Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2014

Copyright © Terry Goodkind 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Cover art and design by Rob Anderson at Revel Studios.

Terry Goodkind asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007510863

Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007510887

Version: 2014-07-15

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Also by Terry Goodkind

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

Bring us our dead.”

At the same time as he heard the voice, Richard felt the touch of an icy hand on the back of his shoulder.

He drew his sword as he spun.

As it cleared its scabbard, the blade sent its distinctive ring of steel through the hushed, predawn air. The power contained within the weapon answered the call, inundating him with rage in preparation for a fight.

Standing in the darkness right behind where he had been on watch were three men and two women. The dying campfire burning in the distance off behind him cast the faintest flicker of reddish light across the five stony faces. The gaunt figures stood passively, shoulders slumped, arms hanging limp at their sides.

Besides the hint of impending rain, the air carried the smell of wood smoke from the fire back at camp, the scent of balsam trees and cinnamon ferns growing nearby, their horses, and the musty smell of the damp leaf litter matting the ground.

But Richard thought he also detected a trace of sulfur.

Even though none of the five looked or acted threatening, having the crackling power from the ancient weapon he held in his fist thundering through him had his heart hammering. Their passive poses did nothing to ease his sense of threat or his readiness to fight should they make a sudden move to attack.

What concerned Richard more than anything, though, was that he had been watching and listening for any sound or movement in the predawn stillness—that was the whole point of standing watch—and he hadn’t heard or seen the five come up behind him.

In such a dense, uninhabited woods it was unimaginable to him that not one of them had made a sound by stepping on a twig or crunching any of the dry leaves and bark scattered about on the ground.

Richard was more than used to being in the woods and it was virtually impossible for so much as a squirrel to sneak up on him, much less five people. When he had been a woods guide he had played the game of sneak-up with other guides. He was well practiced at it and it had developed in him a kind of sixth sense for any living thing near him. People rarely if ever successfully snuck up on Richard.

Yet these five had.

The trackless wasteland of the Dark Lands seldom saw travelers. It was far too dangerous a place to take any chances. Any traveler would know that and not tempt trouble by sneaking up on a camp.

Richard was but one wrong word or sudden move away from unleashing his restraint. In his mind, the deed was already done, every move calculated and decided. If they did anything wrong he would not hesitate to defend himself and those in camp behind him.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want?”

“We have come to be with our dead,” one of the two women said in the same sort of emotionless voice as the man who had spoken first.

The gazes of all five seemed to be staring through him.

“Bring them to us,” the second woman said in the same disembodied tone. Like the others, she looked to be little more than skin and bones.

“What are you talking about?” Richard asked.

“Bring us our dead,” one of the other men repeated.

“What dead?” Richard asked.

“Our dead,” a different man said in a voice equally devoid of emotion.

The circular answers were getting him nowhere.

Back in the camp behind him, Richard could hear a soft, calculated commotion as soldiers of the First File, awakened by the sound of his sword being drawn, threw off their blankets and sprang to their feet. He knew that they would be snatching up swords, lances, and axes at the ready near where they had been sleeping. These were men who were always prepared for trouble.

Without taking his eyes from the five any longer than necessary to snatch quick glances to either side in order to watch for other threats, Richard knew that the soldiers behind him would be giving hand signals for defensive positions. As distant as they were, as careful as they were, he could hear a footstep here, the rustle of leaves there, the squish of mud underfoot to the side as some of them moved swiftly through the forest to surround the strangers.

These men were the best of the best—experienced soldiers who had worked hard to join the elite corps of the First File. They all had seen years of combat. A number of their ranks had already given their lives after coming to the Dark Lands in order to help get Richard and Kahlan safely back to the palace.

Unfortunately, they were all still a very long way from home.

“I don’t know who you are talking about,” Richard said as he watched the distant gazes of the five people before him.

“Our dead,” the first woman said in a lifeless voice.

Richard frowned. “Why are you telling this to me?”

“Because you are the one,” the man who had touched him said.

Richard lifted his fingers one at a time, flexing them in a wavelike motion, readjusting his grip on his sword. He looked from one blank face to another.

“The one? What are you talking about?”

“You are fuer grissa ost drauka,” another man said. “You are the one.”

Goose bumps tingled up the back of Richard’s neck. Fuer grissa ost drauka meant “the bringer of death” in the ancient language of High D’Haran. It was a name prophecy had given him. Very few people, other than Richard, knew the dead language of High D’Haran.

Perhaps even more disconcerting was how these five would know that it referred to him.

Richard kept the point of his sword toward the five, making sure none of them could approach any closer, even though none of them tried. He wanted to be sure he had fighting room should he need it.

“Where did you hear such a thing?” he asked.

“You are the one—you are fuer grissa ost drauka: the bringer of death,” one of the women said. “That is what you do. You bring death.”

“And what makes you think that I can bring you your dead?”

“We have long sought our dead,” she said. “We need you to bring them to us.”

“Bring us our dead,” another man repeated, for the first time with a trace of dark insistence that Richard didn’t like.

It seemed to make some kind of sense to the five people, but it didn’t make any sense to Richard, other than in a decidedly perverse way. He knew the three ancient meanings of the term fuer grissa ost drauka and how they applied to him.

These five were using it in an entirely different way.

Behind him, he could hear Kahlan racing back toward him. He recognized the unique sound of her boot strikes and stride. She had been sharing some quiet time with him before dawn and had only moments before started back toward the camp. As she came rushing up behind him, Richard held his left arm out to make sure she stayed out of the way should he need to use his sword.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she came to an abrupt halt not far away.

Richard stole a quick glance back over his shoulder. The tense concern of her expression did nothing to diminish the flawless beauty of her familiar features.

Richard turned back to the five to keep his eye on them.

They were gone.

He blinked in surprise and then looked around. He had looked away for only a fraction of a second. It was impossible, but all five people were gone.

“They were right there,” he said, half to himself.

There was nowhere they could have hidden in the brief time he had glanced back at Kahlan. The sloping, rocky ground where they had been didn’t offer any cover. It was a few dozen feet to the closest trees. That was why Richard had picked the spot—it was open enough that no one could hide or sneak up on them.

He saw that the decomposing leaves and forest debris that had drifted in across the ground where they had been standing beside the exposed ridge of granite ledge looked untouched. He would have heard them move. They would have disturbed the leaf litter. They couldn’t have taken a single step without making a sound, nor could they have gotten out of his sight and to cover that fast.

“Who?” Kahlan asked as she leaned to the side, peering around him.

Richard stretched his arm out, pointing insistently with his sword. “Only seconds ago there were five people standing right there.”

The small bits of sky that could be seen through gaps in the heavy forest canopy were beginning to turn a leaden, muted gray tinted red by the approaching dawn. Kahlan knew better than to discount what Richard said he had seen. She scanned the near darkness to both sides.

“Were they half people?” she asked, the worry evident in her voice.

Richard could still feel the icy sensation from where one of the men had touched his right shoulder.

“No, I don’t think so. One of them put his hand on me—as if to get my attention. They didn’t bare their teeth. I don’t think they came to try to take my soul.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Did they say anything?”

“They said that they wanted me to bring them their dead.”

Kahlan’s mouth opened in wordless surprise. Richard studied the place where they had been before again looking around for any sign of the five. In the gloom he couldn’t see any footprints.

Kahlan hugged her arms to herself as she finally stepped closer. “Richard, there’s no one there.” She gestured off toward the trees. “And nowhere to hide until you get back into the woods. How could they have vanished?”

Dozens of soldiers of the First File, his personal guard, rushed out of the darkness to form a protective perimeter. Each of the big men had a weapon to hand, ready for pitched battle. It looked as if he were suddenly standing in a steel porcupine.

“Lord Rahl,” one of the officers asked, “what is it? What happened?”

“There were five people here—just a moment ago.” Richard gestured with his sword. “They came up behind me and were standing right there.”

The soldiers briefly scanned the darkness, and then, without further word, at least a dozen men dashed away into the woods to search for the intruders. Although dawn was starting to bring a weak gray light to the quiet forest, it was still dark enough that Richard knew it would be easy to miss someone hiding in such dense woods. All the strangers would have to do would be to crouch in the darkness among thickets of bushes or saplings and they could easily be missed.

But he didn’t think these five were crouching and hiding.

He knew otherwise.

He knew that they had vanished.

CHAPTER 2

What is it?” Nicci called out as she pushed her way through the tight ring of towering soldiers. Her gaze quickly swept over his sword, probably checking to see if it was bloody. Despite the size of the men and their fearsome weapons, Nicci’s gift probably made her more deadly than all of the men put together. Had his own gift been working, he would have been able to see the aura of her power shimmering around her.

“Five people came up behind me as I was standing watch,” Richard told her as Zedd rushed in through the gap Nicci had created. “I didn’t know they were there until one of them touched my shoulder.”

Nicci did a double take. “They walked right up and one of them touched you?”

Like Nicci, the old wizard looked incredulous. Though Richard knew his grandfather well, from time to time he was amazed at what Zedd was able to do with his ability, as well as his uncanny knowledge about the most arcane of subjects.

“People?” Zedd peered to each side behind Richard and Kahlan. “What people?”

The young Samantha and her mother, Irena, rushed up behind Zedd. Despite only being in her mid-teens, Samantha had proven to have remarkable abilities as a sorceress. Richard didn’t yet know much of anything about her mother’s gift, but if Samantha was any indication, her mother was potentially quite formidable.

Despite the knowledge, abilities, and power of the people gathered around him, they were in a dangerous land that put all of them at risk. The fact that five people had been able to walk right up on them, and then vanish, only served to highlight the perils of the Dark Lands.

“Are you all right, Lord Rahl?” Irena asked with a look of concern as she reached out to touch Richard’s arm.

He nodded as Nicci subtly but protectively stepped in close enough to move Irena aside.

“They snuck up behind you?” Nicci tilted her head toward Richard. “Five people snuck up behind you?”

Exasperated that he was being ignored, Zedd waved an arm. “What five people?” he demanded again before Richard could answer Nicci. “Where are they?”

Richard gestured behind in frustration. “They were right there, and then they were gone.”

Zedd cocked his head as his bushy brow drew down. He peered intently with one eye. “Gone?”

“Yes, gone. I don’t know where they went. I didn’t see them come and I didn’t see them leave. When I turned back around to keep an eye on them they were simply gone.”

Samantha lifted her chin, sniffing the air. Her features had yet to fully take on the more sharply defined form of full adulthood. The soft contour of her nose wrinkled.

“What’s that smell?” she asked, rather urgently, before Zedd or anyone else could say anything more. “It’s fading now, but it seems like I remember it from somewhere.”

Everyone looked around, distracted by the strange question and her tone of alarm.

Kahlan frowned. “Now that you mention it, I remember it from somewhere, too.”

Richard methodically studied the shadows, still looking for any sign of the five strangers. “It’s sulfur.”

Samantha pushed some of the matted mass of her black hair back from her face as she peered up at him. “Sulfur?”

“Yes—the smell of death,” Richard said, still gazing off into the darkness, still looking for any sign of the strangers.

“No,” Kahlan said, tapping a thumb against the handle of the knife sheathed at her belt as she tried to recall. “The spirits know I’ve been around that stench enough. This was certainly unpleasant, but it’s not the smell of death. It’s something else.”

“That’s not what he means,” Nicci said in a dark and disquieting tone as she shared a knowing look with Richard when he turned back to them.

“It’s the smell of the world of the dead,” Richard said in an equally somber voice to all the faces watching him. “Like a doorway to the underworld itself was briefly cracked open.”

Everyone stared back.

“The underworld!” Samantha snapped her fingers. “That’s where I remember the smell from. It was when I was trying to heal you and the Mother Confessor. When I got near that poison of death deep in you both, I smelled that smell.”

Irena, having moved around behind Samantha, put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder as she leaned in. “Poison? What poison?” Her expression had turned suspicious. It was an expression that seemed to go naturally with the creases in the center of her brow and her mass of black hair. “What was my daughter doing anywhere near anything to do with the underworld?”

“Jit, the Hedge Maid, had captured Kahlan and me,” Richard said, “but before she could kill us I was able to plug our ears with some wads of cloth and then break the restraints on the evil that resides inside her kind. When I did, she involuntarily let out a cry that called death to her. That was how I was able to kill her so that we could escape.

“Unfortunately, some of that sound was still able to get through. Now, that opening to the world of the dead is embedded within us. When Samantha healed our other wounds, she came near to that boundary rooted deep within us. That’s what she is remembering.”

“Samantha wouldn’t know anything about such matters,” Irena insisted as her gaze shifted from her daughter back to Richard. “She’s too young. She has no business even attempting such things yet. She still has too much to learn before going near such dark forces.”

As Samantha tilted her head back to look up at her mother, her eyes glistened with tears at the terrible memory. “It was the only way I could heal their wounds. I had to do it or they would have died. Lord Rahl is the one meant to save us. He helped save many of the people of Stroyza.

“I had to do it or they would have died. He guided me in what I needed to do. It was then, when I was doing the healing, that I felt that terrible darkness of death deep within them. That’s when I smelled that awful smell.”

“She’s right,” Zedd grumbled unhappily. “I recall a hint of that same odor from when I started healing the both of them back before we were attacked and captured. I recognized it at the time as the stagnant stench of the darkest depths of the world of the dead.” His eyes turned away. “I’ve encountered that singular smell before.”

Nicci hooked a long strand of her blond hair back behind an ear as she scanned the darkness among the trees. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, or else she was using her ability to try to sense if someone or something was hiding out there.

“When you are near to the boundary to the underworld, when death is near,” she said in a quiet voice that seemed to come from some dark place within her, “you could sometimes smell it, smell the world of the dead beyond the veil.”

Irena glanced around at the grim expressions. “When death is near …? The world of the dead? Here? Now? What are you all talking about? It’s likely to be nothing more sinister than a sulfur spring nearby. There are a number of such places in the Dark Lands. Most likely the breeze carried a whiff of a sulfur spring in this direction, that’s all.” She cast a deliberate glance in Nicci’s direction. “I think we’re letting ourselves get carried away by groundless fears.”

Nicci’s flawless features took on a ill-humored cast as her gaze settled on the woman. “I was once a Sister of the Dark. I suffered that stench often enough when the Keeper of the underworld visited us in our sleep, when he came to us to direct us to do his bidding. That’s why the Mother Confessor thought of it as a memory from a dream. When she sleeps, the sights and sounds of the conscious world fade into the background. In that state, she is nearer to the boundary to the underworld now rooted within her.”

Samantha’s jaw hung open. “You were a Sister of the—”

“Hush,” her mother cautioned from behind in a low voice as she put both hands on the young woman’s shoulders to add emphasis to the order.

Samantha’s mother looked shaken by the revelation that Nicci was once a Sister of the Dark. Richard knew that many people who lived in remote places, like Irena and her daughter, were superstitious and avoided speaking out loud of things they feared lest they call those mysterious dangers to themselves. There was nothing more terrifying than the Keeper of the underworld. Richard knew Sisters of the Light who called the Keeper “the Nameless One” for fear of calling him forth.

Richard also saw the shadow of suspicion in Irena’s dark eyes. Women who had given themselves over to such dark forces never returned to the light. Yet Nicci had.

“Sulfur smells similar, but it’s not exactly the same as the stench from the world of the dead. Considering my past allegiances, I could hardly mistake sulfur for the haunting stench of the underworld. When I touched Richard and Kahlan before, to heal them, I recognized all too well that death itself is growing in them both.”

Hearing the unmistakable tone of authority and experience in Nicci’s voice, Irena didn’t argue.

The creases in Zedd’s face drew tight as he looked around in alarm. “Where’s Cara?”

Richard’s grandfather knew that the Mord-Sith wouldn’t be far when there was any sort of danger to Richard and Kahlan.

The words felt like a knife to Richard’s heart.

“Cara is gone,” he said in a quiet voice as he looked back into his grandfather’s hazel eyes.

Zedd’s brow drew down. “Gone? What do you mean, gone? She was here when we set up camp.”

“She left earlier in the night.”

When Zedd saw the look on Richard’s face he closed his mouth, leaving his questions for later. Zedd had been there when Cara’s husband had been brutally killed by the half people. Cara had been there as well. Richard could see in his grandfather’s eyes that he suddenly made the connection to the reason she had left.

Irena eyed the dark shapes of trees emerging as dawn crept up on them. With the same wiry figure and the same mass of long black hair framing a face of delicate features, she looked like an older version of Samantha, if somewhat more tense. Samantha by contrast had faced terrible dangers with bravery and resolve. He knew that part of that was because she was young.

It occurred to Richard that, living in the Dark Lands her whole life and being an experienced sorceress, maybe Irena had experienced far more than her daughter and had good reason for being anxious. Irena would have seen things that Samantha had yet to see, understood things that Samantha had yet to comprehend. The older woman would have spent well over twice Samantha’s years surviving the dangers of such a rugged and remote place.

Irena knew, too, of the barrier to the third kingdom being down. Being the sorceress of the village of Stroyza, she had been responsible for watching over that barrier in case it was ever breached and warning others if it was. She probably knew at least some of the terrors from beyond the wall to the north that her people had watched over for thousands of years.

Richard wondered just how much she knew about the barrier and the third kingdom that had for so long been locked away beyond, a realm where the world of life and death existed together in the same time and place. He needed to have a long talk with the woman to find out just what she knew.

“We should be away from this place,” Irena murmured as she watched the shadows.

The mention of the half people had set her on edge, and for good reason. Her husband had been killed by the half people—devoured before her eyes in an attempt to steal his soul for themselves.

With the barrier to the third kingdom down, the unholy half dead—beings without souls—had now been loosed on the world of the living, attacking anyone they could catch, devouring their flesh in a deranged attempt to capture a soul for themselves. When that barrier had been breached after holding evil back for thousands of years, Irena had left her village to warn people of what was happening. She hadn’t made it far. After killing her husband, the half people had taken her captive. After attempting to use her for their occult purposes, they would have eventually devoured her as they had so many others. Fortunately, Richard had managed to free her along with all the soldiers, Zedd, Nicci, and Cara before that could happen.

Unfortunately, Cara’s husband, Ben, the general in command of these men, had not made it out alive.

Everyone turned to look when they heard a distant scream.

Richard pointed with his sword. “There!”

CHAPTER 3

Just as Richard started out toward the source of the scream, Irena caught his arm.

“No, Lord Rahl—you can’t. There could be too many of them. We must get you out of here.”

Richard pulled his arm away as he heard another scream. “That’s one of our men.”

She pointed urgently in the direction of the cries. “But it’s too late to save him. The risk would be for nothing.”

“We don’t know that.” He swept the woman aside on his way past her. “We don’t leave our own behind if there is a chance to save them.”

Kahlan fell in close behind Richard to block the woman from interfering with him. It was not the time to debate the issue, but more than that, there was nothing to debate. Kahlan knew that as well as Richard. In situations like this, seconds could mean the difference between life and death.

Besides that, Kahlan could see the rage of the weapon in Richard’s eyes. He was intent on stopping the threat and he would let nothing get in his way.

She supposed it made sense for Irena to be concerned about Richard’s safety—he was the Lord Rahl, after all, and the leader of the D’Haran Empire. In so many ways, everyone’s survival depended on Richard. But Kahlan wondered how much Irena, being from such a remote place, knew of the wider world. Perhaps more troubling, she wondered how much Irena knew of the unique dangers in her birthplace. Kahlan had to push the issue from her mind as she rushed to stay close to Richard.

As the entire mass of men turned and raced after Richard, Nicci cut in front of Kahlan to stay close behind him. The woman’s blond hair streamed out behind her like a flag as she followed the Lord Rahl into battle. Richard leaped over a wind-fallen spruce, charging off into the darkness of the dense forest as everyone else gave chase.

With Cara gone and the sickness of death preventing Kahlan’s or Richard’s power from working, Nicci was obviously intent on staying close to protect both Richard and Kahlan. She, perhaps better than just about anyone, knew how everyone’s survival depended on Richard. Just as Cara would have done, she intended to make sure he was protected.

