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Severed Souls(174)



Nicci sniffled to get herself under control so that she could explain.

“Because not to have done so, not to have let him have his deepest wish to go after you to try to save you, would have been worse. It would have been saving his life but killing his soul.”

It was obvious what such a burden was doing to the woman. She looked ready to end her own life.

Kahlan reached out and cupped Nicci’s face. “Dear spirits, I understand. I’m so sorry, Nicci, that it had to be you to do such a thing. You, of all people.”

“I’m so sorry, Kahlan,” Nicci wept. “I’m so sorry.”

A spark of an idea, a spark of hope, came to her, then.

“Nicci, you stopped his heart. Can’t you start it again? You said you did it only a moment ago. Can’t you start his heart and let life come back into him, the way it came back into me?”

“No.”

That single word had a world of finality to it.

Kahlan touched her chest where she remembered the knife slamming into her. She remembered the pain, the helpless terror.

“But I was stabbed through my heart. How is it working now? I don’t understand. Why can’t you do that for him?”

“Richard had me heal the damage to you before he went … But I couldn’t bring back your life, and I can’t bring back his. I don’t have the power. Your heart started spontaneously when your soul returned, when Richard sent you back. Even if I could start his heart beating again, there is no soul there, nothing to keep it going. I can’t pull his soul back from the world of the dead.”

Tears ran down Kahlan’s face as she stared at Richard lying there still as stone. She had fought countless battles, seen death more times than she cared to contemplate. She recognized that terrible stillness that existed only in death, when, after the last breath of life had faded away, the soul had left the body to journey beyond the veil.

It was a kind of stillness that was beyond redemption.

Richard was gone. It didn’t seem like it could be real, and yet, she knew it was.

Kahlan lay down against Richard’s dead body as she gave in to the agony and lost control.

All she could think was that he had come for her, traded places with her in death, and now there was no one to save him.





CHAPTER

88

Even as she wept against Richard’s body, the words kept echoing around in her mind. No one to save him.

Kahlan sat up suddenly. She sucked back the sobs and wiped the tears back from her face as she scooted to the edge of the bed and hopped down onto the floor.

“Where are Cassia, Laurin, and Vale?”

Nicci gestured. “Standing watch outside the doors.”

Kahlan raced to the doors and flung them open. The three Mord-Sith turned and gasped when they saw her.

“Mother Confessor!” Cassia cried. “How—I mean—I don’t—”

“Richard traded places with me in the world of the dead so he could send me back,” she said in a rush.

Their eyes widened, stricken with horror. “Lord Rahl is dead?” Vale asked in a shaky whisper.

“I’ll explain it later. Listen to me. Cassia, go get Commander Fister.”

She pointed to a hallway branching off not far down the corridor. “He is waiting right down there, not far but out of the way, along with a number of the men.”

“Good. Tell him to bring a few dozen men. At least half of them archers. Laurin, Vale, you two go down in the dungeon and get Dreier. That collar he is wearing keeps his powers contained, so you will be able to handle him.”

Although shocked to see her alive and at a loss to understand what she could be thinking, they nodded earnestly.

“What do you want me to do?” Cassia asked. “I mean, after I give the commander your instructions?”

“I want you to go get Mohler and bring him back here. We need his keys.”

They looked confused. Or maybe it was just that they thought she might be a ghost, or a good spirit.

“Go! Hurry!” Kahlan said. “If we are to have any chance of saving Richard’s life, we have to hurry!”

Cassia blinked. “You mean, there is a chance to save his life?”

“Yes!”

All three turned and raced away to do as they had been asked.

Kahlan rushed back inside. She thought there was a chance. She had to believe that there was. She forced her grief aside so that she could act. Now was not the time to grieve. Richard would tell her to think of the solution.

“Dreier has abilities we can’t even imagine,” she told Nicci.

Nicci turned away from staring at Richard’s lifeless corpse stretched out on the bed. “What of it?”

“What if he could bring life back into Richard?”