Warheart (14 page)

“What do you mean? Why?”

Zedd's gloriously beautiful spirit smiled. “It takes the gift carried into the underworld, and that gift needs to be connected by blood if it is to be able to help you here.”

“To be helped, in a situation such as you find yourself, it takes many friends,” the spirit of a woman said. “I am Naja,” the spirit said when she realized his confusion.

“Naja. Naja, as in the one who wrote the account on the walls of the caves at Stroyza?”

The spirit smiled. “The same.”

“That was an awfully long time ago,” Richard said.

The spirit gave him an unreadable look. “Not so long. From here it seems only a moment ago.”

“Or an eternity,” another spirit said.

Richard didn't recognize her, either, but because she was with Naja, and another spirit was with her, he suspected that he knew who it was.

“Magda Searus?”

The smiling spirit nodded and held out a glowing hand. “And this is Merritt, my soul mate.” She lifted her hand back toward the constellation of lights behind. “Baraccus is here with us as well. He was pulled to the amulet he once made. We have all come to do whatever we could to help free you.”

Richard saw the spirit of Baraccus, as well as countless others there with him. He saw his friend Warren. He saw Ben, Cara's husband, and legions of soldiers, now good spirits, who had fought with him in the world of life.

“Dark forces have conspired to keep you here,” Naja said. “It took many good spirits to fight this battle. Once your grandfather ripped the demons away from you, some of those here were then able to see to it that they sank into the forever of darkness. They cannot return for now.”

“But there are other dangers for you, here,” Magda said.

“You must return to the world of life,” Nicci told him.

“And so must you,” Naja's soft voice said, “for the ones who never sleep and walk like men are coming.”

Nicci turned in alarm. “What do–”

Naja's glowing finger touched Nicci's forehead.

In an instant Nicci was gone.

“How do I return? Is there a way?” Richard asked as he looked around at all the good spirits. “There are things in the world of life I must do. The lives of a great many people depend on me. I need to get back. I need to help them. I can't let Sulachan have his way with them.”

The spirit of Merritt smiled knowingly. “That is the anger of the sword. I recognize it. It is here with you. Even in death, because it is bonded to you, your soul carries the righteous anger of the sword. Only the right person could do such a thing. Only the bringer of death could bring the power of the sword and life itself to the underworld.”

“Well, if I'm the one, then I need to get back there. Sulachan and Hannis Arc are going to destroy the world of life.”

“Indeed they are,” Naja said.

“I can't stop them from here,” Richard said, his soul filled with urgency. “I need to get back there.”

“The righteous rage of the sword as well as the spark of life you carry still anchor you to the world of life,” she said, “but the world of the dead still holds you here. The skrin guard the veil so that none from this world may cross back.”

Richard remembered the bone woman telling him about how the skrin, the guardians of the veil, held the dead back in the underworld and kept them from coming through the veil.

“Sulachan crossed back,” Richard said.

“With your blood,” Naja reminded him.

“Kahlan crossed back.”

“With a lot more than merely your blood,” Naja said.

“So how do I get back?” Richard asked the constellation of glowing spirits around him. The spirits all stared back but none seemed to want to answer.

When Zedd laid a sympathetic, glowing hand on her shoulder, Naja finally spoke in a somber tone. “You must have a living bridge.”

“How do I find this living bridge?”

“You don't,” Naja said, “it must find you.”

“I don't understand.”

Zedd shook his head in great sadness as he drifted closer. “I'm afraid, my boy, that someone would have to give you their life as that bridge. Their soul would have to join us here.”

“It's the only way,” Naja confirmed.

Denna's glowing arm embraced him protectively. “You need the help of others, Richard. You need the life of another.”

“No,” Richard said, drifting back, shaking his head. “I can't allow someone to give their life for me. There has to be another way.”

“They would not simply be giving up their life for you,” Zedd told him in a comforting voice. “They will be giving up their life for everyone, and out of love.”

