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hrhrionastar) wrote2011-01-16 08:17 pm
Fic: The Murder of Lucasta Rahl
Characters/Pairing: The Keeper, OC early Rahl family--Canton Rahl, Lucasta Rahl, Caliana, Scinta Rahl, Phaedrus Rahl
Length: 4152
Rating: R for violence
Spoilers: none--this is VERY pre-series
Warning: Character death!
Summary: NOT based on the books. This is the story of how Lucasta Rahl wound up a ghost (she previously appeared in The Bratty Ghost), and also, incidentally, an origin story of the first Mord'Sith.
The Murder of Lucasta Rahl
“Breathe,” the sorceress Caliana instructed her granddaughter coolly. “You’re forcing it too much. The power should just flow through you.”
Six-year-old Lucasta Rahl clenched her fists and stomped her feet. “Too hard!” she wailed. “I can’t!” Lightning flashed from Lucasta’s fingers, torching a nearby rosebush and electrocuting Caliana, who twitched her shoulders in annoyance, her power more than a match for Lucasta’s—at least for the moment. Someday, Caliana knew Lucasta would surpass even her. But not if she never learned how to properly channel her Han.
“Young lady, control yourself,” Caliana said sternly. “And try again. Levitate the twig with your thoughts.”
“I can’t,” Lucasta pouted, now chewing on her embroidered sleeve.
“Yes, you can,” Caliana said patiently. In all her years of fighting, learning, spellcasting…Caliana had never known anyone with so much occult potential as little Lucasta. She might be a brat, but someday she would be a powerful sorceress—the most powerful the world had ever known. So Caliana put in the effort to train her, despite the discomfort of being under her son-in-law’s watchful eye.
“How long are you going to allow That Woman to remain here?” General Nicolls asked, watching the infamous Caliana tutor the princess.
“My mother-in-law is a very powerful sorceress,” Canton Rahl said grimly. He was staring at Caliana and Lucasta as well.
Scinta’s strong magical heritage had been a large factor in Canton’s marriage to her. He had not expected her mother to be such a staple of their lives.
This habit of cohabitation was a mere annoyance, and as such hardly rankled with Canton, who wasn’t particularly interested in his wife and children in any case.
But Caliana made no secret of her disagreement with some of Canton’s policies. They’d all seen where political unrest led, and Canton was astonished that Caliana would court its reemergence by flouting his authority.
And the same powerful magic that Canton had once pursued made Caliana a formidable opponent.
“But, my Lord,” General Nicholls protested. “You’re the man who united the hundred kingdoms!”
Hundred squabbling villages, more like, thought Canton. Just in the need of a little leadership.
Canton needed more than that. If only there were some way to stop Caliana’s magic before she entirely subverted Lucasta.
Canton wasn’t a fool—he knew Caliana was training Lucasta to be her slave, her tool in her campaign to depose Canton.
There simply had to be a way to make himself immune to Caliana’s powers. Canton’s eyes narrowed. When he saw a problem, he knocked it down.
One way or another, he wouldn’t keep playing host to his mother-in-law for long.
“Mother, mother, look what Grandmother gave me!” Lucasta shrieked, running full-tilt into the kitchens. She was holding an elaborate silver star that her grandmother, the sorceress Caliana, had fashioned for her out of thin air.
The kitchens were big, warm and welcoming. Lucasta’s mother, the Lady Scinta, spent most of her time there, and her children loved the special treats she made just for them.
Lucasta expected such a treat—after all, she’d been hard at work with Grandmother on using her power all morning. But mostly, she wanted to show off her silver star.
She ran up to her mother, her hurried advent tipping over a soup tureen and sending a knife clattering to the floor inches from the undercook’s foot, and hugged Scinta round the knees, jumping up and down ecstatically.
The undercook glared in Lucasta’s direction, but she didn’t notice.
“Mother! Look!” she said peremptorily. “It’s a special throwing star like the ninjas from Blacklake have!”
(Blacklake was one of the many tiny kingdoms Lucasta’s father, Canton Rahl, had annexed; their ninja-like warriors used silver throwing stars with rather sharper edges—though that had done them little good in the face of Canton’s armies.)
“That’s dumb,” said Lucasta’s older brother, Phaedrus. He was just at the age when he thought he knew much more about the world than all the adults set to watch over him, and he had no time for the antics of his little sister. Besides, some hot soup had gotten on his vest, spoiling its otherwise pristine state.
