Naked Empire   ::   Goodkind Terry

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.