Witch's Oath

25

Richard’s muscles burned with exhaustion as he fought against the vines trying to pull his arms away. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer. The Mord-Sith to each side were having even worse problems. The danger to all of them increased with the strain of pulling every breath.

Richard should have been able to strangle the man by now. It was obvious that the witch man’s powers were somehow energizing him with desperate strength beyond that of a normal man so that he was able to overcome all of their efforts. It was clear that they were all now locked in a struggle to the death.

“Forgive me!” Michec cried out. “I was only following orders!”

Richard glared into Michec’s dark eyes as he struggled with all his might to strangle him. His hands shook with the effort. His muscles burned.

Richard didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction of asking whose orders, but the witch man told him anyway.

“I was only following the queen’s orders!”

Richard didn’t know what queen the man could be talking about, but he didn’t believe him. Michec would say anything to escape. Richard wondered if maybe he was talking about the Golden Goddess, but she was described as a goddess, not a queen.

Kahlan appeared to the right of Richard, covered with dust from the rock the witch man had blasted up at her, trying to kill her. Blood streamed down her face from several wounds.

A strange look of bemused calm came over the witch man’s swollen, red face. “If you think this witch’s oath begins and ends with me, you are a fool.”

That time, Richard couldn’t resist asking, “What are you talking about?”

“Ask your witch,” he said with a sneer.

Kahlan suddenly dropped in beside Richard, using her full weight to drive her blade between two of Michec’s ribs and into his heart. She let out of cry of rage as she pivoted the handle of her knife from side to side, slicing through his heart.

Michec’s eyes went wide.

Kahlan, gritting her teeth, keeping her knife pressed hilt-deep in his chest, put her face in close to his, looking into his startled eyes.

“Think to harm my babies, do you?” she growled. “I deliver you now into the hands of the Keeper of the underworld. He will take you into darkness you can’t begin to imagine. You will never see the light of Creation again. All those innocent souls you tortured to death will now torment you for all eternity.”

Michec’s mouth worked, trying to beg for mercy, to explain, but no words came forth. The panic and terror in his eyes was clear. He had never had a shred of mercy for the panic and terror of his victims, and now Richard, Kahlan and the others with them had none for him.

Vika, covered in stone dust and with a gash across her forehead that had her face covered in a mask of blood, knelt to Richard’s left. Without pause, she rammed her knife into the side of Michec’s neck. Blood oozed rather than spurted out from the artery she severed. His heart could no longer pump blood.

The surprise in Michec’s eyes slowly faded as the life went out of them until his stare was blank and empty. The bony hands holding Richard’s wrists released their grip on him as they crumbled into dust and vapor.

Shale, her eyes still closed, dropped to her knees, clearly drained from the effort of trying to pull back on the vines that had so powerfully held Richard’s wrists. Exhausted, she put a hand down on the rock for support.

Finally, Richard sat back on his heels, letting his cramping hands drop to his lap. He looked around to see everyone panting along with him from the effort. Despite being battered, and some of them bleeding, none of them seemed seriously hurt.

He finally circled an arm around Kahlan’s neck and pulled her close. He brushed hair back from her face and kissed her forehead, then hugged her tight, grateful that she was alive and not seriously hurt. She took her bloody hand from her knife in Michec’s chest and with both arms hugged him back, silently thankful to be alive and have the ordeal over.

At last, after a brief time to hold Kahlan tight, get his breath back, and be thankful that she was safe, Richard finally struggled to his feet. He helped Kahlan stand. All of the Mord-Sith untangled themselves from their grips on the dead man’s arms and legs.

“You did it, Lord Rahl,” Berdine said as she gazed hatefully down at the dead witch man. “You killed the butcher.”

Richard shook his head. “No, we all did. It took all nine of us. The Law of Nines had more power than even a witch man.”

The Mord-Sith looked pleased that he included them. Shale, with a hand on her knee to help her stand, managed to show a weary smile along with them.

They all backed away a short distance to stare at the dead man, all of them still having some difficulty believing the monster was finally dead. It had been a monumental struggle, but the witch man would no longer bring terror and pain to anyone.

Spotting something he didn’t like, Richard gestured to the bloody body slumped in the corner as he looked over at Shale.