“Is not,” Lucasta said, sticking her tongue out at him. “I’m going to be a Blacklake ninja for Keeper’s Day!” She said it defiantly, as though she expected opposition—which she received.
“Keeper’s Day?” Phaedrus scoffed. “That’s for babies. Who wants to dress up like some stupid ninja anyway?”
At this point, Lucasta wailed her fury and started attacking Phaedrus with her throwing star, while Scinta made little ineffectual protests.
Everything Scinta Rahl did was ineffectual. She was mousy in appearance, and mousy in attitude, having spent the first part of her life meekly obeying her mother, and the second meekly obeying her husband.
Now, she gave up trying to separate Phaedrus and Lucasta, and sat with her head in her hands.
“Stop that,” Caliana said calmly, and a tightly controlled burst of magic sent Phaedrus and Lucasta sprawling in opposite directions. Caliana, however, did not overturn any soup tureens.
“I thought we discussed control, Lucasta,” Caliana said coldly. She hardly glanced at Phaedrus, and spared her own daughter, Scinta, only a momentary glance of contempt.
Lucasta hung her head. “Yes, Grandmother,” she said, sweetly.
Lucasta knew that her grandmother had her best interests at heart, and she did try to be good. She clutched her silver star to her chest, hoping Grandmother wouldn’t decide to confiscate it. Keeper’s Day was coming up, and the next big event after that was Lucasta’s birthday, when she would turn seven. Maybe then Phaedrus would stop being so mean to her. Lucasta couldn’t wait for her birthday. Grandmother had said she had a surprise for her, but she had to be good and patient before she could get it.
Lucasta vowed to herself, for the sixth time that day, that from now on she wouldn’t lose control of her magic, or get mad at Phaedrus, or spoil Mother’s soup (as Grandmother was now lecturing her about), or anything. She could be patient. It was only a little longer, after all.
What Canton found in the library of Scinta’s ancestors, the people who had once ruled from his palace, was fascinating—but tantalizingly incomplete.
He was astounded that he had never before thought to research magic, as a whole, rather than simply learning to do specific spells as the occasion demanded. He had spent most of his life in the saddle, riding from one tiny kingdom in the great land now known as D’Hara to another. Never had he devoted much of his time to reading.
Thus it took him some time to realize that his mother-in-law could well have looked through everything here—and that this library was therefore the last place he should be trying to find ways of neutralizing her power.
It was as he was looking through a huge tome on all the different spells that came directly from the drawing of a Grace (some differed by no more than a hairsbreadth from the simple Grace Canton had learnt as a child, and which Caliana had now trained Lucasta to draw perfectly), that one of his problems entered the room.
Lucasta smiled charmingly up at him. “What’re you doing, Father?” she asked cheekily, climbing onto the too-large chair on the other side of the table and thence to the table, where she leaned over to peer at his book upside down.
“Working,” he said, not encouragingly. Children had always baffled him. What did she want?
“Grandmother said to tell you the dela—delagay--gayshuns—the people from the North are here,” Lucasta said sunnily. “They’ve got really thick cloaks, and only their noses stick out!” She laughed delightedly. “I want a cloak like that for my birthday,” she added, in a tone of one simply providing information. “Like the Snow Monster of Gnoth—whoosh, whoosh!” she said, now swooping around on the table, her gown catching on the spines of magical texts as she leaned over the edge, pretending, Canton could only assume, to be the Snow Monster of Gnoth.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, slammed the book he’d been reading, and told Lucasta firmly, “Go tell your Grandmother she can entertain the Northerners. I’m sure she’s already been sharing a good deal with them. Go!”
Lucasta, pouting, went, and Canton tried once more to capture his train of thought. He kept picturing Caliana, wining and dining the Northern savages in his home, wreathed in smiles—did she plan to enlist their assistance, when the moment came and she tried to use all he had gained against him?
Canton told himself that the hundred kingdoms would never stand for a woman’s rule, but he had a hard enough time keeping them more or less not at war with one another as it was, and the slightest move on Caliana’s part could unbalance the entire region, bogging it down in yet more useless war.
Canton could stop that—the same way he had combined the kingdoms to begin with. All kings had a bond with their people, but Canton had found a way to keep that bond more or less active all the time, so that his people’s magic flowed through him, and his through them.
But this Bond was tied to him through his blood, which should mean that Phaedrus, his heir, would inherit it.
