Stone of Tears (62 page)

Lightning exploded in every direction with deafening noise. A bolt blasted the ground at his feet. He leapt to the side to avoid the next strike. His hair seemed to stand on end as the lightning hit. He could feel the searing heat. His vision was laced with blue-white afterimages of the jagged flashes.

Richard screamed out the Sister’s name as he gathered up the lead lines, pulling the horses on as he frantically scanned about. The lightning seemed to follow him, striking the ground repeatedly where seconds ago he had been.

Balls of flame ignited in the air, shrieking as they came apart. It seemed as if the very air burned. The wail of the fire was everywhere. Richard ran toward the gaps left after each dissipated, dodging the lightning and the flames, covering his head with a hand, even though he knew that if the magic hit him, that hand wouldn’t save him. The cacophony seemed enough to drive a person mad. The dark dust clouds prevented him from seeing anything, if indeed there was anything to see. He ran on, heedless of direction, just trying to avoid the blue bolts and yellow flames.

Abruptly, the corner of white, polished marble walls loomed up before him. Lurching to a panting halt, he looked up, but couldn’t see the top; it disappeared into the dark cloud above. A strike that was too close for comfort started him running again, pulling the three horses behind. The middle of the wall had an arched opening in it. Rounding the corner he found that wall, too, held an arched opening.

As he ran, he counted. Each of the five sides of the structure was about thirty strides. In the center of each wall was an arched opening six strides wide, and about as tall. He stopped, catching his breath, outside one of the openings. It was empty inside, and through the opening he could see each arch in the other walls.

Lightning hammered the ground, flinging dirt into the air. The threw his arms up in front of his face. The strikes marched toward him, their sound thundering in his ears. He had nowhere to go. He let go of the horses and dove through the arch, rolling across the sandy ground inside.

Silence echoed in his ears as he sat up, leaning back on his hands. Inside the structure was barren, empty. The air wasn’t sweltering, as it had been outside, but felt almost cool in comparison, and smelled sweet, like a grassy meadow.

Through the arched openings he could see the boiling black clouds that hugged the ground. The lightning arced violently, but its sound was only a dim rumble. The horses wandered slowly, grazing on the grass that wasn’t there.

This must be one of the Towers of Perdition Sister Verna had told him about. The interior of the walls soared up into the darkness high above, and were black with the results of wizard’s life fire. Richard ran a finger through the black grit and tasted it. He winced at the bitter tang it left on his tongue. The wizard who had died to give his life to this fire had not done so willingly; he had done it to save himself the torture of what they had intended to do to him, or perhaps what they were doing to him.

The ground was covered with white sand that sparkled with prismatic light. It was drifted into the corners, like snow. Richard remembered seeing sand like this before. It was in the Peoples’ Palace, in the Garden of Life, in a circle in the center of the room. Darken Rahl had drawn spells in that sparkling, white sand when he had been trying to open the Boxes of Orden.

Richard paced around the inside of the tower, trying to decide what to do. It seemed safe in this place, but for how long? It seemed that sooner or later, the magic would find him. Maybe the seeming safety of this place was simply an enchantment meant to trap him, keep him here for all time, afraid to venture out.

He couldn’t stay. He had to find the Sister. She needed his help. She was afraid. He had told her she would make it through.

But why should he want to help her? She kept him prisoner. If he left her here, he would be free. But free to do what? If she didn’t help him learn to control the gift, he would die. Or so she said.

Richard turned at a sound from behind. Kahlan stepped out of the darkness of an archway. Her long hair didn’t flow over her shoulders, but was tied back in a single braid. Instead of her white Confessors dress, she wore the red leather of a Mord-Sith.

Richard stood stiffly, his chest heaving. “Kahlan, I refuse to think of you in this way, even in an illusion drawn from my own mind.”

She arched an eyebrow. “But isn’t this what you fear most?”

“Change it, or be gone.”

The red leather shimmered and became the white Confessor’s dress he knew so well. The braid came undone.

