XXXV. TRADE
"Why is there a dacra at her belly?" Darken Rahl spoke softly, smoothing a pale, greenish hand along the sleeve of his robe. Kahlan looked down as a sister withdrew the blade in question, puzzled by the sudden reversal of the threat. But the dacra at her back remained, and Sister Dana pressed another against her throat as if in compensation. Rahl's eyes flashed. "Remove the blades. All of them."
Sister Dana hesitated. "But she's dangerous."
"One woman in labor? She is quite contained here." He rubbed at his temple, lips drawn into a thin line. "Why do you insist on failing at even the simplest of tasks? You promised to deliver her without using force."
"And so we have." Sister Isobel stepped forward, armed with apologetic smiles. "She was just a little nervous, poor thing." Kahlan blinked. Sister Isobel's smile seemed far more wizened than before, her gray hair thinner and ragged. She almost shrugged it off, but a glance at Sister Lena showed her flawless young skin to be steadily blossoming crow's feet. Sister Dana grew more and more stooped with every passing breath. All of the sisters were aging impossibly fast.
Kahlan held out her own hands, only to find they had not changed in the least. The skin remained smooth, unmarred by wrinkles or age spots. Whatever terrible effect the Underworld was having on the Sisters of the Dark, she appeared to be immune. She remembered Sister Isobel's words about the potion. Apparently they'd only had enough for her.
Even that thought was fleeting as another pain started in her belly and burned through her. She clenched her hands in fists, biting her lip to keep from groaning. The dacras were gone and every instinct urged her to attack, but Rahl was right. She was quite contained, her own body effectively holding her hostage. She thought of the child that was about to come no matter where she was and felt ill.
She could think of nothing to do, no strategy for escape. She longed to see Richard's face just one more time.
"We've brought her to you. We've fulfilled the agreement." Sister Dana's voice broke through the haze of pain, now hoarse and almost inaudible, save for the harsh rasp of impatience. She shoved her, surprising strength in her bony fingers, and Kahlan went sprawling, catching herself on her hands and knees. A long scratch formed across her palm, and her body shook from the impact. Sister Dana creaked and glowered, "Now we'll have our reward."
Rahl had stepped back as she came sprawling, as if to avoid her flailing arms. Kahlan didn't have the energy to haul herself up again, but she lifted her head, staring at him through the mass of her hair.
"Reward?" His eyes danced with cold amusement. "My dear woman, you do not get your reward until the child is born and bonded to the Keeper by its first breath. If your time is running out, I suggest you encourage the Confessor to get on with it."
"Bonded to the Keeper? My baby?" Kahlan's arms shook. "How?"
Rahl tilted his head, looking down at her. "By the very power of her first breath. The Creator gives life, and the Keeper takes it away. But in bringing you down here, the tables have turned." He paced around her as the sisters aged and her belly tightened. "It will be the Underworld that gives your daughter her first breath of life, binding her to this realm, instead of the one above."
"That's not possible," hissed Kahlan.
"Oh but it is." He smiled at her. "Think of it as giving the Keeper his very own child. It is not possible for a soul to be more loyal, more utterly devoted to the Keeper than she shall be when she first breathes in life from him, not her Creator."
Kahlan trembled. Death would be a better fate. "No," she said, her voice low and unsteady. "No, no." She could not stop shaking. The violence came from somewhere deep within, pushing itself outward until her whole body was caught up in it, quaking and shuddering. Her lips were still mouthing 'no' when a primal shriek of fury tore from her throat. It lifted her to her feet as if she had suddenly become weightless and as strong as iron. The sisters took a collective step back, but it was useless.
Pain left her as the cavern before her tinged the bloody red of the Con Dar. Kahlan flung her arms wide. There was a boom of sound as if they lived inside an earthquake, except she had felt it there at her fingertips. The sisters' eyes blackened in unison. They were hers. Aged and aging, yet hers.
