Warheart: Sword of Truth: The Conclusion (Sword of Truth 15)

“Dark forces have conspired to keep you here,” Naja said. “It took many good spirits to fight this battle. Once your grandfather ripped the demons away from you, some of those here were then able to see to it that they sank into the forever of darkness. They cannot return for now.”

“But there are other dangers for you, here,” Magda said.

“You must return to the world of life,” Nicci told him.

“And so must you,” Naja’s soft voice said, “for the ones who never sleep and walk like men are coming.”

Nicci turned in alarm. “What do–”

Naja’s glowing finger touched Nicci’s forehead.

In an instant Nicci was gone.

“How do I return? Is there a way?” Richard asked as he looked around at all the good spirits. “There are things in the world of life I must do. The lives of a great many people depend on me. I need to get back. I need to help them. I can’t let Sulachan have his way with them.”

The spirit of Merritt smiled knowingly. “That is the anger of the sword. I recognize it. It is here with you. Even in death, because it is bonded to you, your soul carries the righteous anger of the sword. Only the right person could do such a thing. Only the bringer of death could bring the power of the sword and life itself to the underworld.”

“Well, if I’m the one, then I need to get back there. Sulachan and Hannis Arc are going to destroy the world of life.”

“Indeed they are,” Naja said.

“I can’t stop them from here,” Richard said, his soul filled with urgency. “I need to get back there.”

“The righteous rage of the sword as well as the spark of life you carry still anchor you to the world of life,” she said, “but the world of the dead still holds you here. The skrin guard the veil so that none from this world may cross back.”

Richard remembered the bone woman telling him about how the skrin, the guardians of the veil, held the dead back in the underworld and kept them from coming through the veil.

“Sulachan crossed back,” Richard said.

“With your blood,” Naja reminded him.

“Kahlan crossed back.”

“With a lot more than merely your blood,” Naja said.

“So how do I get back?” Richard asked the constellation of glowing spirits around him. The spirits all stared back but none seemed to want to answer.

When Zedd laid a sympathetic, glowing hand on her shoulder, Naja finally spoke in a somber tone. “You must have a living bridge.”

“How do I find this living bridge?”

“You don’t,” Naja said, “it must find you.”

“I don’t understand.”

Zedd shook his head in great sadness as he drifted closer. “I’m afraid, my boy, that someone would have to give you their life as that bridge. Their soul would have to join us here.”

“It’s the only way,” Naja confirmed.

Denna’s glowing arm embraced him protectively. “You need the help of others, Richard. You need the life of another.”

“No,” Richard said, drifting back, shaking his head. “I can’t allow someone to give their life for me. There has to be another way.”

“They would not simply be giving up their life for you,” Zedd told him in a comforting voice. “They will be giving up their life for everyone, and out of love.”

“Until and unless that happens, you have no way back,” Naja said. “If it does not happen, you can never return.”

“If you can’t return,” Magda said, “then the fate of your soul mate, the fate of the world, will be in the cruel hands of Emperor Sulachan.”

“And I can’t help from here?” he asked, anger at his banishment rising in his soul. “There is nothing I can do?”

With great sorrow, Magda shook her head.

Denna’s arm embraced him, trying to give him comfort. Richard felt no comfort.

But he did feel rage at Sulachan for bringing this on him and everyone living.

“Good,” Merritt whispered. “Let the rage fill you. If you ever get the chance to use it, it will be ready and there with you.”

Richard reached for the hilt of his sword, and even though he could almost touch it, it wasn’t there. It was on the other side of the veil, in the world of life. Kahlan was there, on the other side of the veil, in the world of life.

So was Sulachan.

CHAPTER

18

Kahlan flinched when Nicci suddenly gasped and opened her eyes. Red flinched as well and jerked her fingers back from where they had been resting on Nicci’s shoulders.

The sorceress’s face looked gray in the candlelight. Her hands trembled. Her beautiful features reflected the anguish of what she had just experienced. The witch woman, while not as ashen as Nicci, looked gravely troubled.

Kahlan hadn’t been able to see what Nicci was seeing beyond the veil, but she felt some of it, even if distantly, and she could read the tension of Nicci’s face as tears ran down her cheeks. It was clear that it had been a profoundly difficult journey. What Kahlan most wanted to know, though, was if it had been successful. Nicci gave no clue.

The terrible, inky darkness surrounded them, isolating them inside the circle of light from the candles set out at the points of the Grace. The darkness also shut away the sounds of the world of life around them.

As that darkness gradually began to recede, Kahlan could begin to make out the walls of the room. She saw the window materialize. She could also begin to hear distant sounds.

As the darkness receded, taking the underworld with it, she was finally able to see the bed again. She stood in a rush and carefully stepped over the lines drawn with her blood to get out of the Grace. Once free of it and past the candles, she rushed to the bed and put a knee up beside Richard, leaning over him, looking for a sign, looking for life, expecting–hoping–to see him smile up at her.

His lifeless hands still gripped the sword. He had not drawn a breath. Kahlan had been sure that Nicci would have been able to do something and that now Richard would at last draw a breath. She had hoped against hope that he would somehow return to life, return to her.

She had hoped to see his eyes open to look at her.

Instead, he remained as dead and still as he had been before.

Nothing had changed.

Kahlan laid her fingers tenderly over his big hand. There was no warmth of life in it. His eyes were still closed, closed to the world of life. His soul had not returned from exile to his worldly form.

“Dear spirits,” she whispered, “why haven’t you sent him back to us?” She felt a tear run down her cheek. “Dear spirits, I need him. We all need him.”

She remembered the dark ones enveloping him with clawed arms and black wings. She remembered the terrible sight of him being smothered by those inky demons and taken down into the darkness.

Nicci joined her to stand beside the bed. “Kahlan … I’m sorry.”

Kahlan wiped a tear from her cheek. “Why didn’t it work?”

The witch woman hurried to join Nicci, looking exhausted and confused. “What happened?”