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"You get some sleep."
Nicci smiled as she nodded. "All right, Zedd." She gestured, pointing with her chin. "First I think we had better get down there to see who our guests are."
They were just coming out the big door of the Keep at the side entrance with the paddock when the riders came under the arched opening in the wall.
Tom and Friedrich were escorting Chase and Rachel. Rachel's hair was chopped short, rather than long the way it had been, and Chase looked to be in surprisingly good health for a man who had been stabbed with the Sword of Truth.
"Chase!" Zedd shouted. "You're alive!"
"Well, it's hard to ride a horse upright when you're dead."
Cara chuckled. Nicci glanced at her, wondering where the woman's sudden appreciation for humor had come from.
"Found them returning," Tom said. "First people we've seen out there in months."
"It was good to see Rachel back," Friedrich said. The older man regarded the girl with a grin, showing how much he really meant it.
Zedd caught Rachel as she slipped from the saddle while Cara took the reins of the horse.
"My, but you're getting heavy," Zedd told her.
"Chase rescued me," Rachel said. "He was so brave. You should have seen him. He killed a hundred men all by himself."
"A hundred! My, my, what an accomplishment."
"You stabbed one in the leg for me," Chase said as he swung down out of his saddle. "Otherwise I'd only have gotten ninety-nine."
Rachel kicked her legs, eager to be put down. "Zedd, I brought something important with me."
Once on the ground, she untied a leather bag hanging right behind her saddle. She brought it to the granite steps and set it down, then undid the drawstring.
When she pushed back the leather covering, darkness came out into the crisp late-autumn daylight. To Nicci, it felt like looking into the inky obscurity of Jagang's eyes.
"Rachel," Zedd said in astonishment, "where did you get this?"
"A man, Samuel, who had Richard's sword had it. He stabbed Chase and took me with him. Then he gave it to a witch woman named Six, and to Violet, the queen of Tamarang, though I don't think she's queen anymore.
"You can't believe how evil Six is."
"I think I can imagine," Zedd told her.
Having a little trouble following the story, he lifted the leather back a little for a better look inside.
Staring at one of the boxes of Orden sitting on the steps before her, Nicci felt as if her heart were in her throat. After the weeks and weeks of study of the book that went with the boxes, to actually see one was startling. Theory was one thing, but to see the reality of what this object represented was altogether something else.
"I couldn't let them have it," Rachel told Zedd. "So when I got a chance to escape I stole it and took it with me."
Zedd ruffled her chopped-off blond hair. "You did good, little one. I always knew you were special."
Rachel hugged the wizard around the neck. "Six made Violet draw pictures of Richard. It scared me to see what they were doing."
"In a cave?" Zedd asked. When Rachel nodded, he glanced up at Nicci. "That explains a lot."
Nicci took a step closer. "Was Richard there? Did you see him?"
Rachel shook her head. "No. Six left one day. When she finally came back she told Violet that she had been bringing him back, but the Imperial Order captured him."
"The Imperial Order…" Zedd said.
Nicci tried to imagine what was worse, the witch woman having Richard in her clutches, or the Imperial Order capturing him.
She guessed that what was the worst was Richard stripped of his gift, his sword, and being in the hands of the Order.
* * *
CHAPTER 56
Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself as she walked beside the emperor, his constant, compliant companion. It was not by choice, of course, but by force, whether applied or implied. At night she slept on the carpet beside his bed, a constant reminder of where she would end up. During the day she remained always at his side, like his dog on a leash. Her leash, though, was an iron collar with which he could bring her to heel at any time.
She could not imagine what could engender such hatred for her, what could have given rise to his burning need to bring punishment down on her for the sins he saw in all his enemies. Whatever she had done to earn his hatred, he deserved it.
When a gust of bitter cold wind ripped through the encampment, Kahlan hid the side of her face behind her cloak. Men turned their faces away from the blast of grit carried in the wind. With autumn rapidly drawing to an end, winter would soon be upon them. Kahlan didn't think it was going to be at all pleasant out on the open plain around the plateau that held the People's Palace, but she also knew that with this bone in his teeth, Jagang wasn't going to let it go for anything. He was nothing if not tenacious.
There was supposed to be another copy of The Book of Counted Shadows hidden somewhere within that plateau, and Jagang meant to have it.
Out on the Azrith Plain, the construction ground onward. It had been going on throughout the autumn, and she knew it would go on into winter, all winter if necessary, until it was complete. If, that was, the ground beneath them didn't freeze solid. Kahlan suspected that he had plans if that were to happen—probably fires, if needed, to keep the dirt thawed. She supposed, too, that if it remained dry, the ground could still be dug even if it was freezing.
There was no way to breach the great inner door into the plateau, and the road up the outside had quickly proven worthless for an attack by such vast numbers of men.
Jagang had a solution to the predicament.
He intended to construct a great, ramped road which would allow his army to march right up to the walls of t
he palace atop the plateau. He had told his officers that once they reached the walls, siege machines could be used to batter their way through the walls. First, though, they had to get up there.
To that end, out beyond the vast encampment, closer to the plateau, the army was constructing the ramp. The width of the ramp was staggering. They needed it wide for two reasons, both equally important. They needed a ramp wide enough to eventually support an assault massive enough that it couldn't be turned back by the defenders. Just as important, the plateau towered above the Azrith Plain. For the ramp to reach that height, the base had to be monumental lest the whole thing collapse. They had to, in essence, build a small mountain up against the plateau in order to reach the top. Tenacious, indeed.
The distance they had to their goal, from where they had started, was daunting. Because of the height, it required great length so that men and equipment could eventually be marched and rolled up the roadway they were building up to the very walls of the People's Palace.
It seemed at first to be a crazy idea, an impossible project, but what could be accomplished with millions of men who had nothing else to do and a driven emperor who cared nothing about their well-being was nothing short of astonishing. Every moment there was light, and sometimes by torchlight, long, snaking files of men either carried containers of dirt and rock to the site of the ever-growing ramp or dug up great mounds of supplies. Rock was mixed with the finer soil to make it stable. Other men had simple, weighted tampers to pack the new dirt as it was dumped.
Nearly all the men in the camp were engaged in the enterprise. Though the task was daunting, the progress made by so many men was continual. Inexorably, the ramp continued to grow. Of course, the higher it got, the longer it was going to take, because it would require so much more material.
