Severed Souls

CHAPTER 74

When Richard opened his eyes, he couldn’t see anything. He was in total blackness. His eyes hurt from what felt like intense pressure that had been pushing against them. He felt a rising sense of panic, fearing that he had been blinded.

He tried to move, but found that he could only move a little. He was restrained. He looked to the right, but what seemed to be a tall, rough iron collar cut into his flesh under his jaw if he turned his head too far.

His vision gradually began to return. Looking to the side as best he could, he was just able to see Kahlan out of the corner of his eye. Like Richard, she, too, hung by an iron band around her neck and manacles on her wrists. She appeared unconscious. The chains attached to the collars and the manacles were pinned into the stone wall and so short that they only allowed the captive to slump a little, but not sit.

Richard was beside himself with worry at the way Kahlan hung by the collar and manacles. She looked lifeless.

He turned his head the other way, to the left, blinking, trying to clear his vision, and saw that Nicci was similarly restrained. Beyond her, Richard could just make out some black hair and knew that Samantha also hung in the iron restraints.

Nicci’s wrists were bleeding. Despite her powers, she looked entirely helpless. She started to stir, then. As she groaned she put some weight on her legs to take the pressure off the collar and manacles. She coughed and blinked, trying to clear her vision.

Richard scanned the room, as best he could in the restrictive iron collar. Two torches in brackets on the opposite side of the room hissed as they burned. He didn’t see anyone other than the four of them chained to the wall.

He checked Kahlan again and saw that she was still hanging lifeless. He turned back to Nicci.

“Nicci,” he called out. His voice sounded gravelly and his throat felt raw. “Nicci, can you hear me?”

She nodded, swallowing against the pain in her throat. She blinked and squinted as she turned her head as far as the collar would allow.

“Richard, are you all right?”

A flip answer popped to mind but he was too worried to be flip. “I think so. I ache all over.”

“Me too,” she said. She looked the other way, toward Samantha, then turned back to him. “Where is Kahlan?”

“On the other side of me. She isn’t awake yet.”

“Do you have any idea how long we’ve been out?” she asked.

Richard shook his head just a little. “No. But it would have to be at least a while for someone to get us all chained up in these things. They must have the men, and Irena, too, or we wouldn’t be stuck here like this.”

He had a sudden flash of worry that the others had been killed because they weren’t as valuable.

Another part of him wished that he had been killed as well. He didn’t want to have to face whatever was in store for them. He remembered Zedd saying that he was tired of living.

At that moment, with the enormity of everything weighing down on him, Richard felt the same way. It was only Kahlan that kept him from giving into the tempting call of death inside him. It would be so easy to give in and slip into that dark forever.

Except that Kahlan needed him.

He tested his wrists, cuffed with iron manacles and connected to a heavy chain, and saw that they hardly had any slack. As he tried to move forward, he was only able to move inches before the iron collar around his neck brought him up short. He could barely move away from the damp stone wall. He could stand, but had no chance to sit or lie down.

He recognized the method of restraining prisoners. It was a simple but very effective form of torture. Once the prisoners could no longer stay awake and fell asleep or lapsed into unconsciousness, they slumped, basically hanging in the collar and manacles. The pain of the rough iron bands cutting in flesh kept a person awake, but they couldn’t remain awake forever, so there were brief periods of sleep or blacking out, when they would hang in the iron. The longer it went on, the worse the wounds would get, eventually festering and becoming infected. Gangrene would set in and turn arms black. As the flesh decomposed it would begin sloughing off and falling away. Death would inevitably follow, but it was a very long and agonizing way to die, all alone and helpless.

“We need to get out of here,” Nicci said in an angry voice.

“I’m with you. How do you suggest we go about it?”

Nicci was silent a moment before she spoke. “My gift doesn’t work in this room. It’s shielded to keep gifted prisoners from using their ability to escape.”

“What about Subtractive Magic. Cut the iron with Subtractive Magic.”

“Don’t you think I tried that?” she asked in frustration. “Subtractive is still part of the gift. It was probably a lot more common when this dungeon was built. The shields are equally as effective against both sides.”

Richard sighed in disappointment. “I guess that makes sense.” He glanced down. “I still have my sword, but I can’t reach it.”

“Irena is an idiot,” Nicci growled. “She is an inexperienced idiot from an isolated little village in the middle of nowhere and she mistook a containment cell for a containment field.”

“Are they similar?” Richard asked.

“In some ways,” she admitted. “They both are designed to contain power.”

“What’s going on?” It was Samantha’s groggy voice as she was beginning to wake up. “Where are we? What’s going on?”

“We’re having an adventure,” Richard said.

“I don’t think I like it,” she said.

“I’ve never been very fond of adventure, myself,” Richard said.

“Is my mother all right? Where is she?”

“We don’t know about any of the others,” Nicci told her. “All we know is that the four of us are chained up in here. They must be holding everyone else in other cells.”

“What about the Mother Confessor?” Samantha asked. “I can’t see her.”

“On the other side of me,” Richard told her.

He bent his knees, sagging a little, but that was the limit of how much he could move. He was exhausted. He felt like he had been beaten with a club. He hurt everywhere.

“Lord Rahl, what are we going to do?” The young woman sounded desperate and on the verge of panic.

“I don’t know yet, Samantha.”

“Well, who did this to us? Everyone seemed like they were cooperating.”

“I don’t know, Samantha. Try to save your strength.”

He looked over at Kahlan again. She was still hanging unconscious by the iron bands at the ends of taut chains. Her head hung forward, her arms spread wide and stretched back a little toward the wall. Blood from where the iron collar cut her neck dripped off her chin.

The sight ignited Richard’s anger. He tried to talk his anger back down. It could do him no good at the moment, and only wasted what little strength he had left. He needed to save that strength in case he had a chance to use it.

He heard Samantha crying softly over on the other side of Nicci. He couldn’t think of anything to say to comfort her.

At that moment, his only hope was that they would be killed quickly, rather than endure a long, agonizing path toward the inevitable end.