Naked Empire

The woman, middle-aged with her curls of brown hair just starting to carry a bit of gray, smiled. "I'm not all that far from home, myself, but I do so like to spend a night at the palace, now and then, just to lift my spirits."

A

"Yes, I see what you mean," A

The place didn't lift her spirits. In fact, the place made her as nervous as a cat in a doghouse with the door closed. She could feel that her power was frighteningly diminished in this place.

The People's Palace was more than any mere palace. It was a city all joined together and under countless roofs atop a huge plateau. Tens of thousands of people lived in the magnificent structure, and thousands more visited it daily. There were different levels to the palace itself, some where people had shops and sold goods, others where officials worked, some that were living quarters. Many sections were off limits to those who visited.

Sprawled around the base of the plateau were informal markets where people gathered to buy, sell, and trade goods. On the climb all the way up through the interior of the plateau to reach the palace itself, A

More than that, though, it was the ancestral home of the House of Rahl.

As such, it was grand for arcane reasons beyond the awareness or even understanding of most of the people who called it home or visited it. The People's Palace was a spell-not a place spelled, as had been the Palace of the Prophets where A

The entire palace had been built to a careful and precise design: that of a spell drawn on the face of the ground. The outer fortified walls contained the actual spell form and the major congregations of rooms formed significant hubs, while the halls and corridors themselves were the drawn lines-the essence of the spell itself, the power.

Like a spell being drawn in the dirt with the point of a stick, the halls would have had to have been built in the sequence required by the specific magic the spell was intended to invoke. It would have been enormously expensive to build it in that ma

The spell was specific. It was a place of safety for any Rahl. It was meant to give a Rahl more power in the place, and to leach power away from anyone else who entered. A

A

Spells drawn with blood were always more effective and powerful. But when the blood soaked into the ground, decomposed, and dissipated, the power of the spell would often fade as well. But this spell, the drawn lines of the spell itself-the corridors-were filled with the vital living blood of all the people moving through them. A

"So, you're renting a room, then."

A

"Well. ." A

The woman's smile persisted, but it looked as if it was taking more and more effort all the time. "You can't curl up on a bench, you know. The guards won't allow it. You have to rent a room, or be put out at night."

A

"I have the price of a room," A

The smile looked a little easier. "I'm off to my own room and I could take you. It isn't far."

"That would be kind of you," A

The woman stood, bidding her two benchmates a good night.

If A

She felt like a mouse being watched by hawks so she joined with the other people moving toward the square.

She had spent nearly two hours on her knees, on a hard clay tile floor, bowed down with her forehead touching the ground like everyone else, repeating the devotion in concert with all the other somber voices.

Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.

Twice a day, those in the palace were expected to go to the devotion.

A

Then she remembered the bond between the Lord Rahl and his people that prevented the dream walker from entering their minds, and she knew how they could endure it. She, herself, had briefly been a prisoner of Emperor Jagang. He murdered a Sister right before her eyes, just to make a point.

In the face of brutality and torture, she guessed that she knew how people endured a mere devotion.

For her, though, such a spoken devotion to the Lord Rahl, to Richard, was hardly necessary. She had been devoted to him for nearly five hundred years before he had even been born.

Prophecy said that Richard was their only chance to avoid catastrophe.

A

"This way," the woman said, tugging at A

The woman gestured for A

A

The floor had a dizzying pattern of dark brown, rust, and pale tan-colored stone ru

Shops were set back under a mezzanine to each side. Some of them looked to sell items travelers might want. There was a variety of small food and drink stands, everything from hot meat pies, to sweets, to ale, to warm milk. Some places sold nightclothes. Others sold hair ribbons. Even at this late hour, some of the shops were still open and doing brisk business. In a place such as this, there would be people who worked at night and would have need of such shops. The places that offered to do up a woman's hair, or paint her face, or promised to do wonders with her fingernails, were all closed until morning. A