The Scribbly Man

16

Kahlan frowned and leaned in as if she hadn’t heard him correctly. “She fears what?”

“The shiny man.” He tilted his head in Richard’s direction. “Lord Rahl.”

“She fears Lord Rahl most of all?”

Nolo nodded as he cried out, “Yes!”

“Why does she call him the shiny man?”

“His magic. His abilities. His power. His gift. His sword. Everything about him strengthens the magic of this world—especially his bond as the Lord Rahl with his people. That bond is open-ended, without limits. The shiny man lights this world with this strange thing: magic.”

“How could his gift give the magic of this world strength?”

“The same way his bond powers the Agiel of the Mord-Sith in ways that we cannot see. But she sees it shining. She sees the shiny threads of it.

“Magic shrouds this world, veils it, obscuring her ability to see into it very well. For that reason she uses people here, peering out through their eyes, like she was seeing through my eyes in the great hall when I came before you to give you her demand that you surrender. She was watching you both through my eyes. Through that imperfect, murky vision of looking through another’s eyes—through my eyes—she couldn’t see what Lord Rahl really looks like. His gift makes him look shiny to her. That terrible shine hurts her vision. No one else looks like that to her, just him. That’s why she calls him the shiny man.”

Richard remembered the way Nolo had kept looking away from him in the great hall, avoiding eye contact. This would explain why.

“So she hates him,” Kahlan said, “because of his gift.”

“Oh yes,” Nolo said, nodding furiously. “She hates him. She wants him dead. Your magic reinforces his gift. She hates you. She wants you dead. Once you both are dead then this confusing shroud of magic around this world will fade away and her hordes will have free run.”

“But our magic protects us. Lord Rahl’s magic can defeat them.”

“Forgive me, Mistress, for not being clear,” he whined. “They don’t understand magic, so they are cautious… for now. But don’t mistake caution for fear and especially not for weakness. They are anything but weak.

“Up to now she has only allowed a few of her kind through to our world, like the one who attacked you. Allowed them to come here to hunt, to feed, to probe, mostly far away from you both, far away from your magic, to test our species. As she learns more about our world, she will send more of her kind.”

“But my magic protected me?”

“During that moment when one of hers struck out at you, it was because you were at your weakest, but even so your magic kept the one who came from being bold enough to slaughter you as swiftly as she had intended.”

“What exactly is their purpose, though? Their objective?”

“Her kind considers us an inferior species. We are prey. They will hunt us like game. They will hunt us in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. Other worlds are merely sport to them. We are a new kind of species, a new kind of prey, one that is difficult to chase down and kill, one that has this strange thing, magic. All that makes us a new kind of sport for them, a more challenging sport. That excites them.”

“There must be a way for us to show her that we are intelligent, thinking beings,” Kahlan said. “You’re a diplomat, tell us how we can reason with them to reach a peace between our worlds.”

“Peace is repugnant to them. They regard themselves as a race of gods. They don’t live in peace with any inferior species. They hunt them.”

Richard thought it ironic that the consul general, a man whose life had been devoted to diplomacy and negotiation in pursuit of peace, was explaining why there could be no peace with these beings.

Kahlan still wasn’t convinced. “There must be a way to persuade them that hunting the people here isn’t right, that there are better ways to deal with each other even if we are different, even if they think we are inferior to them.”

Nolo had been shaking his head as she spoke. “You are still thinking of them in human terms. They are not human. They are not anything like us. I don’t know what they are but I do know they are not like us. They even reproduce differently.”

“What do you mean, they reproduce differently?”

“For them reproduction does not involve bonding or love or any kind of pleasure. They simply replicate more of their kind through some sort of process as necessary to maintain their supremacy. They get no pleasure or satisfaction from it, and certainly no joy. There is no bonding with those they create.

