Severed Souls Read online

  “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 d
eath. 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.