Hateful Things Read online

  Vika shoved men to one side then the other as she pushed and squeezed her way through the cluster of big, heavily armed soldiers in order to get close to Richard. All of the men knew that Vika was Richard’s personal guard, so they didn’t try to stop her, even though the First File was also his personal guard. None were willing to challenge a Mord-Sith with an Agiel in her fist, especially not one dressed in her red leather.

  The First File was the closest line of defense for the Lord Rahl. These men had worked all their lives to earn a place in the First File. They were all powerful men in chain mail and shaped leather armor. They were all experts in every weapon they carried. Each was deadly. They were all the elite of the elite. Each would lay down his life before he allowed trouble to get a look at Richard.

  Yet none wanted to disagree with a Mord-Sith who insisted she be closest to Lord Rahl. Like them, like all the Mord-Sith, Vika wanted nothing more than to protect Richard. For the Mord-Sith, their greatest wish was to die in their duty of protecting the Lord Rahl. It was a twisted wish, but then, the Mord-Sith were rather twisted women.

  When Richard had released them all from their long history of enforced bondage to the Lord Rahl, they all chose on their own to stay right where they were. If anything, freeing them and giving them their lives back had only made them more devoted to protecting him, now by choice, not a lifetime of training, punishment, and compulsory duty.

  The hall they were all racing down, while elegantly paneled with dyed maple, was dimly lit with reflector lamps spaced a good distance apart, leaving a lot of unsettling shadows. Following the sporadic, weak sound of pain and the occasional, otherworldly, echoing bellow, Richard passed dozens of rooms to each side before having to turn down another hall branching off to the left. The thick, dark mass of soldiers flowed through the halls behind him and Vika. The new hall he entered had only one lamp, back near the intersection, so they were all running into growing darkness.

  Even before Richard drew his sword, the weapon’s magic was calling to him, eager to join with his suddenly awakened anger at the unknown threat. The magic of the blade was impatient to join with the Seeker’s fury and taste the blood of the enemy.

  Knowing that he was getting closer to the source of the sounds, Richard at last drew his sword. The unique ring of steel as it was pulled free of the scabbard echoed through the confined space. What little light there was seemed to give the black steel a sinister glow.

  Now, with that ancient weapon in his fist, there was nothing holding back the power of the sword’s magic from flowing into him. Together, his fury and the sword’s joined, ready to confront any threat, eager to meet the enemy.

  Behind Richard, the soldiers’ weapons clanged and jangled. The dim lamplight sent flashes of reflections off them into the darkness.

  As they raced onward, darkness closed in around them. It grew hard to see. Even as they rushed ahead, the weak gasps had died out. The footfalls of all the men sounded like rolling thunder echoing through the narrow hallway.

  Suddenly, Richard came upon the crumpled form of one of the men of the First File. A quick look told him that the man had been mauled. Great wounds were cut right through the leather breastplate and the man’s rib cage, exposing his insides. His arms were shredded to the bone through the chain mail. He had no weapon in his bloody fists.

  Richard looked up just in time to see a dark shape in the distance. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it was moving away from them. When it paused to look back, Richard could just detect the lamplight from quite a distance behind him reflecting a dim gold color in the eyes of the predator.

  Having already taken in the sight as he had approached the downed soldier, he bounded over the man without losing a stride and was off down the hall after the attacker.

  The thing was swift and made no sound. In a fleeting moment, it had melted into the darkness. Richard charged down the dark hallway after it, determined not to let it get away.

  Vika grabbed his shirt at his shoulder and pulled him to a stop. Her teeth were gritted in anger.

  “What do you think you are doing?” she growled.

  “I’m going after it!” Richard jerked his shirt free of her grip.

  Before he could be off after the attacker again, she hooked an arm around his to keep him from getting away. “No, you are not going after it! It’s all dark down there. We don’t even know what that thing is. Did you see what it did to that man back there?”

  “Yes, the same thing it had started to do to Kahlan. I have to—”

  “No you don’t! It wants you to follow. It’s black as pitch down there. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  Richard, as angry as he was about the man being killed, frowned at her. “What do you mean, it wants me to follow?”

  Vika gestured angrily back with an arm. “Don’t you see? It mauled that man within earshot of where you were sleeping. It wanted to draw you out and down here, into the dark. It wanted you to come after it.”

  “It could have just appeared in the bedroom and had me there.”

  “You heard what Nolo said. They want this world, but they are wary of your gift. They don’t understand it. This one wanted to get you to do something stupid so that you would be vulnerable—just as the Mother Confessor was when one of them attacked her.

  “They are using your empathy for your people to try to draw you to them. For all we know there could be an ambush down that hallway, waiting in the dark, with the intention of trying to overcome your magic. There could be dozens of them waiting down there to tear you apart.”

  The commander of the men standing close behind Richard smoothed down his thick beard as he caught his breath. “I think you should listen to her, Lord Rahl. She has a good point. It could have attacked any number of people asleep in the palace without being heard or discovered. Had it done that, we would only later find the remains. This attack on a lone sentry, near your quarters, only makes sense if you see it as a tactic to draw you out.”

