[Salazar]

Another vid.

http://vimeo.com/43940553

Keen to efface the bland truth that he writes on a Macbook Pro like the rest of us.

[Gattsu25]

Don't forget the part where they cut holes into a man just to rape him harder.

I must read this. lol

What book (or series) is this from?

[Keen]

Tormund over at westeros has started the new book and is providing chapter summaries (and entertainment)! 

Choose death and go here

[Salazar]

Where is the thing available ? I'm not seeing it on Amazong.

Edit: Aha, bought. Ready to go. Will just carry on in this thread.

Hmmm, there is a prefatory message.

WE APPRECIATE YOUR SUPPORT This is an author self-published release. It is supported directly by you, the reader. Your purchase is vital to the success of this novel and our ability to continue offering these stories. Thank you for purchasing The First Confessor

No worries, TG. Bust dem shackles.

lmao,

This is a work of fiction. All characters portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

Put down the phone, ye wizards, dragons, winged wookies. Call off the lawsuits.

[Limedust]

Evil chickens.

This is the precise moment in the series where I shut the book, said "Holy shit, Terry! Really?" and stopped reading. Not that this part was any worse than the numerous volumes before it, just more of a gradual build to that particular straw.

FWIW, I enjoyed the television series in the same way I enjoyed the Xena series. Pure, over-the-top hilarity.

[Salazar]

CHAPTER 1

THE FORMATTING OF THIS BOOK IS FUCKED UP, YO.

”I have heard it told,” the old woman* confided, “that there be those walking among us who can do more than merely speak with the dead.”

*Alarm fucken bells. Accept no food. Watch her hands. Know where the exits are.

Magda looks up, and the old woman is leaning over her shoulder as she talks. She frowns, as well she might. Dangerous shit. Not a world in which you want folks sneaking up on you mumbling about necromancy.

She asks Tilly (gonna lay a bet that Tilly either kills or is killed) what she is on about.

Tilly (who has faded blue eyes - she’s probably blind. Terry likes his blind characters) says that down in the depths of the Keep (the wizard hangout - we must be at Aydindril. And pause to fucken lol at Aydindril. what the fuck.) there are folks doing dark work speaking with souls.

[We thought we were going to hear about something more gnarly than just talking to the dead, but Terry has switched on us. Fuck.]

Magda tells Tilly to pipe down and stop believing crazy shit.

She stares around the room (probably blind) at dust and sunlight and stuff, and then down at a silver box that apparently holds all her memories.

Which are all she has. Something awful has happened to Magda. Tilly mumbles that she has a contact down in the Keep who knows about what the deadspeakers are doing.

And yes, they are bringing folks back from the dead. Tilly wants to tell Magda

”that maybe you could have brought him back”

Which is a pretty braindead/callous thing to say. Magda refrains from slapping/zapping/choking out Tilly and merely asks her what the fuck. Kindly, what the fuck now.

They chat about how benign Magda has been towards Tilly, a mere servant. Magda pats her hand and tells her

”We are all noble, Tilly. Every life is . . .” Magda had to swallow, fearing that another word would put her over the edge. “Precious,” Tilly finished for her.

Bleurgh. She continues, telling Tilly that when life is done, it’s done. This is patently untrue in the Goodkindiverse. And she kinda knows it.

Tilly doesn’t swallow it. Insists that her friend down in the Keep has seen wizards working for the war effort bring souls back, reverse death. And that she feels like Magda could make it happen for Baraccus [a wizard, we’ve heard that name before. He was a Temple of the Winds maverick], who was Magda’s husband.

Magda pretty much shuts her down. Sends her out. Tilly limps towards the door, still suffering from a broken hip that has never quite healed.*

*Bullshit. Watch for her sudden agility in later chapters. Old woman is a panther.

Magda contemplates that Baraccus had already gone to the Land of the Dead once, and had come back. Doesn’t seem plausible (for some reason) that he could do it again*.

*Book it. Baraccus is coming back. Maybe as Nasty Baraccus. Or pseudo-Baraccus.

Tilly suggests, hovering by the door, that Magda visit “a spiritist”. Oh Terry. You are not good at words. She says that Magda, although she has super-long hair and is the widow of the First Wizard, might be in danger now that he is gone. Might not be respected. Perhaps advice from Baraccus-in-the-beyond could help her handle herself. Heaven forbid she manage to hold it together on her own. A husband, even if dead, is essential.

Seems like Baraccus might have committed suicide. Magda sits and looks at the silver box, wondering why he had “done what he did”. Tilly calls out, and when she looks up she sees

Men, their faces in shadow, their hands clasped, stood out in the doorway. “There are . . . visitors come to see you, Mistress”

Magda seems to know them. She isn’t afraid, exactly, but wary and tired. And she knows Baraccus would want her to be strong.

As soon as all seven of them glided* into the room, Tilly hurried away, closing the door behind her

*Walked elegantly, I guess.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Welp. We’re away. Magda doesn’t seem to have powers - I guess she is going to acquire the Confessor gift at some point over the course of this book. Tilly is going to get herself killed. No doubt. If her limp is legit, and her eyes are truly a bit hazy, she is at a laughable disadvantage. The seven folks who came into the room are probably wizards. Hence gliding. Hence Magda’s trepidation, because they will do magic shit, which usually involves pain for women. No idea about the silver box. Maybe it’s Baraccus’s ashes. War ? Presumably against other wizards. Bodes well, though. Even Terry can’t make a magical war tedious. Holes will be blasted through midriffs. Guts will fly.

That was actually a somewhat meaty chapter, compared to the two-page drool he served up in The Omen Machine.

Bodycount: Technically 1, Baraccus. Count it as 0.25. I feel like I knew him. He should register on the deathometer.

Sexy Times: 0. Not even close. Seven men alone in a room with a widow is a classic Goodkind setup, though.

[Salazar]

Chapter 2



Magda slides the silver box to one side, leaving it with a collection of smithing tools, semi-precious stones that had belonged to Baraccus - which he had used to craft a War Wizard amulet.

When she had asked its purpose, he had said that it was an ever-present reminder of his calling come to pass, his talent, his duty, and his reason for being. He said that it represented a war wizard’s prime directive: to cut the attacker* down, to cut them down to their very soul. The ruby red stone in the center of the intricate lines represented the blood of the enemy

*Or the innocent. Makes no odds to a War Wizard.

Baraccus had left it behind when he jumped to his death off the side of the Wizard’s Keep. Several thousand feet - whoosh.

She looks up at the seven men, and recognises six of them as councilmen.

There was another man with them, his face shadowed by the hood of his loose brown habit. As they came closer, into the weak light leaking around the closed shutters, the seventh man pushed the cowl back to rest on his rounded shoulders. The man’s black eyes* were fixed on her, the way a vulture’s steady gaze fixed on a suffering animal. Men often stared at her, but not in this way.

HOLD THE FUCK UP. ALARM. ALARM. Black eyes ? How can he possibly be anything but super-evil ?

Black-eyes is Lothain, head prosecutor.

His features looked firm and densely packed, as if every part of the man was as hard as his reputation

Sexy talk.

Lothain has been carrying out treason charges against the Temple of the Winds team - the mob who took lots of magic stuff into the temple and then vanished it all away into the underworld. They apparently went a bit too far - hence the charges. One hundred wizards have been beheaded so far.

Lothain’s badass credentials just keep on rising. He went into the underworld to check out what was going on. Wasn’t able to fix anything, but it’s still tough.

He asks Magda why her husband killed himself. Why, with such a pretty wife, would he jump ?

Magda says she dunno.

”Really,” Lothain said in a drawl as he touched his chin and gazed off in thought.

Drawling and black eyes = Jagang, roid-rager who liked to eat fried chicken and torment nude sorceresses. TG obviously means for us to remember this. Lothain is going to kick some ass. Lothain has the Jagang physique, too. Bull-neck.

Magda asks Lothain what he is doing in her room, and he snaps back that he will ask the questions. She knows that he is right: that she will have to co-operate, even if he does seem like a categorically menacing sonofabitch.

-------------------------------------------------------

Good stuff. We have a villain already. You don’t get black eyes and stay legit. You don’t go to the underworld and come back without being fucked up. And beheading all those wizards is a Richard-esque move. Lothain doesn’t give a fuck. He is already cooler than most of the folks in TG’s previous book. Baraccus seems like the originator of Richard’s dippy tendency to go into a brutal trance with the sword - CUT SLASH CUT JUST CUT rabble rabble.

Lothain is going to try to kill/rape Magda. She needs those powers already. Seeing as TG published this himself, there's no reason for him not to rock out with his early style.

Bodycount: 0.25
Sexy Times: 0.5. Seems like Lothain’s Thing rose when interrogating Magda.

[speedpop]

Holy shit hahaha

[Salazar]

Book is already a startling improvement on The Omen Machine.

Self-publishing is manly as fuck. It's the woods-guide way to write. The war wizard, wind-in-your-hair, way to operate as a novelist.

[Clevinger]

Magda says she dunno.

lol

[The Technomancer]

Yes! The best thread on GAF is back!

[Salazar]

Chapter 3

Magda smooths her dress and tells Lothain to get to the point.