Yet there was no explicit reason why Lucasta could not also inherit it, meaning that Caliana might be able to bind the D’Haran people to her, if she had Lucasta as her figurehead, or if she could find out how to transfer the bond to herself.
The whole thing made Canton’s head ache. What he wanted, more than anything, was a way to repel Caliana’s magic before she cursed him into oblivion (or tried, anyway—she might be the most powerful sorceress ever heard of, the Queen of this tiny kingdom for more years than Canton had been alive, but he was not new to the duel sorcerous, either).
What he needed was…anti-magic. Canton sat up in his chair and threw the book he’d been perusing aside. He had a better idea.
Magic was part of life. Some people went so far as to say it was life.
Therefore, who better to advise Canton on the creation of anti-magic than the one being in all the world who was completely anti-life?
“WHY HAVE YOU SUMMONED ME, CANTON RAHL?” the Keeper asked.
Canton, safe in his blood-traced pentagram, gulped nervously. “I have a favor to ask,” he said, bravely.
The Keeper, who was merely a sort of dark green fiery mist and a deep voice, chuckled. “A FAVOR? YOU DARE?”
“I need to know how to repel magic—how to make something that’s entirely anti-magic,” Canton explained.
“AND YOU COME TO ME,” said the Keeper. “INTRIGUING…YOU KNOW THAT SUCH POWER MUST COME AT A GREAT PRICE. ARE YOU PREPARED TO PAY THAT PRICE, WHATEVER IT MAY BE?”
Canton thought of all he’d struggled to do, the war he had fought to end all wars, the people who put their faith in him, like General Nicholls, who trusted his judgment…he thought of his mother-in-law, who had hated him since they had met. He believed she was capable of undoing all the good he had done in the world, simply to spite him.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I’m ready.”
Caliana smiled and smiled at the Northerners. They believed her son-in-law a barbarian—she agreed. That alone gave them common ground.
As they talked, however, all she could think of was the future—she had given a lot of thought to her situation here.
It was untenable.
Canton Rahl was a brute, an ambitious man who had lucked upon the right method of controlling the rabble, and thus amassed armies surprisingly loyal to his cause.
His son was in the same mold, Caliana could already sense. Phaedrus would grow up and take his father’s place, all without ever thinking an original thought.
As for Scinta—it was almost hard for Caliana to believe that they shared blood. Her daughter had never shown either initiative or Han to speak of, and it was ludicrous to suppose she would start now.
Only Lucasta was at all salvageable. Her power made her unpredictable, but it also gave her the potential to be truly important to the world. There was a wall, in a palace, many leagues from here, where the Creator’s words were written.
Caliana had never been there, had only seen the place in her visions, but she knew that Lucasta was the sort of person who ended up on walls like that.
Nor did Caliana fear her own ability to control the inhabitants of the palace, who likely had never even set foot on the sands of the Pillars of Creation, or deep within the Fires of the Great Chasm.
Only a little longer now, until the child turned seven, and she would take Lucasta to this palace. Only a little longer, and they would both be free.
YOU MUST DO IT ON KEEPER’S DAY—MY DAY—FOR THAT IS WHEN THE VEIL BETWEEN THE LAND OF THE LIVING AND MY DOMINION IS THE THINNEST…
Canton Rahl gathered the leather-bound weapons he had caused to be made. They fit easily in his palm, but they were too small to be effective staves, too dull to serve as any sort of knives. Nonetheless, he obeyed the Keeper’s instructions.
YOU MUST SACRIFICE ONE OF YOUR OWN BLOOD, IN ORDER TO BIND THE ANTI-MAGIC TO YOU AND TO YOUR BLOODLINE. CHOOSE WISELY.
That was easy—or as easy as such a decision could ever be. Canton’s parents were dead, and he had no one living who shared his blood save his two children, Phaedrus and Lucasta.
Phaedrus was his heir.
Lucasta was only a daughter. And she was already a tool in his mother-in-law’s hands.
Canton even smiled grimly to himself as he scooped his sleeping daughter into his arms on the night of Keeper’s Day. Her toy throwing star, clutched in her fists, caught on his vest, but Canton didn’t notice.
Soon he would repel Caliana’s magic, and be rid of her unsettling control over Lucasta—a danger to his throne.
Two birds, one stone…
PLACE THE CHILD ON THE SACRIFICIAL STONE.
The cold woke Lucasta, who shrieked, her eyes wide. “Father?” she asked, but Canton did not reassure her.