Already, Sister Dana was little more than skin and bones. As she looked on, the woman seemed to shatter from within, crumpling into ash and nothingness with a moan.
Kahlan felt nothing, said nothing. Slowly, she rounded on Sister Isobel instead. The traitor. Her head rang with the word. Traitor. She would pay.
"Mistress," whispered Sister Isobel, her face now a web of wrinkles. Kahlan didn't hear the reverence with which she spoke. There was only vengeance.
"Die for me," she said, her voice rising up cold and calm out of the storm at her center.
And she did. Death came for her sudden and silent, as her heart obeyed her mistress and ceased to beat. Sister Isobel crumpled to the ground, and Kahlan looked swiftly past her. Sister Lena and two others remained. Before they had been young; already they appeared middle-aged. She had not yet learned their names, but it did not matter. They were hers.
She stepped towards them, feeling a surging desire to kill. To ask for death and watch them topple. But even beneath the rage, she felt the life inside her, her daughter's gift too young to rise alongside her own. She would need these women. These guards. She promised the coursing fury that they would die soon enough.
"Get me out of here," she ordered.
They raced to her side, dacras at the ready, though Rahl made no move to stop them. Instead, he smiled at her, a quiet smile of private amusement, and behind her she heard a faint, rumbling sound. It grew louder and louder as if the ground itself was alive and groaning. Kahlan looked over her shoulder in time to see the first rock fall. When it hit, the whole cavern shook.
"Run," she cried even as more boulders rained down, filling up the same stairwell through which they had entered, choking off their escape.
By the time they made it halfway to the passage, it was closed, and the sisters guarding her were old women. She whirled around, pointing a hand at Rahl. He was the one her magic could not touch. "Stop him," she seethed, the blood rage thrumming in her veins. But the sisters moved on feeble, faltering feet now.
The first crumpled to ash and bone before reaching him; the second just as her withered hand grasped his robe. Rahl stepped around the little pile of ashes and retrieved her dacra, throwing it in a deft arc straight at Sister Lena's wizened face. She fell dead, and then there were none.
"What now, Kahlan?" Rahl spread his hands, palms up. "My soul is immune to confession, and you have nowhere to go."
It did not matter. She had never felt stronger. She would confess all the other souls. One by one, she would turn every last soul in the Underworld to her will, until the Keeper opened up the earth and set her daughter free.
She set off with purpose, walking deeper into the dark, foul belly of the Underworld. But on the sixth step past the sisters' ashes, she faltered. Sudden, fierce pain tore through her, so great that, for a moment, she thought she'd been stabbed. The Con Dar broke in a way it never had before.
It was not Richard's voice coaxing her back from the wildness of the blood rage, but pain. It yanked her back, tearing limb from limb, mind from body until she was wretched and shuddering. Her enormous belly pressed against a stone as she curled forward and began to vomit. It seemed to go on forever; her insides roiling, hands scratching desperate at the ground. When it finally stopped, she could do no more than collapse on her back, staring up at the cavern through half-blind eyes. She let out a feeble, mewling sound. Her body would not stop trembling.
She saw Rahl's face loom over her. He smiled as if he'd been expecting this. "Ah. So it begins."
"What?" she choked out. "What's happening to me?"
"You're dying." Kahlan blinked, eyes watering. Rahl's smile broadened. "I see you do not understand." He settled on a hulking boulder and folded his hands neatly in his lap. "New life beginning in the Underworld should be an impossibility. It threatens to upset the very order of things. For you see, life is not compatible with death. A price must be paid."
Kahlan blinked again, struggling to track his words through the gnawing pain settling into her bones and her belly.
Rahl gestured at her, hand sweeping in an elegant arc. "Your daughter can only come to life in the Underworld if, at the same time, another soul is dying. In unison. You will give birth to your daughter here, but it will kill you." Kahlan's body shook with sudden, violent spasms, and she could not even find the voice to cry out. Rahl tilted his head, amending, "Is already killing you. Her first breath will be your last, Kahlan. That is the price."