Naked Empire

by Angreal

  A man at the rear, against the wall, appeared to be somewhat uninterested, as if impatient for the exhibition to be over so he could go back to his own affairs. While none of these people could be said to think of themselves as important individuals with consequential sway over any meaningful aspects of life in their empire, a few occasionally exhibited tendencies, even if inconsistent, toward self-interest. Nicholas flicked his finger for the fifth time. The man would soon have reason to be highly interested in the proceedings, and he would find that he was no better than anyone else. He would be going nowhere—at least not in body.

  Everyone stared in silence as Nicholas chuckled alone at his own joke.

  His amusement ended. Nicholas tipped his head toward the door in a single nod. The soldiers jumped into action.

  "All right," Najari growled, "move along. Move! Get going. Out, out, out!"

  The feet of the crowd shuffled urgently through the door as ordered. Some people cast worried glances back over their shoulders at the five Najari had cut out of the flock. Those five were shoved back when they sought to stay with the rest. A stiff finger to the chest backed them up as effectively as would a club or a sword.

  "Don't cause any trouble," Najari warned, "or you will be making trouble for the others."

  The five remaining huddled close to one another, rocking nervously side to side like a covey of quail before a bird dog.

  When the soldiers had driven the rest of the people out, Najari closed the door and stood before it, hands clasped behind his back.

  Nicholas returned to the windows, opening the shutters on the west wall. The sun was down, leaving a red slash across the sky.

  Soon they would be on the wing, on the hunt.

  Nicholas would be with them.

  Casting an arm back without needing to turn to look, he doused the torch. The flickering light was a distraction during this cusp of time, the transient twilight that was so fragile, so brief. He would need the light, but, at the moment, he wanted only to see the sky, to see the glorious, unbounded sky.

  "Are we going to be able to leave soon?" one of the people asked in a timid squeak.

  Nicholas turned and peered at them. Najari's eyes revealed which one had spoken. Nicholas followed his commander's gaze. It was one of the men—the one who had been impatient to leave, of course.

  "Go?" Nicholas asked as he swept in close to the man. "You wish to go?"

  The man stood with his back bent, leaning away from Nicholas.

  "Well, sir, I was only wondering when we would be going."

  Nicholas stooped in even more, peering deeply into the man's eyes. "Wonder in silence," he hissed.

  Returning to the windows, Nicholas rested his hands on the sill, his weight on his arms, as he breathed in deeply the gathering night while taking in the sweep of crimson sky.

  Soon, he would be there, be free.

  Soon, he would soar as no one else but he could.

  Impulsively, he sought them.

  Eyes bulging with the effort, he cast his senses where none but his could go.

  "There!" he screeched, throwing his arm out, pointing a long black nail at what none but he could see. "There! One has taken to wing."

  Nicholas spun around, strips of cloth lifting, floating up. Panting through a rush of fluttering excitement, he gazed at the eyes staring at him. They could not know. They could not understand one such as he, understand what he felt, what he needed. He hungered to be on the hunt, to be with them, ever since he had imagined such a use for his ability.

  He had reveled in the experience, dedicating himself to it as he learned his new abilities. He had been off with those glorious creatures as often as he could afford the time, ever since he had come here and discovered them.

  How ironic it now seemed that he had resisted. How odd that he once had feared what those gruesome women, those Sisters of the Dark, had conspired to do to him ... what they had done to him.

  His duty, they had called it.

  Their vile magic had cut like a red-hot blade through him. He had thought his eyes might burst from his head from the pain that had seared through him. Tied spread-eagled to stakes in the ground in the center of their wicked circle, he had dreaded what they were going to do to him.

  He had feared it.

  Nicholas smiled.

  Hated it, even.

  He had been afraid because of the pain, the pain of what they were doing to him, and the even greater pain of not knowing what more they intended to do to him. His duty, they had called it, to a greater good. His ability bore responsibilities, they had insisted.

  He watched through glazed eyes as Najari bound the hands of the five people behind each of their backs.

  "Thank you, Najari," he said when the man had finished.

  Najari approached. "The men will have them by now, Nicholas. I told them to send enough men to insure that they would not escape." Najari grinned at the prospect. "There's no need to worry. They should all be on their way back to us."

  Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "We will see. We will see."

  He wanted to see it himself. With his own vision—even if his own vision was through another's eyes.

  Najari yawned on his way to the door. "See you tomorrow, then, Nicholas."

  Nicholas opened his mouth wide, mimicking the yawn, even though he didn't yawn. It felt good to stretch his jaws wide. Sometimes he felt trapped inside himself and he wanted out.

  Nicholas closed the door behind Najari and bolted it. It was a perfunctory act, done more to add to the aura of peril than out of necessity. Even with their hands tied behind their backs, these people could, together, probably overpower him—knock him down and kick in his head, if nothing else. But for that, they would have to think, to decide what they ought to do and why, to commit to act. Easier not to think. Easier not to act. Easier to do as you are told.

