Kahlan stared openly at the Mord-Sith. “Then why in the world didn’t he order them changed? He routinely ordered the execution of countless innocent people. He delighted in throwing people from different lands into slavery and indentured servitude. He ruined lives across D’Hara and then the Midlands without a second thought. He ruled with an iron fist.
“So why, if he didn’t like these chairs, wouldn’t he order them removed, burned, and replaced with something else?”
Berdine raised her eyebrows, as if it were a silly question. “Because they have to be here.” The way she said it made it sound obvious.
Kahlan pressed the middle finger and thumb of one hand to opposite temples in an effort to calm herself. She had a headache from thinking about the helpless terror of all those poor, innocent people who had been slaughtered down in the lower reaches of the palace. The tension of this new threat was getting to her. She knew that her pregnancy had something to do with it. She was in a constant state of worry for the two babies growing inside her.
She took a deep breath before asking, “Why do these chairs have to be here?”
“Because they have ugly magic.”
“What?” Kahlan made a face at the woman. “Ugly magic? These chairs have ugly magic? What in the world kind of magic is ugly magic?”
“Well,” she said, gesturing to the closed doors, “that room is dangerous. It’s a repository, a containment field, for very dangerous spells. Darken Rahl rarely went in there himself. I’m pretty sure he was afraid of that room, although he never admitted as much.”
“What does that have to do with these ugly chairs?”
Berdine shrugged. “There are inviting places everywhere.” She gestured back down the corridor one way and then the other. “There are many comfortable, beautiful places outside other libraries to sit. You can sit and relax almost anywhere you like up on this level.”
“Well then,” Kahlan said with exaggerated patience, “who would want to sit here in these uncomfortable, ugly, orange-striped chairs?”
Berdine smiled. “Exactly.”
Shale blinked. “You mean, these chairs are—”
“You mean, they’re meant to discourage people from lingering here in front of that dangerous room,” Kahlan said, suddenly understanding.
Berdine nodded with a smile that Kahlan finally caught on. “One time,” she confided in both Kahlan and Shale, looking back and forth between them as if revealing a secret, “Darken Rahl said that a person would have to be crazy to use the room with the orange-striped chairs.”
“Crazy …” Kahlan glanced to the double doors. “Crazy, like Richard.”
Berdine confirmed it with a single nod of satisfaction. “You see? Ugly magic.”
Kahlan stood to gesture toward the doors. “Does Richard know that this room is dangerous?”
Berdine snorted a laugh. “Are you kidding? Of course he knows. Back when Lord Rahl—your Lord Rahl, not Darken Rahl, not that Lord Rahl—asked me to help him do research on things he desperately needed to find out, he asked me to go to all the libraries throughout the palace to search the reference works referring to specific things he needed.”
Kahlan frowned. “So?”
Berdine leaned in again, lowering her voice as if someone might overhear, even though there was no one other than Shale and Kahlan within earshot.
“So, when Lord Rahl asked me to search the reference books in all the libraries, he told me, ‘Except the one with the orange-striped chairs. I don’t want you going in that room—not for any reason. I will search that library myself.’ That’s how I know that he knew the place is dangerous. Of course, I knew it was dangerous before, because of Darken Rahl.”
Just then an onslaught of piercing shrieks erupted. Along with everyone else, Kahlan looked toward the doors. It sounded like the shrieks of demons.
Then came a collective howl so horrifying that it made Kahlan flinch in fright. The horrible screech from beyond the doors echoed through the corridor. Everyone—the soldiers, the Mord-Sith, Shale, and Kahlan—all turned to gape at the library. The sound made the hair on Kahlan’s arms and neck stand on end.
18
The hundreds of bloodcurdling shrieks joined into one collective howl that felt as if it tore the very fibers of Kahlan’s nerves. Her heart pounded out of control in her chest. She knew that the slaughtered people down below had heard those same shrieks as they were being ripped apart. She knew because she had heard one of those horrifying shrieks when she had been attacked, one claw pierced into her side to hold her while the other claw ripped down through the muscles of her arm.
