The man immediately to Richard's left gasped his last breath, thrashing in uncoordinated movements as the soldier holding up the man's head sawed the large knife back and forth across the victim's exposed throat. When finished, the soldier growled with the effort of heaving the dead weight back into the open pit. Richard heard the body thud down in the bottom of the open grave atop other bodies. He could hear gurgling gasps coming from the dark hole.
"Your turn," the soldier holding Richard said as he stepped around behind him to assume the role of executioner. The man leaned close. His breath stank of ale and sausage. "I need to finish this. I've a meeting with your lovely wife as soon as I'm done with you. Kahlan, isn't it? Yes, that's right—one of the other women confessed that your wife's name was Kahlan. Don't you worry, lad, I won't give Kahlan much of a chance to grieve, reminiscing about you. I'll have her full attention—I can promise you that. After I've had my satisfaction from her, others will have their turn on her."
Richard wanted to break the man's neck.
"Think about that as your wicked soul slides into the dark, eternal agony of the underworld, as you fall into the cold, merciless grasp of the Keeper. That's where all your kind goes—to the justice of eternal suffering—and that's as it should be, seeing as how we've all sacrificed everything to come up here to this forsaken land so we can bring divine Light and the law of the Order to all you selfish heathens. Your sinful way of life, your mere existence, offends the Creator—and it offends those of us who bow to Him."
The man was working himself up into a righteous rage.
"Do you have any idea what I've sacrificed for the salvation of the souls of your people? My family went hungry, went without—sacrificed—so that they could send everything to our courageous troops. My brother and I gave ourselves over to the fight for our cause and everything we believe in. We both came north to do our duty to our emperor and our Creator. We both devoted our lives to the cause of bringing goodness to you people. We fought in countless bloody battles against those who resist our efforts on behalf of what is right and just. We saw countless of our brethren die in those battles.
"I saw the glory of our army of the Order continue on in the fight for salvation while your people sent the wicked gifted against us. Those gifted conjured evil made of magic. My brother was blinded by some of that magic. He screamed in agony as that magic bloodied his eyes and burned his lungs. The infections that swiftly befell him made his whole head swell, his sightless eyes bulge. He could only moan in agony. We left him to die alone, so that we could move on in our noble struggle, as was only right.
"Your wife and those like her will now sacrifice themselves to give us a small diversion in this miserable life as we labor in that noble struggle. It's her small payment on a debt of gratitude for what we have given over for our fellow man in order to bring the word of the Order to those who would otherwise turn away from their duty to faith.
"Someday your sinful wife will join you there in the darkness of the underworld, but not until after we're finished with her. Just don't expect her to be joining you any time soon, as I expect she'll be whoring for the brave soldiers of the Order for some time to come, what with how the men like to get their hands on a good-looking woman like her in order to take their minds off the drudgery of their honorable work. I expect she'll be kept good and busy, since there is so much honorable work to do"—he waggled his knife before Richard's eyes—"like this business here. With the relief us men get from her, we'll have the strength to redouble our determination to eliminate all those who will not submit to the ways of the Order."
It was insanity. Richard could hardly believe that there were men this irrational, this devoted to such mindless beliefs, but there were. They seemed to emerge everywhere, multiplying like maggots, devoted to destroying anything joyful and beneficial to life.
He choked back his words, his rage. Nothing angered men like this as much as reason or truth or life or goodness. Such qualities only incited such men to destroy. Because Richard knew that anything he said would only provoke the man and make it worse for Kahlan, he kept quiet. That was all he could do for her, now.
Seeing that he had not goaded Richard into an appeal, the soldier laughed again and threw a kiss toward Kahlan. "Be with you shortly, love—soon as I'm done divorcing you from your worthless husband, here."
He was a monster, shortly to be headed for the woman Richard loved, toward a defenseless, terrified woman who was only beginning to suffer at the hands of these brutes.
Monster.
Could this be what Shota had meant?
The witch woman had once said that if Richard and Kahlan ever married and lay together, she would conceive a monster. They had always assumed that Shota had meant that if they conceived a child, then their child would be a monster because that child would have Richard's gift and Kahlan's Confessor power.
But maybe that was not at all the real meaning behind Shota's foretelling.
After all, nothing Shota warned them about ever turned out the way she had made it seem, even the way she herself believed. Shota's warnings and predictions always seemed to come about in a completely unforeseen manner, in a way that they had never even imagined, but at the same time Shota's predictions had always turned out to be true.
Was this what Shota's prediction had really meant? Was this the complex set of events finally reaching the climax of her prophecy? Shota had warned them emphatically not to marry or Kahlan would bear a monster child. They had married. Could this be how Shota's prophecy unfolded? Could this have all along been the real meaning behind her warning? Were these monsters to sire a monster?
Richard was choking on his tears. His death would not be the worst of it. Kahlan would suffer the worst of it, suffer a living death at the hands of those brutes, mother their monster.
"Richard, you know I love you! That's all that matters, Richard—that I love you!"
"Kahlan, I love you, too!"