“Better, my love? I’m afraid it still won’t save you. I have come to kill you. Die with honor. Defend yourself.”

Richard drew the Sword of Truth. The unique ring of its steel echoed throughout the tower. Wrath surged through him as the magic was loosed. He endured with detached misery the sensation of murderous need while looking upon the face of the only person who made his life worth living.

His knuckles tightened on the braided, wire hilt, on the bumps of the word Truth. His jaw muscles flexed as he gritted his teeth. He felt a rush of understanding at how the wizards could have made life fire, and have given themselves into it, rather than endure what was to be done to them. Some things were worse than death.

Richard tossed the sword to the ground at Kahlan’s feet.

“Not even in an illusion, Kahlan. I would rather die.”

Her green eyes shone with a sad, timeless, knowing look. “Better you would have died, my love, that you wouldn’t see what I have come to show you. It will bring you more pain that death.”

Her eyes closed as she sank to her knees, leaning forward, bending into a deep bow. The whole of the time she was slumping forward, her hair shortened. By the time her head touched the sparkling, white sand, her hair looked as if it had been chopped short, close to the nape of her neck.

“This must be, or the Keeper will escape. Stopping it will aid him, and he will have us all. Speak if you must these words, but not of this vision.” Without looking up, she spoke in a detached rote.

“
Of all there were, but a single one born of the magic to bring forth truth will remain alive when the shadow’s threat is lifted. Therefore comes the greater darkness of the dead. For there to be a chance at Life’s bond, this one in white must be offered to her people, to bring their joy and good cheer.
”

As Richard stood staring at the illusion, at the back of her head, a ring of blood blossomed around her neck. Richard’s breath halted. As if it had been cleaved off, Kahlan’s head tumbled away. Her body fell to its side, blood gushing, spreading in a pool beneath it, turning the white sand and white dress to red.

Richard drew a gasp of a breath.

“Noooo!”

His chest heaved. He felt his fingernails cutting into his palms. His toes curled in his boots.

It’s an illusion, he told himself as he shook. An illusion. Nothing more. An illusion meant to terrorize him.

Kahlan stared up at him with flat, dead, green eyes. Though he knew it had to be an illusion, it nonetheless was working. Panic paralyzed his legs; fright raced recklessly through his mind.

The image of Kahlan wavered and then vanished suddenly as Sister Verna stormed through an archway to the side.

“Richard!” she shrieked in fury. “What are you doing in here! I told you to stay with me! Can’t you follow the simplest instructions? Must you always act like a child!”

She took two strides forward, her face red with rage.

His heart thumped violently with the pain of what he had just seen. He blinked at Sister Verna. He was in an ill humor to tolerate the surly side of her disposition. “You were gone. I couldn’t find you. I looked but …”

“Don’t talk back to me!” Her curls sprang up and down as she yelled. “I’ve had all the talk from you I can stomach. I told you I was in no mood for it. My patience is at an end, Richard.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but the collar yanked him backward, his feet leaving the ground. It felt as if he had been jerked by a rope around his neck. With a grunt he slammed into the wall. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs and the sense from his head. He hung, his feet clear of the ground, pinned to the wall by the Rada’Han. The collar was choking him. He tried to focus his eyes, but his vision only blurred uselessly.

“It is time you had a lesson I should have given long ago,” the Sister said in a growl as she stalked toward him. “I have suffered enough of your disobedience. I will suffer it no longer.”

Richard struggled for breath. Each breath burned as he drew it through the constriction at his neck. His vision cleared and finally focused on Sister Verna’s face. His anger heated.

“Sister … don’t …”

Pain took his words. It ignited in his chest with such intense burning force it made his fingers tingle. He couldn’t draw a breath to scream.

“I have had enough of your words. I will hear no more. No more of your excuses, your arguments, your harsh judgments. From now on, you will do as you are told, when you are told, and you will offer me no more of your insolence.”

She took another step toward him, her expression twisted with menace. “Do we understand each other!”

She somehow made the pain worse. He shook with the crushing hurt in his chest. Stinging tears flooded from his wide eyes.

