Hateful Things Read online

  Each side of the long room had three rows of freestanding bookcases. Some of the cases held enormous, oversize volumes. Some of the covers and spines of those had titles in gold foil. One of the cases had locked glass doors covering the entire face of it, further restricting access to the books it contained in a room that was already highly restricted.

  The glass doors weren’t simply locked. Richard knew that the books behind those glass doors were some of the most dangerous of the books in the library, books so dangerous that the wizards of the time when the library had been created did not want to trust the simple trick of making those books look unimportant. Those glass doors were sealed with spells that required considerable skill and Subtractive Magic to open.

  Richard knew that many of the most dangerous books, those on the shelves and those behind locked glass doors, spoke of him. They called him by many different names. They spoke of him centuries before he had even been born. They expressed grave warnings, and profound hopes.

  On the distant side of the room to Richard’s left, beyond the rows of bookcases, there was a sitting area with three comfortable-looking chairs. Except that he couldn’t imagine anyone using them, because they had the same ugly orange stripes as the chairs in the sitting area outside the library. Richard knew the true purpose of the ugly orange stripes.

  In the center of the room, between the rows of bookcases to each side, stood a long, heavy oak table with massive, turned wooden legs. A few wooden chairs sat at random angles around it, as if the people using them had just gotten up for a moment, but never came back. Richard had been one of those people.

  A number of simple, unimportant-looking books lay open on the table. Richard was the one, quite a while back, who had left those books there. A few small stacks of books on the table were ones he had collected from the shelves and left there in case he needed to come back to search them for things that could help him. The whole library looked like a cozy, inviting place to read. But Richard knew that, like some others, this room was more than simply a library, and it was anything but cozy.

  As Dori gazed about the room, he went to the end of the far wall on his right and pulled the heavy drapes across the tall windows made up of squares of thick, clouded glass. It was a very special type of glass that only the most knowledgeable wizards in an age long past knew how to make. It took not only Additive Magic to create such spiraled glass, but Subtractive as well, to say nothing of special knowledge and arcane skills.

  “What are you doing?” Dori asked. She sounded annoyed and impatient.

  “Just hoping to make you comfortable,” Richard said over his shoulder as he made sure the drapes were light-tight.

  When satisfied, he blew out the flame on one of the nearby reflector lamps. He smiled at her.

  “I know how you prefer the dark.”

  “I have spent time with that woman, the mother of this body. She has magic,” Dori added with growling distaste. “Magic is not the incomprehensible mystery I thought at first. I have observed the woman and it is not so strong a thing, this magic your kind has.”

  “No,” Richard agreed with a sigh. “I suppose not.”

  He blew out the flame of another lamp on his way by. With the heavy drapes drawn over the windows and doors, only two lamps, one at either end of the room, were left to light the grand library. They were woefully inadequate for the task and left the middle of the room in deep shadows. Dori smiled her approval. Richard had to be careful not to run into the rows of bookcases.

  “What are the terms for my surrender?” he asked as he returned to the center of the room.

  “Terrrrms?” she rasped. “No terrrrms.” The very word was obviously distasteful to her. “Surrender is unconditional. In return for saving me the trouble of having to hunt you down and kill you, I will grant you the indulgence of a quick death. It will be terrifyingly painful, of course, but quick. That is your reward for surrendering. That, and the knowledge that you will not have to witness what is to come for the rest of your world. You should be groveling at my feet in gratitude for sparing you that.”

  “What about the Mother Confessor?”

  Dori frowned her displeasure. “She did not offer to surrender. Unlike you, she still resists the inevitable. She will again feel our claws, but this time, as she screams her lungs out, she will also feel our teeth as they rip her face from her skull. We will suck out her eyes and brains and gorge on her flesh. We will smear her blood on ourselves for the pleasure of the warm, wet, greasy feel of it.”

  Richard desperately wanted to draw his sword. Its magic was screaming for release. He denied that magic its urgent need. He controlled his own rage, as the Sisters of the Light had for so long sought to teach him. As he smiled at the little girl, it occurred to him that the Sisters would be proud of how far he had come.

  What they wouldn’t have understood, though, was how he was able to turn that fury inward. Richard blew out one of the two remaining lamps by the ugly orange chairs and then returned to the center of the room. In the murky light of the one remaining lamp off in the distance behind him, he could barely see Dori at the opposite end of the long table.

  “Who are you, exactly?” Richard asked across the length of the heavy table. “It seems I should be allowed to know who you are, since I have agreed to surrender.”

  “I am the Golden Goddess.”

  Richard shrugged. “Well, I know that much. What I mean is”—he leaned in—“who are you? What are you?”

  Dori effortlessly sprang up onto the top of the other end of the heavy oak table like something out of a nightmare. She slowly walked down the length of the table toward him, her heels clicking with each measured step, a predator locked on to its prey.

  “I am the bringer of the tide of my kind,” she said in a low, guttural growl. “A coming tide that will wash over your kind, wash over your world, and drown you all.” She came to a halt above him at his end of the table. She glared down at him. “I am the Golden Goddess, the bringer of that tide.”