Kahlan was thankful that at least the power of Richard’s sword worked for him. His gift didn’t work any better than her power, but the sword had its own magic and he could still depend on that.

Rather than object to Nicci cutting in front of her, Kahlan simply followed behind the sorceress. She knew that in Cara’s absence it made the most sense for Nicci to be as close as possible in order to protect them both. Besides, there was nothing more important to Kahlan than Richard’s safety. More than his importance to everyone else, he was everything to her and if Nicci could best protect him, then Kahlan wanted the sorceress as close to him as possible.

Zedd followed on Kahlan’s heels while Samantha and Irena were swept up and carried along with the tide of men rushing up from behind. Some of the men fanned out to the sides, creating protective wings around Richard and Kahlan and making sure that they weren’t taken by surprise from an attack from the sides.

In the grip of the rage from the sword, Richard wasn’t going to slow for anything and it wasn’t long before he had outdistanced the rest of them. He ran through the woods, weaving his way among the trunks of towering pines, through thickets of brush, over rocks and fallen trees and streams with the kind of practiced abandon that the rest of them couldn’t match. It was like watching an unstoppable shadow slip among the timber to be absorbed into the darkness out ahead.

More than that, though, the sickness she carried within her was hampering Kahlan’s ability to keep up. It was troubling the way it sapped her strength, leaving her winded long before she ordinarily would have been. Richard had the same sickness of death growing all the time inside him, but it was more advanced in Kahlan. That death within would soon claim them both, but if not stopped it was destined to take her first.

The way that weakness swiftly drained her strength as she ran after Richard not only surprised her, it alarmed her. Zedd and Nicci had warned her how serious the situation was, and how the inner poisonous touch of death from Jit would steadily grow stronger. If it wasn’t removed, neither Richard nor Kahlan would live much longer.

As she started losing ground to Richard and Nicci and struggled to get her breath, Zedd put a hand on Kahlan’s back, between her shoulder blades. It was not merely meant to help her keep her balance. While he couldn’t remove what was poisoning her, at least not until they could get back to the People’s Palace, he was trickling his gift into her to add strength to the life within her still fighting for survival. That trickle of power was enough to help her keep up. She knew, though, that it wouldn’t last for long.

From time to time Kahlan heard the soldier’s screams out ahead of them. The sound of those screams were getting closer. She knew it must be the half people attacking the man, but since they weren’t making any noise she had no idea how many there might be. She hated running headlong into such an unknown situation, but there was no other choice except to leave the man to be killed, and that was not acceptable.

In the early dawn light, she saw branches sweep out of the darkness at her at the last instant before they whipped past. Sometimes she had to quickly duck to the side to keep from being hit in the face. Sometimes it was too late and she could only close her eyes. Other times, when they sprang back as Richard batted limbs out of his way, they slapped her shoulder.

At times, if the bough was too large to shove aside or avoid, Richard simply swung his sword as he rushed headlong through the dense woods, sending the limb sailing up and out of his way to come down among those following behind. The men shielded themselves with an arm whenever a branch came down among them. Kahlan struggled to regain sight of Richard as he vanished from time to time among the thick growth of spruce saplings and brush only to reappear again as he bounded up and over a fallen tree trunk or an outcropping of rock.

At a dead run, breaking through into an open area of the forest with little ground cover among maple and birch trees, they abruptly ran up on a knot of half-naked people smeared with white ash, all hunched over around something on the ground.

They were Shun-tuk.

In the weak, early dawn light the Shun-tuk looked like ghosts. All had eye sockets painted with a black, greasy substance. Wide grins of teeth drawn on their faces completed the look, making them resemble skulls. Most of their heads were shaved, but some had a knot of hair remaining at the top that was tied up with strings of beads and bones to keep it standing up straight so that it resembled a fountain of hair.

Some of the men turned from their prey to look up in surprise as Richard bounded over a boulder and leaped in at them, suddenly screaming in rage, his sword held high in both fists.

In that frozen instant, Kahlan saw that the startled faces were dripping with blood.

The Shun-tuk had knives, but they remained in their sheaths.

Instead, they used only their teeth.

CHAPTER 4

Richard crashed down among the chalky figures, his fury at last unleashed. His blade swung around in an arc, lopping off a shaved head with startled, dark painted eyes. The speed of the weapon was so great that the tip whistled through the air even as the blade continued on to gash open the shoulder of the Shun-tuk beside the headless man, almost completely severing his arm. Richard immediately delivered a powerful side kick to the man rushing in on his other side.

As some of the half people around Richard toppled to the sides, Kahlan saw the soldier down on the ground under the white figures crowded around him like a pack of wolves in a feeding frenzy. Despite Richard killing several as he charged in, others only glanced sideways up at him, unwilling to relinquish the flesh clenched in their teeth. Others, lost in bloodlust, seemed oblivious of the danger to themselves as they tore flesh from the soldier.

Even with the half people piled in on him, the soldier still had his sword in his right hand and a knife clutched tightly in his left fist. He kicked and swung his sword past the bodies trying to hold him on the ground and at the same time used his knife to stab at others still trying to get in on the feast.

His screams were as much rage as pain. Wherever it was not protected by his leather armor his flesh was torn and bloody, but he was quite alive and full of fight.

It was clear that the soldier had fought fiercely, as any of the First File would have. A number of the white figures lay strewn along the forest floor, a line of bloody bodies marking a trail along which they had fought him to a stop.

A few of those downed Shun-tuk lying around the soldier were still alive and lay panting in agony as they bled out. Their wounds were clearly unsurvivable. Others, horrifically wounded from the soldiers’ blades, writhed among the ferns and mosses at the side of a small brook as their blood ran down the rocks, turning the moss and water red. Some moaned, but none of them screamed in pain as did most of the wounded Kahlan had seen injured in battle.

The majority of the downed Shun-tuk, though, were clearly dead. The soldier had not gone down easily and the enemy had paid a heavy price to get him to ground.

The problem was, there simply had been too many of the half people for him to fight them all off. The danger to themselves seemed less important to these soulless beings than getting at their victim and having a chance to try to steal his soul.

Richard’s sword arced around to cleanly cleave the head off a chalky figure rising up to grab him and try to pull him down with the soldier. A few others rose up, eager to rip into the new people coming their way in an effort to devour a soul for themselves.

To Kahlan’s alarm, though, most of them charged Richard as if they recognized him and wanted him more than anyone else.

Before the Shun-tuk could overwhelm Richard and take him down under the weight of their numbers, the soldiers crashed into the pack of whitewashed figures, driving most back away from Richard. The half people, oblivious of the danger, immediately attacked the soldiers descending on them.

But teeth were no match for razor-sharp steel.

The terrible sight reminded Kahlan of blades scything down wheat. It was brutal butchery of savages bent only on murder.

None of what the soldiers did could match the violence Richard’s sword brought to them. As half people reached for him, his sword took off fingers, hands, arms, heads, and split their bodies nearly in half. It seemed that his blade never paused and each time found its mark, shattering skulls and severing flesh and bone.

Knowing that the gift didn’t work well against these half people, Nicci was at least able to use her ability to gather air into a powerful fist to knock back a number of them coming at Kahlan from the side. Soldiers hacked them to pieces as they stumbled back, trying to recover their footing. Kahlan used her knife to slash several of the whitewashed figures that got in too close to her. Their blackened eyes were terrifying up close, especially when they had their mouths open, baring their teeth.

Zedd, too, fought fiercely to protect Kahlan, as well as Irena and Samantha. Irena, though, broke away from Samantha’s grip and Zedd’s protection to run in toward Richard. She cast her hands out, clearly attempting to use her gift to protect him, but Kahlan didn’t see that it was working at all. The half people saw her as an opportunity to have a gifted soul for themselves. Chalky white arms and clutching fingers reached out toward her.

Before they could snatch her, Richard severed their arms and cut down the ones racing in to dive atop her. As they fell, he circled an arm around Irena’s waist and tossed her back out of his way and out of the way of immediate danger. Clearly relieved, Samantha clutched her mother’s arm and tugged her back away from the danger.

Just as it seemed they were gaining control of the situation and putting down the half people who had attacked the soldier, brush and tree limbs shook as the woods came alive with Shun-tuk pouring out from the darkness all around them.

Kahlan had suspected that it had been a trap, with the soldier as the bait. These were predators and they were acting in a coordinated fashion to attract and then down their prey.

Back away from the battle, she spotted several of the chalky figures bent over the dead of their own kind. They weren’t taking part in the attack, and the figures on the ground were clearly dead and not simply injured, so she couldn’t imagine what they were doing. Their topknots waved around as they tossed their heads from side to side and moved their arms in a ritualistic fashion over the motionless corpses. They spoke words Kahlan couldn’t hear.

As one of them finished his work and swiftly moved on to another body sprawled on its side, the first dead man sat up, then stood, rising to his full height as if brought back to life. His eyes, which a moment before had been glassy, now had an inner red glow. In the gloomy darkness it was difficult to see much of anything clearly, but those eyes pierced the gloom like hot, glowing coals.

Kahlan stared in shock as the dead man began coming toward them. He half stumbled as he stepped on his own entrails hanging from a horrific diagonal gash across his abdomen and dragging along the ground. He paused to see what kept holding him back at each step. When he saw the bloody viscera stretched from the open wound in his middle to his foot standing on them, he reached down and ripped his own guts away from his abdomen so they wouldn’t interfere. Once free of the obstruction, he again started out for them.

Even as he hacked the living, Richard saw the dead man coming. His sword swung around and shattered the dead man’s skull. An equally powerful blow on the return swing severed the dead man’s legs at mid-thigh. As the headless corpse toppled forward, his arms reached toward Richard but missed. He landed hard on his chest. His fingers clawed at the dirt and clutched at a small brush to pull the headless, legless remains onward. Richard swiftly hacked arms from the torso as soldiers fought back Shun-tuk to the sides.

Kahlan could see the chalky figures in the distance bending over and awakening other of their dead. She had a flash of hopelessness that even killing them was doing no good. Even in death they would keep coming.

Richard, too, saw what was happening. He pointed with his sword.

“There!” he called out loud enough so all the soldiers could hear him. “Head for that higher ground at the base of that cliff. We need to get to a place where we’re not surrounded so we can better defend ourselves!”

In a heartbeat, with no further orders needed, some of the men of the First File formed a wedge bristling with blades. It was a formation designed to punch through enemy lines. While it was not always the most effective battle tactic, in this case they knew from training and experience that it was what they needed.

Nicci and Zedd in unison laid down a blistering wall of flame to clear the way ahead of the soldiers. Some of the white figures, probably the same ones able to raise the dead, lifted a hand as if dismissing the threat. The fire parted, arcing gracefully away from the half people before it could engulf them. Others to the sides were not so lucky and were enveloped before they could turn the fire aside. Figures in flames stumbled blindly as soldiers cut them down. As the wedge of men rushed them, the half people in the way who had avoided the conjured flames were not able to avoid the steel.

With a backswing, Richard cleaved a slender, snarling figure almost in half at mid-chest. As the stricken man’s legs buckled and Richard swung around with the follow-through of the powerful strike, he reached down with his other hand and clasped the forearm of the fallen, bleeding soldier. He pulled the man out from under several Shun-tuk still biting him. As Richard pulled the soldier to his feet, using his sword to chop the arms of half people away from the wounded man, he turned him toward their escape route and told him to hurry. Though covered with bite wounds and blood, the soldier looked able to make it on his own, at least for the moment, now that the weight of all the attackers was off him.

Richard caught Kahlan around her waist to pull her along with him and under his protection. “They didn’t kill him on purpose,” he said as he bent close to her. “They wanted him to scream. It was a trap meant to draw us in.”

She glanced up at the rage in his gray eyes, eyes that at other times could be so kind and compassionate. “I thought the same thing.”

With a tip of his head he indicated the higher ground. “We need to make it to that defensive position before they spring the rest of it on us.”

“You think there is more to come besides this?”

“Absolutely.”

With the man now rescued and the soldiers protectively surrounding them, they followed the wedge-of-steel formation toward the rise of ground backed by the cliff rising up among the hardwood trees. From time to time Zedd was able to throw a flood of flame out ahead of them. The blinding yellow light ignited trees and lit the bottoms of the clouds. Pine needles to each side flared as they ignited and went up in flames, sending a cascade of fire up the sides of the trees before they were turned to ash.

Any Shun-tuk unfortunate enough to be caught in the blinding incandescence appeared skeletal for an instant before even that much of their remains was vaporized.

Kahlan thought the heat of it might burn away her hair and eyebrows. She didn’t know what kind of power these half people had, but the flames were doing more damage to the trees than most of them. Fortunately, it had been raining so much and everything was so wet that the fire was confined to the immediate area and didn’t set the woods ablaze.

While it didn’t catch up as many of the half people in the inferno as they would have hoped, it at least helped scatter them out of the way. It seemed that the half people, once conceived with occult powers outside the Grace, were not affected by magic the way normal people would have been.

Kahlan saw more of the half people pouring out of the woods behind.

To her right, Richard tightened his arm around her waist to help her keep up, while on her left Nicci kept a hand firmly planted between Kahlan’s shoulder blades not only to help move her as swiftly as possible, but to give her strength. Kahlan hated needing the help.

Irena ushered Samantha along close behind them.

“Lord Rahl,” Samantha called out, “what can I do to help?”

“Run faster,” he called back over his shoulder.

Samantha and her mother obeyed as the troops fought the enemy off from the sides. Zedd laid down yet more fire behind them to protect their flank as best he could. Kahlan knew that using such power was difficult and exhausting. She knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep up such an intense effort for long.

With the way ahead being cleared by the wedge of men of the First File, Kahlan was feeling more confident that they could make it to the defensive position on higher ground up against a rock wall. Once they made it there, then they would only have to fight the half people from one side rather than from every direction. In that way, they would be able to continually reduce the number of enemy and eventually, hopefully, if there weren’t too many, wipe them out.

Kahlan realized that she was falling, that one of the ghostly white figures had dropped from a tree onto her back, only when she felt the impact knock the wind from her lungs at the same time as she felt his teeth sink into the muscle at the side of her neck. She hit the ground hard, face-first, and went sprawling.

CHAPTER 5

Gerald frowned as he straightened from his work of putting a sharp edge on his shovel. He let the ring of the file against metal fade away as he listened. He thought that he heard a strange, low rumbling sound.

He paused, motionless for a moment after the ring of steel had faded, the file in his callused hands still in midair, as he cocked his head to listen. He could feel the rumble in the dirt floor beneath his feet more than he could hear it. It reminded him of distant thunder, but it was too even, too unwavering, too continual, for it to be thunder. Still, more than anything, that was what it reminded him of.

He carefully laid the file down on the wooden workbench and went to the small window at the side that overlooked the graveyard. Beyond the far side of the sodden hayfields the woods that covered most of the Dark Lands rolled off into the distance, over ever-rising ground, toward imposing snowcapped mountains.

Gerald didn’t especially like the woods. There were enough dangers in the Dark Lands without venturing too far into the woods. He had always thought that people were trouble enough without tempting fate with the things that lived in the woods.

Rather than brave the mysterious dangers of the trackless forests of the Dark Lands for no good reason, he preferred to stick to his work of tending the graveyard and burying folks who could no longer bring about any harm to anyone. People in the town of Insley didn’t like coming out to where dead bodies rotted in the ground, so they left him alone, shunning him because he tended his garden of the dead, as he thought of it.

The dead left him alone, too.

The dead left everyone alone. People only feared them out of foolish superstition. There were plenty of real things to fear, like the dangers that lived in the forested wilderness of the Dark Lands. The dead never bothered anyone.

The job of burying the dead didn’t pay well, but he had no family left and his needs were simple. Fortunately, most people were at least more than willing to pay him, even if it wasn’t much, to put their kin in the ground. It was enough to afford him a small room in town, safe at night among the townspeople, even if they averted their eyes when he passed. He knew he would always have a roof over his head, a bed, and enough to eat.

One thing about his job, even if it didn’t pay well and left him mostly alone in the world, was he knew that as long as there were the living, there would always be need of gravediggers to dispose of the newly dead.

It wasn’t that people so much objected to digging a hole themselves—it was that the dead gave them the shivers, so they didn’t want to dig a hole out in the graveyard and then have to handle the dead themselves. Gerald had long ago become numb to the dead. They meant he had steady work and they never gave him any trouble.

Most of his adult life, Gerald had had the dreary duty of burying those folks he’d thought highly of, as well as the privilege of putting people in the ground he hadn’t much cared for in life. He’d often shed a tear over the passing of the first kind. The passing of the second kind brought him a grim smile as he went about the work of shoveling dirt over them.

He never smiled too much, though, since he knew that one day he would be joining them all in the underworld. He didn’t want to give any of the souls there reason to bear a grudge against him. He tried to go about his work so as not to cause any of the living to bear a grudge against him, either.

Gerald swiped some of his limp gray hair away from his eyes as he leaned toward the small window a bit more, listening as he squinted into the distance. He noticed that all the cows in the grass fields had stopped grazing. They had even stopped chewing their cud as they all looked off in the same direction, toward the same spot to the northeast.

He found that unsettling. He stroked the stubble of his cheek as he considered it. There was not much to the northeast. The Dark Lands were desolate enough as it was with dangers not to be taken lightly, but to the northeast the Dark Lands were even less hospitable—mostly a trackless waste without any villages he knew of but one, Stroyza.

It was said that for as long as anyone knew, it had always been a wilderness and it always would be because there was terrible evil living off in that direction and anyone with any sense at all stayed away. It was general, if vague, knowledge passed down from generation to generation that there were wicked things off that way, even witch women, it was said. Everyone knew that witch women were not to be trifled with.

Most people didn’t question, or investigate. Who wanted to go poke at sleeping evil? Or witches. What was the point?

Gerald had met a few traveling merchants who had been to the distant village of Stroyza, off in that direction beyond the looming range of mountains he could see to the northwest. He’d never met anyone from Stroyza, but he had talked to the few traders who had infrequently tried their luck off that way. There wasn’t much to trade there and since the merchants returned with little of any value for the effort, it wasn’t a draw for others. Stroyza was a small village of folks who lived in their remote, cliffside village, as he’d heard tell, and they kept to themselves. It was understandable that the people there would be aloof; strangers most usually meant trouble.

It was said that some who went off to the northeast to find their fortune simply never returned. Those who did return told stories of encounters in the dark of night with beasts, cunning folk meaning them harm, and even witch women. It was not hard to imagine why some had never returned. The ones who did never went back, instead going off to other, more well known places to try to make a living.

As he watched, Gerald spotted movement at the edge of the distant woods. It was hard to tell for sure, but it seemed like it might be one of the mists that would sometimes settle down out of the mountains and drift across the flatlands. He wondered if maybe he had been wrong and it really was some kind of strange mountain thunder he was hearing and what he was seeing was a mist leading the way down the mountains out ahead of a storm.

He shook his head to himself. It wasn’t any kind of thunder he was hearing. He was just fooling himself to think it was. Whatever was making the low rumbling sound, he had never heard the likes of it before, that much was sure.

As he watched the relentlessly advancing mist, he wondered if it could be riders, a lot of riders, like maybe cavalry troops. Like everyone else in Insley he had heard stories about the recent war from some of the young men who had gone off to fight for D’Hara and came back to tell about it. They told stories about the vast armies and the thousands upon thousands of cavalry troops charging into bloody battles. He wondered if the haze could be a great many horses that were raising dust. Or maybe it was vast numbers of marching soldiers.

What such troops or cavalry would be doing this far out in the Dark Lands he couldn’t begin to guess. Horse hooves galloping across the flatlands, though, might explain the rumbling sound.

He’d seen some of Bishop Hannis Arc’s guards come through Insley in the past, but they didn’t have large numbers of men. There had never been enough to raise a cloud of dust like he was seeing, or make the ground rumble.

He realized, then, that with the ground as wet as it was, it couldn’t be dust. It was far too muddy for there to be any dust. Yet the haze he was seeing seemed to be too dirty-looking to be mist.