“I asked you a question! Do we understand each other!”

Air rushed into his lungs. “Sister Verna … I’m warning you … don’t do this or …”

“You are warning me! You are warning me!”

White-hot pain knifed through his chest, twisting tighter with each breath. A scream ripped from his lungs. His worst fears were coming to life. This was what wearing a collar had brought him to, again. This was what the Sisters had in mind for him. This was his fate, if he allowed it.

Richard called the sword’s magic.

Called by its master, the power swept into him, hot with promise, hot with wrath, hot with need. Richard welcomed it, embraced it, letting his own rage join with the rage of the sword and spiral through him. His fury consumed the pain, using it to draw power.

“Don’t you dare fight me, or I will make you rue the day you were born!”

Fiery flames of agony bloomed anew. Richard drew them into the wrath. Though he wasn’t touching the sword, he didn’t need to. He was one with the magic, and he called forth all its force now.

“Stop this,” he managed through gritted teeth. “Or I will.”

Sister Verna, with her fists at her side, stepped closer.

“Now you threaten me? I warned you before about threatening me. You have made your last mistake, Richard.”

Though he was nearly blinded by the pain she suddenly unleashed into him, he was able to see one thing. The Sword of Truth. It lay in the sand, near the Sister.

The Seeker focused the sword’s magic into the power that bound him to the wall. With a loud crack, the bond broke and he tumbled away from the wall, rolling through the sand.

His hands found the sword.

Sister Verna charged toward him. He came up swinging the sword in an arc. The need for her blood seared through his soul, beyond retrieval. Nothing else mattered.

Bringer of death.

He didn’t try to direct the track of the blade, but simply focused his need to kill into the power of its swing.

The sword’s tip whistled through the air.

Bringer of death.

The blade exploded through the Sister at shoulder level. The cool air erupted with a spray of hot blood, the smell of it filling his nostrils as the sight of it filled his vision. Her head and part of her shoulders tumbled up into the air as the blade severed her in two. Blood and bone hit the walls. The lower half of her body collapsed fluidly to the ground. Blood soaked into the white sand, spreading beneath her. What was left of her shoulders and head hit the ground on a good ten feet away, sending up a spray of white sand. The gore of her insides glistened in a line away from the body.

Richard collapsed to his knees, panting, the pain finally gone. He had told himself he would not allow this to be done to him again. He had meant it.

Like a distant memory, his insides ached with the pain of what he had done. It had all happened so fast, before he had had time to think. He had used the sword’s magic to take a life, and the magic would want its due.

He didn’t care. It was nothing to compare to the pain of what she had been doing to him, what she would have done to him. As he focused on the rage, the pain evaporated and was gone.

But what was he going to do now? He needed the Sisters to teach him how to keep the gift from killing him. He would die without Sister Verna’s help. How could he go to the other Sisters and ask for their help, now? Had he just sentenced himself to death, too?

But he would not allow them to hurt him anymore. He would not.

He knelt, recovering, resting on his heels, trying to think. In front of him, near the side of Sister Verna’s body, lay the little book she had kept tucked behind her belt. It was the little book in which she was always writing.

Richard picked it up and thumbed through the pages. It was blank. No, not entirely. Near the back, there were two pages with writing.

I am the Sister in charge of this boy. These directives are beyond reason if not absurd. I demand to know the meaning of these instructions. I demand to know upon who’s authority they are given. 

— Yours in the service of the Light, Sister Verna Sauventreen.

Richard reflected on the fact that Sister Verna had been temperamental even in her writing. He looked to the next page. It was in a different hand.

You will do as you are instructed, or suffer the consequences. Do not presume to question the orders of the Palace again. 

— In my own hand, The Prelate.

Well, it looked as if Sister Verna had managed to raise the ire of someone besides himself. He tossed the book back on the ground next to her. He sat staring at her body, at what he had done. What was he going to do now?

He heard a sigh, and lifted his head to see Kahlan, in her white Confessor’s dress, standing again in an archway. With a sad expression, she slowly shook her head.