Ears ringing, head spinning, Zedd tried to sit up when he was kicked, knowing it was a command. He spat out dirt. With his hands tied behind his back he was having difficulty complying. After three kicks, a big man grabbed him by the hair and lifted him upright.

Zedd's heart sank to see that they sat among an army of astounding size. The dark mass of humanity blighted the land as far as he could see.

So, it would seem, they had arrived.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Adie sitting in the dirt beside him, her head hanging. She had a livid bruise on her cheek. She didn't look up when a shadow fell across her.

A woman in a long drab skirt moved in before them, distracting him from his appraisal of the enemy forces. Zedd recognized the brown wool dress. It was the Sister of the Dark who had put the collar around their necks. He didn't know her name; she'd never offered it. In fact, she hadn't spoken to them since they were chained in their boxes. She stood over them, now, like the strict governess of incorrigible children.

The ring through her lower lip, marking her as a slave, in Zedd's mind irrevocably tarnished her air of authority.

The ground was covered with horse manure, most, but not all, old and dried. Out beyond the Sister, horses stood picketed seemingly without any order among the soldiers. Horses that looked like they might belong to the cavalry were well kept. Workhorses were not so healthy. Among the horses and men, wagons and stacks of supplies dotted the late-day landscape.

The place had the foul stink of shallow latrines, horses, manure, and the filthy smell of crowded human habitation failing to meet common sanitary needs. Zedd blinked when acrid woodsmoke from one of the thousands of cook fires drifted across him, burning his eyes.

The air was also thick with mosquitoes, gnats, and flies. The flies were the worst. The mosquito bites would itch later, but the flies stung the instant they bit, and with his arms bound behind his back, there wasn't much he could do about it other than shake his head to try to keep them out of his eyes and nose.

The two soldiers who had freed Zedd and Adie from their boxes stood patiently to the sides. Beyond the woman's skirts a vast encampment spread out as far as the eye could see. There were men everywhere, men engaged in work, at rest, and at recreation. They were dressed in every variety of clothing, from leather armor, chain mail, and studded belts to hides, dirty tunics, and trousers in the process of rotting into rags. Most of the men were unshaven, and all were as filthy as feral recluses living in mad seclusion. The mass encampment generated a constant din of yells, whistles, men hollering and laughing, the jangle and rattle of metal, the ring of hammers or rhythm of saws, and, piercing through it all, the occasional cry of someone in agonizing pain.

Tents by the thousands, tents of all sorts, like leaves after a big wind, lay littering the gently rolling landscape at the foothills of towering mountains to the east. Many a tent was decorated with loot; gingham curtains hung at an entrance, a small chair or table sat before a tent, here and there an item of women's personal clothing flew as a flag of conquest.

Wagons and horses and gear were all jammed together among the rabble in no seeming plan. The ground had been churned to a fine dust by the masses in this mock city devoid of skeletal order.

The place was a nightmare of humanity reduced to the savagery of a mob on the loose, the scope of their goals no more than the impulse of the moment. Though their leaders had ends, these men did not.

"His Excellency has requested you both," the Sister said down to them.

Neither Zedd nor Adie said anything. The men hauled them both to their feet. A sharp shove started them moving behind the Sister after she marched away. Zedd noticed, then, that there were more soldiers, close to a dozen, escorting them.

The wagon had delivered them to the end of a road, of sorts, that ran a winding course through the sprawling encampment. The end of the road, where wagons sat in a row, appeared to be the entrance to an inner camp, probably a command area. The regular soldiers outside a ring of heavily armed guards ate, played dice, gambled, bartered loot, joked, talked, and drank as they watched the prisoners being escorted.

The thought occurred to Zedd that if he called out, proclaiming that he was the one who was responsible for the light spell that had killed or wounded so many of their chums, maybe the men would riot, set upon them, and kill them before Jagang had a chance to do his worst.

Zedd opened his mouth to try out his plan, but saw the Sister glance back over her shoulder. He discovered that his voice was muted through her control of the collar around his neck. There would be no speaking unless she allowed it.

Following the Sister, they walked past the standing row of wagons in front of the one that had brought them. There were well over a dozen freight wagons all lined up before the cordoned-off area with the larger tents. None of the wagons were empty, but all were loaded with crates.

With sinking realization, Zedd understood. These were wagons with goods looted from the Wizard's Keep. These were all wagons that had made the journey with them. They were all full of the things those ungifted men, at the Sister's orders, had taken out of the Keep. Zedd feared to think what priceless items of profound danger sat in these crates. There were things in the Keep that became hazardous to anyone should they be removed from the shields that guarded them. There were rare items that, if removed from their protective environment, such as darkness, for even a brief time, would cease to be viable.

Guards in layered hides, mail, leather, and armed with pikes set with long steel points flanked by sharpened winged blades, huge crescent axes, swords, and spiked maces prowled the restricted area. These grim soldiers were bigger and more menacing-looking than the regular men out in the camp-and those were fearsome enough. While the special guards patrolled, ever watchful, the unconcerned regular soldiers just outside the perimeter carried on with their business.

The guards led the Sister, Zedd, and Adie through an opening in a line of spiked barricades. Beyond were the smaller of the special tents. Most were round and the same size. Zedd thought that these were probably the tents of the staff the emperor would keep close, his attendants and personal slaves. Zedd wondered if the Sisters were all held within the emperor's compound.

Up ahead, the palatial vision of the grand tents of an emperor and his entourage rose up in the late-afternoon light. No doubt some of these comfortable tents set about the center compound, within the ring of tents for servants and attendants, were accommodations for high-ranking officers, officials, and the emperor's most trusted advisors.

Zedd wished he had a light spell and the ability to ignite it. He could probably decapitate the Imperial Order right then and there.

But he knew that such confusion and turmoil would only be a temporary setback for the Imperial Order. They would provide another brute to enforce their message. It would take more than killing Jagang to end the threat of the Order. He wasn't even sure anymore just what it would take to free the world of the oppression and tyranny of the Imperial Order.

Despite the seductively simplistic notions held by most people, the Emperor Jagang was not the driving force of this invasion. The driving force was a vicious ideology. To exist, it could not permit successful lives to be lived in sight of the suffering masses produced as a result of the beliefs and dictates of the Imperial Order. The freedom and resulting success of the people living in the New World put the lie to all the Order preached. It was blasphemy to succeed on your own; since the Order taught that it could not be done, it could only be sinful. Sin had to be eliminated for the greater good. Therefore, the freedom of the New World had to be crushed.