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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 than 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.
