Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

But he knew that, for him, it was a one-way journey.

This time, there was no way he could come back.

He was terrified of dying, of giving up the only life he would ever have, but he was more terrified of living without Kahlan.

He was fully committed to what he had to do. He had made his decision. Nothing was going to deter him.

He knew full well that this was the last time he would cross through the veil.

CHAPTER

86

Nicci’s power slammed into him like a bolt of lightning, compressing his chest. In an instant his heart was stilled.

Richard’s eyes squeezed closed under the unrelenting pressure. With desperate effort, he gasped a breath under the enormous weight of pain pressing in on him.

He was all too aware that it was the last breath he would ever draw.

His muscles went rigid against the searing pain. Pain burned through the nerves of his jaw, down his arms, and into his back.

Things were happening too fast, spinning out of control. He felt himself suffocating as he was unable to get any air.

Time stretched until it became meaningless. Gradually, the agonizingly pain began to become more and more distant. The pain seemed to recede in his awareness as darkness increasingly seeped in around him to take its place.

He felt as if he was trying to hold back the night, but the weight of it was overwhelming.

At some point, he lost track of what the pain had felt like. It no longer seemed important.

But in place of the pain came something far worse: a kind of blind panic at the sensation of slipping away from the world of life.

It was happening too fast.

He felt icy-cold fear as he fully grasped that he was dying, felt the finality of it, and tried desperately to cling to the slender thread of life he still had left as light and images flashed through his mind. He saw people he remembered, places he had been. The colors were vivid and bright and real. He heard distant laughter. It was him, when he was a boy, laughing as he ran from Zedd. Zedd was laughing as he chased after Richard.

Mostly, though, through it all, there was Kahlan. He saw glimpses of her gazing at him with love, her whole face radiant with it, as she smiled with her special smile that she gave no one but him.

Then that, too, faded away as his mind descended into ever-gathering darkness, a kind of heavy, thick darkness unlike any other.

He could smell sulfur.

There was no up, no down. There were no boundaries of any kind, only a black void.

He focused on what he had to do, on why he had done this.

That overpowering need became all.

In that eternity of darkness, he had to find the one person he loved more than life itself.

He had to find his soul mate.

With that thought, the thought of how Kahlan was the one, the only one that he could ever love in the way he loved her, in the way that only one soul mate could love another, he began to have a sense of a track of light in the forever of darkness. It wasn’t light, though, the way the sun created light.

This was a kind of spiritual light, the kind of glow that he would expect to see from the good spirits. It seemed to be everywhere, and nowhere. It was a feeling, a presence of spirit.

He recognized that it was the right one, the right spirit.

He thought that the light was beginning to coalesce, but then he realized that it really wasn’t. Rather, it was that he was traveling along the trail left by that spirit he knew so well, and as he did, he was moving along a line, a pathway that it formed moving through the eternity of darkness.

He knew, then, that he was actually seeing the glowing line of the gift within the Grace itself.

And then he spotted the glow of her spirit moving ever onward, farther and farther away, sinking ever downward.

He was confused. It felt wrong. He didn’t understand why it was spiraling downward.

And then he saw them.

The demons.

They were so dark they blended with the eternal blackness. They were darkness itself, the way a night stone was dark beyond simply black. And yet, he could see them, see their shape when they writhed and tumbled and twisted downward.

The dark ones had enveloped Kahlan’s spirit and were taking her with them as they descended ever deeper toward the darkest depths of eternity, taking her where they could smother her spirit and keep it forever from the light, even as they smothered the light of her spirit so that only the glow of the trail it left was visible to Richard.

A snarl of glistening black fangs turned to him. With menacing, fluid grace they spread their wings wide.

Rather than resist, Richard used the rage from the sword to propel himself toward them. It felt like he had jumped from a cliff, falling through bottomless space that was not even space, but merely a black emptiness as he traveled ever farther from any light. Even Kahlan’s spirit was dimming as it was being suffocated under the weight of dark wings wrapped around her, pulling her downward.

