Into Darkness

23

Kahlan felt solace at Richard’s words. Shota, however, looked like she was having none of it. Kahlan wondered how long the witch woman’s patience would last before she decided to simply kill them.

Shota opened her hands as an empty smile spread on her lips. “Richard, just as you have so often misinterpreted my actions in the past, you misunderstand my resolve to be of assistance in this difficult time. You must believe me when I say that I have no malice toward you or the Mother Confessor. Nor do I have any desire to do battle with either of you. Most of all, I certainly have no intention of harming either one of you. I already told you: I am grateful to you both. Everything you falsely interpret as threatening is merely my desire to help you both.”

Richard glared with incredulity. “You expect me to believe you are only interested in helping us? You want us to think that by murdering our children you are helping us?”

Shota stepped close so she could rest an arm over Richard’s shoulder. She smiled warmly and batted her eyelashes, as if trying to charm him. Kahlan had absolutely no doubt that Richard was not charmed or attracted to the witch woman. Even so, it made her blood boil to see her trying to seduce Richard with her “charm.”

“Think of me as doing a difficult chore for you, one that must be done, so that you don’t have to do it,” she said with a shrug. She idly ran a finger of her other hand down his chest, making Kahlan fume all the more. “I admit that my insistence on being of service to you could be taken the wrong way, but be assured, I certainly intend you no harm.”

“If you intend us no harm, then why did you force us to come here?” Kahlan asked, drawing the witch woman’s attention away from her husband.

Shota withdrew her arm from where it was resting on Richard’s shoulder and turned to Kahlan, clearly annoyed to be interrupted in mid-seduction. “I brought you here so you could give birth to the children you carry. I will see to it that you will be safe and comfortable while you are here until then. Once you give birth, both you and Richard, and”—she gestured offhandedly beyond Richard without taking her eyes off Kahlan—“your gaggle of Mord-Sith, will be free to leave and go about your lives.”

“My children will not be born here, in this vile place, so that you can slaughter them.”

Shota’s grin widened. “I’m afraid that you are once again getting the wrong idea. You see, you have no say in this. We will do our best to make you comfortable for the duration of your visit to my palace. After you give birth, as I said, you will be free to leave. But you will not be leaving with those children.”

Kahlan’s hands fisted with fury. “You can’t have my babies so that you can murder them!”

Shota pressed the tips of her fingers together and bowed her head for a moment, as if patiently thinking of how to explain something to a stubborn child. Her head finally came back up.

“You claim to be protectors of your people. Well, so am I. Although we disagree about aspects of it, our goals are actually the same: the safety of our people. That is in fact what this is all about. You are blinded by maternal instinct, which is only natural, but it prevents you from having the vision and strength to do what is necessary for the greater good. I have both, so I am going to help with what must be done.”

Kahlan fought back tears of rage. “The greater good?”

Shota’s expression turned dark and dangerous as she leaned in. “I am finished with trying to reason with you two foolish children. It shall be as I say.”

Kahlan knew how dangerous this witch woman was, but she was at the end of her patience. “Shota, if you do not withdraw your witch’s oath and let us go, there will be no turning back—for either of us. Know that, as the Mother Confessor, I will grant you no mercy and allow none.”

Shota looked amused. “You think your Law of Nines will help you? I’m afraid that it no longer applies.”

Richard glanced around at the group with him. The Mord-Sith, all in their red leather, looked not only resolute but positively dangerous as they watched the conversation, waiting to be let off their chain.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

Shota lifted her arm out behind, indicating the odd-looking group of women lined up to either side of her throne. “You see, I have come here, to Bindamoon, to my winter palace, to convene a coven.”

Kahlan scanned the line of grim women to either side of Shota’s throne. There were six on one side of it, and five on the other side. Although all of the women looked very different from one another, they had one thing in common: they did indeed all look like witches. They all fit the stories she had heard as a young girl from the wizards who taught her. And they certainly all looked dangerous.

She suddenly realized the flaw in Shota’s grand scheme.

“I don’t want to tell you your business,” Kahlan said, “but a coven is thirteen witches. With you and the rest of these ladies, here, there are only twelve. You’re missing your last witch.”

“Do tell,” Shota said with an amused smile.

