Naked Empire   ::   Goodkind Terry

When they stroked their huge wings, Richard could usually hear their feathers whisper through the air, although now, with the sound ofthe wind, he couldn't. Their black eyes watched him watching them. He wanted them to know he was aware of them, that he hadn't slept through their nocturnal return.

Were he not so concerned about the meaning of the races, he might think they were beautiful, their sleek black shapes silhouetted majestically against the crimson flush coming to the sky.

As he watched, though, Richard couldn't imagine what they were doing.

He'd seen this behavior from them before and hadn't understood it then, either. He realized, suddenly, that those other times when they'd returned to circle in this curious fashion, he had also been aware of them. He wasn't always aware of them or aware of when they returned. If he had a headache, though, it had vanished when they returned.

The hot wind ruffled Richard's hair as he gazed out across wasteland obscured by the dusty predawn gloom. He didn't like this dead place. Dawn here would offer no promise of a world coming to life. He wished Kahlan and he were back in his woods. He couldn't help smiling as he recalled the place in the mountains where the year before they had spent the summer. The place was so wondrous that it had even managed to mellow Cara.

In the faint but gathering light, the black-tipped races circled, as they always did when they performed this curious maneuver, not over him, but a short distance away, this time out over the open desert where the buffeting wind unfurled diaphanous curtains of sandy grit. The other times it had been over forested hills, or open grassland. This time, as he watched the races, he had to squint to keep the blowing sand from getting in his eyes.

Abruptly tipping their broad wings, the races tightened their circle as they descended closer to the desert floor. He knew that they would do this for a short while before breaking up their formation to resume their normal flight. They sometimes flew in pairs and performed spectacular aerial stunts, each gracefully matching the other's every move, as ravens sometimes did, but otherwise they never flew in anything like the compact group of their sporadic circling.

And then, as the inky shapes wheeled around in a tight vortex, Richard realized that the trailers of blowing sand below them weren't simply snaking and curling aimlessly in the wind, but were flowing over something that wasn't there.

The hair along his arms stood stiffly up.

Richard blinked, squinting into the wind, trying to see better in the howling storm of blowing sand. Yet more dust and dirt lifted in the blast of a heavy gust.