'If I wanted it done tomorrow, I would have called you tomorrow!'
Kahlan reached the stairs over grand entrance just in time to see Prince Fyren joining the man in plain robes waiting there for him. His dark eyes met hers for a long moment.
'Guards!' She screamed down toward the doors. The men in uniform looked up as they came running. 'Diplomatic privilege is suspended! If I see that Keltish pig or any of his personal guard in this palace before the council session tomorrow morning, I will personally skin you all alive after I kill him!'
They saluted. Kahlan saw Lady Ordith in the hall leading to the entrance, watching everything that had just happened.
'Lady Ordith.' Lady Ordith was already staring up. 'I believe you said you were a guest of the Kelton Palace. Get out of mine.'
She was stammering her good-byes as Kahlan spun on her heel and headed back to her room. She picked up a handful of guards on the way.
Outside her rooms, she waited until they were lined up before her doors. 'If anyone comes into my room tonight, it had better be over your corpses. Do you understand?'
They all saluted to indicate that they did. Inside, Kahlan threw the white mantle around her shoulders and went out onto the balcony, into the bitter cold night. She stood with her back straight, near the railing, as she looked down on the scene in the courtyard below.
She wanted to run, but she couldn't. She was the Mother Confessor. She had to do what all the Mother Confessors before her had done - protect the Midlands. She was alone, and had no one to help her in her duty.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she watched flames leap up from her bed; the bed she had promised Richard.
CHAPTER 58
The reflections of the Mother Confessor, in her white dress, rotated around the polished black columns as she marched down the gallery, the Mother Confessor's private entrance to the council chambers. Kahlan was an hour early. She planned to be sitting in the First Chair as she watched all the councilors arrive. She didn't want them talking among themselves before she was present.
She froze to a halt as she threw the doors open. The room was packed. Every council chair was occupied. The galleries were all packed with people - not only officials, administrators, staff, and nobility, but ordinary people: farmers, shopkeepers, merchants, cooks, tradesmen, wagon drivers, and laborers. Men and women of every sort. Every eye was on her as she stood before the doors.
Across the huge room, the councilors all sat in their chairs. No one made a sound. Someone was sitting in the First Chair. From this distance, she couldn't see who it was, but she knew.
Kahlan touched her fingers to the bone necklace at her throat and prayed to the good spirits for protection and strength. Her boots echoed off the marble as she strode through patches of sunlight. There was something on the floor before the dais, but she couldn't tell what it was.
When Kahlan reached the curved desk, the man sitting in the First Chair was not the one she expected. Stretched out on a litter before the dais lay the body of Prince Fyren. His skin was pasty. His arms were folded, his hands laid over the blood-soaked ruffles of his shirt. His sword rested across his body. Prince Fyren's throat had been sliced open nearly to his spinal column.
Kahlan looked up to the solemn, dark eyes watching her. He came forward from the back of the First Chair and folded his hands together on the desk. A quick glance revealed what she hadn't noticed before: a ring of guards around the room.
She glared up at the man with the dark hair and beard. 'Get out of my chair, or I will kill you myself.'
The room rang with the sound of swords being drawn. Without taking his dark eyes from her, the man gestured with a flick of his hand. Every sword went hesitantly back into its scabbard.
'You are done killing people, Mother Confessor,' he said in a quiet voice. 'Prince Fyren was your last victim.'
Kahlan frowned. 'Who are you?'
'Neville Ranson.' Still, his eyes did not leave her as he turned his hand up. A ball of flame ignited above his palm. 'Wizard Neville Ranson.'
Still, his eyes did not leave her as he cast the ball of flame skyward. It rose obediently toward the peak of the dome, where it broke, with a pop, into thousands of sparkles. Astonished gasps filled the room.
Wizard Ranson leaned back and drew open a scroll. 'We have a great many charges, Mother Confessor. Where would you like to begin?'
Without turning her head, Kahlan's eyes took a sweep of what she could see of the room. There was no chance of escape. None. Even if the man before her were not a wizard.
'Since they will all be invented, I guess it doesn't matter. Why don't we just dispense with the mockery, and simply proceed to the execution.'
The room remained dead silent. Wizard Ranson did not smile. His eyebrows lifted.
'Oh, no mockery, Mother Confessor, but serious charges. We are here to get to the truth of them. Unlike the Confessors, I refuse to put an innocent person to death. Before we are finished today, everyone here will know the truth of your treason. I want the people to know the full extent of your vile tyranny.'
Kahlan clasped her hands together as she stood with her back straight. She wore her Confessor's face. The people all leaned forward a little.
