Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 17

As Shota glided closer to Richard she cast Nicci a threatening glare. He wondered why Shota hadn’t also told Nicci to go back up the steps with Jebra to talk to Zedd. He surmised, though, that the witch woman probably knew that Nicci wouldn’t follow any such orders. He certainly didn’t want to see them in a test of wills. He had enough to worry about without those on the same side battling among themselves.

When Richard glanced over and saw Jebra ascending the steps he also saw that Ann and Nathan had already made their way around the room to stand near him as well. When she reached him, Zedd circled a comforting arm around Jebra’s shoulders as he murmured words of reassurance, but his gaze was on Richard. Richard appreciated his grandfather watching out for him and keeping an eye on the witch woman just in case she had any ideas about pulling one of her tricks. Zedd probably knew far better than any of them just what Shota was capable of. He also harbored a deep mistrust of the woman, not sharing at all Richard’s view that Shota, at her core, was driven by the same convictions as they were.

As much as he might appreciate her central purpose, Richard was well aware that Shota sometimes pursued that purpose in ways that had in the past caused him no end of grief. What she viewed as help sometimes ended up being nothing but trouble for him.

He was all too aware that Shota also on occasion had her own agenda—such as when she had given the sword to Samuel. Richard suspected that she was up to something now as well, he just didn’t know what or what was behind it. He wondered if it might have something to do with eliminating the other witch woman.

“Richard,” Shota said in a soft, sympathetic tone, “you have heard the nature of the terror that is descending upon us. You are the only one who can stop it. I don’t know why it is so, but I do know that it is.”

Richard did not spare her for her gentle tone or her concern about their common enemy. “You dare to express your deep distress over the suffering and death brought by the Order and your conviction that only I can do something to stop the threat, and yet you conspired to withhold information just so that you could wrest the Sword of Truth from me?”

She didn’t rise to the challenge. “There was no conspiring, as you put it. It was a fair trade—value for value.” Her voice remained serene. “Besides, the sword would not be of any help to you in this, Richard.”

“A poor excuse for you giving it to that murderous Samuel.”

Shota arched an eyebrow. “And, as it turns out, had I not, then those Sisters of the Dark who stole the boxes of Orden would probably have united by now. With all three boxes together, they very well might have already opened one, very well might have already unleashed the power of Orden, very well might have already turned us all over to the Keeper of the dead. What good would the sword do you if the world of life were ended? It seems that Samuel, for whatever reason, has prevented a cataclysm.”

“Samuel also used the sword to kidnap Rachel. In the process he nearly killed Chase—and apparently intended to.”

“Use your head, Richard. The sword served us all by buying us time, even if it was at a cost that none of us likes. What are you going to do with the time you now have that you otherwise would not? More to the point, what good would the sword do you, now, against the threat of the Order?

“Besides, with the sword anyone can be a Seeker—a pretend Seeker, anyway. A true Seeker does not need the sword to be the Seeker.”

He knew that she was right. What would he do with the sword? Try to cut down the Imperial Order single-handedly? Just as Nicci had explained to Jebra how those with the gift could not overcome vast numbers just because they could wield magic, the same applied to the sword. Still, Shota had given the sword to Samuel, and now Samuel seemed to be acting on the orders of a different witch woman, one who apparently had no one’s interest at heart but her own.

Worse, what sense did it make to fret over a single weapon when so many were dying at the hands of the Order, when that single weapon would not preserve their lives or freedom? Richard knew that the sword was not the real weapon; the mind that directed it was what really mattered.

He was the true Seeker. He was the true weapon. Samuel couldn’t take that.

And yet, he had no idea what to do to stop the threat, to halt any of the dangers closing in around them.

Nicci stood not far away—distant enough to give Shota her chance to talk to him, but close enough to step between them in an instant if the talk turned to threats, or to something Nicci didn’t like.

Richard stared into Nicci’s blue eyes a moment before turning again to meet Shota’s gaze. “And just what is it that you expect me to do?”

Without being aware of her coming closer, he suddenly realized that he could feel Shota’s breath against his cheek. It carried the faint scent of lavender. The fragrance felt as if it drew the tension right out of him.

“What I expect,” Shota said in an intimate whisper as her arm slipped around his waist, “is for you to understand.

“To truly understand.”

