Severed Souls (24 page)

It was then that she noticed something else in the moonlight. Atop the rock, three dead rabbits had been laid out neatly side by side in a row. Although freshly killed, none had been eaten.

The creature had brought her a gift.

Kahlan looked down at the animal curled up against her middle.

“Now I know your name. Hunter,” she said softly but with emphasis. “Hunter fits you.” She stroked behind a tufted ear. “Hunter sound good to you?”

Hunter's only response was to purr a little louder. She could feel the vibration of that contented purr against her stomach.

Kahlan laid her head back down, her hand resting on little Hunter's back, feeling his even breathing and the soft, steady throbbing of his purr.

She smiled as she recalled Richard once admonishing her not to name wild creatures. He had brought her a jar of little fish one time to entertain her while she was recovering from terrible injuries. He had told her not to name them. It wasn't long before she and Cara had named them all.

“Sleep well, Hunter.”

Kahlan couldn't help smiling as she fell back to sleep.

 

CHAPTER

34

Ludwig Dreier's gaze drifted around the cramped, narrow streets of Saavedra as he and Erika rode their horses up through the city toward the citadel. Two-story buildings packed with people in cramped apartments crowded in close to the muddy road. Small shops or work areas filled some of the lower floors while carts and vendor stands stood wedged between buildings or in alleyways. Some were covered with tarps to protect the goods of hopeful merchants from the light drizzle.

Ludwig had been to Saavedra to visit the citadel a number of times over the years, and he rather liked the feel of the city. And, he liked the way it smelled.

It smelled of fear.

The people of Saavedra feared the citadel on the hill looking down on them, watching them. Actually, it had been Hannis Arc watching them, and Hannis Arc they feared. The citadel was merely a symbol that embodied those fears. Hannis Arc believed that fear equaled respect, so most everything he did was aimed at earning their full and complete respect.

The bishop had believed that if people feared him, they respected him, they obeyed him, they bowed down to him. He made sure that people were never without cause to fear him.

Ludwig Dreier leaned over in his saddle and spat to the side. Hannis Arc was nothing but a petty despot, the ruler of the pathetic little land of Fajin Province, proud of himself for the way he could instill fear, and because of that he thought himself respected and worthy of more.

He thought himself worthy of an empire.

Because the Dark Lands were such a dangerous place, people were drawn to Saavedra for protection from those dangers. Those people needed food, clothing, and a myriad of other things, which drew in yet more people to service those needs and every other sort of need, from butchers to bakers to healers to merchants to woodcutters to prostitutes. All those people found shelter and relative safety in Saavedra, but it made the whole city feel like it was hunched inward, cowering in fear of everything out in the dark forests beyond and the citadel watching over them. Such fears, both the external and the internal, were wholly justified.

Hannis Arc, if nothing else, was a man of considerable occult talent, and in return for their “respect,” he protected the people of his province in general and Saavedra in particular from things even less forgiving than he was. While they lived in fear of the man, at least they lived.

Out in the wilds of the Dark Lands people died easily, swiftly, and often. There were claws and fangs always ready to take the careless, or even the properly cautious, but there were also things out there that were far worse than claws and fangs always ready to take them when they least expected it.

The Dark Lands was mostly a deserted, trackless waste for good reason. So, people wanted to live in Saavedra or places like it as salvation from those very real dangers beyond the expanse of dark forests.

Weighed in that light, Hannis Arc was a leader they were more than willing to tolerate—not that they had any real choice in the matter. As Ludwig knew so well, if given a choice people always chose the less painful of their options. It was the task of an intelligent leader to limit and properly frame those options so that people could see those choices in stark terms.

The people walking in every direction on the narrow street scattered out of the way when Ludwig and Erika made no effort to take any care in guiding their horses among them. If people didn't get out of the way that was their problem. He was in no mood to indulge inconsiderate people not paying attention to where they were walking. It was their choice to get stepped on by a huge horse, or pay attention and get out of the way.

