Even in the poor light that the reflector lamps provided to the grand hall, he could see that down on the floor below them it was mass chaos. Half people were everywhere, outnumbering the people and the soldiers many times over. There were dead bodies sprawled all over the place. Almost all of the dead were half people, but some weren’t. Some were people from the palace who had been caught and taken down. Half people crowded around a body, squatting down to feed on it. Blood was splattered and smeared over the marble walls and columns. Richard saw barefoot half people slip and fall on the bloody marble floor.
Richard didn’t have time to assess the situation, he simply needed to put a stop to it.
He drew his sword.
The blade came out with the metallic ring that was unique to the Sword of Truth. Richard by now had come to think of that sound as reassuring. It also came out with that same dark metallic gleam from having touched death. With the fighting and panic below, no one noticed the sound or the sight of the sword up on the dark balcony.
Richard pointed the blade out over the edge of the marble balustrade.
“There are your worldly forms,” he said. “Go to them. Return to those you were torn from if you can. Some of you will have to go a great distance to find the one to whom you belong. If they are gone from life and you find yourself still caught in this world, then come to me and we will help you cross over to eternal peace.”
In the dim light, a curtain of sparkling light peeled off the sword and unfurled out over the hallway, stretching as it went. The curtain of light wavered the way the strange lights in the night sky to the north did. They moved in long, slow, curling, undulating waves. Countless specks of light, each one a soul, together created a display that had some of the people below slowing down. Even some of the half people glanced up.
As the curtains of light drifted out over the hallway, Richard swung the sword. “Go! Find where you belong.”
With that, the specks of light scattered. Many others began to drift downward, like snowflakes in a dead-still air. All the way down the halls, as far as Richard could see, the tiny specks moved out to find the ones to whom they belonged.
“Richard,” Kahlan said in wonder, “what in the world is that? What have you done?”
“Remember the Sanctuary of Souls down in the Keep?”
“Yes,” she said as she watched the strange sight. “What about it?”
“Well, that place was built back at the time when there were wizards who were makers–like Wizard Merritt.”
“Magda’s husband?”
“That’s right. Sulachan made the half people by pulling out their souls and not letting them go to the underworld in order to keep the bodies alive. I believe that makers back then made that sanctuary for those lost souls. Those people up there at the Keep, even though the half people were sent to kill them, understood the tragic truth and felt empathy for the lost souls who had not chosen that fate, and had themselves meant no harm. So, they made those lost souls a sanctuary.”
Kahlan held her hand out toward the hall below with the dots of light drifting down. “But what is this?”
Richard shrugged. “It’s the lost souls, the ones that belong to the half people.”
Kahlan could barely contain her exasperation. “What are they doing here?”
“I went there and got them and brought them back.”
“Richard, are you crazy? You could have–”
“Look,” he said with a smile.
Kahlan turned and looked down. Everywhere half people were stopping. They quit running, quit chasing people. The ones near soldiers fell to their knees and raised their arms in surrender. The ones feeding stopped and stepped back, wiping the blood from their mouths in disgust. As the half people quit chasing victims, the screaming died out.
Throughout the halls, all of the half people slowed down and looked around in bewilderment, or amazement, or jubilation. Some started laughing with delight, looking at their own hands as if seeing them for the first time. Soldiers didn’t quite know what to make of it, but as long as the half people weren’t trying to attack and eat them, they stopped hacking the half-naked people apart.
“Come on,” Richard said. “Let’s get down there. I’m worried about the others.”
The broad stairwell of creamy stone leading down was close, and the descent quick. As they reached the lower halls, soldiers of the First File closed in protectively.
Richard still had his sword out. Along with the sword there was always the anger, but he kept it in check. He held the sword out and shook it to check to see if any more sparkles of souls would come out of it. None did, so he slid it back in its scabbard before he reached for the doors that led out into the hallway. When he opened the doors, they were confronted by the quite strange sight of the masses of half people no longer attacking anyone.
