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CHAPTER 40
Richard peered out from under the canvas tarp as the wagon rolled through the outer fringes of the Order’s camp. Every time a gust of wind buffeted the wagon he had to keep a good hold on the tarp to keep it down. The towering monstrosity of the ramp loomed overhead. Up this close he could see just how immense it had already become. It didn’t seem a false hope that it could eventually reach the palace at the top of the plateau.
After Adie had used her gift to help them make it through the fighting around the Ja’La field, it had been a relatively uneventful journey across the rest of the vast Imperial Order encampment. Regular soldiers wanted nothing to do with the potential trouble offered by a small wagon escorted by what appeared to be a high-ranking royal guard and a Sister. Men mostly ignored them as they passed.
The riot, as large as it was, had primarily been confined to the spectators at the Ja’La match. While it seemed that perhaps hundreds of thousands of men were involved in the fight over the outcome of the game, and it was a vast, gruesome bloodbath, the trouble was still limited to a fraction of the encampment. In much of the rest of the camp commanders had rushed armed men in to clamp down on movement and contain the trouble.
Despite that effort, the turmoil had spread to a certain extent. Most of these men had not joined a struggle to be cold, hungry, and spend their lives digging dirt. They were becoming resentful of having to work at menial labor rather than being about the business of murder, rape, and plunder. Waiting for the prospect of conquest was one thing, but now the remaining spoils looked rather limited and the work of getting to them was considerable. It seemed that self-sacrifice for the cause of the Order had its limits. The line appeared to have been drawn at actually having to work.
Authorities, though, were not only quick but brutal in crushing pockets of trouble as they broke out. As unhappy as many of the men were with their conditions, when they saw what happened to some of those who stirred up unrest, they lost the stomach to join in.
Several times General Meiffert had had to bluff his way through groups of men. Once his bluster had needed to be reinforced by killing a man with a swift slash across the side of his neck. Other times Adie had quietly used her powers to ease their way through potential trouble. Having the soldiers think she was one of Jagang’s Sisters ended a lot of questions before they even began. Several times, when she had been stopped and questioned by soldiers foraging for loot, she merely stared at the men without answering. Looking into her completely white eyes as she glared at them, they lost their nerve and vanished back into the darkness.
Far behind them at the Ja’La field there were pockets within the riot that were finally being brought under control, but for the most part the night there had been abandoned to chaotic battles between drunken soldiers. The emperor’s guard hadn’t really cared about restoring order; they had only been interested in saving the life of the emperor.
Nicci’s trembling pain told Richard that Jagang was still alive and able to exert his influence. That didn’t mean he was conscious, though. What Richard didn’t know was if Jagang at some point, when unable to force her to return, might decide to kill her through the collar. If he did, there was nothing Richard could do to stop him. Getting the collar off from around her neck was the only solution, and to do that they needed to get to Nathan up in the palace.
Peeking out from under the tarp, Richard spotted a confusion of vast pits spread out ahead in the torchlight. Richard could see lines of men, animals, and wagons leading out of pits where material was being dug up. Clouds of dust streamed away from areas where men were actively digging. The lines of men and wagons coming out of those pits stretched all the way to the ramp. Those lines were all in constant motion as they conveyed the dirt and rock to the construction site.
Richard again glanced at Nicci, lying in the low wagon bed right beside him. She had his hand in a death grip. Her whole body trembled. He ached with sympathy for her agony. He knew what it felt like. He had endured the same magic from a collar. His ordeal hadn’t lasted as long, though. He didn’t know how long she could live through such pain.
Jillian lay on the other side of Nicci, holding her other hand. Bruce lay beyond Jillian, carefully peering out from under the tarp on that side from time to time, sword at the ready in case he had to help them fight their way out of trouble.
Richard wasn’t sure how much he could trust the man. Bruce had more than once stepped in to protect Richard at great risk to his own life. Richard knew that not every single man in the Order’s camp would choose the Order, if really given the choice. There had to be some, even if only a few, who would rather have nothing to do with the Order. Richard didn’t really know Bruce all that well, so he didn’t know what experiences the man had lived through that would cause him to take this chance to side with him, but Richard was glad that he had. In a small way it gave him hope that not the whole world had gone mad. There were still some people who valued their own lives and wanted the freedom to live those lives as they saw fit. They were even willing to fight for it.