Lucasta struggled to get off the stone—it was giving her chills. But she was bound by invisible ropes—
A waking wizard’s web was child’s play for Canton Rahl, although he was shocked, in an abstract way, that Caliana had not yet taught it to Lucasta.
THE PENTAGRAM SHOULD BE A LITTLE WIDER. THERE. NO ONE LIVING MAY PASS UNTIL THE ANTI-MAGIC IS COMPLETE.
“My Lord, no!” It was Scinta, on her knees just outside the pentagram. At her side, Phaedrus stood, looking pale and shocked.
Lucasta’s shrieks must have called them to the scene, Canton thought detachedly.
“Please, no!” Scinta begged. “I’ve been a good wife, haven’t I, my Lord? Why are you doing this to us? What could harming her possibly bring you?”
“Power,” Canton whispered, raising the knife. “Beyond my wildest dreams.”
WHEN YOU HAVE CUT THE CHILD’S WRISTS, CATCH THE BLOOD IN YOUR HANDS AND SMEAR IT ON THE AGIELS—OH, I’M SORRY. YES, THE ANTI-MAGIC STICKS. YES, KEEP CHANTING. THE CHANT SHOULD GET LOUDER AND LOUDER, ITS CRESCENDO COINCIDING WITH YOUR SACRIFICE’S LAST BREATH—
Lucasta’s screams were quieter, feebler now. Her sight was getting hazy. She didn’t understand what was happening.
Didn’t her father love her anymore?
NOW, REMEMBER, IF YOU WISH TO CREATE MORE AGIELS—BECAUSE ‘AGIELS’ SOUNDS BETTER THAN ‘ANTI-MAGIC STICKS’! DO TRY TO KEEP UP—YOU MUST BIND THEM TOGETHER—YES, A MODIFIED WIZARD’S WEB. THEN THEY AND THEIR WIELDERS WILL BE BOUND IRREVOCABLY TO YOUR BLOODLINE.
Canton Rahl stood, with Lucasta’s blood staining his hands, and smeared out the pentagram. He struck Scinta across the head, knocking her unconscious to the floor. He was tired of her weeping and carrying on—had she always been this pathetic?
And then Caliana was sweeping down the corridor toward him, her hands already extended, lightning leaping from her fingertips—Canton snatched up one of the anti-magic sticks—agiels, the Keeper called them—and almost dropped it again, the pain was so intense.
But he saw death in Caliana’s eyes, as they darted from Lucasta’s cold corpse on the stone slab behind him, back to Canton’s blood-smeared hands. And Canton clung grimly on to the agiel.
The lightning met the anti-magic embedded in Canton’s agiel and was reflected back—Caliana only just managed to duck the lion’s share of it, and it singed her hair.
Panting, she glowered at him. She pointed a finger, but this time, no lightning came. Instead she spoke, and her words were like ice. “Murderer. Monster. From this day forward, Canton Rahl, I curse you and all your line! Until the day comes that another daughter as gifted as Lucasta is born to your blood, and survives your cannibalism—as you have murdered Lucasta, so shall one of your own blood kill you, and on through the ages. Never will you know the happiness of a family’s untainted love—your own blood, your greatest enemy and last betrayer.”
Caliana drew herself to her full height, and spat. “That for your tyranny, Canton Rahl. I will see that you are reviled from here to the frozen Northern reaches!”
And she was gone, in a flurry of crackling magic. Canton was surprised to find he could feel it, its structure sparking up his arm through the agiel.
The agony made him long for death, and he put the weapon down. He would need to train his most devoted soldiers to use it; he had no desire to touch that thing again.
Only then did Canton meet his son’s eyes. For a moment—just for a moment—something in their cold depths made him shiver with unfamiliar fear. But the feeling was gone as quickly as it had come, and Canton could congratulate himself on getting rid of his mother-in-law at last.
Forgotten, Lucasta’s silver throwing star smoked ominously on the cold floor.
“Why does it hurt?” Canton asked the Keeper, summoning Him once again from the safety of a pentagram.
“THE AGIEL? IT IS MADE OF ANTI-MAGIC. IT MEETS THE MAGIC THAT RUNS THROUGH THE BLOOD OF EVERY LIVING CREATURE, AND THAT MEETING IGNITES A WAR WITHIN YOUR FLESH. DID YOU EXPECT YOUR REQUEST TO HAVE NO PRICE?”
Canton digested this. There had to be a way to subvert that terrible pain—perhaps fool the agiel into ignoring someone’s magic. But that was a problem for another day.