Whatever it was, he was beginning to pick out a broad area of dots in that dirty, foggy cloud. Dots, like maybe people.

Gerald reached down, sliding his hand along the haft of a pickax leaning up against the wall, gripping it up near the head to more easily lift the heavy end. He didn’t have any real weapons—never really needed them. Common weapons were really no good against such things as were to be feared in the Dark Lands, things such as the cunning folk or witch women. As far as anything else, well, most people, even when they were drunk, didn’t want to have an argument with a pickax.

As much as he didn’t like the idea, he headed for the door of the shed to go outside and see if he could tell what was coming his way.

CHAPTER 6

Gerald used his free hand to shield his eyes from the gloomy, slate-gray sky as he stared off into the distance. In his other hand he gripped the haft of the pickax up near the head, letting the weight of it pull his arm down straight.

He had been right. It definitely was people in the distance. He could just make out the movement of them walking. But in all his life, he had never seen anything like the numbers he was seeing now. He had never even imagined that he ever would, at least not on this side of the underworld.

He knew from tales of merchants and traders, of course, that there were places with lots of people. He’d heard about a number of great cities far off to the west and the south, though he’d never seen them with his own eyes. There were also towns in the Dark Lands, mostly to the southwest, that were considerably bigger than Insley.

The biggest place he knew of was the city of Saavedra, at the fringes of the most remote and dreaded areas of the Dark Lands. From the citadel in Saavedra, Bishop Hannis Arc ruled Fajin Province. Most people referred to Fajin Province by its ancient name, the Dark Lands. It was a name that had stuck, like the muck oozing from the dead that you could never get out from under your fingernails no matter how much you washed and tried to scrub it away.

Gerald had ventured to Saavedra once, when he was younger, but on the advice of those who knew the place he had made sure to stay well clear of the citadel. Those same people whispered frightening descriptions of Bishop Hannis Arc. There was nothing to be gained from tempting trouble, so he had heeded the advice.

He never found any work in Saavedra, but he had found a wife there. Being from a poor family with parents who could not adequately feed their children, she had cared more about having enough to eat than his occupation. Since it earned a living, she married him and they returned to Insley, and he to tending the graveyard in order to put food on the table.

She had long ago died when she had been with her first child. It seemed a lifetime ago. He never had another wife.

As he watched into the distance, watched all the people coming his way, Gerald had the decidedly uneasy feeling that it could be nothing other than trouble. He gave thought to running, but he was too old to run for far.

Besides, it was a crazy worry. What could they want with him? An old gravedigger was hardly worth ransom. He had nothing of value, really. The only thing he had of any worth at all were a few tools and a rickety handcart that reeked of the dead, so unless they wanted to haul corpses and dig them graves, his possessions weren’t worth much to anyone but him.

As he watched the vast numbers of figures spread out in the distance, his curiosity kept him rooted in place. Besides, where would he hide? The woods? There were things to fear in the woods that were likely worse than a lot of people passing through Insley.

The strangest thing, other than what looked like numbers in the thousands, was that the figures all appeared to be dressed in white. He assumed that, strange as it seemed, they must all be wearing white robes. As they got closer, and he squinted enough, he saw that he was wrong, they weren’t wearing robes. Most didn’t look to be wearing shirts or pants, either. They appeared not to be wearing much at all.

Their bodies, arms, and legs—even their heads—were a chalky whitish color, as if they had rubbed ash all over themselves. He had never seen such people in all his life. He couldn’t imagine the purpose of rubbing white ash on themselves.

In the center, though, in the lead, were several darker figures. The contrast against the flood of pale figures behind them was striking and made them stand out all the more.

The dirty haze that Gerald had seen at first seemed to be something that enveloped the throng, as if it were being dragged along with them, or created by them. As they got closer it was an ominous-looking murk, an atmosphere of threat, oddly enough like they were inside their own dreary day and bringing it along with them.

Strange greenish luminescence crackled from time to time within that gloomy murk.

Gerald reconsidered his decision not to run. He wanted to run, or at least walk away and maybe go visit the woods for a spell until all the people had gone on their way, but since the darker figures at the center were headed right toward him, he instinctively knew that running would be the wrong thing to do.

Running from a predator provoked them to chase.

Only then, with that thought, did he realize that he knew these were predators.

He decided that his best bet was to keep his wits about him, appear friendly, and maybe offer the approaching strangers any information they might want. He was obviously no threat to them, so his best chance was to be helpful and let them be on their way.

He knew well enough that folks kept you around if you were useful. Despite his having no real friends, and no one in Insley particularly holding any favor with him, they tolerated him with a brief smile and a passing nod because he was useful. He had survived a long time simply by being useful with onerous tasks.

He became more alarmed, though, when he saw that the darker figures at the lead were going to come marching with all those following them right across his carefully tended garden of the dead.

He could see that one of the darker figures had what looked like a faint, glowing, bluish green light about him—as if he were half man, half spirit. Beside him was a figure that was darker yet. That one wore heavy, black robes. From what Gerald could see of his hands and face, the man’s flesh appeared dark with tattoos of some sort. Following behind him was another person all in red. He knew well enough what that had to be.

Gerald swallowed when he saw that the eyes of the man in the dark robes were fixed on him, and those eyes were red.

As he strode at a steady, easy pace, the spirit man walked with his arms down, his palms out. It appeared that he was the source of the dark haze, that it was being pulled along by the man’s hands. It was like he was dragging the grim murk along behind him the way a boat dragged a wake along with it.

Gerald couldn’t imagine what he was, other than one of the rumored beings from out of the darkest depths of the woods.

Against all common sense, Gerald finally decided to run. But as much as he intended it, his feet seemed rooted in place as both dark figures continued walking right toward him. He didn’t know if it was something they were doing to him, some kind of magic, or if he was simply frozen in fright. Either way, he was unable to move and had no choice but to stay right where he was as he watched them coming.

As the darker figures entered the far side of his carefully groomed graveyard, with the mass of whitewashed figures dutifully following behind, Gerald could see the ground near them begin to move. It didn’t appear to be the feet of the strangers causing the mud and clumps of grasses to shake and shiver. It appeared to be moving of its own accord.

It was then that he realized that it was not the ground in general that was moving. It was only the ground over the graves that was joggling, as if the dead beneath were agitated and pushing up at the soil from below.

All across the graveyard, as the dark haze dragged by the spirit man passed across the ground, the dirt over a number of the newer graves it touched began to heave and quake all the more.

Gerald looked up from staring at the incomprehensible sight and found himself looking right into the eyes of the two men who had by then stopped not far away from him. He didn’t know which man looked more terrifying.

One of the two appeared to be a cadaver dressed in garments covered with dark stains that looked to be dried blood. Gerald had seen enough bloodstained clothes on corpses, but he had never had one of those corpses appear to be alive.

More frightening even than that, the cadaverous man had a bluish glow to him. To Gerald, it looked like nothing so much as a spirit in the same place as the corpse. At least a spirit as had been described to him—he had never actually seen a spirit himself. Until now.

Together, body and spirit, there was no doubt that the man was somehow alive and aware of everything about him. He looked out at the world both with the glowing eyes of the spirit and the eyes of the corpse beneath it. As cadaverous as the man’s body looked, there was no doubt that he was looking, seeing, and comprehending.

Gerald did not think for one moment that this was a good spirit.

There was no doubt that the other man, the one with the red eyes and black robes, was living flesh and blood. His flesh, though, rather than being dried and dead, was covered with tattoos of strange occult designs. They were beyond counting. Every inch of the man, every speck of skin, was covered in the dark designs.

For years, Gerald had heard the whispered descriptions. He knew without a doubt who this man had to be.

Behind him stood a tall woman with blond hair pulled back in a single braid. Although he had never seen one before, he knew by her hair, her tight red leather outfit, and the cold look in her icy blue eyes that she could be none other than one of the notorious Mord-Sith.

Behind the three, the sea of the nearly naked figures, their flesh smeared with ash or whitewash of some sort to make them look intimidating and frighteningly like ghost men, had come to a halt and now stood with grim expressions, watching from black painted eye sockets.

“I am Lord Arc,” the man in the dark robes said. When he held a tattooed hand out to the side, Gerald could see that even the palm was tattooed. “This is the spirit king, Emperor Sulachan.”

Gerald had never heard of Emperor Sulachan.

“What is it you want?” he heard himself ask.

The spirit king’s thin lips widened with the slightest hint of a smile. “We have come for your dead.”

The sound of his voice sent pain tingling along Gerald’s flesh.

CHAPTER 7

My dead?” Gerald asked.

The spirit king’s thin smile grew wider and his eyes more dangerous. “Yes, your dead. We have use of them. They are to become our dead.”

With that, he lifted his arms. Far and near the muddy dirt a number of the graves began to churn almost as if it were a thick stew coming to a boil.

At the same time, the bluish, spiritlike glow of the spirit king changed to a disturbing greenish luminescence.

Gerald then saw an arm here and there push up through the ground. Hands of the dead beneath that ground wriggled and threw dirt aside. Feet emerged and kicked at the imprisoning soil.

The dead were escaping their graves.

The dirt churned and pitched in agitation, as if unwilling, or unable, to contain what was below. The whitish figures stood out of the way of the corpses twisting and pulling themselves up from the ground. It was as horrifying a sight as Gerald had ever seen, much less imagined.

Some of the corpses beginning to emerge were dark and desiccated. Their joints popped and snapped and cracked as they ripped at the shrouds cocooning them, tearing them away. Beneath the shrouds, the remnants of clothes had been stained with decay and then as the bodies dried and shriveled, the clothes bonded to the hardening flesh so that they were almost one.

Other bodies were slimy and bloated with decay, their clothes soaked through from the ooze coming from the breaks in their flesh. Their wet shrouds came apart like wet paper. In their struggle to pull themselves up through the ground, moldering flesh snagged and tore. Great wet chunks were pulled off them, leaving bones exposed.

Through splits in the flesh of some, Gerald could see gooey masses of maggots writhing beneath the blackened skin. Others of the dead were little more than skeletons with scraps and bits of sinew, flesh, and remnants of clothes holding most of the bones together. Some were so decayed that the effort of trying to emerge from the ground was too much and what was left of their bones crumbled in the attempt. Other graves were resting places where any traces left of the dead were beyond rising.

But a great many were sufficiently intact to emerge through the muddy ground. Many of those growled in anger at the ground trying to hold them back. They snarled with menace as they tore themselves away from the confinement of their graves, their eyes all glowing red. Gerald could only imagine that such a sinister crimson glow was the mark of an inner fire of occult powers animating them.

He stood frozen in fright as he watched the dead—the dead he had put to rest in the ground—leave their eternal rest and come back out of the ground. He recognized many of them, some by their faces, some by their clothes—remembered who they had been in life, anyway. Many were decomposed and decayed beyond recognition, so he didn’t know who they had once been.

Now they were something else other than what they once had been. Now, they were the dead husks of departed spirits. Those husks were now somehow returning to the world of life. Gerald didn’t think, though, that their spirits were returning as well. These seemed to be spiritless bodies driven by magic, not the power of the Grace and Creation.

For a moment, he thought that perhaps he had passed away and maybe he was actually dead, and he was at last seeing the mysteries of the underworld revealing themselves to him.

It was a fleeting thought, banished by the stench of the dead. He was all too alive. At least for the moment.

As the newly escaped corpses rose up they stood among the chalky figures, waiting along with them, staring with those terrible, glowing red eyes as the last of the dead were finally liberated from their graves. He noticed then that the dark painted eyes of the chalky figures resembled some of the dead, those who were little more than skeletal remains with their big dark eye sockets in their skulls, except the dead had a red glow back in those dark recesses.

“Lead the way,” Lord Arc said at last once the ground had stopped moving and all the corpses who could had emerged.

That’s who the man had said he was—Lord Arc. Gerald had never heard him called “Lord Arc” before. He had always heard that the leader of Fajin Province was “Bishop Hannis Arc.” It couldn’t be anyone else. It had to be the same man.

As frightened as Gerald was, he was not about to question the change of title. “The way, Lord Arc?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“Why, the way to Insley, of course,” Lord Arc said. “I have yet to visit the place. Seeing as it is one of the towns in my empire, I thought it fitting that I visit it.”

Gerald blinked. “Your empire, Lord Arc?”

The man lifted an arm toward the southwest. “Yes. The D’Haran Empire. I am assuming rule of the D’Haran Empire.”

Gerald had heard some of the young men who had returned from the fighting talking about some of their experiences. They had said that since the terrible war with the Old World had ended and the world was now at peace, Richard Rahl was now the Lord Rahl ruling D’Hara. As far as Gerald knew, a Lord Rahl had always ruled D’Hara.

He swallowed, averting his eyes from the man. It was difficult for Gerald to look at the menacing tattooed occult designs covering his face and scalp, but more than that, it was unnerving to look into those terrible bloodred eyes.

“I deeply apologize for my ignorance, Lord Arc. I am but a humble gravedigger for a little town that is quite removed from the rest of D’Hara and we infrequently receive news here. I had always heard that Lord Rahl, Richard Rahl who led us in the war, was the leader of the D’Haran Empire.”

Lord Arc smiled indulgently. “Yes, that was once true, but the House of Rahl no longer rules D’Hara, or anything else for that matter. His flesh has no doubt already been eaten off his bones by some of the Emperor Sulachan’s half people.”

Gerald blinked in confusion. “Half people?”

“The Shun-tuk warriors.” A tattooed hand swept around at the chalky figures. “The half people. Ones without souls. Now, lead on, gravedigger, or you will serve us as one of the army of the dead.”

Gerald had never heard of Shun-tuk or half people. He held an arm out, pointing. It took great effort to summon his voice as all the eyes stared at him.

“Insley is right up the road, Lord Arc. There is no road but this one, and no other town but Insley. It’s not far at all. It lies just beyond a few bends in the road among the oak grove up ahead. You will have no trouble at all finding the humble town of Insley. I am sure the people of Insley will … welcome their new ruler’s visit.”

Lord Arc’s disturbing smile returned. The spirit king didn’t share in the smile, nor did the Mord-Sith or any of the sea of grim, chalky faces watching him. The awakened dead glared with glowing red eyes.

“I don’t think they will be all that happy to see us.”

Gerald was sure of the truth of that. He turned to look in the direction of town, wanting more than anything to be free of Lord Arc and all his people, to say nothing of the newly awakened dead. “But it’s right up the road—a short walk. You don’t really need me in order to find the place.”

Gerald wished there was something he could do to warn the people of Insley. He wanted to tell them to flee. But there was nothing he could do.

“We don’t need you in order to find the place,” Lord Arc said with exaggerated patience. “Nor did I ask where it was, now did I? I asked you to lead us there.”

“For what purpose?” Gerald asked, his fear of being with this nightmare collection of people and unholy monsters overriding his typical sense of caution.

The spirit king, rather than Lord Arc, spoke up. “We need you to bear witness,” he said in a voice that burned painfully against Gerald’s skin. It almost felt as if the hairs on his arm would be burned off.

“Bear witness?”

“Yes,” Lord Arc said, “bear witness so that others, in other places, will know what will happen to them should they not bow down and welcome their new ruler and the new era he brings to the world of life. We are giving you the opportunity to help all those people. You are to be a messenger, bearing witness to what has happened here so they will have the chance to avoid the same fate.”

Gerald swallowed. He could feel his knees trembling. “What is to happen here?”

Lord Arc spread his hands. “Why, the people of Insley failed to welcome me as their new ruler. That is an intolerable offense.”

Gerald took a step forward. “Then please, Lord Arc, allow me to run ahead and tell them. Let me announce you. I know they will bow down and welcome you. Let me show you.”

“Enough of this,” the spirit king said in a low growl.

He casually pointed at the pickax still gripped in Gerald’s fist at the end of his hanging arm. The handle grew hot and crisped to black. In a heartbeat it checkered into shriveling charcoal before turning to ash that crumbled away from Gerald’s hand like dust going through his fingers. When it did, the heavy steel pickax head thumped down onto the ground and flopped over on its side.

Gerald stared in disbelief as, in mere seconds, the entire steel pickax rusted to crumbling, reddish fragments.

All that was left on the ground at Gerald’s side was an ashen black stain that had been the wooden handle and unrecognizable reddish fragments that moments before had been the steel head of the pickax.

Lord Arc lifted a slender, tattooed finger, pointing it down the road as he cocked his head, staring at Gerald.

Gerald knew without a doubt that it was a command, and if he disobeyed that command or delayed another moment, he would swiftly regret it.

No choice left to him, he immediately turned and started for the road.

All the chalky figures, led by Lord Arc, his Mord-Sith, and Emperor Sulachan, along with the dead pulled up from their graves by the king of the dead, followed behind him.

CHAPTER 8

The road curved several times as it wound its way among the grove of ancient oaks on its way into Insley. Because the massive oak trees grew together over the road, they closed off most of the churning, gray sky, making the day seem even darker, making the glowing red eyes of the dead stand out all the more. Gerald wished it was a lot farther to town, rather than a short walk.

He wished there was a way to warn people, but he could think of none. Even if he ran, Insley was so close there would be no time to explain it. Besides, had he not seen it, he doubted he would believe a story such as he had to tell.

Not far behind him followed the two emperors, Sulachan and Hannis Arc. The Mord-Sith shadowed her master, Lord Arc. Behind them came an entire Shun-tuk nation of the half-naked, chalky figures with their eyes painted black all around them, making their eyes look like great, dead sockets. The sound of all those bare feet made the air rumble. The dark murk he had seen at first now seemed to envelop them all, like the air itself was poisoned by the evil of these people.

As the road made its way over a slight rise, Gerald glanced back into the distance behind and for the first time was able to take in the enormous numbers of half people. There were so many that he imagined it would probably be most of the day before the last of them passed the spot he was passing. It might even be well after dark before they had all passed that same spot.

Because of their vast numbers the Shun-tuk couldn’t confine themselves to the road, instead surging across the landscape to either side, like a tide of ashen figures flooding the valley landscape and about to drown the town of Insley. In among the half people, the awakened dead lumbered stiffly along, like debris carried on that incoming tide.

It seemed that the garden of the dead that Gerald had tended for so long had finally been harvested by a spirit king come to claim them as his own.

As they rounded a bend in the road at the top of the slight rise, off between the oaks, the first buildings at the edge of town came into view. Gerald had heard of places where buildings were made of stone, but these were not so grand as that. They were simple structures made of wood cut from the ample supply in the trackless forests of the Dark Lands all around.

Most of the buildings of the small town were clustered along the road. Some of those were sheltered by big old oaks growing behind them. The dozen largest buildings were two stories, bunched close together on both sides of the single road, as if turning their backs on the Dark Lands behind them.

The bottom floors of some of those larger buildings provided workspace for leatherworkers, woodworkers, chair makers, or shops for the butcher, baker, and herbs. The families who ran those shops lived above them. There were a few narrow streets off to the sides but they were little more than footpaths. They led to small one- or two-room homes for people who worked the fields or tended to animals all around Insley.

Insley wasn’t big enough to have an inn. When merchants came through, one of the shop owners often allowed the trader to sleep in a shop. Sometimes they slept in the barn at the opposite end of town.

Gerald had heard that in other places, mostly places much farther west and south, farmers who raised crops and kept animals had their homes out where they tended the land. That made it convenient for working, since coming to town was hardly a daily necessity. Most only needed to come to town on market days when they had goods to sell or when they needed supplies. People who lived on their land could watch over the land and they were always there for their work of feeding and caring for their animals, mending fences and barns, or tending their crops.

But in the Dark Lands such convenience was secondary to safety. In the Dark Lands most people, including farmers, usually crowded together in places like Insley, choosing to live close together for protection. Most folks didn’t live off by themselves for good reason. Also, for good reason, most everyone shut themselves in at night.

Gerald knew that living close together for protection wasn’t going to do them any good this time. Nor was daylight going to be any salvation. This time, trouble was coming right into town, into their midst, in broad daylight.

Gerald saw women off to the right behind a small home pause to stare as they hung clothes on a line. They quickly ran off to tell others of the approaching strangers. The sounds of life in town, everything from conversation to hammers and saws in the woodworking shop to chickens roaming everywhere, probably helped mask the sound of the horde coming their way.

