Severed Souls(159)

“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.”