I'm sorry I've gotten behind on replying to reviews. Things have been very busy the past few days, and I thought you'd rather have the new chapter more. But I've read and appreciated every one, and I will catch up as soon as I can!

IX. BROTHER

Richard sat alone by the fire, his elbows resting on his knees. It was nearly time to wake Cara for her watch, but his mind felt far too full for sleep. Shota's promises lurked as close and ominous as the shadows in the night. Prophecy was proving to be a far harder thing to laugh at now that it concerned Kahlan's life. He glanced to his right to where she lay curled up on her side, a hand tucked beneath her chin, the firelight adding hints of orange to her dark hair. At least she finally rested. That was some small comfort. Lately, her eyes had become twin pools of worry, and only in sleep did she seem at peace.

An owl hooted somewhere high overhead. His companions snored and breathed and dreamed. The fire turned hypnotic. He watched how the flames twisted and licked at the wood. How they sent up showers of sparks and began to glow green.

A pale, sickly shade of green he recognized all too well.

Richard scrambled to his feet just as the fire erupted skyward in a plume of vivid green. Darken Rahl materialized in front of him, flames like tongues licking at his crimson robes. His heart racing, Richard pulled his sword free. He felt suddenly, wildly awake, but the others slept on, unaware of the monster now standing in their midst.

Rahl chuckled, sweeping a hand in a graceful arc towards the Sword of Truth. His voice was smooth and velvety and full of delight, "I thought you learned last time, brother? You can't kill the dead."

Richard kept his sword up anyway. Kahlan lay just out of reach, closer to Rahl than to him. Fear and fury gripped his legs like iron, and his words started as a growl somewhere low in his throat, "What do you want, Rahl?"

The line of his eyes gave him away, and Darken Rahl followed it to where she slept. A pleased hum slipping past his lips, he treated her name like something far too intimate, "Kahlan, of course."

Richard moved without thinking. Leaping to the right, he thrust himself between Kahlan and the spirit of his brother, claiming the ground before her bedroll. He wasn't sure what to expect in response – a threat, perhaps, or more of the burning pain that had seared the Keeper's mark onto his chest their last encounter – but Rahl made no move to stop him. He stood there amidst the flames, his pale eyes glinting, the fire giving a green sheen to his dark hair. He watched in silence until Richard began to feel foolish and helpless, and then his smile turned into a leer.

"I'm sure you understand," he murmured. "She is an exquisite creature."

Anger from the sword forked through his body, and Richard brandished the blade at Rahl's chest. Though they spoke loudly, Kahlan slept still, helpless at his feet. He wondered if he should shout and wake her and the others, but the thought passed through his mind in a strange way as if just out of reach. He couldn't act on it though he wanted to; instead he spoke through gritted teeth, "You'll never have her."

Rahl spread his hands out, palms up. "Why do you insist on this hostility? I only wish to speak with you. We are not as different as you like to think." His gaze dropped to Kahlan lying unconscious on the ground, his lip curling as he took in her flesh, stared at it openly, his eyes gone dark with lust. "After all, I know what you did to her." He looked up, laughing softly, "I never would have thought my little brother had it in him to rape a woman."

Richard felt his vision blur with hot, feverish tears. "Stay away from her!" he choked out. He could not fathom how Rahl knew. Was he such a monster that the whole world knew? Even in the Underworld, they knew what he had done to her?

Rahl went on, his voice growing louder until it threatened to consume the night, "Tell me, brother, did she weep? Most women weep."

Oh, how she had wept. With her arm around his shoulder and her face pressed against his neck. Though he'd seen it through the haze of confession and had only found it unfortunate and nothing more, he could recall every silent tear she'd shed beneath him. "You know nothing about us," he snarled at Rahl, hating him, but it felt so much like staring in a mirror that it nearly brought him crashing to his knees. He had made Kahlan weep.

"Nothing?" Rahl raised a dark eyebrow. "That is where you are wrong, my brother. There is much we know about the two of you. The Keeper has women to read him the words written on the Halls of Prophecy as easily as you once read your precious Book of Counted Shadows. How else did you think I learned of your many transgressions?"

Richard tightened his grip on his sword, clinging to it in desperation. It seemed to him that, if he were to loosen his hold but a little, he would descend into a world of madness. He forced himself to think, "The Keeper's daughters?" he asked.

