Vika ran forward and crouched down, helping Richard get back up onto his knees. His hands trembled as he tried to get control of his movements. Before he could even get to his feet, Kahlan flung her arms around his neck, crying with joy to see him alive, holding his head to her. His arms finally able to move as he wanted, he hugged her for what seemed ages, but not long enough.
Finally, as she separated and wiped the tears from her face, Richard stood.
Vika stepped closer to him. “I made my choice, Lord Rahl. I chose you.”
“Then why use your Agiel on me?”
“Because I knew that you wouldn’t have stood a chance against his occult powers if you tried to fight him like that. I knew he would kill you if I didn’t find a way to make sure he was distracted enough so that I could take him out. So I needed to put you down and to have you stay down.
“He never let me come up behind him like that. He knew what a Mord-Sith was capable of. He was a very careful man about potential threats like that.”
“So, you used your Agiel on me to throw some raw meat in front of him and distract him.”
Looking solemn, she nodded once and kept her head bowed. “Yes, Lord Rahl.”
Vika went to her knees before him and held out her Agiel in upturned palms. “We all learn during our training that should we ever use our power on the Lord Rahl like that, it is automatically punishable by death. I chose to do it anyway to save your life and the life of the Mother Confessor. That was my choice, for my life.”
She swallowed without looking up at him. “I ask only that you make it quick, so that I do not suffer. I don’t wish to suffer. I have suffered enough.”
Richard knelt down in front of her. Her head was bowed and she wouldn’t look up at him, fearing the worst.
Richard put his hand over both of hers holding out the Agiel, and lowered them. Then, with a finger, he lifted her chin. Looking into her wet blue eyes, he kissed a finger, and then pressed that finger on her forehead.
“That is your punishment.”
Vika frowned, tears starting to run down her cheeks. “Lord Rahl, I don’t understand. I used my Agiel on you. That is a mandatory death sentence.”
“I just did something to you worse than death.”
Her brow twitched. “What have you done?”
“If you don’t behave, I will tell all the other Mord-Sith that I kissed you. You will never hear the end of it as long as you live.”
He showed her a smile, then, a smile that showed her how proud he was of her for making a choice for herself, a choice for life.
Kahlan put an arm around Vika’s shoulders and helped her up. “I have to tell you, I’m proud of you too, but you certainly had me fooled there for a while. I thought we were going to die right then and there.”
Vika nodded with a genuine smile. “I decided long ago, after Lord Rahl talked to me in the cave prison. I knew, though, that I needed to do more than simply run away. No one runs away from Hannis Arc. He will find you and then take out his revenge for your betrayal. I knew that the only way to save myself, and the only way to save others, would be to kill him. I had to wait for my chance. He was a pig, but I had to wait for the right time. Today was that time.”
Kahlan gave the woman’s arm a squeeze of empathy. Then she looked back in the direction of the screaming in the distance. “Richard, the half people–”
“I know,” he said as he took her hand. “Come on.”
CHAPTER 58
“What are we going to do?” Kahlan asked as she ran beside him.
Vika raced along close behind.
As they burst through the gold-sheathed double doors, Richard immediately took the hallway to the left. It was the shortest route to where he needed to go. After racing down one short flight of stairs, they took a long corridor lined with white marble. The floor was a complex wave pattern of a variety of stones, and quite slippery, so they had to slow a bit.
At the end, Richard burst out of the double doors onto a balcony above the central hallway. He immediately raced to an arched bridge high over the walkway below. He skidded to a stop near the center. Since it was the middle of the night, the skylights were dark. That meant that the hallway, lit by scores of reflector lamps, was dimly lit.
Even in the poor light that the reflector lamps provided to the grand hall, he could see that down on the floor below them it was mass chaos. Half people were everywhere, outnumbering the people and the soldiers many times over. There were dead bodies sprawled all over the place. Almost all of the dead were half people, but some weren’t. Some were people from the palace who had been caught and taken down. Half people crowded around a body, squatting down to feed on it. Blood was splattered and smeared over the marble walls and columns. Richard saw barefoot half people slip and fall on the bloody marble floor.
Richard didn’t have time to assess the situation, he simply needed to put a stop to it.
He drew his sword.
The blade came out with the metallic ring that was unique to the Sword of Truth. Richard by now had come to think of that sound as reassuring. It also came out with that same dark metallic gleam from having touched death. With the fighting and panic below, no one noticed the sound or the sight of the sword up on the dark balcony.
Richard pointed the blade out over the edge of the marble balustrade.
“There are your worldly forms,” he said. “Go to them. Return to those you were torn from if you can. Some of you will have to go a great distance to find the one to whom you belong. If they are gone from life and you find yourself still caught in this world, then come to me and we will help you cross over to eternal peace.”
In the dim light, a curtain of sparkling light peeled off the sword and unfurled out over the hallway, stretching as it went. The curtain of light wavered the way the strange lights in the night sky to the north did. They moved in long, slow, curling, undulating waves. Countless specks of light, each one a soul, together created a display that had some of the people below slowing down. Even some of the half people glanced up.
As the curtains of light drifted out over the hallway, Richard swung the sword. “Go! Find where you belong.”
With that, the specks of light scattered. Many others began to drift downward, like snowflakes in a dead-still air. All the way down the halls, as far as Richard could see, the tiny specks moved out to find the ones to whom they belonged.
“Richard,” Kahlan said in wonder, “what in the world is that? What have you done?”
“Remember the Sanctuary of Souls down in the Keep?”
“Yes,” she said as she watched the strange sight. “What about it?”
“Well, that place was built back at the time when there were wizards who were makers–like Wizard Merritt.”
“Magda’s husband?”
“That’s right. Sulachan made the half people by pulling out their souls and not letting them go to the underworld in order to keep the bodies alive. I believe that makers back then made that sanctuary for those lost souls. Those people up there at the Keep, even though the half people were sent to kill them, understood the tragic truth and felt empathy for the lost souls who had not chosen that fate, and had themselves meant no harm. So, they made those lost souls a sanctuary.”
Kahlan held her hand out toward the hall below with the dots of light drifting down. “But what is this?”
Richard shrugged. “It’s the lost souls, the ones that belong to the half people.”
Kahlan could barely contain her exasperation. “What are they doing here?”
“I went there and got them and brought them back.”
“Richard, are you crazy? You could have–”