“Look,” he said with a smile.
Kahlan turned and looked down. Everywhere half people were stopping. They quit running, quit chasing people. The ones near soldiers fell to their knees and raised their arms in surrender. The ones feeding stopped and stepped back, wiping the blood from their mouths in disgust. As the half people quit chasing victims, the screaming died out.
Throughout the halls, all of the half people slowed down and looked around in bewilderment, or amazement, or jubilation. Some started laughing with delight, looking at their own hands as if seeing them for the first time. Soldiers didn’t quite know what to make of it, but as long as the half people weren’t trying to attack and eat them, they stopped hacking the half-naked people apart.
“Come on,” Richard said. “Let’s get down there. I’m worried about the others.”
The broad stairwell of creamy stone leading down was close, and the descent quick. As they reached the lower halls, soldiers of the First File closed in protectively.
Richard still had his sword out. Along with the sword there was always the anger, but he kept it in check. He held the sword out and shook it to check to see if any more sparkles of souls would come out of it. None did, so he slid it back in its scabbard before he reached for the doors that led out into the hallway. When he opened the doors, they were confronted by the quite strange sight of the masses of half people no longer attacking anyone.
Just outside, Cassia ran over to him. “Lord Rahl! You were right! You did it! Mother Confessor, look!” Cassia pointed out at the half people milling around, blinking, laughing, crying, talking. “That’s why he left you and didn’t say where he was going. I scolded him for not telling you.”
“Yes, she did,” Richard confirmed.
Nyda and Rikka escorted Nathan and Nicci across the hall from one of the grand staircases leading up from the lower levels.
“Richard!” Nicci called out. “You’re back! We were so worried! If you ever do anything like that again I swear I will have you locked in a dungeon and only let Kahlan visit you once a week.”
Nathan peered around. “Richard, would you happen to know what in the world is going on?”
“Yes, what is happening?” Nicci asked. “It’s the same down in the lower areas, near the crypts where they were getting in. There’s been a battle raging down there for days and then all of a sudden the half people simply stopped fighting. Almost together, almost all at once, they simply stopped.”
Cassia casually pointed a thumb back at the strange scene. “Lord Rahl gave them their souls back.”
Nicci’s jaw fell open. “What?” She pointed in alarm at his hip. “How did you get your sword back? Richard! Don’t you dare tell me that you went back to the Keep and you brought the sword back through the sliph!”
“Well, actually–”
“You can’t do that! Richard, your life isn’t worth the sword.” Nicci was beside herself, hardly knowing what to complain about first. “Richard, you were told how it would make the sickness grow, how it would bring you to the cusp of death, how…”
She looked up suspiciously. “Why don’t you look sick?”
“Because I’m not. Why, do you want me to be sick?”
Not believing him and ignoring his flippant remark, Nicci pressed her fingers to his temples. She withdrew her hands in astonishment and turned to Nathan. “He’s not sick. It’s gone. Completely gone.” She turned back to Richard. “I could feel your gift. How is that possible?”
Richard took a deep breath. “Do you want me to explain, or would you rather complain?”
Nicci planted her fists on the curve of her hips and gave him a look she had apparently saved from back in the days when she was his teacher, trying to teach him to use his gifted abilities.
Kahlan turned her face away to hide her smile.
“Explain, please,” Nicci said with forced patience.
“I figured out that the only way I was ever going to be able to stop Sulachan was to send him back to the world of the dead. The easiest way to do that, since I couldn’t hope to overcome his occult abilities, was to use the poison of death I had in me. So, when I was in the underworld, and you and Kahlan brought me back, during that stretch of time in infinity when I had all the time I needed, I decided that rather than leave the sickness of death there in the world of the dead, as I had done with Kahlan, I’d rather have Sulachan in the world of the dead, so I didn’t … leave it. I kept it.”
“You lied to us?” Nicci fumed. “You told us you couldn’t leave it there. You lied?”
It was Kahlan’s turn to look astonished. “You mean to say that you deliberately kept that poison of death in you? That poison that could easily have killed you? When you know how difficult it would be to remove it in this world?”
Richard shrugged one shoulder. “Sure. It made sense to me.”
Nicci looked over at Kahlan. “It made sense to him.”
“The problem was, I feared it wasn’t strong enough–”
Nicci flicked a hand in the air. “Not strong enough. Of course. Not strong enough.”
“–So right when I found out we were going to have to face Sulachan at any moment, I went back to the Keep and retrieved the sword. Traveling in the sliph with the sword drained away most of my life force and made the poison a lot stronger. That was what I needed to kill Sulachan.”
Both women stared openly at him.
“Oh yes,” he added, “and while I was there I also collected all the souls that have been lost for the last three thousand years or so, and…” He held out his hand to where the half people were all cooperating with the soldiers who were collecting them together. He could see half people weeping, apologizing, asking forgiveness.
Nicci started waggling her finger as she shook her head at the same time. “No, no, no. Wait. How did you kill Sulachan with the death that was inside you?”
“I did the same thing the Hedge Maid did. I let it out with a scream.”
Nicci was seething to the point of being momentarily speechless. Kahlan was also being overcome with exasperation. She spoke up before Nicci could put words to her discontent.
“But the scream would have killed you, too, Richard. The sound of it is lethal. That is in fact what killed Jit.”
“But it didn’t kill us.”
Kahlan pointed at her ear. “No, because you plugged our ears with wads of cloth. And even though it didn’t kill us right away, it wasn’t good enough and so it poisoned us.”
Richard smiled as he clasped his hands. “Yes, rather poor choice, but all I had available at the time. This time I knew better. I used wax to plug my ears.”
Kahlan turned away, shaking her head, muttering about how dangerous and risky that was.
“No, no, no,” Nicci said, finally able to frame her objection. “Not so fast. It’s not that easy. You can’t just scream and have that touch of death come out. It’s not that simple.”
“Well of course not,” Richard said. “That’s why I had to use my gift.”
Nicci threw up her hand, looking away for a moment. She turned back, leaning toward him. “Your gift didn’t work! The touch of death blocked it from working!”
“Ah, I see why you’re getting confused,” Richard said, tilting his head back. “That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I fixed my gift so it would work to do what I needed.”
Nathan, Nicci, and Kahlan were all staring openly at him.
Nicci calmed her voice. “Explain, please, Wizard Rahl, how you ‘fixed’ your gift, and what you did to make it work the way you wanted.”
“Well, I used to think it was hard,” he said. “But it’s not. Not really. Well, in this world, sure, but not there.”
“There?” Nathan swished a finger, looking like he was lost.