Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

She abruptly reached up and touched her hair. She pulled the single braid forward and saw her brunette hair now streaked with gray. Moment by moment, as the other Mord-Sith watched, her hair gradually turned ever more gray and brittle. Her skin continued to thin and wrinkle.

Abruptly, one of her upper front teeth dropped from her open mouth and bounced across the carpet. The other four women stared.

Two more teeth quickly followed. Alice reached into her mouth with trembling, arthritic, deformed fingers and took out several more teeth that had loosened and fallen out within her mouth. She scooped out the handful of teeth and stared at them.

In mere moments she looked to have aged at least an additional sixty years.

“You aren’t looking well, Alice,” Ludwig said with feigned concern, his arm still around her shoulders. “Not well at all.” He looked up at Erika. “I don’t think she looks well. Do you?”

“No, Lord Dreier, I don’t,” Erika said in a calm voice. “Not well at all.”

“I … I … don’t understand,” Alice stammered.

The confusion on her deeply wrinkled face showed that she was clearly telling the truth. She didn’t understand. She touched her face, her sagging jowls, her blotchy wrist. She put a hand over her loose red leather, feeling her shrunken breasts.

“What’s happening to me?”

Ludwig, still leaning in, his arm still around her shoulders, frowned with a look of concern as he peered up into her face. “Well, do you know, Alice, what I have heard tell a Mord-Sith fears above all else?”

Her panic-stricken, washed-out eyes suddenly turned up to him. “Dying old and toothless in bed…”

He nodded earnestly. “That’s right, Alice. Dying old and toothless in bed.” He finally removed his arm from around her frail shoulders and gestured toward the hallway. “Now, Alice, I want you to go off to bed.”

Without objection, looking confused and addled with advanced age, the stooped old woman in drooping red leather started shuffling off to do as instructed.

Once she had shambled off down a hall, Ludwig resumed his place before the other four, clasping his hands behind his back.

“I’m afraid that Alice’s worst fears have come to pass. She is shortly going to die in bed, old and toothless.” He shook his head sadly as he sighed. “Such a shame.”

One of the others swallowed. “Abbot, I mean, Lord Dreier, what is going on?”

He smiled. “Well, it would seem that you have just taken the first step. You recognized me as Lord Dreier. Does that mean that you accept me as your master?”

He cocked his head with a questioning look. “Fully and completely? The master for whom you would lay down your lives? The master who will now hold your bond and power your Agiel?”

Ludwig did not for one moment underestimate the powers that Hannis Arc wielded, but he didn’t think the man could do what Ludwig had just done, and apparently the Mord-Sith didn’t think so either.

One by one, all four of them nodded.

“Good,” he said, smiling, vigorously rubbing his hands together. “Very good. Now, why don’t you try those Agiel again.”

They did, flicking the weapons back up into their hands, and by the look of resolve coming back into their eyes, it was clear that their Agiel now worked again. The women had been restored to Mord-Sith. They were bonded to him.

“Each of you has given up your bond to your old master, and taken up a new one. You have made wise choices at the right times. First, you gave up your bond to Darken Rahl and instead willingly gave your loyalty and service to Hannis Arc. But Hannis Arc has proven himself unworthy of you, to say nothing of letting Alice rule you in a way unfitting to Mord-Sith.”

They shared looks among themselves.

“Now, each of you has again taken a new master—but this time one worthy of your unwavering loyalty. You are now all bonded to me, Lord Dreier, as is Erika. Like Darken Rahl, Hannis Arc is a fallen, unworthy past master. It is now my ability that powers your Agiel.”

“We understand, Lord Dreier,” one of them said as her back stiffened and her shoulders squared up. “Thank you for the opportunity to serve you.”

The others straightened and swore their service, their loyalty, and their lives to him as well.

Ludwig placed a hand on Erika’s shoulder. “Mistress Erika has been with me for quite a while.” He offered them a smile. “She will of course be your mistress. She is in charge of you and you will do as she says. But that is merely a chain of command; she does not own you, as Alice did. You are again sisters of the Agiel. Understand?”

All of them, standing up straighter, looking well pleased, nodded without reservation.

“Now,” he said, “I know enough about Hannis Arc to be able to tell you that I have different requirements of my Mord-Sith. First of all, you are to wear black leather to indicate that you are in service to me. Is that understood?”

Again, they all nodded.

“That service to me extends to the bedroom.”

They blinked at the unexpected command, and how blunt he had been about it. But they were far from shocked. It had been one of the reasons they had left Darken Rahl. Ludwig had heard about the way Darken Rahl used women. Hannis Arc, on the other hand, didn’t care about their bodies, just their service to him. Ludwig Dreier cared about both.

But unlike their link to Darken Rahl, their link to Ludwig was forged with occult powers. They might have believed that it was in part a function of their belief in his mastery over them and their sworn loyalty as was their previous bond, but it was not. This time it was a bond forged with powers that they could not break as long as they lived, as long as he lived. This time death was their only escape from their bond, no matter how badly they might come to wish they could leave their service to him, the way they had left their service to Darken Rahl.

But he didn’t have the same rather exotic cravings with which Darken Rahl had been obsessed. In fact, he considered the things he had heard about what the man did to women in the bedroom to be repugnant. Hardly a wonder they had wanted to be free of him. Ludwig’s Mord-Sith would not be plagued by the same wish to leave him just because he took them to his bed. He had simple tastes and simply enjoyed being with women

the way the Creator intended. Mostly.

“Any questions? Comments?”

“No, Lord Dreier,” they all said as one.

He turned to Erika. “You pick for me. Pick which one will spend tonight with me.”

Erika pointed at the one she knew he would like best, the blonde she had used her Agiel on.

“You.”

The Mord-Sith bowed her head. “Yes, Mistress. I am yours tonight, then, Lord Dreier, and any night you would have me.”

Ludwig was pleased that, once again, given the choices that he had shaped for them, they had chosen wisely. Once again, his insistence on focusing on people had advanced his cause. It so happened that it had also gotten him a comfortable new home from where he would prepare to offer choices to Hannis Arc’s chaos.

He nodded. “It’s still early. First, show me Bishop Arc’s study—the recording room where he used the prophecy I sent to him.”

Although Ludwig had sometimes personally brought some of his important prophecies to Hannis Arc—the ones he wanted to make sure the bishop saw—the man had always insisted on meeting with him in a small secondary office, or in the grand entrance hall, sitting in the chairs, sharing tea, as they discussed the prophecy. While they sipped tea, Ludwig fed the bishop the prophecies he wanted the man to know.

Hannis Arc had never let him see the recording room, though, the place where he did most of his work. Ludwig wanted to see it himself and know why not.

The woman that Erika had picked for him held her arm out to the side. “This way, Lord Dreier.”

CHAPTER

39

Up on the top floor, an old scribe named Mohler nervously fumbled with the keys with one hand while holding a lantern in his other. Ludwig knew the man. He was the one person Hannis Arc seemed to trust, at least as much as he trusted anyone. He was the only scribe allowed to handle the prophecies that Ludwig sent to the citadel.

As Ludwig Dreier impatiently watched the man groping through all the keys on the ring, flipping them over one at a time with a thumb looking for the right one, he gave consideration to simply using his ability to blow the heavy door off its hinges. With a sigh, he reminded himself that there was no need to rush, or use his ability for trivialities.