Severed Souls (59 page)

“Richard, that's … Richard I understand how you feel, I swear I do, but that's just not—”

“I have the touch of death inside me.”

“And so you want to hurry it along?”

Richard's gaze turned from Kahlan back to Nicci's haunted blue eyes. “When Hannis Arc captured all of you, he kept you trapped in chambers behind a veil to the underworld. I stepped through that veil and into the underworld to come and get you out. Remember?”

“We weren't dead, Richard.”

“In the third kingdom, both worlds existed together at the same time in the same place. Because I have death inside me, I am part of that third kingdom. I'm not only alive, I also carry death inside.

“I passed through the world of the dead to get you out of that prison. I was there briefly, in the underworld, and I made it through. I know a great deal about the underworld.”

“Richard, this is different. You can't go to the world of the dead and retrieve a soul that has crossed over. You can't do such a thing.”

“Ordinarily, no, but Kahlan has that same touch of death in her that I do. That means that in this world, the call of death we have in us has been slowly stealing life away from us. But Kahlan and I are of that third kingdom, with both death and life in us, together, at the same time.

“That means that right now, in that place, Kahlan has the call of life still in her. She carries both worlds until the spark of life still attached to her soul extinguishes in that dark place.

“I have to go get her before that happens. I'm dead anyway. This poison is killing me.”

“But we may be able to get Ludwig Dreier to show us how to heal you.”

“Only after I bring Kahlan back. Then you can heal us. But before we try to heal that touch of death, I need to use it.”

“Richard, it isn't so simple as you—”

“Nicci, you were a Sister of the Dark. You know that there is more to it all than most people can begin to understand. You must stop my heart and send me beyond the veil. You must.”

Nicci shook her head. “No. Richard, I can't do that.” Tears started coursing down her face. “I can't do that to you. I can't. Please, don't ask such a thing of me.”

Richard gripped her shoulders and made her look back at him. “I am asking it.”

She started sobbing in earnest. “I can't, Richard.”

“Would you die for me?” he asked.

Surprised by the question, she looked up into his eyes. “Yes.”

“Then you understand that sometimes those we love are worth dying for. If you care about me, if you love me, you will grant me this.”

“Richard, it just won't work,” Nicci sobbed. “She's gone. You can't change that. It would be for nothing.”

“Don't you see? If I can't bring her spirit back, then I want to be with her. Please, Nicci, don't deny me this. Kahlan needs me right now. She needs what only I can do. There is no one else with the kind of chance I have. I have to do it now, before it's too late. Let me go. Let me be with her.

“Don't hold me a captive in the world of life when you have the power to send me beyond the veil. Don't make me do it myself and damage my body so that I don't have a chance to return. You have to do it now, while the spark of life is still in her soul and before her spirit travels too far into that darkness for me to find her. Every second counts. Every second allows Kahlan's soul to slip farther and farther away into the depths of the underworld where the winged demons wait for her.”

Nicci shook as she sobbed, hardly able to look at him through the tears. “They are waiting for you, too.”

Richard drew his sword. If he had to, he could do it himself with the sword. If he had to, he would.

“I have my sword.”

“Are you crazy?” she asked in fury through her tears. “The sword is of this world. It can't cross over with you.”

With the hilt in his hand, his anger had been ignited. It powered him, gave him strength to do what he needed to do.

“Its anger will. The blade is bonded to me. That bond will cross over with me, even if the blade itself won't.”

Richard lay down on the bed beside Kahlan's still, lifeless form. He had never imagined that he would lie next to her when she was dead. He had to partition his mind to be able to function, to be able to think at all, or the grief would claim him and then he had no chance.

He laid the blade of the sword down the length of his body, holding the hilt over his heart, feeling the word “TRUTH” pressing into his palm as Nicci stood beside the bed crying.

Only the rage of the sword kept him from losing control and screaming in agonizing grief.

“Hurry, Nicci. It must be now.”

Her teeth gritted, her hands fisted, she leaned closer. “Richard, I don't want to lose you. We can't lose you. We all need you.”

“Why do you need me?” he asked, looking up into her wet, blue eyes.

“Because you are the one. You always have been. You always know what to do to save us. You always do the right thing.”

“That's what I'm doing, now.” He smiled. “You know that you are far more than special to me. You have saved my life more times and in more ways than I can count.

“Now, you must take it.”

“How can I?” she asked.

“It's all right, Nicci. This is what I want.”

As he stared into her eyes, as she wept nearly uncontrollably, she leaned over, her long blond hair falling forward over her shoulders as she placed her hands to either side of the hilt of the sword over his heart.

Richard didn't tell Nicci that while he thought he had a chance to return Kahlan's spirit to her body in the world of life, he knew that he had no chance to return.

There could be no one with both life and death in them, no one with the knowledge and experience of having been to the underworld, who could come after him.

He believed that he had a chance—a slim chance, but a chance—to capture Kahlan's spirit in time and let it return to the world of life, to her healed body.

But he knew that, for him, it was a one-way journey.

This time, there was no way he could come back.

He was terrified of dying, of giving up the only life he would ever have, but he was more terrified of living without Kahlan.

He was fully committed to what he had to do. He had made his decision. Nothing was going to deter him.

He knew full well that this was the last time he would cross through the veil.

 

CHAPTER

86

Nicci's power slammed into him like a bolt of lightning, compressing his chest. In an instant his heart was stilled.

Richard's eyes squeezed closed under the unrelenting pressure. With desperate effort, he gasped a breath under the enormous weight of pain pressing in on him.

He was all too aware that it was the last breath he would ever draw.

His muscles went rigid against the searing pain. Pain burned through the nerves of his jaw, down his arms, and into his back.