He flicked a finger out towards the shutters. “Well, there is the matter of the moon turning red.” Lothain strolled off a few paces and then turned back. “After I failed to gain access to the Temple of the Winds, others, presumably with abilities more effective for such a specialized undertaking than I, also made the journey. None of them returned”.

Basically, they just chucked wizard after wizard into the underworld and wondered why none of them were coming back. Clever. The moon turning red (although a red moon is not uncommon or unnatural in the real world) is the worst thing ever in the Goodkindiverse. It’s a symbolic gut-punch. Means the world is magically screwed.

Lothain gives Magda another “vulture looking at scraps of meat” stare. I think we all know what’s on his mind.

Turns out Baraccus chose the wizards who went on this doomed journey, one after the other. Lothain thinks, and has the temerity to say, that he might have meant for them to fail - that Baraccus might have sabotaged the effort.

Hard as she could, Magda slapped the man across his face

Lothain don’t care. A man with black eyes can take a slap. He nods, obviously filing this for reference when he gets down to business with Magda in later chapters. He mock-apologises for his rudeness.

Magda insists that Baraccus chose the best wizards for the job, and that it broke his heart that they didn’t come back. And eventually he himself went down.

Lothain asks if Baraccus made it into the Temple. Magda lies, saying she doesn’t know. Baraccus told her he did, and told her a bunch of other stuff she’s not going to tell Lothain. Which is risky. This motherfucker might be able to read minds. Interpose himself in dreams.

”You know, I’ve always been curious. Why would . . .” His frown returned as his black eyes again fixed on her. “Well, why would a man of such extraordinary ability, a gifted war wizard, a man whose talents included everything from combat to prophecy, why would a man like that marry a woman who had no ability at all ? I mean, other than . . .” He let his gaze wander down her body.

I believe this passes for a come-on in Goodkind. Lothain is totally into her. This is going to get awkward. She can’t explode him with magic or suck out his brains with a touch.

Magda starts to cry. She says that Baraccus loved her.

Lothain gives a villainous snort. What is love. Ptchah. You feeble creature.

One of the councillors, Sadler, steps in and tells Lothain to ask some meaningful questions or pack it in. Lothain accedes, and asks Magda if she knows about Baraccus having secret meetings with the enemy.

Magda could feel her face go red with rage. “Get out”.

And Lothain goes, pausing to drop some glib insinuations about how convenient it was that Baraccus left just when the enemy pressed their attacks, and how the moon still being red means that whatever Baraccus did had no positive effect.

Magda keeps angrily quiet. Lothain grins and warns her that he is thinking about cutting off her head. Presumably he will want to sex her up first.

------------------------------------

Lothain is quality. A proper evil character. Smug. Probably got insane powers. Committed with a quivering determination to doing something sexy/violent to Magda. The councillors are obviously weaklings. Irrelevant. Lothain runs this shit. And there is no Richard around to punch his spine out through his back. Magda's principal ally is fucken Tilly.

Bodycount: 0.5
Sexy Times: 1. Tensiooon.

[Veelk]

The thread title should probably be changed to accommodate for the new book.

[Salazar]

The thread title should probably be changed to accommodate for the new book.

I vote for "THE STORY OF LOTHAIN feat. Magda".

[Salazar]

Chapter 4

Lothain is gone. Councilman Sadler apologises to Magda for Lothain being such a swaggering badass.

Magda says no worries, but she hopes the council doesn’t support this notion about Baraccus having been a treasonous rotter.

Sadness softened his expression. “Baraccus was a good man. We all miss him. I fear that bitter sorrow over recent events may have clouded Lothain’s better judgement”.

This is obviously drivel. The other councillors all nod. Lothain doesn’t seem sorrowful at all. He’s having the time of his life. He’s probably kicking it in Aydindril’s red light district.

Councilman Cadell touches Magda on the shoulder and says she has to understand that all the little people out on the streets are terrified. Red moon. Wizards dying. War. They gossip, and Lothain is merely acting on their behalf.

Magda says it’s a bit stupid for him to be working as an instrument of public speculation. She has a point. But the councilmen are morons. They give a bureaucratic shrug.

”So what would be the purpose of this visit from the council ? Have you all come to discuss some of the matters I have pending before you ?”

They haven’t. She has no power anymore. She just hasn’t realised it yet. Baraccus leaping off the Keep has left her in the lurch. They shuffle their feet and say they have some other things to handle. Can’t bring themselves to tell her straight.

What they’ve come here to do, as Magda knew all along, is cut off her hair. Her status symbol.

”Do it, then,” she said in a voice finally gone lifeless and empty. “Carry out your critical custom. And then leave me be.” What did it matter anymore ?

She hears whispers in her head, the good spirits telling her seductively that life with Baraccus in the underworld would be killer, would be preferable to hanging out with Lothain and these guys. They let her keep her hair just above her shoulders. What this means, she knows, is that she will no longer be able to talk about important social issues to the council and be taken seriously. She’s devastated.

She tells Cadell to place the hair somewhere public so people can see it. Weird.

The councilmen file out. Magda feels terrible.

---------------------------------------------------

Pretty slow going without Lothain around. Magda’s pretty much fucked, though. No powers + no hair + no wizard husband. She could get taken down by a castle rat, never mind super-Lothain. The levelling-up required for her to survive this book, let alone do shit that earns her a position as its hero: I mean, goddamn. It needs to happen fast, and it needs to be enormous.

Bodycount: 0.25
Sexy Times: 1, unless you got some kinda fetish.

[The Technomancer]

Why does he end chapters in the middle of conversations? It makes sense when other authors do it because they usually switch to another character's story for a while and then come back, thus allowing the tension of the cliffhanger to build. Why on earth would you end a chapter in the middle of a conversation only to pick up on the very next page?

[Salazar]

Chapter 5

Warm summer air rising up the towering outer keep wall and spilling over onto the rampart ruffled Magda’s shortened hair, pulling strands around in front of her face. As she made her way along the deserted rampart, she reached up and drew her hair back. It felt strange, foreign, to her touch now that it only just brushed her shoulders rather than going down to the small of her back.

She reflects on how big a deal this is. It’s the central axis of social judgement in Goodkindland. It means people will listen to you, do what you say, potentially refrain from raping you.

She had cared about Baraccus, not how long she was allowed to grow her hair simply because she was married to him.

Well, that’s good, I guess. She’s not utterly vacuous. It feels like TG means that as a sentence of substantial moral praise.

Wait, wait. Sudden change of heart. She feels good that the hair is gone. She feels free. Who cares ?

She looks out over Aydindril. The wind tugs at her. It’s really far down, as Baraccus found out.

These massive battlements where she stood had watched her husband’s life end. This was the very spot where he had stood in the last precious moments of his life. She thought, fleetingly, that she didn’t want to follow him, but the whispers from the back of her mind overwhelmed those doubts. What else was there for her ?

Make your fucken mind up. God DAMN.

She anguishes over Baraccus, who had been torn up inside by the general misery of the war. She feels guilt at the idea of leaving behind those who had depended on her.

The night wisps, for example. lol. The poor ickle magical fireflies.

Her life no longer had a noble purpose, except to herself. And at that moment her own life meant nothing to her but insufferable anguish with no end in sight. She felt as if she was caught up in a raging torrent of sorrow. She just wanted the hopeless agony to end. Inner whispers urged her to end the suffering.

---------------------------------------------------

Pfffffffft. Transitional shit. Buffer chapter. If we’re going to care about your emotions, you got to decide what you feel and stick to it for more than a microsecond, girl.

At least Kahlan had some grit. Magda needs to muscle up.

Bodycount: 0.25
Sexy Times: 1, unless you got some kinda fetish.

[SerArthurDayne]

Oh, wow. This thread is back. I am very excite.

Busy at the moment, but bookmarked for later.

[Salazar]

Chapter 6

Looking down at the frightening drop over the edge of the wall, a drop of thousands of feet, Magda saw that the towering wall in this section of the Keep wasn’t perfectly vertical but actually flared out as it descended toward the foundation within the rock face of the mountain. She realized that when she jumped she would need to get herself some distance away from the wall to ensure that she cleared the steeply angled stone skirt of the wall or it would be a long, gruesome fall. Her muscles tensed as she thought of a drawn out, tumbling descent, repeatedly smacking the steeply angled wall and breaking bones all the way down. She didn’t like the thought of that. She wanted a quick end.

It’s a pretty tantalising visual prospect, as she describes it. I feel vaguely sure that she would lose consciousness/her brains on contact with this angled stone anyway. If she thinks she’s surviving all the way to the bottom, she doesn’t understand much about physics/physiology. That stone is gonna rip some limbs off.

She wants to hit the rocks at the bottom, though. Splat. Not bounce. Undignified, as much as anything.

She feels crushing sadness and she gets herself in a sprinter’s crouch, ready to boost out horizontally.

She keeps hearing this voice telling her to do it. Starting to think that these voices aren’t just metaphoric instantiations of her own doubts. Maybe Lothain is at work. But he can’t sex her up if she is in pieces all over the rocks. That’s his alibi, really. He wants that ass.

