The Scribbly Man

2

Richard was doing this public audience only because Kahlan had asked him to. She had told him that allowing people to come before the First Wizard with petitions or concerns was an ancient practice. She had in the past overseen the wizards’ council as Mother Confessor in a time when there had been no First Wizard. Because of that experience, she’d said, she knew the good it did.

Richard had protested at first, saying that a wizards’ council was a thing of the past, and besides, this was now the D’Haran Empire, not merely the Midlands.

She said that made it all the more important. She had argued that the need was not a thing of the past and that as the Lord Rahl, the leader of the D’Haran Empire and the new First Wizard, he was far more important than a wizards’ council had ever been. She believed that because he held absolute rule people needed to know that it was fair and just rule. For that to happen they needed to be able to witness that rule firsthand. This was one way, she had told him, of letting people know that as part of the D’Haran Empire their voice would be heard and they would be treated fairly.

Richard had always found it difficult, if not impossible, to go against Kahlan’s advice, especially since it was almost always sound advice. As the Mother Confessor, Kahlan knew a great deal more about the protocol of rule than he ever would.

While Richard was no longer a simple woods guide, Kahlan, too, was much more than the woman he had met in the Hartland woods that day so long ago. She was the Mother Confessor—the last Confessor. She’d held sway over the Midlands council, and thus the Midlands. Kings and queens trembled on bended knee before her. She knew about authority and rule.

They had fought a long and bitterly difficult war to finally bring peace to the world. In that struggle they had lost many dear friends and loved ones, as had nearly everyone else. She and Richard were each the last of their kind, and together they were the hope of their world.

In the end he had known that Kahlan was right about holding such an event.

For three days they had been giving an audience to people who had traveled from far and wide to come before the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor with their concerns, or to see others do so. While he found it tedious and most of the matters achingly trivial, he realized that the people who had gathered to see it done found it not only exciting, but riveting and reassuring.

For those gathered, it was, in a way, a celebration of the end of wars, a joyous gathering with those who had saved their world and brought them peace, a time when rulers from far and wide came to swear their loyalty to the empire.

Richard just wanted it to be over so he could be alone with Kahlan.

While most people who had come before them were sincere, even if some stuttered in terror to be standing before the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor, this man, Nolo, was unlike the others. As far as Richard was concerned, he didn’t seem to represent any real danger. Richard thought that maybe he was simply senile or possibly deranged in his old age. Richard noted, though, that Kahlan thought differently.

There were a great many people waiting for their turn to speak with them. This man had already wasted enough of their time with his nonsense, but worse, he had clearly upset Kahlan. Before Richard could say anything else, the man spoke again.

“Lord Rahl”—the Estorian’s voice turned harsh, losing the polish of polite diplomatic tolerance—“it would be in your own best interest if you surrendered your world without further delay. You can either do so voluntarily, thereupon to be executed in a humane fashion, or, should you refuse, you will be assassinated in a most brutal fashion.”

Richard leaned forward, put both forearms on the table, and folded his fingers together. With such a direct threat, especially after such hard-won peace, but especially against Kahlan, this man had just crossed a line.

Richard’s patience was at an end.

Many hundreds of people were crowded in on the main floor observing from each side of the petitioners who were waiting to be heard. Many more watched from the balconies. All of them leaned forward in anticipation of what the Lord Rahl might say or do. This was a memorable event in their lives—the very stuff of legend—and it now held the distinct air of mortal peril.

He thought that most people expected a prompt beheading.

Richard was just about to instead ask the guards to escort the crazy old fool out of the People’s Palace and see to it that he and the rest of the people with him never returned, when Kahlan touched his arm. She was staring directly at the Estorian diplomat as she spoke in a low voice to Richard.

“Do not dismiss this threat, Richard.”

Richard could see the aura around Kahlan snapping with faint, flickering flashes not unlike lightning dancing and crackling all across the haze of her aura. Since coming back from the underworld, he had found that he had access to his own inner power in ways he had never expected. One of those was that it gave him the ability to read Kahlan’s aura, much the same as he had often been able to read the complex aura around a sorceress. But knowing Kahlan as well as he did, he didn’t need to see her aura to know her mood.