His mind was on dark thoughts about the tasks that lay ahead.

People stared at him because they recognized his black coat buttoned to his neck, the straight collar closed at his throat, and his rimless, four-sided hat. Even if they hadn't seen him before, they would have heard of him. They knew by his distinctive clothes that he could be none other than Bishop Arc's abbot. They knew that Ludwig ran the abbey, and the abbey was one of those places out in the vast forests beyond the city that they rightfully feared.

Ludwig Dreier smiled as he suddenly realized that he, too, was “respected.”

The men and women on the street also stared because Mistress Erika rode beside him. The stunningly beautiful creature, her posture perfect as she swayed easily in her saddle, was worthy of more than a long look, but most people averted their eyes the first instant they recognized her for what she was and then quickly made themselves scarce. Those who did not look away quickly enough risked finding themselves looking into her cold, blue-eyed gaze.

A Mord-Sith in black leather was more than enough on her own to make people scatter without the horses urging them to move. Much like the abbot himself, people didn't want a Mord-Sith taking note of them, especially not a Mord-Sith as intimidating as Erika. They believed such a woman's gaze was capable of weighing their very soul.

Ludwig Dreier smiled to himself because that fear was closer to the truth than people realized.

Erika was a Mord-Sith who was more than merely talented at her craft. Others he had used were bumbling oafs in comparison to Erika. Their clumsy ability could hardly be compared to her talents. Erika was an artist.

She could hold a person at the cusp of death for days on end, suspended between the world of life and the world of the dead, from where, when Ludwig Dreier applied his own occult abilities, those people could look into the dark, timeless depths of the underworld and then draw from that dark well to trade him prophecy in exchange for the favor of finally being allowed to cross over and escape the pain that was all that life, and Erika, had left to offer them.

Demoralized people, once their choices were properly framed for them, begged for death, knowing full well that death was their only escape from Mistress Erika. When Ludwig Dreier added the final occult ingredients, they were more than willing to trade the task he asked of them in exchange for that escape.

In that way, Ludwig considered himself an agent of the Grace. He carried them along that thread of the gift coming from the heart of the Grace, and eventually across the boundary between life and death.

But Ludwig Dreier's days as an abbot were over. That was merely a phase of his past, a period of edification, a stepping-stone to his wider future. He had always been considerably more than a mere abbot. No one recognized that, of course—especially Hannis Arc—but he was. In his modest occupation as the loyal abbot, he had remained inconspicuous and unnoticed from where he observed and learned as he waited. That anonymity was a powerful tool he used to leverage his inborn ability into powers he had kept hidden.

Until now.

Ludwig had been content to spend years in obscurity honing his craft and making his plans. All the while, he helped Hannis Arc toward the man's wider goals. Ludwig helped him because it served Ludwig's own plans, and for no other reason.

Ludwig had been born close to the profound occult powers contained for thousands of years beyond the great barrier to the north. All of that occult power could not be contained forever, and the barrier had failed to prevent it from occasionally escaping, even before the barrier itself had finally failed completely. Ludwig had always known that at least some of his innate ability had been a result of those powers slipping through the barrier, unnoticed, and settling in his spark of life at conception.

That had been the source of much of Hannis Arc's ability, as well as many of the lesser talents of some of the cunning folk out in the wilds of the Dark Lands. But Ludwig had such abilities as well, and in greater abundance, augmenting his gift. For that reason, his abilities, and his powers, were unique even if they had remained unrecognized all this time.

He supposed that he had that in common with Richard Rahl. Lord Rahl had grown up completely unaware of his latent abilities. No one recognized those powers in him, much the same as no one recognized them in Ludwig Dreier, except that in Ludwig's case he had been self-aware of his abilities. On his own, keeping to himself, he had studied, worked on, and developed those abilities.

Hannis Arc wore those ancient abilities he had been born with on his sleeve, literally, in the form of his tattoos. He wanted the world to see him standing out. Ludwig Dreier chose to keep his ability concealed until the time was right. With much of his planning coming to fruition, the time was finally right.