Then, an icy flash of comprehension. She remembers telling Tilly that every life is precious. What the fuck is Tilly going to think if she smooshes herself all over the Keep rocks only an hour or so after telling her that. Huh. She feels like it was a dream, not a conscious act, that brought her to this point.

SHE WANTS TO LIVE

But she was already moving too fast to stop, already flying out towards empty space

omg

---------------------------------------------------

Good stuff. She is totally being mind-controlled. Dem voices are real. Someone is puppetmastering her.

And there is one super awesome candidate. Your friend. My hero. The people’s champ.

Bodycount: 0.25 - BUT THAT MIGHT BE TICKING UP IN JUST A MOMENT.
Sexy Times: 1, unless you got some kinda fetish.

[Salazar]

Chapter 7

Her fingers claw at the stone either side of her, but the momentum is too much.

A scream catches in her throat.

Just as she lost her footing going over the brink of the stone wall, a powerful gust of wind rising up the side of the mountain caught her body, lifting some of her weight as she snatched at the wall to each side and helping her get back to solid footing. The push from the wind coming up the mountain had been just the help she needed to stop herself going over the edge.

Awwwww what the fuck. TG, if you were going to rescue her with a gust of fucken wind, you should have actually let her go over and then had the wind carry her back. It’s some stupendously improbable shit, but that’s WHAT YOU DO. This is just as absurd, but less exciting. Basic novelistic skills. Basic stuff.

Magda stumbles around a bit and eventually steadies herself. When she does, she finds a bit of paper wedged in one of the crenellations.

She couldn’t imagine what a folded piece of paper was doing, stuck there. It made no sense. Who would put a piece of paper there in the joint at the edge of the wall ? And why ?

Jesus fucking christ. Terry. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t let us see inside your process. Just keep on going, keep the flow up. Don’t look back. It’s too embarrassing. The paper is there, let’s see what it says.

It’s a message from Baraccus. Tells Magda that his time was up, that there is still stuff for her to do. Tells her that a palace will be built just out from the wall, and that her destiny lies in it. A destiny that involves finding truth.

Baraccus had a bit of prophetic talent, so she takes all this quite seriously. Her head spins. She feels acute gratitude. She has a reason to go on. She kisses the note.

---------------------------------------------------

Bollocks. Lothain will not be pleased. It was clear that Magda wasn’t going to get splooshed into gore, but the way it happened was simultaneously ludicrous and mundane. Hmmm. Her destiny is underway. It’s still not happening quickly enough for her. A sense of moral purpose isn’t going to keep her safe from a bull-necked authoritarian wacko with black eyes and a vulture-esque hunger for her meaty hips.

Stop wasting our time, Terry.

Bodycount: 0.25
Sexy Times: 1, unless you got some kinda fetish.

[Salazar]

Chapter 8

Magda finds her way blocked. There are lots of soldiers in the corridor, and she thinks, at first, that Lothain has come for her.

These men, though, were not dressed in the dark green tunics of the prosecutor’s office. These were hulking men, towering men, with bull necks, powerful shoulders, beefy arms, and massive chests. Under their leather armour they wore chain mail that was well used, scuffed, and discoloured by tarnish. She could smell the oil they used to help keep rust from their mail and weapons. The whiff of slightly rancid oil mixed disagreeably with the smell of stale sweat

Warrior pheromones.

She knows that these are some seriously nasty folks. They grin in the face of death.

A blonde man, about forty or so, steps out from the others. He’s a big bastard too. He has two bodyguards who stand right beside him, and they have metal razors around their forearms for gutting in close combat. They are Rahl guards. The blonde man is Alric Rahl. From D’Hara.

He tells her he’s sorry about what happened to Baraccus. He was a good man, etc. He asks if they can talk privately; she agrees; they walk off, and she asks if he has brought so many men because he is expecting trouble.

He says yup. Nowhere is safe. Three of his men have died since they arrived.

He hooked a thumb behind his weapons belt. “One was found in a corridor, dead from over a hundred stab wounds. Another died in his sleep for no reason we could find. The third suffered a mysterious fall from a high wall”

Aha. The voices. Clearly. Magda reckons that her case might be related. But she can’t be sure, not yet.

Magda wonders aloud why Alric needs bodyguards - he tells her not to be silly. Wizards can die from a cut throat just as easily as regular humans.

What he is here for, though, is wizardly knowledge. Knowledge to turn the balance of power in the war back in their favour. Because they need some clever new weapons.

”That’s why I’m here. That balance of power has shifted. We now stand at the brink of annihilation”

---------------------------------------------------

Mix of good and bad. Alric seems like a noble and powerful dude. Lothain won’t be in charge of the Keep while he’s around. Which is something of a shame. The deaths are good. Folks are being straight-up mind-controlled. All kinds of crazy stuff could happen. And the Keep being filled to the brim with beefy soldiers is an extraordinarily positive sign for some imminent bloody action. A Screeling. Some Mriswith. Some new stupidly named Goodkind hell-creature that can slice through heavily armoured troops.

There are definitely going to be more inexplicable deaths, though. Increasing in grisliness.

And one has to wonder if anybody has thought to ask why Lothain's eyes are black. Were they black before he went to the Underworld ?

Bodycount: 3.25
Sexy Times: 1, unless you got some kinda fetish.

[Salazar]

Chapter 9

Magda says she’s sorry about their impending doom, but she doesn’t see how she can help.

Baraccus says that she’s an important woman, she can talk to the council and other influential folks. She says nope, she can’t. Hair gone. Game over.

He gestured impatiently. “I know about the custom. It’s absurd. I can understand petty people paying attention to such trivialities when deciding the seating arrangement at a banquet, but beyond that it ceases to be useful. This is a serious issue. What does the length of your hair have to do with matters of life and death ?”

Nothing, obviously, but it’s still over. Magda says she’s a nobody.

Alric pulls some cringeworthy reverse psychology. Ooooh, well I am disappointed that my friend Baraccus married such a weakling. Such a pretty weakling. You must be killer in bed etc.

Mags is riled.

In a blink, Magda had the point of her knife poised motionless a hairsbreadth from his throat.

Good stuff. So she is weapons-trained.

Alric’s eyes twinkle. He tells her she can handle herself well enough to assist him. She toughens up a bit and asks what she can do.

---------------------------------------------------

More buffer. We learn that Magda can wield a dagger, at least. That Alric is pretty chill.

Bodycount: 3.25
Sexy Times: 1

[SerArthurDayne]

Do you actually have 103 pictures?

[Salazar]

Do you actually have 103 pictures?

Mord Sith cosplay is no joke.

Chapter 10.

”You must speak to the council and let them know of the threat, make them understand how serious it is,” Alric Rahl told her. “With Baraccus dead, it’s up to us, and we’re running out of time.” “What threat ?” A bit surprised, he cast her a suspicious look from under a lowered brow. “Surely Baraccus must have told you about the dream walkers”

YESSSSSSSSS. The real motherfuckers. The A Team. The unstoppables.

Yes, Baraccus did tell her. Dream Walkers were weapons made out of humans. They were the enemy’s greatest strength.

But Baraccus was clever.

”Well, because Baraccus understood what the spell did, he was able to work in reverse from there to create a close replica, even though it was not entirely functional, of what he believed the constructed spell would have to be like. From that approximation, he was able to ignite an artificial verification web. Once he had a functioning verification web, he back-traced the spell’s unique nodes and core elements to the men who would have created the real one”

Fantasy CSI.

Baraccus had a shadowy team working for him, and he used them to hunt and kill the men who created the spell, and to bring him the icon/object that held the spell’s power.

It was a black egg-shaped stone in a bone box, and when Baraccus touched it with his magic it sent a luminous spiral up into the air. To engage it further with magic would have turned you into a DW. He couldn’t deactivate it. Wouldn’t have been safe to try.

So he locked it in the Temple of the Winds, and then punted the Temple into the Underworld.

Bodycount: 3.25
Sexy Times: 1

[Salazar]

Chapter 11

So, they can move ahead tentatively believing that they just have to deal with the Dream Walkers that already exist. Which is still a terrifying prospect.

”Can a dream walker invade anyone’s mind ?” “Technically, yes, however entering a person’s mind is profoundly difficult, so, to help them, dream walkers use the person’s gift. In essence, they seize control of a person’s magic and turn it against them. Where dream walkers are concerned, having the gift is a dangerous liability”

It’s harder, for some reason, for DWs to exert control over ungifted minds. Like Magda’s. They can still get in there and wreak havoc, but it’s not as complete a form of control. Or something.

But Alric has a plan. A counter. His job was to come up with a way to fight back, and they managed to capture a Dream Walker.

But how do they know the captive is one ?

Black eyes. Totally black eyes.

And at this point, Magda says “Oh, we have a Chief Prosecutor with black eyes. He’s kind of an asshole and he wants to chop my head off, among other things. Alric, can we go and kill him immediately ?

But wait. She doesn’t say anything of the sort. WHY THE FUCK NOT. WHY THE FUCK NOT. I’M ACTUALLY MILDLY ANGRY.

The story glides on, no mention of Lothain. Craziness.

