His frown grew even more incredulous. “He is dead.”
“We didn’t bring you up here to tell us what we already know,” Nicci said, heat increasingly coming into her tone. “If you want, we can take you back down to your cell, chain you back up, lock the door, and throw away the key. Or, maybe we can have these three fine young ladies convince you of the benefits of not being tortured by a Mord-Sith.”
Cassia briefly jammed her Agiel into the small of his back. He grunted with a cry of pain as he dropped to one knee. She motioned with her Agiel in front of his face for him to get up.
He stared at the weapon with open fear as he rose. “What is it, exactly, that you want me to do for the corpse of Richard Rahl?”
Kahlan hated the way he was referring to Richard, but she maintained the Confessor face. She had more important matters on her mind. She needed to stay focused, despite her inner anguish.
“We know that occult powers can do some remarkable things with creating the likes of half people and reanimating the dead, but beyond that, we don’t know if you can do anything that would convince us not to have you tortured to death. So, you tell us. What can you do to keep him alive.”
He tilted his head to look past them. “May I get a closer look?”
Kahlan nodded and the Mord-Sith walked him closer to the bed. He reached out and touched Richard’s face, then his neck.
“What’s in it for me?” he asked as he looked back.
“Depends on what service you can provide,” Kahlan said.
“Well, I can’t really be of any use to you at all with this collar around my neck. It prevents my ability from functioning.”
“If we take the collar off, what can you do? You don’t need it off to tell us.”
He checked the resolve in her eyes before again studying Richard more closely from the side of the bed.
“Well, not a lot. I may be talented, and may have a great many skills, but I can’t revive the dead.”
“Then I guess you will soon find yourself in the same condition,” Kahlan said. “Dead. I guess this conversation is over.”
He put a finger under the collar, trying to ease the discomfort of it. Kahlan could see his hands trembling slightly.
“Well, there are things I can do with occult abilities that suspend the death process.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Nicci asked.
He gestured toward Richard. “If he stays like that, he will soon go all stiff, then begin to decompose and rot, just like any corpse. With my occult abilities, I can suspend that process before it starts so that the body stays viable, after a fashion.”
“How does that work,” the sorceress asked.
“It’s complex to explain to someone not schooled in the use of occult abilities.”
“Make it simple for me while you still have the ability to talk.”
He swallowed at the look in her eyes before again glancing over at Richard. “Well, you were a Sister of the Dark. You must know some of the basics about the underworld.”
“I do.”
“Then you know that time means nothing there, in the eternity of the underworld. What I can do is create a bridge to link some of that timelessness of the underworld to his body.”
“And what would that do?” Kahlan asked.
He shrugged. “I’m not positive. I’ve never done it before, never had cause. But it’s the basic concept behind using occult powers to enliven corpses or to create half people. The half people, for example, live for long periods of time because they carry a link to the underworld. That timeless link keeps them from aging like normal people. Keeps time from working on their living body the way it ordinarily would. By using a link like that, I can keep his body the same as it was the moment he died. With time moving slower for him, he will remain in that state for quite some time.”
Nicci rubbed her arms as she glanced over at Kahlan. “The Palace of the Prophets was like that,” she admitted. “Nathan Rahl lived there for close to a thousand years because the spell around the palace was linked to the underworld.”
“Exactly,” Dreier said, lifting a finger to make the point. “It can’t bring back the dead, but it keeps the body in the state it was in when he was alive, doesn’t let it age the way the dead ordinarily would, and thus not decompose.”
“Then how do we bring him back to life?” Kahlan asked.
“I never said you could. I only said that I could keep him viable. I can’t make the dead come back to life. I can animate corpses, but they aren’t actually alive.”
“So what good would this do him?” Nicci asked.
Dreier lifted his hands in frustration. “None, as far as I can see. He’s dead. His life force is gone. His spirit is in the underworld. You asked what I could do. That’s the closest I can come. I can link his remains to the underworld to halt the process his body would go through after dying.”