“The pleasure for their species comes from the singular act of inflicting terror and then killing their prey. The best way to explain it is that terrorizing prey is for them much the same pleasure we get from the act of sex. Bringing terror is a complex act to them, filled with nuance and excitement. After a period of this enjoyment building up from inflicting terror, killing, you might say, is their form of orgasm.

“Sometimes they eat what they kill, sometimes they don’t. Either way, the object is terror and then the climax of killing. That is the central pursuit of their lives, much like some depraved individuals here are driven to get sick pleasure out of torturing and killing animals. We are just animals to the goddess and her kind. They have no empathy for prey.”

“So they prey on other worlds?” Kahlan asked.

“Yes. They search the worlds among the stars for hunting grounds. They have been to our world before, but it has always been too distant a place to come to and hunt successfully, or even visit except for the briefest of moments. Too short a time to kill. Now, our world has somehow come within reach. Now, they can prey on us.”

“It is only magic, then, keeping them from flooding in and slaughtering us all?”

“Yes, Mistress. Only the magic of this world gives the goddess pause—but only for the time being. You may not realize it, but only the power of the shiny man and you, Mistress, hold that net of magic together around our world. You two are the nexus of magic in our world. Lord Rahl’s bond, as shown through the devotion, gives strength and energy to the web of magic. Your gifts are what binds all kinds of magic together in countless ways and keeps it viable.

“Even so, as soon as they learn more, her kind will use this world as they have used others within their grasp—for the sport of killing.”

“But surely she must know that we aren’t going to let that happen. We will fight back.”

Nolo nodded. “She is counting on that. Your defiance piques their interest. They know we have weapons and that we are often warlike. The shiny man is a war wizard, after all. The resistance that would be put up by our kind excites them, draws them. It will bring more numbers than usual. It will drive them to stalk every person in this world and hunt us to extinction.

“In the end, there can be no salvation for our world. If you do not surrender, she will become bolder and then hunt you both down and kill you. If for some reason you could elude her, even that is not a problem. If she so decided, she has but to wait. It is only a matter of time.”

“What do you mean, wait?” Kahlan asked. “Wait for what?”

“Wait for you both to die. Each of you is the last of your kind. The last Confessor, the last Lord Rahl.

“When you die—whether she kills you, or something else does, or you die of natural causes like old age—then the obstacle of magic will crumble. Once it does, we will then be like any other world. They will drink our blood and eat our flesh and spit out the bones. When they have eventually finished us off, they will move on to another world.”

“Maybe she will die before we do,” Kahlan said. “Richard and I aren’t that old yet. We have our lives before us. Maybe she is older than we are and she will go first. That means she can’t really afford to wait.”

“No, Mistress. She is already many times older than you, and she is only now entering the prime of her life, in many ways the same as you and Lord Rahl. The difference is she will outlive you both by centuries.

“Even when she eventually dies, others of her kind will take her place as she took the place of those before her. Having this world is not so much her objective as it is the driving force of her species. She will outlive you if necessary and then when magic dies they will have our world.

“Time is on their side.”

Kahlan touched the square neckline of her Confessor’s dress over the spot where Richard had pulled out the knife. “So, since this superior species failed to finish the kill, that’s why you stepped in and stabbed me.” It was not a question.

Nolo’s face twisted with horror at the sudden mention of what he had done. “Yes, Mistress,” he answered in a whimper.

Kahlan looked puzzled. “How were you able to stab me after I used my power on you?”

He sobbed and trembled at what he had done.

“Answer me,” Kahlan said in a deadly calm voice that matched her Confessor face.

“Forgive me, Mistress, but that was not me, that was the goddess using me. The one she sent pulled back to their world before you were dead. She wanted to finish it. She wanted you dead. She didn’t care how so she forced me ahead, forced my hand to drive the knife toward you. You blocked me. We fought, and even though you only had one good arm, you managed to get the knife away from me. You stabbed me—as you should have, Mistress. But with the goddess guiding me in the pitch blackness, as you came at me again I was able to twist the knife away from your grip. Once I had it, it was the goddess driving my hand to plunge the knife into you. It was the goddess, not me, Mistress. The superior species, not me. Thank the Creator it missed your heart and you weren’t killed. Please, Mistress, I am telling you the truth.”

