Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

“Me too,” she said. She looked the other way, toward Samantha, then turned back to him. “Where is Kahlan?”

“On the other side of me. She isn’t awake yet.”

“Do you have any idea how long we’ve been out?” she asked.

Richard shook his head just a little. “No. But it would have to be at least a while for someone to get us all chained up in these things. They must have the men, and Irena, too, or we wouldn’t be stuck here like this.”

He had a sudden flash of worry that the others had been killed because they weren’t as valuable.

Another part of him wished that he had been killed as well. He didn’t want to have to face whatever was in store for them. He remembered Zedd saying that he was tired of living.

At that moment, with the enormity of everything weighing down on him, Richard felt the same way. It was only Kahlan that kept him from giving into the tempting call of death inside him. It would be so easy to give in and slip into that dark forever.

Except that Kahlan needed him.

He tested his wrists, cuffed with iron manacles and connected to a heavy chain, and saw that they hardly had any slack. As he tried to move forward, he was only able to move inches before the iron collar around his neck brought him up short. He could barely move away from the damp stone wall. He could stand, but had no chance to sit or lie down.

He recognized the method of restraining prisoners. It was a simple but very effective form of torture. Once the prisoners could no longer stay awake and fell asleep or lapsed into unconsciousness, they slumped, basically hanging in the collar and manacles. The pain of the rough iron bands cutting in flesh kept a person awake, but they couldn’t remain awake forever, so there were brief periods of sleep or blacking out, when they would hang in the iron. The longer it went on, the worse the wounds would get, eventually festering and becoming infected. Gangrene would set in and turn arms black. As the flesh decomposed it would begin sloughing off and falling away. Death would inevitably follow, but it was a very long and agonizing way to die, all alone and helpless.

“We need to get out of here,” Nicci said in an angry voice.

“I’m with you. How do you suggest we go about it?”

Nicci was silent a moment before she spoke. “My gift doesn’t work in this room. It’s shielded to keep gifted prisoners from using their ability to escape.”

“What about Subtractive Magic. Cut the iron with Subtractive Magic.”

“Don’t you think I tried that?” she asked in frustration. “Subtractive is still part of the gift. It was probably a lot more common when this dungeon was built. The shields are equally as effective against both sides.”

Richard sighed in disappointment. “I guess that makes sense.” He glanced down. “I still have my sword, but I can’t reach it.”

“Irena is an idiot,” Nicci growled. “She is an inexperienced idiot from an isolated little village in the middle of nowhere and she mistook a containment cell for a containment field.”

“Are they similar?” Richard asked.

“In some ways,” she admitted. “They both are designed to contain power.”

“What’s going on?” It was Samantha’s groggy voice as she was beginning to wake up. “Where are we? What’s going on?”

“We’re having an adventure,” Richard said.

“I don’t think I like it,” she said.

“I’ve never been very fond of adventure, myself,” Richard said.

“Is my mother all right? Where is she?”

“We don’t know about any of the others,” Nicci told her. “All we know is that the four of us are chained up in here. They must be holding everyone else in other cells.”

“What about the Mother Confessor?” Samantha asked. “I can’t see her.”

“On the other side of me,” Richard told her.

He bent his knees, sagging a little, but that was the limit of how much he could move. He was exhausted. He felt like he had been beaten with a club. He hurt everywhere.

“Lord Rahl, what are we going to do?” The young woman sounded desperate and on the verge of panic.

“I don’t know yet, Samantha.”

“Well, who did this to us? Everyone seemed like they were cooperating.”

“I don’t know, Samantha. Try to save your strength.”

He looked over at Kahlan again. She was still hanging unconscious by the iron bands at the ends of taut chains. Her head hung forward, her arms spread wide and stretched back a little toward the wall. Blood from where the iron collar cut her neck dripped off her chin.

The sight ignited Richard’s anger. He tried to talk his anger back down. It could do him no good at the moment, and only wasted what little strength he had left. He needed to save that strength in case he had a chance to use it.

He heard Samantha crying softly over on the other side of Nicci. He couldn’t think of anything to say to comfort her.

At that moment, his only hope was that they would be killed quickly, rather than endure a long, agonizing path toward the inevitable end.

CHAPTER

75

Richard’s head jerked up. He realized that he must have nodded off briefly. Blood had puddled on the floor in front of him from the iron collar cutting into his neck. The way the rough iron ring dug into the fresh wound stung.

He was exhausted from the grueling effort of trekking through trackless wilderness to reach the citadel, from whatever sort of power had been used to render them unconscious, and also from the relentless weight of darkness within trying to pull him into the forever of death.

Trying to think clearly, trying to come up with some solution, was also sapping his strength. He could barely form a thought, and what thoughts he could form weren’t helping.

He looked over and saw that Kahlan hadn’t moved. She still hung unconscious. He remembered Nicci telling him that if either of them lost consciousness again from the poison inside them, it would be the last time and they wouldn’t wake again. He didn’t know why she was unconscious, but if it was from the sickness she carried, then it was possible she had already slipped away and would never wake again. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, but he would rather she died that way, than from a long ordeal of torture.

The thought of her dying made him want to scream. He couldn’t endure to contemplate Kahlan being dead. He couldn’t stand the thought of life without her. He would do anything to save her life. Anything.

But it did

n’t seem likely that either of them had any life to look forward to.

He had been so confident that they had been close to the resolution to their sickness, that Nicci would be able to heal them, and that they would then be able to collect the horses they needed to make it back to the palace in time. Not only that, but he had been positive that once Kahlan was herself again, she would also recover her strength of spirit and the commitment to what they were fighting for. That dedication to truth and the well-being of good people was so much a part of her, a part of her that he loved. It was her.

Now, those hopes had been crushed.

It had seemed within their grasp. They had worked so hard to get there, only to discover that there was no containment field. He felt cheated. It seemed so unfair.

Richard’s head came up when he heard something out beyond the door. Nicci’s head rose as well. They shared a look.

“Be strong, Richard. Be strong.”

“You too,” he told her.

“Always. We’ve both faced worse than this and survived.”

She actually gave him a smile, then. He actually found himself returning it. She was a rare woman.

He felt a great sadness, then, at the thought of Nicci dying in this miserable dungeon out in the middle of the Dark Lands. Samantha, too, was going to have her life snuffed out before she could live it. It didn’t seem fair.

He knew, though, that there was no such thing as fair in life. Existence had no agenda. Life simply existed. It was up to them to fight for life to be worthwhile and good if that was what they wanted. If they didn’t, evil would flourish unopposed and have its way. And now, that evil was going to win.

The door squealed in protest when it was pulled open.

Richard stared in disbelief when Ludwig Dreier strolled in. The man wore a smirk that widened as his gaze met Richard’s. Rather than the black clothes Richard was used to seeing the man wear, he now had on rather royal-looking purple-and-gold robes that swished around his legs as he walked.