“Until and unless that happens, you have no way back,” Naja said. “If it does not happen, you can never return.”

“If you can't return,” Magda said, “then the fate of your soul mate, the fate of the world, will be in the cruel hands of Emperor Sulachan.”

“And I can't help from here?” he asked, anger at his banishment rising in his soul. “There is nothing I can do?”

With great sorrow, Magda shook her head.

Denna's arm embraced him, trying to give him comfort. Richard felt no comfort.

But he did feel rage at Sulachan for bringing this on him and everyone living.

“Good,” Merritt whispered. “Let the rage fill you. If you ever get the chance to use it, it will be ready and there with you.”

Richard reached for the hilt of his sword, and even though he could almost touch it, it wasn't there. It was on the other side of the veil, in the world of life. Kahlan was there, on the other side of the veil, in the world of life.

So was Sulachan.

 

CHAPTER

18

Kahlan flinched when Nicci suddenly gasped and opened her eyes. Red flinched as well and jerked her fingers back from where they had been resting on Nicci's shoulders.

The sorceress's face looked gray in the candlelight. Her hands trembled. Her beautiful features reflected the anguish of what she had just experienced. The witch woman, while not as ashen as Nicci, looked gravely troubled.

Kahlan hadn't been able to see what Nicci was seeing beyond the veil, but she felt some of it, even if distantly, and she could read the tension of Nicci's face as tears ran down her cheeks. It was clear that it had been a profoundly difficult journey. What Kahlan most wanted to know, though, was if it had been successful. Nicci gave no clue.

The terrible, inky darkness surrounded them, isolating them inside the circle of light from the candles set out at the points of the Grace. The darkness also shut away the sounds of the world of life around them.

As that darkness gradually began to recede, Kahlan could begin to make out the walls of the room. She saw the window materialize. She could also begin to hear distant sounds.

As the darkness receded, taking the underworld with it, she was finally able to see the bed again. She stood in a rush and carefully stepped over the lines drawn with her blood to get out of the Grace. Once free of it and past the candles, she rushed to the bed and put a knee up beside Richard, leaning over him, looking for a sign, looking for life, expecting–hoping–to see him smile up at her.

His lifeless hands still gripped the sword. He had not drawn a breath. Kahlan had been sure that Nicci would have been able to do something and that now Richard would at last draw a breath. She had hoped against hope that he would somehow return to life, return to her.

She had hoped to see his eyes open to look at her.

Instead, he remained as dead and still as he had been before.

Nothing had changed.

Kahlan laid her fingers tenderly over his big hand. There was no warmth of life in it. His eyes were still closed, closed to the world of life. His soul had not returned from exile to his worldly form.

“Dear spirits,” she whispered, “why haven't you sent him back to us?” She felt a tear run down her cheek. “Dear spirits, I need him. We all need him.”

She remembered the dark ones enveloping him with clawed arms and black wings. She remembered the terrible sight of him being smothered by those inky demons and taken down into the darkness.

Nicci joined her to stand beside the bed. “Kahlan … I'm sorry.”

Kahlan wiped a tear from her cheek. “Why didn't it work?”

The witch woman hurried to join Nicci, looking exhausted and confused. “What happened?”

The sorceress shook her head. “It's hard to explain.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Red. “With your help at least I was able to find Isidore and Naja. They were able to find Richard.”

Kahlan grabbed Nicci's arm. “You found Richard?”

Nicci nodded. “The dark ones had him, just as you said. Zedd and a great many others came to help us. There was a battle among spirits. Zedd helped us free Richard from the dark ones. Because he was there, we won the battle.”

“Then why isn't Richard back?” Kahlan asked, trying to control her voice as well as her pounding heart.

She couldn't help thinking of the wood stacked in a funeral pyre down in the citadel square, waiting for Richard if this last hope didn't work. The terror of having to consign him to the flames was returning. She couldn't go on living if that was going to be his fate. She didn't want to live without him.