Now that they were close enough, though, people started to take notice. Concerned people peered out from the narrow walkways between buildings, shopkeepers poked their heads out of doorways to look, and women stuck their heads out of windows. All of them wanted to see what the commotion was all about, much like Gerald had done when he had heard them coming.

When mothers called their names, children turned and ran for home. Chickens roaming the streets, pecking here and there and unconcerned by any of it, suddenly scattered when children ran through their midst.

As Gerald led the two emperors and their Shun-tuk army down the road and into the shadows of the buildings on each side, people started coming out of doorways and alleyways all over, dumbfounded by the strange sight, unsure what it meant. The vast numbers of the strangers were not yet quite close enough for the people to see and understand the terror of what approached. Even Gerald didn’t understand what was to come, but he knew enough already to be terrified.

Out of the corner of his eye, off between buildings, he caught sight of the white figures. The Shun-tuk had slipped around to either side to surround the town so that no one could escape. Gerald hoped that some of them had already had the good sense to run before the town was surrounded, but by the numbers of startled people he saw, he didn’t think that many, if any, had done so. After all, running would mean running off into the wilds of the Dark Lands. These people thought they were safer if they stuck together and stayed in the protection of the town.

Gerald knew that illusion of safety was a mistake.

A group of younger men, their sleeves rolled up from being at their work, emerged from between the buildings. They were big men, well muscled and young enough not to be easily intimidated. Most had fought in the war and were more accustomed to trouble.

Now they had gathered into a home guard to protect their town. They all carried weapons of some sort. A couple had clubs that they smacked in their free hand as an open threat. A few held axes or knives while a good number of them had swords.

Because of the rise behind, none of these men could see the vast numbers amassing behind Gerald just outside Insley.

One of the bigger men, one of the young men who had been with the D’Haran army in the war with the Old World, gripped a sword in his meaty fist as he stepped out in front of the others. It was a sword he had brought home with him from the war. The young man had used it to save his life in the past.

“Gravedigger, what is it these people with you want?”

Lord Arc stepped in front of Gerald before he could say anything. When he came into full view, some of the people in doorways shrank back a little. Some vanished entirely.

“The people of Insley have failed to welcome me as their new ruler,” Lord Arc said. “They have failed to welcome me on bended knee. That is an intolerable offense.”

“This is Lord Arc,” Gerald hurriedly put in, hoping the men would realize who they were dealing with.

The young man nodded and then motioned to those with him. They followed his lead and all went to a knee. “Welcome, Bishop Arc. There, if it pleases you to see us kneel before you, then you have what you came for.”

“Not yet,” Lord Arc said with a grim smile. “But I shall.”

The young man swiped his sweaty hair back from his eyes as he returned to his feet, the rest of the men rising with him. “We meant no offense and want no trouble. Now leave us and be on your way. We mean you no harm.” He swept his sword around to point behind. “Go around our peaceful town and be on your way.”

Watching with wide eyes, townspeople in doorways, those standing along the side of the street with their backs pressed up against shops, and those peering out from behind buildings all started melting back into the shadows, leaving the trouble to their young home guard to handle.

With a look behind him, Lord Arc met the gaze of the spirit king. “I think it’s time to show them what they face.”

A small smile seemed to be the spirit king’s only command. With that small smile, the corpses freshly pulled up from their graves, and up until then out of sight among the closely packed, chalky figures, pushed their way out from behind and trundled forward. One of them bumped into Gerald on the way by, knocking him aside.

The young men looked as shocked as everyone else to see the corpses with glowing red eyes approaching, but they stood their ground and met them with the kind of fury and confidence that only invincible youth and simple ignorance could muster.

The young man in command who had spoken for the others drove his sword through the chest of the first of the walking dead to reach him, a putrefied corpse that smelled bad enough to gag half the men waiting to stop him. The sword jutted from the back of the dead man. The corpse twisted, yanking the hilt of the sword embedded through his chest from the young man’s grip.

With surprising speed, the dead man seized the leader by the throat with one hand. With his other hand, he grabbed the young man’s muscular arm and with a mighty twist tore it off at the shoulder.

Everyone, including Gerald, flinched in disbelief. It was an act of occult strength that no living man could perform.

Without delay, other men charged forward and drove their swords through the dead man still holding his victim. He soon had half a dozen more blades stuck through his chest to go with the first. None of them slowed him any more than did the first.

The dead man tossed the screaming young soldier down on the ground at his feet. Even as other men hacked at him with swords and stabbed him with knives, the attacker seized his one-armed victim by the ankle and threw him into the side of a building with such force it cracked the clapboard walls. The man fell unconscious at the edge of the road, bleeding his life away.

Others of the dead, from the dried and brittle to the slimy and bloated, advanced into the midst of the young defensive guard trying to keep them back. Axes driven by powerfully strong men failed to bring down even one of the dead. Confidence swiftly turned to terror and screams, both from the young men and from the townspeople watching.

The battle was as brief as it was one-sided. In moments it was over and any confidence or hope the townspeople had that their home guard could protect them was shattered. All of the young men lay bleeding, most of them dead, at the feet of the dead come back to life standing over them. And the Shun-tuk had yet to descend on the town.

Lord Arc, the spirit king, the Mord-Sith, and the untold thousands of half people waiting behind watched without reaction. The townspeople watched with unbridled terror. Some screamed. Some fell to their knees and prayed to the Creator to spare them. Some begged Lord Arc for mercy. Many tried to run and hide.

Then the king of the dead, the greenish glow wavering over his worldly corpse, turned back to the sea of whitewashed figures behind.

The spirit king said but one word.

“Feed.”

CHAPTER 9

With that single command, the silent Shun-tuk instantly turned into a howling mass of killers leaping ahead toward the townspeople. People screamed as they scattered in a panic to escape, but it was too late. To the sides, a flood of the half people spilled in from between buildings. At the far end of town the road was inundated with the half-naked figures. They poured around Gerald as if he were a boulder in a raging river.

Some of the invading throng knocked into him on their way past him, spinning him around, making him stumble as he was buffeted first one way and then another. They ignored him in their madness to get beyond him to the people of Insley.

When they reached those frightened people, they fell on them with the savagery of wolves taking down terrified prey.

It was shocking how quickly the muddy road through town turned red. Everywhere people shrieked in panic. The Shun-tuk barged into buildings, going after people who ran inside seeking safety. People cowered inside, but Gerald could tell by the shrieks that there had been no safety in trying to hide.

In other places, people dove headlong out of windows on the second floors of buildings to escape those coming after them inside. Chalky white arms stretched out of those windows, trying to catch the fleeing people. Those who jumped escaped for only the brief moments they were in midair. Once they crashed to the ground, the Shun-tuk pounced on them, closing in so tightly that no more could get in on the ferocious feast.

Clothes were torn off to get at flesh. Teeth sank into victims. The howling, whitewashed figures strained, pulling their heads back with the effort of ravenously tearing off the stretching chunks of flesh. Others stretched in to lick at the blood gushing from open wounds. The chalky faces with the blackened eyes were swiftly stained a bright red.

It appeared to matter not to them what part of the victim they could get at. They bit into every part of their thrashing, suffering prey with equal intensity. Mouths of others opened wide as they tried to get in for their share. Teeth raked over faces, skinning off the features. Skin and muscle of legs and arms were pulled off in a savage feeding frenzy. As the soft part of the bodies were torn open, bloody hands reached in and pulled the viscera out past those crowded in close so that they could get a bite of something for themselves.

Gerald had always thought he was numb to death. But now he felt like he was going to vomit as he stood watching, unable to do anything for anyone. He had never felt so helpless in his entire life. His whole body trembled. Tears ran down his cheeks as he panted in horror.

He didn’t want to live to see any more of it. He would rather die. He wanted death to take him so he would not have to endure it.

The screams finally died out when there was no one left alive to scream, but the feeding frenzy continued. Every scrap of flesh was consumed, leaving only bloody bones. Those were pulled and twisted apart and taken by those crowded around so that they could be licked clean of the blood or bashed open to suck out the marrow. There didn’t seem to be enough to go around, leaving the Shun-tuk who hadn’t been able to feed to fight over any scraps that were left.

Gerald turned back to Lord Arc, rage filling his voice. “Why would they do this? There is no possible purpose for such savage murder!”

Lord Arc’s face was shaded with a dark and terrible look.

“The Shun-tuk are half people. They look human, and in some ways they are human, but they have no soul.” His calm voice seemed unaffected by what had just happened. “Having no soul, they feel empty and incomplete. They feel that those people with souls only have them because they were born lucky. They covet that connection to the Grace that a soul provides others. They are jealous. So, whenever they get a chance, they try to take a soul for themselves.”

Gerald glared bitterly. “They think they can steal the souls of the people they eat?”

“That’s right. They feel that the world has unfairly cheated them. They feel that they deserve what they covet, what others have.” Lord Arc shrugged. “So they are intent on taking a soul, intent on having that which they want.

“They believe that the only way to get the soul they feel they are entitled to is to eat the flesh or drink the blood of those who have one and consume it before it flees the body on its way beyond the veil of life.”

“You get a soul by being born human, through the Creator,” Gerald insisted. “You can’t get one by eating people.”

Lord Arc shrugged again. “They believe they can, so they continue to try.”

Gerald gazed out at the bloody scene. “Why have you not killed me as well? Why have you made me witness such evil?”

Hannis Arc spread his hands. “You, gravedigger, have the honor of being the first crier to announce me as the new ruler.”

“The new ruler of the D’Haran Empire?”

“Yes, that’s right, but also the new ruler of the world of life. You are to announce the beginning of a new era.

“Others will soon join you, but you are the first of many who will follow. Go from place to place and announce what is to come. Bear witness to the horrors you have seen with your own eyes. Let people know that those who do not bow down and swear allegiance in life, will serve me in death.

“The world of the dead, you see, will be joined with us in the world of life. Both worlds will be united as one.

“Since there will no longer be need for gravediggers, you have a new job. You are to go on ahead and tell those places before us that we come with our Shun-tuk warriors, and we come to rule the world. Give witness to what you have seen along with what others will see in other places that will also be taught this lesson.”

Gerald’s jaw was set with bitter determination. “I would rather die—I will kill myself.”

The man’s tattooed hand rose and he put a finger under Gerald’s chin, lifting his face. “Then you will be responsible for a great many more deaths. If you warn people, if you convince people, then many will see how hopeless resistance would be and so decide to surrender to the inevitable. Those people will live. You must recount to people what you have seen, convince them of the futility of resistance.

“If you kill yourself, then you can’t warn them and as a result you will be responsible for countless more people dying needlessly because you did not do your part to help them see what must be. If you die with that blood on your hands, then the spirit king will see to it that your soul is pulled back from the underworld and sent to wander the world of life, lost and unable ever to find peace, forever doomed to witness the suffering you allowed to come about by failing to do your part.

“Perhaps the worst of it for you will be the utter emptiness of your pointless gesture because, you see, you are not special. I can choose anyone to be a witness to warn the places that lie before our advancing army. If not you, then I will simply select others, in other places.”

Gerald swallowed, now more terrified even than he had been, if that was even possible.

Lord Arc lifted Gerald’s chin even farther, and reached a clawed hand out to push it against his soft middle. Gerald felt a pain such as he never imagined. It was a pain down to his soul. It was the pain of that man’s occult power clutching his soul and threatening to rip it out.

“Do you now see the importance of your mission?”

Gerald nodded, as best he could with the finger still under his chin.

“Good.” Hannis Arc smiled a deadly smile. “You see? I know what is best for people.”

“Yes, Lord Arc,” Gerald managed.

“Now, rush off on your way. Warn others what will happen if they choose to resist. As we visit other places, others will be enlisted to join you. Armies of criers will join you and help spread the word. Pray you all succeed. I will show mercy to none who think to resist.”

Gerald wet his lips. “Yes, Lord Arc.”

“And gravedigger,” Lord Arc said as he leaned closer, his red eyes looking like coals burning in his soul, “you be sure to tell them all at the People’s Palace. You tell them that I am now their ruler, and I am coming. You tell them there that we are bringing the entire Shun-tuk nation with us, and that they had better welcome me on their knees. You tell them what will happen if they don’t.”

Gerald nodded. And then he was running. Running to warn people of what was coming—warn them to surrender and not resist what they could not stop or they would suffer an unimaginable death

Lord Arc had said that he intended to unite the world of life and the world of the dead.

Gerald believed him.

CHAPTER 10

Kahlan opened her eyes.

It was night. In the flickering firelight, as she tried to will her vision into focus, she saw fuzzy faces bent down over her. She felt as if she was a great distance away, and it was proving to be a long and difficult journey back.

As her focus began to resolve, she recognized Zedd’s weathered, worried face bent over her. His wavy white hair looked more unruly than usual. The tips of his bony fingers pressed firmly against her forehead. That explained the persistent tingling sensation down her spine. Seeing Zedd, she realized that what she felt was the healing power of the gift.

She saw Nicci, then, kneeling down close to her on the opposite side from Zedd. The sorceress looked no less concerned. Nicci squeezed Kahlan’s hand as she offered a reassuring smile to welcome her back from the dark world of the lost.

Samantha crowded in close behind Nicci, with her mother Irena, leaning in over her shoulder, watching intently.

Then, in the fluttering light from a nearby campfire, Kahlan spotted Richard a little farther back in the center of the other faces. She saw the relief in his eyes as he let out a deep breath.

As soon as she saw him, Kahlan sat up and threw her arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly to her. She had feared he had been killed by the half people and she would never see him again.

Now that she had her arms around his muscular neck, her cheek against his stubble, she let the joy and relief of seeing him alive run rampant through her. She put a hand to the back of his head and held him to her, thankful that he was all right and there with her. She wanted to envelop him.

“It’s so good to see you,” she whispered privately in the midst of the crowd. When she held him, there was no crowd, there was only him. There was always only him in her heart and soul.

His arms tightened around her. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you wake up.”

She finally parted from him, holding his shoulders, and saw that he had cleaned off all the blood of the half people he had fought. She looked around at all the grim faces, their bleak expressions finally easing.

“Well,” Zedd said, “it would seem that I have done it again.”

Richard laughed. Everyone else looked like they had thought for a time that they would never smile again.

“What happened?” Kahlan asked.

“I healed you,” Zedd announced, as if that should be explanation enough.

Kahlan waved a hand as she sat up the rest of the way. “No, I mean what happened with the half people that were after us?”

She saw firelight from a nearby fire reflecting up the face of the cliff. As she looked around, she saw that there were two more campfires, one to either side of them, their light also reflecting off the cliff and helping to light the general area and the trees nearby. The men of the First File were close by all around them. The fires were large, meant to keep the darkness at bay so that no one could easily sneak up.

“Well,” Richard said, “we made it here and we were able to fight them off. We set up camp with a tight defensive line. You were unconscious—”

“I healed you,” Zedd repeated, apparently trying to get across how difficult it had been without complaining directly.

“Was it hard?” Kahlan asked him. It was dawning on her that he was trying to say something more without saying it. “Was it extra difficult … for some reason?”

Zedd leaned back on his heels. “Yes, it was hard,” he confirmed with an earnest nod. He lifted one eyebrow. “Quite difficult, actually.”

Kahlan decided to cut through the dancing and turned to Nicci. “Why?”

Nicci didn’t shy from the question. “You were injured—one of the half people tried to steal your soul by eating you. The ever-present threat of death within you used that opportunity, when so much was going on, when you were weakened by the struggle, to try to pull you in. You were pretty far gone and it took all day and part of tonight, but Zedd managed to pull you back.”

Kahlan put a hand up to the top of her shoulder and felt only smooth skin. She thought she remembered the pain of teeth sinking into her flesh there. She remembered the terror of it. Then there was only blackness and the terrible feeling of being forever lost to it.

She smiled at the wizard. “Thank you, Zedd.”

Samantha leaned in, eager to tell the story. “Lord Rahl chopped the head off the man that was biting you so fast and with such power that I bet we were halfway here before it ever hit the ground.”

“You were unconscious, though,” Irena said, considerably more worried-looking than Samantha.

“Some of the men carried you,” Samantha said as she leaned past her mother, eager to get to the meat of the story. “That way Lord Rahl could fight off the Shun-tuk. You were bleeding pretty badly. Lord Rahl and the men—”

“We made it here,” Richard said, not at all interested in the drama of the tale. “Once we were here we were able to gain control of the situation and begin to reduce their numbers—”

“And then the Shun-tuk disappeared,” Samantha put in, not happy with Richard’s pace at storytelling. She snapped her fingers. “Gone, just like that.”

“We set up a defensive position,” Richard said, “so that Zedd and Nicci could heal you.” The ghost of worry reappeared on his features. “Or at least heal your more obvious wounds.”

Nicci laid a hand on Kahlan’s arm. “You know we can’t get the poison of death out of you, at least not here, or we would. We did the best we could to give you strength.”

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Kahlan asked.

Nicci nodded. “I’m afraid so. It was touch-and-go for a while, there. We were worried that this time we wouldn’t be able to bring you back.”

Kahlan nodded. “Me too.”

“Ba,” Zedd said with a dismissive gesture. “Nicci was afraid. I knew I could do it.”

Nicci smiled at last. “Yes, Zedd, this time you proved yourself to be the wonder you have always insisted you are.”

With a wave, Kahlan cut off the small talk. “What about the men? Are they all right? Were any of them hurt or killed? Did we lose any of them?”

“Surprisingly enough,” Richard said, “we didn’t lose a single man. The First File knows how to fight. Half people typically don’t, although these are Shun-tuk, and they’re more trouble than the other half people we’ve encountered in the past. They don’t just attack randomly. They execute their attack according to a plan. That makes them more dangerous than the half people we’ve fought before.

“Worse, some of these obviously have an ability to use occult powers. We know how dangerous they are. After all, they’ve overwhelmed and captured these battle-hardened, elite troops and our gifted once before and took them beyond the barrier, so they’re confident they can take us again. Even though we managed to escape, it wasn’t before we lost a lot of men back beyond the barrier. It’s pretty clear that the Shun-tuk don’t give up.”

“What about the man we went to help?” she asked. “Is he all right, too, then?”

Richard nodded. “While Zedd and Nicci were working on you, Samantha helped by healing some of the men who were injured. None of them were as seriously hurt as Ned, the man we went to help.” He gestured to Samantha’s mother. “Irena healed him.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Nicci lifted an eyebrow as she looked up at the other sorceress on the opposite side of Kahlan. “She healed the man she would have had us leave to be eaten alive.”

Irena met Nicci’s glare in kind. “These men are Lord Rahl’s guard. Their duty is to protect him at all costs, even if that cost is their lives. That is their calling. They know the risks and accept them willingly. Yes, we saved him, but it was at a risk to Richard’s life that was not the wisest choice. It could all too easily have turned out quite differently.”

“And if we allow those men to be needlessly lost, then Lord Rahl loses their protection, now doesn’t he?” Nicci asked in cold challenge. “They can’t very well protect Lord Rahl if they are dead.”

Irena had used “Richard.” Kahlan noticed that Nicci clearly didn’t think the woman was entitled to be so familiar as to call him “Richard.”

Everyone but individuals close to him called Richard “Lord Rahl.” To everyone else, he was “Lord Rahl.” To some, it was a term of deep respect. To some, that name, attached to Richard, meant liberty. To others, it was tantamount to a curse.

Even Cara, his closest personal guard and close friend, had called him “Lord Rahl,” not out of duty, but because he had earned her respect. The Lord Rahl before Richard had enslaved her into service to him as a Mord-Sith. Richard had freed her from that servitude, and out of respect for him she called him Lord Rahl. Even though it was the same title, it meant something unique when applied to Richard.

Richard had wed Cara to her husband, Ben. He had been there when they had lost Ben. And, he had been the last person she came to see before she’d left.

Richard was not only the leader of the D’Haran Empire, he had created that empire out of war-torn, fragmented lands in order to win freedom from a world falling to tyranny. He had become Lord Rahl in every sense of the term.

