Warheart (50 page)

He took several steps closer, glaring down at Richard the way one would inspect an animal in an iron trap. “You think you have won? You think you have spoiled my plans? Quite the contrary. You have unwittingly helped me by eliminating a very, very dangerous associate who had outlived his usefulness. The fool wanted to destroy the world of life. The world of life will find much more favor with me. I only want to rule it.

“Now that you have sent that lunatic spirit back to the world of the dead, the Shun-tuk will soon have subdued the palace, and I will finally–finally–be able to kill the Lord Rahl, and in his own fallen palace, no less.”

Hannis Arc took a step forward as he lifted his hands out to Kahlan and Richard, one to each of them.

Vika walked up behind the man, and without a word pressed her Agiel to the base of his skull.

Hannis Arc's arms lifted, shaking and trembling with the agony of what Vika was doing to him. She showed no expression or mercy as she held her Agiel against him. Spittle flew from his mouth as he shook violently.

And then, all the tattoos on him began to smoke. The lines of each tattoo covering his head turned red-hot, like coals in a fire. The flesh bubbled and sizzled, smoke rising from his skin, as the symbols all over him continued to burn down into his flesh. The skin on his cheekbones detached along the lines of one of the symbols and flopped down, exposing burned and bloody bone.

Still, Vika stood emotionless behind him, holding her Agiel to the base of his skull.

As the lines of the tattoos all over his skin burned, the smell of it was gagging. Blood frothed at Hannis Arc's mouth. His eyes bled. Blood ran out of his ears.

The man's legs suddenly twisted unnaturally and he went down in a heap. Smoke rolled up from his burning flesh. There was no need to check that he was dead. The man was dead and his spirit probably already in the underworld, being swarmed by Sulachan's dark demons, taking his soul down into the darkness of eternity.

Vika ran forward and crouched down, helping Richard get back up onto his knees. His hands trembled as he tried to get control of his movements. Before he could even get to his feet, Kahlan flung her arms around his neck, crying with joy to see him alive, holding his head to her. His arms finally able to move as he wanted, he hugged her for what seemed ages, but not long enough.

Finally, as she separated and wiped the tears from her face, Richard stood.

Vika stepped closer to him. “I made my choice, Lord Rahl. I chose you.”

“Then why use your Agiel on me?”

“Because I knew that you wouldn't have stood a chance against his occult powers if you tried to fight him like that. I knew he would kill you if I didn't find a way to make sure he was distracted enough so that I could take him out. So I needed to put you down and to have you stay down.

“He never let me come up behind him like that. He knew what a Mord-Sith was capable of. He was a very careful man about potential threats like that.”

“So, you used your Agiel on me to throw some raw meat in front of him and distract him.”

Looking solemn, she nodded once and kept her head bowed. “Yes, Lord Rahl.”

Vika went to her knees before him and held out her Agiel in upturned palms. “We all learn during our training that should we ever use our power on the Lord Rahl like that, it is automatically punishable by death. I chose to do it anyway to save your life and the life of the Mother Confessor. That was my choice, for my life.”

She swallowed without looking up at him. “I ask only that you make it quick, so that I do not suffer. I don't wish to suffer. I have suffered enough.”

Richard knelt down in front of her. Her head was bowed and she wouldn't look up at him, fearing the worst.

Richard put his hand over both of hers holding out the Agiel, and lowered them. Then, with a finger, he lifted her chin. Looking into her wet blue eyes, he kissed a finger, and then pressed that finger on her forehead.

“That is your punishment.”

Vika frowned, tears starting to run down her cheeks. “Lord Rahl, I don't understand. I used my Agiel on you. That is a mandatory death sentence.”

“I just did something to you worse than death.”

Her brow twitched. “What have you done?”

“If you don't behave, I will tell all the other Mord-Sith that I kissed you. You will never hear the end of it as long as you live.”

He showed her a smile, then, a smile that showed her how proud he was of her for making a choice for herself, a choice for life.