Richard shot through that dark tangle of wings and reached Kahlan, embraced her, joining with her soul to do what he needed to do.

In that instant, for a glorious, singular spark in time, he joined with his soul mate and they were one.

He knew that that brief, singular connection when they were alone and together in the darkness would have to last him—would have to last both of them—for eternity.

And yet in the underworld, there was no time. He knew that in the brief spark of time when they were joined, he had forever to do what he needed to do, even if it might be only a fleeting second back in the world of life.

But here, time was his.

Once it was done, Richard used all his will to leave her and streak past the demons, running from them, drawing that overwhelming, uncontrollable, predatory need to chase. Hungry for his soul, driven to chase, they all turned and then suddenly swept through the darkness to go after him.

They drew ever closer as he streaked away. Black fangs glistened in the darkness as they growled and snapped at him, eager, hungry for his soul. Richard let their claws hook into him, sinking ever deeper so they could pull him in until they were close enough for their black wings to wrap around him and capture him. Even as they did, he let the rage power him so that he could keep racing away from Kahlan’s spirit, keep their fury and their attention on him.

And then, claws firmly gripping him, wings enfolding him, the dark ones dragged him downward, tumbling ever downward with him, suffocating the light of his soul.

But in doing so, in coming after him as he raced away, they had abandoned Kahlan’s spirit, her soul.

In that infinite span of time he had been with her spirit, he had accomplished what he needed to accomplish.

He had given her the chance she needed to live.

Suddenly freed from the weight of the dark demons, the light of her essence, that spirit, that soul, still carrying the buoyant spark of life from being part of the third kingdom—part of both worlds fused together—began to ascend, ever faster all the time, ever higher, escaping the forever of darkness.

Richard saw her glowing arms open, reaching for him as she was pulled ever upward toward life. She tried to reach out to touch him, to draw him to her, to bring him with her, but she no longer could because as she rose he was sinking with ever-increasing speed under the weight of the demons that had cocooned their inky black wings tightly around him.

The last thing he saw was her spark in the darkness high above him as it winked out, and then she was gone.

He was suddenly alone with the dark ones, alone with them in an eternity of blackness under the dead weight of oblivion where there was nothing, where even his soul would be crushed under the pressure of darkness until it ceased to exist.

His last thought was one of joy that he had been able to save Kahlan from that fate, that he had been able to give Kahlan the gift of her life, that he had done what he had always said he would willingly do.

He had traded his life for hers, so that she might live.

In so doing he had also been able to draw all the demons with him into the dark eternity below. They could no longer shadow her in death. When it was her time, she would rest forever in the Light.

Even as he felt his own spirit become insubstantial as it faded away into an eternity of darkness, he felt joy.

It had been worth it to him.

Kahlan would live.

CHAPTER

87

Kahlan gasped as she sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. She desperately gasped again, trying to get enough air.

Nicci cried out, jumping back as if she had seen a ghost.

Kahlan was only dimly aware of the warm colors of the strange room, the rust-colored carpeting, the heavy, blue-green fabric draped overhead and down around the bedposts. Almost her entire focus was on urgently drawing life and air into her lungs.

On desperately drawing her severed soul back into her worldly self.

None of it really made any sense. Everything was a jumble. She couldn’t quite put all the images and events together into a coherent concept.

“Kahlan!” Nicci cried out as she rushed in close to take up Kahlan’s hand. “You’re alive!”

Kahlan looked down at her own hand in Nicci’s. It did not look to her the way she thought it should look. It didn’t look like it belonged to her, or like it could possibly be hers.

It should be light, luminescent.

It should be without form. It should be insubstantial.

But this was substantial. It had form. It was not made of light. It was flesh and bone. She could feel blood pumping through her, she could feel life coursing through her, she could feel weight, touch. She could feel herself whole again.

She still gasped for air, still struggled to get enough, to catch her breath, but she was beginning to feel like she was finally getting it under control.

“Where am I?” she asked, gulping for air.