'Since it is a long list,' Ranson said, 'we might as well begin with the most serious charge.' He glanced down. 'Treason.'
'And since when is defending the people of the Midlands treason?'
Wizard Ranson slammed his fist to the desk as he shot to his feet. 'Defending the people of the Midlands! I have never in my life heard such filth from the mouth of a woman!' He smoothed his tan robes at his stomach and then sat back down. 'Your "defense" of the people was to plunge them into war. You would condemn thousands to die, to assuage your dread that someone other than yourself would rule. And rule with the unanimous agreement of the council, I might add.'
'It is hardly unanimous if the Mother Confessor dissents.'
'Dissents for her own selfish motives.'
'And who is it that you would have rule the Midlands? Kelton? Yourself?'
The saviors of all people. The Imperial Order.'
A prickling sensation rose up her legs. Kahlan felt as if the whole of the dome overhead were collapsing down on her. Her head spun. She thought she might be sick right there, in front of everyone. She forced her stomach to behave.
'The Imperial Order! The Imperial Order slaughtered Ebi-nissia! They crush all opposition to steal rule for themselves!'
'Lies. The Imperial Order is dedicated to benevolent rule. They simply wish to put your murderous intents to an end.'
'Benevolent! They raped and butchered the people of Ebinissia!'
Ranson chuckled. 'Come, come, Mother Confessor. The Imperial Order has murdered no one.' He turned to a man Kahlan didn't recognize. 'Councilor Thurstan, has your crown city been harmed by anyone?'
The jowly man looked surprised. 'I have just arrived two days ago from the beautiful city of Ebinissia, and they know nothing of their slaughter.'
The crowd chuckled with him. Ranson smiled petulantly at her.
'Did you not expect, Mother Confessor, that we would have witnesses to expose your preposterous stories? This is simply a fiction meant to inflame people's fears, and stir them to war.'
Ranson snapped his fingers. A woman in drab, worn clothes came in and stood to the side. Ranson gently told her not to be frightened, and to tell her story. The woman told of how her children had to go to bed hungry, because she had no money. She said she had been forced into prostitution to feed her children. Kahlan knew it was a lie. There was no scarcity of charitable people and groups who would help anyone truly needing it.
For the next hour, one witness after another was paraded in, and each told a story of hunger and want, and how the palace would not give them money to feed and clothe themselves, not caring if their children starved. The people in the balconies listened with rapt attention to the sad stories, some weeping with the witnesses.
Kahlan recognized a few of the people testifying. She remembered Mistress Sanderholt offering them work in the past. She had told Kahlan that when they had come in, they scoffed at the things they were asked to do. Mistress Sander-holt ended up having to do many of the tasks herself.
Wizard Ranson rose to his feet, after the last witness had told his tearful story, and turned to each side, addressing the people gathered. The Mother Confessor has a vast treasury, and she intended to use it to finance a war against the people of the Midlands who would wish to be free of her rule. She first takes the food from your mouths, and the mouths of your children, and then, to keep you from thinking about the gnawing hunger in your gut, invents an enemy, and starts a war with your hard-earned money, which she has stolen for her already wealthy friends.
'While you people go hungry, she eats well! While you need clothes, she would buy weapons! While your sons would bleed to death in battle, she lounges in the lap of luxury! When your family members are unjustly accused of crimes, she uses her magic to make them confess to crimes they did not commit to silence their protests against her tyranny!'
People were weeping. A few cried out with anguish at the last part. Still more angrily demanded justice. Kahlan began to doubt that she would be beheaded. This mob would probably tear her apart before she ever made it to the block.
Ranson held his arms open to the people gathered. As a representative of the Imperial Order, I direct that the people get what they really need. The treasury of Aydindril will be put to its best use. It will be turned back to the oppressed. I direct that every family shall be entitled to one gold piece a month, to clothe and feed your children. There will be no starvation allowed under the rule of the Imperial Order.'
Cheering erupted in the great hall. The wild applauding and huzzahs went on unabated for a good five minutes. Ranson sat and steepled his fingers while he listened to the celebration. He never took his eyes from Kahlan, nor she from his.
Kahlan knew that life's hardships were not that simple to eradicate. She knew that seeming kindness could in truth be cruel. She calculated that the payments would take, at most, six months to empty the treasury. She wondered what would happen the following month, when the money was gone, and people would have by then stopped working, or planting, to provide for themselves. Then there certainly would be hunger and starvation - in the guise of generosity.
At last the noise died out. Ranson leaned forward.
