Stone of Tears

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.

Summoned 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 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 any more. 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 whose 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.

“And you wonder why I would send you away.”

“Kahlan, you don’t understand. You don’t know what she was going to…”

A quiet laugh drew his attention to the other side of the room. Darken Rahl stood in another archway, his white robes aglow.

Richard felt the scar of his father’s handprint on his chest tingle and burn with heat.

The Keeper welcomes you, Richard.” Darken Rahl’s grim smile widened. “You make me proud, my son.”