Distantly alarmed by what might be her veiled intent, Richard thought that he should back out of her firm embrace. Before he could move a muscle, Shota lifted his chin with a finger.

In an instant, he was kneeling in the mud.

The sound of the steady downpour roared around him, drumming on the roofs and awnings, pattering in the puddles, spattering mud on the walls of buildings, on broken carts and on the legs of the milling mob. Soldiers in the distance shouted orders. Bony horses, their heads hanging, their legs caked with mud, looked miserable as they stood impassively in the rain. A group of soldiers off to the side laughed among themselves while some others not far away chatted in trivial, bored conversation. Nearby wagons rumbled and bounced as they rolled slowly down a road, while in the distance a few dogs barked ceaselessly in a manner born of habit.

In the gloomy light of the leaden overcast everything looked a murky shade of grayish brown. When he glanced to his right, Richard saw that there were other men lined up, kneeling in the mud beside him. Their drab, sodden clothes hung limp from slumped shoulders. Their faces were ashen, their eyes wild with fright. Behind them lurked the maw of a deep pit, looking like nothing so much as a dark opening into the underworld itself.

With a growing sense of urgency, Richard tried to move, to shift his balance, so that he could scramble to his feet and defend himself. It was then that he realized his wrists were bound behind his back with what felt like leather thongs. When he tried to twist out of the tightly wound bindings, the leather cut deeper into his flesh. He ignored the scaring pain and strained with all his might, but he could not break free. An old dread of being helpless with his hands tied welled up in him.

All around him towered hulking soldiers, some in armor made of leather, or out of rusty metal discs, or chain mail, while still others wore nothing more protective than crude hide vests. Their weapons hung from wide belts and studded straps. None of the weapons were ornate. They were simple tools of their trade: knives with homemade wooden handles riveted onto the heels of the blades; swords with leather wound around wooden grips to hold them to the tangs; maces made of crudely cast iron atop a stout hickory handle or wrought-iron bar. Their coarse construction made them no less effective for their task. If anything, the lack of adornment served to emphasize their only purpose and in so doing only made them look all the more sinister.

The greasy hair of those who didn’t shave their heads was matted by the steady rain. Some soldiers had multiple rings or sharpened metal posts in their ears and nose. The grime layering their faces appeared impervious to the rain. Many a man had a swath of a dark tattoo across his face. Some of the tattoos were almost like masks, while others swept over cheek and nose and brow in wild, snaking, dramatic designs. The bold tattoos made the men look all the less human, all the more savage. The eyes of the soldiers flicked back and forth, seldom pausing on any one thing, giving the men the look of restless animals.

Richard had to blink the rainwater out of his eyes to see. He tossed his head, flicking strands of his wet hair back off his face. It was then that he saw men to his left as well, some weeping helplessly as soldiers held up those who would not, or could not, kneel upright in the sloppy mud. The sense of panic was palpable. The floodwaters of that panic spread to Richard, rising up through him, threatening to drown him.

This wasn’t real, he knew . . . but, somehow, it was. The rain was cold. His clothes were soaked. An occasional shiver rattled through him. The place stank worse than anything he could ever remember, a combination of acrid smoke, stale sweat, excrement, and putrefying flesh. The cries of those around him were all too real. He didn’t think he would have been able to imagine moans so devoid of hope and at the same time so desperately frightened. Many of the men trembled uncontrollably, and it wasn’t from the cold rain. Richard realized, as he stared at them, that he was one of them, much the same as them, just one of the many on their knees in the mud, one of many with their hands bound behind their backs.

It was so impossible that it was disorienting; somehow he was there. Somehow Shota had sent him to this place. He could not conceive of how such a thing could be possible; he had to be imagining it.

A rock hidden beneath the mud dug painfully into his left knee. Such an unforeseeable, trivial detail seemed like it had to be real. How could he possibly imagine something so unexpected? He tried to shift his weight, but it was difficult to balance. He managed to push his knee to the side a little, off the sharp rock. He couldn’t be imagining such a thing.

He began to wonder if it was everything else that he had actually been imagining. He wondered if it all had just been a dream, a diversion, a trick of his mind. He began to wonder if it could be possible that the Chainfire spell had somehow made him forget what was really happening, or if reality was just so terrifying that he had somehow blocked it out of his mind, withdrawing to an imaginary world, and now, suddenly, under the stress of the situation, he had snapped back to what was real. He began to realize that, even if he didn’t know exactly what was going on or how he could be so confused, what really mattered was that this actually was real and somehow he was only now awakening to it. In fact, that’s just what it felt like to him, like he had just awakened, disoriented and confused.