The wail of it made her freshly healed claw wounds throb in sudden pain. Kahlan covered her ears, trying to shut out the horrifying sound. Tears sprang to her eyes from the bone-tingling terror for her husband beyond those doors.
Then, the whole palace shook with a sudden jolt that nearly took them all from their feet.
The powerful shock that rocked the palace made Shale gasp. The Mord-Sith spread their feet and went into a crouch to keep their balance. Kahlan grabbed one of the high-backed orange-striped chairs for support. Some of the others fell over.
She saw the doors to the library shudder in their frame, but they held, and not even the glass broke from the violent jolt that had come from inside that room. It was, after all, a containment field, so she would have expected the doors to hold. That brutal jolt to the palace brought an abrupt end to the needful, murderous howls.
In one instant, Kahlan had to cover her ears, and in the next instant, everything went dead quiet. She lowered her hands from her ears.
“Earthquake?” Shale asked in the sudden silence.
Kahlan shook her head. “I don’t think so. It was just one big jolt. I’m not sure, but I think earthquakes shake more. This was more like an explosion. And besides, it came from in there, not underfoot.”
Shale looked confused. “But there was no sound of an explosion. How could there be no sound?”
“Outside a containment field you wouldn’t necessarily hear the explosive release of profoundly violent magic, but you couldn’t help but to feel it.”
Shale gave one cynical shake of her head. “I’ve never heard of a containment field before. But I guess it’s not the kind of thing to be found in the Northern Waste.”
Kahlan hurried to the room and pounded a fist on the door. She didn’t care if he was doing something and wanted to be left alone. That wish had suddenly been nullified as far as she was concerned.
“Richard!” When there was no answer, she pounded again. “Richard! Are you all right? What’s going on?”
She stepped back when all of a sudden, the doors burst open. Thick black smoke billowed out and spread across the ceiling of the corridor. Men of the First File were already rushing to the scene from every direction. Glowing embers floated and whirled out with the sooty smoke.
Berdine and the other Mord-Sith ran toward the open doorway, followed closely by Shale. With all the black smoke, it was hard to see inside the room. Kahlan held an arm out to stop the others. She didn’t think it would be wise to blindly charge into the room.
“Richard!” Kahlan called into the darkness, fearing the worst.
“I’m here,” he said in a quiet voice as he seemed to materialize out of the swirling, inky smoke and burning embers. Kahlan expected the smoke to smell acrid. It didn’t. Not at all. Oddly, rather than smelling like anything burning she had ever smelled before, it smelled like nothing so much as a stagnant swamp.
“Dear spirits, what happened? What was that explosion or whatever it was?” Kahlan asked as she gripped his upper arm. “It shook the whole palace.”
Before he could say anything, Shale leaned around him to look into the room as the smoke was beginning to thin and clear. “Where’s Dori?”
Rather than answer, Richard gave her a forbidding look, then turned and disappeared back into the swirling smoke, the gold of his cape swallowed by the murky haze. As the haze started to c
lear, the room began brightening. Apparently, Richard had opened the drapes over the windows.
Once there was enough light from those windows and coming in through the open double doors, Berdine, Nyda, Rikka, Vale, Cassia, and Vika pushed past Shale and then Kahlan to hurry into the room. Each of them had her Agiel in her fist. Ignoring the fetid smell from inside, Kahlan cautiously followed them in, with Shale right behind her.
The sight of the inside of the room was not at all what Kahlan had expected. She had expected nothing but a charred shell. Instead, it appeared mostly intact. The shelves she could see rising up all around into the smoke still hanging near the high ceiling looked relatively undamaged. The books were intact and all still on their shelves.
But it was clear that something in the room had been incinerated.
