Hateful Things Read online

  Hateful Things

  BY TERRY GOODKIND

  The Sword of Truth Series

  Wizard’s First Rule

  Stone of Tears

  Blood of the Fold

  Temple of the Winds

  Soul of the Fire

  Faith of the Fallen

  The Pillars of Creation

  Naked Empire

  Debt of Bones

  Chainfire

  Phantom

  Confessor

  The Omen Machine

  The First Confessor

  The Third Kingdom

  Severed Souls

  Warheart

  The Children of D’Hara

  The Scribbly Man

  Hateful Things

  The Nicci Chronicles

  Death’s Mistress

  Shroud of Eternity

  Siege of Stone

  The Angela Constantine Series

  Trouble’s Child

  The Girl in the Moon

  Crazy Wanda

  The Law of Nines

  Nest

  HATEFUL THINGS

  TERRY GOODKIND

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published by Head of Zeus in 2019

  Copyright © Terry Goodkind, 2019

  The moral right of Terry Goodkind to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781789541205

  ISBN (E): 9781789541199

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.headofzeus.com

  Contents

  By Terry Goodkind

  Welcome Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  1

  “A boy and a girl?” Kahlan asked in astonishment.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Shale said with a single nod and a warm smile. “You are pregnant with twins.”

  Kahlan stared up with both excitement and a deep sense of dread. Having twins—a boy and a girl—would be like a gift from the good spirits. It was a way for Richard’s gift and her Confessor power to live on into future generations. The House of Rahl would not die out. The lineage of Confessors would not end. It couldn’t be more perfect.

  Kahlan winced as she tried to sit up. She put an arm across her abdomen to comfort the unexpected pain of the attempt.

  “Easy,” Shale said, pressing a hand against Kahlan’s shoulder to ease her back down. “Your injuries were life-threatening, and you’ve only just been healed, at least for the most part. Your body is still in the process of completing the final repair of those injuries. Your muscles have been tested to exhaustion. You need to rest to complete your recovery.”

  Kahlan put her hand over Shale’s in gratitude for saving her life after she had been attacked. She had worked tirelessly to keep Kahlan from dying or losing the use of her arm.

  Even though she was a sorceress, the woman looked entirely too young and beautiful to be so accomplished a healer. Her youthful beauty laid over a shadow of wisdom and authority—that odd combination of freshly bloomed femininity and seasoned shrewdness—gave Kahlan pause in the back of her mind that Shale was more than what was on the surface.

  At the moment, though, Kahlan was tormented by bigger issues than the hints of things beyond the woman’s beauty or her own mortality. She gently pushed Shale’s arm aside as she sat up and swung her feet down off the bed. She finally stood. Shale, sitting on the edge of the bed, rose up beside her, ready to steady her or catch her if her legs gave out. Kahlan willed herself to straighten up. She found that she felt better being on her feet.

  The lavish bedroom was still and quiet, lit only by the soft glow of lamps and a low fire in the massive fireplace. Kahlan knew that most of the Mord-Sith would be out in the entryway guarding the bedroom. She knew that Vika, though, would be guarding Richard.

  With the Mord-Sith standing guard outside and Shale in the room with her, the private sanctuary seemed safe enough. But the thing that had attacked and nearly killed Kahlan hadn’t needed to come through the doors. After all, it had attacked her when she had been in a locked room. From that, it seemed that those mysterious predators could appear anywhere.

  Weighed down by the worry of the new threat to their lives and their world, Kahlan slipped on a robe and then opened the double glass doors to the balcony. The Lord Rahl’s quarters for countless generations—now her and Richard’s bedroom—were high up in the People’s Palace and heavily protected by the men of the First File, the Lord Rahl’s personal guard. At the far edge of the balcony, the fluted white marble balusters and railings had wild black veins among gold flecks. The grand balcony jutted out far enough over the edge of the plateau for her to be able to stand at that railing and look down past the palace to the Azrith Plain far below.

  Kahlan tightened her robe against the chill. Summer was drawing to a close. The cold was a harbinger of the harsh times ahead.

  In the predawn darkness there was no view of the Azrith Plain. Many times, beneath the vast sky it was a beautiful sight, in a stark, barren sort of way. It was a view of the world without the robes of green hills, carpets of forests, or jeweled streams of sparkling water. Instead, it was rather pure in the honesty of its unadorned form.

  In a way, it was a visual reminder of how cruel and unforgiving the world of life could be beneath the façade of beauty.

  Now, though, there was nothing to see except when lightning flickered. The lamplight coming from the bedroom behind her illuminated falling sheets of rain.