There is no way of telling how many people have gone hungry, or starved to death, or died in war, by your command, Mother Confessor. It is obvious you are guilty of treason against the people of the Midlands. I see no reason to draw the evidence out, as we could, for weeks.' The other councilors all voiced yeas of agreement. Ranson slapped his hand to the desk. 'Guilty of the first charge then: treason.'
The people cheered, again. Kahlan stood with her back stiff, wearing her Confessor's face. Ranson read off charges she could scarcely believe could be read with a straight face. Witnesses came forward and testified to atrocities that Kahlan thought anyone with common sense would laugh at. No one laughed.
People she had never met before confided their intimate knowledge of what Confessors did in secret. A lump rose in Kahlan's throat as she heard what people thought of her. People repeated irrational fears and rumors of every sort of outrage committed by Confessors, and the Mother Confessor in particular.
For her whole life she had sacrificed everything, as had the other Confessors, to protect these people, and the whole time they believed these monstrosities instead. Kahlan thought, when she heard a witness testify that in order to retain their magical power, Confessors had to dine regularly on human flesh, that there would be laughter at the charge. Instead, wide-eyed people leaned forward and gasped. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting into tears, not because she was being charged with such things, but because people truly believed them of her.
Kahlan finally stopped listening. As Ranson listed charges, brough forth witnesses, and the council found her guilty of charge after charge, she thought about Richard. She tried to remember all the moments she had spent with him, all the times he had smiled, all the times he had touched her. She tried to remember every kiss.
'You think it amusing!' Ranson railed.
Kahlan looked up. She realized she was smiling. 'What?'
A woman was standing to the side, weeping into a kerchief. Kahlan blinked at her, and then looked up to Ranson.
'I'm sorry, I guess I missed her performance.'
The crowd grumbled in anger. Ranson leaned back in his chair with a disgusted shake of his head.
'Guilty, of practicing your Confessor's magic on children.'
'What? Are you insane? Children?'
Ranson held a hand out toward the woman, who broke into wild wailing. 'She has just testified that her child is missing, and has told how other women nave had their children disappear, too, and how it is common knowledge that the children are taken so that Confessors may practice their magic on them. As a wizard, I can verify the truth of this.' The crowd howled with rage.
Kahlan blinked up at him. 'I have a headache. Why don't you just chop it off for me.'
'Uncomfortable, Mother Confessor? Uncomfortable that the people would be given the chance to face their oppressor, and hear the extent of her heinous crimes?'
Kahlan held her Confessor's face to keep from tears. 'I am sorry only that I have given my whole life to the people of the Midlands. Had I known they would be so ungrateful, and believe instead such filth after what I have sacrificed for them, I would have been more selfish and left them to true tyranny.'
Ranson scowled down at her. 'You have worked your whole life for the Keeper.' The crowd gasped again. That is who you serve. That is what you work for. You offer the souls of your people to your master, the Keeper, in the underworld.'
People in the balconies wailed with terror. Cries of anger and calls for vengeance echoed in the dome. Shaking their fists, the crowd on the main floor tried to push forward, but the guards spread their arms and held them back. Ranson lifted his hands, calling for calm and quiet.
Kahlan moved her gaze over the people to each side.
'I give you to the Imperial Order,' she called out in a loud voice. 'I work no longer to save you. You will be punished for your unthinking willingness to believe these lies. Punished by what your own selfish desires will bring upon you. You will come to regret the torment you have willingly cast yourselves into. I am joyful that I will be dead, so I will not be tempted to help you. I regret only that I have ever shed a tear for your suffering. To the Keeper with all of you!'
Kahlan glared up at a smirking Wizard Ranson. 'Get on with it! Chop off my head! I'm sickened with this travesty of truth! You and your Imperial Order win. Kill me, so I may be rid of this life, and go to the spirit world, where I will not have to suffer to help anyone. I confess to everything. Execute me. I am guilty of it all.' She looked down at the body at her feet. 'Except killing this Keltish pig. I wish, now, that I had killed him, but unfortunately, I can't claim credit.'
Ranson lifted an eyebrow. 'A liar to the end, Mother Confessor; you cannot even admit the truth of this murder.'
Lady Ordith came in, her nose in the air, and testified that she had heard Kahlan threaten Prince Fyren only the night before. The council all spoke up, that they, too, had heard her threaten to cut his throat.
'This is your proof?' Kahlan asked.
Ranson gestured to the side. 'Bring in the witness. You see, Mother Confessor, we know the truth. One of your former friends wanted to help hide the truth of your ways, and we had to use extreme measures to make her cooperate, but in the end, she did.'