There were countless black splotches, as if countless clots of greasy soot had been hurled against the walls, the books, the shelves. There were splashes of that dark, grimy substance everywhere, on nearly everything. Hundreds of those masses had impacted against the walls of books all around, leaving them looking like hundreds of clusters of dirty, greasy ash had been blasted against them. All of those sprays of soot lumped up in the center of each splash, with a starlike pattern thrown out from that center. Wisps of smoke still floated up from each of those clots. The floor was covered with the still-smoking substance. It was so deep that Kahlan’s shoes sank into it. As the smoke gradually thinned out, she could see the same kind of grimy splatters all over the ceiling.
Kahlan couldn’t imagine what had made such an incredible mess.
“What in the world … ” Shale whispered as she stared up at the dark disorder all around the room. She turned and frowned at Richard. “Where is Dori? The little girl you came in here with. Where is she?”
Richard fixed the sorceress in his raptor gaze a moment, and then went to the end of the table. There was a small pile of ash on the end of the table, but this particular pile wasn’t black. It was gray.
Richard put a hand under the edge of the table and with his other hand wiped the ash off the table and into his upturned palm.
He took it to the sorceress. “Hold out your hands.”
Shale regarded him suspiciously. “Why?”
The muscles in Richard’s jaw flexed. “Hold out your hands.”
Reluctantly, Shale finally did as he asked, lifting her hands, holding them together, palms up. Richard let the ash slowly pour into her hands.
“This is what is left of Dori,” he said in a low, menacing tone. “Since you are such an advocate of bringing innocent children into a world in the middle of this terrible threat, where they will be helpless, where they will be hunted, where they will be subjected to horrors with no way to defend themselves, I want you to take the remains of this child to her mother, and tell her that her precious daughter was possessed by an evil force and died because of it.”
Shale looked horrified. “Lord Rahl, I don’t think I can—”
“Do it!” Richard yelled right into her face. “You think this world is safe for children and wanted Kahlan and me to have children despite the monsters that hunt us. This is the kind of thing that would await them. You take this child’s remains to her mother, and you tell her that we are sorry but none of us could protect her daughter from evil—just like none of us could protect Kahlan and my children from this evil.”
Kahlan wanted to tell him that it wasn’t Shale’s fault, but at the sight of Richard’s anger over the death of a child, she was paralyzed. She was going to have to tell him sooner or later, but she wanted it to be a joyful announcement of her pregnancy. She didn’t want to have such wonderful news come out when something had just happened that had Richard in a rage, or when someone else’s child had just died.
Worse, apparently died at Richard’s hands.
Shale, still standing with her hands out, holding the pile of ashes, swallowed. Seeing the look in his eyes, she finally nodded in resignation.
As Shale left to do his bidding, Kahlan threw her arms around Richard, hugging him close. She could feel him trembling. She didn’t know if it was in rage, or from what had just happened in this room.
She wanted to tell him that everything was all right, now, but she knew it wasn’t. Whatever had happened was only a small part of a much larger menace, and it had involved a child losing her life. At a loss for words, Kahlan simply hugged him.
“I’m sorry,” Richard whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry. I do want to have children one day. I just can’t imagine bringing them into a world with what I have just seen.”
19
Kahlan wanted to know what had happened—what he had just seen—but she didn’t want to press him for answers right then. Richard would tell her in his own way, in his own time. For the moment, she simply put her head against his shoulder and her arms around his waist.
By the time Shale returned with Vika, Kahlan had come to realize that Richard’s trembling was anger. He had come out of the library room shaking in rage and that rage was still charging his muscles with tension. Worse, he hadn’t even drawn his sword and called forth its fury. It was purely his anger.
“I did as you asked, Lord Rahl.” Shale’s face had lost some of its color.
Richard nodded. “Thank you. I don’t imagine Dori’s mother took the news well.”
“No, she did not,” Shale admitted. “But she did tell me something I think you should know. When I told her what you said, that her daughter had been possessed by evil and died because of it, she didn’t act surprised. She cried at the loss, of course, but then told me that Dori had been acting strange ever since arriving at the palace.”
