Hateful Things

1

“A boy and a girl?” Kahlan asked in astonishment.

“Yes, that’s right,” Shale said with a single nod and a warm smile. “You are pregnant with twins.”

Kahlan stared up with both excitement and a deep sense of dread. Having twins—a boy and a girl—would be like a gift from the good spirits. It was a way for Richard’s gift and her Confessor power to live on into future generations. The House of Rahl would not die out. The lineage of Confessors would not end. It couldn’t be more perfect.

Kahlan winced as she tried to sit up. She put an arm across her abdomen to comfort the unexpected pain of the attempt.

“Easy,” Shale said, pressing a hand against Kahlan’s shoulder to ease her back down. “Your injuries were life-threatening, and you’ve only just been healed, at least for the most part. Your body is still in the process of completing the final repair of those injuries. Your muscles have been tested to exhaustion. You need to rest to complete your recovery.”

Kahlan put her hand over Shale’s in gratitude for saving her life after she had been attacked. She had worked tirelessly to keep Kahlan from dying or losing the use of her arm.

Even though she was a sorceress, the woman looked entirely too young and beautiful to be so accomplished a healer. Her youthful beauty laid over a shadow of wisdom and authority—that odd combination of freshly bloomed femininity and seasoned shrewdness—gave Kahlan pause in the back of her mind that Shale was more than what was on the surface.

At the moment, though, Kahlan was tormented by bigger issues than the hints of things beyond the woman’s beauty or her own mortality. She gently pushed Shale’s arm aside as she sat up and swung her feet down off the bed. She finally stood. Shale, sitting on the edge of the bed, rose up beside her, ready to steady her or catch her if her legs gave out. Kahlan willed herself to straighten up. She found that she felt better being on her feet.

The lavish bedroom was still and quiet, lit only by the soft glow of lamps and a low fire in the massive fireplace. Kahlan knew that most of the Mord-Sith would be out in the entryway guarding the bedroom. She knew that Vika, though, would be guarding Richard.

With the Mord-Sith standing guard outside and Shale in the room with her, the private sanctuary seemed safe enough. But the thing that had attacked and nearly killed Kahlan hadn’t needed to come through the doors. After all, it had attacked her when she had been in a locked room. From that, it seemed that those mysterious predators could appear anywhere.

Weighed down by the worry of the new threat to their lives and their world, Kahlan slipped on a robe and then opened the double glass doors to the balcony. The Lord Rahl’s quarters for countless generations—now her and Richard’s bedroom—were high up in the People’s Palace and heavily protected by the men of the First File, the Lord Rahl’s personal guard. At the far edge of the balcony, the fluted white marble balusters and railings had wild black veins among gold flecks. The grand balcony jutted out far enough over the edge of the plateau for her to be able to stand at that railing and look down past the palace to the Azrith Plain far below.

Kahlan tightened her robe against the chill. Summer was drawing to a close. The cold was a harbinger of the harsh times ahead.

In the predawn darkness there was no view of the Azrith Plain. Many times, beneath the vast sky it was a beautiful sight, in a stark, barren sort of way. It was a view of the world without the robes of green hills, carpets of forests, or jeweled streams of sparkling water. Instead, it was rather pure in the honesty of its unadorned form.

In a way, it was a visual reminder of how cruel and unforgiving the world of life could be beneath the façade of beauty.

Now, though, there was nothing to see except when lightning flickered. The lamplight coming from the bedroom behind her illuminated falling sheets of rain.

It was a gloomy, foreboding view that matched her mood.

Kahlan wanted these two children—Richard’s children—more than anything. She had known she was pregnant, but to learn that she was pregnant with twins nearly took her breath with the unexpected excitement of it. As much as she wanted these children, though, she didn’t know if she could dare to hope that she would ever have them.

The sorceress came up from behind. “Winter has already come to the Northern Waste. It will be down here soon enough.”

“Is that where you are from?” Kahlan asked, her mind sinking into cold, dark thoughts.

Shale nodded as she gently placed a hand on Kahlan’s shoulder. “I know your concerns and fears,” she said as if reading Kahlan’s mind, “but these children, the continuation of Lord Rahl’s gift and your power, are what will help keep our world safe into the future. This could not come at a better time.”

Kahlan folded her arms. “It could not come at a worse time. Giving birth to them will only mean that they would be hunted and slaughtered by the Golden Goddess and her kind. Our world needs them, needs our lines of magic to continue in order to protect our people into the future, but for that reason the Golden Goddess cannot allow them to live.” Kahlan stared out into the darkness. “She will come for them.”

“Are you saying that you would seek out an herb woman who would murder those unborn children in your womb before the Golden Goddess can?”

Kahlan recoiled at the very notion of ending the lives of her two unborn children before they could be born. But that dark thought, not fully formed, had been lurking in the corner of her mind. The way Shale had framed it was starkly cruel, and it was, but still, Kahlan couldn’t help wondering about the mercy of such an act.

A cold tear ran down her cheek. “I didn’t say that.”

“Mother Confessor, your pregnancy is a joyous thing. Having these two children will preserve Lord Rahl’s gift into the future. It would mean that you don’t have to be the last Confessor.”

“There is no way to know if either of these two children would carry our gift. They could be skips. Magic does not always pass on to the children of the gifted. It frequently skips one generation, or even many generations.”

Even as she said it, she knew that daughters of Confessors were always born Confessors. But not all the sons of the Lord Rahl were born wizards.

“And if they are gifted? If it is what is needed for magic to continue to be the link that protects our world?”

Kahlan wiped the tear from her cheek as she looked back over her shoulder. “What if they are not gifted? Then having these children would not preserve magic in our world. Though it would be my greatest joy to bear Richard’s children and they would be loved no less, they may not be gifted. If they aren’t, and especially if they are, they could only look forward to being born into a dying world preyed upon by the Golden Goddess and her kind with no hope for the future.”

Shale showed a curious smile. “I don’t believe the good spirits would play such a cruel trick at such a time of need.”

“How can you be so confident?”

Shale’s smile widened as she placed her hand against Kahlan’s belly. “Because I can feel it in them.”

Kahlan’s eyes widened. “You can say for sure that they are gifted? Both of them?”

Shale nodded with conviction. “I can.”

Kahlan looked away again, out into the darkness. While that was what their world needed in the long term, it only made the immediate situation far worse.

The Golden Goddess would be able to see their magic. She called Richard the shiny man because she could see his magic shining in him. These two unborn children of D’Hara would draw that evil to them.

For all she knew, the goddess could sense that magic growing in Kahlan’s womb at that very moment and could very well already be coming to kill her. It occurred to her that the goddess had already sent her kind to kill Kahlan and these unborn children. Kahlan had barely escaped alive. The goddess would send others to finish the job.

They would not be so timid the next time.

“This is not the way I wanted it to be,” Kahlan said in a whisper. “Any time but now. Even if by a miracle these children are born, their birth will be their death sentence.”