A shaking Mistress Sanderholt was led into the chamber. Guards stood to each side of her stooped, thin frame. Her face was drawn, her red eyes heavy with dark bags underneath. Her familiar vitality was gone. Swaying slightly, she looked as if she could hardly stand without aid.
Mistress Sanderholt held her mangled hands out, in fear they would touch anything. All her fingernails had been pulled off with tongs. Bile rose in Kahlan's throat.
A stern-faced Neville Ranson looked down at the woman. 'Tell us what you know of this murder.'
Mistress Sanderfiolt gazed unblinking up at him. She bit her lower lip. Her eyes filled with tears. It was obvious she didn't want to speak.
Ranson slammed his fist on the desk. 'Speak! Or we will find you guilty of aiding the murderer!'
'Mistress Sanderholt,' Kahlan said softly. The woman's eyes came to her. 'Mistress Sanderholt, I know the truth, and you know the truth; that is all that matters. These people are going to do as they plan, with or without your help. I do not want you to suffer on my account. Please tell them what they wish to hear.'
Tears rolled down her face. 'But...'
Kahlan straightened her back. 'Mistress Sanderholt, as Mother Confessor, I command you to testify against me.'
Mistress Sanderholt gave her a twitch of a smile. She turned her face up to the council. 'I saw the Mother Confessor sneak up behind Prince Fyren. She cut his throat before he knew she was there. She offered him no chance to defend himself.'
Ranson smiled down and nodded. Thank you, Mistress Sanderholt. And you were her friend, but you came forward and agreed to testify, because you wanted the council, and the people, to know the truth?'
More tears streamed down. 'Yes. Though I loved her, I had to tell the people the truth of her murderous ways.'
After she was escorted out, and the council had unanimously found Kahlan culpable, Ranson stood, lifting his hand for silence before addressing the people.
The Mother Confessor has been found guilty of all charges!' Everyone hooted and hollered their satisfaction. They shouted for an immediate execution. The Mother Confessor will be executed, but not this day.' He held his hand up angrily against the protests. They quieted. 'She has committed crimes against all the people. They must be given a chance to hear of justice being done. They must be given a chance to come to the beheading. It will be held in a few days, when everyone harmed by this criminal has had a chance to come to see her executed.'
Neville Ranson stepped down and came around the dais. He stood in front of her, looking into her eyes. He spoke quietly, to her, and not to the crowd.
'You would think to use your power on me, Mother Confessor?'
That had been exactly what she had been thinking, to use her power knowing she would die in the process. But she said nothing.
Ranson's smile was cold and cruel. 'You shall not have the chance. I am going to strip you of three things. First, your power and its symbol. Second, your dignity. Third, your life.'
Kahlan threw herself at him. He stood, his hands clasped, and watched as she was able to move only inches before she was mired in a thickness of air that held her tight. She fought unsuccessfully against the staggering power that held her.
The wizard lifted his hands. Kahlan saw a flash. She cried out as she felt a cold shock flood through her body. It felt as if she had plunged naked into an icy river. She shivered violently. The sting of cold brought tears to her eyes. The cold pain felt as if it could grow no worse, could hurt no more, but then it did.
It felt as if her insides ripped, as if her heart were being torn from her chest. She screamed in pain. Stunned by the shock of it, she realized she was on her knees. Ranson was holding his hands out, over her head.
When the pain lifted, she felt tingling panic.
Her power was gone.
Where she had always felt it before, without even being aware of it most of the time, she now felt a forlorn emptiness.
She had so often wished to be rid of it, but never realized what it would feel like to be without her magic. She cried out again. Tears streamed down her cheeks at the forsaken, vacant desolation. She felt naked before the mob of people.
She forced herself to stop the tears. She would not let these people see the Mother Confessor cry. No - she would not let these people see Kahlan Amnell cry.
Ranson drew Prince Fyren's sword from its scabbard. He stepped behind her. He took up her hair in his fist and pulled it out tight as she knelt on the cold floor.
With the sword, he sliced her hair off, close, right at the nape of her neck. The shearing felt almost as shocking to her as having her power taken. The hair Richard loved so. She bit back tears.
Neville Ranson held up the severed handful of her hair to wild cheering. Kahlan knelt, numbly staring at nothing, as soldiers tied her wrists behind her back. Ranson grasped her arm, under her shoulder, and hauled her to her feet.
'The first of it, then, Mother Confessor. You have been stripped of your power, and its symbol. As I promised you. Now to the rest of it.'