If he had been confused before, now he was desperately trying to remember, to understand how he had come to be where he found himself, how he had ended up on his knees in the mud among Imperial Order soldiers. It seemed like he could almost remember how he had gotten there, almost recall it all, but it remained just out of reach, like a forgotten word that was lost somewhere in the dark well of the mind.

Richard looked down the line to his left and saw a soldier grab a fistful of man’s hair and yank his head upright. The man screamed—short, terror-choked sounds driven by a heaving chest. Richard could easily see that despite the man’s frantic effort, he had no chance of escape. The sounds of his tearful pleas raised goose bumps on Richard’s arms. The soldier behind the kneeling man brought a long, thin knife around in front of the man’s exposed throat.

Again, Richard tried to tell himself that he had been right before, that it wasn’t real, that he was somehow just imagining it. But he could see the chip in the blade of the crudely honed knife, see the man swallowing over and over in panting panic, see the grim grin on the soldier’s smug face.

When the knife sliced deep across the man’s throat, Richard flinched in shock at the sight, as the man flinched with the shock of pain.

The man thrashed, but the soldier holding him by the hair had no trouble restraining his victim. The rain-slicked muscles of his powerful arm bulged as he exerted more effort to cut down through the man’s throat a second time, far deeper, and nearly all the way around. Blood, shockingly crimson in the gray light, gushed out with each beat of the man’s still throbbing heart. Richard winced as the fresh smell of it made his nostrils flare.

He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t real, yet, somehow, as he watched the man weakly twisting, watched as a bib of blood grew down the front of his shirt, soaked down the crotch of his pants, it was all too real. With one final effort, his neck gaping open, the man kicked his right leg out to the side. The soldier, still holding the man by the hair, heaved him back into the pit. Richard heard the dead weight splash down heavily in the bottom.

Richard’s heart pounded against his chest wall so hard that he thought it might burst. He felt sick. He thought he might vomit. He strained frantically to wrench his hands free, but the leather only cut deeper into his flesh. The rain was washing sweat into his eyes. The leather thongs had been in place for so long that just moving against them burned painfully enough into the raw wounds to bring fresh tears to his eyes. That didn’t stop him, though. He grunted with effort, putting all his muscle into the struggle to break his bonds. He could feel the leather rasping against the exposed tendons in his wrists.

And then Richard heard his name called out. He instantly recognized the voice.

It was Kahlan.

His whole life hammered to a halt when he looked up, across the way and into her dazzling green eyes. Every emotion he had ever had washed through him in an instant, leaving behind a kind of weak and terrible agony that ached all the way down to the marrow of his bones.

He had been separated from her for so long . . .

Seeing her, seeing every detail of her face, seeing the little arch in the wrinkle in her brow that he had forgotten about, seeing the exact way her buck curved as she stood turned slightly, seeing the way her hair parted naturally under the weight of the rain, seeing her eyes, her beautiful green eyes, told him that he could not possibly be imagining it.

Kahlan stretched out an arm. “Richard!”

The sound of her voice paralyzed him. It had been so long since he had heard her singular voice, a voice that from the first time he’d met her had riveted him with its intelligence, its clarity, its grace, its bewitching charm. But now there was none of that in her voice. All those qualities had been stripped away until all that was left was anguish beyond bearing.

Matching the distress in her voice, Kahlan’s exquisite features twisted in horror at seeing him kneeling in the mud. Her eyes were rimmed with red. Tears streamed down her cheeks along with the rain.

Richard knelt frozen in terror, frozen at the sight of her, right there, so close yet so far. Frozen to discover that she was there, in the middle of thousands upon thousands of enemy troops.

“Richard!”

Her arm desperately stretching for him again. She was trying to get to him, but she couldn’t.

She was being held back by a burly soldier with a shaved head.

Richard noticed for the first time that the buttons on Kahlan’s shirt were gone, ripped off, so the shirt hung open, exposing her to the leers of the soldiers.

But she didn’t care. She only wanted Richard to see her, as if that was all that mattered in life, as if that single sight of him was her whole life. As if she needed only that to live.