“Burn him to ash, would you please?”

Shale looked a little surprised by the request. “Why? He’s dead. What do you think he can do, now?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. You’re good at conjuring fire. Do that now. End it. Burn him to ash.”

Shale turned an uneasy look from Richard, to Michec, and back. She suddenly seemed both distressed and apologetic.

She shook her head. “Lord Rahl, I am a witch woman. I can’t burn another witch. Never. That act has terrible significance.”

Richard felt his anger heating. It made no sense to him.

“Even a man as evil as this?”

She couldn’t seem to look him in the eye, so she stared off at the dead Michec. “I know that he was a monster, but he is also a witch. I wanted him dead just as much as the rest of you, and I helped with that to the best of my ability, but I can’t burn a witch, not even a dead one. I just can’t.”

Richard was surprised, but it was obviously something profoundly personal to her. He wondered why, but rather than asking her he deemed it best not to force the issue.

He laid the palm of his left hand over the hilt of his sword. When he did, he was surprised to feel the magic from the sword stirring, trying to join with him. He surmised it could be that the sword’s magic sensed his lingering rage at this evil man and all the horrific acts he had committed.

And then, as Richard looked over at the dead man staring back at him with dead eyes, he saw it again, a glint of something, some spark of light in those dead eyes that shouldn’t have been there.

In that instant, he envisioned the horrors starting all over again. He saw everything they had just won suddenly slipping away from them. He saw that threat to Kahlan and their children reawakening, as if Michec were somehow trying to strike out at them one last time from the world of the dead before he would sink away into its eternal darkness.

From somewhere deep within him, without Richard consciously summoning it, the primal rage of his birthright awakened. With his left hand still on the hilt of the sword, drawing on all the ancient power of the weapon, he cast his other hand out, opening his fist, instantly igniting wizard’s fire. The rotating bluish-white ball of flame shook the room with a reverberating boom as it exploded into existence. Seemingly at the same instant it came into being, it shot across the room, wailing with a piercing shriek as it lit the stone posts and all the stunned faces on its way to the source of Richard’s ire. The sound of it was deafening as it hurtled the short distance to that target and burst apart on impact, splashing sticky fire over the body of the witch man.

Wizard’s fire burned with a fierce intensity and purpose unlike any other fire. The roaring flames burned white hot at their center.

Shale wrinkled her nose at the stench of burning flesh. The Mord-Sith didn’t.

In mere moments, the soft tissue was consumed in the ferocious blaze. Once the soft tissue had burned away, the wizard’s fire continued to sink inward until it covered the bones, engulfing them in the savage flames until they, too, began to break apart and finally turn to ash and collapse into a brightly glowing heap. Only then did the fire, its work done, finally extinguish.

Everyone stood in stunned silence at what they had just witnessed. The heat from the wizard’s fire had even partly melted the stone wall behind where Michec had been slumped.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Kahlan said in a soft voice as she stared at the aftermath.

Richard felt a bit stunned himself. “Neither did I.”

Shale looked shaken by what she had just seen. “I’ve heard whispered stories of such a thing. I never imagined I would live to see it with my own eyes.”

Richard stared at the pile of ash that was all that remained of a henchman for Darken Rahl, a witch man who had been determined to kill them all, glad it was finally over.

The sorceress turned to him with a grave expression. “How did you do it?”

Richard slowly shook his head as he stared at the still-glowing pile of ash and asked her a question instead. “Did you see that glint of light in his eyes?”

Shale was taken aback. “No.”

“I have no idea how I did it,” he finally told her. “When I saw a spark of light in his dead eyes, I simply acted.”

He knew that such an ability would be more than useful against the Glee, but it had all happened in an instant. He had absolutely no idea how he had brought it about.

After a moment of silence, Kahlan circled an arm around his waist. “Can we please get out of this wretched place?”

Richard smiled down at her as he looked into her beautiful green eyes. “Sure.”

“We can now safely be on our way to the Wizard’s Keep,” Shale said, still looking a bit shaken.

“We’ve been down here an awfully long time,” Cassia said. “We need to get some food.”

Berdine grinned. “I could eat.”