“One more question,” he said, staring into the swirling black and green mists. “Why have you helped me?”
“IMPERTINENCE!” was all the Keeper said, and then He was gone.
Once in the Underworld, the Keeper allowed Himself a small cackling laugh, in anticipation of the many, many souls he would soon receive as Canton Rahl tried to control the agiels. It would take him years to discover that most men were too weak to even survive the touch of an agiel.
Furthermore, the dark anti-magic would spread, touching the lives of many—and every soul an agiel sent to the Underworld would have to struggle that much harder to escape the Keeper’s dominion and find the Creator’s Light.
The Keeper laughed again. The only thing that puzzled him was the girl—Lucasta Rahl. He should have received her soul by now. Child she might be, but so much dark power had come from her death that the Creator could not find her first.
So where was she?
Caliana left D’Hara by dawn. As she turned back to survey the land that had once been her home, her heart held nothing but hate.
Hate for Canton Rahl, the monster who had stolen first her kingdom, then her daughter’s loyalty, and finally her granddaughter’s life. Lucasta had been her last hope.
But all was not lost, Caliana thought, as she concentrated, sealing herself and the land before her—the place with the wall of the Creator’s words—from D’Hara and its environs.
This veil was not as strong as that between the Land of the Living and the Underworld, but it would hold against Canton Rahl, who, if he came this way, would bring nothing but destruction.
Caliana’s curse had done more than doom all the Rahls, down through the ages, until they changed enough to nurture and love a gifted daughter in her own right—it had bound Lucasta’s spirit to that long wait. Someday, a child as yet unborn, a girl of the Rahl blood and Caliana’s ancient inherited power, would heal the Rahl line, break the curse, and embrace Lucasta’s spirit—giving Lucasta the closest thing to the life she had so unfairly lost.
In the meantime, Canton Rahl and all his descendants would suffer for his terrible crime. And Caliana smiled sharply at the veil between her and the cursed Rahls.
It was some months since Canton Rahl had finally sent his mother-in-law packing. The agiels were still lying in the smudged pentagram where Lucasta’s body had lain. No one was able to touch them for more than a few seconds before crying out for release, begging for death, and, if forced to continue holding the agiel, either losing his sanity or his life—sometimes both.
Thus, Canton Rahl was at his wits’ end, when Phaedrus brought down the undercook’s youngest daughter, who was about Lucasta’s age.
“She’s a little girl,” protested Canton. “This is getting ridiculous.” Nonetheless, he picked up the agiel (as the man who had cast the spell that had created them, some of their fearsome anti-magic lodged within his soul at all times, and so he still held the record for longest contact), and struck the little girl across the cheek with it. She whimpered, fell to the floor—
Canton took frequent breaks, but soon had a rhythm going. He tortured the little girl every day for weeks, until, finally, she could pick up the agiel herself.
She frowned at it. Then at him.
Canton raised his eyebrows. Trained to withstand the unimaginable pain of anti-magic she might be, but a warrior she was not. Furthermore, he held the Bond over her head, as he did over all his subjects.
Then, behind her, he saw a flicker. And then a shape. It resolved itself into that of Lucasta, wearing her customary gown, free of bloodstains.
She pouted. “Father?” she asked.
Bemused, he nodded.
“You’re mean,” Lucasta told him. “Even meaner than Phaedrus.” And she stuck out her tongue at him and then disappeared.
The next thing Canton Rahl felt was the pain of the agiel striking his neck.
The last thing he felt was the sword protruding from his chest. He hadn’t felt it going in, that had been lost in the painful mists of the agiel. But he felt the tip, nice and sharp and shiny, and thought that someone had better make sure to clean it before it rusted—look at all that blood.
The last thing Canton Rahl saw was the face of the little girl he had tortured—the little girl who now knew how to wield an agiel.
The little girl his son, Phaedrus, had brought him. Whom Phaedrus had later promised the honor of helping him kill his father.
Not that Canton Rahl was aware of this; it was kindly explained to him by the Keeper, when he woke in the Underworld.
Not until he had a son of his own did Phaedrus discover one of the most intriguing side effects of his father’s greatest casting.
Sufficiently determined, Phaedrus could bring the dead back to the Land of the Living. Furthermore, he could grant this power—called the Breath of Life—to anyone he chose.
This was, of course, decades too late for Lucasta, nor did this trouble Phaedrus, who had always considered her a bit of a brat.