He couldn't think of anything more to say—anything more meaningful. He guessed that there was nothing more meaningful, nothing more important to him. Those simple words spoke a whole life's worth of meaning, a whole universe of meaning.
"I know, my love," she said with a brief spark of a smile that flashed for an instant in her beautiful eyes. "I know."
Richard saw a blade sweep around before his face. He instinctively backed away. The man straddling his legs was ready and jammed a knee between Richard's shoulder blades, stopping him from falling back, then pulled his head up by his hair.
Kahlan, seeing what was happening, screamed again, flailing at the men holding her. "Don't pay any attention to them, Richard! Just look at me! Richard! Look at me! Think about me! Think of how much I love you!"
Richard knew what she was doing.
"Remember the day we were married? I remember it now, Richard. I remember it always."
She was trying to give him the last gift of a pleasant, loving thought.
"I remember the day you asked me to be your wife. I love you, Richard. Remember our wedding? Remember the spirit house?"
She was also trying to distract him, to keep him from thinking about what was happening. Instead, it only reminded him of Shota's warning that if he married her she would conceive a monster.
"Touching," the soldier behind him said. "It's the passionate ones like her who are good in the sack, don't you think?"
Richard wanted to rip the man's head off, but he said nothing. The man wanted him to say something, to beg, to protest, to wail in agony. As a last act of defiance against such men, Richard denied him the satisfaction.
Kahlan cried out her love, and that she wanted him to remember the first time she had kissed him.
Despite everything, that made him smile.
At the moment, she didn't care what was going to happen to her, she just wanted to distract him, to ease the pain and terror of his last moments of life.
His last moments.
It was all ending. It was all over. Ther
e was no more.
Life was over. His time with the woman he loved was over. There would be no more.
The world was ending.
"Richard! Richard! I love you so much! Look at me, Richard! I love you! Look at me! That's right, look at me! You're the only one I ever loved! Only you, Richard! Only you! That's all that matters—that I love you. Do you love me? Tell me, please, Richard. Tell me. Tell me now."
He felt the blade catch on the thin veneer of flesh covering his throat.
"I love you, Kahlan. You alone. Always."
"Touching," the soldier growled in his ear as he held the blade against Richard's throat. "While you're down in the pit, bleeding out, I'll have my hands all over her. I'm going to rape your pretty little wife. You'll be dead by then, but before you die, I want you to know exactly what I'm going to do to her, and that there's nothing you can do to stop it, because it's the Creator's will being done.
"You should have long ago bowed to the ways of the Order, but instead you've fought to keep to your sinful ways, your selfish ways, and turned away from everything right and just. For your crimes against your fellow man you will not only die, but you will suffer for all eternity at the hands of the Keeper of the underworld. Suffer greatly.
"As you go to the dark afterlife, I want you to go there knowing that if your precious Kahlan lives, it will only be as a whore for us. If she lives long enough, and she has a boy child, he will grow up to be a great soldier of the Order, and to hate your kind. We'll see to it that he comes here someday to spit on your grave, to spit on you and those like you who would have raised him in your wicked ways, raised him to turn away from serving his fellow man and the Creator.
"You think on that as your spirit is being sucked down into darkness. As your body grows cold, I'll be with the nice warm body of your love, giving it to her good. I want to make sure you know that before you die."
Richard was already dead inside. It was over, life and the world were ended. So much lost. Everything lost. For nothing but a mindless hatred of every value, of life itself, by those who chose instead to embrace the emptiness of death.
"I love you now and always, with all my heart," he said in a hoarse voice. "You've made my life a joy."
He saw Kahlan nodding that she'd heard him, and her lips mouthing her love for him.
She was so beautiful.
More than anything, he hated to see her inconsolable grief.
They stared into one another's eyes, frozen in that instant that would be the last instant that the world existed.
Richard gasped in a cry of terror, anguish, and sudden sharp pain as he felt the blade bite flesh, felt it slice mortally deep into his throat.
It was the end of everything.
* * *
CHAPTER 18
"Stop it," Nicci growled.
Richard blinked. His mind reeled in confusion. Nicci had Shota's wrist in an iron grip, holding her hand away from him. But Shota still had an arm around his waist.
"I don't know what you're doing," Nicci said in a tone so dangerous he thought that surely Shota would shrink back in fear, "but you will stop it."
Shota did not shrink back, nor did she look the least bit fearful. "I am doing what needs to be done."
Nicci was having none of it. "Back away from him, or I will kill you where you stand."
Cara, Agiel in hand and looking even more displeased than Nicci, stood close on the other side of the witch woman, blocking her in. Before Shota could return the threat in kind, Richard collapsed heavily to the marble bench surrounding the fountain.
He was panting, gasping, and in a state of ragged terror. In his mind's eye he could still see Kahlan in the hands of those thugs, still feel the sharp blade slicing deep into him. His fingers lightly brushed across his throat, but there was no gaping wound, no blood. He desperately didn't want to let go of the sight of Kahlan, but at the same time it was so horrifying a glimpse of her hopeless dread that he wanted nothing so much as to forever wipe it from his mind.
