AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The oddest look came over his face. His eyes abruptly turned up to meet her gaze.
And then the slightest hint of a smile turned up the corners of his mouth as he leaned back.
“Well,” he said, “it seems that you have had a healing recently. A fine one at that. I can feel it. I can sense the residual effects of the gift used to heal you.”
Ester stole a quick glance at Kahlan. “As I said, Sammie worked some healing on her. She said that the Mother Confessor now only needs to rest.”
The abbot stood, giving the Mord-Sith a meaningful look.
“I think she is well enough to travel. I can be of invaluable assistance with her recovery once we get her back to the abbey.”
“No,” Ester said, more firmly in spite of her fear of the man. “No, she needs to rest right now, right here. Lord Rahl will want her to rest. He won’t want her moved.”
The abbot casually lifted a finger toward Ester. The woman shuddered. Her fingers trembled as she blinked in confusion. Panting as if in pain, she backed away a few steps. Kahlan wasn’t sure exactly what the man had done, but it was now clear that he was powerfully gifted and that he was hurting Ester.
In all his time at the palace, Abbot Dreier had keep that relevant fact hidden, never revealing that he was gifted.
“Now,” he said down to Kahlan, “I think you should come along with us. We will be better able to see to your needs at the abbey.”
“I’m afraid that I must decline your kind offer,” Kahlan said in a chilling tone.
Abbot Dreier stared for a moment without showing any emotion and then turned to the Mord-Sith. “Please bring the Mother Confessor along. I will wait out front.”
He seized Ester’s arm and pushed her out of the room ahead of him. He paused and from the doorway looked back at Kahlan.
“Mord-Sith can be quite persuasive. I advise you to cooperate as she helps escort you out to our waiting coach.”
With that he left, pulling the door closed behind himself.
CHAPTER
56
After Dreier closed the door, the Mord-Sith smiled that way Mord-Sith smiled that could make you forget to breathe.
“We weren’t introduced. I am Erika. Mistress Erika to you.”
Kahlan glared.
Erika heaved an impatient sigh. “So, it’s going to be like that, is it?”
“Get out,” Kahlan said.
Erika spread her hands with mock decorum. “I’m afraid that the abbot has invited you to come along. He asked me to assist you. He would be very disappointed in me if I didn’t do as he asked. Believe me, I have no wish to disappoint the abbot.”
“We all are bound to disappoint someone now and again,” Kahlan said.
The Mord-Sith dispensed with the smile. She rolled her fingers in a commanding gesture.
“Get up.”
“I can’t. I’m rather weak from my recent injuries that have only just been healed.”
“Perhaps you misunderstood me. You must have thought that I was asking you.” The smile reappeared. “I wasn’t. I was telling you. Now, get up.”
Kahlan thought the wordplay was childish. She was not about to be intimidated by a Mord-Sith, of all people. This one, by all rights, shouldn’t even exist. If she even was a real Mord-Sith.
It occurred to Kahlan once again that the woman might simply be window dressing for an arrogant man, a woman who had convinced herself she could play the part of a real Mord-Sith. She appeared to be a woman who enjoyed pretending to be important and powerful so she could intimidate people and watch them cower.
Kahlan was not about to cower before this woman.
She rocked forward enough to get her feet under her. After being unconscious for so long, she found that the effort made her heart pound. She hadn’t been on her feet for a quite a while and she felt incredibly weak.
She crouched a moment, getting her balance, trying to summon enough strength to not show this haughty woman any weakness. Kahlan was, after all, the Mother Confessor.
With effort, she stood, if not to her full height, then at least most of the way. She couldn’t stretch the last little bit at her waist. It felt like all of her abdominal muscles had shrunk, keeping her from straightening to her full height, which would have probably been an inch or two taller than the Mord-Sith if Kahlan could have stood fully upright.
“Now,” Kahlan said through gritted teeth as she looked the woman in the eye, “get out. I will not ask you again.”
An eyebrow lifted over one cold blue eye. “Or what?”
“I don’t know where you came from, but you appear not to know much about anything.”
Erika shrugged. “I know that Abbot Dreier asked me to bring you along. That is enough. What else is there to know, Mother Confessor?”
“‘Confessor’ is the operative word.”
The Mord-Sith frowned a little. “Really? In what way?”
“You are apparently unaware of the danger a Confessor poses to a Mord-Sith—or a woman posing as a Mord-Sith.”
“Danger? From you?” She smiled again, this time with what appeared to be genuine amusement. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you have any idea what a mistake it is for a Mord-Sith to attempt to use her Agiel on a Confessor? The results are beyond gruesome and all Mord-Sith know it. It is a death they all greatly fear.”
“Really?” Erika cocked her head with an earnest frown. “How interesting. Well, I don’t have to use an Agiel on you, you know. You look to be pretty weak.” A dangerous look came into the woman’s eyes. “Even if you were in the best of health, I don’t think I would need to use my Agiel to handle you.”
Kahlan didn’t know what was going on, or how it had come to this, but she knew in that moment that she was going to need to unleash her power on this woman, and it was not going to be pretty.
“You are about to cross a line from which you will never, ever be able to step back,” Kahlan warned in a deadly tone. “I suggest you call it quits now, Erika, while you have the chance.”
“I don’t think so, Mother Confessor. Like I said, I can handle you without my Agiel. More importantly, as I told you before, it is Mistress Erika to you.”
The Mord-Sith spun the Agiel up into her fist.
It was an open threat, a hostile act that had now gone too far. For whatever crazy reason, this woman was not going to stop until Kahlan stopped her.
In Kahlan’s mind, the deed was already done. This woman had crossed a line from which there was no walking back. Kahlan was already letting the restraint on her power begin to slip its bounds in preparation for releasing her inherent ability.
The Mord-Sith gritted her teeth. “But in this case I prefer to use my Agiel.”
With that, the woman slammed the weapon into Kahlan’s middle.
Kahlan expected the ignition of power that would bring the attack to a halt before it could ever be completed. She expected to feel the hammering thump of silent thunder that would shake the walls and forever change who this woman was.
Instead, Kahlan’s mouth opened in a shock of pain the likes of which she had only felt a few times in her life.
The nerve-shattering shock of it stunned her, took her breath. She doubled over around the Agiel. It felt like a bolt of lightning threatening to rip her in half. Her mind went blank of everything but the complete and total understanding of that terrible, all-consuming agony.
She heard herself screaming.
She felt herself hit the floor.
CHAPTER
57
The pain of the Agiel, even though it was no longer touching her, had been so overwhelming that waves of jolting shocks still filled her mind, preventing her from forming a thought or even getting her breath.
Confused, disoriented, trembling from head to foot, Kahlan rolled over onto her back, her knees pulled up, her arms pressed across the pain knifing through her abdomen. Through tears of agony, she looked up at the woman in black leather standing tall and still over
her, watching her.
An eyebrow lifted. “You were saying?”
“How…?” was all Kahlan could manage to get out through the still-shuddering pain pulsing through every nerve in her body.
Erika shrugged a shoulder. “Well, Mother Confessor, as you have probably surmised by now, your power does not work. For you to be a threat to me—as you have so vividly described and as you so wholeheartedly intended—your power has to work.” The cruel smile returned. “Don’t you suppose?”