A painful knot swelled in his throat. Tears welled up. Richard whispered her name, too shocked by the sight of her to bring forth more.

Frantic, Kahlan again reached out for him, straining against the restraint of the soldier’s meaty hand. His tight grip left white prints of his fingers in the flesh of her arm.

“Richard! Richard, I love you! Dear spirits, I love you!”

As she tried to tear away, to lunge toward him, the soldier circled a powerful arm around her middle, inside her open shirt, holding her back. The man reached around and, with a finger and thumb, seized Kahlan’s nipple, twisting it as he glanced up, grinning with meaning, making sure that Richard saw what he was doing.

A small cry of surprised pain escaped Kahlan’s throat, but otherwise she ignored the soldier, instead screaming Richard’s name in abject terror.

Fired by rage, Richard furiously tried to get to his feet. He had to get to her. The soldier laughed as he watched Richard struggle. There was no way another chance would come along. This was it; this would be his only chance.

As he began to force his way to his feet, a guard rammed a boot into Richard’s gut so hard that it doubled him over. Another soldier kicked him in the side of the head for good measure, stunning him nearly senseless. The world dimmed. Sound melted together into a dull drone. Richard struggled to remain conscious. He didn’t want to lose sight of Kahlan. There was no sight in the whole world that meant more to him than the sight of her.

He had to find a way to get her out of the middle of this nightmare.

As he fought to regain his breath, the big hand of a soldier seized his hair and yanked him upright. Richard gasped, trying to draw a breath against the stupefying pain of the blows. He felt warm blood running down the side of his face, washing cold mud down his neck.

As his head was pulled upright, Richard’s gaze fell on Kahlan again, on her long hair now tangled and matted by the rain. Her green eyes were so beautiful that he thought his heart might burst with the pain of seeing her again but not being able to hold her in his arms.

He wanted so badly to hold her in his arms, to comfort her, to protect her.

Instead, another man was holding her in his arms. She tried to squirm away. He cupped her breast, squeezing until Richard could see that it was hurting her. She beat at him with her fists, but he held her fast. He laughed at her futile efforts as his gaze again slid to Richard.

Kahlan fought him, but at the same time ignored what he was doing, ignored the distraction. What he was doing was not what mattered most to her. Richard was what mattered most. Her arms frantically stretched out toward him.

“Richard, I love you! I’ve missed you so much!” She was overcome with sobs of sheer misery. “Dear spirits, help him! Please! Somebody help him!”

To his left, the next man in line tried with all his might to back away as his throat was sliced deep. Richard could hear the man’s frantic gasps gurgling through the gash that opened up his windpipe.

Richard felt faint with panic. He didn’t know what to do.

Magic. He should call his gift. But how was he to do that? He didn’t know how to call forth magic. And yet, in the past he had been able to do it.

Rage.

In the past his gift had always worked through his anger.

Seeing the soldier holding Kahlan, hurting her, provided him with more than enough anger. Seeing another of those monsters come in close to her, leering down at her, touching her intimately, only fanned the wild flames of his anger.

His world went red with rage.

With every fiber of his being Richard tried to ignite his gift with the essence of that fury. He clenched his jaw, gritting his teeth with the monumental concentration of his wrath. He shook with rage, expecting an explosion of power to match that rage. He saw what he needed to do. It seemed so close. He imagined it cutting down the soldiers. He held his breath against the storm that was about to be unleashed.

It felt like falling unexpectedly, without any ground below him to catch his fall.

The rain continued to plunge from the gray sky as if to drown his effort. No magic arced through the empty space between Richard and the man who held Kahlan. No conjured lightning erupted. No justice was at hand.

In all his life, if there was anything there, this was the moment it would have come—that much he knew beyond any doubt. There could be no more urgent need, no more desire, no more wrath for the woman he loved. But no power was there, no redemption at hand.

He might as well have been born without the gift.

He had no gift. It was gone.

It felt to Richard as if the world was caving in around him. He wanted everything to slow down, to give him time to find a solution, but everything swirled in a terrible rush. It was all happening too fast. It was so unfair to have to die like this. He hadn’t had a chance to live, to have a life with Kahlan. He loved her so much and he hadn’t really been able to be with her, just the two of them, living in peace. He wanted to smile and laugh with her, to hold her, to go through life with her. Just to sit in front of a fire with her on a cold, snowy night, holding her close to him, safe and warm, as they talked about the things that mattered to them, about their future. They should have a future.