He wasn't completely sure where he was. He wasn't sure exactly what was happening. It wasn't at all clear to him what was real and what wasn't.
He wondered if he was on the cusp of death and this was some confusing death-dream before all his lifeblood drained out of him, some final delusion to torture his mind as he passed from existence. He groped, trying to feel for other bodies there with him in the pit.
While Cara stood protectively before him, shielding him from the witch woman, Nicci immediately abandoned her altercation with Shota to sit beside him. She circled an arm around his shoulders.
"Richard, are you all right?" she leaned down, looking into his eyes. "You look like you've seen the walking dead."
Ignoring Cara, Shota folded her arms as she stood over them, watching Richard.
In his mind, the sound of Kahlan's screams still echoed, the sight of her as she cried out his name still tore at his heart. It had been so long since he had seen her. To see her again so suddenly, and like that, was devastating.
"Richard, it's all right," Nicci said. "You're right here, with me, with all of us."
Richard pressed a hand to his forehead. "How long was I gone?"
Nicci's brow twitched. "Gone?"
"I think Shota did something. How long was she… doing whatever she did?"
"I didn't let her do anything—I stopped her before she could begin. The instant she touched you under your chin I stopped her. She didn't have enough time to do anything."
Richard could still see Kahlan in his mind's eye, still see her screaming for him as the grimy hands of Imperial Order soldiers held her back.
He ran his trembling fingers back through his hair. "She had enough time."
"I'm so sorry," Nicci whispered. "I thought I stopped her soon enough."
He didn't think he could go on. He didn't think he could summon the strength to draw another breath. He didn't think that he would ever again be able to do anything but abandon himself to despair.
He could not hold back his anguish, his pain, his tears.
Nicci drew his face against her shoulder, wordlessly sheltering him in the refuge of her embrace.
It all seemed so futile. It was all ending. It was all over. He'd always said that they didn't have a chance to defeat Jagang's army. The Order was too powerful. They were going to win the war. There was nothing Richard could do about it, nothing left to live for but waiting for the horror of death to catch them all.
Shota stepped up on the side of him, beside where he sat on the short marble wall, opposite Nicci, and started to lay a hand on his shoulder. Cara snatched the witch woman's wrist, stopping her.
"I'm sorry to have to do that, Richard," Shota said, ignoring the Mord-Sith, "but you need to see, to understand, to—"
"Shut up," Nicci said, "and keep your hands off him. Don't you think you've brought him enough pain? Does everything you do have to be injurious? Can't you ever help him without trying to hurt him or cause him trouble at the same time?"
As Shota withdrew her hand, Nicci cupped hers to his face and with a thumb wiped a tear from his cheek. "Richard…"
He nodded at her tender concern, unable to summon his voice. He could still see Kahlan crying out for him as she tried to fight off the hands of those men. As long as he lived he would be haunted by that sight. At that moment he wanted more than anything to spare her the pain of seeing him executed and of her being in the cruel clutches of the Order. He wanted to go back, to do something, to save her from such inhuman abuse. He couldn't bear her world ending as she saw him murdered like that.
But it wasn't real. He couldn't have been there like that. Such a thing was impossible. He could only have imagined it.
Relief began to seep into him.
It wasn't real. It wasn't. Kahlan wasn't in the hands of the Order. She wasn't seeing him being executed. It was just a cruel trick by the witch woman. Just another of her illusions.
Except it had been real for all those people in Galea as w
ell as untold other places where the Order had been. Even if it hadn't been real for Richard, it had been all too real for them. That was what it had been like.
Their worlds had ended in just that manner. He knew exactly what they had suffered. He knew exactly what it felt like.
How many countless, unknown, unnamed, good people had lost their chance at life in just that way, all for the otherworldly ambitions of those from the Old World?
A new dread suddenly overwhelmed him. He had the gift. He was a war wizard. For most of those with the gift, it manifested itself in one specific area. But being a war wizard meant that he had elements of all the various aspects of the gift, and one aspect of magic was prophecy. What if what he had seen was really a prophecy? What if that was what was to happen? What if what he had seen was really a vision of the future?
But he didn't believe that the future was fixed. While some things, such as death, were inevitable, that didn't mean that everything was fixed or that one couldn't work toward worthy goals in life, couldn't avert disasters, couldn't alter the course of events. If it was a prophecy, it only meant that he had seen what was possible. It didn't mean that he couldn't try to stop it from happening.
After all, Shota's prophecies never seemed to come out the way she presented them. And anyway, what he had seen, what he had just experienced, was most likely Shota's doing.
Richard squeezed Nicci's hand in silent appreciation. Her other hand on his shoulder returned the squeeze. Her concern melted a little under the warmth of a small smile of relief at seeing him recovering his wits.
Richard rose up before Shota in a way that by all rights should have made her take a step back. She stood her ground.
"How dare you do that to me? How dare you send me to that place?"
"I did not send you anywhere, Richard. Your own mind took you where it would. I did nothing but release the thoughts you had suppressed. I spared you what would have otherwise come out in nightmares."