Hateful Things Read online

  “I started checking and soon discovered who the missing men were.”

  “Who were they?” Richard asked.

  The burly soldier leaned closer. “The thing was, Lord Rahl, the missing men were the ones who were supposed to be guarding the landings on the way down here—the landings with the doors, like the one I showed you. The men had been posted to guard those doors to the inner areas of the plateau where the public comes and goes from the palace. There had only been one man at each post, and now those men were gone.

  “So, I took a squad and we went searching. On our way down here, we found bloody handprints here and there, on the corner of hallways, at doorways, even along the walls. It was where the victims were dragged in here, still alive, trying to grab onto a corner or doorway, anything to try to help them get away. None did.

  “We kept going, following the bloody smears and the blood that had dripped on the floor.” He gestured to the remains. “Eventually we discovered this. I can only imagine how terrified these poor people were as they were dragged in here and eaten alive. Down here, no one would be able to hear their screams.

  “I recognized a couple of the pieces of armor. They belonged to my men. Some have a mark that identify their owner. That’s how I know who they were and that this was where they had vanished to.”

  Richard boiled with rage, and at the same time he was heartsick at the discovery. It was especially painful seeing that children were among the remains.

  He also felt a rising sense of panic that everyone depended on him to stop this slaughter, and he didn’t have the foggiest idea how he was going to do that.

  “They were using this place as a base to hunt from.” Richard gestured back up the way they had come. “After they killed your men, they used the doors out to the dark landings where people were coming and going from the palace. They were snatching unsuspecting people from the shadows on the landings outside those doorways.”

  “If ever there was a nightmare come to life, that is it,” Kahlan said.

  The sergeant nodded. “That was why I wanted to show you the dark landings beyond the doors when we were on our way down here. I wanted you to see where they were likely snatching most of the victims.”

  Richard took the torch from the sergeant, and alone stepped among the skulls—both of adults and children—scattered on the floor in order to get a closer look at the heap of remains. He had to walk through the sickening pools of blood and fluid. None of the others looked the least bit inclined to want to go with him, except, of course, Vika. She followed closely in his footsteps, her Agiel in her fist, as her analytical gaze swept over the scene.

  Richard wanted to get a closer look to burn the full horror of it into his memory so that he would never fail to use every last bit of strength and resolve to stop these hateful things, as Kahlan had called them.

  But more importantly, he wanted to see what he could learn about the predators who had done this. He squatted down next to a small skull. It was obviously from a child probably six or seven years old. The scalp and face had been mostly scraped off. Only a little patch of blood-soaked hair remained, above where an ear would have been. With a finger, he turned it around and around to get a better look at it in the torchlight.

  The back of the skull was missing. Jagged marks revealed that it had been teeth that had opened the skull, most likely to get at the brains, as the skull was mostly empty.

  He bent closer, holding the torch near to see better.

  The deep gouges across the top of the skull and down toward the brow were made by a row of many, many sharp, pointed teeth all close together. By the way they were deeper in the center, and lighter and lighter as they moved farther to the side, it told him that the thing had a very large mouth. Only the front teeth had done this damage as they were raked across the bone. He looked around at some of the other skulls littering the floor. They had the same kind of deep gouges raking across the bone, indicating the same thing—a very large mouth with a lot of very sharp, pointed teeth, all close together, tightly lined up across the top and bottom jaws.

  Vika shadowed him as he stood and returned to the others, where he handed the torch back to the sergeant.

  “What did you learn?” Kahlan asked.

  “Without realizing it, they have revealed a little bit about themselves. From the evidence left on the skulls, I can tell that rather than fangs like many predators have that would leave puncture holes, they have a lot of needle-sharp teeth, all about the same length, lined up closely together side by side. Some of the large bones were bitten clean in half, so their jaws are powerful. From the evidence on some of the skulls, it also looks like their mouths are big enough to gnaw on a skull, like we might bite at an apple. From the confusing mass of indistinct footprints, they don’t wear boots. From the size of those prints I’d guess they must be half again my size.”

  “Dear spirits,” Kahlan said as she slowly shook her head. “We are in a lot of trouble.”

  11

  They left the site of the slaughter, grateful to be away from the gagging stench of death, and made the long, tiring climb mostly in silence. When they finally reached the uppermost landing of the service stairs, Richard gently grabbed the sergeant’s arm and brought him to a halt.

  “There is no way we will ever be able to identify all those people. You said you have a list of the names of missing people. I think it’s safe to assume that the missing are those we saw down there.”

  The man nodded. “So, what do you want to do, Lord Rahl?”

  Richard felt overwhelmed, frustrated, and angry. “We can’t really bring the whole rotting mess back out of there for a proper burial. It would be to no real purpose, since we wouldn’t have any way to put the remains of individuals together or identify any of them so that people could grieve and bury their loved one. There is no way we would know who we’re burying or if the missing are for sure among them, even though it seems likely that they are. And we certainly can’t bring their families down there to the site and tell them that their loved ones are likely among the remains in the pile.

