Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

Kahlan finally stepped back. “All right, go ahead.”

They all watched as Dreier wasted no time in laying his hands on Richard’s chest. He closed his eyes a moment, then placed one hand on Richard’s forehead. The air in the room began to hum. The sound built until the glass in the window rattled. A momentary glow came to Richard’s body as the room darkened.

Dreier lifted his hands back.

“It is done.”

Kahlan stood by the bed and stared at Richard for a moment. “I don’t see anything different.”

“I told you, the man is dead. Nothing is going to change that.” He gestured in frustration at Richard. “I did what I told you I would do. He will be preserved for now. He will not go stiff in death and decompose. He will stay as he was when alive. You will be able to tell for yourself when in a short time he does not get stiff as the dead always do.”

Kahlan went to the window set back in the thick stone wall, looking out at the dawn of the gray day. She put a hand over her stomach. She felt like she might be sick. She leaned under the arch and opened the window to get some fresh air on her face.

She had never thought she would see another day. Now, she didn’t care if she did.

“You may go,” she said without looking back over her shoulder to Dreier. “Commander, see that he has safe passage out of the citadel. I want him out of here, and I want him out now.”

As they all watched and waited on her, Kahlan took a breath to steady her voice.

“But I gave my word as the Mother Confessor. Don’t you or any of your men do anything to break my word. Get him out of the citadel and let him go. Do it at once.”

CHAPTER

90

Commander Fister reluctantly clapped a fist to his heart. “Of course, Mother Confessor.”

He gestured to his sergeant. “Take some of the archers and see to getting him out.”

Kahlan didn’t look back. “Laurin, Vale, please go with them to make sure the abbot is promptly sent out and on his way.”

Dreier was eager to leave before she could change her mind. In a moment they were gone. The commander fidgeted for a time after the door closed as she stared out the window.

“Kahlan,” Nicci finally asked in a quiet voice, “do you really think what Dreier did was of any use? Do you really think that it gives us any hope at all?”

Kahlan was silent for a time, staring out the window without seeing anything, as tears ran down her face and dripped off her jaw.

“No,” she finally said in a frail voice as she stared out at nothing. “Richard is gone. He took my place in the underworld. I saw the winged demons take him down into the depths of darkness. He is lost to us.”

Nicci stepped closer. “You saw that?” she asked in a soft, fearful voice. She had been a Sister of the Dark and knew full well what such a thing meant. “You saw the dark ones take him down?”

Kahlan nodded without looking back.

“Dear spirits…” Nicci whispered. She covered her mouth with a hand, holding back a cry of anguish at having sent him to that fate.

“Mother Confessor,” Commander Fister said, “there must be some small hope that Lord Rahl will somehow…”

“Come back from the dead?” Kahlan slowly shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “I would love to believe it. I would hold out hope if I could. For a brief time I thought I could. I tried. But my whole life I have been devoted to the truth, no matter how harsh and cold the truth may be. I am the Mother Confessor and I can’t believe in something I know isn’t true.”

The room behind her fell silent again as she stared out the window.

Kahlan wiped tears from her cheek as she turned to one of the men. “May I have your bow, please?”

Puzzled, he handed it over. Nicci, wondering what Kahlan was doing, went to the window beside her.

Kahlan nocked the arrow and drew the string to her cheek. She settled herself and called the target to her the way Richard had taught her.

Nothing else existed.

Time slowed.

She didn’t even feel herself release the bowstring. Like a breath of breeze, the arrow was away.

Kahlan watched its flight, watched it going exactly where she had envisioned it to fly.

The arrow hit Ludwig Dreier square in the back of his head on the left side, exiting his right eye socket. Dreier dropped, dead before he hit the road leading away from the citadel.

“Beautiful shot, Mother Confessor,” the archer said, sounding sincerely impressed when she handed him back his bow.

“Richard taught me to shoot. You wouldn’t believe how good he is … was…” she said, her voice trailing off.

Nicci arched an eyebrow. “Not that I object, but you broke your word. You said you would let him go in exchange for what he did.”

Kahlan met Nicci’s gaze with an iron look. “I kept my word. I told him I would let him go. I never said how far.” She gestured out the window. “I didn’t tell him that that was as far as I ever intended on letting him go.”

Some of the men smiled just a little. That was the Mother Confessor they knew, the Mother Confessor they had fought beside. The Mother Confessor with an iron will and an unwavering sense of justice.

Kahlan softly asked everyone to leave, then. She wanted to be alone with Richard.

She sat on the edge of the bed beside him, looking down at him, as everyone started quietly filing out.

Nicci shared a silent, tearful, sympathetic look with Kahlan before gently closing the doors behind her as she left.

Kahlan didn’t know how she was going to go on, or what she was going to do.

She was lost.

Everything was lost.

She understood how Cara felt.

CHAPTER

91

After crying in desolate solitude for hours as she lay beside Richard’s body, desperately wanting more than anything to have him reach out and hold her in his arms, after being certain that she would die of inconsolable grief, after wishing she could die and have the suffering end, Kahlan finally wiped her tears, straightened her clothes, and emerged from the bedroom.

Nicci, a number of soldiers of the First File, and the three Mord-Sith were standing silent vigil outside the bedroom, but down the hallway a respectful distance, not wanting to appear to be standing by the door, listening to her cry. When Kahlan started off in silence down the corridor to go speak with Commander Fister, they all followed behind her. They were thoughtful enough, though, to give her plenty of space to be alone in her grief. Even Nicci hung back with the others. She could tell that it would be best to give Kahlan some privacy and not ask any questions.

There was no comforting such inner agony and they all knew it. They were grieving, too, but Kahlan’s grief was different.

She had lost her entire world.

She had lost her soul mate.

As she came around a corner, Erika suddenly appeared from a dark doorway right in front of her.

The Mord-Sith again had on her black leather outfit. Gripping her Agiel in a tight fist, she was considerably closer to Kahlan than any of the people back down the hall following behind. And the Mord-Sith was already moving at a dead run as she emerged from the doorway. Kahlan had fought in the war with Cara enough to recognize the way Erika was holding her weapon. It was a killing stance, meant to deliver a single strike to stop the heart of an enemy.

Erika’s eyes were filled with hate.

Instinctively, Kahlan had already raised her hand as Erika flew toward her.

Kahlan’s fingers just began to contact the center of the woman’s chest, just below her throat.

In that instant, time became hers.

The contact of her fingers was still ever so slight, barely more than that of a lover’s warm breath on a cheek.

Time was hers. Kahlan could have counted every hair at the hairline on Erika’s forehead and then every eyelash.

Although Erika’s face was filled with hate, Kahlan felt no

hate. She felt no pity, no rage, no anger, no sorrow. There was no mercy in Erika’s eyes, and there was none in Kahlan’s, either.

In that infinitesimal spark of time, Kahlan’s mind was without emotion, filled only with the all-consuming rush of time suspended.

As she watched Erika before her, frozen in time in the midst of rushing in for the kill, Kahlan knew that the woman had no chance.

None.

She was already dead. That fact simply hadn’t caught up with her yet. Kahlan could see in the woman’s eyes that she did not yet comprehend what was about to happen. She still thought that she was in control of what was about to happen.