  Easier to die than to live.

  Living took effort. Struggle. Pain.

  Nicholas hated it.

  "Hate to live, live to hate," he said to the silent, ghostly white faces watching him.

  Out the window the streaks of clouds had gone dark gray as the touch of the sun passed beyond them and night crept in to embrace them. Soon, he would be among them.

  He turned back from the window, taking in the faces watching him. Soon, they would all be out there, among them.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 27

  Nicholas seized one of the nameless men. Powered by muscles crafted of the Sisters' dark art, he hoisted the man into the air. The man cried out in surprise at being lifted so easily. He struggled hesitantly against muscle he would not be able to resist were he even to put daring into it. These people were immune to magic, or Nicholas would have used his power to easily lift them aloft. Absent the necessary spark of the gift, they had to be manhandled.

  It made little difference to Nicholas. How they got to the stakes was unimportant. What happened to them once there was all that mattered.

  As the man in his arms cried out in terror, Nicholas carried him across the room. The other people withdrew into a far corner. They always went to the far corner, like chickens about to be dinner.

  Nicholas, his arms around the man's chest, lifted him high in the air, judging the distance and angle as he raced ahead.

  The man's eyes went wide, his mouth did likewise. He gasped with the shock, then grunted as Nicholas, hugging the man tight in his arms, drove him down onto the stake.

  The man's breath came in short sharp gasps as the sharpened stake penetrated up through his insides. He went still in Nicholas's powerful arms, fearing to move, fearing to believe what was happening to him, fearing to know it was true ... trying to deny to himself that it could be true.

  Nicholas straightened to his full height before the man. The man's back was as straight and stiff as a board as he sat impaled on the sharpened stake. His eyebrows pushed his sweat-beaded brow up in furrows as he writhed in slow agony, his legs trying to touch the ground that was t
oo far away.

  Into that confusion of sensation, Nicholas reached out with his mind, at the same time clawing his hands before the man with the effort as he slid his own being, his own spirit, into the core of this living creature, slid into this man's open mind, into the cavernous cracks between his abrupt and disconnected thoughts, there to feel his agony and fright. There to take control. Once he had slipped his own mind in there with this man, seeped through his consciousness, Nicholas drew his essence out and into himself.

  With a staggering fusion of destructive and creative power dealt by those women that day, Nicholas had been born into a new being, part him, and yet more. He had become what no man had ever been before—what others wished to make of him, what others wished him to be.

  What had been unleashed in him by those Sisters all linked in their ability to harness powers they could never have touched alone and should never have invoked together, they instilled in him. They engendered in him powers few could ever have imagined: the power to slide into another living person's thoughts, and withdraw their spirit.

  He drew his closed fists back toward his own abdomen with the effort of drawing with him the spirit of this man on the cusp of life and death, drew onward the marrow of this man's soul. Nicholas felt the slick heat of this other spirit slide into his, the hot rush of sensation at feeling himself filled with another spirit.

  Nicholas left the body there, impaled on the first stake, as he rushed to the windows, his head spinning with the first intoxicating wave of excitement at the journey only now just begun, at what was to come, at what power he would control.

  He opened his mouth wide again in a yawn that was not a yawn, but a call carrying more than just his silent voice.

  His eyes swam with wavering images. He gasped in the first scent of the forests out beyond, where his intent had been cast.

  He rushed back and seized a woman. She begged as she wept, begged to be spared as he bore her to her stake.

  "But this is nothing," he told her. "Nothing compared to what I have endured. Oh, you cannot imagine what I have endured."

  He had been staked naked to the ground, in the center of a circle of those smug women. He had been nothing to them. He had not been a man, a wizard. He had been nothing but the raw material, the flesh and blood innervated by the gift, that they needed for what they wanted, that they used in yet another of their trials, all to be twisted by their tinkering at creation.

  He had the ability, so duty required he sacrifice it.

  Nicholas had been the first to live through their tests, not because they took care—not because they cared—but because they had learned what didn't work, and so avoided their past errors.

  "Scream, my dear. Scream all you want. It will help you no more than it helped me."

  "Why!" she screamed. "Why!"

  "Oh, but I must, if I am to have your spirit to soar on the wings of my distant friends. You will go on a glorious journey, you and I."

  "Please!" she wailed. "Dear Creator, no!"

  "Oh, yes, dear Creator," he mocked. "Come and save her—like you came and saved me."

  Her wailing did her no good. His hadn't either. She had no idea how immeasurably worse his agony had been than hers would be. Unlike her, he had been condemned to live.

  "Hate to live, live to hate," he murmured in a comforting whisper. "You will have the glory and the reward that is death."

  He drove her down onto the stake. He reckoned her not far enough onto the stake, and shoved her down another six inches, until he judged it deep enough within her, deep enough to produce the necessary pain and terror, but not deep enough to lance anything inside that would kill her right off. She thrashed, trying desperately, hands helpless behind her back, to somehow remove herself.