To most people, titles were important touchstones of power and widely employed as a mark of that power. Kahlan, as the Mother Confessor, was all too familiar with the power a title represented, and the fear it engendered.

Richard didn’t do the things he did for a title to represent his power, or for power itself, or to impress anyone. Titles didn’t really matter to him. While others concerned themselves with titles, Richard simply did as he needed to do. He judged people as individuals and by their actions, not by their title, and expected them to judge him the same way, not by his title.

Nicci was one of the few for whom such familiar use of his name seemed to come naturally. To her his title meant something else. Kahlan wasn’t exactly sure what.

“We lost the horses,” Richard said, changing the subject. “One broke away and ran off in the confusion.”

Kahlan was brought out of her thoughts. “What? How?”

Richard gestured vaguely into the distance. “When we went after Ned, some of the Shun-tuk used the opportunity to go after our horses. They want to slow us down. They drew us away so they could cut the horses’ throats. One of the mares managed to get away and run off. We were able to get it back, but one horse won’t do us much good.”

Kahlan leaned forward. “Slow us down? You mean you think the whole attack was a diversion to draw us off just so they could get at the horses?”

Richard nodded. “I think that at least in part their plan is to prevent us from being able to get to the People’s Palace to warn them that Emperor Sulachan is heading their way with an army of half people.

“These Shun-tuk seem smarter than the ones we’ve fought before. Rather than simply relying on brute force, they’re employing rudimentary strategy, such as killing our horses to slow us down. This attack was part of a larger plan and I’m not sure what the rest of it is, except that it is meant to have us all in the end.”

“But they were trying to eat us in hopes of capturing our souls for themselves,” Kahlan said, remembering quite well the teeth sinking into her neck. “That’s what all the others we’ve fought before wanted.”

Richard arched an eyebrow. “They didn’t eat Ned when they had the chance. They wanted him making a lot of noise in order to draw us into coming to his aid, probably so that some of them could then get at the horses. Up until then the horses had been protected within our camp. We chose to try to save a life that was in immediate risk and that left the horses unprotected. Along with the horses, they also destroyed the carriage. All of that makes it easier for them to limit our ability to move swiftly.

“They’re acting more like a wolf pack, working together to take down their prey. But once that prey is down, it’s every wolf for itself.”

Richard and Kahlan had both been riding in the carriage most of the time. With both of them weakened by the poison of death rooted deep inside them, the more of their strength they used up, the sooner death would take them. Riding in the carriage helped save their strength and thus prolonged their lives until they could get back to the People’s Palace, where the poison could finally be removed.

Richard was right. Losing the horses would slow them down and make them more vulnerable. It also continued to leave the palace in the dark as to what was coming their way.

Before anyone else could say anything, a breathless soldier ran up to them.

“Lord Rahl!”

“What is it?” Richard asked.

“We got one of them.”

“What do you mean, you got one of them?”

“We caught one of those pale bastards. We captured him as he was trying to sneak up to spy on our camp.” He pointed off toward one of the other fires. “We’re holding him over there for you to question.”

CHAPTER 11

As they made their way across the camp to one of the other fires where the captive was being held, Kahlan met the gazes of young men cleaning weapons, repairing gear, standing watch over the dark forest beyond, or having a bite to eat before bedding down. She returned hopeful smiles, easing their concerned looks, reassuring them that she was all right.

She knew most of these men by name. All had fought in the long and bloody war with the Imperial Order, a war they had won. Now it seemed that the victory and the brief peace that followed had only been an illusion, because the ancient events that had sparked that war had flared anew, as if leapfrogging across time to come after them.

It seemed to Kahlan that most of her life had been lived in one war or another, first with Darken Rahl, then Jagang and the Imperial Order, and now with the long dead Emperor Sulachan, come back to life to finish what he had started thousands of years before.

These soldiers had come to the Dark Lands to protect her and Richard and get them safely back to the palace. It should have been a relatively easy mission after Richard had defeated the Hedge Maid. It had turned out to be anything but easy.

As it turned out, the Hedge Maid had been a harbinger of the evil that had finally managed to escape its long banishment. Her deadly touch had taken Richard’s gift and Kahlan’s power. She ached for her ability every waking moment. Her Confessor power was who she was. She had been born with it. It was part of her. And now she was cut off from it.

The camp was quiet, with all the activity subdued so some of the exhausted men could catch up on needed sleep. From what Kahlan could see when she was able to get a glimpse between the soldiers in the tight ring guarding the prisoner, it was obvious that the captive wasn’t going anywhere.

As they made their way to where the man was being held, she saw that the entire encampment was in a fairly tight but open space at the foot of a cliff. Since they were camped on what was mostly open ledge, it was free of trees and brush. Some of the closest trees beyond had been felled for firewood. Since the wood was green, it crackled and popped as it burned, sending snapping sparks billowing up in the acrid smoke.

With the cliff backing them, the enemy were able to attack from only one side. A heavily defended perimeter all the way around, from the cliff face on one end of the encampment to the cliff face on the other end, bristled with steel defenses. Having the men concentrated close together made it easy for reinforcements to move swiftly from point to point in the line to fight off any sudden charge of the bloodthirsty Shun-tuk.

Such a fortress strategy meant there would be no guards posted at distant points beyond their perimeter as an early warning of an attack, nor any scouts on patrol to gather information. Instead, all the men were being kept together so they could all watch over everything and one another.

While it did deny them advance warning of an attack, it also denied the enemy the opportunity to pick off softer targets, such as outposts and patrols, in order to gradually reduce their numbers. They didn’t have a lot of men to begin with and couldn’t afford to lose any.

The fires lit their encampment so that they could more easily spot anyone trying to slip into their midst. They also lit some of the forest beyond. That must have been how the men spotted and captured the Shun-tuk trying to sneak in closer.

Such a tight layout was generally not the best defensive tactic for an encampment, since an enemy force outside their perimeter could get in fairly close, hide among the trees, and use arrows or spears to pick off soldiers out in the open of the camp. While the enemy could hide off in the darkness, campfires inside the camp lit targets for them. But the half people didn’t have those kind of weapons, so in such circumstances a fortress encampment like this was the safest way to prevent vulnerable lone scouts or small groups of sentries from being attacked and killed, and it made for a hardened defensive line that was extremely difficult for a lightly armed enemy to penetrate.

Some of the soldiers of the First File moved aside when they saw Richard and the small party with him approaching the prisoner. The captive Shun-tuk was on his knees, not far from the fire. He had a big soldier to either side of him, each man holding a well-muscled arm out straight and twisted so that he couldn’t move.

A third, their even bigger commander, a D’Haran with closely cropped blond hair, had a boot planted on each of the man’s calves, pinning his knees to the ground. Since General Meiffert, Cara’s husband, had been killed by the Shun-tuk as they had escaped the caves, Commander Jake Fister was now the highest-ranking officer there with them. He had arms the size of Kahlan’s waist and a neck like an oak tree.

Standing behind the Shun-tuk, the powerfully built commander, obviously not wanting to take any chances, held a razor-sharp knife to the immobilized captive’s throat. Several other men kept nocked arrows pointed at the man.

Kahlan knew Jake Fister. He had served under Captain Zimmer when Kahlan had commanded the special forces in the war with the Imperial Order. Each morning Captain Zimmer would bring her a string of enemy ears collected the night before. Jake Fister, a sergeant at the time, had been one of Captain Zimmer’s most trusted men, and had been responsible for more than his fair share of the ears they collected. Those men were proud of what they accomplished on their nightly raids, striking fear into the hearts of the enemy troops. Each ear represented the life of one less enemy who could harm them. Kahlan had always shown her sincere appreciation of their grisly trophies, which pleased the men no end.

It seemed so long ago. At the time, Richard had been held captive down in the Old World by Nicci, when Nicci had been fighting on the other side for Emperor Jagang. With Richard gone, Kahlan had led the war in his place.

During his captivity, Richard had gradually taught Nicci the value of freedom and of her own life, and won her over. Few people valued freedom as much as those who had never had it, like Nicci, and had come to discover its true value in their own lives. Since that time, Nicci had more than earned her place as one of their most trusted and valuable friends.

Captain Zimmer was now Colonel Zimmer, serving in the First File at the People’s Palace. Jake Fister had been promoted to a commander in the First File and was one of the men handpicked by General Meiffert to come with him to the Dark Lands to bring Richard and Kahlan safely home. It sadly occurred to Kahlan that with Benjamin Meiffert dead, Colonel Zimmer was likely next in line for general to command the First File. She knew he would find it a sorrowful honor. Ben had been his friend.

Despite the arrows aimed at the prisoner, it was obvious to Kahlan by the way Jake was holding the knife to the man’s throat that at the first twitch of aggression, it was Commander Fister who would be the one to end it before an arrow cleared a bow.

The Shun-tuk prisoner wore only a coarse, bleached cloth wrapped around his waist and between his legs, as did many of his kind, including the women who fought with the Shun-tuk men. His legs, arms, and chest were bare. His mostly shaved head had a dense crop of long hair at the top, standing up like a sheaf of wheat at harvest. Strings of human teeth wound tightly around the bundle of hair kept it standing up straight.

Once she got closer, Kahlan could see in the firelight that his skin looked like it had been rubbed with a paste of ash, possibly mixed with something to make it stick better so that it wouldn’t rub off easily when they moved through heavy brush, or wash off in the frequent rains. It looked like the man habitually rubbed the ghostly ash paste over himself, so that in places it was thick, crusty, and cracked.

Like all of the Shun-tuk she had seen, black grease smeared around his eyes mimicked the eye sockets of a skull. He glared out from that darkness. As was the practice of some of the Shun-tuk, the same black grease had been used to paint a skeletal grin full of teeth on this man’s lips and cheeks to go with the skeletal eye sockets. Even held as securely as he was, because of the ghostly whitewash over his body and the skeletal face of a skull, the man presented a frightening, intimidating presence.

As Richard approached, the man’s glare seemed to grow more menacing. Despite how helpless he was, his eyes were filled with hate and defiance, like those of a wolf caught in a trap. He did not look the least bit frightened by his helpless situation or all the big men towering around him. He wanted to fight. Kahlan thought that if nothing else, he would be wise to be more than a little respectful of Commander Fister’s knife at his throat.

CHAPTER 12

Kahlan waited a few steps behind Richard along with Nicci and Zedd. Irena put out a hand to the side, stopping Samantha farther back. She leaned close to her daughter and whispered instructions for her to stay where she was, safely behind the rest of them. Samantha’s mouth twisted in disappointment as she folded her arms, but she accepted the order without a complaint.

She obviously wanted to go up closer to Richard and get a better look at the prisoner. She had fought these half people and she wanted to see what Richard might ask, but she always appeared respectful and deferential to her mother. Until Richard had shown up in Samantha’s village of Stroyza, life had probably always been a constant, with clear-cut lines of respect, with Irena their sorceress and authority figure.

When the barrier holding back the third kingdom and the half people was suddenly breached, Samantha’s mother had been captured by the Shun-tuk. Everything in young Samantha’s predictable, stable life suddenly changed. Her whole world had been turned upside down, and she found herself, young as she was, the only sorceress left in Stroyza. Richard had shown up in the middle of that crisis.

In their time spent together, Richard and Samantha had depended on each other for their survival as they went to the dangerous land beyond the barrier to rescue Irena, Zedd, Nicci, Cara, and the soldiers who had been captured.

Richard said that she was smart, and that she seemed to have a great deal of ability with her gift, although he wasn’t sure of all that she was capable of doing with her power. Samantha didn’t really know, either. Together, the two of them had succeeded in rescuing all those that the Shun-tuk had captured. At least, the ones still alive.

Kahlan could not help but notice that the young woman seemed to be infatuated with Richard. It was just a stage of youth, of growing up and discovering the wider world and the mysteries of the opposite sex. It didn’t help that the object of her affection was Richard. He was an easy man to like, handsome and commanding, yet kind and considerate. Kahlan could certainly understand what Samantha saw in him, even if she wasn’t particularly thrilled about it.

But Samantha respected Kahlan and did her best to hide her feelings, thinking that she did a good enough job of it that no one knew. Samantha undoubtedly realized that it was inappropriate and that nothing could come of it. Still, the heart wants what the heart wants and such feelings aren’t so easy to turn aside.

Kahlan believed that the young woman was smart enough not to let herself get carried away and hurt, even if at times, when she didn’t think anyone was looking, she did stare at Richard with unmistakable longing. Kahlan knew that it was best to let it die out on its own rather than say something and embarrass Samantha. Young women were easily humiliated in such matters, and Kahlan didn’t want to hurt her. She liked Samantha. She just wished that Richard weren’t the object of her desire.

Richard, of course, was oblivious of it. With so many more things to worry about, his mind was focused elsewhere and Kahlan was not about to bring it up. She, too, had enough things that were a great deal more serious to worry about.

Kahlan was taken by surprise when Irena abruptly left her daughter and rushed past the rest of them to grab Richard’s arm.

“Richard, you must come away from this man.” Irena tugged on his arm. “Leave these men to tend to it and come back with me. Come away right now.”

Richard stood his ground and frowned down at the woman. “What?”

She leaned in close and turned her face away from the prisoner so he couldn’t hear as she whispered, “He has occult powers. I must get you back away from him. Come with me.”

Nicci immediately forced her way between them, breaking Irena’s grip on Richard’s arm. With a look from Richard, Nicci understood the instruction and towed Irena by her wrist back out of the way.

“Can you sense if the half person has occult powers?” Kahlan whispered to Nicci as she fell in beside her to escort Irena back away from Richard.

Nicci looked over out of the corner of her eye. “No. I could sense the gift in him if he had it, but he doesn’t. I can’t sense any other type of power in a person, occult or otherwise. Occult magic is an entirely different form of power. I suspect that you can only sense it if you possess it yourself, and while I may know a little about it, I don’t have any occult abilities so I can’t sense them.”

“He has occult powers,” Irena insisted. It was all too clear that she resented having been dragged away from what she had been doing. She was the authority figure in her village and was apparently used to people deferring to her. She obviously didn’t appreciate having her word questioned or challenged.

“What are you talking about, he has occult powers?” Nicci growled through gritted teeth. “I am a sorceress with a great deal of experience.” She seized Irena’s arm and hauled her close. “If I can’t sense any occult powers in the man, then how can you?”

Fuming, Irena yanked her arm away from Nicci’s grip. Her expression had grown as dark as her mass of black hair.

“You don’t need to be a sorceress or have occult powers to know that the man has such ability and that he is dangerous.” She thrust out an arm, pointing back the way they had come. “Didn’t you see some of those unholy demons during the battle when they brought the dead back to life?”

“What of it?” Nicci asked.

Irena leaned in closer. “The Shun-tuk didn’t do such things by wishing the dead back to life, now did they? The gift can’t do such things. They couldn’t do such things without being able to wield occult sorcery. That’s how I know he has such powers.

“It’s dangerous for Richard to be near such a person. Richard’s gift isn’t working. He is naked before such dangerous occult abilities. He could be hurt or killed before any of us could do anything to protect him.”

“She’s right,” Kahlan whispered.

Nicci pressed her lips tight as she glanced over at Kahlan. “Only some of them—not all—have such powers. This one has shown no indication that he has occult powers.”

She finally gritted her teeth and turned back to Irena. “We don’t know that this man is one of the Shun-tuk with those abilities. My gift works just fine. I am Richard’s protection.

“Lord Rahl has a job to do. You let him do it. As the Lord Rahl he is doing what he has to do. He knows the dangers. You stay out of his way, understand?”

Irena looked shaken at being challenged. Before she could argue, Nicci grabbed the skirts of her black dress in both fists and rushed back to stand with Zedd, close behind Richard, where she could keep a close eye on the prisoner. Samantha wrung her hands, distraught at seeing her mother scolded. Zedd had been watching, too, but looked like he knew better than to get in the middle of quarreling sorceresses.

Kahlan joined Nicci at her side but didn’t say anything. She knew Nicci’s power was formidable, and if the knife the soldier was holding to the man’s throat and the arrows pointed at his chest didn’t stop him from harming Richard, Nicci surely would, even if she had to use her bare hands.

Kahlan hoped that Nicci really could stop him if she had to. She gripped the handle of the knife at her waist, making sure it was there if she needed it. She wished Cara were still with them. The Mord-Sith had always been Richard’s protector, but now she was gone.

Kahlan’s heart ached for Cara, for her loss. She could understand why she had left, but she missed her.

Kahlan couldn’t imagine how she would feel if she lost Richard, or what she would do. Just imagining such a terrifying thing quickened her heart rate. Unfortunately, with the sickness afflicting them both, it was a thought that always haunted her and she couldn’t entirely banish.

Richard looked back over his shoulder. “Everything all right?”

Nicci leaned closer to Richard and whispered so that he, but not the prisoner, could hear. “Be careful, Richard. We don’t know what abilities this man might have. He could be a risk to you without him even having to touch you.”

Richard rubbed his fingertips on his forehead as he shared a look over his shoulder with them. Kahlan could see by the reaction in his eyes, or rather, the lack of reaction, that he was already well aware of that danger.

“I understand. But we’re running out of time. I have to find out what I can.”

Kahlan understood what he meant. Death was coming for the two of them, and it was getting closer by the moment.

Nicci gave him a nod and he turned back to the prisoner.

CHAPTER 13

What’s your name?” Richard asked the man on his knees.

The Shun-tuk glared without answering.

“Do you even have a name? Do any of your people use names?”

The man maintained his silent glare.

Richard clasped his hands as he looked down at the prisoner. “No name, no soul.”

“We will have souls,” the man said in a low growl filled with hate. Richard had touched a nerve. “We will have all of your souls for ourselves. They will be ours.”

“It’s foolish to even imagine you can get a soul by eating the flesh of people who have them. There is only one way to get a soul.”

The man’s brow twitched with the slightest bit of interest, but he would not ask.

“You can only get a soul,” Richard finally said in answer to the unspoken question, “by being born with one. It is forged into a person at their creation. It’s an inherent part of them, a living connection to everything in this world and the next as shown in the lines of the Grace. It’s their link to existence.

“Good or bad, kind or cruel, for better or worse, whether they want it or not, the soul they were born with is theirs from the instant of the ignition of that spark at their creation, through life, and on into the world of the dead. In the most basic sense, it is the sum of who they are, the distillation of everything they are. They can neither give it away or lose it or have it stolen from them. That soul is a part of them and can’t be separated from them, either willingly or unwillingly.”

The man smiled. “If that were true, then how do you explain the existence of the half people?”

“You were born without souls.”

“Not in the beginning. In the beginning the half people started life as you did, as people born with souls. Their souls were ripped out of them to create weapons, to create the half people—those without souls.”

“Yes, but that was done thousands of years ago by Emperor Sulachan and his wizards, wizards who had powers none of us today have or can fully envision.”

“But they did it. They took souls from people who had them.”

Richard gestured to the south, toward the Old World, where Sulachan had originally ruled. “Sulachan’s violation of the nature of life was depraved. It was not a simple plucking of soul from someone. It entailed great effort of many wizards with long-lost powers and dedicated to Sulachan’s perverted task.

“None of those original half people could give their offspring a soul because they no longer had one. They had lost their connection to the Grace. Their offspring were born without a soul and can only bear offspring of their own without a soul.

“The only soul those original half people could ever have would have been their own, if Sulachan were to somehow reunite them. But those people are long dead and gone. Their descendants, like you, can’t ever gain a soul by any means because none ever belonged to you.”

“As those with souls die,” the man said with confidence, “that soul flees the body as it begins its journey to the world of the dead. After all, the bodies that rot in the ground no longer have souls. Their souls left them. So, souls can flee the body of their host.”

“That part of them that is their soul leaves them at death to go through the veil as the Grace shows,” Richard said.

“And we can capture the soul by eating the living flesh that the soul is still bound into. If we consume the living, then at just the right instant, while their soul still resides in their flesh and blood, as they die we will have that warm flesh and blood inside us at the exact instant the soul departs the dying flesh of that host. Since we are living that soul that is within us will bind to us. It will have found a new, living host and we will then possess that soul.”

