Into Darkness

37

Kahlan turned halfway to the threat.

It was clear from the wild look in her eyes that Nea’s rage had taken control of her senses. Surprisingly, she charged in with a knife—Kahlan’s knife—rather than using magic. She apparently wanted to physically rip into Kahlan and take her down. She raced ahead knife-first, intending to slam the blade into Kahlan.

That was the last mistake the witch woman would ever make.

With the death of three witches mere moments before, the spell of coven was broken.

Kahlan’s power was no longer suppressed.

Nea leaped toward Kahlan, throwing herself at her, intending to crash down on her knife-first.

Kahlan lifted her hand, palm out toward the blade, as if warding it off.

It all happened in an instant, but that instant was all the time it took.

The world went still.

Kahlan felt the tip of the knife, as it had just begun to touch her palm. Although it was a razor-sharp blade, to Kahlan it felt like no more than a breath of air on her hand. It was not necessary for her to summon her Confessor power; she merely had to withdraw her restraint of it, and she had already done that.

Time stopped.

The inner violence of Kahlan’s cold, coiled power slipping its bounds was breathtaking. The astonishing magnitude of the force as it was unleashed was like touching the sun. It flared up from the very core of who she was and through every fiber of her being, lighting her soul with white-hot intensity.

Nea hung in the air, stopped dead before Kahlan, her hand with the knife outstretched, her feet clear of the ground, one of her knees parting the hundreds of knotted and beaded strips of her leather skirt. Kahlan could have counted the hundreds of stringy strands of red hair, lifted out in all directions, now frozen motionless in midair. It was like seeing a statue made of flesh and bone.

The rage in Nea’s eyes had only just taken that first tick of transition to alarm. She had just begun to realize by Kahlan’s posture, her resolute stance, her fearless bearing, that something was terribly wrong. Before she had been able to fully realize what was happening, it was already too late.

She was frozen in that instant of time just before the danger had fully registered.

Kahlan knew that behind her, the rest of the witch women were also still as stone, frozen in mid-movement. In the sky, a number of the ravens that had taken to wing at the initiation of the violence were impossibly stopped in midflight, their wings having just flapped, spread, or started to take another bite of the air, the fanned feathers at the back of their wings standing out individually, black, glossy, beautiful.

Something under the water to the side of the path had just disturbed the surface, and the ripples from it were now motionless. The mist drifting over the water had likewise stopped in place. The whole world waited, unmoving.

In the silent stillness of Kahlan’s mind, she had all the time in the world, all the time she would need to do what she had done so many times before.

Nea’s face was set in mid-snarl. Her teeth were bared. Beads of sweat dotted her glowering brow. Her pale blue eyes were wild, frozen in a picture of fury.

Of all the witch women, this one had been the one she had feared most because she always seemed dangerously deranged. Shota had put her in charge of Kahlan for a reason. She was not only Shota’s next-in-command, but she was also ruthless and would not hesitate to take control of any situation, and she had the power to deal with anything.

Except this.

The control of what was about to happen now belonged entirely to Kahlan.

She knew that back behind her somewhere, Shota would be in mid-scream, trying to stop what Kahlan had already done to break the coven. That power was now lost to Shota.

The Confessor’s power was now Kahlan’s again.

She had yet to feel a single heartbeat. Even so, she had taken in the whole scene in excruciating detail. She knew where everything and everyone was, all stopped in space.

Kahlan wondered if this redheaded witch woman yet knew that her mind was about to be gone. It was possible that she didn’t realize that a Confessor’s power also took a person’s mind, but everything she was, and everything she had been, was about to be wiped away in a lightning instant by the unstoppable force of Kahlan’s power.

The woman’s mind, once emptied, would be replaced with a frantic, burning desire to do what Kahlan, and only Kahlan, as the Confessor who was taking her mind, wanted.

Even with taking control of this one witch before her, Kahlan was well aware that her position was still one of great peril. There were a lot of other witches.

And then there was Shota. She would not take kindly to what Kahlan had done.

Even so, it couldn’t be helped. The way things were going, if Kahlan didn’t act, and soon, it would all end badly. This way, at least, she had broken the coven and changed the balance of power. It didn’t ensure that she would survive, but had she not done it she would have had no chance. This at least gave her an entirely different field of battle, one in which she was not powerless.

As Kahlan gazed again into the eyes of this woman before her, she felt no hatred, no remorse, no anger, no sorrow, no pity. In fact, she felt no emotion at all.

This act was the embodiment of Confessor power, and the Confessor face reflected its cold nature, and in a way part of its purpose. This was reasoned action absent of emotion. It was a calculated act of aggression to change what would have otherwise happened. Emotion had no place in that, and was no longer necessary, so it was no longer a component of what had to be done. It was already decided the instant that knife point touched Kahlan’s palm.

Nea had no chance. None.

In that singular moment, if Kahlan was the absence of emotion, then Nea was the manifestation of it.

In that infinitesimal tick of time, Nea’s mind, who she was, who she had been, was already gone.

Kahlan did not hesitate.

She released the rest of her restraints on her gift to unleash the full, blinding force of her power.

Time slammed back.

Thunder without sound jolted the air—exquisite, violent, and for that pristine instant, sovereign.

The trees all around shook with the force of the concussion. The violent shock of it lifted the leaves, bits of plants, and sticks littering the ground and blew them outward in an ever-expanding ring around Kahlan. The dust and dirt and debris driven before the wall of power knocked the rest of the women from their feet as it stripped vegetation off the nearby shrubs and trees. As the force of that silent thunder ripped across the water to each side of the path, it drove a ring of water and water vapor before it. Trees shook. Small branches were torn off and blown back.

Nea gasped as the full force of Confessor power slammed into her.

Behind Kahlan, all of the women, who had been thrown from their feet and tumbled back away, were now grabbing their elbows, knees, or wrists in pain. She could hear them groaning in agony from having been too close to Kahlan when her Confessor power was unleashed.

Nea dropped to her knees before Kahlan. She looked up through strands of red hair, no longer in hate and rage, but in pleading.

“Mistress … please … command me.”

Kahlan looked down, feeling no sorrow for the woman. Her life as she had known it was now ended. Her memories, her wishes, her hopes were gone. She had forfeited all of that and more when she tried to kill Kahlan.

“Please, Mistress,” Nea begged. “Please, command me.”

“Kill Shota.”

Almost instantly, knife still in her fist, Nea scrambled to her feet and charged past Kahlan, going for Shota.