Naked Empire

The dawn, only moments ago filled with the the bloodcurdling screams of the black-tipped races, was suddenly quiet but for the low moan of the wind.

Black feathers lifted in that wind, floating out across the open expanse beneath a yellow-orange sky.

At that moment, the sun broke the horizon, throwing long shadows out over the wasteland.

Je

When she stood, unable to turn Betty from her dead offspring, Richard sheltered Je

"Why would the races suddenly do that?"

"I don't know," Richard said. "You didn't see anything other than the races, then?"

Je

"What about the shape defined by the blowing sand?" Kahlan asked as she placed a comforting hand on Je

"Shape?" She looked from Kahlan to Richard. "What shape?"

"It looked like a man's shape." Kahlan drew the curves of an outline in the air before her with both hands. "Like the outline of a man wearing a hooded cape."

"I didn't see anything but black-tipped races and the clouds of blowing sand."

"And you didn't see the sand blowing around anything?" Richard asked.

"You didn't see any shape defined by the sand?"

Je

"If the shape involved magic," Kahlan said in a confidential tone to Richard, "she wouldn't see that, but why wouldn't she see the sand?"

"To her, the magic wasn't there."

"But the sand was."

"The color is there on a painting but a blind person can't see it, nor can they see the shapes that the brush strokes, laden with color, help define." He shook his head in wonder as he watched Je

"It could even be that it's something like the boundaries were; two worlds existing in the same place at the same time. Je

"We'd better stitch this," he told Je

Je

Richard stared off toward where the form had appeared in the blowing sand. "Something evil."

Off behind them, Rusty tossed her head and whi

Je

"Not for long," Richard said.

His headache came slamming back with such force that it nearly took him from his feet. He had learned a great deal about controlling pain, about how to disregard it. He did that now.

There were bigger worries.

CHAPTER 7

Around midafternoon, as they were walking across the scorching desert, Kahlan noticed Richard carefully watching his shadow stretched out before him.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter?"

He gestured at the shadow before him. "Races. Ten or twelve. They just glided up behind us. They're hiding in the sun."

"Hiding in the sun?"

"They're flying high and in the spot where their shadow falls on us. If we were to look up in the sky we wouldn't be able to see them because we'd have to look right into the sun."

Kahlan turned and, with her hand shielding her eyes, tried to see for herself, but it was too painful to try to look up anywhere near the merciless sun. When she looked back, Richard, who hadn't turned to look with her, again flicked his hand toward the shadows.

"If you look carefully at the ground around your shadow, you can just make out the distortion in the light. It's them."

Kahlan might have thought that Richard was having a little fun with her were it not about a matter as serious as the races. She searched the ground around their shadows until she finally saw what he was talking about. At such a distance, the races' shadows were little more than shifting irregularities in the light.

Kahlan glanced back at the wagon. Tom was driving, with Friedrich sitting up on the seat beside him. Richard and Kahlan were giving the horses a rest from being ridden, so they were tethered to the wagon.

Je

From what Kahlan had learned, Je

Moving around as she and her mother had, ru

Kahlan wiped the stinging sweat from her eyes. She took in the four black feathers Richard had bundled together and strung on his upper right arm. He had taken the feathers when he'd retrieved the arrows that were still good. Richard had given the last feather to Tom for killing the fifth race with his knife. Tom wore his single feather like Richard, on his arm.

Tom thought of it as a trophy, of sorts, awarded by the Lord Rahl.

Kahlan knew that Richard wore his four feathers for a different reason:

it was a warning for all to see.

Kahlan pulled her hair back over her shoulder. "Do you think that was a man below the races? A man watching us?"

Richard shrugged. "You know more about magic than me. You tell me."

"I've never seen anything like it." She frowned over at him. "If it was a man… or something like that, why do you think he finally decided to reveal himself?"

"I don't think he did decide to reveal himself." Richard's intent gray eyes turned toward her. "I think it was an accident."

"How could it be an accident?"

"If it's someone using the races to track us, and he can somehow see us-"

"See us how?"

"I don't know. See us through the eyes of the races."

"You can't do that with magic."

Richard fixed her with a trenchant look. "Fine. Then what was it?"

Kahlan looked back at the shadows stretching out before them on the buckskin-colored rock, back at the small bleary shapes moving around the shadow of her head, like flies around a corpse. "I don't know. You were saying?.. About someone using the races to track us, to see us?"