  Vika bowed her head to the commander as if in respect for the man for agreeing with her.

  Richard reluctantly forced himself to think through the fog of rage about their words. He had to ram the Sword of Truth back into its scabbard to quench the anger it was feeding into him. He took a settling breath.

  Finally, he gave a nod to Vika. “You’re right. Thanks for not letting me do something stupid.”

  “From what I hear from my sisters of the Agiel, that appears to be my full-time job.”

  Some of the soldiers chuckled.

  “All right,” Richard said. “Let’s hurry and get back to that man to see if there is anything that can be done for him.”

  The commander gestured back with his sword. “The only thing you can do for him now, Lord Rahl, is to say some words as he is laid to rest. His pain and terror is at last ended. He is in the hands of the good spirits, now.”

  Richard felt terrible that the man had died guarding him.

  “We need to search this hall and see if that thing is still down there,” he told the commander. “If it is, we won’t be rushing into an ambush. We will corner it. Have some of your men get torches.”

  Once close to a dozen men rushed back with torches, Richard moved quickly but cautiously on down the hall, looking for the killer. Men searched every room along the way. At each intersection two men were dispatched to scout side routes. The farther they went down the main corridor, the more the corridors branched off.

  After a time-consuming, fruitless search, Richard finally brought them all to a stop. “There is no telling where that thing went. But from what Nolo told us, they can simply melt into thin air and go back to their own world. I suspect it’s no longer in the palace.”

  “I’m afraid I have to agree,” Vika said. “I think it’s gone.”

  “But to be sure,” Richard said, “I want the men to conduct a thorough search. Make sure they are in pairs at a minimum.”

  The commander nodded. “I will get more men and we will search
this entire part of the palace.”

  Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “I need to go check on Kahlan.” He was still feeling the remnants of the sword’s rage crackling through him. It was hard to douse such powerful anger once it had been ignited. “If the sorceress isn’t finished healing the Mother Confessor, I will wring her neck.”

  “I’m sure she is doing her best, Lord Rahl,” Vika offered in a quiet voice.

  Richard nodded before addressing all the men watching him. “It looks like these predators are ambush hunters. They pick the moment to strike. That means we will always be at a disadvantage. It doesn’t matter how big and strong you men are. If they catch you off guard, or alone, you will be like that unfortunate soldier back there—dead before you know what happened.”

  “Then it would seem prudent,” the commander said, “that all men standing guard, no matter where, do not do so alone. There should be at least two men, maybe three, at each post. That way if the enemy jumps one of them, the others can attack it.”

  Richard sighed as he nodded. “That’s the idea. Please see to it. In the meantime, I need to make sure the Mother Confessor is safe.”

  The commander clapped a fist to his heart. “This way, Lord Rahl.”

  “While I’m checking on her,” Richard said as he started out, “I want all the officers of the First File gathered.” He gestured to the left. “There’s a devotion square not far away in that direction. There’s too many men of the First File to pull them from their duties all over the palace and address them all at once, but by meeting with the officers they can pass my words on to their men. Have them gather there so that I can talk to them.”

  6

  Kahlan, in the white dress of the Mother Confessor, was just emerging from their bedroom as Richard hurried into the entryway from the broad corridor. He could see that her arms were moving without pain. She was walking straight and tall, which told him that the healing had been successful.

  When her green-eyed gaze locked on him, her expression brightened.

  The Mord-Sith were all gathered in that round entry where they had been guarding the bedroom all night while Shale had finished the healing. Only Vika had gone with Richard to another room where he could get some rest.

  A weary-looking Shale followed Kahlan out. Richard knew that such a healing would have been quite an ordeal for her as well as Kahlan. He could read in the sorceress’s face and in her aura the toll it had taken on her.

  Kahlan rushed into his arms and for a long moment he lost himself in that embrace, relieved beyond words to see her looking like herself again. As he was hugging her, he reached out with one hand to touch Shale’s arm in appreciation for what she had done. She returned a proud smile.

  “Did you sleep well?” Kahlan asked, holding his upper arms as she pushed back from the hug.

  “Without you? Hardly at all.”

  Kahlan flashed him her special smile. “Now that Shale has finished healing me, tonight you will be back with me, and I will see to it that you do.”

  “There was an attack,” he said, hating to break the spell of her smile.

  Just that quick, the smile was gone. “What?”

  “I’m pretty sure that it was the same kind of thing that attacked you—one of the predators sent by the Golden Goddess. The thing you called the scribbly man.”

  Kahlan’s face lost some of its color. “Where? When?”

  Richard pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “A short time ago. It was one of the soldiers standing guard by himself down the hall not far from the room where I was sleeping.”

  “Was he severely hurt, Lord Rahl?” Shale asked from behind Kahlan. “Can I help?”

  Richard shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s too late to help him.”

  “Dear spirits, that’s terrible.” Kahlan frowned. “Why attack a lone man standing guard? That seems odd.”

  “I think because I was sleeping nearby.”