His Mord’Sith—the girls he trained to use the agiels, and to love him for so honoring them—obeyed him. A little obedience was worth more than Lucasta’s leaps of imagination any day.
Still, when Phaedrus watched the Breath of Life being given, he could almost hear the Keeper screaming, “NO!!!!!” which reminded him of his father’s look of surprise, right after Canton Rahl had slid off Phaedrus’s sword.
That memory always cheered him.
And so the Rahl family remained cursed—never did a Lord Rahl die peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his loving family. And never was a gifted daughter born to them, who might break the cycle of death and betrayal.
Never—or at least, not yet.
no subject
What an incredible story - not only encompassing the origins of agiels, dacras and the Mord'Sith, but also, I presume, giving us a framing device for your on-going story. I am venturing a guess that Nila will be the next gifted daughter born of the Rahl bloodline. Hopefully, Darken will be a wiser and more loving father than Canton. And Kahlan will certainly be a more effectual mother than poor Scinta. Nicholas is an interesting parallel to Phaedrus with Confessor powers on top of everything else. But will the cycle be broken?
You can weave such a dark engrossing tale, but also include bits of humor which do not detract in any way from the intensity or suspense. I loved the bit where the Keeper decides to call the anti-magic sticks agiels because it just sounds better.
Sadly, it seems as if Scinta, as ineffectual as everybody thought her to be, is maybe the only person who actually loved Lucasta for just being a little girl. Even her grandmother wanted to put her to use - even if it was for a good end.
no subject
I am venturing a guess that Nila will be the next gifted daughter born of the Rahl bloodline. Maybe *shifty eyes* Nila would have to have the gift--and she may not end up the only candidate. However, the curse and Lucasta WILL eventually appear in Princess Rahl. But will the cycle be broken? Always the most interesting question...
Sadly, it seems as if Scinta, as ineffectual as everybody thought her to be, is maybe the only person who actually loved Lucasta for just being a little girl. Even her grandmother wanted to put her to use - even if it was for a good end. Yes--good point. I'm afraid Lucasta didn't exactly luck out, family-wise. But the Rahls do suffer from having abusive parents--hence my idea for the curse :)
I'm glad you like it!
no subject
I don't think the show is clear on the underworld; until the veil was torn it seemed that "good" souls went to a sort of Elysian fields (we see Viviane finally find rest with her Seeker there) while "bad" souls go to the Keeper. When the veil was torn all souls went to the Keeper. Here you propose a sort of limbo where all souls arrive at the underworld and "good" souls go to the creator, "bad" or "tainted" souls remain with the keeper - at least until they've paid their debts as it were...which is interesting.
And I love the pics of Lucasta - if I'm right she's the child vampire Claudia played by Dunst, who shared some of Lucasta's traits in her power and wilfulness and was also a pawn between those who created her.
no subject
I don't know the bookverse so I don't know how much liberty you've taken here. I don't do bookverse, so...a lot ;) That is, sometimes I take a few place/people names, that kind of thing, but I don't think there's any of that in here.
I don't think the show is clear on the underworld. It's not, really; I didn't even realize until I saw the special features bit with Craig Horner that the 'mark of the Keeper' actually means, everyone Richard kills in season 2 goes to the Keeper. But if the Veil being torn means that anyone dying in season 2 goes to the Keeper, is this redundant? And then, after the Veil is sealed, do the people Richard killed/who died of natural causes or banelings get another shot at the Creator's Light, or not?
if I'm right she's the child vampire Claudia played by Dunst, who shared some of Lucasta's traits in her power and willfulness and was also a pawn between those who created her. Correct :) It seemed right.
no subject
And if that's the case then, yes, the torn veil does make the mark redundant because it seems that everyone goes to the Keeper - even the monk who'd sheltered Panis and who died of old age went to the Underworld. I really hope everyone got to their rightful place afterwards or seriously, the Creator is not doing her job.
Now I'm having thinky thoughts about the ineffectiveness of a female Creator and wondering if that's influenced by Goodkind's apparent misogyny.
no subject
I really hope everyone got to their rightful place afterwards or seriously, the Creator is not doing her job. I like to think they did, it just took longer. Like, that first everyone goes to the Keeper, except for innocent babies or Kahlan, because she's the Creator's favorite, and then they have to work/evolve/learn and grow before they can get to the Creator.
Goodkind--I know he came up with the sandbox we're playing in, but sometimes, I really hate that guy.