Severed Souls

CHAPTER 79

“Do any of you know where the others are?” Richard asked the three Mord-Sith and the scribe, Mohler. “All the soldiers of the First File? There were a lot of men.”

“And my mother,” Samantha added.

“They are all down in the dungeons,” Mohler said.

“The dungeons?” Richard asked.

“Dreier used his occult ability to render everyone unconscious—like he did to you,” Laurin said. “There are only shackles for four people in here, so the citadel guard brought you four in here and carried all the others down to the lower cells in the other dungeons.”

Richard looked around at the stone room. It was shielded and secure. “But I thought this was the dungeon.”

Cassia shook her head. “This is only the upper dungeon area of the citadel, and by far the smallest. The citadel has an extensive dungeon complex—three full floors below us, with dozens and dozens of individual rooms. Some cells are only large enough to hold one person, but most are a great deal larger than this one. They could easily house hundreds of prisoners at a time down there.”

Richard frowned at the three Mord-Sith. “Why would they hold so many people?”

Cassia pulled a finger across her throat. “To await execution.”

Vale nodded. “There is an execution room on each floor below. Drains are cut into the stone for all the blood running from the blocks where the beheadings were done. Each execution room has a number of stations with well-worn blocks.”

Cassia gestured downward. “The way it looks, they probably only used the cells to house people temporarily until they could be executed. From what I’ve seen of those rooms down below, it doesn’t look like the dungeons and execution rooms have been in use for ages, but there is plenty of evidence that they were once in heavy use.

“The bodies were thrown in pits below the dungeons. One pit contains only skulls. The bones in others are a jumble—the bodies likely thrown in and left to rot. I have no idea how deep the layers of bones might be.”

“We have to get my mother out of there,” Samantha insisted, sounding on the verge of panic. “We have to get her out now.”

Richard put a hand on her shoulder as he thought it through. “We will, Samantha, we will.”

“She would get me out,” she insisted.

Richard looked back up at the Mord-Sith and the scribe. “I don’t understand. Why are there so many prison cells here? Do any of you know? I mean, this is a pretty small city for so many dungeon cells, to say nothing of all the executions.”

“From old accounts I’ve seen,” Mohler said, “the citadel has long been a prison for the Dark Lands, a place to confine the most dangerous people, such as those with occult powers, until they could be executed.”

It was suddenly making sense to Richard.

“The barrier to the third kingdom was in this general area of the Dark Lands,” he said. “The people back in the time of the first Confessor, the time of the great war, knew that the seals of the barrier would begin to fail one day and that occult powers confined there would begin to seep out. They left people in Stroyza to watch for the barrier to fail completely, but more than that, they built the citadel to collect and confine anyone with dangerous occult powers that from time to time had leaked out from beyond the barrier. People like Jit.”

“Unfortunately, those powers apparently also settled into Hannis Arc and Ludwig Dreier,” Kahlan said.

Nicci gestured in frustration. “Great. So a man with those occult abilities came to be the very one running the prison meant to confine him.”

“More likely to execute him,” Kahlan said.

Richard looked back at the shackles pinned to the wall. He was beginning to get an idea. He just needed time to think it through. But there was no time. He needed to act before it was too late.

“I know that look,” Kahlan said. “What are you thinking? Get everyone out from below and do a lightning-quick attack?”

Richard’s mind was filled with the flow and form of the dance with death, the way of a war wizard. He was lost in that dance he had come to know so well.

“The threat we face is not one that will be helped with soldiers. For the moment, we need to leave them down there, out of the way. We need everyone in the citadel to think we are all still locked up and under control.”

Samantha’s hands fisted. “My mother is gifted. We need to get her out. She can help.”

“Samantha, calm down. I know how much you want to get her out, but I know what I’m talking about. We will get her out, I promise, but we first have to make it safe to do so. You need to trust me in this. You wouldn’t want to get her out only to have her killed because we failed to recognize the full extent what we face, would you?”

“Well, no, I guess not, but—”

“But nothing. Dreier possesses occult abilities. He has already proven that he can cut any gifted person down in a heartbeat. He put all of us and the men down before any of us knew what hit us. Your mother has no chance against him. None of us do.”

A devious smile spread on Nicci’s face. “I have some ideas.”

Richard was sure she did. Nicci was experienced at this sort of thing, at using her head rather than brawn. She also knew better than to try to use what they knew wouldn’t work.

“We need to act with surprise, swiftness, and violence,” Richard told all of them. “Capturing Dreier is the priority.”