  Just then, a soldier of the First File rushed into the entryway breathing heavily. “Lord Rahl, Mother Confessor, are you both all right?”

  “Yes,” Richard said. “What is it?”

  “One of the sentries standing guard down a hallway branching off from this corridor coming in here was just found dead.”

  “Did it look like he had been mauled by a bear?” Richard asked, his heart sinking.

  “That’s right,” the man said, looking a little surprised. “There is no sign of whatever it was that attacked him.”

  “So, you didn’t catch sight of it?”

  “No, Lord Rahl.”

  “I heard a scream a couple of hours ago,” Cassia said.

  Richard turned to stare at the Mord-Sith. “And you didn’t go to help the man?”

  She frowned. “Of course not, Lord Rahl.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because our duty is to protect the Mother Confessor. It could be that it was a diversion to draw us away from protecting her. We are not going to abandon our duty to keep her safe. The risk of doing so would be too great. It is the job of the First File to respond to such things.”

  Richard looked at the grim faces of Rikka, Nyda, Vale, and Berdine. None looked to think any differently.

  “Lord Rahl,” Berdine finally said, “we are here, in your place, to protect your wife. She is just as important to preserving the magic protecting this world as you are. I know you would not want us to be tricked into leaving her without our protection. We would not trust her to anyone else’s care. We are the last line of defense. We would all die before harm could get a look at her, just as we would all die before harm could get a look at you.”

  “That’s right,” Cassia added. “I am sorry one of the men of the First File was killed, but that’s all the more reason we should not leave our post guarding the Mother Confessor.”

  Vika looked to her sister Mord-Sith. “Lord Rahl sometimes gets crazy ideas to expose himself to danger. Fortunately, I was there to stop him from doing something foolish and dangerous only a little while ago, in a similar situation.”

  The rest of them nodded solemnly.

  “Protecting him is often a burden,” Berdine confirmed.

  Richard was used to the Mord-Sith talking about him in such a way, right in front of him, as if he were a doddering old fool who could barely feed himself.

  He turned back to Kahlan, spellbound by her green eyes, but needing to return to business.

  “I asked the officers to meet us in a devotion area not far from here,” he finally said. “With two men killed already this morning, I’m sure rumors will be circulating among the First File. We need to let them at least know the nature of the threat. We need to come up with a plan to fight it.”

  “They can appear out of thin air,” Kahlan said, sounding skeptical that any planning could be possible.

  “I know. That makes it difficult, but we’ve learned one thing. They are attacking targets around both of us to try to draw us out and into a surprise ambush.”

  Kahlan looked more than a little concerned. “It seems they can appear anywhere, so why wouldn’t they simply attack us right there in our rooms, much like the way they did when I was alone with Nolo? Why not surprise us that way?”

  Richard stared off for a moment, trying to reason it out in his own mind. He finally looked back at Kahlan.

  “They are afraid of our magic. They tried a direct surprise attack on you when you touched Nolo with your power. They struck when you were at your weakest. Even though that thing ripped into you, I suspect that it vanished before finishing the job because at the same time your power was already returning. Nolo says they are fearful of our magic.

  “Before, when Shale was beginning to heal you, I was going down a hallway that was dark because the lamps had gone out. One of them appeared suddenly. I don’t know where it came from, or if it came out of nowhere. It was simply suddenly there.”

  “What did it look like?” Kahlan asked.

  “It was too dark to get a goo
d look at it. This dark shape suddenly came rushing at me out of nowhere. I had my sword out before it was on me and I was able to take a swing right through the middle of it.”

  Kahlan leaned in. “And then what? What happened? Did you kill it?”

  Richard shook his head in regret. “Then it just wasn’t there, as if it never had been. For just an instant I thought I had only imagined the whole thing, imagined I had seen something in the dark—a shadow or a twist of the light. I wondered if I’d been scared by my own shadow. But I wasn’t. Something was there. My magic—the sword’s magic—must have scared it off. I suspect they are attacking people around both of us to test the limits of our powers.”

  “Or to try to test themselves against it,” Shale said.

  “That could be, too,” Richard said in a worried tone as he paced off a few feet, thinking.

  “We need to warn people of this new danger,” Kahlan said.

  “Can people defend themselves against these things,” Vika asked, “these scribbly men, as you called them?”

  Kahlan shook her head. “No, they can’t. No one can, except maybe Richard and maybe me.”

  “Then what can be accomplished by telling everyone that our world is under attack from an unknown threat that will come out of nowhere to rip them apart and there’s nothing they can do to save themselves? That would terrify people, which is exactly what Nolo said these predators seek: terror.”

  Richard rubbed his chin in thought. “I’m afraid Vika is right.”

  “Along with the First File, we are the steel against steel,” Vika said. “You are the magic against magic, Lord Rahl. This what you were born to do.”

  “These predators don’t have magic,” Richard reminded her.

  “Well, they have something that enables them to get from their world to ours in order to hunt and kill us. You are the only one who can figure out how to fight beings that can do that.”

  “Right now, you can’t worry about the people living in the palace,” Berdine added. “You need to focus on stopping this threat, not managing panicked people.”