Alric developed a counter to their ability, a very complex spell that “I actually propagated within myself”. It protects him totally from their powers. He can’t make the same spell for everybody else, but he did come up with a way to extend its influence to other folks.

But it’s problematic. That’s why he needs her diplomatic assistance.

Because the way for people to be protected by Alric’s spell is to sincerely acknowledge him as their ruler. Like with Richard in the other Sword of Truth books. You gots to swear.

”To be protected, people must swear as follows. Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours”

Yar, totalitarian cult. But you gotta do it. That’s what makes things tricky. Because the council aren’t going to be easily persuaded of the virtues of a plan that gives Alric power over pretty much everywhere and everyone.

---------------------------------------------------

Absurd. Soul-dissolvingly goddamn ridiculous. Don’t tell me a character has black eyes, and then have black eyes diagnosed as the cardinal symbol of terrifying and lethal evil, and not JOIN UP THOSE FUCKING DOTS.

You deserve to die. Both of you. All of your friends. TEAM LOTHAIN.

Money is on Tilly being a DW-pawn. She’s made for it. Customised. No gift, doesn’t seem like a threat, all of a sudden stabstabstabstabstabstabstab.

Bodycount: 3.25 - set to rise vertiginously if they don’t get a goddamn clue.
Sexy Times: 1

[Veelk]

Did you skip 10?

[Salazar]

Did you skip 10?

Fixed. I back-traced the verification nodes and unique cores.


Chapter 12

From the things her husband had told her in the past and from what she had learned from Alric Rahl, Magda was coming to fully grasp the mortal danger they were in. It was only a matter of time until the dream walkers learned to use their abilities to find their way into the minds of those in the Wizard’s Keep. If something wasn’t done to protect people, such an event would be the beginning of the end.

Has TG himself forgotten that Lothain is a dream walker ? What precisely is going on ? Hell, what generally is going on ? THEY ARE ALREADY INSIDE THE KEEP. Someone kill him, dammit. At least force the issue.

Magda wonders about the moral issues at stake in signing over the known world to Alric in order to defend themselves from the DWs. She wonders, too, about her suicide attempt.

She thinks about the whispers, the voices. Yup.

She says she sees what Alric means, accepts his plan, and will do her best to convince the council.

But then pain slammed into her, so abruptly, so unexpectedly, so violently, that it stole her breath. Magda’s muscles locked stiff as the searing pain ignited in her head. It felt as if half a dozen hot needles were all at the same time being thrust into her ears, through her temples, and up into the base of her skull.

Alric frowns and asks if she is ok.

She’s really not ok.

She feels a thumping force hit her in the chest, and hears her ribs snap. She sees blood, her blood, in front of her. Rahl’s guards move forward - not to help. They see her as a threat. A crazy and possessed woman.

Rahl is yelling at her but she can’t hear him. She clutches his pants.

”Master Rahl . . .” she managed in a hoarse voice. Blood dripped from her lips. She could taste it in her mouth.

She manages to say the devotion, though. The banal swearing over of her entire existence to Alric, even tho she just met him. And the pain goes. The alien presence recedes.

She dodges death again. Lothain will need to work harder.

---------------------------------------------------------

Well, this just makes it ridiculously pressing to go and find Lothain and make him eat some steel. As in, if it doesn’t happen in the next chapter or so, Alric is contemptibly soft. It’s going to intensify Lothain’s resolution, though. He’s going to come at them through Tilly. She hasn’t said shit yet. No devotion.

Snapped ribs might slow Magda down a bit, although chances are good that she will shrug it off/TG will forget he wrote it.

Bodycount: 3.25
Sexy Times: 1

[Salazar]

Chapter 13

Free of the alien presence, but still in agony, Magda lay in a warm, velvety pool of her own blood.

She can feel broken ribs grinding against each other as she tries to breathe.

Alric leans over her and heals her up. Which sets Terry off on --

his blue eyes reminded her of looking up into a blue sky. As she stared, unable to blink, she was drawn into that calming colour. His eyes became the sky. She felt herself falling to that azure forever that became sapphire that became cobalt that became midnight blue that became simply midnight.

Holy shit. What just happened. Self-publishing is lots of fun until something like this happens.

Alric uses some Additive and some Subtractive magic to fix her. It does something to her emotions, too. She still misses Baraccus, but she’s not miserable about it. She’s ready to go.

They need to get to the council chambers. There is a session in progress. Alric suggests that Magda should clean herself up.

”No”. He frowned. “No ?” “No. I want the council to see me like this. They need to see the reality of the blood that will be shed by our people at the hands of the dream walkers if they refuse to listen”

Alric grins and says that she is a hardass. She says yup.

Of course, what people will see is a bedraggled woman covered in blood, and what they will think is nothing very complimentary or helpful.

---------------------------------------------------------

Chapter serves a marginal purpose. Alric and Magda might get together at a later stage. Alric has both sides of the magic. And they’re off to the council chambers, where Lothain is presumably hanging out. And there can hardly fail to be some degree of conflict. I mean, the motherfucker has black eyes. He just cracked Magda’s ribs up and needled her skull. End him, or he will come at you harder.

Hope Alric’s magic isn’t ‘exhausted’ by the healing effort. That would be some bullshit. He needs to be on point.

Bodycount: 3.25
Sexy Times: 2 - all that staring, my word.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 14

As she marched down the long carpet, men to the sides paused in mid conversation to stare openly. Women moved back. The drone of talking withered to whispers and then people fell silent as she passed, leaving a hush in her wake.

Alric and his two gigantic bodyguards are with her. She reaches the vast mahogany doors to the council chamber, and she strides right up to them.

The guards think, hold on a minute. She plays it confidently. Tells them she’s going in there. Alric’s presence helps to convince them that it might be a bad idea to stop her.

Once inside, she tells him to wait. Having him there beside her might make the councillors think that she is nothing more than his mouthpiece. He agrees. He doesn’t like it, but he sees her point.

An aristocrat is talking to the council when Mags strolls up. Someone called Vivian. Long hair.

She tells Mags to wait.

Mags tells her to shut the fuck up. Hair or no hair. Recognise.

Threatens to knock Vivian on her ass.

Now she has everyone’s attention. One of the councillors, affronted, asks her what is going on.

Magda met the gaze of each councilman, now that one of them had made the mistake of asking her to speak on the subject. “The dream walkers are in the keep”

---------------------------------------------------------

Good. So she does realise now that they have a serious problem, but she still seems not to have directly identified Lothain as the primary threat to her existence. Which is just extravagantly dumb. Cognitively vacant. And Alric is just as much to blame, probably more so, in that he is a warrior type. Where has your alertness gone, man.

And lol Vivian. She’s gonna die.

Bodycount: 3.25
Sexy Times: 2

[Keen]

I wonder if, in some Goodkindian attempt at a twist, alric will turn out to be the bad guy and that the Dream Walkers are just a ploy to get the entire New World to swear fealty to him!

[Salazar]

Chapter 15

The room goes crazy. Angry, scared, confused, the lot.

Councillor Cadell calls for calm. Councillor Weston says that the whole idea is ridiculous. Absurd.

Councilman Guymer shot to his feet. “You have no standing to speak before this body much less to interrupt us ! How dare you dismiss someone who was speaking on important matters and . . . “

Magda patiently tells them that what she has to say is a matter of life and death. Nobody cares about Vivian. They need to pay attention to the dream walker threat.

Councilman Hambrook leaned back and clasped his hands together over his ample middle. “Dream walkers, you say ?”

lol. I like him. Shame he will probably die. Fat folks get no luck in fantasy.

Guymer keeps squealing. Magda strides up to him and tells him to belt up and sit down. Staggeringly, he obeys.

Next it’s Weston who gives her lip. She slams her fist down on the table in front of him, making them all jump, and tells him to open his fucken eyes. She’s covered in blood. It could be them next.

She tells them that the Dream Walker might be eavesdropping on anybody’s thoughts. The state is at critical risk.

”The blood you see all over me,” she said, “is the evidence of the torture he was inflicting. If it is shocking to see, I promise you, you would not have wanted to hear my screams as I lay in a pool of my own blood and on the brink of death.” “And so I guess the good spirits swept in and saved you at the last moment ?” Councilman Guymer asked, bringing a smattering of laughter.

Oh man. Get it over with now, Guymer. Jump off the wall. You are all kinds of finished. Terry doesn’t let that shit slide.

She says no, she just swore to Lord Rahl. Like they should do. Like everybody needs to.

Guymer shrieks his objections. The others seem skeptical, too.

The whispers in the crowd fell silent as a man who had been watching from the shadows at the back of the room behind the councilmen stepped out into the light. It was Prosecutor Lothain. His menacing gaze was fixed on Magda.

---------------------------------------------------------

Steely work by Magda. Some deadset violent-passing candidates identified among the councilmen. You don’t snigger like that at a Goodkind heroine and get away with your testicles intact. Guymer is proper fucked. Boss entrance from Lothain. Timing was perfection. And as he stares, with the signature black eyes of a dream walker, at Magda, surely something must click in her brain. Please. This bizarre suspension can’t continue. Only Terry’s baffling, Keatsian capacity to remain in uncertainties could prolong such an OBVIOUSLY UNTENABLE circumstance.

