Terry Goodkind: Severed Souls

“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.

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.