Kahlan put an arm around Vika's shoulders and helped her up. “I have to tell you, I'm proud of you too, but you certainly had me fooled there for a while. I thought we were going to die right then and there.”

Vika nodded with a genuine smile. “I decided long ago, after Lord Rahl talked to me in the cave prison. I knew, though, that I needed to do more than simply run away. No one runs away from Hannis Arc. He will find you and then take out his revenge for your betrayal. I knew that the only way to save myself, and the only way to save others, would be to kill him. I had to wait for my chance. He was a pig, but I had to wait for the right time. Today was that time.”

Kahlan gave the woman's arm a squeeze of empathy. Then she looked back in the direction of the screaming in the distance. “Richard, the half people–”

“I know,” he said as he took her hand. “Come on.”

 

CHAPTER

58

“What are we going to do?” Kahlan asked as she ran beside him.

Vika raced along close behind.

As they burst through the gold-sheathed double doors, Richard immediately took the hallway to the left. It was the shortest route to where he needed to go. After racing down one short flight of stairs, they took a long corridor lined with white marble. The floor was a complex wave pattern of a variety of stones, and quite slippery, so they had to slow a bit.

At the end, Richard burst out of the double doors onto a balcony above the central hallway. He immediately raced to an arched bridge high over the walkway below. He skidded to a stop near the center. Since it was the middle of the night, the skylights were dark. That meant that the hallway, lit by scores of reflector lamps, was dimly lit.

Even in the poor light that the reflector lamps provided to the grand hall, he could see that down on the floor below them it was mass chaos. Half people were everywhere, outnumbering the people and the soldiers many times over. There were dead bodies sprawled all over the place. Almost all of the dead were half people, but some weren't. Some were people from the palace who had been caught and taken down. Half people crowded around a body, squatting down to feed on it. Blood was splattered and smeared over the marble walls and columns. Richard saw barefoot half people slip and fall on the bloody marble floor.

Richard didn't have time to assess the situation, he simply needed to put a stop to it.

He drew his sword.

The blade came out with the metallic ring that was unique to the Sword of Truth. Richard by now had come to think of that sound as reassuring. It also came out with that same dark metallic gleam from having touched death. With the fighting and panic below, no one noticed the sound or the sight of the sword up on the dark balcony.

Richard pointed the blade out over the edge of the marble balustrade.

“There are your worldly forms,” he said. “Go to them. Return to those you were torn from if you can. Some of you will have to go a great distance to find the one to whom you belong. If they are gone from life and you find yourself still caught in this world, then come to me and we will help you cross over to eternal peace.”

In the dim light, a curtain of sparkling light peeled off the sword and unfurled out over the hallway, stretching as it went. The curtain of light wavered the way the strange lights in the night sky to the north did. They moved in long, slow, curling, undulating waves. Countless specks of light, each one a soul, together created a display that had some of the people below slowing down. Even some of the half people glanced up.

As the curtains of light drifted out over the hallway, Richard swung the sword. “Go! Find where you belong.”

With that, the specks of light scattered. Many others began to drift downward, like snowflakes in a dead-still air. All the way down the halls, as far as Richard could see, the tiny specks moved out to find the ones to whom they belonged.

“Richard,” Kahlan said in wonder, “what in the world is that? What have you done?”

“Remember the Sanctuary of Souls down in the Keep?”

“Yes,” she said as she watched the strange sight. “What about it?”

“Well, that place was built back at the time when there were wizards who were makers–like Wizard Merritt.”

“Magda's husband?”

“That's right. Sulachan made the half people by pulling out their souls and not letting them go to the underworld in order to keep the bodies alive. I believe that makers back then made that sanctuary for those lost souls. Those people up there at the Keep, even though the half people were sent to kill them, understood the tragic truth and felt empathy for the lost souls who had not chosen that fate, and had themselves meant no harm. So, they made those lost souls a sanctuary.”

Kahlan held her hand out toward the hall below with the dots of light drifting down. “But what is this?”