  In the dead silence, with shadows all around her, she slowly lifted both arms out at her sides and opened her fingers, palms up, summoning that tide forth.

  First one began to appear, then another; then the whole room started coming alive with movement. It was just as Kahlan had described it, like scribbles in the air, dizzyingly fast lines upon swirling lines, faster and faster, arcing, looping, tracing through the air, indications of their shape and mass and size. Because it was impossible to make it all fit any notion of what was real, what was solid, what existed, and what didn’t, it was a disorienting sight.

  At least it was until those scribbly lines began to thicken, as if they were now being drawn in gooey, muddy water. Those thickening lines began to fuse together, revealing their true forms, until they finally materialized in the gloom all around him. The whole process took only seconds, but in those few seconds, the whole world seemed to change as it suddenly came alive with creatures more terrifying than anything he could have imagined.

  “My children,” Dori said in a low, menacing snarl as she held out her arms, this time in introduction. “They have come for you.”

  All around, more and more of those scribbles in midair were coalescing into dark, wet shapes, tall, massive, and muscular. They stood on two legs, hunched a little. He could just make out the claws at the ends of powerful arms. Steam or vapor of some kind rose from the black, glistening bodies. Globs of gelatinous material slid down off their lumpy, amphibious-like skin, dripping from the creatures to splash on the floor.

  “Who are you?” Richard asked in a whisper as more and more of the creatures were continually materializing in the shadows all around, each one scribbles at first, then becoming its full form, until they packed the room with their tall, black, steaming, dripping shapes.

  When their wide mouths opened and their thin lips drew back in a kind of snarl, Richard could see their long, sharp, pointed teeth. Those sharp white teeth stood out against the wet, black bodies. Slime d
rew out in thin strands between the top and bottom teeth as they opened their mouths wider, hissing with threat.

  “Who are you?” Richard asked Dori again, appalled at what he was seeing all around him. “I mean, who are your kind? What are you? What are you called?”

  “We are the Gleeeee,” she said, dragging the name out in a guttural growl that was bone-chilling.

  Hundreds of them, it seemed, surrounded him, packed into every available space in the library, some even crouched atop the rows of bookcases, all leaning in toward him. The steam rising from their wet bodies collected like a cloud near the ceiling. Their lumpy black skin shimmered in the shadowy light. Their teeth clacked as they snapped their jaws at him.

  “The Glee,” Richard repeated.

  “Yessss,” she said as she grinned with evil intent.

  “But how are you able to be in the body of this girl? How do the Glee travel from your world to ours?”

  “I am able to put my mind into this body.”

  Richard frowned. “But how?”

  “Because I am the one who presently serves as the Golden Goddess, my mind is able to go to those places where I send the Gleeeee. I am able to enter the mind of another. I am now in this pathetic, weak, skin creature.”

  Richard gestured up at all the menacing creatures behind her. “And how are your kind able to come here, to our world?”

  “We come.” Dori cocked her head. “We collect other worlds. It is what we do.”

  Richard realized that, for whatever reason, he wasn’t going to be able to get any better explanation out of her, possibly because she didn’t know how they did it, only that they did. He guessed that maybe it was something like someone asking him how he breathed, how he walked, and how he was able to talk. Like her, he just knew that he did.

  He gazed around at the hundreds of creatures packed into the library, their wet bodies sliding against one another as they vied for a better position, trying to get closer to their prey.

  “Why did you need to bring so many just to kill me?”

  “Because I wanted the Gleeeee to see that your magic is not to be feared so they can tell others. With caution about magic dispelled, we will become a tide that will wash over your world. I am the Golden Goddess. I am the bringer of that tide.”

  16

  “What do you suppose he is doing in there?” Shale asked as she paused to gaze nervously at the double doors before turning her attention back to Kahlan.

  The woman’s pacing was starting to get on Kahlan’s nerves. She knew that something was terribly wrong, and her heart already hammered in dread. Richard had wanted to see all the gifted in the palace, and when they proved to have very little useful power, Kahlan had thought he would be disappointed, but he wasn’t.

  It was obvious to her now that he’d had some kind of plan when he called all those gifted people up to the library area. Kahlan didn’t know what that plan had been or what it was he had been looking for, but she did know that it had brought him what he had been seeking. Kahlan worried what his real reason could have been for wanting to see all the gifted. More worrisome, though, was what he could have really been looking for, and what he had found.

  He was the Seeker, of course, and Kahlan had seen him do such inexplicable things before. Kahlan knew Richard, and she knew that he was focused on something. Something dangerous. Something so dangerous that he hadn’t told her what he was really doing or what it was about.

  Kahlan slowly shook her head as Shale stood over her, waiting for an answer. “If I know Richard, and I do, he has gotten some crazy idea into his head.”

  “Crazy idea?” Shale was clearly agitated by the answer and considered it unsatisfactory. “You said that before. What kind of crazy idea?”

  “Lord Rahl gets crazy ideas sometimes,” Berdine said, coming to Kahlan’s rescue.