Nicci's gaze left Kahlan's. “There is more to it. They couldn't send him back. They said–”

When she heard a distant scream, Kahlan turned away from the bed to stare at the closed doors. It was the kind of scream that sent a chill up her spine and made the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.

Red's eyes were closed, as if she was consulting an inner voice. “They come.”

Both Kahlan and Nicci turned to the witch woman.

Kahlan frowned. “Who? Who comes?”

“The ones who never sleep. The ones who walk like men,” the witch woman said. Her blue eyes opened. “They are close.”

Kahlan was about to ask what she was talking about when beyond the door more screams ripped the night. They were a lot closer. She heard heavy thuds and then the sound of furniture breaking.

Nicci grabbed their arms and pulled them both back toward the Grace just as the doors exploded inward, banging back against the wall and barely hanging by their hinges. A shower of splintered woodwork filled the room.

A roar came from out in the hall and then a man lurched into the room. In the soft candlelight Kahlan could see half a dozen broken spears jutting from the man's chest and back, along with a cluster of knives and several broken sword blades that had completely penetrated his body. There was no blood.

The eyes of the man glowed crimson in the near darkness, as if lit by the fires of the underworld. The torn, withered skin of his face hung down in places. Teeth showed through holes in the dried flesh of his cheeks. His clothes looked like the dirt in which he had long ago been buried. A fine net of tree roots had grown into his clothes, and some of the bigger roots had even grown through his wrist. Maggots wriggled in open wounds of his abdomen. Ribs showed through splits in his rotted shirt.

The gagging stench of death the man brought with him filled the room.

This was probably one of the dead summoned from his grave by Sulachan's minions. Occult powers, rather than life, gave him purpose and strength.

The three women backed away, keeping out of his reach. The dead man, one ankle broken so that his foot lay completely over to one side, staggered forward as he roared at them. His eyes glowed with hatred and fury.

A soldier raced in and with all his strength drove a spear through the dead man. Kahlan heard it splinter bone, but it had no more effect than the other weapons stuck through the man.

Another brawny soldier leaped onto the dead man's back, trying to wrestle him to the ground. The raging corpse seized the soldier by an arm and whipped him around as if he were but a child. A desiccated arm lashed around with impossible speed, ripping open the soldier's chest. An arc of blood splashed across the wall. The soldier dropped in a lifeless heap against the wall. The other soldier ducked back through the door so as to not be caught by the man's arm.

Just as the invader turned back to them, Nicci threw a fist of air at the man. It knocked him back toward the door. He spread his arms, grabbing the wall at the sides to keep from falling through the splintered doorway. From behind, out in the hallway, Laurin rammed her Agiel into the small of his back. Even though her Agiel didn't work, he roared and spun, backhanding her hard enough to send her flying. She hit the wall and slid down into an unconscious heap.

A soldier stabbed his sword through the dead man's chest, but it did no more than the collection of steel already there. Another soldier swung, trying to hack off an arm, but with the dead man's otherworldly strength he effortlessly deflected the strike. The soldiers kept coming but the dead man knocked them back or took them down as fast as they came. The risen dead were not easily stopped by worldly weapons.

Before more of them could join the battle, the soldiers were set upon from behind by howling hordes of half people racing up the hall. The soldiers were forced to turn to meet the new attack.

Kahlan looked across the room to Richard's sword lying along the length of his body. His hands around the hilt were still where she had placed them. That sword could stop these dead men driven by occult magic. She just needed to get to it.

Before she could try to get across the room to grab the sword, the dead man lurched farther into the room, blocking her from getting to Richard. In the gloom, the glowing red eyes looked all the more menacing as they tracked her dodging first left, then right.

Before Kahlan could try to dart around the growling dead man, Nicci pulled her and the witch woman farther back, dragging them both over the lines of the Grace, until the three of them stood in the center beside the drop of Richard's blood. Nicci apparently hoped the Grace would be protection from such otherworldly forces.