As the wagon wobbled to a halt, Adie stepped close, laying an elbow casually over the short sidewall beside Richard. She glanced over. “We be here.”
Richard nodded, then leaned close to Nicci. “We’re here.
We’re near the ramp.”
Her brow was tightly creased in agony. She seemed to be in a faraway world of suffering. With great effort she released some of the pressure on his hand, then squeezed again to let him know that she’d heard him.
Despite how cold it was, she was drenched in sweat. Her eyes were closed most of the time. Occasionally they opened wide as she gasped from a terrible twist of pain.
It was making Richard crazy that he couldn’t help her right then and there, that she had to wait, suffering in her isolated world of torment, enduring the dragging eternity it seemed to be taking to get her to Nathan.
“Nicci, can you tell me what we need to do? We’re here, but I don’t know why. Why did you want us to go to the ramp?”
He gently pulled back hair that was plastered to her beaded brow. Her eyes opened wide with a stitch of overpowering pain.
“Please…” she whispered.
Richard leaned closer yet so he could hear her. “What is it?”
He put his ear closer to her mouth.
“Please…end it. Kill me.”
She shook with a moan as another bout of pain cascaded through her. She started to sob.
Richard, terror rising in his throat, clutched her close. “We’re almost there. Hold on. If we can get inside the palace I think Nathan can get that collar off. Just hold on.”
“Can’t,” she wept.
Richard pressed his hand against the side of her face. “I’ll help you get it off. I promise. We just need to get inside. I need to know how do we get in.”
“Catacombs,” she said in a gasp as her back arched.
Catacombs? Richard blinked at the word. Catacombs?
He lifted the flapping canvas tarp a little and peered out again. The ramp stood nearby. Beyond the ramp the black wall of the plateau, only some of the fringe at the bottom visible in the torchlight, soared up into the night.
As he looked at the plateau, it made sense.
Jillian leaned over Nicci. “Could she mean catacombs like at my homeland?” She looked down at Nicci. “Catacombs like in Caska?”
Nicci nodded.
Richard again looked out from under the tarp, searching for anything that looked different, for any sign of where the entrance could be. He went over in his mind everything he could remember about the ancient catacombs in Caska. Dee
p within those underground rooms was where they’d found the Chainfire book. The maze of ancient tunnels and chambers had run on for miles. Richard had spent nearly the whole night searching through the catacombs and he knew that he’d only seen a fraction of them.
Finding the entrance, though, had been difficult. It had been only a small opening that had led him down into the hidden underground world of the catacombs. Finding such an opening out here in the open, with all these men around, was going to be far more than merely difficult.
He turned back. “Nicci, how did you find catacombs down in the palace?”
She shook her head. “Found us.”
“They found you?” Richard peered out again as the realization hit him. “Dear spirits…”
It all started to make sense to him. Jagang’s men, digging the pits, had uncovered ancient catacombs. They must have used those tunnels to get up into the palace.
“They got up into the palace and captured you? Is that what you mean?”
Nicci nodded.
But if they had gotten up into the palace, then why would they still be working on the ramp? He realized that if the catacombs were anything like the ones in Caska they would need more than those tunnels to get an army up into the People’s Palace. It would be like trying to force sand through an hourglass.
It could also be that the ramp was a diversion to buy them time to do just that.
Diversion or not, Jagang might have gotten spies up into the palace through the catacombs. If there was a way in, there was no telling the damage such a breach could cause.
It had to be Sisters who had snuck in. It would have taken Sisters to have captured Nicci. With their powers weakened by the spell of the palace, he knew that it would have taken more than one.
“The crews digging dirt for the ramp discovered catacombs,” Richard guessed out loud to Nicci. “Sisters went through the catacombs and found a way to get up into the palace. That’s how they captured you.”
Though the trembling and pain, Nicci squeezed his hand in confirmation.
Richard leaned close to Nicci. “Does anyone up there know that Jagang has a way in?”