Bodycount: 3.25
Sexy Times: 2

[Salazar]

Chapter 16

Lothain’s smile looked every bit as deadly as a skeleton’s grin*. “And how do you know, Lady Searus, that it was not really Alric Rahl’s own magic that was in fact tearing you apart from the inside, as you put it ?” “Lord Rahl’s magic ?” Magda gaped at the man. “Why would he do such a thing ?”

*Que ? Comment ?

Well, given the choice between two suspects - one of whom is a prick with black eyes, and the other who just healed your broken ribs and saved your life - it’s pretty goddamn clear, Magda. Don’t fall for his lies.

Oh god. Magda’s voice wavers. She wishes she didn’t sound so uncertain. She tries to rally. Says that Alric was a stoic ally of her husband, and that they have both fought hard against the enemy and the dream walkers. Hence his great trustworthiness.

Lothain smirks. Strokes his stubble.

”Are you saying, then, that your husband was all along a party to Alric Rahl’s plot to rule the new world ?”

Damn. That will play well with the crowd. Lothain is so smart.

Magda tries to bring the issue back. Says that the dream walkers are here [RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU].

Lothain says that he is sure that Magda genuinely believes that. But it all seems a bit too fishy.

Cadell chimes in. Says that it doesn’t matter, anyway. They’ve decided on a means to protect the public.

”Surely you don’t mean the towers ?”

Weston tells her to pipe down. That’s confidential. Magda won’t shut up. She is scandalised.

The magical towers they are creating will, ostensibly, “seal us off from the Old World and end the war”.

But the way to build them involves the sacrifice of thousands of wizards. They’re basically building these things with the life force of volunteer wizards. Magda says it is stupid, and barbaric besides. The Rahl solution is quick and easy and free.

”You claim,” Lothain said. “The question for us here remains, do you say this because you have been duped into believing it, or because you are a willing participant, a traitor plotting against the Midlands ?” The prosecutor cocked his head, as if inviting a confession.

Straight-up accusation. Magda is in danger. She realises this, and screeches back at him that he could cost many thousands their lives.

Lothain remains calm, and Magda plays her final card. Raises her arms, displaying her bloody body and clothes. Tells people that ignoring it will get them the same. Or worse. Tells them the words to the Rahl devotion, and suggests that they speak it or face the gnarly consequences.

The councilmen signal for the guards to get her the hell out of there, but she is already walking. Face blank. Swag. Some of the crowd whisper their support as she goes.


---------------------------------------------------------

Disappointed that conflict with Lothain is still verbal. That needs to change. Magda did well, though. I don’t quite know why Lothain doesn’t just have her brought up on charges and killed. The council are obviously a pack of miserable bastards who could crumble if he pushed even lightly.

Bodycount: 3.25
Sexy Times: 2

[questionmark]

I wonder if, in some Goodkindian attempt at a twist, alric will turn out to be the bad guy and that the Dream Walkers are just a ploy to get the entire New World to swear fealty to him!

Doubt it. Isn't Alric mentioned in SoT as the guy that started this particular practice? Also, Magda is the first confessor, right?

[Salazar]

Also, Magda is the first confessor, right?

Yar.

Next few chapters will need to be treated as a group. It would be giving Terry too much credit to regard them as meaningfully distinct.

[Keen]

Doubt it. Isn't Alric mentioned in SoT as the guy that started this particular practice? Also, Magda is the first confessor, right?

Hence the twist! But that might be too subtle for Tairy.

[Keen]

Yar. Next few chapters will need to be treated as a group. It would be giving Terry too much credit to regard them as meaningfully distinct.

I applaud your effort, the guy at westeros has done three posts for 64 chapters.

His updates are more cliff notes, yours are much more detailed (ands therefore better).

[Salazar]

Chapters 17-18-19-20



Magda checks in with Alric on her way out. His troops are nearby, looking ready to mess folks up if need be. He signals for them to calm down.

Back inside the council chambers, despite the calls for order, things were not returning to normal. The crowd didn’t want to go on with the agenda. They wanted answers to pointed questions about the threat from the dream walkers

Alric notes that Magda has made a bunch of enemies. She knows, but she doesn’t really care. He thinks that, nonetheless, she might be safer with him at the People’s Palace. Which is to say, his palace. She declines, though. Wants to defend Aydindril.

Lothain’s conspiracy theories are starting to gnaw at her. Alric says, rightly, that it’s garbage.

They banter a little about Baraccus. Why he killed himself. They suppose that it must have been the only way to achieve something of extreme and express significance.

Alric tells her he has done something sneaky.

”when I first arrived I went to those who do the work of protecting us—the officers and the gifted working here—and laid out the situation. Military men understand threat all too well, and grasp the value of an effective defence.”

A bunch of them have made the devotion. Which is good news. Before Alric goes, Magda makes him promise that this isn’t all just a power grab. He says nope. He just wants to grind out the dream walkers. Got to eliminate em.

---------------------------------------------------------



Magda is in a stone passageway, deep in the Keep.

Water seeping from joints in the rough stone blocks of the walls had in places over many years built up spongy, slimy mats across the floor. At times Magda had to hold her breath against the stench of rat carcasses rotting in puddles of stagnant water.

Tilly is with her. There is crazy magical shit going on around them. Massive thumps are dislodging grit from the walls and the roof. Wizards are creating and testing weapons and spells.

There have apparently been lots of bodies found in these passages. Badly mutilated.

Too badly mutilated, yesyes, to have been the work of a man. Sum kinder animal, maybe, zurr.

They hear screams in the dark. Magda has got Tilly to swear the Rahl devotion - which is something, at least. Would only have taken a knife in the throat.

They bump into some wizards.

”Do you know who screamed ?” Tilly asked. The man had to turn sideways a little in order to shuffle past. “Yes,” he said, anger charging his tone. “Merritt just got another two men killed. A third was injured. That’s who you heard screaming”

Supposedly, this Merritt refused to continue to help crafting a magical weapon. And they’re trying to do it without him. And it’s proving a lethal attempt. As the men move past, Magda sees that they are splattered with gore.
----------------------------------------------------------------



Magda thinks about Baraccus. How much she loved him and vice versa. She thought she remembered the name Merritt, but couldn’t summon a face.

Huh. It has apparently been weeks since Alric left. Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Terry.

Even though he has left, she can still “feel him through the bond”. She decided, eventually, to accept Tilly’s suggestion that she meet with a “spiritist” to try and reach Baraccus. Get more answers. Find out why he jumped.

The passageway finally emptied them out into a vast, narrow chamber that rose up like an enormous split inside the mountain. Fine-grained granite blocks lined the soaring walls. The chamber was perhaps half a dozen stories high, yet only as wide as the public corridors up in the Keep where merchants sometimes sold their wares from small carts or stands.

Magda sees a cat and throws it some chicken strips, before taking some for herself and giving some to Tilly.

There are wagons filled with bloody bandages. They’re nearing the areas where magical weapons are created from people. The failure rate is seemingly very high.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

”Over there,” Tilly gestured to an entryway, set back in the shadows, some distance down on the far side of the vast chamber. “We must go down that way”

Magda keeps her face hidden. Doesn’t want to be recognised.

She thinks, again, about how important Baraccus must have thought this thing was to commit suicide for it.

As they walk, they see the aftermath of a forge explosion. Lightning, fire, feverish activity, men lying with broken swords embedded in them, limbs missing. This is apparently the work that Merritt abandoned.

[Wise man, Merritt. Looks like a fucking shambles.]

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Four god damn chapters to shuffle two characters through some passageways. This is narrative molasses. This is an almost arrogant approach to pacing. Fucking MOVE.

Bodycount: 5.25 - Two wizards killed in the forge explosion.
Sexy Times: 2

[Lord Phol]

As douchie as Terry might be (no idea what he's like, dont really care) I did enjoy the first two books in The Sword Of Truth series. Got pretty lame after that, Richard is too much of a fantasy superman.

[Salazar]

Richard is too much of a fantasy superman.

I don't mind him being overpowered. I mind him being such a blood-drenched moron with the moral intelligence of a mosquito.

Chapters 21-22-23-24

When they reached the far side of the long chamber, Magda glanced around, checking to make sure that the people were going about their own business and not paying any attention to her. Satisifed, she and Tilly slipped into a sheltering entryway.

Pretty sure nobody would care, Mags. Ur fancy hair is gone. Ur a nobody.

The architecture is relatively ornate, but there is a threatening air to the place.

This was the threshold to the place of the dead.

They walk down, and down, a spiraling stair, into a “spacious cavern”.

Without delay, Tilly entered the ninth opening , a number that she knew from Baraccus had great meaning in things having to do with magic.

I think Terry meant to write Magda instead of Tilly there. No big deal.

Cavities in the wall are crammed with bodies. Magda contemplates her decision to burn Baraccus’s remains.

There are people around them now. Wizards. Working on webs and spells and stuff. Reading books. They keep walking.