  Shale paused in her pacing to stare incredulously at the Mord-Sith.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know because I am Lord Rahl’s favorite,” Berdine explained with a grin.

  Whereas the others were tall, muscular, and blond, Berdine had wavy brown hair, also pulled back into a single braid. She was shorter than the others, too, with a curvier, solid build. While she looked different from the other Mord-Sith, and had a rather flippant nature, she was no less devoted or deadly.

  Shale blinked at the woman. “His favorite?”

  “He doesn’t have favorites,” Kahlan absently reminded her as she stared again at the double doors. “He’s told you many times, Berdine, that he loves you all equally.”

  Berdine beamed as she nodded. “I know. But he loves me more equally.”

  Kahlan could only shake her head. She didn’t feel like indulging Berdine’s nonsense. Kahlan knew that Berdine sometimes turned to the distraction of such seemingly inane banter when she was worried for Richard.

  Kahlan was worried for him, too. She thought again about how she had heard Richard lock the latch on the double doors. Was he worried about someone interrupting them? Or did he want to lock Dori in for some crazy reason?

  “What is she talking about?” Shale complained. Kahlan had learned over the years that sorceresses tended to complain a lot. It was part of their nature. An annoying part. “What does she mean about Richard getting crazy ideas?”

  Kahlan, sitting on the front edge of one of the ugly orange chairs, hands in her lap, her back straight, finally looked up at Shale when she came insistently closer, expecting an answer.

  Kahlan lifted a hand in a vague gesture. “Richard sometimes has crazy ideas. At least, they always seem crazy to us at the time, but they’re not crazy to Richard. He is always running odd little bits of information and strange calculations through his head that none of us could possibly know about or understand and so the things he says or does can seem … crazy.”

  “That’s the truth,” Cassia chimed in. “I haven’t known him as long as some of the others, but I certainly have seen him get crazy ideas.”

  A few of the other Mord-Sith nodded that they, too, were all too familiar with Richard’s crazy ideas.

  “It isn’t just that Lord Rahl gets crazy ideas,” Nyda explained. “The man is crazy. Stone-cold crazy. That’s why he has crazy ideas. That’s why he needs all of us to protect him.”

  Shale looked appalled. “You mean he does that a lot?” she asked as she leaned down toward Kahlan. “Get these crazy ideas?”

  Kahlan glanced to the doors again before answering the sorceress. “I don’t know. Sometimes he just does. A lot of times it’s simply hard to imagine what he’s thinking. He doesn’t always have the time or patience to explain things. I don’t know how to explain the ideas he gets in his head.”

  “That’s because they’re crazy,” Berdine offered, helpfully.

  Kahlan ignored her. “Sometimes when we all think we know exactly what we must do, then he suddenly does the opposite. Or he comes up with something out of the blue that no one expected or understands. Sometimes he does things as the Seeker that he knows he has to do, and we just don’t know his reasoning, so it seems crazy to us, that’s all.”

  “Like what?” Shale pressed.

  Kahlan got up from the chair and went to the doors. She leaned close, putting an ear almost against the glass for a moment. She didn’t hear anything. As she returned to Shale and Berdine she hooked a long strand of hair behind an ear.

  Kahlan gave the sorceress a look. “Like deciding that to save the world he must end prophecy. Does that sound normal to you?”

  Shale made a face. “No. I’ve never seen him do anything I would call crazy, but now that you mention it, that most definitely would have sounded crazy to me.” She shook her head. “I have to say, it still does.”

  “Well,” Kahlan said, gesturing at the locked doors, “now you have seen him do something else that seems a bit crazy.”

  Shale conceded with a sigh.

  17

  Kahlan glanced over at Vika, a ways down the corridor. The Mord-Sit
h had backed the girl’s mother off quite a distance. The woman was wringing her hands in worry, peeking around Vika from time to time, trying to see what was happening with her daughter. Kahlan worried about that, too.

  A few dozen men of the First File stood guard farther down to each direction of the corridor, well beyond the sitting area outside the library. The upper level of the palace was generally quite elegant. Most of it was calming and hushed. All the decorations and beautiful art contributed to that sense of tranquility. It seemed rather odd to her, considering the types of men who had been the Lord Rahl throughout history. In recent centuries, they had been a long string of tyrants, and the world was never calm and tranquil under their rule.

  The one thing that didn’t fit with all the tasteful areas of the upper corridor was the orange-striped chairs in the sitting area outside this particular library. They were terribly uncomfortable to lean back in and were so ugly that Kahlan didn’t really like to sit on them.

  “Why do you think they would have put chairs like this in such a beautiful corridor?” she said out loud to no one in particular.

  Shale frowned at the question and then looked around at the chairs. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “What’s wrong with them? They’re grotesque.”

  Kahlan’s feet hurt from standing, so, as much as she didn’t like the chairs, she sat down again on the very front edge of one.

  Berdine patted a hand in a familiar manner on the back of one of the chairs. “Richard’s father, Darken Rahl, never liked coming up here because he didn’t like these chairs, either.”