“Strange how?” he asked.
“Cold and distant. She said that was unlike Dori and she began to fear that her daughter had been possessed by something depraved. That was the word she used, ‘depraved.’”
Richard stared off into distant thoughts for a moment. “I have seen too many mothers lose their children. With the great war finally over, I thought I had seen the last of it. But now I know otherwise. We have only seen the beginning of it.”
“A mother feeling that something was off about her daughter is understandable,” Shale said, apparently trying to distract him from grim thoughts. “A mother would know. But, how did you?”
Richard let out a sigh. “She wouldn’t look at me.”
Shale looked skeptical. “Children usually are too shy to look at strangers, especially an authority figure. Being shy is not exactly unusual, especially not when meeting a frightening person like the Lord Rahl.”
“I realize that,” Richard said, “but there was something about the way she avoided looking at me that wasn’t quite natural.” He thought about it a moment before going on.
“Remember when we questioned Nolo? He wouldn’t look at me, either. The Golden Goddess used Nolo to demand that we surrender, and if we did she would in return offer us a quick death. Later Nolo told us that the Golden Goddess called me the shiny man because she found it painful to look at me because of my gift. I remembered the way he wouldn’t look at me in the great hall the other day. That was the goddess not wanting to look at me.”
“That’s it?” Kahlan asked, throwing her hands up. “Just that she wouldn’t look at you? Richard, that hardly seems enough to prove that the Golden Goddess was watching through Dori’s eyes.”
“Well,” Richard admitted, “that, and what she did when I leaned down close and told her that I wanted to surrender.”
“What?” Shale asked.
Richard nodded. “When told her that I wanted to surrender, she looked up at me and grinned.”
Kahlan still wasn’t entirely convinced that meant that Dori was acting on behalf of the Golden Goddess. “Children often smile at the strangest times. I’ve seen little kids smile at me as they were wetting their pants.”
Richard looked over at her, shaking his head. “Not like this. This was as evil a smile as I’ve ever seen. Once I told her that I wante
d to surrender and took her into the library, she dropped all pretense and there was no longer any question about it. The goddess was possessing Dori.
“I closed the drapes and blew out all but one lamp to make her more comfortable—to make the goddess more comfortable looking at me. The shy little girl was gone; there was only the contemptuous Golden Goddess.”
“You mean she showed her true self because you told her you wanted to surrender?” Kahlan asked.
“That’s right. She thought she had me where she wanted me—surrendering and ready to die. But the thing that was really making her confident was the mistake she made.”
“What mistake?” Berdine blurted out, too curious to keep quiet at a lull in his story when he stared off into the memory.
Richard smiled at her eagerness. Berdine was an old friend, and the two of them had a special bond. Berdine was something of a scholar, and they had grown close when searching through books together for answers about things such as the omen machine.
Vika was Richard’s personal bodyguard. She was muscular, strong-headed, and reacted instantly with profound violence to any threat to Richard. Berdine would also protect Richard with her life, but the two had known each other for a long time, and he really did love her, although not more than the others.
“The mistake the Golden Goddess made was in the choice of a host. I don’t know how she can do it, and she wasn’t able to tell me, but somehow, she invaded Dori’s mind in much the same way as she had used Nolo. But this time she wormed her way in deeper and for longer.”
“Why choose a little girl?” Kahlan asked. “Just to look less suspicious?”
Richard folded his arms. “No. She chose Dori because her mother was bringing her to the palace, where we are, but more importantly, because Dori’s mother has the gift. The gift may not be strong in her, but the Golden Goddess didn’t know that. The goddess is wary of magic, so she wanted to have time to observe the mother’s magic and take the measure of it, thinking magic is magic—all magic is the same. So, she chose the daughter of a gifted person, a gifted person who was going to the palace where we live. She thought she had an additional stroke of luck when the mother was called up here to meet with me.”
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