Just outside, Cassia ran over to him. “Lord Rahl! You were right! You did it! Mother Confessor, look!” Cassia pointed out at the half people milling around, blinking, laughing, crying, talking. “That’s why he left you and didn’t say where he was going. I scolded him for not telling you.”
“Yes, she did,” Richard confirmed.
Nyda and Rikka escorted Nathan and Nicci across the hall from one of the grand staircases leading up from the lower levels.
“Richard!” Nicci called out. “You’re back! We were so worried! If you ever do anything like that again I swear I will have you locked in a dungeon and only let Kahlan visit you once a week.”
Nathan peered around. “Richard, would you happen to know what in the world is going on?”
“Yes, what is happening?” Nicci asked. “It’s the same down in the lower areas, near the crypts where they were getting in. There’s been a battle raging down there for days and then all of a sudden the half people simply stopped fighting. Almost together, almost all at once, they simply stopped.”
Cassia casually pointed a thumb back at the strange scene. “Lord Rahl gave them their souls back.”
Nicci’s jaw fell open. “What?” She pointed in alarm at his hip. “How did you get your sword back? Richard! Don’t you dare tell me that you went back to the Keep and you brought the sword back through the sliph!”
“Well, actually–”
“You can’t do that! Richard, your life isn’t worth the sword.” Nicci was beside herself, hardly knowing what to complain about first. “Richard, you were told how it would make the sickness grow, how it would bring you to the cusp of death, how…”
She looked up suspiciously. “Why don’t you look sick?”
“Because I’m not. Why, do you want me to be sick?”
Not believing him and ignoring his flippant remark, Nicci pressed her fingers to his temples. She withdrew her hands in astonishment and turned to Nathan. “He’s not sick. It’s gone. Completely gone.” She turned back to Richard. “I could feel your gift. How is that possible?”
Richard took a deep breath. “Do you want me to explain, or would you rather complain?”
Nicci planted her fists on the curve of her hips and gave him a look she had apparently saved from back in the days when she was his teacher, trying to teach him to use his gifted abilities.
Kahlan turned her face away to hide her smile.
“Explain, please,” Nicci said with forced patience.
“I figured out that the only way I was ever going to be able to stop Sulachan was to send him back to the world of the dead. The easiest way to do that, since I couldn’t hope to overcome his occult abilities, was to use the poison of death I had in me. So, when I was in the underworld, and you and Kahlan brought me back, during that stretch of time in infinity when I had all the time I needed, I decided that rather than leave the sickness of death there in the world of the dead, as I had done with Kahlan, I’d rather have Sulachan in the world of the dead, so I didn’t … leave it. I kept it.”
“You lied to us?” Nicci fumed. “You told us you couldn’t leave it there. You lied?”
It
was Kahlan’s turn to look astonished. “You mean to say that you deliberately kept that poison of death in you? That poison that could easily have killed you? When you know how difficult it would be to remove it in this world?”
Richard shrugged one shoulder. “Sure. It made sense to me.”
Nicci looked over at Kahlan. “It made sense to him.”
“The problem was, I feared it wasn’t strong enough–”
Nicci flicked a hand in the air. “Not strong enough. Of course. Not strong enough.”
“–So right when I found out we were going to have to face Sulachan at any moment, I went back to the Keep and retrieved the sword. Traveling in the sliph with the sword drained away most of my life force and made the poison a lot stronger. That was what I needed to kill Sulachan.”
Both women stared openly at him.
“Oh yes,” he added, “and while I was there I also collected all the souls that have been lost for the last three thousand years or so, and…” He held out his hand to where the half people were all cooperating with the soldiers who were collecting them together. He could see half people weeping, apologizing, asking forgiveness.
Nicci started waggling her finger as she shook her head at the same time. “No, no, no. Wait. How did you kill Sulachan with the death that was inside you?”
“I did the same thing the Hedge Maid did. I let it out with a scream.”
Nicci was seething to the point of being momentarily speechless. Kahlan was also being overcome with exasperation. She spoke up before Nicci could put words to her discontent.
“But the scream would have killed you, too, Richard. The sound of it is lethal. That is in fact what killed Jit.”
“But it didn’t kill us.”