Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

Although shocked to see her alive and at a loss to understand what she could be thinking, they nodded earnestly.

“What do you want me to do?” Cassia asked. “I mean, after I give the commander your instructions?”

“I want you to go get Mohler and bring him back here. We need his keys.”

They looked confused. Or maybe it was just that they thought she might be a ghost, or a good spirit.

“Go! Hurry!” Kahlan said. “If we are to have any chance of saving Richard’s life, we have to hurry!”

Cassia blinked. “You mean, there is a chance to save his life?”

“Yes!”

All three turned and raced away to do as they had been asked.

Kahlan rushed back inside. She thought there was a chance. She had to believe that there was. She forced her grief aside so that she could act. Now was not the time to grieve. Richard would tell her to think of the solution.

“Dreier has abilities we can’t even imagine,” she told Nicci.

Nicci turned away from staring at Richard’s lifeless corpse stretched out on the bed. “What of it?”

“What if he could bring life back into Richard?”

Nicci wiped back her tears as she frowned. “Bring back life? What are you talking about? What do you mean, bring life back into him? You can’t do such a thing to—”

She closed her mouth. She looked like she had been about to say “to the dead.” She didn’t want to refer to Richard that way.

“Sulachan and Hannis Arc can,” Kahlan said. “Even those half-people soul trackers could wake the dead, remember?”

A horrified look twisted Nicci’s face. “You want to … what? Have Ludwig Dreier turn Richard into one of those walking dead? You want the man to use his power to reanimate Richard’s dead body? Kahlan, you can’t, you wouldn’t. He wouldn’t really be alive. He would just be another of those monstrous corpses that moves, but he wouldn’t be alive. It wouldn’t be Richard.

“Kahlan, Richard is gone. His life force, his spirit, his soul has left him and gone beyond the veil.”

Kahlan paced for a moment, thinking, refusing to allow herself to give up. “Nicci, I’m just trying to think of how to do what he did.”

“What he did? What do you mean?”

“Richard had you heal my body—the wound and my heart—so that my body would be ready for my spirit to return.”

Nicci was frowning at her. “So you are suggesting that we get Dreier to make his body alive again, like some kind of mutant half person without a soul?”

Kahlan paced to the window and back along the thick, rust-colored carpet. “No—I don’t know. I’m just trying to think of a way to help him. We have to help him.”

Nicci cocked her head. “Help him … what?”

“Well, you remember when he saw those people who snuck up on him—back right before all those half-people spirit trackers attacked us.”

“Yes, I remember. But they weren’t there. They vanished, somehow.”

Kahlan nodded. “Richard said that the souls of the half people Sulachan created were ripped from them, and also that in order to animate the dead, part of that process involved ripping the dead person’s spirit from the underworld—disconnecting them from where they belonged. Those spirits were lost, they were severed souls.”

Nicci folded her arms, frowning as she tried to follow what Kahlan was getting at. “All right.…”

“What did Richard say they said to him? ‘Bring us our dead.’ He said that they expected him to reunite them with their dead bodies.”

Nicci rubbed her eyes for a moment. “You mean, you think that maybe Richard’s spirit could be reunited with his dead body? How?”

Kahlan lifted her arms in a gesture of frustration. “I don’t know, Nicci. All I’m saying is that if there is any chance for Richard to ever return, it has to be soon, and he has to have his body ready for his soul to return to.”

“Like Richard wanted your heart healed so that when he went to get you, your soul could return to your body, because there was a home for it after I fixed it. So you think that maybe Richard’s spirit will find a way back to his body?”

Kahlan shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know, Nicci. I’m just trying to think of something—anything. I can’t accept that Richard is really dead. The way he crossed over and came back before makes me think there has to be hope. Richard has gone to the Temple of the Winds in the underworld. He is of the third kingdom and so he went through the world of the dead to rescue you and the others.

“This is Richard we’re talking about. He’s done it before. He has gone to the underworld before and returned.”

Nicci gently grasped Kahlan’s shoulders, then, and looked into her eyes. “Kahlan, Richard made sense, after a fashion. A crazy, wild, Richard kind of sense, but sense. This is different. This is … I don’t know, this sounds to me like you are just trying to wish something into being true because you’re desperate.”

Kahlan stared back. Hopelessness clawed its way back into her. “Maybe I am, but don’t you think we should try? Do you want to let him go without trying? We have to try.”

“Kahlan, look at him.” Nicci turned Kahlan’s chin to make her look past her toward the still body lying on the bed. “Look at him. Kahlan, Richard is dead.”

Kahlan looked back into Nicci’s eyes. “So was I.”

Nicci wiped a trembling hand back over her forehead. “Yes, and you had Richard to go to the underworld itself to bring you back. Who is going to bring him back?”

Kahlan felt the terrible weight of despair crushing her. “I don’t know, Nicci, but we can try, can’t we? Please, Nicci? We can try every last crazy thing, can’t we?”

Nicci took a deep breath, then. “Yes, of course we can. You’re right. We have to try.”

CHAPTER

89

Kahlan and Nicci were standing beside the bed, waiting, when there was at last a knock on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Cassia opened the door and stuck her head in.

“Mother Confessor, we have him.”

Kahlan gestured impatiently. “Bring him in.”

She put on her Confessor face, the expression her mother had taught her, the countenance that showed nothing of what she felt. She was dying inside, terrified and in agony inside, but none of it showed on her face.

She was again the Mother Confessor.

The doors opened and the three Mord-Sith led Ludwig Dreier in. They gave him a last, rough shove so that he stumbled into the room. He wore filthy, old groundskeeper clothes they had found for him. He missed a step, balking when he saw what was waiting for him in the room.

Commander Fister stood near the foot of the bed, behind Kahlan and Nicci. The room was ringed with over a dozen archers, all with arrows nocked, holding them in place, the strings with tension on them but not yet drawn fully tight. There were also men with swords out, as well as men with axes in hand, and others with pikes. It was the archers, though, that Kahlan could tell worried Dreier the most.

When he had rendered them all unconscious with his occult ability, they had not had time to do much about it. A man with a sword, no matter how swift, still took a brief bit of time to reach his target.

But an arrow could be released in an instant.

“Well, well, Mother Confessor,” Dreier said as he straightened, “it seems you have me at a disadvantage.”

“I’m glad that you recognize the reality of the situation.”

He looked around at the room. “I know you said you intended to kill me, but this seems an odd place for an execution.”

Kahlan stepped aside so he could see Richard’s body on the bed. He frowned when he realized who it was.

“Is he actually dead?” he asked, his astonishment overcoming his fear.

“I stopped his heart,” Nicci said.

His frown deepened. “Not that I object, but why would you do that?”

“Here’s the thing,” Kahlan said. “We wan

t you to do something to keep him alive for now.”

He scratched an eyebrow. “What?”

“Use your occult abilities to keep him alive,” she said.

He stared at her a long moment, looked over at Richard, and then back at Kahlan. “He’s dead. You must realize that. I can see from here that he’s dead.”

“We know his condition,” Nicci said. “It was necessary to stop his heart, but I don’t have the ability to restart it. We need you to do that.”