Severed Souls

CHAPTER 88

Even as she wept against Richard’s body, the words kept echoing around in her mind. No one to save him.

Kahlan sat up suddenly. She sucked back the sobs and wiped the tears back from her face as she scooted to the edge of the bed and hopped down onto the floor.

“Where are Cassia, Laurin, and Vale?”

Nicci gestured. “Standing watch outside the doors.”

Kahlan raced to the doors and flung them open. The three Mord-Sith turned and gasped when they saw her.

“Mother Confessor!” Cassia cried. “How—I mean—I don’t—”

“Richard traded places with me in the world of the dead so he could send me back,” she said in a rush.

Their eyes widened, stricken with horror. “Lord Rahl is dead?” Vale asked in a shaky whisper.

“I’ll explain it later. Listen to me. Cassia, go get Commander Fister.”

She pointed to a hallway branching off not far down the corridor. “He is waiting right down there, not far but out of the way, along with a number of the men.”

“Good. Tell him to bring a few dozen men. At least half of them archers. Laurin, Vale, you two go down in the dungeon and get Dreier. That collar he is wearing keeps his powers contained, so you will be able to handle him.”

Although shocked to see her alive and at a loss to understand what she could be thinking, they nodded earnestly.

“What do you want me to do?” Cassia asked. “I mean, after I give the commander your instructions?”

“I want you to go get Mohler and bring him back here. We need his keys.”

They looked confused. Or maybe it was just that they thought she might be a ghost, or a good spirit.

“Go! Hurry!” Kahlan said. “If we are to have any chance of saving Richard’s life, we have to hurry!”

Cassia blinked. “You mean, there is a chance to save his life?”

“Yes!”

All three turned and raced away to do as they had been asked.

Kahlan rushed back inside. She thought there was a chance. She had to believe that there was. She forced her grief aside so that she could act. Now was not the time to grieve. Richard would tell her to think of the solution.

“Dreier has abilities we can’t even imagine,” she told Nicci.

Nicci turned away from staring at Richard’s lifeless corpse stretched out on the bed. “What of it?”

“What if he could bring life back into Richard?”

Nicci wiped back her tears as she frowned. “Bring back life? What are you talking about? What do you mean, bring life back into him? You can’t do such a thing to—”

She closed her mouth. She looked like she had been about to say “to the dead.” She didn’t want to refer to Richard that way.

“Sulachan and Hannis Arc can,” Kahlan said. “Even those half-people soul trackers could wake the dead, remember?”

A horrified look twisted Nicci’s face. “You want to … what? Have Ludwig Dreier turn Richard into one of those walking dead? You want the man to use his power to reanimate Richard’s dead body? Kahlan, you can’t, you wouldn’t. He wouldn’t really be alive. He would just be another of those monstrous corpses that moves, but he wouldn’t be alive. It wouldn’t be Richard.

“Kahlan, Richard is gone. His life force, his spirit, his soul has left him and gone beyond the veil.”

Kahlan paced for a moment, thinking, refusing to allow herself to give up. “Nicci, I’m just trying to think of how to do what he did.”

“What he did? What do you mean?”

“Richard had you heal my body—the wound and my heart—so that my body would be ready for my spirit to return.”

Nicci was frowning at her. “So you are suggesting that we get Dreier to make his body alive again, like some kind of mutant half person without a soul?”

Kahlan paced to the window and back along the thick, rust-colored carpet. “No—I don’t know. I’m just trying to think of a way to help him. We have to help him.”

Nicci cocked her head. “Help him … what?”

“Well, you remember when he saw those people who snuck up on him—back right before all those half-people spirit trackers attacked us.”

“Yes, I remember. But they weren’t there. They vanished, somehow.”

Kahlan nodded. “Richard said that the souls of the half people Sulachan created were ripped from them, and also that in order to animate the dead, part of that process involved ripping the dead person’s spirit from the underworld—disconnecting them from where they belonged. Those spirits were lost, they were severed souls.”

Nicci folded her arms, frowning as she tried to follow what Kahlan was getting at. “All right.…”

“What did Richard say they said to him? ‘Bring us our dead.’ He said that they expected him to reunite them with their dead bodies.”

Nicci rubbed her eyes for a moment. “You mean, you think that maybe Richard’s spirit could be reunited with his dead body? How?”

Kahlan lifted her arms in a gesture of frustration. “I don’t know, Nicci. All I’m saying is that if there is any chance for Richard to ever return, it has to be soon, and he has to have his body ready for his soul to return to.”

“Like Richard wanted your heart healed so that when he went to get you, your soul could return to your body, because there was a home for it after I fixed it. So you think that maybe Richard’s spirit will find a way back to his body?”

Kahlan shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know, Nicci. I’m just trying to think of something—anything. I can’t accept that Richard is really dead. The way he crossed over and came back before makes me think there has to be hope. Richard has gone to the Temple of the Winds in the underworld. He is of the third kingdom and so he went through the world of the dead to rescue you and the others.

“This is Richard we’re talking about. He’s done it before. He has gone to the underworld before and returned.”

Nicci gently grasped Kahlan’s shoulders, then, and looked into her eyes. “Kahlan, Richard made sense, after a fashion. A crazy, wild, Richard kind of sense, but sense. This is different. This is … I don’t know, this sounds to me like you are just trying to wish something into being true because you’re desperate.”

Kahlan stared back. Hopelessness clawed its way back into her. “Maybe I am, but don’t you think we should try? Do you want to let him go without trying? We have to try.”

“Kahlan, look at him.” Nicci turned Kahlan’s chin to make her look past her toward the still body lying on the bed. “Look at him. Kahlan, Richard is dead.”

Kahlan looked back into Nicci’s eyes. “So was I.”

Nicci wiped a trembling hand back over her forehead. “Yes, and you had Richard to go to the underworld itself to bring you back. Who is going to bring him back?”

Kahlan felt the terrible weight of despair crushing her. “I don’t know, Nicci, but we can try, can’t we? Please, Nicci? We can try every last crazy thing, can’t we?”

Nicci took a deep breath, then. “Yes, of course we can. You’re right. We have to try.”