“You had better know what you are doing. You have a history of taking chances with that man and letting him slip through your fingers.”
Hannis Arc jabbed an angry finger against his own chest. “I’m the one who figured out how to use Richard Rahl and the omen machine–blood and prophecy–to bring you back. I’m not the one who is dealing with him this time. You are the one who is seeing that his fate is sealed.
“Richard Rahl has proven in the past to have many people willing to help him. This time he is in your hands, so to speak. He is in your realm. It is you who needs to worry about seeing to it that he can’t interfere.”
“He is dead.”
“So were you.”
Hannis Arc didn’t like being lectured to by the man he had rescued from the oblivion of the underworld and brought back to the world of the living. Without Hannis Arc, Emperor Sulachan would forever be banished to the eternity of darkness. The man might have laid out careful plans and taken extraordinary precautions to have everything in place for his return, but without Hannis Arc and his talents, without him going to the trouble of having the symbols he needed tattooed on every patch of flesh as he studied and collected forgotten prophecy, all of those plans would have come to nothing and there would have been no return.
The spirit king glanced to the city wall, his gaze following the men on top.
“I think it unnecessary,” he said at last, “but if this is your wish as the new ruler of the D’Haran Empire, then it shall be as you say. My army of Shun-tuk will be only too happy to satisfy your desire to send a clear and terrifying message for those still before us.”
“Good.” Hannis Arc smiled, happy that the spirit king understood his place. “It is settled, then. We make an example of these people for daring to resist obedience to their ruler. I have, after all, been generous to give a clear offer of peace. It will be useful to let others know what happens to those who do not accept the offer of peaceful obedience. The consequences must be both swift and painful so that others will know that I do not permit disrespect.
“Just be sure to have your people let some of the witnesses escape with word of what happened here. They must race on ahead of us to carry that word to the People’s Palace.”
At last the emperor smiled. “A small taste, then, of what is to come for this world.”
Hannis Arc smiled as he turned to Vika. When he gave her a nod the Mord-Sith stepped forward. Dressed in her red leather, she made quite a contrast to the sea of Shun-tuk behind, half naked, their bodies and faces all smeared with crusty white ash.
“Have them bring the captives forward.”
Vika bowed her head. “As you wish, Lord Arc.”
She ran back to the Shun-tuk and spoke briefly. Soon the captives were dragged forward out of the trees. They were bound and gagged, their spirits broken. Some seemed almost in a trance from the constant terror. The eyes of others were wide with that terror.
Hannis Arc turned back to the man on the wall. “These are some people from the last city that did not bow down in respect to their Lord Arc.”
With that he flung out an arm tattooed completely over with ancient symbols. Some of those symbols lit from within as he invoked his power.
Most of the group of nearly a hundred prisoners were snatched into the air by that power, lifted from their feet and sent flying over the wall screaming the whole way until they crashed down inside.
Some didn’t make it over, their bones breaking as they crashed into the stone wall. Those who didn’t make it over fell to heaps before the wall, most still alive but in no condition to run. Beyond the wall, those who had come falling from the sky cried out in pain from their injuries.
Hannis Arc turned back to the several dozen remaining prisoners. They were the ones with wide eyes, the ones who would do anything they were told.
Before the man on the wall could ask what he was doing, Emperor Sulachan lifted a hand powered by the bluish glow of his spirit.
The power of that gesture blew the gates apart. Splinters of the beams spiraled through the air. Hot shards of iron from the shattered hinges and straps bounced along the ground. Dust boiled up into the still-falling bits and pieces. Through that cloud people beyond were already running. They had nowhere to run, really. The walls held them prisoner for what was to come.
Sulachan turned to his army of Shun-tuk.
“Feed.”
With a howl that vibrated the air, the masses of half people, all desperately hungry for a soul of their own, saw the souls inside and charged for them.
The people inside screamed and shrieked as they ran, trying to find a place to hide. Shun-tuk were skilled at finding hiding souls. Trapped inside the city walls, they were run down by the flood of half-naked Shun-tuk racing in through the gaping hole in the wall. The half people, now in a frenzy to have a soul for themselves, fell on the people of Drendon Falls and started ripping into them with their teeth.
For those who now thought to change allegiance and tried to bow down to Lord Arc, it was too late. They had been given a chance to bow down and they had not taken it. Now, even as they fell to their knees, crying out for mercy, they would serve him in a different manner. They would serve as examples.
Hannis Arc turned to the tattered group of prisoners, both men and women, all filthy with dust and dirt. He gestured with a finger and the rope binding their wrists parted. Their gags fell away.
“Go on to the People’s Palace and the places along the way. Tell them what is coming, and that their only hope of salvation is to bow down and swear allegiance to Lord Arc.”
The group fell to their knees, wailing with relief. They all crowded in around him, taking his robes in trembling fingers, kissing the cloth, thanking him for his mercy. They all swore undying loyalty to him.
Hannis Arc was gratified to have such a show of respect.
“All right. That’s enough. Be on your way.”