Tilly paused to the side of the covered opening. “Here be where you need to go, Mistress. I can take you no farther”. “Why not ?” Tilly glanced at the hanging. “The gifted who I sometimes work for, and who have told me about the woman, also say that I am not to go beyond these symbols hung here. They say it is only for the gifted to go beyond”. Magda frowned. “I’m not gifted”. “But you are Magda Searus. As the life of the First Wizard you had to live up to responsibilities others don’t have, but with those responsibilities came liberties not always enjoyed by those who are not gifted”

Gibberish. Tilly has no clue. She says that Magda will encounter a woman called Isidore, who will take her to the spiritist. Tilly also says that Magda should be careful, because the spiritist be a dangerous woman.

Mags sighs deeply, as well she might, and keeps going.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Magda lifted the rough cloth aside and cautiously entered what the map showed to be a complex maze.

She wanders around, feeling lost and getting increasingly nervous, but then manages to orient herself.

The place smells of death. Several times, she thinks she hears a sound behind her.

Eventually, she calls out. A woman’s voice answers, asking her why she is here. To speak with the dead.

The voice says, ok, come in. If you really want to. Magda has some final doubts (after so many goddamn chapters getting there, she’d better believe she has to keep going), but she goes in.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Magda pushes through some hangings into a round chamber filled with candles.

In the middle of the room a thin young woman sat cross-legged on the floor. She had very short fine brown hair and wore a dark, loose-fitting wrap of a dress that covered her legs entirely but left her shoulders and slender arms bare.

The woman has a blindfold on - one covered with magical symbols. She cocks her head and says “welcome”.

Magda asks her if she is Isidore. Yup. She asks Magda’s name, and says, ah, I know of you. Sorry about Baraccus. He was a good man etc.

Isidore asks if Magda’s need to talk to the dead is important. Magda says yes.

”Come back another day”

lulz.

Magda is mortified. She says that she insists. Isidore says she has no right to insist. Magda says it’s REALLY important. Isidore still doesn’t give a shit.

Not her problem.

Mags hits her with the dream walkers. Tells her they are inside the keep. Says that Isidore should give real thought to taking advantage of the Rahl protection. Isidore gives it some fey, otherworldly moments of thought, and then says yup. She wants protection.

Magda knows, now, that Isidore is the spiritist. Not her offsider or maid.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Isidore does the devotion. She and Magda seem best of pals, now.

She points out that the black cat has followed Magda into her chamber.

”People fear black cats, thinking they are evil. They are not evil. It’s just that they have some small ability to see between worlds”.

Garbage. The cat meows, Mags gives it more chicken. Isidore says she should adopt it and call it Shadow. Mags says she doesn’t need a cat. But they talk a bit more, and it emerges that a cat’s ability to see ghosts might come in handy. So Shadow becomes part of Team Magda.

Magda then hits Isidore with it - she IS the spiritist. Don’t try to deny it. Isidore admits it, and takes off the blindfold. She has no eyes. Skin has healed over them, as if she never had any.

Turns out she asked to have it done, to help her see into the spirit world. Magda asks to hear the story. Why does she care ? How does she think she has time to sit around listening to this stuff ? Isn't the world ending ?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bleurgh. We finally get to the spiritist and all that is waiting for us is a goddamn story about how she lost her eyes. Action. Fucking action. Don’t meet me at the end of a loooong goddamn passageway out of a Morrowind mod and have only a fucken story for me. It might have NOTHING to do with the main stream of this book’s plot. And has Shadow said the devotion ? Can cats be dreamwalked ?

Bodycount: 5.25
Sexy Times: 2 - and nobody is getting lucky, or Goodkind-unlucky, anytime soon.

[Alfarif]

My man is back at it! Friday is about to be a glorious HILARIOUS day. I am so glad that you're doing the reading so I can sit back and read the abridged version, because I really can't bring myself to read anything Terry Goodkind related anymore but I still want to know what nonsense he puts to page.

[Salazar]

Chapters 25-26-27-28-29-30

Isidore nodded, then started to reach up as if to wipe away tears. Her hand paused when she realised that she could no longer make tears any more than she could see. The hand sank to her lap.

Ugh.

She tells of living in Grandengart - which means “Guardian at the gates”. It lies on the southern fringe of the New World. The Old World did a heap of trade with it, and through it.

Then that trade stopped. Timber piled up. Food rotted. New rule in the Old World was freezing things up.

Isidore was the chief sorceress. Everyone looked to her for help and advice, but she had no ideas. She went looking, and came back to Grandengart the day after a General Kuno and his forces swept through the city. Kuno rounded up the people into the main square and told them to choose between the emperor (Sulachan) or the New World.

He didn’t mention what would happen if they chose incorrectly.

The two groups of voters were put on different sides of the square. Those who panicked and tried to run were cut down.

To the full, screaming panic of the people, most of the men who had voted against, along with their family members, were hoisted by their wrists up onto the poles. A small number of old men were made to watch as General Kuno’s soldiers walked up both sides of the road, slashing the terrified people hanging by their wrists. The soldiers pulled down strips of their flesh, leaving muscles and ribs exposed. Other people were stabbed in the legs or stomach, but left alive in their panic to hang there in helpless agony

The group of old men who had been made to watch were sent out to tell other towns what was going on. Kuno continued the process until there were fifteen-hundred poles, each carrying a Grandengart citizen, lining the road.

Isidore returned to this sight, and all she could do when she walked back into town was mercy-kill the folks on the poles. All but one of them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She reached the last man, Joel. A baker. She had feelings for him. He had lost his wife and unborn child. He used to bring her a loaf of bread every day.

He didn’t seem entirely beyond healing. He could talk.

He said that they’d had gifted among them, men with fearsome powers. He said that had I been there, I would be hanging on a pole with the rest of them, and then I would not be there to help end the suffering.

She threw Joel over the back of a horse and rode to a town called Whitney. His life was slipping away. He confessed to her that he had never been able to give himself to her, that he still cared too much for his dead wife.

She reached Whitney and buried Joel.

But

that was only the beginning of the nightmare.

--------------------------------------------------------------

A man and his wife helped Isidore bury Joel. She knelt, delirious, beside his grave and prayed that the good spirits would welcome him. The townfolk in Whitney had heard about what Kuno did. A detachment of troops from out of town were also there, and they rode with Isidore back to Grandengart to see for themselves.

”When we got there, the dead were missing”

All the bodies. Gone. The blood and bloodied clothes were still there, and the poles and stuff, but not a single corpse. Wagon tracks showed that the bodies had indeed been taken away. They would have been amazingly rotten by that stage.

Magda says that yar, that really does sound like a nightmare. Isidore says nope, the nightmare was still to come.

GET ON WITH IT. FFS. Terry seems to have forgotten that we are, in limited terms, sitting in a subterranean chamber listening to a potentially irrelevant anecdote while a black-eyed lunatic plots and slays above ground. Come the fuck on.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The troops went after Kuno. Which seems suicidally bold of them.

Isidore went back to Whitney. Didn’t really want to stay in Grandengart, and she knew there was a spiritist in Whitney. She wanted to know that Joel was safely with the good spirits.

”Sophia was much older, and quite experienced, although she told me that in recent years she had not practiced her craft. She said that while she was proud of the work she had done, she had spent a lifetime at it and was finished with the whole business of dealing with the spirit world. She said that she wanted only to live the remainder of her life in peace. She refused to help me”

That is apparently what spiritists do. They always refuse, and refuse, and refuse, and eventually say ok.

She chatted with Sophia, told her what she wanted to know. Sophia felt pity for the slaughtered folks from Grandengart, and said that she would help, on the condition that Isidore learnt her trade. She wanted to pass the knowledge on.

Yup. Yup. Anything. Ok.

”Then we got the reports that the soldiers who had gone back with me to Grandengart and then gone south after General Kuno’s forces had been slaughtered”

Wow. I didn’t see THAT coming. Fucken idiots. Who goes chasing a genocidal freak like that with only a tiny band of traumatised soldiers ? Inexcusable. No sympathy.

The dead and dying were tied together to the backs of wagons and dragged around for a bit.

Sophia, scandalised, starts teaching Isidore the craft.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

”How long did these lessons take ?” Magda asked. “Less time than I thought they would. Being the daughter of a sorceress and a wizard, I had a good start on what I needed to know”

Good.

Her dad had been an experimentalist. Additive and Subtractive magic, fooling with dangerous shit. Underworld shit. He did teach Isidore some valuable general philosophical lessons about balance, though. About life and death holding each other in tension.

All of her lessons were conducted blindfolded. They drank tea, chanted, ate herbs, used blood to draw stuff, created spells, and eventually pulled the veil to the Underworld aside. And Isidore looked through for the first time and was horrified.

”Horrified by seeing the world of the dead ?” “No,” Isidore said. “Horrified by the truth”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mags asks (perhaps sharing, by this point, the reader’s flaming impatience) what truth.

She saw Joel, his spirit. He was at peace. Mags wonders how it was that she was lucky enough to bump into Joel. Isidore dunno.

Spiritists just can.

The truth, though, was that the Grandengart dead weren’t there. Were not in the Underworld. Crazy shit. Seems logically impossible. Mags asks how that could be. Isidore dunno.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ungh. Let’s go, let’s go. Why not transplant Kuno from this story into the present ? Into Aydindril ? How much better would this book be if a mad general seemingly named after a boardgame was stringing folks up on poles outside the Keep and howling at Alric to come out and face him. Hmmmm ?

