Severed Souls

CHAPTER 73

Once the scribe had disappeared up the stairs, Richard turned back to those waiting with him.

“We’re in luck. They have horses here. Once we’re healed and I take a quick look at the prophecies that Hannis Arc used, and if we hurry, we might still be able to beat him and Sulachan back to the Palace of the Prophets. First, though, it’s time we finally got rid of Jit’s poison.”

He pulled Irena forward by her arm. “Where is the containment field? Show us the way.”

Irena nodded. “Gladly, Richard. At last! This way,” she said, pointing to the right, off between columns holding up a balcony above a dark gallery below it.

She looked thrilled to finally be the center of importance, to finally be able to fulfill her role. She hurried on ahead of them, leading the way, with a gleeful Samantha right on her heels. Samantha, proud of her mother’s part in saving their lives, flashed a wide grin back over her shoulder.

Richard couldn’t help feeling cheered himself. He acknowledged the smile with a brief one of his own.

He couldn’t wait for Kahlan to be healed. He could tell by the dull look in her green eyes that the darkness within was growing ever stronger. He wanted her healed first.

He was also pretty sure that after the poison was out of her, Kahlan would be herself again and realize the need to stop the threat from Hannis Arc and Emperor Sulachan. It aggravated him, every time he thought about it, how his blood had been used to bring the spirit of Sulachan back from the dead. Richard needed to set that right. Once well again, Kahlan would feel the same.

In the corridor beyond the gallery, when Irena headed down the first set of stairs she came to, Richard signaled to the men. Several of them took up stations, guarding the stairwell at the top. He didn’t know what was below, but while they went to find out, he wanted men watching their backs.

The rest of the group—Richard, Kahlan, Nicci, Commander Fister, and all the men with them—funneled down a wide stairwell after Irena and Samantha. Kahlan’s hand found his. She gave it a silent squeeze that he returned.

At the bottom of the stairs, Nicci used her gift to send sparks of flame into lamps hung at intervals along the wall so they could see as they followed a series of utilitarian passageways toward a door at the end. It was a simple oak door but looked heavily built. With a silent signal from Commander Fister, one of the men drew his axe and rushed out in front of everyone else to get to the door first.

“Is that really necessary?” Irena asked, puzzling back at the commander as they all hurried down the hall toward the door.

“It is,” he said without apology or bothering to tell her why. To the commander, the need seemed not only obvious, but routine and hardly worthy of explanation.

Irena shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt to be on the safe side.”

They all slowed and waited as the man with the axe took a lamp from the wall and then slipped behind the door to check the hall beyond. When he returned and gave them the all-clear, everyone swiftly followed Irena into the darkness beyond.

She stopped not far ahead where light spheres brightened in her presence. She lifted one of the glass spheres resting in a row of iron brackets and handed it to Nicci, then gave one to Samantha, and finally she took one for herself. The light spheres were powered by the gift, and started glowing brighter with greenish light as each woman took one. Since Richard was cut off from his gift, it wouldn’t do him any good to take one, so, like some of the men, he took a cold torch from the assortment standing on end in a woven wicker basket to the side.

He held the torch out and let Samantha light it for him. She ignited a flame over her palm and sent fire into the torches of several men, who hurried off down the hall, in turn lighting torches for others. The flames sent yellow-orange light flickering ahead into the darkness. Acrid smoke from the hissing, popping torches rolled along the sooty ceiling.

Irena’s face looked greenish in the strange light of the sphere she was holding. “Down this way,” she said before turning and heading for another, smaller stairway.

The stairs were roughly cut stone, as were the walls, and not as wide as the previous steps. In pairs, they all followed the stairs down around several landings as they descended to the foundation level of the building. Richard supposed that it made sense for the containment field to be in as secluded and secure a place as possible.

At the bottom of the stairs, they held out the light spheres and the torches Richard and several other men carried to peer off into the darkness of the stone corridor. The air was musty and damp, but at least there was no standing water.

“Down there,” Irena said, “near the end. I believe it is rarely used anymore so the place is in a mostly forgotten corner.”

Leading them onward, she hurried off down the hall, the crunch and pop of crumbled granite littering the floor under their boots echoing back from the distance as they passed rooms off to the sides. Some of the rooms had no doors, but most did. From what Richard could see when he thrust his hissing torch through a few open doorways, the pitch-black rooms beyond looked to be storage rooms for rarely needed supplies and building materials for making repairs—roof slates, beams, and planks in a variety of sizes. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

The commander used hand signals to send men off in various directions to check the rooms and branching passageways. Richard knew that it would take time to conduct a thorough search of what was turning out to be an extensive maze under the citadel, but at least they could clear the immediate area.

The stone hallway, built of granite blocks, looked eerie in the greenish luminescence of the light spheres. It reminded him, in a way, of the veil to the underworld that had infected them. He was relieved that the open passageway to the underworld infecting them would soon be withdrawn and kept by the containment field from escaping out into the world of life.

“Here,” Irena said, gesturing to an iron door to the right side of the hallway. “It’s through here.” She tugged on the door. “Through this place in here.”