  He was only dimly aware of her cries, her worthless words. She thought they might somehow make a difference.

  Pain was his goal. Their complaints of it only confirmed that he was achieving his goal.

  Nicholas stood before the woman, hands clawed, as he slid his own spirit through her sundered thoughts and into the core of her being. With mental strength far superior to his physical strength, he pulled her back. He gasped as he felt her spirit slide into his.

  For now, he slipped those spirits out of tortured, dying bodies while those spirits existed in the netherworld between the worldly form they knew was lost to them, but still alive, and the world of the dead already calling them in from beyond. Life could no longer hold them, but death could not yet have them. In that time of spiritual transition, they were his, and he could use those spirits for things only he could imagine.

  And he had not yet really even begun to imagine.

  Such ability as he possessed was not something that could be taught by another—there was no other but he. He was still learning the extent of his powers, the things he could do with the spirit of another. He had only scratched the surface.

  Emperor Jagang had sought to create something akin to himself, a dream walker, a brother, of sorts. One who could enter another's mind. He had gotten far more than he could have ever have imagined. Nicholas didn't simply slide into another's thoughts, as Jagang did; he could slide into their very soul, and draw their spirit back into himself.

  The Sisters hadn't counted on that aberration of their tinkering with his ability.

  Rushing to the window, his mouth pulled open as wide as it would go in a yawn that wasn't a yawn. The room swam behind him. It was only partly there, now. Now, he was beginning to see other places. Glorious places. See them with new vision, with spirits no longer bound to their paltry bodies.

  He rushed to the third person, no longer aware even if they were man or woman. Their soul was all that mattered—their spirit.

  He drove them onto a stake with urgent effort, slid into them and drew their spirit into his, shuddering with the power of it entering him.

  He rushed to the window again, opening wide his mouth again, twisting his head side to side again with the thrill of it, the slick, silken, sliding ecstasy of it... the loss of physical orientation, the exaltation of being above his corporeal existence, the former bounds of his mere worldly form—carried aloft not simply with his own efforts, but by the spirits of others that he had freed from their bodies.

  What a glorious thing it was.

  It was almost like the joy he imagined death would be.

  He seized the fourth weeping person and with delirious expectation ran with them across the room, to the stakes, to the fourth stake, and drove them screaming onto it.

  As he lurched back from them, he thrust himself into their wildly racing, confused, swirling thoughts, and took what was there for the taking. He took their spirit into himself.

  When he controlled a person's spirit, he controlled their very existence. He became life and death for them. He was their savior, their destroyer.

  He was in many ways like those spirits he took, trapped in a worldly form, hating to live, to endure the pain and agony that was life, yet fearing to die even while longing for the promise of its sweet embrace.

  With four spirits swirling through him, Nicholas staggered to the fifth person, cowering in the corner.

  "Please!" the man wailed, trying to ward what he would not commit to warding. "Please, don't!"

  The thought occurred to Nicholas that the stakes were really a hindrance; using them required him to carry people around like woolly sheep to have their souls sheared. Yes, he was still learning what he could do and how to control what he did, but to have to use the stakes was limiting. When he thought about it, it was actually insulting that a wizard of his ability would have to use so crude a device.

  What he really wanted to do was to slide into another's spirit and take it without any warning—without needing to bring people to the stakes.

  When he was fully able to do that—to simply walk up to another, say "Good day," and slide like the thrust of a dagger into the heart of their spirit, there to draw it into his—then he would be invincible. When h
e was able to do that, then no one could challenge him. No one would be able to deny him anything.

  As the man shrank down before him, Nicholas, before he fully realized what it was he was doing, driven by an angry need, by hatred, thrust out his hand as he thrust his own mind into this man, into the spaces between thought.

  The man stiffened, just as those on the stakes stiffened, when Nicholas had impaled them with his ability.

  He drew back his closed fist toward his middle as he drew in this man's spirit. He gasped with the heat of it, with the silky slick feel of it sliding into him.

  They stared at each other, each in shock, each considering what this meant for them.

  The man slumped back against the wall, sliding down, in soundless, silent, terrible empty agony.

  Nicholas realized that he had just done what he had never done before. He had just taken a soul by his will alone.

  He had just freed himself to take what he wanted, when he wanted, where he wanted.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 28

  Nicholas, his vision a blur, staggered to the window.

  All five were his, now.

  This time, as his mouth opened wide, a cry at last came forth, a cry of the five spirits joining his as he drew them together into one force guided by his will alone. Their worldly agony was a distant concern to them. Five spirits gazed out of the windows along with him, five spirits now waiting to soar out into the night, to where he chose to send them.

  Those Sisters had not known what they unleashed that night. They could not have known the power they fused into him, the ability they burned into him.

  They had achieved what none had achieved for thousands of years—the altering of a wizard into something more, honing him into a weapon of specific intent. They had imbued him with power beyond that of anyone living. They had given him dominion over the spirits of others.

  Most had escaped, but he had killed five of them.