“Where is she?”

Richard could tell that Kahlan was getting tired and frustrated.

“Where is this goddess?” she asked.

“In her world, Mistress.”

“But where is that—where is her world?”

Nolo started to weep. “I don’t know, Mistress,” he said in a pitiful whine. “Forgive me, Mistress, I don’t know how she moves from world to world. I don’t understand those abilities any more than she understands magic. One way or another she will outlive you and then they will have our world.”

“There is a flaw in her plan.” Kahlan lifted her head a little. “Lord Rahl and I can have children.”

“Children?” he said, leaning forward as much as the restraints allowed, as if staring with his bloody eye sockets.

“Yes, children,” she said. “Those children will carry the power of the Rahl line and the Confessors. That’s how it has always worked. That is how it was passed down to us. That is how magic will go on to survive in our world. Our magic will continue unbroken through them. It will always help to keep her kind away from our people. Magic will pass on and always protect our world.”

Again he shook his head. “She sees that you have been together for enough time to have reproduced. She sees that you have failed to breed successfully and bring forth successors as others of our kind have. As mates, you both have proven to be barren. She sees that your lines of magic are dead ends, that your world is nearly ripe for the taking.”

Seeing Kahlan standing there, in a dungeon, discussing such personal matters with this man who had tried to kill her made Richard feel profoundly sorry for her. The war had robbed them of the chance to have children. She never mentioned it, but he knew how devastated she had been to have lost the child the one time she had been pregnant. And then the world had nearly come apart. With their lives drawn into so much terror and death, they could hardly bring a child into the world.

He had been hoping that the new golden age would finally provide that opportunity for a family, but now, with this dire threat from the Golden Goddess… it looked like their chance for children had just slipped away.

“Just because we haven’t had children yet,” Kahlan said, “doesn’t mean that we couldn’t still have children to carry on our lines.”

“She does not care.”

Kahlan blinked. “Why wouldn’t she care—that would ruin her whole plan to outlive our gift?”

“She does not care because the young of any species are commonly helpless, ours especially so. You may be hard to kill, but young ones are easy to kill. They do not yet have magic that can protect them. Infants are even easier to slaughter. Her kind lusts to kill the young of any species because they more easily succumb to helpless terror.

“If you were to have children that would only serve to excite their prey drive even more. Your children would be irresistible to her. She would come for them, magic or no magic, and she would kill them the way we would step on a cockroach.”

Tears welled up in Kahlan’s eyes, fury twisted her features as her hands fisted at her sides. “I want your Golden Goddess dead! I want you dead!”

Richard straightened, not expecting her sudden proclamation.

At her words, blood began to run from the man’s ears. His body shuddered violently, and then he slumped heavily in the restraints. Once touched by a Confessor’s power, a person lived only to serve her. If she wished them dead, they complied without hesitation.

She had just wished him dead. It was as an execution.

This man had tried to kill her. He had driven his knife into her chest in the hope of stabbing her through the heart, even if with the Golden Goddess commanding him. For that, Richard wasn’t at all displeased that he was dead. But he had the larger picture in mind.

He stepped close to put a hand on her shoulder. “Kahlan, why would you kill him? He may have been able to provide more information.”

“The goddess will grant no mercy,” she said as tears ran down her cheeks. “Neither will I.”

That was the iron will that inspired them all and had helped win the war. Although he would have liked to have access to more information, Richard wouldn’t change her for anything.

He could see that the ordeal, both physical and emotional, had drained what strength she had left. Her face grew ashen.

And then he saw a wet red stain at her side spreading through the white dress.

Shale rushed forward to help him just as Kahlan collapsed.