Terry Goodkind - Severed Souls

“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.”