It was so unfair. He wanted to live his life. Instead, it was to end in this miserable place for no good reason. For nothing. He wasn’t even able to make his death mean something, to die fighting for life. Instead, he was going to die here in the rain and mud, surrounded by men who hated all that was good in life, while Kahlan was forced to watch it happen.

He didn’t want her to see this. He knew that she would never be able to get the sight of it out of her mind. He didn’t want to leave her with that last, horrific memory of him struggling in the bloody throes of death.

He made another attempt to get up, as did most of the other men. The soldier behind him stepped on his calves, bearing down with all his weight. The pain felt distant. Richard was in a daze.

He wanted nothing in the world so much as to get Kahlan away from the men who were holding her, groping her. Kahlan screamed in rage at them, clawed at them, swung her fists at them, and at the same time cried in helpless terror for Richard.

He twisted with all his might against the leather thongs binding his wrists but, rather than part, they only cut deeper. He felt like an animal caught in a trap. His hands had gone numb. He could no longer feel the warm blood dripping off his fingertips.

He didn’t want to die. What was he to do? He had to stop this. Somehow, he had to. But he didn’t know how. In the past, anger was the means to reach his gift, to call forth its power. Now, there was nothing but a helpless confusion.

“Kahlan!”

He couldn’t seem to help himself from being swept up in the terror of it, in the blind panic of it. He couldn’t stop the headlong rush of it. Couldn’t regain his sense of control over himself. He was being swept away in a river of events he could not control or stop. It was all so senseless. It was all so overwhelmingly pointless, so monumentally brutal.

“Kahlan!”

“Richard!” she cried as she again reached out for him. “Richard, I love you more than life! I love you so much. You’re everything to me. You always have been.”

Sobs caught her breath, turning them to gasps.

“Richard . . . I need you so badly.”

His heart was breaking. He felt that he was failing her.

A soldier seized Richard by the hair.

“No!” Kahlan screamed, holding out a hand. “No! Please no! Somebody please help him! Dear spirits, somebody, please!”

The soldier leaned down, a cruel smile twisting his grime-streaked face.

“Don’t worry, I’ll see to her . . . personally.” He laughed in Richard’s ear.

“Please,” Richard heard himself say, “please . . . no.”

“Dear spirits, please, somebody help him!” Kahlan cried to those around her.

She could do nothing and she knew it. There was no chance for him and she knew it. She was reduced to begging for a miracle. That, in itself, fed the flames of hot dread burning out of control within him. This was, the end of everything.

“She’s a real looker,” the soldier said as he leered across the way at Kahlan, proving what Richard knew—that no miracle was at hand.

“Please . . . leave her be.”

The soldier behind him laughed. That was what he had wanted to hear.

Richard was choking on the sob welling up in his throat. He couldn’t breathe past it. Tears ran down his face along with the rain. She was the only woman he had ever loved, the one person who meant everything to him, meant more than life itself to him.

Without Kahlan there was no life, there was only existence. She was his world.

Without Kahlan life was empty.

Without him, he knew, Kahlan’s life would be just as empty.

He saw other women not far from Kahlan, all being held by soldiers, all screaming for their men. He saw them saying things much like the things Kahlan was saying, offering the same words of love, the same calls for someone to save them. The soldiers taunted the men kneeling in the mud with vile oaths.

Seeing the women in the hands of the soldiers, one of the kneeling men to Richard’s right struggled hard enough to earn himself a lightning-quick stab to the gut. It didn’t kill him, but it was enough to keep him from fighting while he was made to wait his turn. As he knelt stiff and still, his wide eyes stared down at his own pink, glistening insides slowly bulging out of the gash. The screams of the man’s wife seemed like they could have split the clouds above.

The man immediately to Richard’s left gasped his last breath, thrashing in uncoordinated movements as the soldier holding up the man’s head sawed the large knife back and forth across the victim’s exposed throat. When finished, the soldier growled with the effort of heaving the dead weight back into the open pit. Richard heard the body thud down in the bottom of the open grave atop other bodies. He could hear gurgling gasps coming from the dark hole.

