jennsen said. "I don't believe I much like thinking
about a falcon that big, much less five of them
together."
Her goat, Betty, looked to share the sentiment.
"We take turns standing watch at night," Kahlan
said, answering Jennsen's unspoken fear. While that
was hardly the only reason, it was enough.
In the eerie silence, withering waves of heat
rose from the lifeless rock all around. It had been
an arduous day's journey out from the center of the
valley wasteland and across the surrounding flat
plain, but none of them complained about the brutal
pace. The torturous heat, though, had left Kahlan
with a pounding headache. While she was dead tired,
she knew that in recent days Richard had gotten far
less sleep than any of the rest of them. She could
read that exhaustion in his eyes, if not in his
stride.
Kahlan realized, then, what it was that had her
nerves so on edge: it was the silence. There were
no yips of coyotes, no howls of distant wolves, no
flutter of bats, no rustle of a raccoon, no soft
scramble of a vole—not even the buzz and chirp of
insects. In the past, when all those things went
silent it had meant potential danger. Here, it was
dead silent because nothing lived in this place, no
coyotes or wolves or bats or mice or even bugs. Few
living things ever trespassed this barren land.
Here, the night was as soundless as the stars.
Despite the heat, the oppressive silence ran a
chill shiver up through Kahlan's shoulders.
She peered off once more at the races barely
still visible against the violet blush of the
western sky. They, too, would not stay long in this
wasteland where they did not belong.
"Kind of unnerving to encounter such a menacing
creature when you never even knew such a thing
existed," Jennsen said. She used her sleeve to wipe
sweat from her brow as she changed the subject.
"I've heard it said that a bird of prey wheeling
over you at the beginning of a journey is a
warning."
Cara, until then content to remain silent,
leaned in past Kahlan. "Just let me get close
enough and I'll pluck their wretched feathers."
Long blond hair, pulled back into the traditional
single braid of her profession, framed Cara's
heated expression. "We'll see how much of an omen
they are, then."
Cara's glare turned as dark as the races
whenever she saw the huge birds. Being swathed from
head to foot in a protective layer of gauzy black
cloth, as were all of them except Richard, only
added to her intimidating presence. When Richard
had unexpectedly inherited rule, he had been
further surprised to discover that Cara and her
sister Mord-Sith were part of the legacy.
Richard returned the little white kid to its
watchful mother and stood, hooking his thumbs
behind his multilayered leather belt. At each
wrist, wide, leather-padded silver bands bearing
linked rings and strange symbols seemed to gather
and reflect what little light remained. "I once had
a hawk circle over me at the beginning of a
journey."
"And what happened?" Jennsen asked, earnestly,
as if his pronouncement might settle once and for
all the old superstition.
Richard's smile widened into a grin. "I ended up
marrying Kahlan."
Cara folded her arms. "That only proves it was a
warning for the Mother Confessor, not you, Lord
Rahl."
Richard's arm gently encircled Kahlan's waist.
She smiled with him as she leaned against his
embrace in answer to the wordless gesture. That
that journey had eventually brought them to be
husband and wife seemed more astonishing than
anything she would ever have dared dream. Women
like her—Confessors—dared not dream of love.
Because of Richard, she had dared and had gained
it.
Kahlan shuddered to think of the terrible times
she had feared he was dead, or worse. There had
been so many times she had ached to be with him, to
simply feel his warm touch, or to even be granted
the mercy of knowing he was safe.
Jennsen glanced at Richard and Kahlan to see
that neither took Cara's admonition as anything but
fond heckling. Kahlan supposed that to a stranger,
especially one from the land of D'Hara, as was
Jennsen, Cara's gibes at Richard would defy reason;
guards did not bait their masters, especially when
their master was the Lord Rahl, the master of
D'Hara.
Protecting the Lord Rahl with their lives had
always been the blind duty of the Mord-Sith. In a
perverse way, Cara's irreverence toward Richard was
a celebration of her freedom, paid in homage to the
one who had granted it.
By free choice, the Mord-Sith had decided to be
Richard's closest protectors. They had given
Richard no say in the matter. They often paid
little heed to his orders unless they deemed them
important enough; they were, after all, now free to
pursue what was important to them, and what the
Mord-Sith considered important above all else was
keeping Richard safe.
Over time, Cara, their ever-present bodyguard,
had gradually become like family. Now that family
had unexpectedly grown.
Jennsen, for her part, was awestruck to find
herself welcomed. From what they had so far
learned, Jennsen had grown up in hiding, always
fearful that the former Lord Rahl, her father,
would finally find her and murder her as he
murdered any other ungifted offspring he found.
Richard signaled to Tom and Friedrich, back with
the wagon and horses, that they would stop for the
night. Tom lifted an arm in acknowledgment and then
set to unhitching his team.
No longer able to see the races in the dark void
of the western sky, Jennsen turned back to Richard.
"I take it their feathers are tipped in black."