Hannis Arc was an agent of chaos, thinking that creating disorder and turmoil would make him powerful. But Ludwig understood that true power accrued to the one who could step into a world swamped by chaos and galvanize the masses to lift him up as the champion of a new order that they so desperately needed. At such a point, given the choices Ludwig would carefully frame for them, whatever order they were offered by him would be embraced as salvation compared to a world crumbling around them at Hannis Arc's hands.

Hannis Arc believed himself the one who would create a new world order by fundamentally changing the nature of life. In reality, Ludwig had actually been the one who had helped Bishop Arc from the beginning to break the world apart, to start sending it spiraling out of control and into chaos, and Ludwig would be the one who was there to put the pieces back together for people desperate for a savior. But he would put things back together his way.

It had all been going well, according to that plan, until the spirit king brought information to Hannis Arc from the underworld, telling him of the things Ludwig had been doing and what he had been planning all along. The two of them had sent the savages, the half people, to extract vengeance by eliminating Ludwig.

Ludwig Dreier possessed profound powers, but even such powers had their limits. He was still only one man and could be overwhelmed by numbers such as the half people had. Hannis Arc and Sulachan had surprised him. They caught him off guard and they had almost crushed him.

Oddly enough, and fortunately enough, Richard Rahl of all people had shown up to rescue his wife before Ludwig and Erika could begin their work on her. Ludwig imagined that the Mother Confessor could unlock profoundly important prophecy. He had been particularly interested in working with her, but Lord Rahl and his troops had arrived just in time to ruin those plans. They had also been just in time to encounter the rampaging half people sent to assassinate Ludwig. The Lord Rahl had been so kind as to eliminate the savages, saving Ludwig and Erika from the fate Hannis Arc and the spirit Sulachan had intended for them.

Sometimes chaos, once set in motion, worked against its agent.

Ludwig had been the one who had helped Hannis Arc with prophecy in order for him to bring the long-dead Emperor Sulachan back from the world of the dead so he could fundamentally change the nature of the world. Ludwig thought that reviving the dead to again fight a failed war was unwise, but it served his purposes so he had helped the bishop in his single-minded task.

In part with the help of pivotal prophecy that Ludwig had provided, Hannis Arc had been able to bring the long-dead Emperor Sulachan back to the world of life.

Neither trusted the other one bit, but both believed they were getting the better end of the deal by far, so for the time being they were trusting companions—the best of chums. Ludwig imagined that each of them smiled amicably, inwardly believing that in the end he would cut the other's throat and be the last one standing.

For now, Ludwig didn't care about their plans—actually it benefited him for the two of them to focus on each other as they initiated the world's fall into chaos. That chaos was, after all, one of the choices Ludwig needed to offer people—the most undesirable choice, of course. Ludwig was content to leave them to it. It would keep them busy for the time being.

Ludwig had his own work to do. After barely escaping the abbey with his life, he needed to establish a new place from which to work and set in motion his own plans.

With the citadel only just recently vacated by Hannis Arc in his rush to be off after bigger things, it made the perfect place for Ludwig to establish his new base and at last begin multiplying his power.

Hannis Arc hated being confined to the distant and forgotten Fajin Province in the dirty little city of Saavedra. He had no intentions of ever coming back to the place.

Hannis Arc had his eye on the People's Palace. He viewed himself as worthy of the seat of power for the D'Haran Empire. He wanted revenge against the House of Rahl. His eyes were filled with visions of vanquishing the House of Rahl and taking rule for himself. As part of his vision, he wanted to rule in their place from the grand People's Palace, the ancestral home of the House of Rahl.

Ludwig had been to the wedding of one of Lord Rahl's Mord-Sith. The People's Palace was certainly grand on a scale unparalleled as far as Ludwig knew. He supposed it was impressive, if you went in for that sort of thing. He didn't. He wanted to live in the minds of his subjects, to rule from the perspective of their every conscious thought—not from a cold marble palace.