Kahlan was silent - there was nothing to say - as Ranson and a cluster of grinning guards led her down through the palace. She didn't pay any attention to where she was being taken. She was thinking about Richard, hoping he would remember her love for him. She lost herself in memories of him. She let the world around her go. She would soon let the world of life go, too. The good spirits had deserted her.
She was numb to what was happening. The emptiness of being without her power left her feeling half dead already. She had never known how much it meant to her, how much a part of her the magic was, until it was gone. She wondered if this dull bleakness was the way people without the power felt all the time. She couldn't imagine living without the magic.
She longed for death, now, to end this dead feeling. Only Richard had accepted her with her power. She never completely accepted it herself, but Richard had. Now it was too late. She grieved more for the loss of her magic than her life. She knew, now, what the other creatures of magic would feel, when it happened to them. She grieved for them.
Ranson's hand on her arm jerked her to a halt, jerked her to awareness, before an iron door in a dim corridor. One of the guards worked at a rusty lock on the iron door. Kahlan recognized the door. She had taken confessions down here.
'And now, to my second promise, Mother Confessor,' Ranson said with a sneer. 'You will be stripped of your dignity.'
Kahlan gasped as his fist grabbed what was left of her hair and jerked her head back. As she was held helpless, her wrists bound painfully behind her back, and her hair in his fist, Ranson kissed her neck.
Right where Darken Rahl had kissed her neck.
The same horrors coursed through her mind as when Darken Rahl had done it. She shuddered with revulsion, with the horror of the visions. In her mind, she saw the young women in Ebinissia, only this time, she was one of them.
'I would rape you myself,' Ranson whispered in her ear, 'but I find your sense of honor disgusting.'
The door squeaked open, and without any further word, Ranson shoved her through the doorway, into the pit.
CHAPTER 59
Kahlan gasped at the feeling of falling through space, but before she had a chance to fully consider what would happen when she hit the floor, rough hands caught her. They pushed her down to the cold stone. She saw the light of the doorway above disappear when the door clanged closed. In the light of a sputtering torch in a bracket, she saw grinning men all about, pushing in at her.
The rope cut into her wrists. Her feelings of terror and helplessness gave way to desperate action. Kahlan kicked a man in the groin. She was on her back on the floor, so she had leverage to do damage. She rammed her heel into the face of another man leaning over her. He fell back with a cry. She kicked frantically at the others.
The grasping hands caught her ankles. She kicked her legs but the men held tight. She rolled to the side, breaking the grip, and skittered into a corner. Her freedom was only momentary. They seized her flailing legs again.
In the back of her mind, as she fought, Kahlan desperately tried to think. A spark of thought tried to get her attention. It was something about Zedd, but she couldn't think clearly.
The men fighting to get at her pushed her white dress up her legs. Hands pawed at her thighs. Big, meaty fingers hooked her smallclothes, stripping them down her legs and off her feet. She felt rough hands and cold air on her flesh. She fought the men and, at the same time, her own panic.
Two men were on the floor; one holding his crotch, the other sprawled out, blood gushing from his ruined face. His nose was crushed. There were ten others, all trying to get at her at once. They threw each other back, trying to force themselves on top of her, the biggest working his way in. Kahlan couldn't get her breath.
With frantic effort, the spark of thought sprang forth. She remembered asking Zedd if he could remove her power. She had wanted to be free of it so she could be with Richard. Zedd had told her that it wasn't possible to rid a Confessor of her power, that she was born with the magic, and it couldn't be separated from her as long as she was alive.
How could Ranson have stripped her of her power? Zedd was a wizard of the First Order; there was no wizard with more power than a wizard of the First Order. Why wouldn't Ranson have wanted to rape her first? He said she disgusted him. But he said he wanted to strip her of her dignity. Why wouldn't he want to do it?
Unless he was afraid.
Afraid she would figure it out. Figure what out?
It came to her. The Wizard's First Rule.
People would believe anything, if they wanted to believe. Or if they were afraid it was true. She was afraid it was true that he had stripped her of her power. Maybe he had used magic to give her pain and mask her ability to sense her own magic, to try to trick her into believing what she feared.
As the men groped at her, she groped for her power. She tried to find the calmness, the place of her magic, but it just wasn't there. All she felt was emptiness. Where she always felt the swell of magic before, she now felt only a numb, hollow void.
She wanted to cry at the feel of the men's hands on her legs, and between them, but she couldn't allow herself to lose control, her only chance. Try as she might, she couldn't find the magic, couldn't call it forth. It was simply gone. She desperately wanted her hands free.
'Wait!' she screamed.
The men all stopped for a moment, their faces pulling back, looking at her. She gasped to catch her breath.
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