Bodycount: 1525.25 - including the Grandengarters and the detachment. For the hell of it.
Sexy Times: 2. Might even have to knock some points off that score if this goes on.

[The Technomancer]

A lot of this Mord-Sith cosplay is actually impressive from a technical perspective...is this series that popular, or is this specific style of red leather wear more common then I thought?

[Salazar]

I think the series has been pretty damn popular.

Of course, we've reached a point where Terry is self-publishing, so one would assume that there has been quite a drop. But I dunno.

[SerArthurDayne]

A lot of this Mord-Sith cosplay is actually impressive from a technical perspective...is this series that popular, or is this specific style of red leather wear more common then I thought?

I think it is a fairly common color for women's clothing, but not usually in the necessary styles. I have to assume these are very dedicated fans investing a ton of time or money.

It is such a nice color. I miss my bad ass red leather jacket that I got too fat for.

[Salazar]

Chapters 31-32-33-34-45

Isidore says that she only looked into the Underworld for a moment, but the physics of the place is such that

”that spark of time seems to last an eternity. In a way, it isn’t an instant at all. In a way, it is an infinitely large piece of forever.” Magda felt as if she were getting lost*. “How can that be ?”

*OR BORED.

Isidore gives Magda a brief and tedious explanation of the concept of infinity. There is a rope. The rope is long. You can’t find the ends.

She bumped into people from Grandengart who had died before the massacre, but none of them knew anything helpful. She also bumped into Sophia, who was glowing, and who told her to stop looking. That she had already found the truth she was looking for.

That is to say, that the spirits were still in this world. The real world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Magda can’t believe her ears.

She wiped a weary hand across her face. She feared to imagine the reasons for such a thing. She couldn’t begin to imagine the implications, the consequences. Her mind spun with a confusing tangle of thoughts. Isidore went on without Magda needing to prompt her.

She says Sophia’s glowing spirit swept towards her and ordered her to find the Grandengart spirits.

This became Isidore’s reason to live, to go on, to develop her spiritist craft. She tells Magda that she has a similar calling -- Isidore can see it in her eyes. Mags is a warrior. It don’t matter that she has no magic, or that her hair only comes down to her shoulders.

She also says that Mags will be regarded as a threat by the enemy. Which is something to bear in mind.

------------------------------------------------------------------

After Isidore came back from the Underworld, she went to the Aydindril council - a closed session. Lots of important wizards and soldiers were talking about practical and strategic war matters.

She saw a handsome wizard stand up and heard him addressed as Merritt.

”Merritt told the council that he was now confident that his method to create a person who could elicit truth was achievable”

FINALLY, THE CONFESSOR POWER. IT MIGHT NOT BE TOO LATE.

Merritt said he needed some weird cosmic calculations in order to make the spells work.

”The elder finally leaned forward again and said that there was nothing they could do to help him because they didn’t even know if such seventh-level rift calculations even existed, but if they did, the council didn’t possess them.

Merritt said he would go to the First Wizard, Baraccus, but Mags knows that Baraccus told her that he had been unable to help. Because the seventh-level magical algebra is in the Temple of the Winds.

Isidore was impressed with Merritt, and after the council had finished mumbling sorry platitudes about how grievous the Grandengart massacre was, they told her that maybe she should go and seek his help.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

”So,” Isidore said, “considering the possibilities of what the enemy could be doing with the bodies they had harvested and what they might be doing to prevent the spirits of those poor people from finding their rightful way into the spirit world, and why they would do such ghastly things, I decided that my best chance was to look for wizard Merritt”

Break for some excruciating discussion of Merritt’s identity as a “maker”. Terry is blatantly projecting his own manly handyman self-image, and it hurts to read. Baraccus was one too.

She recalled how his eyes lit up when he explained that makers were more, though. They were actually artists, he said, and true artistic ability was as rare among wizards as it was among those without the gift. And, like true artistic ability, a lot of people thought they had it, but few actually did”

This is fucken rich coming from Terry.

They chat a bit more. Isidore tells Magda she is a rare and wonderful person. Which Terry always goddamn does. He always has dopey side-characters tell his protagonists how freakishly special they are. Not a moment’s demonstration of their quiddity to the reader. Just fucking scrolls and scrolls of pissant testimony.

Magda tells Isidore about the war wizard amulet Baraccus made. How he said it represented his dance with death.

Isidore clutches her arm and says it’s ok. They’ll figure shit out together.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Magda put thoughts of Baraccus out of her mind as she returned to the matter at hand.

So Isidore went to see Merritt. Who listened, patiently, and then asked what Isidore thought he could do to help her.

She told him that she needed a new way to see the dead. And that she would need to be blinded to do it.

Merritt got offended and punted her out of his door. Eventually, she came back. She asked him, while stood at his door with his piercing hazel eyes reaching into her womanly soul, why Kuno’s forces harvested the dead. Merritt dunno.

They chat a a bit more about the process Isidore has in mind.

”he began to realise that I was not asking him to blind me so much as I was asking him to take my vision so that he could replace it with a new kind of sight”

-------------------------------------------------------------------

This is, admittedly, not as dull as it could be in Terry’s hands. But it’s taking too long. Far too long. I would markedly prefer Richard gibbering about how there is no valid pacifist option, how the world is a vortex of killkillkillkill.

Bodycount: 1526.25 - vale Sophia
Sexy Times: 2.

[Salazar]

Chapters 36-37-38-39-40

Magda and Isidore chill in silence for a bit.

Isidore then tells Mags about the day she lost her sight. Merritt had taken weeks to create the required magical things.

”One day a messenger delivered a note. It was from Merritt, saying he was ready and would arrive shortly. It asked that I be ready”

So Isidore, heart thumping, got ready. She laid out some differently coloured scarves on the table, knotted to reflect their colour. So that when she was blind, she could pick one up and know - if not quite see - colour.

She opened the door when Merritt knocked and

was surprised to see that Merritt’s eyes were red.

[See, I don’t know if she means they were red like Merritt was baked, or crying, or red like demon red. Who the fuck knows. Same with Lothain’s eyes being “black”. Dream walker black, or just black in some other way ?]

Merritt laid out on the table designs for a maze. What this maze would accomplish, essentially, was to draw the spirits of the dead towards Isidore. Because spirits like mazes, and dead ends. For some reason.

”I don’t see how you could allow a wizard to alter you in such a way,” Magda said, unable to contain her emotion any longer”

Isidore says that it was simple. She needed to toughen up. And besides, she can see much more now, in a way.

She can see . . .

Shadow hisses and rises up on its paws.

Magda blinked at the cat. “Shadow . . . What’s the matter with you ?” “You should run,” Isidore whispered. Magda looked up. “What ?” “Run”.

ACTION ACTION SWEET FUCKING ACTION. HUZZAH. IT ONLY TOOK US ABOUT TWENTY CHAPTERS.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mags jumps up. Shadow is going bananas. There’s obviously a spirit about.

Wind is blowing through the chamber. Feels bad. Magda has her knife out.

With a sudden roar that made Magda gasp, a dark shape burst out of the blackness of the hall and into the room. In the dim light Magda could see that it was a man. As Magda brought her knife up, Isidore ignited a blot of power between her palms that lit the room in a blinding flash of light

Shadow springs at the man but he forearm smashes it into the wall. Yar.

Isidore’s bolt of power bounces off. No effect.

She tries another magical laser and it doesn’t even slow him up.

Magda screams that she’s not leaving without Isidore, who says no, go on without me, I am DOOMED.

Mags gets a stab in on the man, ducking in under his swinging arm and jabbing up into his chest. He doesn’t care. He smashes Shadow again.

Lashing out with lightning speed, his clawed hand raked through Isidore’s middle. Isidore’s scream turned to a grunt with the impact of the blow. An arc of warm blood and flesh splattered across Magda and then in a diagonal line up the wall.

Mags keeps stabbing him. He keeps on shrugging the wounds off. Because he is, in fact, a zombie. His body is almost completely rotten. He powerslams Magda into the wall, and she recovers in time to watch Isidore get ripped in half.

He tore off the side of Isidore’s face and top of her skull with one powerful blow, the rest of her head with the next.

Mags scrambles to her feet and hurtles out of the chamber, Shadow running after her.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crying as she runs, Magda notices that her dagger is covered in zombie gore.

She is pretty much completely lost in Isidore’s spirit maze.

Then she saw the glow of his eyes off in the darkness, like some goblin from her childhood nightmares come to life.

Killer.

Somehow, with Shadow clinging to the zombie’s head, Magda manages to put a hard shoulder into his midriff and knock him over.

She runs into some of the gauzy cloth hanging from the roof. It’s covered with symbols. When she looks up from it, she sees that she is trapped in a dead end. The zombie is staring at her.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Magda could see his boots just on the other side of the hanging cloth. Her back was to the wall at the dead end of the corridor.

The zombie doesn’t seem to be able to move past the cloth. Something to do with its magic - the spells painted on it. He sweeps his zombie claws around, groping for Mags, and she keeps doging him.

