Hateful Things

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 clear, 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.”