He inclined his head toward her and spoke in a confidential tone while keeping his gaze on the chief diplomat from Estoria.

“I’m listening.”

She finally turned to direct her fiery green-eyed gaze and that hot aura at him.

“Let me question him. Alone.”

Richard hadn’t expected that. “Don’t you think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, here?”

“No.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice to a heated whisper. “You need to listen to me in this, Richard. Estorians are diplomats. It’s their nature, their very makeup. I’ve dealt with them many times and I’ve spent time in their land among the people there. They don’t believe in conflict of any type as a solution to anything. They believe that any dispute must be resolved through diplomatic negotiation. They simply don’t believe in absolutes nor do they make unconditional demands. There is no black and white to them. They exist in a gray world of diplomacy.

“I’ve never once seen an Estorian behave this way. Never. Something is very wrong. You need to listen to me in this. This man is dangerous. Let me question him.”

It was an instruction, not a request.

Richard briefly glanced over at Nolo before looking back at Kahlan. What she was proposing, for all practical purposes, was nothing short of an execution, if not of his living form at least of his mind. Richard knew she was dead serious. Kahlan never used her power lightly or without being absolutely convinced of the need. But still…

“Kahlan, do you—”

“I know kings and queens and rulers of every kind and nearly every land. I’ve never once heard of a goddess. Have you? This man has just as good as declared war on behalf of someone unknown to us and made an open, public threat to our lives if we don’t unconditionally comply.”

Richard knew she was right. He had been trying to convince himself that because the demand was so preposterous the old man had to be insane, senile, or demented, but Kahlan was right. They could not let this pass, or allow people to see them let such a threat pass.

He turned a raptor gaze back on Nolo. That look alone caused the expansive room to break out in buzzing and worried whispers. It caused Nolo to avert his gaze.

Richard lifted a hand, wordlessly commanding silence.

“I am the Lord Rahl,” he said in a clear voice that carried back through the hall. “The D’Haran Empire is this world. They are one and the same. I rule the D’Haran Empire along with the Mother Confessor.”

Nolo couldn’t seem to help his amused smile. The fat folds of skin bunched under his chin as he bowed his partially bald head. “That is true for now,” he said as he looked up, “but you are a mere man, a ruler with no successor. Your rule is a dead lineage.” He gestured up at the marble medallion towering behind Richard and Kahlan. “You are the last of the Rahl line. She is the last Confessor. When you two die those bloodlines will die with you. Your kind and your rule are at an end.”

Kahlan slapped her hand down on the table. The sound made everyone jump as it echoed back through the hall.

She shot to her feet. “Enough!”

The room fell dead silent.

People had always been fearful of Confessors in general, and the Mother Confessor in particular. Seeing the Mother Confessor angry had them giving ground as if driven back by a wave crashing to shore.

Kahlan swept an arm out, calling on the soldiers to the side.

“We will take this man to a room where we can have a private conversation.”

Everyone in the vast room knew exactly what that meant. This was to be an execution and it was to be at the hands of the Mother Confessor herself, not some hooded axeman.

Richard rose up beside her, adding his silent backing to her words.

He took up Kahlan’s hand and gave it a squeeze as if to ask if she was sure she wanted to do this.

She gave him a look of resolve he knew all too well. “After all we have fought for, Richard, all we have lost, you promised me that we were now entering a new golden age. I will not have anything take that golden age from all of us. This man has just threatened our lives. He has made himself an enemy of a peaceful future for everyone.”

“He could simply be an old man who has lost his mind and is imagining things,” Richard reminded her.

“He represents a threat to us, Richard—I can feel it in my bones. This is not a time to let down our guard. We need to know the nature of the threat. There is only one way to find out the truth with absolute certainty.”

Cassia leaned in close to them. “I will go with her, Lord Rahl, and protect her while she questions this fool who would think to threaten you both.”

Richard gave her a look. “Do you really think you want to be in the room when a Confessor unleashes her power?”

That gave the Mord-Sith pause. “She’s going to… Oh… Well then”—she straightened—“I will guard the room from outside in case she should need me.”

Kahlan, looking ready to go to war to stop a war before it could start, gestured to the guards.

“Bring him,” she growled.