The Scribbly Man Read online

  It was not the first time Richard had seen Kahlan exhibit such determination to show strength to her people. She believed that showing leadership meant she had to rise above any personal pain.

  In a way he was proud of her, and at the same time he was exasperated by her stubbornness.

  After a long day in the great hall in which they answered one trivial concern after another, listened to the platitudes of kings and queens and heads of city-states, and accepted tokens of appreciation from the people of various parts of the D’Haran Empire, and after the boring normality of it all gradually doused the rumors that had flared up overnight, Kahlan finally stood.

  In her confident, silky voice, she thanked everyone for coming. She told them what a great honor it had been for Lord Rahl and herself to host them at the People’s Palace. She promised that they would try to make it to as many of the planned banquets as possible. She wished them a pleasant stay at the palace and a safe journey home when it came time for them to leave. She said that they would always be welcomed back to the people’s house, the People’s Palace.

  As the applause, cheers, and clamor of conversation died out and people began to leave, Kahlan turned to Richard. She looked no happier than she had that morning.

  “I need to question Nolo. Take me to where he is being held.”

  “How about you let Shale finish helping you first.”

  Kahlan turned to the captain of the guard. “Take me to where the prisoner is being held.”

  Clapping a fist to his heart, he bowed his head. “This way, Mother Confessor.”

  As the captain started out, Kahlan marched off right behind him, seemingly not caring if the rest of them came along or not. Richard and Shale had to hurry to catch up to her. The gaggle of Mord-Sith were right on their heels.

  It was clear to Richard by the way she moved that Kahlan was in pain. Throughout the day she had used the arm that had been mauled less and less, and now it didn’t look like she was able to lift it for more than brief moments. Occasionally she had pressed her right hand over her side. Despite that pain, she showed no sign that she might be reasonable and allow Shale to finish the healing.

  It was obvious to Richard that there was something bigger driving her.

  As they left the upper broad corridors of the palace proper, the passageways became more utilitarian, the stairways less grand. By the time they reached the lower portion of the palace, the narrow, low, simple stone passageways were dark and dank. It was quite the juxtaposition to the beauty and grandeur of the great hall where they had seen the petitioners earlier.

  Down in the lower passageways, one did one’s best not to touch the often dirty or slimy walls. As grim as the lower passageways were, Richard was thankful to be down there because that meant they were just that much closer to completing Kahlan’s wishes so that Shale could finish healing her.

  Torches carried by soldiers both leading the way and following behind lit the forbidding passageways with flickering light that made their faces seem to float along in the darkness. As they hurried down the long halls, the flames flapped and hissed. Besides the light, those torches filled the air with the sharp smell of pitch. At least that smell was better than the all too frequent stench of the dead rats.

  Water seeping down through the stone ceiling left slippery, wet, green mold in places. The oozing water had over ages created yellowish growths down the walls in areas that almost looked like the type of formations that he’d seen growing in caves.

  Unlike the rest of them, Kahlan didn’t look at anything in the cavelike passageways. She kept her eyes ahead, her expression grim and determined as she marched along on her way to see the man who had promised to take her world into a new age of a golden goddess.

  An age she believed Richard had promised her.

  Richard didn’t quite know what to make of that, but he was confident that when he’d promised her a new age, he hadn’t meant it would be under the tyranny of some mysterious golden goddess. He was hoping that Nolo could provide answers and from those they could find a solution.

  They all came to a stop at a solid iron door completely blocking off the dark corridor. The soldiers on station there were already working several keys in multiple locks in order to get it open for them. Unlike the soldiers from up top in the palace, these men stationed down below were grimy and dirty. Their faces were blackened with soot from torches.

  Once the heavy door had been pulled back on squealing hinges, they saw that there were more armed soldiers on the other side. Those soldiers all stood with their backs against the walls to let the visitors pass. After stepping through the low doorway, they soon came to long runs of iron stairs that led down into a large chamber. Their footsteps and the clanking of weapons echoed all the way down the stairs.

  The chamber at the bottom, constructed of granite blocks, was damp and had an off-putting smell. It was clear that things had died down here. Most likely, people. It tainted the place with the enduring stench of death.

  A series of rust-stained iron doors with small viewing slits lined each side of the rectangular room. Fingers gripped a few of those slots from the other side. The captain of the guard shepherded the group to the lone door at the far end.

  “We put him in here, Lord Rahl,” the captain said.

  Richard nodded. “Don’t bring him out. We will go in to see him.”

  The captain gave a nod to the men guarding the cell. After a soldier unlocked the door, two others pulled it open and went inside to unlock a second door. Once that was open, they took in half a dozen torches each and placed them in iron brackets so the visitors would be able to see well enough.

  As the soldiers placed the torches, Richard stepped in front of Kahlan to prevent her from going in first, as she had clearly intended.

  Unlike the rest of the cells, this one was a relatively large room. By the row of manacles and chains pinned into the stone at regular intervals, the room was meant to hold a number of prisoners along the length of the wall, but now it held only one.