  “Seeing those remains would be more horrific to them than the torment of not knowing what happened to their loved ones. There is nothing we could do that would provide closure for people.”

  “So, what are you thinking?”

  Richard wiped a hand across his mouth as he briefly considered. As much as he didn’t like the idea of simply leaving the remains down in the lower reaches of the palace, he couldn’t see that there was really any choice. There were catacombs under the palace where a great many people were interred. In a way, the victims were already buried underground.

  “Their suffering is over. They are with the good spirits, now,” Richard finally said to the sergeant. “I’d like you to get a group of men together. Have them collect stone and mortar from down in the lower levels. I saw supplies of that kind down there in some of the nearby rooms off the side passageways. Once you have the supplies you’ll need, seal up the entrance to that chamber with the remains.

  “Not just a simple wall. Those creatures could probably break through that and go back to using it again. You need to plug up the end of the passageway for a good enough distance that they aren’t ever going to be able to break through it to get back in and use it as a nest. That will be the tomb for all those poor victims.”

  Sergeant Barclay nodded. “Then those creatures will know we are on to them, know we have discovered their lair.”

  “Good. I want them to know that they aren’t as clever as they thought they were. And at least they won’t be able to continue to hunt in the same way.”

  The sergeant tilted his head closer with a serious look. “Lord Rahl, there are many places like that in the lower areas of the palace. They may simply find similar places from which to hunt.”

  “Of course they will. We will have to be on the lookout for that now that we know what they were doing. We need to quickly deny them places they use wherever we find them. Maybe we c
an make them feel like the hunted for a change. We might even be able to kill or capture some of them. In the meantime, seal that chamber as a gravesite.”

  The man clapped his fist to his heart. “I will see to it right away, Lord Rahl.”

  As the sergeant hurried off through the service area to get a crew to take care of sealing up the tomb, Richard headed in the direction of the double doors that would lead out.

  “We need to get up there to meet with the gifted,” he told the others. “They likely will be waiting for us by now.”

  “What are you thinking?” Shale asked, sounding suspicious. “What do you want with the gifted?”

  Richard paused before opening the doors out of the service area and turned back to the eight grim female faces watching him. Instead of answering her question, he asked her one. “Do you know how to join gifts from different gifted people to create more power?”

  He knew that the Sisters of the Light could do it. He had seen it done.

  Shale’s smooth brow bunched together a bit. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. But to be fair, the only gifted people I knew were my parents.”

  Richard paused in thought for a moment. “That means you may not know how to do what a lot of sorceresses who have been trained are able to do.”

  Shale’s lips pursed with displeasure. “Magic is magic.”

  “So it is,” he said, offering her a small smile.

  Kahlan took his arm and pressed her head against his shoulder as he started off toward the grand staircase. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close as they went up the first flight to the broad landing where the stairs reversed direction to continue on up.

  12

  Shale hooked a hand around Richard’s arm to stop him.

  “Lord Rahl …” She sounded hesitant. “That sight down there, all those people … it was horrifying.”

  Richard frowned, not knowing if she had a point. “It was.”

  “Well, the thing is, you hope to be able to stop these predators. In the meantime, our world is steadily heading toward the day when people will be without the protection of your magic and without the Mother Confessor’s magic. If anything should happen to either of you, then the future of our world would be doomed as the protective web of your gift holding all magic together disintegrates.

  “The Golden Goddess may never send those of her race to have a big battle in which you can hope to defeat her. She may deny you that opportunity of a conventional war and instead continue to attack as she has been, terrorizing us with continual surprise attacks, maybe even wiping out small towns here and there so that everyone will be in the grip of fear. They will continue to feed on our people. As we wait for an attack that may never come, many more people will go missing, just as those people down in the darkness were missing.

  “Your magic is the only thing protecting our world by keeping them cautious. The future survival of this world depends on that magic being preserved. Every day that passes increases the danger that you will be killed and our world would then lose that protection.

  “As we learned through Nolo, the Golden Goddess can wait us out. If she chooses, she can wait for you to die of old age. You and the Mother Confessor grow older every day, and with your gifts destined to eventually die out, our world gets closer to dying out with you.”

  Richard was absently wondering what kind of gifted might be living at the palace and what abilities they might have that would be able to help them. He was only half listening to Shale ramble on with the obvious. He realized that even though she seemed to be talking a lot without saying much, she was getting at something.

  “What of it? What’s your point?” he asked, impatiently, needing to get to the library where the gifted would be gathering.

  “Well, to keep any of that from happening, and to have your gifts live on to protect the future of our world, you and the Mother Confessor need to have children. It can’t wait. You must have them now.”

  “Children! Now? Are you out of your mind?” Richard blew up in anger, flicking a hand in a gesture toward Kahlan. “I can’t think of anything that could cause us more trouble right now and threaten to bring the sky down on us all, than Kahlan getting pregnant.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing! You heard what the goddess said about the young and how she lusted to kill them. How can you even suggest that right now?”