Kahlan shared a troubled look with Zedd. It was about as sick a belief as she had ever heard.

Richard was shaking his head. “No, you can’t. You can’t, because that soul, that essence of who the person is, that spark they were born with, doesn’t wander around looking for a new ‘host,’ as you put it. That isn’t at all what happens. When that person dies, their soul, being part of the continuation of the gift, follows the lines coming from the spark of creation and passes through the veil into the underworld.”

“Not if we capture it first as they are dying.”

Richard watched the man without showing any emotion to the revolting idea. “It doesn’t work that way. Someone else’s soul—who they are—can’t reside in you. It can’t be trapped or take up residence in someone new. At death it is bound to the underworld.”

“We will have your souls for ourselves,” the man said with the confidence that only unshakable, irrational faith could provide.

While Kahlan wasn’t entirely sure of what, exactly, constituted the soul, she knew enough to know that in these people wishing took the place of reason. It wasn’t possible to reason with people who were irrational. That was what made irrational people so profoundly dangerous.

The half people had dreamed up an entire belief system around what they imagined a soul was, how it behaved, and how they could get one for themselves. They invented the entire belief system out of wishes. They wished it to work that way, and so they believed it must, simply because they wanted it to.

In a way, they didn’t have the ability to listen to reason because they weren’t human in the conventional sense. They looked more or less like normal people, but they weren’t. They were a different kind of human. In some ways, without a soul, they had more in common with animals than people, with little more than the reasoning ability of a predator.

They were hungry, they hunted. They hungered for a soul, they hunted them. It was action based on need alone.

Richard stared at the man for a long moment before speaking. “And do you know any of your kind who have ever gained a soul by capturing it from a person they ate? Has it ever worked even once? Have you ever seen it actually succeed?”

He hesitated a moment. “I have not seen it yet, myself.” His chin lifted a little, but not enough that Commander Fister’s knife cut his throat. “If I had, I would have fallen on the man who accomplished it and I would have eaten him in turn to get that soul for myself. I need one for myself. I am entitled to a soul.”

“Who sent you?” Richard asked, abruptly changing the subject from the dead end of blind belief.

The man’s chest puffed up with pride. “Our king and emperor, Sulachan. He came back from the world of the dead. His soul returned. You are the bringer of the dead. Your blood brought him back. I was there. I saw it happen with my own eyes.

“If I do not first gain a soul for myself, our king will help us to be complete.”

Richard folded his arms over his chest. “And how do you think he can do such a thing? How can he make you complete?”

“He is a spirit king,” the man said, as if that said it all. When Richard only stared, he went on. “He can bridge worlds. He has proven that by returning from the dead. Now that his spirit has returned to the world of life, bridging the veil, he will bring the worlds together and unite them. The world of life and death will be together in one world—no longer separated by the veil. I will be complete when he does.”

“How is that going to make you complete?”

“In life, you must have a soul to be complete. When life ends the soul continues on through the veil into the world of the dead.”

He fell silent again, again seeming to think that should explain it all. Richard frowned in realization.

“I see your problem. The way things are now, after you die you can’t go on to the world of the dead because you have no soul to go there, no soul to make that journey. Without a soul, there is no underworld for you, no going beyond the veil to the eternity beyond. Without a soul, when you die you will simply cease to exist.”

The man stared off for a moment before answering. “That is why I must have a soul. Those with souls were born lucky. We are entitled to have a soul.”

“So you think you are justified in killing people because you want their soul for yourself?”

“Of course. We need a soul, so we must kill to get one.”

Kahlan was right. These half people were less than human. Without a soul they had no empathy for others. They didn’t feel for their victims, or feel any guilt at killing. Without a soul they couldn’t. They were predators, remorseless killers after prey. They felt no empathy for that prey, any more than a wolf felt sorry for deer it took down. It was simply prey.

She understood now that there was a larger purpose than she had thought behind the depraved desire to steal a soul. It wasn’t merely a blind hunger for a soul to fill a void within themselves. It was a hunger to have a soul in order to do what humans could do—go on to the underworld after death.

Having no soul denied them the eternity of the underworld. The world of life was a brief spark in time compared to an eternity in the underworld. They were desperate to escape the fate of ceasing to exist at death. They invented a belief they thought would allow them to live on in the underworld, basking in the warm light of Creation. In a very real way, these people worshiped death because it seemed like a better world to them, a world without end. Theirs was, in a way, a religious quest.

Without a soul, they couldn’t do any of that. Without a soul, death meant they would go out of existence like a candle flame being snuffed out. For the half people, having no soul meant that there could be no eternity among the good spirits. To the half people, having a soul meant gaining immortality.

In a way, she felt a twinge of sorrow for them, except that they were willing to kill to get what they wanted.

Kahlan knew that Richard didn’t want her asking anything because it would draw the man’s attention to her, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Sulachan can’t give you a soul,” she said, “and without that spark of the gift within you, he can’t take you to the underworld. You are bound to this world, but only for as long as you live. There is nothing there within you for him to take to his realm after you die. He can do nothing to help you after you die. So why would you follow him? What is it you think he can do for you?”

His dark eyes fixed on her. “Once our king unites the world of life and the world of the dead, there will be no need for a soul. Death will no longer be an end for us.

“Once you die, your soul goes to the world of the dead. In that way you are able to bridge both worlds. Without a soul we cannot go on to the world of the dead.

“But once the worlds are united into one, both worlds will be one, together, not separate. We will already be in the world of the dead as well as the world of life. All those like me will be able to exist in a single world of life and death bound together. It will be all parts of the Grace in one united world without end.

“Our king has promised that in such a world, once life and death exist together, I will be complete and have no need of a soul in order to go on to the underworld. I will already be there without needing a soul to make that journey, to cross over. There will be nothing to cross over to. We will be there.

“Once the world of life and death are brought together into a third kingdom, a kingdom of both life and death in the same place at the same time, Sulachan will rule over it all for all time in the eternity of that world brought together into one.”

It was a profoundly disturbing concept. The very fact that after three thousand years Sulachan had returned from the world of the dead showed that the idea made a perverse kind of sense, at least to Sulachan and the half people.

Kahlan didn’t believe that it could actually work, but she knew that they did.

It was troubling that it had been Richard’s blood that had enabled the occult conjuring to work and bring Sulachan’s spirit back from the dead.

But most troubling of all was that with such powers as Sulachan possessed, the very attempt to make such a delusional scheme work could very well destroy the world of life.

In that sense, there would be only one world.

An eternally dead one.

CHAPTER 14

How did you find us?” Richard asked, changing the subject again.

For the first time a sly smile came to the man. “We tracked you.”

“How did you track us?”

By his tone of voice, Kahlan didn’t think these people read footprints on the ground. Apparently Richard didn’t either.

The man’s smile turned murderous. “Some of us have … talents.”

Zedd frowned, no longer able to contain himself. “Talents? What sort of talents?”

The man’s eyes turned up to the old wizard. “Some of us are spirit trackers. It is an ancient ability passed down to us from the first half people that Emperor Sulachan created. Now that he has returned, he has use of us. He sent us to track you.”

Richard paced as he thought about the unusual claim. “You expect me to believe that you can track people by sensing their spirits?”

“I do not expect you to believe anything,” the Shun-tuk prisoner said. “You asked, I told you. We are spirit trackers. It does not matter to me what you believe.”

“So you’re saying that some of you can track spirits,” Richard asked, “that some of you have that ability to sense them and follow them?”

“The Shun-tuk are not all the same. Some of our ancestors were created with abilities forged into them. Among the Shun-tuk there is a variety of abilities.”

“Abilities,” Richard repeated in a flat tone.

Kahlan knew that such abilities created out of people were all too real. After all, she was a Confessor, an ability that had been created in the first Confessor, Magda Searus. That ability had been passed down to all the offspring of Confessors.

“Some of us were born with different abilities than others among us, just as some of you are gifted, while others of you are not.

“Spirit trackers can sense the presence of souls. Because we can sense souls, we can track them, much like a wolf can smell his prey and follow its scent. And like a wolf following a scent of a particular animal, we can distinguish between spirits. We can sense individual spirits and follow their essence. Once we found you, we did as we were commanded.”

“Not exactly. You failed,” Richard pointed out. “You failed even to kill the one man you had down and by himself. How does your spirit king treat those who fail him?”

“We did not fail. We tracked your spirits as instructed.”

“Tracking us would only be part of your orders. I’m sure you were instructed to kill us or bring captives back, much as you captured all these people here once before and brought them to Sulachan.

“This time, you failed. You didn’t kill any of us, steal any souls for yourselves, and you don’t have any captives to take back to Sulachan. Knowing how he treats those who fail him, I would say that you are fortunate you will never see Emperor Sulachan again.”

The man lifted his chin indignantly. “I will see him soon enough. When the world of the dead is brought together with the world of the living, I will be with my king again. In the meantime, the spirit trackers have not yet failed. We found you. We will continue coming after you until we succeed. We can fail many times and still keep coming. You can fail only once, and then we have you.

“Sooner or later you will be ours. We will have the souls of those with you, and bring you back so that Lord Arc can send you to the world of the dead with his own hands.”

“Lord Arc.” Richard frowned. “So you were instructed to bring only me back with you?”

“That’s right, our king sent us at the request of Lord Arc. But he sent us to bring back only you, for Lord Arc.”

“So you are not to bring back any other captives?”

The man looked over at Kahlan with lust in his dark eyes. “No. Just you. The rest he no longer needs. The rest we can eat. We can have their souls for ourselves.”

He smiled up to Richard. “Your soul belongs to my king and Lord Arc to do with as they will. That is their business, not ours. Our trackers are free to do what they will with the rest of your people.”

“And where are your spirit king and Hannis Arc? Where were you to bring me?”

The man’s brow lifted with a dismissive expression. “They head to the southeast.”

Kahlan didn’t like the sound of that. By the look Nicci and Zedd gave her, neither did the sorceress or wizard. The People’s Palace was to the southeast.

“Where are the rest of your trackers?” Richard asked. “When are they coming back to attack again?”

The man stared off without answering. It was obvious enough, now, that they would return, and keep returning. Kahlan knew that the only way to stop them was to kill every last one of them.

“It seems to me that it is in your best interest to cooperate in order to stay alive, since if you die without a soul you will not be around for the time when your king unites the world of the dead and the living.”

The Shun-tuk frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The longer you cooperate, the longer you live. Who knows, you might live long enough to see the worlds united.

“But if you don’t cooperate, then you are of no further use to us. Why would we want to keep you around, take you with us, watch over you? Like a wolf in our midst, your existence will have to be extinguished. Then there will be nothing left of you, no spirit, no spark of anything to live on in the united world of the third kingdom. For now, death is the final end for you.”

The man tried to shift his weight, but with big soldiers to either side holding his arms, and Commander Fister standing on his calves, he could move little more than his head, and that was limited by the knife at his throat.

“If you kill me, then it cannot matter to me, because I will not exist in any world. I will be no longer.”

“But you would rather continue to exist, or you wouldn’t be trying to steal these souls,” Richard said as he gestured around at all the people watching.

The Shun-tuk looked at the people surrounding him with the eyes of a hungry wolf.

“Now, what are their plans?” Richard asked in a quiet, deadly tone that made most people tremble, making it clear that the man was running out of time. “What are your spirit trackers planning to do next?”

The man, staring ahead for a moment, finally looked up at Richard. The unshakable resolve was back in his eyes. “It can make no difference for you to know what we will do. Knowing cannot help you because you will not be able to do anything to stop us, or to stop our king.

“So there is no point in me telling you.”

The man lifted his chin and fell silent.

CHAPTER 15

I think there is a very good reason for you not to tell me,” Richard said. “I think you don’t want to say because you fear that I really can stop them.” Richard spread his hands. “After all, if what you’re saying were true—that the spirit trackers will have us sooner or later—then why would you be so afraid to tell me their plans?”

The man frowned. “I am not afraid.”

“The only reason for not telling me has to be because you really do believe we can prevent them from capturing me and having all the rest of us. You’re afraid that if I know, I will stop them and you will have none of our souls.”

The man frowned as he thought it through. Finally, he decided to speak.

“Your spirit”—he tilted his head to indicate Kahlan—“and hers, are touched by death. We can feel it, sense it, like the smell of death. The spirit trackers can sense that sickness darkening your lives. You are like wounded animals.

“We can sense those times when that weakness comes over you and makes you lose consciousness. That is when your people are vulnerable. Without you, they cannot fight us off.

“After all, we captured all of them and more once before when you were unconscious. Had Sulachan’s spirit already returned and used his trackers, we would have known that you were among the others, but unconscious and hidden. Sulachan had not returned from the dead, yet, so that time you both escaped.

“This time, the trackers will again attack, but they will do so when they know that you are weak and vulnerable. We attacked earlier, when we felt your woman drifting closer to death. When we sensed her weakness, we came for you all.

“Sooner or later that will happen to you, and we will know. When it happens, then we will have you all.

“Even now, we can sense your spirits losing the battle for life. You do not have long to live. Soon the time will be right and the trackers will be all over your people while you lie helpless. They will tear them apart and have their souls.

“Then we will capture you and take you to our king.”

Richard shrugged. “If what you say is true, I may be dead by then. If I die, your plans will be ruined.”

He looked disinterested. “If you should happen to die before we can take you back, that will satisfy Sulachan just as well. Either way, we will win in the end. You have no chance.”

“If he wants me brought to him so badly, then how can he be satisfied if I die first?”

The man smiled again with the kind of arrogant smile that put Kahlan in mind of so many killers right before she had touched them with her Confessor power. No matter how self-assured they were, no matter how superior they behaved, no matter how dismissive and arrogant toward her, no matter how tough they thought they were, once she touched them with her power all that ended in an instant and each and every one of them confessed their crimes to her, no matter how vile those crimes might have been.

“Sulachan does not care if you should happen to die first,” the prisoner said, “because he already has plans for you in the underworld.”

Richard planted his fists on his hips. “What are you talking about?”

“Sulachan is called the king of the dead for good reason. He has infinite patience that only the eternally dead can have. He has been there a long, long time, working on his plans for his return, for his revenge.

“Sulachan was there in the underworld when the scream of death that escaped the Hedge Maid’s lips claimed her and pulled her through the veil. Sulachan knows that the same poison that took her touched you two as well.

“Like Sulachan, the dark ones he commands in the underworld recognize that taint of death on your souls and know that you do not have long to live. Those demons stir, restless in that realm, the world of the dead, eager to have you.

“When you die and your souls cross over, those eternal, dark demons will be there at the veil, waiting to latch on to both of you and drag you each down into the deepest, darkest depths of the underworld where you will be forever lost.

“Lord Arc would like to kill you with his own hands, to look into your eyes and watch you die, but he deals in occult powers and so he knows very well of the demons Emperor Sulachan has waiting for you when you cross over. He would like to kill you and personally send you into the clutches of those dark ones, but if you should happen to die first he wants us to bring him your head so that he knows that your soul is in the hands of those dark demons, suffering worse than any worldly horror he could inflict on you. So, you see, either way, he gets what he wants.”

Everyone watching seemed to be holding their breath.

The man looked around at his captors. “Know that when that taint of death touches your leader—sooner than you think—we will have all of you. We will hunt you down, eat your flesh, suck the marrow from your bones, and steal all of your souls for ourselves.”

He looked deliberately at Richard and then pointed with his chin at Kahlan. “Our people will devour the living flesh and drink the warm blood of your woman. We will enjoy her helpless screams as we rip her apart. Some will lick up her tears as others drink her blood.”

Richard made an effort of not showing his feelings but Kahlan had no trouble reading the anger in his body language. “You just said that your spirit king has dark spirits waiting for our souls, so your trackers can’t have any hope of having hers.”

The man smiled in a way that revealed his darkly determined, inalterable nature. “The trackers know that they cannot have your woman’s soul. They know it is promised to the dark ones in the underworld. But they will revel in drinking her warm blood anyway because she is yours and it will matter to you. Her fate has been ordered by our masters, because in her suffering, both of her flesh being torn from her bones and then the demons of the underworld having her soul to torment for all time, your pain will be intolerable beyond imagining. That is what awaits her, and you.”

It was a threat that not only sent a chill through Kahlan, it crossed a line with Richard.

He looked up from the remorseless eyes of the soulless brute, into the eyes of Commander Fister. Richard pulled a finger across his own throat in silent command.

Once he had given that command, he turned away. Jake Fister was a man devoted to putting down those who served evil. Richard did not need to witness the execution to know that it would be swiftly carried out.

On the way past, Richard took Kahlan’s arm, walking her back toward the center campfire where she had been healed. She could feel the hard tension of rage in his muscles.

“Any ideas about what we do next?” she asked him, trying to take his mind off the haunting threat they had just heard.

Before he could answer, before he could say anything, Richard lost a step.

He went to a knee beside her. Kahlan circled her arm tightly around his waist, trying to help him down so that he wouldn’t fall on his face. He was too big and heavy for her to hold up. All she could do was to help in easing him down.

He reached a hand up. It was a plea for help—gifted help.

Zedd and Nicci were already there, grabbing hold of Richard’s arms and lifting him back to his feet as they kept him from falling over. At Kahlan’s urgent signal, several men rushed in to put a shoulder under his arms.

Zedd pressed his fingers to Richard’s forehead as the soldiers helped move him along. “It’s the poison,” he said in a grim voice, telling them what Kahlan already knew. “Get him back by the fire where I can see better and then let’s lay him down.”

Kahlan’s heart pounded with worry. She felt worse than helpless. An icy wave of dread washed through her. She knew that the pull of death had grown stronger and he might die.

“Richard,” she said, clutching his big hand tightly, “hold on. Zedd and Nicci are going to help you. Hold on. Don’t you dare leave me. Don’t you dare.”

He didn’t respond. His hand was cold and limp.

She tried very hard to hold back her tears.

And then, she heard the howls way off in the darkness of the woods as the half people started their charge.

CHAPTER 16

As Kahlan held his hand, Richard hooked his other around the back of Nicci’s neck and pulled her down close as they lowered him onto a blanket on the ground near the fire. He gripped Zedd’s sleeve and pulled him close as well. He had managed to regain consciousness, if barely.

It took a great deal of effort for Richard to draw each labored breath through the obvious pain he was in. Kahlan knew that pain all too well. The intensity of it made her extremities tingle. The terrible weight of the pain felt as if it would crush her skull at the same time as nausea coursed through her body in dizzying waves.

At least until the blackness overcame her. Then it was worse because she was lost in a dark place, lonely beyond anything she had ever experienced. It was a terrifying, hopeless kind of loneliness that crushed her soul the way the pain felt like it would crush her skull.

But until the darkness overcame you, it stole your desire to speak. It made you not want to open your eyes because when you did the world spun and tilted in a stomach-churning blur. It made every sound feel sharp and stabbing, like knitting needles pushed in your ears. It took maximum effort simply to endure the agony and draw each breath. It was a struggle just to remain conscious.

She knew that the Hedge Maid had felt all of that when she had died, when that terrible, awful, horrifying scream had escaped her. All that lethal agony had been expressed in that one, long, shriek. Richard and Kahlan had been touched by the same call of death, and while not immediately fatal, they had felt much the same pain of what had taken Jit.

Kahlan knew, too, that such a feeling was part of the lure of death making you want to give up, to give in to it, to let it take you. It made you suffer, and in the suffering promised to make the agony stop, if only you would heed the call and step through the veil toward the blessed darkness. It was that beguiling call at the intolerable end of life that made death just beyond life seem so sweet, made it seem like a mere, simple, single step to the other side and then it would all so mercifully end.

Resisting that call was difficult in the extreme, especially when it meant you had to continue to endure the unendurable while telling yourself that you must.

Richard’s voice, when he was finally able to force himself to speak, betrayed all of that suffering and more.

“You two,” he said to Zedd and Nicci leaning close over him, “have Irena help you and the men fight off the Shun-tuk. They must be held back for a little longer.”