Kahlan shrugged. “We killed Moravaska Michec, your thirteenth witch. Without the thirteenth witch, your call to coven can’t authenticate the essential dictate so that you can initiate its power.”

“Michec? A witch man? In a coven?” Shota said with distaste. She huffed dismissively. “Don’t be ridiculous. He could not possibly be part of a coven. He’s of more use to me dead than alive.” She once more smiled as she leaned toward Kahlan. “But thank you for the suggestion of using him.”

Kahlan couldn’t imagine how Shota could use a dead Michec. Ignoring the distraction, she gestured to the women standing in the background.

“Well, I hate to tell you, but in that case you’re a witch short of a coven. Like I said, including you, there are only twelve witches. Without thirteen witches you are not able to invoke the power of coven.”

Shota smiled without humor. “Yes, I know. That’s why I had you bring me the thirteenth witch.”

Kahlan blinked, suddenly worried by Shota’s calm confidence. “What are you talking about?”

Her eyes flashing with menace, Shota walked over to Shale. With her face mere inches away from Shale’s, she pointed back behind. “Go and take your place with your sister witches.”

Kahlan suddenly realized that Shale had been oddly quiet almost the entire time. Kahlan saw, then, that she seemed to be in a trance of some sort. She stared ahead without blinking.

Shota, still pointing back at the line of women, snapped her fingers. “Now.”

Without a word of protest, or question, or even acknowledgment, Shale walked woodenly toward the women standing to the sides of the throne. When she reached them, she took up a place at the end of the line of five on one side of the throne, making six to match the six on the other side.

With Shale bringing the number in the line to twelve, and Shota making the total thirteen, Shota now had the witches she needed to invoke the power of coven.

“Shale,” Richard called out, “what are you doing?”

When he started to charge toward her to get her back, Shota lifted a hand toward him, as if she were dismissing him. Kahlan didn’t know what kind of power she had available to her with a coven, but she knew from stories wizards had told her that it was formidable.

Suddenly, Moravaska Michec materialized as if his corpse had been pulled directly up from the underworld. He looked as intimidating in spirit form as he had in life. Kahlan regretted now even having mentioned his name and giving Shota the idea. The dead man was semitransparent in his spirit form, but the part that was visible looked like half-rotted remains. Blood that had gushed from the wound in his chest where Kahlan had driven her knife into him covered his front, and his intestines hung out from a gaping belly wound, dragging across the floor as he advanced.

His mouth opened with a roar that shook the room and made Kahlan feel as if her eyeballs were rattling in her skull. Michec abruptly shot across the room, not on his feet, but through the air as if he had leaped, his intestines fluttering out behind him.

He struck Richard with enough force to catapult him back so powerfully that he stopped only when he slammed into one of the stone ravens. As he did, the spirit of Michec, his summons completed, dissolved back into the world of the dead.

Richard scrambled to his feet, refusing to be shaken by what Shota had conjured.

“Shale!” he called out. “Don’t do this! Don’t let Shota do this to you! Come away from them!”

Kahlan could hardly believe that the woman who had saved her life several times would suddenly join with Shota against them. She joined Richard in crying out Shale’s name, pleading with her to come away from the others.

“If it pleases you both,” Shota said in a surprisingly sympathetic tone, “know that this is not by the choice of your half-breed witch. It is by my choice alone, by my command alone, as the grand witch.”

Her tone turned iron-hard. “But a witch woman with such a mix of powers is an abomination, as would be your children. I will use her as long as it pleases me. When I am finished with her, I will eliminate her, as I would any such crime of nature.”

Kahlan could feel the blood draining from her face. “Shota, you can’t do this. A coven invokes the underworld, and with it, Subtractive Magic. You said yourself that a witch with a mix of powers is a crime of nature.”

Shota leaned toward her with a deadly look. “I warned you before. You did not listen. This is the consequence.”

Kahlan knew that even in the best of circumstances, her gift and Richard’s didn’t work against witch women the way they did against others. Witch women had the ability to turn whatever powers you used back at you, often with fatal results.

But now that Shota had invoked coven, her power would make using their gift against her next to impossible.

She hoped that Richard remembered the warning Nicci had once given when explaining the complications of the magic involved when trying to use their gift against a witch woman.

Even so, they were being put in the position where trying might be their only option, since not trying would mean their death anyway.