  It was a gloomy, foreboding view that matched her mood.

  Kahlan wanted these two children—Richard’s children—more than anything. She had known she was pregnant, but to learn that she was pregnant with twins nearly took her breath with the unexpected excitement of it. As much as she wanted these children, though, she didn’t know if she could dare to hope that she would ever have them.

  The sorceress came up from behind. “Winter has already come to the Northern Waste. It will be down here soon enough.”

  “Is that where you are from?” Kahlan asked, her mind sinking into cold, dark thoughts.

  Shale nodded as she gently placed a hand on Kahlan’s shoulder. “I know your concerns and fears,” she said as if reading Kahlan’s mind, “but these children, the continuation of Lord Rahl’s gift and your power, are what will help keep our worl
d safe into the future. This could not come at a better time.”

  Kahlan folded her arms. “It could not come at a worse time. Giving birth to them will only mean that they would be hunted and slaughtered by the Golden Goddess and her kind. Our world needs them, needs our lines of magic to continue in order to protect our people into the future, but for that reason the Golden Goddess cannot allow them to live.” Kahlan stared out into the darkness. “She will come for them.”

  “Are you saying that you would seek out an herb woman who would murder those unborn children in your womb before the Golden Goddess can?”

  Kahlan recoiled at the very notion of ending the lives of her two unborn children before they could be born. But that dark thought, not fully formed, had been lurking in the corner of her mind. The way Shale had framed it was starkly cruel, and it was, but still, Kahlan couldn’t help wondering about the mercy of such an act.

  A cold tear ran down her cheek. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Mother Confessor, your pregnancy is a joyous thing. Having these two children will preserve Lord Rahl’s gift into the future. It would mean that you don’t have to be the last Confessor.”

  “There is no way to know if either of these two children would carry our gift. They could be skips. Magic does not always pass on to the children of the gifted. It frequently skips one generation, or even many generations.”

  Even as she said it, she knew that daughters of Confessors were always born Confessors. But not all the sons of the Lord Rahl were born wizards.

  “And if they are gifted? If it is what is needed for magic to continue to be the link that protects our world?”

  Kahlan wiped the tear from her cheek as she looked back over her shoulder. “What if they are not gifted? Then having these children would not preserve magic in our world. Though it would be my greatest joy to bear Richard’s children and they would be loved no less, they may not be gifted. If they aren’t, and especially if they are, they could only look forward to being born into a dying world preyed upon by the Golden Goddess and her kind with no hope for the future.”

  Shale showed a curious smile. “I don’t believe the good spirits would play such a cruel trick at such a time of need.”

  “How can you be so confident?”

  Shale’s smile widened as she placed her hand against Kahlan’s belly. “Because I can feel it in them.”

  Kahlan’s eyes widened. “You can say for sure that they are gifted? Both of them?”

  Shale nodded with conviction. “I can.”

  Kahlan looked away again, out into the darkness. While that was what their world needed in the long term, it only made the immediate situation far worse.

  The Golden Goddess would be able to see their magic. She called Richard the shiny man because she could see his magic shining in him. These two unborn children of D’Hara would draw that evil to them.

  For all she knew, the goddess could sense that magic growing in Kahlan’s womb at that very moment and could very well already be coming to kill her. It occurred to her that the goddess had already sent her kind to kill Kahlan and these unborn children. Kahlan had barely escaped alive. The goddess would send others to finish the job.

  They would not be so timid the next time.

  “This is not the way I wanted it to be,” Kahlan said in a whisper. “Any time but now. Even if by a miracle these children are born, their birth will be their death sentence.”

  2

  “Mother Confessor, don’t you say ‘Rise, my child’ to any who fall to the ground at your feet?”

  Kahlan stared out at the sheets of rain gently billowing in the breeze. “I do.”

  “So, all people are in a way the children of the Mother Confessor, are they not?”

  Kahlan absently nodded in answer.

  “Your instinct, as the Mother Confessor, is to protect your people—your children, is it not? Isn’t that in a way the whole point of that singular title?”

  “It is,” Kahlan said.

  “And you just fought a long and terrible war to protect them all, did you not?”

  Kahlan nodded again, not knowing what the sorceress was getting at. “It was a terrible war. A long and terrible war. But for life to prevail, I had no choice but to fight. My whole life I have been in one endless fight to protect people from evil.”

  “And now you must continue to fight to protect all your children, especially the ones growing in you, even though they are yet unborn.”

  Kahlan took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she turned back to face the sorceress.