  Nolo, heavily secured against the wall, was naked except for underpants stained with dried blood. Without his formal robes, all his body hair made him resemble a bear. That hair was also matted with dried blood.

  Because they didn’t want him crashing into walls and trying to kill himself, he had been tightly chained against the wall to prevent any further such attempts. An iron collar pinned in the granite allowed his head only inches of movement. A post held the collar away from the wall enough to prevent him from banging his head back against the stone. His arms were spread wide, iron bands pinning them against the wall at his shoulders and wrists in a way that prevented him from trying to hang himself to death in the collar. His legs and feet were secured with shackles and heavy chains. The smell of dried blood along with the sweaty man stunk up the room.

  Nolo did not look at all well. His head hung as much as the tall metal collar would allow. His droopy, bloodshot eyes were open but stared unblinking down at the foot of the opposite wall, as if he were in a stupor. He showed no sign that he even knew that people had entered his cell.

  “I want everyone out,” Kahlan said as she stared at the man immobilized against the wall.

  “Well, that’s not happening,” Richard said. “No way am I leaving.”

  “Me neither,” Shale said. “I can clearly see that your injuries are causing you pain. I need to be close by, just in case you require help.”

  “I’m not leaving Lord Rahl in here without me,” Vika said, defiantly.

  The rest of the Mord-Sith chimed in that they weren’t about to leave either of their charges alone and unprotected.

  The muscles in Kahlan’s jaw flexed as she clenched her teeth. She pointed at the door. “I would like the rest of you men to wait outside, please. Close the door. Kill anything that comes out that isn’t us.”

  The captain’s steely gaze shifted among those gathered. “Lord Rahl has his sword, these Mord-Sith their Agiel, and this sorceress her powers.
What is it that you think could make it out that would still need killing?”

  “Just wait outside, please,” Kahlan huffed.

  When the captain looked at him out of the corner of an eye, Richard gave him a nod to do as she asked. The soldiers clapped fists to hearts, if less than enthusiastically, and left them with the heavyset, nearly naked, hairy-chested man chained to the wall.

  13

  Richard moved in close to Kahlan as she stared at Nolo. He didn’t know what was behind it, but he was done with her fit of temper and by his tone made it clear he wasn’t going to put up with it down here with a man who had already proven to be dangerous. He gripped her upper arm as he leaned in close.

  “You have a job to do—a job you were born to do. You can yell at me all you want later, but right now you need to do your job. Our people are depending on us.”

  Her heated expression relented a little. She seemed to get a grip on her emotions as she nodded.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said to her as he pulled her back away from Nolo toward the sorceress. “You still haven’t told me what happened when you used your power on him.”

  She looked up into the resolve in his eyes, then glanced at Shale. Her expression finally softened, returning to the Kahlan he knew.

  “When I begin to release my power, it’s as if time stops. In that otherworldly moment everyone else seems to me like nothing more than a stone statue. There is nothing they can do to stop me, least of all the one I have unleashed my power on. Right then as that connection is made, I guess the easiest way to explain it is that it’s like a discharge of lightning. Pure power. Pure, heady power. The release of it is ecstasy.

  “Right then, in that singular instant as the power has been released from deep inside me, the person is already beyond redemption, their mind is already gone, but that is also when I am at my weakest. I had been furious at the trouble Nolo was bringing us after the terrible war had finally ended. That anger added strength to the power I released. It sent the tables and chairs crashing against the walls. I heard the stone of the walls crack as the discharge of power buckled them. The lights were blown out.”

  Her brow bunched together as she was remembering it. “But right then, in that frozen blink of time as the power was still exploding from me, as the flames in the lamps were still floating above the wicks, those flames were stopped dead in midair like everything else for that instant before they were about to be blown out. In an infinitesimal speck of time, all that would soon change and it would be pitch black. But right then there was still light.

  “That’s when it happened.”

  Goose bumps tingled on Richard’s arms. “When what happened?”

  She looked up into his eyes, haunted by what she had seen.

  “That was when I saw the scribbly man.”

  The sorceress stepped closer and leaned in. “The what?”

  “The scribbly man,” Kahlan said. She put the fingers of her good hand to her forehead, obviously in distress at the memory. “That’s the only way I can think to explain it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Richard said. “What do you mean by a ‘scribbly’ man?”

  Kahlan heaved a sigh of frustration, letting the arm flop to her side. “You know the hard charcoal sticks that artists use to sketch with?”

  Richard was frowning. “Sure.”

  “Well,” she said, searching for words to explain it, “imagine if the artist were to scribble as fast as he could in the form of a figure, a man. No outlines, no shading or features, simply hundreds of scribbles, back and forth, up and down, round and round, fast as possible, filling in the arms, the body, the legs, and the head to make the dark shape of a man.”

  When they only stared at her, she used her hand to demonstrate, as if scribbling in midair. “Like this. Just scribbles over and over and over—fast as you can—so that after a moment on the paper all those scribbles combine into the rough, dark shape of a man. An impression of a man made entirely of scribbles. No outline, no details, just… scribbles.”

  Richard was beginning to get the image in his head. “You mean this figure you saw just before the light went out looked kind of fuzzy or something? Sort of dark and shadowy?”

