Severed Souls(134)

“Hannis Arc,” Kahlan said. “He ruled Fajin Province from the citadel in Saavedra.”

“He ruled much of Fajin Province, but not all,” she said, looking abruptly venomous. “I hold sway here.

“But that is the man,” she said, retracting her fangs a bit. “Hannis Arc benefited profoundly from the occult powers leaking out from behind the barrier. As a result, he has been able to tamper with the very nature of the Grace—the very way the world of life exists—bending those laws in order to bring Sulachan’s spirit back into this world.”

“And your abilities are powered by what the Grace represents,” Kahlan said, “so your very existence is at stake.”

“That’s right. As are your abilities, and Lord Rahl’s, were you not sick with Jit’s touch.

“Sulachan wants to bend those forces until they break. Hannis Arc wants to rule the world of life. He helped Sulachan fulfill his ambitions in return for Sulachan’s help.

“Both men also know that there are always those who are all too eager to help them. Those minions serve to provide an audience of sycophants for evil such as Sulachan and Hannis Arc bring into the world. In return, they earn the table scraps of praise from the depraved.

“While powerfully gifted and possessing occult powers able to mine prophecy and bring Sulachan’s spirit back through the veil, Hannis Arc didn’t have the army necessary to accomplish his more ambitious goals of rule. For that, he needed help. So, he brought Sulachan back to provide that help.”

“One hand washes the other,” Kahlan said.

“Yes. They formed an alliance. Hannis Arc would do what was needed in this world to bring Sulachan back from the dead. Among other things, that meant using the invaluable blood of the bringer of death—your husband—to call Sulachan back from the dead. One of those matters of balance I spoke of.

“In return, Sulachan provided the army of half people and all the revived corpses Hannis Arc could ever need for conquest. Hannis Arc in turn continues to provide the worldly occult powers necessary to sustain Sulachan here in this world. And so on, round and round it goes, both locked together helping each other, but each with motives of his own, each using the other because he has to.

“Each man also thinks he controls the other. For now they both work together toward the same ends. For now, they share the same goals and need each other.

“But they are like two vipers, each with the tail of the other in his mouth. Unfortunately, we will all be long dead and in the merciless hands of the Keeper before that alliance ever comes to be inconvenient for either.

“By then, if they are not stopped first, it will be too late for this world because Sulachan ultimately wishes to destroy the boundary between the world of life and the world of the dead. The balance of Creation itself would be broken.

“That would be a bad thing. A very bad thing.

“Thus, we must act or we all die.”





CHAPTER

67

“Look, Red,” Kahlan said, “you don’t need to explain the consequences to me. I am quite aware of what it would mean.”

“Are you, really?” Red asked. “It would mean not only the end of the natural order of life as we know it, but the Keeper would have me. Do you have any idea of how much the Keeper of the underworld lusts to get witch women into his clutches—outside the natural order of the Grace?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Shota told me all about it. But you are hardly the only one. All of us would be in an eternity of agony should Sulachan and Hannis Arc succeed. It’s not only about you, Red, it’s about everyone.” Kahlan leaned closer. “Everyone.”

Red showed a cunning smile, as if that had been her point all along. “And don’t you ever forget it, Mother Confessor. I may have my own self-interest, but that self-interest just happens to be the same as everyone else’s. My fate would be everyone’s fate. The Keeper would be loosed on the world, on all of us. The dead would feed on the living.”

Red straightened a bit and smoothed her gray dress at her hips. “I’m not sure that you truly comprehend the horror of what that would mean, or that you actually grasp the true enormity of it. Once Sulachan and Hannis Arc destroy the boundary between life and death, there is no putting it back together. All of Creation would be forever out of balance. In such a chaotic, unbalanced state, it would mean the end of all of existence. Creation itself would eventually wink out of existence, like an ember dying.

“But in the grand scale of time, that could still mean a thousand years, or ten thousand years, of ceaseless agony for all of us on the wrong side of that doomed struggle.