"Ah, so you are not entirely blind to the prophecies yourself." Rahl smiled as if he were proud. "This will make it easier. I have come to give you a choice. As you know, Kahlan is going to die." Unbidden, the first part of Shota's vision echoed inside his head.

The Keeper's daughters hunt the one conceived in sorrow – child of love and fury – for their master lusts for its soul. If he gains it, the one in white will perish and all life shall follow her.

"That's not a choice," said Richard. "She's not dying." A world without Kahlan would be one devoid of all beauty and all joy. It would be a world that held nothing for him.

"She is going to die," repeated Rahl. "Your choice is how." He stretched a hand out towards Kahlan, the green flames coiled like a serpent around his arm. "Give her to me now, and I will personally shelter her in the Underworld." His lip curled and he leered at her, "I will be kinder to her than you have been."

At his words, the sword began to glow in Richard's hands. His arms shook with the sudden effort of keeping his grip. Fury swept through him, unchecked and blistering, building and building until there was only the anger and the agony of the blade and nothing more. The voice he spoke in seemed not his own, "I am never giving her to you." He would die and the world would fall before he would ever deliver Kahlan to the Keeper.

Rahl's face remained impassive. He shrugged a shoulder as if it made little difference. "Then wait and doom her to an eternity of suffering. For she will suffer, my brother. You cannot begin to imagine the fate that awaits her." Rahl's eyes bored into him. His brother's eyes. He felt the Keeper's mark burning in his flesh. "That child she carries will be the death of her, one way or another. You will be the death of her."

Richard could hold back no longer. Unable to acknowledge how useless it would be, he brought the blade swinging down towards Rahl's throat. He might as well have been swatting at smoke. Cold, hollow laughter filled the night, clawing its way down his spine. It seemed to pour out of the darkness itself – as if it was the Keeper's own voice. Richard howled his fury as his brother stood before him unharmed.

The Keeper laughed. And laughed and laughed.

And suddenly there was black sky overhead, awash with twinkling stars.

"Richard! Richard, wake up!"

"Are you all right? Richard?"

He bolted upright, tangled in blankets. The anger of the sword was all that stayed with him. It pressed against his chest like the crest of a monstrous wave. He could but go with it or be knocked down. He went, scrambling backwards into a crouch, his mind a jumble, his breathing ragged. It had been a dream. Nothing more. A dream. The Sword of Truth still sat in its scabbard, but the scar on his chest throbbed, and he had his hand locked around the hilt.

The others stood huddled above him, their faces shadowed by the night and grave with concern. Kahlan's dress was ever so slightly askew; her hair tousled from sleep and ringed in firelight. Rahl's voice was a whisper in his ear.

I know what you did to her.

The anger of the sword turned brutal and punishing. He welcomed it, tightening his grip as he forced himself to his feet through a wave of pain. "I'm all right," he muttered. "It was a dream."

"What sort of dream?" asked Zedd. He moved closer and placed a hand on Richard's shoulder. "You were screaming. You had a death grip on the sword in your sleep."

I never would have thought my little brother had it in him to rape a woman.

Darken Rahl's voice crowded his mind, and he stared up at Zedd, the magic spiking beneath his skin. His grandfather's touch seemed suddenly to be something hateful, and he jerked his shoulder free. "I said it was just a dream!" he snarled, only barely aware of how Kahlan was staring at him.

He saw it then in his mind's eye with perfect clarity – the sword lifted high overhead, glowing, glittering with reflected moonlight and flame. The blade cut through the air as he brought it down in the quiet of absolute concentration, cleaving the wizard in two from head to crotch. He was gone in a fountain of blood, the two halves of old bones and wrinkled skin sagging to the ground.

Richard staggered back a step, wrenching his hand from the hilt of the sword.

"My boy, what's wrong?" Zedd stood before him in one piece, frowning down at him with a wrinkled, worried brow. A hot wave of nausea swept over him as the anger bled away. But the vision of shattering his grandfather's skull with the Sword of Truth remained.

Choking on a sudden influx of horror and shame, Richard turned away. He forced some words out about a walk and needing air, and then he was nearly running from the campsite, letting his feet carry him alone into the night.