Kahlan’s expression suddenly took an angry set. “Capture him! Richard, we can’t risk capturing him! And what would be the point? The best thing to do is what you said. Surprise, swiftness, and violence. We need to kill the bastard before he has a chance to strike back. With his abilities he could kill us all. We wouldn’t stand a chance of stopping him. We need to kill him, not capture him. Now we have the chance to surprise him and end the threat.”

“The threat from Dreier,” Richard said, “but what about the rest of it?”

“What about it?” Kahlan lifted her hands and let them flop down at her sides. “What can we do, Richard? We’re going to be dead from Jit’s poison before we have a chance to do anything else. We can at least kill Ludwig Dreier before we die. To be able to do anything else we would have to be cured.”

“Exactly.”

Richard smiled as he drew his sword. The ring of steel echoed around the stone dungeon.

Everyone looked puzzled as he turned. With a mighty swing, he struck the chain holding the collar that had been around his neck. As it cleaved the chain away at the wall, the blade sent hot fragments of steel flying through the room, some skittering along the floor, some rebounding off walls.

When the collar clattered to the floor, Richard picked it up by its short length of chain and held it up before the others. “This is a collar meant to contain the powers of the gifted.”

“Dreier has occult powers,” Kahlan pointed out. “Those are even more powerful than his gifted abilities.”

A grin spread on Nicci’s face. “But this place was made specifically to confine those with occult powers, not merely the gifted.”

“Right,” Richard said. “With this, we can capture Ludwig Dreier and keep him from using his power against us.”

Kahlan folded her arms, interested, but not yet convinced. “Why? It would be easier to kill him. What’s the point of going to the trouble of capturing him?”

“What kind of poison do we have in us?” he asked her.

Kahlan shrugged. “The call of death, from Jit.”

“Which is…?” Richard prompted.

Her eyes widened with understanding. “Caused by an occult power.”

“That’s right. Jit had occult powers. That’s what is infecting us.”

Nicci was smiling. “And Ludwig Dreier has occult powers. So, if we can capture him alive and hold him in that collar, maybe we can find out if there is a way to cure you two of that occult poison without a containment field.”

“It’s our only chance,” Richard said. “We have to try.”

“Even if you somehow get him in the collar,” Kahlan said, “how are you going to get him to cooperate?”

Cassia leaned in as she smiled in the chilling way that only Mord-Sith could smile. “You leave that part to us, Mother Confessor. We are Lord Rahl’s Mord-Sith now. We will get Dreier to cooperate.”

“With this sickness in me, my bond doesn’t work to power your Agiel,” Richard reminded them.

“No,” she agreed, the smile still in place, “but Dreier said that his occult abilities power our Agiel now, and the bond that powers them can’t be broken as long as he’s alive.”

“So,” Vale said, “we can use his own ability against him.”

“We’re going to do whatever it takes to protect Lord Rahl’s life,” Laurin added. “That is what Mord-Sith do. We will get him to talk. If there is a cure, he will tell us what he knows.”

Kahlan looked at the determination in their eyes. “Just leave him alive when you’re done so I can kill him.”

“You’ve got it, Mother Confessor,” Laurin said.

“He’s yours to kill,” Cassia agreed.

“But until then, he is ours,” Vale said with a gleam of menace in her eyes.

“Do any of you know where he sleeps?” Richard asked the three Mord-Sith.

They all shared a look.

“Oh yes, we know,” Cassia said. “It’s up on the third floor.”

“Lead the way,” Richard told her. “I’ll explain the plan on the way.”

“Gladly.”

“Is there a back way up to his bedroom?” he asked.

“Yes,” Cassia said. “Some of the doors are kept locked, though.”

Mohler held up the big ring of keys he carried. “Not a problem.”

“He has soldiers guarding his bedroom,” Laurin said. “Tonight he has Erika entertaining him, rather than one of us. He was eager to get to bed, so I doubt he will be asleep.”

“That means he will be distracted,” Richard said. “But this is still going to require stealth. All of you will need to do exactly as I say. Along the way I’m going to need some of you to stay behind to guard our backs. I don’t want any questioning or second-guessing. There won’t be time to explain or argue. We can’t have that if we are going to succeed and then get the others out of the dungeon. You will all need to do exactly as I say, when I say it, if this is going to work.”

He was directing his comments mostly at Samantha without looking at her because he didn’t want to sound like he was accusing her of something before she was guilty of it. But he also knew how she could be. He knew that he could count on the rest of them to follow instructions.

“If any of you have a problem with that, then you need to wait down here, otherwise you can come with me. Agreed?”

Everyone nodded.