Before Richard had a chance to answer, Cara spoke
in a silken voice that was pure menace. "They look
like death itself drips from the tips of their
feathers—like the Keeper of the underworld has been
using their wicked quills to write death warrants."
Cara loathed seeing those birds anywhere near
Richard or Kahlan. Kahlan shared the sentiment.
Jennsen's gaze fled Cara's heated expression.
She redirected her suspicion to Richard.
"Are they causing you ... some kind of trouble?"
Kahlan pressed a fist to her abdomen, against
the ache of dread stirred by the question.
Richard appraised Jennsen's troubled eyes. "The
races are tracking us."
CHAPTER 2
Jennsen frowned. "What?"
Richard gestured between Kahlan and himself.
"The races, they're tracking us."
"You mean they followed you out into this
wasteland and they're watching you, waiting to see
if you'll die of thirst or something so they can
pick your bones clean."
Richard slowly shook his head. "No, I mean
they're following us, keeping track of where we
are."
"I don't understand how you can possibly know—"
"We know," Cara snapped. Her shapely form was as
spare, as sleek, as aggressive-looking as the races
themselves and, swathed in the black garb of the
nomadic people who sometimes traveled the outer
fringes of the vast desert, just as sinister-
looking.
With the back of his hand against her shoulder,
Richard gently eased Cara back as he went on. "We
were looking into it when Friedrich found us and
told us about you."
Jennsen glanced over at the two men back with
the wagon. The sharp sliver of moon floating above
the black drape of distant mountains provided just
enough light for Kahlan to see that Tom was working
at removing the trace chains from his big draft
horses while Friedrich unsaddled the others.
Jennsen's gaze returned to search Richard's
eyes. "What have you been able to find out, so
far?"
"We never had a chance to really find out much
of anything. Oba, our surprise half brother lying
dead back there, kind of diverted our attention
when he tried to kill us." Richard unhooked a
waterskin from his belt. "But the races are still
watching us."
He handed Kahlan his waterskin, since she had
left hers hanging on her saddle. It had been hours
since they had last stopped. She was tired from
riding and weary from walking when they had needed
to rest the horses.
Kahlan lifted the waterskin to her lips only to
be reacquainted with how bad hot water tasted. At
least they had water. Without water, death came
quickly in the unrelenting heat of the seemingly
endless, barren expanse around the forsaken place
called the Pillars of Creation.
Jennsen slipped the strap of her waterskin off
her shoulder before hesitantly starting again. "I
know it's easy to misconstrue things. Look at how I
was tricked into thinking you wanted to kill me
just like Darken Rahl had. I really believed it,
and there were so many things that seemed to me to
prove it, but I had it all wrong. I guess I was
just so afraid it was true, I believed it."
Richard and Kahlan both knew it hadn't been
Jennsen's doing—she had merely been a means for
others to get at Richard—but it had squandered
precious time.
Jennsen took a long drink. Still grimacing at
the taste of the water, she lifted the waterskin
toward the empty desert behind them. "I mean, there
isn't much alive out here—it might actually be that
the races are hungry and are simply waiting to see
if you die out here and, because they do keep
watching and waiting, you've begun to think it's
more." she gave Richard a demure glance, bolstered
by a smile, as if hoping to-cloak the admonishment
as a suggestion. "Maybe that's all it really is."
"They aren't waiting to see if we die out here,"
Kahlan said, wanting to end the discussion so they
could eat and Richard could get some sleep. "They
were watching us before we had to come here.
They've been watching us since we were back in the
forests to the northeast. Vow, let's have some
supper and—"
"But why? That's not the way birds behave. Why
would they do that?"
"I think they're keeping track of us for
someone," Richard said. "More precisely, I think
someone is using them to hunt us."
Kahlan had known various people in the Midlands,
from simple people living in the wilds to nobles
living in great cities, who hunted with falcons.
This, though, was different. Even if she didn't
fully understand Richard's meaning, much less the
reasons for his conviction, she knew he hadn't
meant it in the traditional sense.
With abrupt realization, Jennsen paused in the
middle of another drink. "That's why you've started
scattering pebbles along the windblown places in
the trail."
Richard smiled in confirmation. He took his
waterskin when Kahlan handed it back. Cara frowned
up at him as he took a long drink.
"You've been throwing pebbles along the trail?
Why?"
Jennsen eagerly answered in his place. "The open
rock gets blown clean by the wind. He's been making
sure that if anyone tries to sneak up on us in the
dark, the pebbles strewn across those open patches
will crunch underfoot and alert us."
摘要：

NAKEDEMPIRE-TerryGoodkindCHAPTER1Youknewtheywerethere,didn'tyou?"Kahlanaskedinahushedtoneassheleanedcloser.Againstthedarkeningsky,shecouldjustmakeouttheshapesofthreeblack-tippedracestakingtowing,beginningtheirnightlyhunt.Thatwaswhyhe'dstopped.Thatwaswhathe'dbeenwatchingastherestofthemwaitedinuneasys...

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