Richard shrugged. “It's the lost souls, the ones that belong to the half people.”

Kahlan could barely contain her exasperation. “What are they doing here?”

“I went there and got them and brought them back.”

“Richard, are you crazy? You could have–”

“Look,” he said with a smile.

Kahlan turned and looked down. Everywhere half people were stopping. They quit running, quit chasing people. The ones near soldiers fell to their knees and raised their arms in surrender. The ones feeding stopped and stepped back, wiping the blood from their mouths in disgust. As the half people quit chasing victims, the screaming died out.

Throughout the halls, all of the half people slowed down and looked around in bewilderment, or amazement, or jubilation. Some started laughing with delight, looking at their own hands as if seeing them for the first time. Soldiers didn't quite know what to make of it, but as long as the half people weren't trying to attack and eat them, they stopped hacking the half-naked people apart.

“Come on,” Richard said. “Let's get down there. I'm worried about the others.”

The broad stairwell of creamy stone leading down was close, and the descent quick. As they reached the lower halls, soldiers of the First File closed in protectively.

Richard still had his sword out. Along with the sword there was always the anger, but he kept it in check. He held the sword out and shook it to check to see if any more sparkles of souls would come out of it. None did, so he slid it back in its scabbard before he reached for the doors that led out into the hallway. When he opened the doors, they were confronted by the quite strange sight of the masses of half people no longer attacking anyone.

Just outside, Cassia ran over to him. “Lord Rahl! You were right! You did it! Mother Confessor, look!” Cassia pointed out at the half people milling around, blinking, laughing, crying, talking. “That's why he left you and didn't say where he was going. I scolded him for not telling you.”

“Yes, she did,” Richard confirmed.

Nyda and Rikka escorted Nathan and Nicci across the hall from one of the grand staircases leading up from the lower levels.

“Richard!” Nicci called out. “You're back! We were so worried! If you ever do anything like that again I swear I will have you locked in a dungeon and only let Kahlan visit you once a week.”

Nathan peered around. “Richard, would you happen to know what in the world is going on?”

“Yes, what is happening?” Nicci asked. “It's the same down in the lower areas, near the crypts where they were getting in. There's been a battle raging down there for days and then all of a sudden the half people simply stopped fighting. Almost together, almost all at once, they simply stopped.”

Cassia casually pointed a thumb back at the strange scene. “Lord Rahl gave them their souls back.”

Nicci's jaw fell open. “What?” She pointed in alarm at his hip. “How did you get your sword back? Richard! Don't you dare tell me that you went back to the Keep and you brought the sword back through the sliph!”

“Well, actually–”

“You can't do that! Richard, your life isn't worth the sword.” Nicci was beside herself, hardly knowing what to complain about first. “Richard, you were told how it would make the sickness grow, how it would bring you to the cusp of death, how…”

She looked up suspiciously. “Why don't you look sick?”

“Because I'm not. Why, do you want me to be sick?”

Not believing him and ignoring his flippant remark, Nicci pressed her fingers to his temples. She withdrew her hands in astonishment and turned to Nathan. “He's not sick. It's gone. Completely gone.” She turned back to Richard. “I could feel your gift. How is that possible?”

Richard took a deep breath. “Do you want me to explain, or would you rather complain?”

Nicci planted her fists on the curve of her hips and gave him a look she had apparently saved from back in the days when she was his teacher, trying to teach him to use his gifted abilities.

Kahlan turned her face away to hide her smile.

“Explain, please,” Nicci said with forced patience.

“I figured out that the only way I was ever going to be able to stop Sulachan was to send him back to the world of the dead. The easiest way to do that, since I couldn't hope to overcome his occult abilities, was to use the poison of death I had in me. So, when I was in the underworld, and you and Kahlan brought me back, during that stretch of time in infinity when I had all the time I needed, I decided that rather than leave the sickness of death there in the world of the dead, as I had done with Kahlan, I'd rather have Sulachan in the world of the dead, so I didn't … leave it. I kept it.”