“Your turn,” the soldier holding Richard said as he stepped around behind him to assume the role of executioner. The man leaned close. His breath stank of ale and sausage. “I need to finish this. I’ve a meeting with your lovely wife as soon as I’m done with you. Kahlan, isn’t it? Yes, that’s right—one of the other women confessed that your wife’s name was Kahlan. Don’t you worry, lad, I won’t give Kahlan much of a chance to grieve, reminiscing about you. I’ll have her full attention—I can promise you that. After I’ve had my satisfaction from her, others will have their turn on her.”

Richard wanted to break the man’s neck.

“Think about that as your wicked soul slides into the dark, eternal agony of the underworld, as you fall into the cold, merciless grasp of the Keeper. That’s where all your kind goes—to the justice of eternal suffering—and that’s as it should be, seeing as how we’ve all sacrificed everything to come up here to this forsaken land so we can bring divine Light and the law of the Order to all you selfish heathens. Your sinful way of life, your mere existence, offends the Creator—and it offends those of us who bow to Him.”

The man was working himself up into a righteous rage.

“Do you have any idea what I’ve sacrificed for the salvation of the souls of your people? My family went hungry, went without—sacrificed—so that they could send everything to our courageous troops. My brother and I gave ourselves over to the fight for our cause and everything we believe in. We both came north to do our duty to our emperor and our Creator. We both devoted our lives to the cause of bringing goodness to you people. We fought in countless bloody battles against those who resist our efforts on behalf of what is right and just. We saw countless of our brethren die in those battles.

“I saw the glory of our army of the Order continue on in the fight for salvation while your people sent the wicked gifted against us. Those gifted conjured evil made of magic. My brother was blinded by some of that magic. He screamed in agony as that magic bloodied his eyes and burned his lungs. The infections that swiftly befell him made his whole head swell, his sightless eyes bulge. He could only moan in agony. We left him to die alone, so that we could move on in our noble struggle, as was only right.

“Your wife and those like her will now sacrifice themselves to give us a small diversion in this miserable life as we labor in that noble struggle. It’s her small payment on a debt of gratitude for what we have given over for our fellow man in order to bring the word of the Order to those who would otherwise turn away from their duty to faith.

“Someday your sinful wife will join you there in the darkness of the underworld, but not until after we’re finished with her. Just don’t expect her to be joining you any time soon, as I expect she’ll be whoring for the brave soldiers of the Order for some time to come, what with how the men like to get their hands on a good-looking woman like her in order to take their minds off the drudgery of their honorable work. I expect she’ll be kept good and busy, since there is so much honorable work to do”—he waggled his knife before Richard’s eyes—“like this business here. With the relief us men get from her, we’ll have the strength to redouble our determination to eliminate all those who will not submit to the ways of the Order.”

It was insanity. Richard could hardly believe that there were men this irrational, this devoted to such mindless beliefs, but there were. They seemed to emerge everywhere, multiplying like maggots, devoted to destroying anything joyful and beneficial to life.

He choked back his words, his rage. Nothing angered men like this as much as reason or truth or life or goodness. Such qualities only incited such men to destroy. Because Richard knew that anything he said would only provoke the man and make it worse for Kahlan, he kept quiet. That was all he could do for her, now.

Seeing that he had not goaded Richard into an appeal, the soldier laughed again and threw a kiss toward Kahlan. “Be with you shortly, love—soon as I’m done divorcing you from your worthless husband, here.”

He was a monster, shortly to be headed for the woman Richard loved, toward a defenseless, terrified woman who was only beginning to suffer at the hands of these brutes.

Monster.

Could this be what Shota had meant?

The witch woman had once said that if Richard and Kahlan ever married and lay together, she would conceive a monster. They had always assumed that Shota had meant that if they conceived a child, then their child would be a monster because that child would have Richard’s gift and Kahlan’s Confessor power.

But maybe that was not at all the real meaning behind Shota’s foretelling.

After all, nothing Shota warned them about ever turned out the way she had made it seem, even the way she herself believed. Shota’s warnings and predictions always seemed to come about in a completely unforeseen manner, in a way that they had never even imagined, but at the same time Shota’s predictions had always turned out to be true.

Was this what Shota’s prediction had really meant? Was this the complex set of events finally reaching the climax of her prophecy? Shota had warned them emphatically not to marry or Kahlan would bear a monster child. They had married. Could this be how Shota’s prophecy unfolded? Could this have all along been the real meaning behind her warning? Were these monsters to sire a monster?

