Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

As Nicci sent the same kind of power crackling toward another Shun-tuk, he casually blocked it with a hand, diverting it away from himself as if it were a petty annoyance. It was clear to Kahlan that some of the Shun-tuk had occult powers that could somehow smother or deflect the power of the gift. It was similar to the way the pristinely ungifted were not affected directly by magic. The Shun-tuk used their ability to protect themselves, and occasionally others, only because they could help bring down the big soldiers. It was likely that these were the ones who had the ability to raise the dead.

She realized that what the soldiers, Zedd, and Nicci were doing was in many cases simply culling the weakest. They were unwittingly creating an enemy force of the strongest and most able half people who were mostly immune to the power of the gift. Each Shun-tuk Zedd or Nicci killed with their gift only increased the percentage of Shun-tuk coming after them who couldn’t be harmed by magic, making the gifted less and less effective all the time. At some point, they were going to face an enemy nearly invincible to gifted powers.

There was nothing they could do about it, of course, but it added a frightening dimension to the evolving nature of the fight.

The men, as well, fought fiercely to keep the ghostly figures back behind their lines. Wherever the chalky figure of a Shun-tuk made it through and appeared out of the darkness, a soldier of the First File was there, running him through with a sword, cleaving limbs with an axe, or crushing skulls with a mace. Irena shared a look with her daughter and then ran off to help the soldiers.

“Samantha, hurry,” Richard said. “We’re running out of time. I need you to give me some strength and keep me conscious for a few minutes longer.”

Kahlan thought that was more than a puzzling thing to say. He needed to have strength to recover enough to get up and help convince the Shun-tuk that he was back and strong enough to fight them off so that they would withdraw.

She wondered if maybe he was delirious and simply didn’t know what he was saying. Maybe he just wanted the pain to stop, if even for a few minutes.

Kahlan hoped the young woman could handle it. She was suspicious, though, that Richard had something more in mind. She especially wondered what he meant about keeping him conscious for a few minutes longer. Why wouldn’t he ask her to give him strength so that he could fight?

Samantha bit her lower lip as she hurriedly scooted around so that her knees were touching the top of Richard’s head. She hesitated, then put her palms on his temples.

“Lord Rahl, I, I…”

Richard put his left hand over hers. “You can do it Samantha … like before…”

“Like before,” she muttered. “I wish I remembered what I did before.”

“You don’t know?” Kahlan asked in alarm as she shifted closer to the young woman.

As Samantha looked up, a tear ran down her cheek. “I don’t know … I’m not sure.”

“Strength…” Richard whispered.

“Strength—I know—strength.” She removed her hands from his head and squeezed them in fists. “But I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, what I was trying to do.”

“Ignore the sickness,” he said. “Don’t try to heal anything. Just support me with your strength so I can fight it myself.”

She gasped with realization. “Of course.” Her faced brightened. She placed her hands back on the side of his head. “Strength. I remember now. I just gave you some of my strength so that you could endure it on your own.”

Richard tried but did a poor job of smiling as he nodded in her hands.

Kahlan could hear the sounds of the battle raging behind them. Half people cried out as they ran up on razor-sharp steel. Men grunted with the unrelenting effort of hacking at the endless horde rushing in at them. Skulls cracked, bones broke, men yelled orders, the wounded cried out in agony. Ghostly bodies with ghastly wounds lay sprawled here and there.

To the other side of the encampment, Kahlan heard another attack beginning. The half people were trying to divide the camp and make it more difficult to defend.

In the firelight, Kahlan saw one of the pale figures leap over the crowded front line of men of the First File. He didn’t last long, but he was followed by another, and then another. The camp was being overrun. She saw men dragged to ground under the weight of chalky figures as other soldiers chopped at arms and heads, frantically working to get the Shun-tuk off them.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye Kahlan saw one of the Shun-tuk leap over the fire, racing right at them. There was no one close enough to stop him in time.

Out of reflex honed by years of training and combat, Kahlan pulled her knife as she sprang up, spun, and with a powerful backhanded swing slammed the knife square into the center of the man’s bare chest. The big Shun-tuk, his face covered in the caked and cracked white paste, stopped dead in his tracks, the knife buried up to the hilt right through the center of his breastbone.

Samantha stared, frozen, her eyes wide.

The blade Kahlan carried had been honed to a razor edge by Richard, and it was easily long enough to go all the way through a man’s heart. It clearly had.

Kahlan hadn’t even really felt any resistance. A knife of that weight, that sharp, and with that much speed behind it was virtually unstoppable. As the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and his legs buckled, Kahlan yanked her blade free. She kept it in her fist where it would be handy if needed again. She was sure that it would be.

“Samantha, help him, please,” Kahlan said.

Samantha swallowed and bent back over Richard.

CHAPTER

18

“We don’t have much time,” Richard whispered.

“I’m trying.” Samantha pushed some of her mass of black hair back out of the way as she bent lower over him. “There’s just so much noise and distraction.…”

Kahlan knew that it had to be hard for a sorceress as young and inexperienced as Samantha to concentrate on finding that calm center in order to use her gift. It took concentrated effort in the best of times. Now there was a battle raging all around her and she was frightened. But it was what it was and if she didn’t do something, Richard was going to be lost to them for the fight, and if that happened then they would all soon be dead.

In this, as in so many things, the difficulty didn’t really matter, only the results counted.

For just an instant, Kahlan had a flash of the memory of what the prisoner had told them, that Sulachan had dark ones waiting for her and Richard in the underworld to drag them down into eternal darkness and torment.

Banishing the memory, Kahlan leaned close, and whispered in Samantha’s ear. “There’s no one else but you and Richard. Ignore everything else. None of it matters. You are the one in control of this. You alone command your own quiet center. You command your power. You alone command what you do with your gift. No one can take that from you but you.”

Samantha looked up at Kahlan with the oddest expression, as if to say she didn’t know that anyone else would understand about using the gift. Kahlan knew a great deal about finding that quiet place inside, even in the middle of a raging battle, even on the brink of death, and still releasing her power.

Except that now they were in the middle of a raging battle and on the brink of death, and she could not reach that power.

Samantha’s eyes closed in concentration as her head bowed again over Richard’s.

Richard’s eyes were closed as well, not in concentration but in pain.

Kahlan took up one of his hands and held it to her heart. “Richard,” she whispered, “I love you.”

He smiled through the pain. Looking like he wanted to answer, to say he loved her, but he couldn’t. She didn’t need to hear it though. She knew.

Kahlan could see Samantha’s fingers trembling as they held Richard’s head. She was afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of the Shun-tuk coming for them all, afraid of the responsibility resting on her shoulders.

“Use anger,” Richar

d whispered to her before his hand went slack and he once again slipped into unconsciousness.

His words seemed to spark some memory in her. “Anger … of course.”

Almost immediately, through the hand she held, Kahlan could feel the warmth of Samantha’s gift flowing into him, finding its way through the darkness and pain that was overwhelming him. Kahlan hoped that it could give him the strength to force the darkness back.

She could feel a bit of the tension return to his hand. He took a deeper breath as he again came aware.

He said one word to Kahlan.

“Sword.”

She stared for a moment, and then she understood.