The Third Kingdom

In the end, people believed what they wanted to believe. The truth had very little to do with it.

“You have been chosen to contribute to this great work,” he said at last as he finally leaned back in his seat. “You will in the end be one of those who gives prophecy to those who need it. Because of your renown, prominence, and birthright as a Confessor, we expect remarkable prophecy from you.”

Kahlan glanced at the Mord-Sith and then back at the abbot. “So you’re going to kill me. Big surprise. Evil men have been killing innocent people since the dawn of time.

“You are going to chop off my head, expecting me to babble prophecy first? Fine, just don’t try to convince yourself that I lay my head on the block willingly. It will be a simple act of murder, nothing more, and certainly not noble.”

He dismissed her words with a wave and a sour expression.

“It’s not that simple,” the Mord-Sith said with a knowing smile.

“Not that simple,” Kahlan repeated. “And why not? You said that you kill people so that they will give prophecy right as they’re dying. That may be lunacy, but it is simple lunacy.”

“No, you misunderstand,” she said. “I meant that the process is not that simple.”

“They must be prepared, first,” Abbot Dreier put in with a kind of twisted zeal.

“Prepared? How do you prepare them to be murdered?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Torture.”

Kahlan stared back. “You torture people at the abbey.”

“That is the function of the facility—to process people on their path to giving their gift of prophecy. It is through torture that people are properly brought to that cusp of life and death and held there at the boundary between worlds until they are finally ready to accept into themselves what we offer them.”

Kahlan was incredulous. “What you offer? What could you possibly offer them as you torture them?”

“Release,” the Mord-Sith said.

“Release?” Kahlan asked, still staring at them both in disbelief.

“Release,” Abbot Dreier confirmed. “Only when they willingly embrace the greater good and allow themselves to be the conduit for this gift to mankind, do we release them and allow them the privilege of crossing over into death.”

Kahlan felt sick. She now understood all too well the part that the Mord-Sith played in this scheme.

Erika smiled when she saw that Kahlan finally understood.

“There is transcendent glory in profound agony,” the Mord-Sith said with quiet conviction, as if to justify what they were doing.

“Glory,” Kahlan said, sarcastically, repulsed by the evil of it all.

“Yes, indeed, glory.” The Mord-Sith’s wicked satisfaction in her work surfaced. “We intend to bring you such glory as you cannot yet imagine.”

Ludwig Dreier was staring at Kahlan. “And then you, too, like all the others who have come before you, will willingly give forth prophecy in order to be allowed to cross over into death.”

CHAPTER

65

Richard sat on the stone floor of the cavern, his back leaned up against the wall, half dozing, weary from the inner sickness weighing him down. He looked up when he heard muffled voices. It was not Zedd’s voice, but voices outside of the barrier, out beyond his main prison entrance. Someone was saying something he couldn’t quite make out.

He saw movement on the other side of the undulating green veil and then several figures came to a halt. It was not the kind of movement he was used to seeing from the writhing spirits inside the world of the dead who had been taunting him for days, promising him the peace of eternal nothingness, whispering for him to step through and join them in that eternal peace.

These other figures were instead standing outside his green prison door.

It had been several days since he had seen or heard anyone even passing by beyond that rippling wall of green light. At least, he thought it had been several days. He couldn’t be sure. It was hard to tell time in the timeless twilight of the imprisoning cavern.

He had slept little and paced a lot as the time slowly passed. They had brought him no food. He had found a recess worn down into the rock itself by the steady drip of water. Over time that slow, steady drip had hollowed out a bowl-shaped depression. That at least provided him a source of water, since the bucket was empty.

But without food, he was beginning to think that maybe they had simply left him there to die. With the touch of death always there in the background inside him, he wondered if that poison left by the Hedge Maid might beat them to it.

Richard had gone back a number of times to the place where he had talked to Zedd, but his grandfather never answered. As he had paced, Richard had frequently checked the other openings that were also blocked by the greenish veil to the underworld. No word came back from beyond any of them. He wondered if the guards had moved people away from the cells near his so that no one could talk to him or tell him what was happening. It would make sense for them to want to isolate him.