Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [224]
“No!” Kahlan whispered. They both looked at her, her face wrinkled with pain at Shota’s words. “I wouldn’t! Shota, I swear, I couldn’t do that to him.”
Tears ran down her cheeks. Shota stepped close to her and reached through the snakes, touching her face tenderly, to comfort her.
“If you are not killed, child, I am afraid you will.” As a tear rolled down, her thumb brushed it back. “You have already come close, once,” Shota said with surprising compassion. “Within a breath.” She nodded slightly to herself. “This is true, is it not? Tell him. Tell him if I am speaking the truth.”
Kahlan’s eyes snapped to Richard. He looked into the depths of her green eyes and remembered the three times she had touched him when he had been holding the sword, and how that touch made the magic jump in warning. The last time, with the Mud People when the shadow things had come, the magic’s reaction had been so strong that he almost put the sword through her before he realized who it was. Kahlan’s eyebrows wrinkled together, her gaze shrinking from his. She bit her bottom lip as a little moan escaped her throat.
“Is this true?” Richard asked in a whisper, his heart in his throat. “Have you come within a breath of using your power against me, as Shota says?”
Kahlan’s face drained of color. She let out a loud, painful moan. She closed her eyes and cried in a long, agonizing wail. “Please, Shota. Kill me. You must. I am sworn to protect Richard, to stop Rahl. Please,” she cried in choking sobs. “It’s the only way. You must kill me.”
“I cannot,” Shota whispered. “I have granted a wish. A very foolish one.”
Richard could hardly stand the pain of seeing Kahlan like this, asking to die. The lump in his throat threatened to choke him.
Kahlan suddenly cried out and threw up her arms, to make the snakes bite her. Richard lunged for them, but they were gone. Kahlan held out her arms, looking for snakes that were no longer there.
“I’m sorry, Kahlan. If I were to let them bite you, it would break the wish I granted.”
Kahlan collapsed to her knees, crying with her face against the ground, her fingers digging into the earth. “I’m so sorry, Richard,” she wept. Her fists grabbed at the grass, then his pants legs. “Please, Richard,” she sobbed. “Please. I’m sworn to protect you. So many have already died. Take the sword and kill me. Do it. Please, Richard, kill me.”
“Kahlan… I could never…” He couldn’t make any more words come.
“Richard,” Shota said, nearly in tears herself, “if she isn’t killed, then before Rahl opens the boxes, she will use her power against you. There is no doubt of this. None. It cannot be changed if she lives. I granted your wish, I cannot kill her. So you must.”
“No!” he shrieked.
Kahlan wailed again in anguish and pulled her knife. As she brought it up to plunge it into herself, Richard grabbed her wrist.
“Please, Richard,” she cried, falling against him, “you don’t understand. I have to. If I live I will be responsible for what Rahl will do. For everything that will happen.”
Richard pulled her up by her wrist, held her to him with one arm as she cried, held her arm twisted behind her back so she couldn’t use the knife on herself. He glared angrily at Shota, who stood with her hands loose at her sides, watching. Was any of this possible? Could it be true? He wished he had listened to Kahlan and never come here.
He relaxed his pressure on Kahlan’s arm when he realized by the way she cried that he was hurting her. He wondered numbly if he should let her kill herself. His hand shook.
“Please, Richard,” Shota said, tears in her own eyes, “hate me for who I am if you will, but do not hate me for telling you the truth.”
“The truth as you see it, Shota! But maybe not the truth as it will be. I will not kill Kahlan on your word.”
Shota nodded sadly, looking at him through wet eyes.
“Queen Milena has the last box of Orden.” She spoke in a voice barely more than a whisper. “But heed this warning: she will not have it for long. If, that is, you choose to believe the truth,