Zedd obviously thought Richard was too delirious to make any decisions. “I need to help you,” Zedd told his grandson. “I can’t leave you like this. I must help you now before it can take you. You can’t fight it on your own. The men can hold off the Shun-tuk. You can’t wait.”

Richard, his eyes closed, rolled his head from side to side. “The men won’t be able to hold them off.”

The certainty in his voice caused Kahlan to steal a quick glance around at the men rushing to the defensive lines. She met Nicci’s troubled blue eyes.

Nicci gripped Richard’s shoulder as she leaned in. “You need our help, Richard. If we don’t save you, we will all be lost. We must help you in order to help all the rest of us. Without you, we are lost.”

“Samantha can help me,” Richard told her. “The trackers can sense my weakness. They know that this is their chance. They will put all their effort into finishing us off quickly while they have the chance, while I can’t fight them. If you don’t help stop them, then we will be lost.”

Zedd’s bushy brows drew tight as he, too, stole a quick glance around at the frantic activity of men preparing to do battle. He looked back down at Richard.

“Samantha? Richard, this is too serious. She is little more than a child. Without the right help—”

The breathless young woman rushed in, then, sliding to a halt on her knees. “I’m here, Lord Rahl.” She gulped air as she gathered up one of his hands in both of hers and held it tightly to her. “I’m here.”

“Listen, Samantha,” Richard said, “you helped give me strength to hold it off before—fight off the sickness. Remember?”

In the firelight Kahlan could see the tears welling up in the young sorceress’s eyes. She was on the verge of panic.

“What? You want me to do this? Lord Rahl, there are people here much better able to help you than me.”

“After we came across that man in the woods, before we made it to the north wall. I grew weak and you helped me. You gave me strength. Remember?”

Samantha nodded as if her life depended on it. “Sure, I remember.”

“I need you to do that again,” he told her. He opened his eyes to look up at the others. “While she helps me, the rest of you need to keep the Shun-tuk from overrunning the camp and killing us all. You need to buy us a little time.”

“It’s that unholy half person who did this,” Irena said. “I told you that he had occult powers and Richard should not go near him, but you wouldn’t listen. Now look what has happened!

“I know a lot more about healing than Samantha. I should be able to do something to help. Get back and let me see if I can do something to help.”

She immediately pushed in beside Zedd and pressed the palm of her hand over Richard’s forehead.

Before Kahlan could say anything, or Nicci had a chance to remove the woman’s hand from Richard, Irena yelped and jerked her hand back on her own.

“Dear spirits. Richard, I had no idea … We can’t heal such a thing.”

Concerned more with Richard and the erupting battle than wasting time lecturing the woman, Nicci didn’t say anything, but she did give Kahlan a look that betrayed her smoldering anger. The look in those blue eyes said it all to Kahlan.

Kahlan thought that Irena would be wise to be more respectful of Nicci. The seductively beautiful sorceress might have looked young and less experienced than Irena, but she was a former Sister of the Dark and as such possessed not only a wizard’s power, but the accumulated power of the gift from others she had killed.

Irena had no conception of where life had taken Nicci, or what she was capable of. Considering how far she had been to the dark side of life, and the journey back, to say nothing of all she had done for them, including all the times she had saved Richard when no other living person had the ability or knowledge to succeed at it, they could have no better friend and ally.

“That’s not what I need,” Richard insisted. His impatience with them was evident. Kahlan was beginning to suspect that he had something in mind, something bigger than the rest of them realized.

She could clearly see that the sickness was keeping him from explaining himself the way he would have liked and that was adding to his frustration. It was taking most of his effort simply to remain conscious, and more yet to speak even the small amount he had spoken. He wanted them to follow orders without having to explain it to them.

Off behind her, Kahlan could hear the sounds of the first of the Shun-tuk slamming into the defensive line. Men of the First File bellowing in rage as they slaughtered the first of the enemy and drove others back. Some of the half people screamed as they fell. Off in the darkness, Kahlan could hear the sounds of swords and axes slashing into people and the cries of pain as maces broke bones.

“Do as he says,” Nicci growled as she seized a fistful of Irena’s dress at the shoulder and hauled the woman up and out of the way. “Let Samantha deal with it.”

Nicci apparently realized that there was some purpose in Richard’s insistence. Nicci knew enough not to question Richard when there was no time for it.

“But, but, I know nothing about fighting,” Irena said. She looked on the verge of lapsing into a daze at what was happening.

Kahlan felt a pang of sorrow for the woman. She had, after all, seen the Shun-tuk eat her husband alive before she had been taken away to captivity herself to await the same fate. The idea of being overrun by the same bloodthirsty half people had her nearly paralyzed with fright.

“I understand,” Nicci said with surprising compassion to the hesitating Irena. “But we have to help keep the half people back. We need everyone helping, including you. Your daughter’s life depends on all of us helping in this.”

Irena met Samantha’s gaze and then nodded. “I understand.”

Zedd urgently leaned in and placed his fingers under his grandson’s chin. Richard’s eyes squeezed closed in pain. “Hold on, my boy. We’ll be back to help you just as soon as there is enough of a break.”

Richard inexplicably shook his head, but there was no time to try to wait for him to explain what he meant.

Without pause, Zedd turned and cast out a fist of air that knocked back a man who seemed to come out of nowhere to dive in toward them. Kahlan realized that some of the half people had already breached their defensive line and were in the camp. The soldiers fell on the man when Zedd’s blow threw him back into their midst.

Nicci paused, then turned back and went to a knee, quickly placing her fingers to Richard’s temples, assessing for herself. “I know,” she said in a very low voice to comfort him. “I know. I can feel it. Hold on, Richard. Zedd and I will be back as soon as we can. Hold on. Fight it until then. Samantha will help give you strength.”

Kahlan swallowed back the lump in her throat as she watched Nicci and Zedd stand and turn to the sounds of the battle erupting at the edge of camp. She wanted them to help Richard, but she knew it would have to wait. For now, their gifted ability was needed to fight off the attack and to try to keep the area around Richard clear of Shun-tuk. She hoped it was enough to help the men of the First File keep the enemy from taking the camp.

CHAPTER 17

Suddenly alone with Samantha and Richard as battle erupted in the night around them, Kahlan put a hand on Richard’s chest, unable to do anything more than to offer him silent comfort.

Kahlan had been in enough combat to know that what was raging around them wasn’t a conventional battle. This was different. This was fighting off predators possessed by a maniacal drive to devour them. She knew the nature of these soulless people, and their numbers, and she knew that she was soon going to have to join the fight. She didn’t have her powers, but she did have a knife and knew how to use it.

What she really needed was a sword. She had learned to use a sword from her father, but she had become truly adept with such a weapon only under Richard’s guidance. Richard was in so many ways a master of the blade, any blade, even a knife or chisel he used to carve the most astoundingly beautiful statues.

Behind her, Zedd sent a thundering bolt of fire slamming into a ghostly figure trying to climb up on the back of a big soldier fighting the enemy to the other side. The soldier was trying to elbow the man off his back, teeth snapping at his neck, while he used his other hand to stab his sword at half people rushing him from the front. The flash sent by Zedd ignited the Shun-tuk in a ball of fiercely glowing flame. He twisted in horrific pain as he sloughed from the soldier’s back into a heap on the ground. His entire body aflame, his flesh bubbling, the man rose up and stumbled blindly through the camp as he screamed. With a battle raging all around, no one noticed his desperate screams. They didn’t last long.

Unfortunately, many more of the ghostly figures seemed immune to the effects of ordinary Additive Magic, such as the fire Zedd was casting. In the tight confines of the camp, Zedd was unable to unleash wizard’s fire. Such a conflagration was not selective enough, and would have engulfed their own men in that lethal, sticky fire that burned with fierce intensity. So, Zedd was forced to use lesser, more targeted forms of fire.

Kahlan saw a number of the Shun-tuk emerge unscathed from those rolling balls of flame sent by the wizard, as if they were untouched by it. One of those men gave Zedd a murderous look, and started for him, only to be run through from behind by a lance. The soldier who had speared the man heaved him off to the side, like a carp speared in a pond, letting the body slide from the weapon so it would be free to use against the next intruder.

Kahlan and Richard had been unconscious and hidden in a wagon at the time, but it must have been very much like this before, at the first battle, when they had all been captured. Without Zedd and Nicci being able to bring the power of magic to bear effectively, the sheer numbers of Shun-tuk had been too much and they had overrun the men. The appalling number of casualties taken by the Shun-tuk in that attack didn’t seem to discourage them in the least. Nor did it seem to faze them in this battle, either.

After hearing the prisoner, Kahlan now understood why. Without souls, without the higher reasoning ability that having a soul implied, these people had no empathy for their own who were injured or killed. Even though they hunted in packs, they didn’t actually care about one another, the way these soldiers did. Men in battle fought to protect their friends as much as they fought to defeat the enemy. They cared about their fellow soldiers.

Each half person that was attacking only cared about getting a soul for themselves. What happened to others of their kind made no real difference to them. If one of their fellow Shun-tuk fell to a blade, it meant that they were more likely to be able to sink their teeth into a person with a soul. It was a “more for me” mentality.

Nicci cast out a crackling bolt of sizzling black lightning, like a whip. It cut a whitewashed figure in two. The suddenly exposed cluster of organs and intestines spilled out across the granite ledge. Another Shun-tuk right behind slipped on them and fell, only to have a soldier drive a sword down through him.

As Nicci sent the same kind of power crackling toward another Shun-tuk, he casually blocked it with a hand, diverting it away from himself as if it were a petty annoyance. It was clear to Kahlan that some of the Shun-tuk had occult powers that could somehow smother or deflect the power of the gift. It was similar to the way the pristinely ungifted were not affected directly by magic. The Shun-tuk used their ability to protect themselves, and occasionally others, only because they could help bring down the big soldiers. It was likely that these were the ones who had the ability to raise the dead.

She realized that what the soldiers, Zedd, and Nicci were doing was in many cases simply culling the weakest. They were unwittingly creating an enemy force of the strongest and most able half people who were mostly immune to the power of the gift. Each Shun-tuk Zedd or Nicci killed with their gift only increased the percentage of Shun-tuk coming after them who couldn’t be harmed by magic, making the gifted less and less effective all the time. At some point, they were going to face an enemy nearly invincible to gifted powers.

There was nothing they could do about it, of course, but it added a frightening dimension to the evolving nature of the fight.

The men, as well, fought fiercely to keep the ghostly figures back behind their lines. Wherever the chalky figure of a Shun-tuk made it through and appeared out of the darkness, a soldier of the First File was there, running him through with a sword, cleaving limbs with an axe, or crushing skulls with a mace. Irena shared a look with her daughter and then ran off to help the soldiers.

“Samantha, hurry,” Richard said. “We’re running out of time. I need you to give me some strength and keep me conscious for a few minutes longer.”

Kahlan thought that was more than a puzzling thing to say. He needed to have strength to recover enough to get up and help convince the Shun-tuk that he was back and strong enough to fight them off so that they would withdraw.

She wondered if maybe he was delirious and simply didn’t know what he was saying. Maybe he just wanted the pain to stop, if even for a few minutes.

Kahlan hoped the young woman could handle it. She was suspicious, though, that Richard had something more in mind. She especially wondered what he meant about keeping him conscious for a few minutes longer. Why wouldn’t he ask her to give him strength so that he could fight?

Samantha bit her lower lip as she hurriedly scooted around so that her knees were touching the top of Richard’s head. She hesitated, then put her palms on his temples.

“Lord Rahl, I, I …”

Richard put his left hand over hers. “You can do it Samantha … like before …”

“Like before,” she muttered. “I wish I remembered what I did before.”

“You don’t know?” Kahlan asked in alarm as she shifted closer to the young woman.

As Samantha looked up, a tear ran down her cheek. “I don’t know … I’m not sure.”

“Strength …” Richard whispered.

“Strength—I know—strength.” She removed her hands from his head and squeezed them in fists. “But I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, what I was trying to do.”

“Ignore the sickness,” he said. “Don’t try to heal anything. Just support me with your strength so I can fight it myself.”

She gasped with realization. “Of course.” Her faced brightened. She placed her hands back on the side of his head. “Strength. I remember now. I just gave you some of my strength so that you could endure it on your own.”

Richard tried but did a poor job of smiling as he nodded in her hands.

Kahlan could hear the sounds of the battle raging behind them. Half people cried out as they ran up on razor-sharp steel. Men grunted with the unrelenting effort of hacking at the endless horde rushing in at them. Skulls cracked, bones broke, men yelled orders, the wounded cried out in agony. Ghostly bodies with ghastly wounds lay sprawled here and there.

To the other side of the encampment, Kahlan heard another attack beginning. The half people were trying to divide the camp and make it more difficult to defend.

In the firelight, Kahlan saw one of the pale figures leap over the crowded front line of men of the First File. He didn’t last long, but he was followed by another, and then another. The camp was being overrun. She saw men dragged to ground under the weight of chalky figures as other soldiers chopped at arms and heads, frantically working to get the Shun-tuk off them.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye Kahlan saw one of the Shun-tuk leap over the fire, racing right at them. There was no one close enough to stop him in time.

Out of reflex honed by years of training and combat, Kahlan pulled her knife as she sprang up, spun, and with a powerful backhanded swing slammed the knife square into the center of the man’s bare chest. The big Shun-tuk, his face covered in the caked and cracked white paste, stopped dead in his tracks, the knife buried up to the hilt right through the center of his breastbone.

Samantha stared, frozen, her eyes wide.

The blade Kahlan carried had been honed to a razor edge by Richard, and it was easily long enough to go all the way through a man’s heart. It clearly had.

Kahlan hadn’t even really felt any resistance. A knife of that weight, that sharp, and with that much speed behind it was virtually unstoppable. As the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and his legs buckled, Kahlan yanked her blade free. She kept it in her fist where it would be handy if needed again. She was sure that it would be.

“Samantha, help him, please,” Kahlan said.

Samantha swallowed and bent back over Richard.

CHAPTER 18

We don’t have much time,” Richard whispered.

“I’m trying.” Samantha pushed some of her mass of black hair back out of the way as she bent lower over him. “There’s just so much noise and distraction …”

Kahlan knew that it had to be hard for a sorceress as young and inexperienced as Samantha to concentrate on finding that calm center in order to use her gift. It took concentrated effort in the best of times. Now there was a battle raging all around her and she was frightened. But it was what it was and if she didn’t do something, Richard was going to be lost to them for the fight, and if that happened then they would all soon be dead.

In this, as in so many things, the difficulty didn’t really matter, only the results counted.

For just an instant, Kahlan had a flash of the memory of what the prisoner had told them, that Sulachan had dark ones waiting for her and Richard in the underworld to drag them down into eternal darkness and torment.

Banishing the memory, Kahlan leaned close, and whispered in Samantha’s ear. “There’s no one else but you and Richard. Ignore everything else. None of it matters. You are the one in control of this. You alone command your own quiet center. You command your power. You alone command what you do with your gift. No one can take that from you but you.”

Samantha looked up at Kahlan with the oddest expression, as if to say she didn’t know that anyone else would understand about using the gift. Kahlan knew a great deal about finding that quiet place inside, even in the middle of a raging battle, even on the brink of death, and still releasing her power.

Except that now they were in the middle of a raging battle and on the brink of death, and she could not reach that power.

Samantha’s eyes closed in concentration as her head bowed again over Richard’s.

Richard’s eyes were closed as well, not in concentration but in pain.

Kahlan took up one of his hands and held it to her heart. “Richard,” she whispered, “I love you.”

He smiled through the pain. Looking like he wanted to answer, to say he loved her, but he couldn’t. She didn’t need to hear it though. She knew.

Kahlan could see Samantha’s fingers trembling as they held Richard’s head. She was afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of the Shun-tuk coming for them all, afraid of the responsibility resting on her shoulders.

“Use anger,” Richard whispered to her before his hand went slack and he once again slipped into unconsciousness.

His words seemed to spark some memory in her. “Anger … of course.”

Almost immediately, through the hand she held, Kahlan could feel the warmth of Samantha’s gift flowing into him, finding its way through the darkness and pain that was overwhelming him. Kahlan hoped that it could give him the strength to force the darkness back.

She could feel a bit of the tension return to his hand. He took a deeper breath as he again came aware.

He said one word to Kahlan.

“Sword.”

She stared for a moment, and then she understood.

She lifted his right hand and pulled it over, placing it over the hilt of his sword. He was only partially conscious and didn’t seem to have enough strength to grip it, so she pressed his fingers around the hilt for him.

When his fingers formed around the hilt, gripping it, she could see that something changed in him. He drew an even deeper breath.

When his eyes opened, they were filled with the magic from the sword, its power feeding strength into him.

Richard was the true Seeker, and the sword was bonded to him in every way. It responded to his touch in a way it responded to no other; it recognized its master.

“There is no time to lose,” Richard said. “We have to act quickly. Where’s the commander?”

Kahlan frowned and leaned in a little. “No time to lose? What do you mean?”

“Fister. Where’s Commander Fister?” The anger of the sword was now clearly powering his voice. “I need him.”

Kahlan didn’t know what Richard could be thinking, or if he really was thinking. It was possible that in the semiconscious state he was in, drifting in and out of comprehension of what was going on around him, he was having some kind of dream or delusion and it was purely the anger from the sword enabling him to voice those delusions.

Rather than question him, Kahlan turned to the scene of the fighting. She saw the big man not far away.

“Commander! Commander! We need you!”

When he heard Kahlan calling for him, he turned from angrily hacking a Shun-tuk to pieces. Almost immediately another half person rammed a shoulder into the commander’s side, attempting to tackle him and take him down. The crusty, chalky figure might as well have tried to topple an oak tree. The big commander casually put a headlock on the man and twisted. Kahlan heard tendons pop and bone crack. Commander Fister let the limp form drop in a heap. On his way toward Kahlan, without pause, he smashed the heavy pommel of his sword into the face of another Shun-tuk racing in toward him.

When there was a heavy clash at the perimeter defenses, the struggle of holding the weight of the enemy back allowed others the opportunity to slip by. It was not a planned, coordinated tactic, but rather individuals seeing an opening created by others and taking advantage of the opportunity.

All of the half people were ultimately out after souls for themselves, not dedicated to winning battles. In a way, that made them easier to fight, because they didn’t coordinate their attacks or make skillful, strategic moves, but at the same time it made them as unpredictable as a cloud of blood flies. They randomly came in from every direction, each interested only in biting and getting at your blood.

Kahlan saw the ghostly figures of Shun-tuk stalking through the camp, trying to stay hidden in the shadows as they hunted for an opportunity to catch a soldier unaware. Whenever they were spotted by soldiers of the First File they were swiftly cut to pieces, but the fact that they were getting into the camp at all was a very bad sign. You never wanted to let an enemy flank you and get in behind to attack from the rear while you fought the enemy in front.

Commander Fister raced in close and went to one knee beside Richard, across from Kahlan. With the help of the power from his hand on the sword, Richard sat partway up, propping himself on his other elbow, and seized the edge of the commander’s leather armor chest plate to pull him closer.

“Listen to me, this is what they have been waiting for—for the sickness to weaken me and put me down. They have been waiting for this opportunity to attack. Without me helping, they are going to overrun us like they did to you before.”

“No, Lord Rahl, I won’t let—”

“You weren’t able to stop them before, when you were captured, were you?”

The commander grudgingly shook his head.

“You have fewer men this time,” Richard said. “A great many were lost in that battle, and more yet while you were being held captive. The numbers you started with have dwindled dangerously low. We couldn’t fight them off before with all the men, so how do you expect that we will be able to fight them off this time, using the same tactics, but with even fewer men?

“We will lose such a fight—that’s why they are pressing us into it. They are making the rules and we are obliging them. They waited until I was weak and down, and then they attacked the rest of you. That’s their way: simple, brutal, and effective.

“We have to change the rules or we are going to lose.”

Commander Fister shared a look with Kahlan and then looked back at Richard. “I understand what you’re saying, Lord Rahl, and I’ve had the same worry, but I don’t know what we can do about it. We fight or we die. That’s the only way for us to survive—fight or die. There is no way to change that rule.”