They all scrambled to their feet and ran to do his bidding.
CHAPTER
15
Uncountable arms reached out of the darkness, clawing the air, trying to catch something, anything. Hands all around tried to touch her, to make contact. Despite how desperately they stretched and raked the air, they could not reach her.
Even with her eyes closed, Nicci could see all the arms and fingers wriggling like a thousand snakes. The hiss of the dead only added to the sense of death closing in around her. Out beyond the walls of arms she could hear the screams of others.
She knew who these souls were. She recognized them.
They were the souls of those she had killed.
Nicci lifted a hand before her, pushing back the ones in front, reaching for her, the ones who had deserved to die but in their hatred for life didn’t fully realize they were dead. Nicci had no fear of them catching hold of her. These were not demons, and not able to do such things as snatch the living to drag them down.
They were the guilty upon whom she had visited justice.
They could no longer touch her.
Before her, in her mind’s eye, she kept the soft light of Kahlan’s spirit safe from those things that wanted to drag her back in among them.
Nicci knew that the dark ones wanted Kahlan back.
Fortunately, Richard had drawn Sulachan’s minions to himself, drawing them away from Kahlan’s spirit.
Unfortunately, those dark demons wrapped him tightly in their dark wings so that Nicci had no hope of finding him on her own. She had searched beyond the veil before and had found spirits, but she would not be able to find Richard.
Sulachan intended for him never to be found. Though Nicci had considerable power, she was not the match for such evil, especially in his realm.
The task before her seemed impossible. The darkness was thick with souls, like grains of black sand on a beach at midnight, all flowing and shifting constantly as inky waves rolled in and tumbled the sand around. Those souls crowded in from every direction, eddies of them swirling around her a
nd making it impossible to see beyond them. Whenever she parted those in her way, there were only more.
As she approached and they saw her, they twisted and turned, shying away from her. She knew what they were doing. She had seen them before. They recognized that she didn’t belong, that she had invaded their peace, that she was a dark force in a world of darkness.
She was out of place, and they were trying to push her back out of eternity to the terror of that momentary spark that was life. They didn’t like to be reminded of what they could not have again. They wanted to be left in peace to slowly forget.
In the unfamiliar light of Kahlan’s soul, those swirling masses flowed through the darkness like dense schools of fish. Endless masses of dark forms made up of millions of individuals billowed and spiraled in to keep Nicci from that light. They were trying to protect that light from Nicci’s darkness.
While she felt like weeping at the beauty of that light, she needed to find her way, and she was being swamped by souls that occupied the darkness. She feared that it was an impossible task to search for a particular grain of sand on that endless, black beach.
Nicci felt gentle hands rest on her shoulders.
It was the witch woman, standing behind her, putting her hands on Nicci’s shoulders.
When she did, the nature of the darkness shifted, the souls swirling and whirling in a mad surge as they parted and spiraled back. Nicci smiled inwardly at again seeing the guiding light of Kahlan’s soul in the center of that Grace constructed of her blood. From that single drop of Richard’s blood in the center, the eternal darkness formed into twisting flows moving gracefully through nothingness.
Nicci realized that the witch woman was using the flow of time to reveal the way through the void. The layers of darkness teeming with spirits folded and turned, rolling over and through itself in undercurrents formed out of nothing, reminding her of strands of smoke curling and billowing through still air. Or blood dripping into still, clear water.
It was as terrifying as it was bewitching and beautiful.
And then, following that flow the witch woman was feeding into her, the light of a soul seemed to appear along those lines out of the black forever. It was a soul Nicci recognized all too well.
It was the soul of the wizard she had killed. It was his power she had taken into her own.
It had been done when she became a Sister of the Dark.
It was something that was beyond forgiving.
The light of the spirit diffused and then consolidated into a glowing form as it confronted her, stopping her progress. She knew that spirits used their light to take a recognizable form.
Nicci didn’t know what to do. What could she do? There was no way she could ask forgiveness. She had no right.
The light of the spirit reached out and touched her, then. Touched her soul. In that instant, in that timeless connection, she felt everything he would say to her.
She wept with the beauty of it all. He was at peace. He told her that although she had taken it in the cause of evil, in the end she had done more good with his gift than he ever would have. Although what she had done was an injustice, she had gone on to do the one thing that gave him peace. She had chosen to change, to fight evil, and to make up for all the harm she had done to others.
Nicci did not deserve forgiveness, and he understood that, too. He told her that he could not give her any such forgiveness, that it came from within herself, and that was all that mattered. She saw the beautiful light of his soul, and wept at what she had done to him.
He told her that she carried his gift, now, and he was with her in spirit, helping her new calling, in spirit. Her purpose was his, now. His gift was hers, now.
He ran a glowing, spirit hand down her hair as a father might while smiling down on a beloved daughter. It was a moment of such pure love, such pure acceptance, that it left her shaken and weeping with the beauty of it.
At that, he moved aside, holding out that glowing arm, and welcomed her onward, wishing her well in her mission to fight for the world of life, a cause he said was a noble use of the gift she was born with, and the gift she had taken up.