  “This is different. These children would never have a chance at life. They will be killed for who and what they are. The Golden Goddess has everything on her side. She will not give up. She has vowed that magic will end in this world, one way or another, and when it does, her hordes will hunt us to extinction.”

  Kahlan couldn’t stand the thought of bringing these two new lives into the world only to subject them to the terror of being slaughtered by such relentless evil. She ached with fear and dread for them.

  “They hardly have everything on their side,” Shale scoffed.

  Kahlan frowned. “What are you talking about? You heard what Nolo said.”

  “Richard is a war wizard. He will fight to stop the Golden Goddess and her race of predators. War wizards are born with that power, that gift, expressly to face threats, both those known and those unknown. His children carry that gift. The world needs them.”

  Kahlan slowly shook her head. “You don’t understand. There is more to it. The Golden Goddess is not the only threat. There is another that in some ways is just as formidable.”

  Shale leaned in to rest her fingers on the baluster while searching Kahlan’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  Kahlan drew a hand back across her face, wiping away the tears. “I’m talking about Shota.”

  “Shota?” Shale’s nose wrinkled. “Who is Shota?”

  Kahlan pressed her lips tight for a moment before answering.

  “Shota is a witch woman.”

  One of Shale’s eyebrows lifted. “A witch woman?”

  Kahlan nodded. “When Richard and I first met her, she put snakes all over me.”

  Shale looked puzzled. “Snakes? Why?”

  “To keep me from moving and getting close enough to use my power on her. Back then I needed to physically touch a person to take them with my power. I no longer have to be close. My power can now span such a distance, but back then it couldn’t, so Shota wanted to keep me at a safe distance from her, and she knew how afraid I am of snakes. She said that if I moved, those vipers would bite me. She intended in the end for those venomous snakes to kill me.”

  “Had you threatened her?”

  “No.”

  Shale looked even more perplexed. “Then why in the world would a witch woman want to kill you?”

  Kahlan gestured, as if weakly trying to banish the awful memory.

  “She said that if she were to let me live and Richard and I ever had a child, it would be a monster.”

  Shale looked even more puzzled. “What would give her that idea?”

  Kahlan let out a deep sigh. “In the distant past there were dark times caused by male Confessors. The gift passed on from a Confessor mother would give these male Confessors extraordinary abilities and power. That Confessor power alone corrupted them, and they used it to gain power. They were brutes who cast the world into tyranny and terror.

  “Because of that history, at birth any male born to a Confessor is killed. That awful duty fell to the father. It had always been that a Confessor took her mate with her power so that he would not hesitate to carry out those instructions. Fortunately, males born to Confessors became rarer over time, so such infanticide became rare. Richard is the first one to love a Confessor and not be taken by her power.

  “Because he is not bonded to me in that way, but by love, Shota knew that Richard would never kill any child of mine. He admitted to her that he could nev
er do such a thing.”

  “Does the power of a Confessor pass on to all female children?”

  “Yes. Every daughter born of a Confessor is herself a Confessor. It’s the way the power was infused into us when originally created by a wizard named Merritt. The first Confessor, the one he created, was Magda Searus.”

  “Are the male children also always born with the Confessor power?”

  Kahlan bit her lower lip as she squinted into her memory. “I guess I can’t say for sure. It was a long time ago. It could be that only some were born with the Confessor ability, but the ones who had it certainly caused enough suffering, so the male children of Confessors are never allowed to live.”

  “Then Shota’s worry may be for nothing. Your son may not have that ability. He may have only Richard’s gift. Since Confessors rarely have male children, it is likely the girl has your power, and the boy Richard’s. Besides, even if he has that ability, you both would teach him to be a good person.”

  “Well, male Confessor or not, Shota said that if Richard and I have a child, it will have both my power and his, and as a result it would be a monster.”

  “So, she was going to use snakes to kill you? Seems like a lot of effort.”

  “She did it because snakes terrify me. She couldn’t be reasoned with. She is convinced that everyone in the world will be terrorized by any child of ours. She wanted me to feel that kind of terror before I died.

  “Richard made her stop. I hate snakes, but I can’t say that I think much of witch women, either, although I have known other witch women who have helped me. One in particular, Red, helped save Richard, but I think that was largely out of concern for her own hide. Witch women are dangerous and nearly impossible to reason with.”

  Shale grinned as if at a joke only she knew.

  “What?” Kahlan asked. “Something funny about that?”

  “In a way,” she said, cryptically. “Go on.”

  “Well, anyway, Shota vowed to kill any child of ours. She said the mixing of gifts would create a monster. You have just told me that my twins are gifted—with Richard’s gift and with mine. Shota is right about that much of it.”