Things were happening too fast, spinning out of control. He felt himself suffocating as he was unable to get any air.

Time stretched until it became meaningless. Gradually, the agonizingly pain began to become more and more distant. The pain seemed to recede in his awareness as darkness increasingly seeped in around him to take its place.

He felt as if he was trying to hold back the night, but the weight of it was overwhelming.

At some point, he lost track of what the pain had felt like. It no longer seemed important.

But in place of the pain came something far worse: a kind of blind panic at the sensation of slipping away from the world of life.

It was happening too fast.

He felt icy-cold fear as he fully grasped that he was dying, felt the finality of it, and tried desperately to cling to the slender thread of life he still had left as light and images flashed through his mind. He saw people he remembered, places he had been. The colors were vivid and bright and real. He heard distant laughter. It was him, when he was a boy, laughing as he ran from Zedd. Zedd was laughing as he chased after Richard.

Mostly, though, through it all, there was Kahlan. He saw glimpses of her gazing at him with love, her whole face radiant with it, as she smiled with her special smile that she gave no one but him.

Then that, too, faded away as his mind descended into ever-gathering darkness, a kind of heavy, thick darkness unlike any other.

He could smell sulfur.

There was no up, no down. There were no boundaries of any kind, only a black void.

He focused on what he had to do, on why he had done this.

That overpowering need became all.

In that eternity of darkness, he had to find the one person he loved more than life itself.

He had to find his soul mate.

With that thought, the thought of how Kahlan was the one, the only one that he could ever love in the way he loved her, in the way that only one soul mate could love another, he began to have a sense of a track of light in the forever of darkness. It wasn't light, though, the way the sun created light.

This was a kind of spiritual light, the kind of glow that he would expect to see from the good spirits. It seemed to be everywhere, and nowhere. It was a feeling, a presence of spirit.

He recognized that it was the right one, the right spirit.

He thought that the light was beginning to coalesce, but then he realized that it really wasn't. Rather, it was that he was traveling along the trail left by that spirit he knew so well, and as he did, he was moving along a line, a pathway that it formed moving through the eternity of darkness.

He knew, then, that he was actually seeing the glowing line of the gift within the Grace itself.

And then he spotted the glow of her spirit moving ever onward, farther and farther away, sinking ever downward.

He was confused. It felt wrong. He didn't understand why it was spiraling downward.

And then he saw them.

The demons.

They were so dark they blended with the eternal blackness. They were darkness itself, the way a night stone was dark beyond simply black. And yet, he could see them, see their shape when they writhed and tumbled and twisted downward.

The dark ones had enveloped Kahlan's spirit and were taking her with them as they descended ever deeper toward the darkest depths of eternity, taking her where they could smother her spirit and keep it forever from the light, even as they smothered the light of her spirit so that only the glow of the trail it left was visible to Richard.

A snarl of glistening black fangs turned to him. With menacing, fluid grace they spread their wings wide.

Rather than resist, Richard used the rage from the sword to propel himself toward them. It felt like he had jumped from a cliff, falling through bottomless space that was not even space, but merely a black emptiness as he traveled ever farther from any light. Even Kahlan's spirit was dimming as it was being suffocated under the weight of dark wings wrapped around her, pulling her downward.

Richard shot through that dark tangle of wings and reached Kahlan, embraced her, joining with her soul to do what he needed to do.

In that instant, for a glorious, singular spark in time, he joined with his soul mate and they were one.

He knew that that brief, singular connection when they were alone and together in the darkness would have to last him—would have to last both of them—for eternity.

And yet in the underworld, there was no time. He knew that in the brief spark of time when they were joined, he had forever to do what he needed to do, even if it might be only a fleeting second back in the world of life.

But here, time was his.

Once it was done, Richard used all his will to leave her and streak past the demons, running from them, drawing that overwhelming, uncontrollable, predatory need to chase. Hungry for his soul, driven to chase, they all turned and then suddenly swept through the darkness to go after him.

They drew ever closer as he streaked away. Black fangs glistened in the darkness as they growled and snapped at him, eager, hungry for his soul. Richard let their claws hook into him, sinking ever deeper so they could pull him in until they were close enough for their black wings to wrap around him and capture him. Even as they did, he let the rage power him so that he could keep racing away from Kahlan's spirit, keep their fury and their attention on him.

And then, claws firmly gripping him, wings enfolding him, the dark ones dragged him downward, tumbling ever downward with him, suffocating the light of his soul.

But in doing so, in coming after him as he raced away, they had abandoned Kahlan's spirit, her soul.

In that infinite span of time he had been with her spirit, he had accomplished what he needed to accomplish.

He had given her the chance she needed to live.

Suddenly freed from the weight of the dark demons, the light of her essence, that spirit, that soul, still carrying the buoyant spark of life from being part of the third kingdom—part of both worlds fused together—began to ascend, ever faster all the time, ever higher, escaping the forever of darkness.

Richard saw her glowing arms open, reaching for him as she was pulled ever upward toward life. She tried to reach out to touch him, to draw him to her, to bring him with her, but she no longer could because as she rose he was sinking with ever-increasing speed under the weight of the demons that had cocooned their inky black wings tightly around him.

The last thing he saw was her spark in the darkness high above him as it winked out, and then she was gone.

He was suddenly alone with the dark ones, alone with them in an eternity of blackness under the dead weight of oblivion where there was nothing, where even his soul would be crushed under the pressure of darkness until it ceased to exist.

His last thought was one of joy that he had been able to save Kahlan from that fate, that he had been able to give Kahlan the gift of her life, that he had done what he had always said he would willingly do.