Hateful Things

6

Kahlan, in the white dress of the Mother Confessor, was just emerging from their bedroom as Richard hurried into the entryway from the broad corridor. He could see that her arms were moving without pain. She was walking straight and tall, which told him that the healing had been successful.

When her green-eyed gaze locked on him, her expression brightened.

The Mord-Sith were all gathered in that round entry where they had been guarding the bedroom all night while Shale had finished the healing. Only Vika had gone with Richard to another room where he could get some rest.

A weary-looking Shale followed Kahlan out. Richard knew that such a healing would have been quite an ordeal for her as well as Kahlan. He could read in the sorceress’s face and in her aura the toll it had taken on her.

Kahlan rushed into his arms and for a long moment he lost himself in that embrace, relieved beyond words to see her looking like herself again. As he was hugging her, he reached out with one hand to touch Shale’s arm in appreciation for what she had done. She returned a proud smile.

“Did you sleep well?” Kahlan asked, holding his upper arms as she pushed back from the hug.

“Without you? Hardly at all.”

Kahlan flashed him her special smile. “Now that Shale has finished healing me, tonight you will be back with me, and I will see to it that you do.”

“There was an attack,” he said, hating to break the spell of her smile.

Just that quick, the smile was gone. “What?”

“I’m pretty sure that it was the same kind of thing that attacked you—one of the predators sent by the Golden Goddess. The thing you called the scribbly man.”

Kahlan’s face lost some of its color. “Where? When?”

Richard pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “A short time ago. It was one of the soldiers standing guard by himself down the hall not far from the room where I was sleeping.”

“Was he severely hurt, Lord Rahl?” Shale asked from behind Kahlan. “Can I help?”

Richard shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s too late to help him.”

“Dear spirits, that’s terrible.” Kahlan frowned. “Why attack a lone man standing guard? That seems odd.”

“I think because I was sleeping nearby.”

Just then, a soldier of the First File rushed into the entryway breathing heavily. “Lord Rahl, Mother Confessor, are you both all right?”

“Yes,” Richard said. “What is it?”

“One of the sentries standing guard down a hallway branching off from this corridor coming in here was just found dead.”

“Did it look like he had been mauled by a bear?” Richard asked, his heart sinking.

“That’s right,” the man said, looking a little surprised. “There is no sign of whatever it was that attacked him.”

“So, you didn’t catch sight of it?”

“No, Lord Rahl.”

“I heard a scream a couple of hours ago,” Cassia said.

Richard turned to stare at the Mord-Sith. “And you didn’t go to help the man?”

She frowned. “Of course not, Lord Rahl.”

“Why not?”

“Because our duty is to protect the Mother Confessor. It could be that it was a diversion to draw us away from protecting her. We are not going to abandon our duty to keep her safe. The risk of doing so would be too great. It is the job of the First File to respond to such things.”

Richard looked at the grim faces of Rikka, Nyda, Vale, and Berdine. None looked to think any differently.

“Lord Rahl,” Berdine finally said, “we are here, in your place, to protect your wife. She is just as important to preserving the magic protecting this world as you are. I know you would not want us to be tricked into leaving her without our protection. We would not trust her to anyone else’s care. We are the last line of defense. We would all die before harm could get a look at her, just as we would all die before harm could get a look at you.”

“That’s right,” Cassia added. “I am sorry one of the men of the First File was killed, but that’s all the more reason we should not leave our post guarding the Mother Confessor.”

Vika looked to her sister Mord-Sith. “Lord Rahl sometimes gets crazy ideas to expose himself to danger. Fortunately, I was there to stop him from doing something foolish and dangerous only a little while ago, in a similar situation.”

The rest of them nodded solemnly.

“Protecting him is often a burden,” Berdine confirmed.

Richard was used to the Mord-Sith talking about him in such a way, right in front of him, as if he were a doddering old fool who could barely feed himself.

He turned back to Kahlan, spellbound by her green eyes, but needing to return to business.

“I asked the officers to meet us in a devotion area not far from here,” he finally said. “With two men killed already this morning, I’m sure rumors will be circulating among the First File. We need to let them at least know the nature of the threat. We need to come up with a plan to fight it.”

“They can appear out of thin air,” Kahlan said, sounding skeptical that any planning could be possible.

“I know. That makes it difficult, but we’ve learned one thing. They are attacking targets around both of us to try to draw us out and into a surprise ambush.”

Kahlan looked more than a little concerned. “It seems they can appear anywhere, so why wouldn’t they simply attack us right there in our rooms, much like the way they did when I was alone with Nolo? Why not surprise us that way?”

Richard stared off for a moment, trying to reason it out in his own mind. He finally looked back at Kahlan.

“They are afraid of our magic. They tried a direct surprise attack on you when you touched Nolo with your power. They struck when you were at your weakest. Even though that thing ripped into you, I suspect that it vanished before finishing the job because at the same time your power was already returning. Nolo says they are fearful of our magic.

“Before, when Shale was beginning to heal you, I was going down a hallway that was dark because the lamps had gone out. One of them appeared suddenly. I don’t know where it came from, or if it came out of nowhere. It was simply suddenly there.”

“What did it look like?” Kahlan asked.

“It was too dark to get a good look at it. This dark shape suddenly came rushing at me out of nowhere. I had my sword out before it was on me and I was able to take a swing right through the middle of it.”

Kahlan leaned in. “And then what? What happened? Did you kill it?”

Richard shook his head in regret. “Then it just wasn’t there, as if it never had been. For just an instant I thought I had only imagined the whole thing, imagined I had seen something in the dark—a shadow or a twist of the light. I wondered if I’d been scared by my own shadow. But I wasn’t. Something was there. My magic—the sword’s magic—must have scared it off. I suspect they are attacking people around both of us to test the limits of our powers.”

“Or to try to test themselves against it,” Shale said.

“That could be, too,” Richard said in a worried tone as he paced off a few feet, thinking.

“We need to warn people of this new danger,” Kahlan said.

“Can people defend themselves against these things,” Vika asked, “these scribbly men, as you called them?”

Kahlan shook her head. “No, they can’t. No one can, except maybe Richard and maybe me.”

“Then what can be accomplished by telling everyone that our world is under attack from an unknown threat that will come out of nowhere to rip them apart and there’s nothing they can do to save themselves? That would terrify people, which is exactly what Nolo said these predators seek: terror.”

Richard rubbed his chin in thought. “I’m afraid Vika is right.”

“Along with the First File, we are the steel against steel,” Vika said. “You are the magic against magic, Lord Rahl. This what you were born to do.”

“These predators don’t have magic,” Richard reminded her.

“Well, they have something that enables them to get from their world to ours in order to hunt and kill us. You are the only one who can figure out how to fight beings that can do that.”

“Right now, you can’t worry about the people living in the palace,” Berdine added. “You need to focus on stopping this threat, not managing panicked people.”

“They have a point,” Kahlan said.

“I’m afraid I have to agree.” Richard let out a deep sigh. “The Golden Goddess and her kind are using our empathy for others against us to goad us into traps.”

Kahlan shook her head in despair. “What can we do about that?”

Richard’s gaze swept over the six women in red leather all standing at ease, watching him. “We have a secret weapon.”

Kahlan frowned. “What secret weapon?”

“The Mord-Sith,” Richard said with a wry smile. “They have no empathy.”

The Mord-Sith all flashed self-satisfied grins.