Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

He decided to be a little less hostile in his answers.

“What is it you came to ask, Cassia?”

He deliberately did not address her as “Mistress.”

Cassia, looking down in thought, finally lifted her head. “I have heard a rumor that you presided over the marriage of a Mord-Sith.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Richard shared a look with Kahlan. The two behind Cassia were intently focused on him.

“Yes, that’s right, Cara.”

“Cara? Cara married?” Cassia looked astonished and incredulous all at once. “Cara is as resolute and formidable as they come.”

“Cara was our protector, but she came to be more than simply a protector to the Lord Rahl. She had become a close friend to the Mother Confessor and me.”

Cassia looked over at Kahlan. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” Kahlan said without hesitation. “Cara was as hard as nails, but she also had a good heart. We loved her.”

The three seemed mystified by that, as if they didn’t know what to think.

“Then where is she now?” the one named Vale asked from behind. “If she is your protector, and your friend, then why isn’t she here protecting you? Did she die in her service to you?”

“No,” Richard said with a deep sigh. “It’s a long story.”

“Make it short,” Cassia said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

Richard looked at the intent expressions of the two behind before looking back at Cassia. He wondered what she meant about not having a lot of time, but went ahead and answered anyway.

“Kahlan and I were captured by Jit, a Hedge Maid. Jit infected us with a kind of deadly poison. Cara and others came to help us. In the meantime, the barrier to the third kingdom failed. Hannis Arc called the long-dead Emperor Sulachan back from the world of the dead in part by using my blood. The half people—people without souls—captured Cara, her husband, and all of our other friends. Kahlan and I were unconscious, so Cara hid us before the attack. Because of that, the half people didn’t take us with the others. We later went in there and got them out. As we were escaping, Cara’s husband was killed.”

“I see,” Cassia said. “So what happened to Cara? Why isn’t she still with you?”

As the painful memory came flooding back, Richard had to pause. It was a long moment before he answered.

“Cara asked to be released from her service to me.”

The room was silent but for the hissing torches as the Mord-Sith tried to take in an act that he knew must be incomprehensible to them.

“What is it you really want to know?” Richard finally asked.

“You are called Lord Rahl. Darken Rahl was the Lord Rahl. Darken Rahl was our master.” Cassia lifted her chin while looking him in the eye. “Did you kill him?”

That was the question he had been afraid they were going to ask. Nonetheless he answered it with straightforward, plain honesty.

“Yes.”

CHAPTER

78

Cassia, Laurin, and Vale stared at him for a long, silent, uncomfortable moment.

Richard decided that maybe he should elaborate on his reasons, so that they would not mistakenly think it was by chance, or accident. He wanted them to know the truth.

“Darken Rahl was an evil man who caused untold suffering and death. I sent him to the underworld so that he couldn’t harm anyone else and I would do it all over again.”

“So then, how is it that you became the Lord Rahl?”

“He raped my mother. That makes me his offspring. I inherited the gift from him.

“At the time I wasn’t interested in being the Lord Rahl, or even willing to accept the fact that I had the gift, but I came to see that I could use my ability, and the bond between the Lord Rahl and the people of D’Hara, to fight for something worthwhile—freedom. Freedom to live our lives without the boot of tyranny on all of our necks. Freedom to live in a just world. Many wanted a chance for that and helped in the struggle. Cara was but one of them.

“She and the other Mord-Sith who have joined in that struggle are not weak for wanting freedom. They are stronger for it. I have held Mord-Sith in my arms as they died for our shared cause. I have worn the Agiel of Mord-Sith who have given their lives fighting for our beliefs.

“Those people, like those Mord-Sith, who want the same things in life that I want, are the reason I fight. I fight on behalf of all of them. There have been times when I have been weary and wanted to give up that struggle and leave the fighting to others.”

He glanced briefly at Kahlan. “But the Mother Confessor, who is the one who came to ask for my help in the first place, is my strength, and it is for her, and all those like her, that I fight. I will fight for what is right to the very end. I will fight with my dying breath if need be.

“That, Cassia, Laurin, Vale, is why I killed Darken Rahl. He needed killing and I was the only one who could do it. That is why I am and must be the Lord Rahl.”

Kahlan gave Richard her special smile. He was heartened to see it, even if it ended up being for the last time.

Cassia abruptly turned to Nicci. “I have heard that you were once a Sister of the Dark, but no longer. Why not?”

Nicci was straightforward and simple in her answer. “Richard showed me a better way. He is a good man. Kahlan is a good woman. I wanted to live life the way they showed me I could, if I chose to.”

Cassia nodded in thought. She looked down as she rolled her Agiel in her fingers for a time, carefully considering her next words. Richard knew the agonizing pain caused by holding that weapon. Mord-Sith were taught to endure and ignore pain. In the madness these women had been cast into, pain was a refuge.

“The pain of the Agiel helps you to think,” he said. “It’s familiar, ever-present, comforting.”

She looked up in wonder. “I guess Denna really did teach you many things.”

“She taught me that people who had been ripped from everything good they knew in life, and were made to suffer for no reason but to turn them into monsters who could be used to serve the cause of evil, could still find their way back.”

“Not all of them,” she said with quiet remorse.

“No, not all of them. Some have been severed from their souls, and can never come back to humanity. But some still can.”

Cassia let her Agiel drop to dangle on the fine gold chain on her right wrist, as if suddenly not wanting to be reminded of the pain.

“We served under Darken Rahl.” She gestured back at the other two. “The three of us. He was everything you say. I would venture to say that we know that better than you ever could.”

Richard nodded. “I understand. I know some of what was done to you by that man, but I’m sure I could never know it all.”

The truth of his words ghosted across her face.

“We finally found a way to leave him,” Cassia said. “Bishop Arc offered us refuge by using his powers to take up our bond. We thought it would be better.

“We found life with Hannis Arc to be little different, except that his schemes for evil were even more grandiose than Darken Rahl’s had been. Once bonded to him, we only then learned that one of our own, Alice, had tricked us—betrayed her sisters of the Agiel.” A dark look settled into her features. “She had delivered us to him in exchange for favors for herself.

“Then, just days ago, Lord Dreier arrived and enslaved us in service to him by using his occult powers to link our bond to him instead, as if we were property he could walk in and seize. In many ways, personal ways, he has proven to be more than a match for the savagery of Darken Rahl or Bishop Arc.

“Those two used torture as a means to an end. Lord Dreier, though, gets pleasure from the things he does to people. Sick pleasure.

“There were four of us he put into bondage to him when he arrived here. Like Darken Rahl, he took us to his bed as a form of domination, to show us our place as his property, to let us know that he can use us as he wishes, however he wishes.

“One night, he took Janel to his bed. He was fascinated—captivated—by her beauty. In the morning, he decided that because she was Mord-Sith and he found her so achingly beautiful, she would be the perfect one to use in his effort to obtain prophecy from the other side of the veil.”

“He tortured her?” Richard asked. “One of his own Mord-Sith?”

Cassia nodded. “He and Erika commanded the three of us to watch it being done, to show us, he said, the tremendous value and importance of the work he does.

“There was no value in what he did to Janel. There was no point to it other than his desire to watch her naked body break. He got no prophecy in exchange for her life. He shrugged it off as a ‘worthy attempt.’”

When she fell silent, Richard said, “Believe me, Cassia, I share your revulsion at all three of the men who enslaved you. That’s why I fight against them and those who help them.”