Richard was shaking his head. “They’re fixated on me. We need to use that against them.”

The commander wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand holding a bloody sword. He stole a worried look over at the battle before once again looking back at Richard.

“I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I don’t follow.”

Kahlan thought that it was more like he didn’t want to follow. He wanted to get back to the battle. His blood was up for the fight, and he was thinking with that anger.

“What do they want?” Richard asked through gritted teeth, both from the pain and from the rage of the sword.

Samantha tried her best to keep her hands pressed to the sides of his head, but she was not having a great deal of success. It was the magic of the sword, mostly, added to what she had started, that was powering Richard at the moment.

“What do they want?” The commander glanced back over his shoulder, quickly appraising the battle, then heaved an unhappy sigh. “Lord Rahl, they want to kill us, that’s what they want. They want to bloody kill us all.”

Richard shook his head insistently. “No—yes, that too—but that’s not the point. You heard the prisoner. They sense my spirit. They know when the life force in me weakens, when I start going unconscious. They know when I am drifting closer to that pull of death. That’s why they attacked now—because they knew I was down.”

“So?”

“So, that’s what they want, what they are using, what they are counting on and waiting for. That’s their strategy. It’s no more complex than that. Wait until the prey is weakest and then attack. We need to use that to lay a trap.”

The big commander slicked a hand back over his closely cropped hair as he let out a sigh. “Seems to me, Lord Rahl, that it’s us that the mouse caught in the trap—especially you.”

“You have it backward. I’m not the mouse; I’m the bait.”

CHAPTER 19

Commander Fister’s brows drew together as he put an elbow on his bent knee and leaned closer.

“What?”

“I’m the bait.”

“Well, yes, we know that they want you. But we’re holding most of them back. Our lines will hold.”

“I don’t want them to hold.”

The man was confused, frustrated, but most of all alarmed by what he was hearing. “Lord Rahl, I think you had better let Samantha, here, heal you as best she can, let your head clear, and then we can talk. Right now I need to get back to my men.”

As the man started to stand to rejoin the battle, Richard lifted his sword a few inches from the scabbard. Commander Fister could not help but notice. He paused. Richard didn’t look to have the strength to pull it the rest of the way. He sank back a little as he looked up at Kahlan.

“Help me draw it.”

Kahlan was not liking the sounds of his plan and she hadn’t even heard it yet, but she did as he asked of her. She suspected that he was counting on the sword, once it was out of its scabbard, inundating him with the full force of its power to give him strength. Kahlan thought that maybe when he had his sword out and finally had that strength, he would recognize the dire circumstances of the battle. Then maybe he would be able to think straight and see that the commander was doing all he could—the best he could—in a very difficult situation, and Richard was needed in that fight.

As Kahlan glanced around at the furious battle raging mostly at the edge of their camp, she saw that there were also fights going on in some places inside their ranks. She wondered if maybe Richard wanted his sword out in order to join the fight. The men at the lines were hacking furiously at the Shun-tuk rushing in at them. Fresh enemy forces were continually pouring in. Such effort was tiring and couldn’t go on much longer before exhaustion caused the men to begin to lose their effectiveness.

Zedd was casting some sort of conjuring but it didn’t look to be halting a lot of the enemy. He stopped and knelt at wounded men and helped where he could. Nicci was doing the same. Kahlan could see at least half a dozen of their men down.

She didn’t see Irena. There were any number of places she could be where Kahlan wouldn’t see her. She hoped that Samantha’s mother hadn’t been taken by the Shun-tuk. Samantha had endured that once before and now that Irena was back with them, it had drawn Samantha even closer to her mother.

Kahlan closed both of her hands tightly around Richard’s big hand on the hilt as she helped him pull. As the Sword of Truth finally slid all the way out, the blade sent its clear, distinctive ring of steel out across the scene of the battle. The sound of it caused a few men of the First File to pause for just an instant and look over. She knew that seeing Richard with his sword out rallied their spirits.

Kahlan could see that having it fully drawn, his hand now firmly on the hilt, had ignited a storm of rage from the sword. She could see in his gray eyes that the power of that ancient weapon was now providing him needed strength. Still, the power of the sword was the twin to his, and that meant that it might have been providing strength, but it needed Richard’s strength to fully complete it, and at the moment Richard didn’t have sufficient strength of his own.

When Richard held his other arm out, Commander Fister gripped it and helped pull him to his feet. Samantha tried her best to maintain contact with him, but to her frustration once he was standing she could no longer keep her hands on his head.

With the sword in his fist, Richard didn’t need Samantha’s help. The sword’s power was far stronger than any strength she could give him, but she stayed close just in case.

Once up, Richard quickly scanned the battle scene. “We can’t keep fighting by their rules or we are soon going to lose.”

“It’s not like we have a lot of choice,” Commander Fister said, his exasperation barely contained.

“Again, you are thinking of the problem, not the solution,” Richard told him, absently, as he carefully looked around, studying everything.

Jake Fister assessed Richard’s face for a brief moment, as if trying to tell if he really was thinking clearly or maybe still suffering from a delusional fog from the sickness.

Kahlan knew better. She knew the way Richard thought. While she didn’t know what he had in mind in this instance, she knew that he was not delusional—he was thinking like the Richard she knew so well. In a way, it heartened her. While everyone else was focused on the problem they faced, he was thinking of a solution.

Richard looked off to the side, studying the darkness. Kahlan didn’t know what he was looking at, but she knew that he could see better in the dark than she could. Richard could see at night almost as well as a cat.

“Casualties are irrelevant to them,” he said, “especially since those with occult powers are soon going to start reviving the dead. The more we kill, the bigger the supply of dead they have at hand to turn into those walking dead. Those unholy monsters are a lot harder to take down than the Shun-tuk. Our men are tiring. Matters can only get worse from this point on.”

“These are men of the First File,” the commander insisted. “They will fight with all their heart and soul.”

“The Shun-tuk don’t fight very well, though, or use weapons,” Richard added, mostly to himself, not seeming to really notice what the commander had said.

“Our men are the best,” the commander again insisted. “You know that, Lord Rahl. They are the best fighters there are. The Shun-tuk aren’t quality fighters.”

Richard finally refocused his attention on the commander. “Yes, but vast numbers have a quality all their own. They don’t care how many people they lose. We do.”

The commander scratched an eyebrow, deciding against further argument. “You have something in mind, Lord Rahl?”

Richard gestured with his sword. “This camp, set up the way it is with the cliff blocking the back side, is not the worst place to fight from. But it’s not the best, either, especially in this case because it works to their advantage. They can surround us from several directions and keep us pinned down. We can’t move easily, so they can keep us here and keep coming at us to wear us down.

“We need to draw them into terrain that is to our advantage, not theirs. We need to flank them and get some men behind them.”

Commander Fister scanned the battle, looking around at the open area and the dark forest beyond where Shun-tuk kept running in from every direction.

“But how can we hope to do that? We’re out in the open. They’re scattered all throughout the woods. We have no idea where all of them are. How are we supposed to flank them?”

“By changing the battle. We need to be able to come at them from both sides at once and crush them.”

The commander lifted an eyebrow. “Lord Rahl, what you say makes sense—theoretically—but in this case it would be like trying to flank ants. They’re all over the place out there.”

“Again, you’re telling me the problem. I already know the problem.” Richard pointed with his sword to the rock wall backing the encampment. “This cliff face, where it goes around over there, is formed by the side of a gorge coming down from higher ground. That ravine turns out here, in this cliff face, as the terrain broadens into this lower, flatter ground. Look there. See that brook over to the side, where we’ve been getting water? That brook comes down through that ravine.”

“What of it?” the commander asked.

“We need to draw the Shun-tuk in there. The terrain climbs from here and the sides are steep, so the Shun-tuk wouldn’t be able to spread out. If they want to come after us, their only choice will be to follow us up the gorge. There is no practical way to go around and catch us. If they tried that, we’d be able to get away from them.”

The commander rubbed his chin as he peered off at the gorge.

“Before we go in there,” Richard said, “we need to station men to either side. They can slip in over there at the edge of the camp. We need to have men climb up and hide on the slopes to lie in wait for the enemy to pass by. Meanwhile, with the other half of the men, we will run up the gorge, as if we’re panicked and running for our lives to try to escape them.”

“What if they don’t follow us?”

“They’re predators. Predators chase running prey. It’s one of a predator’s strongest instincts.”

Commander Fister was listening with more interest. “Then what? A hammer and anvil?”

Richard nodded. “Once we get them to follow half of us into that narrow gorge, the men hiding up on the sides will descend, close off the back door, and come at them from the rear, closing the trap. At that point, we turn back on them. We move in from both ends and crush them in that narrow pass. They won’t be able to escape or hide.”

Kahlan and Commander Fister peered off at the steep hillsides where the brook went around the cliff face to then go back up into the more rugged landscape. Kahlan couldn’t see it very well, and couldn’t make out much of the lay of the land, but she trusted Richard’s word in such things. He had spent his life in the woods and he knew what he was talking about.

The commander rubbed his chin as he looked back at Richard.

“How are we supposed to get them to follow us into a narrow defile like that? They may not fight well, and they may be predators, as you say, but they’re not stupid.”

“Believe me, they will follow us,” Richard assured him.

Kahlan knew that Richard already had some kind of plan in mind, and she knew she wasn’t going to like it.

Not one bit.

CHAPTER 20

The commander didn’t back down and defer to the Lord Rahl, the way some subordinates would have. Richard expected his men to use their heads and not just blindly agree with what he said. Throughout the long war he had instilled that principle in all the officers.

Tyranny had long reigned in D’Hara. Such men ruled with absolute authority and did not tolerate dissenting views. Richard expected people to use their heads and speak up if they thought it was important enough. He valued the experience and knowledge of others. What they could contribute added to, rather than detracted from a leader’s ability to rule. Because of that, there had been times when Richard had been persuaded by reasoned arguments and changed his mind.

“Lord Rahl,” Commander Fister said, “they may be predators and all, and as such they may very well have a strong instinct to chase, but the prisoner told us that these Shun-tuk are spirit trackers. They sense spirits—souls—and can follow them. They will be able to sense the men they are to follow into the gorge well enough, but they are also going to be able to sense the men we have hiding to either side.”

“Yes,” Richard said, “but the group they are chasing will be bunched together and running from them. The men hiding on the slopes to the side will be scattered and stationary. That bunching together of the group they are chasing, that accumulation of souls, will create a much stronger aura for them to follow than scattered individuals.

“Think of it this way. If you are about to go into battle, and you see a large force of the enemy advancing along a tree line, coming toward your position, are you going to be more focused on that main battle formation or on some individuals you spot randomly located out in the fields?”

“I’d pay attention to both, and wonder what the ones out in the field were up to.” Commander Fister tapped the hilt of his sword with a thumb. “But I see your point. In the end, the main group is going to have to be the focus of my attention. Even so, I don’t see that they will abandon their caution just because we want to draw them into a trap.”

Richard smiled. “They will if we make it irresistible.”

The commander shared a look with Kahlan before looking suspiciously at Richard. He had aired his view, and if Richard rejected it, he wasn’t sure what else to say. He looked like he was hoping that Kahlan would.

Kahlan thought that Richard’s sickness was wearing him down and affecting his judgment. So, she stepped in to support Commander Fister’s view.

“Richard, they may be primitive, but they are also skilled predators. They may indeed be eager to chase the main group, but decide instead to pick off those lone individuals, first, choosing to go after the easy souls and at the same time reduce our numbers. After all, that’s what they did with Ned. They attacked a lone man so they could get at our horses. They didn’t directly attack us first. First they went after softer prey. They may choose to do that this time as well.”

“Not if they are going after the one thing they want more than anything else but events are moving rapidly and it may slip away from them. Not if they think they finally have us on the run and vulnerable and they have no time to lose.”

“Vulnerable,” Fister said, suspiciously.

“Yes.”

The big D’Haran officer frowned. “And what is this key to their victory that they will have within their grasp if they move swiftly enough?”

“Me, unconscious.”

Commander Fister blinked. “You. Unconscious.”

Richard nodded. “That’s right.”

Kahlan ran the fingers of both hands back into her hair, holding her head in barely contained exasperation. “Richard, that’s just plain crazy. I don’t even know where to begin with how crazy it is.”

She could see the anger—the fighting anger—of the sword in his eyes, as if she were looking into the depths of his soul.

“You heard the prisoner,” he said. “They can sense when I’m failing and especially when I’m unconscious. He said that they are waiting for me to falter and that was when they would take us. That is their strategy—to wait until I’m unconscious and then attack us. It’s a predator’s thinking, stalking and waiting until the prey is vulnerable. With me unconscious that’s when we are the most vulnerable. That’s what they are waiting for and that’s when they will be after us.”

“But you’re awake now,” Kahlan said. “You can keep the sword out.”

“That’s the tough part of the plan.”

Richard slid the sword back into its scabbard.

Kahlan gaped at him. “What are you doing?”

“Without the sword’s power, I will be unconscious within a few minutes. I can feel the poison waiting to take me into that darkness. It’s stronger this time. It’s growing in both of us.”

The commander was visibly alarmed. “Lord Rahl, that’s too risky. We can’t—”

“Listen to me,” Richard said, his voice still commanding even though it was swiftly beginning to lose its power now that he’d slid the sword home to extinguish its magic. “There isn’t much time. You need to listen to me.”

When Kahlan and the commander reluctantly fell silent, Richard went on. “The way it stands right now, we’re going to lose this battle fighting it this way. Kahlan and I are getting worse all the time. We are running out of time, and each time the poison overtakes us it is stronger. Death is not far off.

“We must act while we still can.”

Richard swept an arm out at the defensive line of the desperate battle. “If we keep fighting them like this, by their rules, we will lose. We have to change the rules.”

Commander Fister hooked a thumb behind his belt. “All right, what’s your plan, then? What do you propose to do?”

“Get half the men positioned up on the sides of the gorge. Do it now. It won’t be long until I’m unconscious. The Shun-tuk will be able to sense when that happens.

“We have one horse left. Once I’m unconscious, lay me over the horse and secure my body. With the remaining half of the men, run up through the chasm with the horse carrying me. Run like you’re trying to get away.

“The Shun-tuk will think our men are panicking. Run up the gorge like you’re taking me and fleeing for your lives. Leave the rest of the men behind, hiding up on the hillsides out of sight until the Shun-tuk pass. Even if they sense them, they will likely think they are some of the men breaking ranks and running away to hide and save themselves. They will sense that the main group of souls has me with them and they are running away up the gorge, trying to escape.

“If you do a convincing job of running, like you’re trying to get the incapacitated, unconscious Lord Rahl away from mortal danger, they will chase us. They behave like any predator. Once predators start chasing prey, they have tunnel vision centered on their prey. They will be focused on the prey and ignore everything else.

“If I’m unconscious, they will come after me.

“Then, once they come after us up into the ravine and the men on the slopes shut the back door to that narrow space, have Zedd lay down wizard’s fire back down the gorge. It will be much more devastating in such a confined space.

“Some of them, though, are immune to such magic, so that’s when you have the men turn and come in from both ends. In that narrow gorge you can cut the rest of those with occult power to pieces. They may not be vulnerable to magic, but they bleed and die just like anyone else.”

“All right, Lord Rahl, but what if you’re wrong and they do sense the men hiding there waiting to spring the trap? Then what?”

Richard was shaking his head. “No. This is the dance with death. You give the enemy the one thing he wants more than anything else, dangle it in front of him, and he will abandon his sense of caution to go after it. I am that one thing, the thing that their spirit king sent them for. Just as importantly, if they think they can eliminate me, that will give them the chance to feed on the rest of you.

“They know that if they can get me when I’m incapacitated then they can also get the rest of you. If they see that chance to have it all running away from them, they must chase it down.”

“So you really plan to be unconscious during this battle?” Commander Fister asked, incredulous.

Kahlan was beside herself. “If you’re unconscious, you will be defenseless.”

“Yes, exactly. I have to be unconscious for them to sense that I am vulnerable. It has to be that way if we want it to work. Samantha and the sword helped give me just enough strength to be able to stay conscious long enough to give you the plan. But I can feel that inner darkness overcoming me as I speak. This time, you have to let it take me.

“You have to let me go for now, then throw me over the horse and get moving. The rest of you will have to carry out the plan without me.”

“But—” the commander started.

The power of the sword that had been so evident in his gray eyes was gone. His eyes were becoming glassy. Kahlan recognized the sickness coming over him. She was on the verge of panic. On the one hand she knew that Richard was right and that he was giving them the best chance of survival.

But on the other hand … it was Richard who would be unconscious, completely helpless, and most at risk. And that was not even taking into account him flirting with the call of death that would be trying to use this opportunity to finally take him.

“Once we get through the gorge, after you cut them to ribbons, then have Zedd and Nicci do their best to revive me,” Richard told them.

Kahlan didn’t think he sounded sure that they would be able to, this time. If they survived the battle. If Richard wasn’t captured. Even if everything went as he planned, it might by then be too late for Zedd and Nicci to revive him. He could die.

“Lord Rahl, I can give you strength now,” Samantha said, clearly on the verge of panic. He had always been her strength and she couldn’t stand the thought of losing that rock in her world.

“Not this time,” he told her. “This is our only chance.”

Kahlan could feel tears welling up in her eyes. “Richard …”

He gripped her arm as he sank to one knee. “Don’t waste this chance. Do as I say. Do it now. I’m counting on you.”

Richard pulled Kahlan closer. “Once they have me secured over the horse, then take my sword. You are going to need it.” He managed to give her a wink. “Just don’t run me through with it this time.”

Commander Fister caught Richard as he fell forward and held him upright on his knees. Richard’s head hung. He was already unconscious.

The commander looked over at Kahlan. “Did anyone ever tell you that you married a crazy man?”

Kahlan couldn’t manage to smile in order to go along with his grim attempt to lighten the terror of the situation.

“He’s not crazy. He has just given us all our only chance.”

The commander hoisted Richard’s limp body up, pulling one arm around his broad shoulders.

“Samantha,” Kahlan said as she gestured, “get one of those men right there to bring the horse immediately. Tell the other two to help the commander with Richard.”

As Samantha raced off to get help, Kahlan turned to Commander Fister. “You had better protect him and keep him alive until Zedd and Nicci can heal him. I’m counting on you.”

The commander nodded. “You have my oath, Mother Confessor. No one will get near him as long as I’m alive.”

Kahlan held back her tears. There was too much to do to give in to emotion.

“One condition in all of this, Mother Confessor,” the commander said. “I’m not telling Zedd and Nicci about this plan. You have to tell them. If I tell them, they will fry me up and have me for breakfast.”

That time Kahlan finally managed a brief smile as she saw men running toward them. One of them tugged the horse along behind.

CHAPTER 21

Two of the soldiers helped Commander Fister lift Richard’s limp body over the back of the horse while the other held the reins. Seeing Richard in this condition was sobering for the men. This was the Lord Rahl who had believed in them, liberated them from servitude to Darken Rahl, and then led them through the long and terrible war with the Old World. He had survived countless dangers and done the impossible—brought peace and prosperity they had never imagined possible in their lifetimes. Now, he was unconscious and the situation looked grim.

After getting Richard laid over the back of the mare, the men helped the commander quickly lash him down with ropes. They didn’t pause to ask questions. The men of the First File stayed focused and did their job regardless of what was going on.

Commander Fister seized one of the men, Sergeant Remkin, by the shoulder. “How many men do we have left?”

“Before the battle we had close to a hundred. I know that I’ve seen some go down, though I don’t know how many we’ve lost, but there has to be something less than that by now.”

“All right. Get three dozen men together as fast as you can.” The commander pointed with his sword. “We’re going to take Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor around the side of the cliff over there and up the gorge. Divide the men. You take half up on the slope to the far side. Have them spread out and hide on the hillside.” He gestured to the other man. “Jenkins, you take the other half onto the left slope and do the same—spread out and hide.”

The sergeant glanced back in the darkness to appraise the barely visible pass. “Consider it done, Commander. Then what?”

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