She is safe-ish, but she knows she can’t stay there.

She had an idea. An idea she didn’t like one bit.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Magda shoves the cloth in the zombie’s face. It doesn’t like it.

She jams the knife into his hand, and, like usual, he doesn’t give a damn. But it does distract him enough for her to scoot past and back out into the maze.

She is still lost. She decides, though, to follow Shadow.

Zombie catches up with her again, the inept motherfucker. He has had so many chances to end her. It’s absurd. He gets his arms around her stomach, but she manages to pivot and get some more knife blows in.

Mags runs, runs, runs, and then, magnificently

Just then, something dark swooped in, hitting the back of his head. Magda could see the cat in the distance, waiting for her, so she knew it wasn’t the cat. [WELL YEAH, YOU FUCKEN DOOFUS. CATS DON’T SWOOP.] When she heard the loud cry, she realised that it was a bird. She saw broad, inky wings fluttering, and realised that it was a raven.

The ravens are coming. The ravens are coming. We are saved.

It distracts zombie enough for Mags to escape the maze and find some wizards. She tells them wassup. They head into the maze to find the zombie, but he ain’t there. She tells them that Isidore got splooshed.

Eventually, Mags picks up Shadow, and goes back alone for the bit of cloth that protected her from the zombie. Which seems stupidly reckless, but eh.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Good shit. Zombie failed hard, though. Managed to kill a blind woman, but failed to even substantially damage a cat, Magda, and a raven.

It seems to have a pretty hard outer casing of skin. I mean, Magda could get some gore out of it with the knife, but when she shoulder-charged it she said it felt like a rock. On the one hand, it must be pretty strong to obliterate Isidore with its bare hands. On the other hand, Magda should be a puddle of organs right now. No excuses.

Body Count: 1527.25 - Unlucky, Isidore.
Sexy Times: 2

[Machine]

Brilliant! I was wondering if the new ebook would be picked up in the old thread or get it's own new thread.

[Salazar]

Brilliant! I was wondering if the new ebook would be picked up in the old thread or get it's own new thread.

Because it can't really wait, I'm going to transcribe the Manifesto at the end of the book.

Let me say up front that I love printed books. Always have, always will. But fist and foremost, I'm a storyteller. As a storyteller, I now have a better way to bring you books. Stories have been with us since the dawn of mankind. Long before people invented writing, they told stories around the fire. Fantasy was born under the stars as parables of man's place in a mysterious universe. Later those stories were set down on clay tablets and then scrolls and animal skins, and later yet, in the last, thin sliver of storytelling history, printed on paper. Stories in spoken form were only recently able to be recorded so people could listen to them at their convenience. Comic books and graphic novels told stories with words and drawings. When film came along, stories became movies. The important thread through every form in which stories are told is the story itself. Every change throughout history has brought improvements and benefits to those who are eager for the stories themselves. I have long wanted to tell the story of Magda Searus, the First Confessor. Because this is such a special book, I wanted to bring it directly to the readers myself, without the filtering middleman of a traditional publisher, the long wait, and the higher price. Now, with ebooks, I am able to bring this story I have long wanted to tell directly to readers and also be much more involved in the entire process than was ever possible before. Publishers have long had total control over books, over what is printed and what you read. Now, they stand against change by refusing to buy any book from any author unless they also control the ebook edition. They do this to prevent any author from publishing his own ebook. They want to maintain total an absolute control over books in all forms. For me, bringing this book directly to readers myself was far too important to give up that right. I wanted to be involved in every aspect of the book, in its design, in the way it is promoted, in its presentation, in the messaging about it, and to be there for readers at every step along that path. I wanted to see it all unfold. I wanted this to be a first, a partnership between author and reader, without the heavy hand of publishers. By not selling the whole bag of rights to a publisher, I gave up a substantial advance. It also meant that I can't have a hardcover edition featured on bookshelves. Why then am I willing to forego a big advance, not be able to offer hardcovers, and go to all the effort and expense of doing this myself ? Because I believe strongly in this book. The story is what matters and I wanted it presented better than was ever possible in traditional publishing. I wanted to present it artfully, with my creative control, my vision, my passion. I wanted to breathe life into it the way I knew it could be done. I also believe strongly in the future of electronic publishing and all the tremendous advantages it holds for both authors and readers. Though it is a huge risk, I wanted to be the first among bestselling authors to do this because I wanted to show that it can be a remarkable, memorable, exciting experience for readers. I hope to have your support on this new path to bring great books directly from me to you at a great price. I love printed books so I completely understand why some of you prefer a paper book. But this story is more important than a mere format. I will have books in printed form in the future, but this one is special. For this special book, I'm asking you to try something new—after all, I am. Journey with me on this new path for a little while and let me tell you a story you have never before imagined and will never be able to forget. As many of you know, when Richard was taken to the Old World he was told what to carve, how to carve it, where it would appear, and when. It was all out of his hands. What did he do ? He carved his own statue, his own way, and revealed it on his own terms, one man taking his work directly to the people. THE FIRST CONFESSOR is my statue, my own creation through and through. The subtitle could very well be "It's my life. I am rising up and living it". Welcome to the New World. I've made the book less expensive and easy to get from anywhere in the world, day and night, without leaving home. I hope you will try this book that is so close to my heart and discover this moving story. Think of all you have to gain. It's true that this is not a book you stick on a shelf. This is a story you will instead always carry in your heart. Thank you for all your trust and support. Terry Goodkind.

Traditional publishers = The Imperial Order ?
Tom Doherty = Jagang ?
Terry = Che ?

[Salazar]

Chapters 41-42-43

Magda stood when the six men filed into the quiet room. A row of small, high windows let in glowing streamers of early sunlight that cut diagonally across the gloomy space.

Elder Cadell tells her to siddown.

Lots of people have asked Magda about the Rahl devotion since that day in the council chambers.

She asks the councillors if they know who/what killed Isidore yet.

Cadell says that Magda is a suspect for a lot of people.

Mags says bullshit. How could she thwack off Isidore’s skull with her bare hands. She had a knife, admittedly, but even then.

They ask her what she was doing down there. She says, duh, I was looking to contact Baraccus. They say, in any case, the killer can’t be found.

Smug asshole Guymer insinuates that she panicked and imagined it. He says that Magda has let everyone down by losing her head and not getting a good look. Fuck him.

Magda sat quietly, refusing to allow herself to rise to the bait. There were more important things at stake than proving herself to these men.

Anyway, Cadell says that they called her in because Councilman Weston had a great idea. Magda should be shipped out of Aydindril to take up a post as “representative for the people in outlying lands”.

lmao, so blatant.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Magda frowned as she looked from one grim face to the next. “You want to appoint me to a post to advise you on the peoples of the smaller lands ?”

Yar. Basically. They want her to spend her life travelling, as a roving ambassador.

Magda doesn’t believe this shit for a microsecond.

”There is also the matter of appointing a new First Wizard,” Elder Cadell said.

So they need to boot Magda from her plush quarters. She doesn’t care. She refuses the post, and says she will find new rooms somewhere else, somewhere much less comfortable if need be.

Councilmen not pleased.

When she bails, she sees Lothain, bull-necked, smirking, on the way out.

They have a prissy exchange.

He caught her arm, stopping her. His grip was hurting her arm, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of showing it.

She wrenches herself free and walks off, seeing Lothain go in for a meeting with the council.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was apparent to Magda that the city of Aydindril, though as busy and active as ever, was on edge. Concern weighed on every face. People in small groups eyed passing strangers as they talked in low, worried tones.

Magda knows they are right to be afraid.

She walks through the market. Fish, magic charms, screaming children, bread.

Panicked people didn’t listen to reason and didn’t want to her the truth. Sympathizers frequently stirred up resentment against the authority of military officers, the council, and even the First Wizard for being unwilling to accept the peace that the Emperor had offered. Peace, these people said, was as simple as letting Emperor Sulachan rule instead of the council. They wanted to believe, and so they did, that the rule of either was the same difference in their lives. If other people didn’t accept the wisdom of their notion of “peace”, the advocates were all too willing to use violence to make their point. It struck Magda as ironic that those who professed to want peace the most were quickest to use bloodshed to try to get their way.

[Remember, this is the Terry who believes moral clarity is a warrant to hack defenceless peace protesters into puddles of gore. He doesn’t know what the fuck he is on about, and it hurts to read him when he’s like this. Pacifists are always the first to use violence ?]

Mags had told Tilly about Isidore getting mashed up. Tilly blamed herself. Mags said nar, no worries.

She arrives at Merritt’s house. She knocks, someone answers and says they are busy. Go away.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where the fuck is Alric ? Lothain shouldn't be able to swagger around grabbing Magda's arm. Motherfucker should be forcefed his own spine. The councilmen too. If Alric is a legit Rahl, this kind of stuff should boil him up.

Body Count: 1527.25
Sexy Times: 2

[mre]

Love this thread. Thank you again for taking one for the team, buying Goodkind's masterpieces, and bringing them to the masses.

[Salazar]

buying Goodkind's masterpieces.

$8.99

Straight from TG in his desert lair to the reader.

Viva la ebook.