Severed Souls(163)

“If you would like, we can take turns doing this to you all night,” Laurin said. “I suggest you get dressed instead, Erika.”

Cassia held out her hand. “Give me your Agiel, first.”

Erika reluctantly handed it over before going back into the room. Richard followed her in to get Dreier’s clothes. He found them thrown over the back of a chair.

When he picked up the purple robes Dreier had been wearing, Richard felt an odd lump. He groped the robes and found a concealed pocket on the inside at the waist. With a finger, he fished out something small and flat.

He was surprised to see a journey book. He opened the black leather cover to see what it said.

Nicci looked as surprised as Richard. “Well?” she asked.

“Nothing in it,” he told her. “Wiped clean.”

She nodded. “A lot of the Sisters wiped theirs clean as a precaution. Others liked to preserve the messages in case they needed confirmation of instructions, or to remember certain things, or even as proof that they were acting on orders.”

Richard sighed as he slipped the blank journey book into his pocket. “Unfortunately, this one tells us nothing.”

Nicci gave him a meaningful look. “I’d sure like to check its twin.”

“Me too,” he said. “But I have no idea who might have it.”

When he came out of the bedroom carrying the robes, he found Kahlan glaring down at the stuporous prisoner on the floor. “He had better prove useful.”

“Nicci may need to heal him first,” Richard said. “I think she might have cracked his skull.”

Samantha briefly stared down at the naked man. “Can we please go get my mother out of that dungeon, now?”

“Of course,” Richard said. “We need to get Commander Fister and the men out as well. They need to get the citadel guard under control or we will soon have trouble.”

“I can handle any who cause trouble,” Nicci said. “Samantha or her mother could as well.”

“They have archers,” Richard reminded her. “An arrow in the back and you would be just as dead as if a sorceress stopped your heart.”

Nicci sighed. “I suppose so.”

“Can we go chain this pig up in the dungeon, now?” Cassia asked as she fastened the sides of her leather top back in place.

“Good idea.” Richard smiled at the three Mord-Sith. “You did good. All of you. I’m proud of you. We just captured a dangerous man with powerful occult abilities and none of us were hurt.”

“I got the idea from Samantha,” Nicci said, smiling down at her. “If you can’t use magic to stop those with occult abilities, just drop rocks on their head.”

Samantha looked proud as she watched the Mord-Sith haul a profusely bleeding, groggy Ludwig Dreier to his feet.





CHAPTER

81

Once the men of the First File had been freed from the dungeons down in the lower levels of the citadel, they had raced up the stairwells into the grand greeting room and spread out through the gallery. As they had poured out among the columns, surprised citadel guards drew their weapons. These citadel guards had been the ones who had carried the unconscious men of the First File down into the lower dungeons and locked them in.

Commander Fister, at the head of his men as he led them into the grand meeting hall, without ceremony cut down the first two men who rushed in at him with swords. It was as shockingly swift as it was decisive. He hadn’t even bothered to loose his men on the soldiers, as if the defenders were a mere pesky annoyance he could deal with himself.

Almost as soon as the two soldiers hit the ground, dead, and lay bleeding out on the rich carpet, the rest of the men had dropped their weapons and raised their hands in surrender.

Until it was decided what to do with the citadel guard, they had all been locked in the dungeons.

Ludwig Dreier, too, had been chained in the dungeon, right where Richard had been chained, with the shields to the collar and the room itself containing both his gift and his occult powers, as they had been meant to do by those in ancient times who had built the citadel, the same people who had once built the barrier to the third kingdom. Erika had been chained up beside him, where Nicci had been restrained.

As Nicci was seeing to the abbot’s wounds to make sure he lived long enough to be of help, Cassia returned and said that she had found Richard and Kahlan a secluded bedroom to use while they waited for Nicci to finish. Richard had figured that after the ordeal of being chained down in the dungeon, he and Kahlan could at least get a couple of hours of sleep. With the way the sickness was wearing them down they couldn’t afford to let exhaustion pull them into unconsciousness before Nicci was able to get answers and they could finally, hopefully, be healed.