  “I can suggest it because every day you both get older. Just like everyone else, day by day the time when you can have children dwindles away. You must think of the future. You must have children. I think it’s time.”

  “That’s absurd. We’re hardly old enough to suggest that we are running out of time to have children.”

  Seeing how angry he was, Shale wisely closed her mouth.

  Richard raked his fingers back through his hair, trying to control his temper. “One day? Absolutely. But now? There is nothing that would do more to draw the dedicated ferocity of the Golden Goddess and her kind than us having children.” He shook his head at the very idea, almost too angered by to it speak.

  Shale’s prudence ran out. “But Lord Rahl—”

  “Tell her!” he suddenly yelled at Kahlan. “Tell her how that would compromise our situation and in all likelihood ensure the destruction of our world! The entire focus of the Golden Goddess would be to hunt down those children and slaughter them. That would unleash such wrath that it would ensure that Kahlan and I would be killed as well. It would be the end of magic in our world. All because of such a foolish impulse at a time like this. Tell her that we can’t put such a notion ahead of us stopping this threat!”

  Kahlan had gone pale, making him suddenly wish he hadn’t yelled at her. He hadn’t really been yelling at her, but rather the recklessness of such a suggestion.

  “But Richard—” she said in a small voice, almost a plea.

  “Someday, Kahlan,” he said, leaning down toward her, softening his voice. “Someday. But right now that is the one thing that could seal our fate and the fate of our world. It would be the single thing that would ensure our total annihilation. Such a thing would cause them to cease being cautious and unleash a full-scale, worldwide invasion. We would be overrun and slaughtered.

  “Right now, their attention is on you and me as they probe our powers. Once we can learn more, discover ways to kill them and get control of the situation and hopefully stop them from coming to our world at will, then yes, that’s what I want more than anything. But right now we have to use our heads, or we will all lose them like those people down below.”

  Kahlan nodded as she glanced at Shale. The sorceress had gone silent and red-faced. Richard didn’t know what was wrong with the woman to even suggest such a thing right in the middle of such a crisis.

  “Kahlan being pregnant would mean that the Golden Goddess could no longer afford to wait us out,” he concluded. “Without a way to stop these predators, it would mean the end of us all.”

  Kahlan turned a look on Shale as she gritted her teeth. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see that Richard is trying his best to figure out how to stop this threat? We don’t need to make his job any harder than it already is.”

  Shale looked a bit sheepish as she abandoned her argument. “I apologize.” She gestured vaguely. “I was only trying to broach a subject that one day must be addressed. But I can see that now is not the time.” Kahlan closed her eyes a moment as she took a deep breath. “One day it will be. Until then, let’s not talk of it again—all right? Richard has a job to do. He doesn’t need us to pile more worries on top of those we already have.”

  Shale’s lips pressed tight for a moment. Finally, she bowed her head. “Of course, you’re right, Mother Confessor.”

  Richard gripped Shale’s shoulder and gave it a jostle, along with a smile. “It’s a wonderful idea, Shale, just the wrong time, that’s all. No hard feelings?”

  Shale shook her head, returning a bit of a smile.

  Richard held his hand out to K
ahlan. “Come on. We need to get up there to see what kind of gifted we have here in the palace. I’m hoping they are strong enough to be able to help us. I’m also hoping that at least one of them knows how to link others with the gift to make it more powerful.”

  Kahlan took his hand, but stood her ground, making Richard stop and turn to her.

  “Richard, I’m feeling a bit sick after what we just saw down below. I think I will go lie down.”

  Richard was a bit puzzled, even though she did look awfully pale. Kahlan had seen horrific deaths before. It always made her more determined than ever. It was completely unlike her to want to go lie down.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

  Kahlan frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s easier for wolves to take down a deer if they can cut one from the herd. Better that we stay together. I don’t want you to become one of the missing.”

  13

  Without realizing it, Richard, in his distracted anger, had started taking the stairs two at a time, opening the distance back to most of the others. At a landing where he had to go around a newel post to the next flight of stairs heading up, when the others had lagged a little way behind, only Vika had kept up with him.

  With all the shuffling footfalls on the stone steps echoing up and down the stairwell masking her voice, Vika leaned close to whisper to Richard as he slowed to let the others catch up.

  “You’re right, Lord Rahl, about not needing the additional worry of a pregnant wife and then children in the middle of a fight to try to save all of our lives. I could see that Shale also upset the Mother Confessor. I will tell the sorceress to mind her own business in the future and I will see to it that she does.”

  Richard, deep in his own thoughts, glanced back at the Mord-Sith. “That isn’t necessary.”

  Vika didn’t answer. She simply straightened her back and proceeded up the stairs with him as the others hurried to catch up. Richard knew that it didn’t really matter if he told Vika not to say anything to the sorceress. She would do what she thought best to protect him so that he could do what he had to do as First Wizard. Steel against steel so that he could be the magic against magic. That consideration of the larger objective overrode whatever he might say.