“So that would preserve him for now,” Kahlan said, “until we can figure out how to bring his life force, his spirit, back into his body.”
Dreier made a face. “Preserve him for a time, yes. Bring his spirit back into that preserved body? That can’t be done. He is dead, ladies. Dead, dead, dead. I don’t know how to bring the dead back to life. But if you do, then I suppose this would keep him from deteriorating until you bring him back from the dead.
“I can do a great many things with my abilities, but there are limits to how far one can bend the laws of nature. One of those limits is the Grace itself. It defines life and death. It can’t reverse death.”
Kahlan wondered if the man was telling the truth—if she could trust him to tell her the truth. She looked from Dreier’s eyes to the still form of the man she loved. The man she desperately wanted back.
Kahlan knew that Richard hadn’t actually, technically, reversed her death. He had used the spark of life still in her soul. That spark was what had brought her back.
Richard had that same spark of life in his soul. At least, she hoped he still did. In the underworld it would fade rapidly.
It was the balance to the poison Jit had infected them with. She had put death into them when they were still alive. That death had been extinguishing their life force, but for a time life and death existed together. They were part dead, yet part alive.
“All right,” she said. “Do it. If that’s the best we can do for now, do it.”
Dreier waggled a finger. “Not so fast. What’s in it for me?”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to let me and Erika go.”
Kahlan, still wearing her Confessor face, stared into Dreier’s eyes. Her entire life had been devoted to uncovering truth. She weighed what to do, what she dared to do. Everything hung in the balance, and on the choice she made. The right choice did not mean success, but if she made the wrong choice, all would certainly be lost.
In that brief instant, she weighed his words, the risks, and made her decision.
Kahlan gave him a single nod. “Done. You do what you said to keep Richard’s body viable, and we will let you go.”
Nicci took hold of Kahlan’s arm. “Mother Confessor, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. What he is proposing to do, when it comes right down to it, is of virtually no value. And for that we would be giving him his freedom? So that he could plot his revenge? So that he could use those occult powers against us on another day? If he could start Richard’s heart, maybe, but just to keep him the way he is…?”
Kahlan stared at Dreier for a long time.
It was his occult powers she was considering. Finally, she turned and paced to the bed. The big men all around the room looked grim and despondent. They had lost their Lord Rahl. It was unthinkable. What was to become of them all without Richard?
“When I was young,” Kahlan said, “there was a boy I knew of who lived there in Aydindril. One day, in late winter, he fell through the ice on a lake. He was under the ice for hours before they were able to get his body out. He was dead, of course—drowned under the ice. They wrapped him up, preparing to bury him, when he revived.
“I don’t know much about such things, but I saw it with my own eyes. Who are we to say when the soul has actually crossed over for good, when that veil has closed? If there is a way to keep Richard on ice, so to speak, to give him a chance to return back through that veil, then I want to take it.”
Nicci regarded her with an understanding look. “If you say so, then I agree.”
Kahlan gave the signal. All around the room, the archers drew back their bowstrings.
“Take off his collar,” she said to the scribe standing quietly back against the wall.
Mohler shuffled forward with his keys.
“You make one wrong twitch,” Kahlan told Dreier as Mohler unlocked the collar, “and you will have a dozen arrows through you from every which way.”
He nodded. “And do I have your word as the Mother Confessor that if I do this, you will let me go?”
Kahlan glanced at the sorceress a moment, then to Dreier.
“You have my word as the Mother Confessor. If you keep your end, we will let you go.”
In unison, the archers tracked Dreier’s every step. He kept a wary eye on them as he went to the bed where Richard lay.
He gestured over the body. “Can you remove that sword, please? It interferes with what I have to do.”
Kahlan lifted the weapon and slid it back into the scabbard at Richard’s hip. Being that close again, touching his cold flesh, seeing him that still, almost made her panic, almost made her lose control of her Confessor’s face.