  Kahlan was shaking her head. “No, no. Not dark. Not fuzzy. Not shadowy. He was made up of scribbles in midair. Lines. Hundreds of lines. All kinds of loopy scribbles like you would make when holding that charcoal against the paper and scribbling to fill in a shape as fast as you could.

  “As he came toward me, every tiny movement he made as his arms moved, as his legs moved to take a step, he was redrawn with new scribbles. He just kept being redrawn over and over, time after time, over and over every fraction of a second. Those scribbles he was made of came anew so fast it made him sort of blur as he moved.”

  Richard suddenly looked over at Shale. “What does that remind you of?”

  The blood had drained from her face. “The marks I told you about left in the snow that looked like thousands of strikes from a switch.”

  “Or scribbles made in the snow.”

  Shale nodded.

  Kahlan looked from one to the other. “What are you two talking about? I know it sounds crazy, but do you mean you believe me?”

  “We believe you,” Shale said. “I have seen people murdered—likely by this same creature, this scribbly man as you call him. Some were clawed to death.”

  “He had claws,” Kahlan confirmed, nodding, the haunted fear returning to her eyes. “He stood upright, like a man, but he had claws. Three on each hand. They weren’t black like the rest of him, like the scribbles. They were more defined, thick, solid.”

  “What color were they?” Richard asked.

  Kahlan rubbed her injured arm hanging at her side as if suddenly chilled. “I don’t know. A lighter color. Sort of a tan or yellowish color.”

  “Or sort of golden?” Richard asked.

  Her gaze came up to meet his. “I guess so. I only just saw him, saw the claws… and then he was on me… tearing at me, ripping into me. It was terrifying.”

  “What do you think it could have been?” Shale asked her, breaking Kahlan’s sudden transfixed daze at the memory. “Do you have any idea at all?”

  Kahlan nodded. “I’m afraid I do.” She stared off into the shadows for a time before going on.

  “They are the monsters under the bed when you are little, the shape just caught out of the corner of your eye when you thought you were alone, the shadow of something in a dark corner that surprises you and then isn’t there. They stop you dead with a knot of unexpected terror in the pit of your stomach. We have all seen glimpses of them. Never long enough to see them as I saw them, but it was them. I recognized it the instant I saw it.

  “We’ve all seen fleeting flashes of them, the dark shadow just out of sight. They could briefly terrify us before but never hurt us because they came from so far distant. They were never able to fully materialize in our world so we saw only transient glimpses of them, the shape of them if the light was just right, if the shadows were deep enough… if you were afraid enough.

  “I think that the star shift has brought us closer to their realm so that they now have the power to step into our world and hurt us.”

  14

  Angry that Kahlan had been harmed by such a monster, Richard turned to Nolo.

  “What was that thing that attacked her?”

  Nolo stared blankly, his eyes unblinking, as if he had not heard Richard’s question, or wasn’t even aware there was anyone in the room with him.

  “I’ve touched him with my power,” Kahlan reminded him. “Whatever else happened as I did, I still unleashed my power into him. He won’t answer anyone but me.”

  “… Or maybe the goddess,” Shale suggested.

  Kahlan’s only answer was a worried look.

  Richard gestured angrily at the portly man pinned to the wall. “We need answers. Ask him what it was.”

  Kahlan moved closer to stand in front of the priso
ner.

  “Nolo. Look at me.”

  He looked up at her as if just coming awake from a deep sleep. Long strands of gray hair meant to cover his large bald spot instead hung down in front of his face. As he saw her, his expression turned to utter devotion to the Confessor who had taken his mind.

  Then, a cunning smile thinned his puffy lips.

  Richard had seen plenty of people touched by Kahlan’s power.

  None of them had ever smiled.

  “She sees you,” Nolo said in a raspy whisper.

  “She?” Kahlan asked.

  “The Golden Goddess. She sees you standing there. She sees into your world.” His voice was slow and sounded different than it had when he was in the great hall. If it even was his voice. “Your world will be hers. You should give it up now, and save yourself witnessing what is to come.”

  “Who is the Golden Goddess?” Kahlan asked in a calm voice.

  “She is the collector of worlds.”

  Richard didn’t like the sound of that.

  “What does she want with our world?” Kahlan asked. “Why does she want it?”

  “You can’t win in the end,” he said in that slow, raspy whisper, which ran a shiver up Richard’s spine. “He is the last of the Rahl line. You are the last of the Confessors. Once you are both dead she will have your world.”

  “Can you get him to be more specific?” Richard asked. “These are just threats. We need something that will help us.”

  Kahlan nodded. “How will the Golden Goddess collect our world?”

  “She will have your world. You can’t win. In the end, no matter what you do, she will have your world. Running will do you no good. Surrender now and she will kill you first. She will pick your bones clean and then you will not have to see the horror that will come for your people.”

  Kahlan shook her head to herself.

  It was obvious to Richard that this wasn’t working. “He is not behaving as he should after he has been touched by a Confessor,” he whispered to Shale, standing just to his right.