She felt drained, her emotions exhausted by the confrontation and the agony of sorrow that had only lasted a spark of time, but at the same time, in that eternal world, had lasted forever. She felt as if she knew him better than she ever had, knew herself better than she ever had.
In the distance, Nicci could hear Kahlan asking if she was all right, but she was too far away to answer. The witch woman answered in her place, telling Kahlan that Nicci was moving on to search.
With her mission firmly in mind, Nicci summoned her strength to push on into the darkness, riding the flow that continued to swirl onward through the endless night.
She saw the light of countless souls along the way. All looked the same, like a night sky scattered with a blanket of stars. They all floated at eternal peace in the firmament. She didn’t know how she would find one star among the countless numbers scattered ahead forever.
But then one of those glowing stars swept in closer.
“I am Isidore,” the spirit said in a voice that was like sunlight. “I felt you calling for me.”
Nicci saw the glowing form sweep in with effortless grace, taking a shape that mimicked her once-living form, but made of light. Nicci couldn’t get out the rush of everything that suddenly came to mind. There seemed too much to convey.
“I must help Richard,” she finally said to the spirit. “I need to find Naja.”
“I know,” Isidore said. “I am here to guide you.”
With that, the spirit form moved off into the flow. Nicci thought that Isidore was just about the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. The spirit glowed with an innocent, childlike kindness. Her smile was a warm summer day.
Together, Isidore leading, Nicci being swept along in her wake, they went into a landscape that was darker yet, with tunnels of blackness through the inky gloom. It was a disorienting journey that was up and down all at the same time, twisting, turning, spiraling their way through places where it seemed impossible to pass.
In a recess of darkness, a deep cavern of eternity, they came to another spirit that took on human form. Isidore gently touched the shoulder of the other.
“This is the one you seek.”
Nicci drifted forward. “Naja?”
The spirit regarded Nicci with cool detachment, rather than Isidore’s warmth.
“What is one of your kind doing here? Why have you come to disturb me?”
“It’s not what it seems,” Nicci said. “I come in the guise of a Sister of the Dark because there was no other way. I had to use what only I know, what only I can do, to do what must be done.”
“And what would that be?”
“What you wanted in life, what you worked for … to stop the emperor, Sulachan.”
The shadowy spirit hissed as she backed away at the name.
“Suuuulachan,” Naja said with venom. “His vile spirit haunts the underworld with an intent darker than death.”
“I know that you tried to stop him when you were alive. You and Magda Searus and the wizard Merritt.”
At speaking their names, their glowing spirits came into view out of the darkness.
“Why have you come here?” the spirit of Magda Searus asked. Much like that of Isidore, her spirit was a wonderful, warm glow that instilled a sense of wonder and peace in Nicci.
Nicci turned and held an arm out. “I come to help her,” she said as she moved aside so they would see the glow of Kahlan’s spirit from where she sat in the center of the Grace beside that single, luminous drop of Richard’s blood.
“The Mother Confessor,” Magda whispered with a benevolent reverence that only a good spirit could summon. “You brought her spirit here?”
“Only a bit of the light within her,” Nicci said. “She powers the Grace that I used to come to you.”
“Why have you come?” Magda asked.
Ni
cci lifted a hand out toward the loving spirit close at Magda’s side. “For the same reason.”
“For her love,” Merritt said with understanding. “The one in life we knew would come one day.”
“That’s right,” Nicci said. “Sulachan has escaped the underworld and again walks the world of life. Richard Rahl is the one who must stop him. In your time, you all worked to stop the emperor and his forces, and worked to lay out the path for the one who would come after you who can stop the demon.”
“That is no longer our world,” Naja said, the others nodding their agreement.
“Richard Rahl is not in the other world. He is in this world. He is here.”
Distress and anguish haunted their features.
In alarm, Merritt glided closer. “That is not supposed to happen. He is supposed to be the one to stop Sulachan. He needs to be in your world to do that. He can’t succeed from here. He can’t help that world from here. None of us can.”
“I know,” Nicci said. “That is why I had to come here, why I had to use the same dark talents I once used for evil, but turned around and now used to fight for the world of life.”
The light of the spirit of Naja coalesced into a shape that mimicked the exotic form she’d had had in life, but now in light rather than flesh and blood. She moved closer.
“How did such a thing happen? We all took precautions, we guided prophecy, we left all the help we could. How did he die?”
Nicci looked at the spirits all gazing at her. “I killed him,” she said, holding her hand out toward the raven current curling away before her, “just as was foretold in the flow of time.”
Merritt glided closer still in a manner that Nicci could only interpret as anger.
Nicci swallowed at the look he gave her. “I had to.”
“Why?” he demanded.
Nicci again held her arm out toward the glow of Kahlan’s spirit. “For her. She had been murdered. Sulachan’s dark minions had her soul and they were taking it into the depths of darkness. Richard asked me to stop his heart so he could go after her, trade places with her, and send her back to the world of life. It mattered to him more than his own life.”