Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

"Some of this has to be overstated." To make his point, Jagang jabbed the paper with a fat finger. The silver rings on each finger flashed in the fading light. "Taka-Mar, for instance. Taka-Mar has been attacked? It couldn't have been very effective for a malcontent mob of fools to attack such a place. There are troop garrisons there. It's a transfer station for supply trains. There are ample defenses in place. There are even Brothers of the Fellowship of Order in charge of the place. They wouldn't have allowed a rabble to have their way in Taka-Mar. This report most likely is overstated by nervous fools who are afraid of their own shadow."

The man bowed apologetically. "Excellency, Taka-Mar was one of the places I saw with my own eyes."

"Well?" Jagang roared. "What did you see, then? Out with it!"

"The roads into the city from every direction are lined with stakes topped with charred skulls," the man began.

"How many skulls?" Jagang waved dismissively. "Dozens? As many as a hundred?"

"Excellency, there were numbers beyond counting, and I stopped counting at several thousand without having made much headway in a full tally. The city itself is no more."

"No more?" Jagang blinked in confusion. "What do you mean, no more? Such a thing is impossible."

"It has been burned to the ground, Excellency. There was not a single building left standing. The fires were so intense that the lumber cannot be salvaged. The orchards all the way out into the hills were all cut down. The fields of ripe crops for miles and miles in every direction have all been burned. The ground has been salted. Nothing will ever grow there again. A once fertile place will never support anything again. It looks like the Keeper himself destroyed the place."

"Well, where were the soldiers! What were they doing during all this!"

"The skulls on stakes were the soldiers garrisoned there. Every last one of them, I'm afraid."

Jagang cast a look at Kahlan, as if she were somehow responsible for the catastrophe. His glare told her that he somehow associated the trouble with her. He crushed the paper in his fist as he returned his attention to the messenger.

"What about the Brothers of the Order? Did they say what happened and why they weren't able to stop it?"

"There were six Brothers assigned to Taka-Mar, Excellency. They were impaled on posts placed in the middle of different roads into the city. Each had been skinned from the neck down. A cap of office was left on each man's head so that all could know who they were.

"The masses of people who fled the city say that the attack came at night. As terrified as they were, we weren't able to get much useful information from them, other than that the men who attacked them were soldiers of the D'Haran Empire. They were all sure of that much. Every one of these people has lost their home.

"The attackers made no move to slaughter the escaping refugees if they offered no armed resistance, but they made it quite clear to the fleeing people that they intended to lay waste to all of the Old World and anyone who supports the Imperial Order.

"The soldiers told the people that it is the Order and their beliefs that has brought this strife upon them, and who will bring them and their land to ruin. The soldiers vowed that they would haunt the people of the Old World into their graves and then into the darkest corners of the underworld if they did not give up the teachings of the Order and their belligerent ways that flowed from those teachings."

Kahlan only realized that she was smiling when Jagang rounded on her and backhanded her hard enough to knock her from her feet. She knew that he was going to beat her bloody that night.

She didn't care. It was worth it to hear what she had just heard. She couldn't stop smiling.

CHAPTER 55

Nicci pulled her cloak tighter around herself as she leaned one shoulder up against the great stone merlon. She peered down through the crenellation to the road far below, watching the four riders making their way up the mountain toward the Keep. They were still quite a distance, but she thought she had a good idea who they were.

Nicci yawned as she looked out over the city of Aydindril below, and the vast carpet of forests all around. The vivid colors of autumn were beginning to fade. Looking at the trees spreading up onto the slopes of the surrounding mountains, and how they so boldly heralded the change of seasons, made her think about Richard. He loved the trees. Nicci had come to love them, too, because they reminded her of him.