One of the soldiers stepped up and pulled the heavy iron door open for her. Irena, not waiting for a soldier to check what was beyond, rushed inside with her light sphere.

“This is an entryway of some kind leading to the containment field,” she said, her voice echoing in the darkness.

Her sphere dimmed considerably once inside. Their torches gave off somewhat better light, but even they dimmed.

In weak glimmers of light, Richard saw that it was a dusty, dirty room. It was a lot longer than it was wide. The faint rays of light cut through the pitch blackness to reveal abandoned items—a broken loom, some scaffolding, and other worn-out implements—stacked in a careless jumble in one of the far corners. Planks and old tools in the other corner were blanketed with old sheets in an effort to keep the dirt off them. A thick layer of brownish-gray dust covered everything in the room, including the sheets.

Holding out his torch as he passed through the doorway into the dark room, Richard could feel the power of a shield tingle across his flesh. He held Kahlan’s hand as she followed him in. Commander Fister and the men took up positions outside in the hall, guarding the doorway.

Irena’s light sphere had dimmed to nearly being dark.

“Oh, I forgot,” Irena said, sounding disgusted with herself. “We have to go in through here, and these light spheres don’t work at all as we get closer to the containment field itself. They have special light spheres made for this area that they keep in a nearby room. I’ll run and get them—I’ll only be a minute.” She rushed back out the doorway before Nicci had a chance to enter. “Samantha, come help me carry them.”

Samantha instead ducked under her mother’s arm and into the room ahead of Nicci, eager to see the place. “I want to stay with Lord Rahl,” she said, her voice echoing as she peered around in the dim light. She held her light sphere up, trying to see, but it was fading fast.

“Oh, all right,” Irena said, “I’ll do it myself. I can get some of the men to help me carry them. I’ll just be a minute—I know right where they are.”

“I’ll help you,” one of the men offered, following after her as she rushed back down the hall.

Richard noticed that for some reason, there were sheets hung on the opposite, long wall, covering something.

“This feels too easy,” Kahlan said as she peered around in the dim, flickering light of the torches.

Zedd’s frequent admonishment came to mind.

“Nothing is ever easy,” Richard said.

He lifted his sword a few inches to check that it was clear before letting it drop back into its scabbard.

“Where’s the entrance to the containment field?” Samantha asked as she looked around. “I don’t see it.”

When Nicci stepped into the room, her light sphere went nearly dark. Richard saw a trace of a frown just beginning to grow on the sorceress’s face.

As soon as she was inside, her frown became more troubled. “This isn’t a containment field,” she said, sounding, now, more than a little suspicious.

“This wouldn’t be it,” Samantha told her. “My mother said that it was through this room.”

“I felt the shields,” Kahlan said.

“Me too,” Samantha added, “so it has to be through here. There must be a doorway, but it’s so dark in here with just one torch, I can’t see much.”

“They were shields,” Nicci agreed, “but I don’t recognize them.”

“Being close to the barrier to the third kingdom, maybe they used occult powers in building this place,” Richard suggested.

Nicci shook her head as she looked around. “There is something about this room…”

“Maybe the opening into the containment field is behind one of these sheets,” Samantha said.

Too eager to wait for her mother to bring more light, and dying of curiosity, she yanked down on one of the filthy, dusty sheets hanging along the far wall. As the sheet fell away in a choking cloud of dust, Richard saw that the sheets had been hung over four sets of shackles spaced evenly along the wall. Each of the four sets of three metal bands on short chains were pinned into the stone wall.

“This isn’t a containment field,” Nicci said in sudden alarm. “This is a dungeon. Those are shields to keep the gifted from using their ability. That’s why the light spheres don’t work in here.”

She spun Kahlan and shoved her toward the door. “Get out! Everyone out!”

That was the last thing Richard heard.

His whole body went numb. He didn’t feel pain, but rather a heavy, thick, tingling sensation spreading through his body to the tips of his fingers and toes.

He realized that he was on his knees but didn’t remember falling. He couldn’t hear anything.

His vision dimmed as he felt intense pressure, as if thumbs were being pressed against his eyeballs. It was the only pain he felt. Everything else was numb.

In his fading vision, Richard thought that the room had tilted sideways. He realized, then, that he was lying on his side, curled up in a ball. Kahlan, Nicci, and Samantha were all on the ground, curled into fetal positions, shaking violently from head to toe.

Richard was barely able to discern through shadowy, blurred vision that the dust on the sheet at the end of the room billowed up as it was thrown back.

He tried to pull his sword, but he couldn’t feel his fingers. Worse, his arms didn’t work. Despite his best effort, he couldn’t move them. His whole body was going completely numb and unresponsive. He couldn’t even tell if he still had a body, or if he was being pulled into the world of the dead.

He heard the faintest sound, and realized that he was hearing himself screaming.

He thought he could just see someone at the end of the room.

Then, even the screaming sound ceased to exist as a heavy blackness settled through him. All awareness went dark as he lost consciousness.