Richard was choking on his tears. His death would not be the worst of it. Kahlan would suffer the worst of it, suffer a living death at the hands of those brutes, mother their monster.

“Richard, you know I love you! That’s all that matters, Richard—that I love you!”

“Kahlan, I love you, too!”

He couldn’t think of anything more to say—anything more meaningful. He guessed that there was nothing more meaningful, nothing more important to him. Those simple words spoke a whole life’s worth of meaning, a whole universe of meaning.

“I know, my love,” she said with a brief spark of a smile that flashed for an instant in her beautiful eyes. “I know.”

Richard saw a blade sweep around before his face. He instinctively backed away. The man straddling his legs was ready and jammed a knee between Richard’s shoulder blades, stopping him from falling back, then pulled his head up by his hair.

Kahlan, seeing what was happening, screamed again, flailing at the men holding her. “Don’t pay any attention to them, Richard! Just look at me! Richard! Look at me! Think about me! Think of how much I love you!”

Richard knew what she was doing.

“Remember the day we were married? I remember it now, Richard. I remember it always.”

She was trying to give him the last gift of a pleasant, loving thought.

“I remember the day you asked me to be your wife. I love you, Richard. Remember our wedding? Remember the spirit house?”

She was also trying to distract him, to keep him from thinking about what was happening. Instead, it only reminded him of Shota’s warning that if he married her she would conceive a monster.

“Touching,” the soldier behind him said. “It’s the passionate ones like her who are good in the sack, don’t you think?”

Richard wanted to rip the man’s head off, but he said nothing. The man wanted him to say something, to beg, to protest, to wail in agony. As a last act of defiance against such men, Richard denied him the satisfaction.

Kahlan cried out her love, and that she wanted him to remember the first time she had kissed him.

Despite everything, that made him smile.

At the moment, she didn’t care what was going to happen to her, she just wanted to distract him, to ease the pain and terror of his last moments of life.

His last moments.

It was all ending. It was all over. There was no more.

Life was over. His time with the woman he loved was over. There would be no more.

The world was ending.

“Richard! Richard! I love you so much! Look at me, Richard! I love you! Look at me! That’s right, look at me! You’re the only one I ever loved! Only you, Richard! Only you! That’s all that matters—that I love you. Do you love me? Tell me, please, Richard. Tell me. Tell me now.”

He felt the blade catch on the thin veneer of flesh covering his throat.

“I love you, Kahlan. You alone. Always.”

“Touching,” the soldier growled in his ear as he held the blade against Richard’s throat. “While you’re down in the pit, bleeding out, I’ll have my hands all over her. I’m going to rape your pretty little wife. You’ll be dead by then, but before you die, I want you to know exactly what I’m going to do to her, and that there’s nothing you can do to stop it, because it’s the Creator’s will being done.

“You should have long ago bowed to the ways of the Order, but instead you’ve fought to keep to your sinful ways, your selfish ways, and turned away from everything right and just. For your crimes against your fellow man you will not only die, but you will suffer for all eternity at the hands of the Keeper of the underworld. Suffer greatly.

“As you go to the dark afterlife, I want you to go there knowing that if your precious Kahlan lives, it will only be as a whore for us. If she lives long enough, and she has a boy child, he will grow up to be a great soldier of the Order, and to hate your kind. We’ll see to it that he comes here someday to spit on your grave, to spit on you and those like you who would have raised him in your wicked ways, raised him to turn away from serving his fellow man and the Creator.

“You think on that as your spirit is being sucked down into darkness. As your body grows cold, I’ll be with the nice warm body of your love, giving it to her good. I want to make sure you know that before you die.”

Richard was already dead inside. It was over, life and the world were ended. So much lost. Everything lost. For nothing but a mindless hatred of every value, of life itself, by those who chose instead to embrace the emptiness of death.

“I love you now and always, with all my heart,” he said in a hoarse voice. “You’ve made my life a joy.”

He saw Kahlan nodding that she’d heard him, and her lips mouthing her love for him.

She was so beautiful.

More than anything, he hated to see her inconsolable grief.

They stared into one another’s eyes, frozen in that instant that would be the last instant that the world existed.

Richard gasped in a cry of terror, anguish, and sudden sharp pain as he felt the blade bite flesh, felt it slice mortally deep into his throat.

It was the end of everything.