“They have archers,” Richard reminded her. “An arrow in the back and you would be just as dead as if a sorceress stopped your heart.”
Nicci sighed. “I suppose so.”
“Can we go chain this pig up in the dungeon, now?” Cassia asked as she fastened the sides of her leather top back in place.
“Good idea.” Richard smiled at the three Mord-Sith. “You did good. All of you. I’m proud of you. We just captured a dangerous man with powerful occult abilities and none of us were hurt.”
“I got the idea from Samantha,” Nicci said, smiling down at her. “If you can’t use magic to stop those with occult abilities, just drop rocks on their head.”
Samantha looked proud as she watched the Mord-Sith haul a profusely bleeding, groggy Ludwig Dreier to his feet.
CHAPTER
81
Once the men of the First File had been freed from the dungeons down in the lower levels of the citadel, they had raced up the stairwells into the grand greeting room and spread out through the gallery. As they had poured out among the columns, surprised citadel guards drew their weapons. These citadel guards had been the ones who had carried the unconscious men of the First File down into the lower dungeons and locked them in.
Commander Fister, at the head of his men as he led them into the grand meeting hall, without ceremony cut down the first two men who rushed in at him with swords. It was as shockingly swift as it was decisive. He hadn’t even bothered to loose his men on the soldiers, as if the defenders were a mere pesky annoyance he could deal with himself.
Almost as soon as the two soldiers hit the ground, dead, and lay bleeding out on the rich carpet, the rest of the men had dropped their weapons and raised their hands in surrender.
Until it was decided what to do with the citadel guard, they had all been locked in the dungeons.
Ludwig Dreier, too, had been chained in the dungeon, right where Richard had been chained, with the shields to the collar and the room itself containing both his gift and his occult powers, as they had been meant to do by those in ancient times who had built the citadel, the same people who had once built the barrier to the third kingdom. Erika had been chained up beside him, where Nicci had been restrained.
As Nicci was seeing to the abbot’s wounds to make sure he lived long enough to be of help, Cassia returned and said that she had found Richard and Kahlan a secluded bedroom to use while they waited for Nicci to finish. Richard had figured that after the ordeal of being chained down in the dungeon, he and Kahlan could at least get a couple of hours of sleep. With the way the sickness was wearing them down they couldn’t afford to let exhaustion pull them into unconsciousness before Nicci was able to get answers and they could finally, hopefully, be healed.
Dreier was now their only remaining hope.
As he and Kahlan followed Cassia through the complex of halls on the way to the bedroom, Richard tried to think of some other solution, some other chance, some other way for them to escape the grip of the poison, but he could think of nothing.
Irena, rushing up one of the side hallways, spotted them out ahead and called out Richard’s name. When Richard turned and saw her back down the hall, she hurried all the more to rush around the corner and catch up with them.
Richard knew that the woman was always trying to find a way to place herself close to him. He saw the looks Kahlan gave the woman when she giggled and fawned over him. Richard disliked it even more than Kahlan, but he wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. He didn’t want to be rude, but more than that, she was Samantha’s mother, after all. He figured that the least he could do was to be polite.
“Richard! There you are,” Irena called out, lifting a hand to keep his attention. “I’ve finally been freed from that terrible place down below. It was awful! I thought I would never get out of there. I was so relieved to hear that you escaped as well. Are you all right? Were you hurt? Is there anything I can do to help?”
Richard and Kahlan shared a look of silent resignation. Cassia stopped between two reflector lamps a short distance farther up the corridor, waiting for them to speak to Irena.
“We’re fine,” Richard said without elaborating.
As Irena cut around the intersection, rushing toward them, her hip bumped the edge of a table she hadn’t seen against the wall just around the corner. When her hip hit the table, something dark fell out of her dress and dropped onto the gold and blue carpet. She cursed the table under her breath for being in her way as she snatched up the skirts of her dress in order to hurry to catch up with them.
She didn’t notice that something had fallen out of her dress.
“Nicci told me that she told you to get some rest for now,” Irena said. “You need to rest, Richard.”
“That’s where we’re headed right now,” Kahlan said, hoping to get the woman to go away.
Instead of getting the hint, Irena gestured with a flick of her hand. “I told the soldiers to take up their posts back there, and that I would watch over you and Kahlan to make sure that you rested in peace. I told them to set up stations a good distance back up the halls to keep anyone from bothering you. It’s important that you not be disturbed for now, and you know how noisy they can be.”
Richard was about to tell her that he, and not she, would be the one to give orders to the men and that she had no business making such presumptions, when he was stopped in his tracks by what he saw lying on the gold and blue carpet.
The small dark thing that had fallen out of her dress was a journey book.
He froze for an instant, his gaze locked on it.
Before she could notice him looking at the journey book lying on the floor behind her, Richard put a hand on Irena’s back and guided her forward toward Kahlan. “Good, Irena, we would be thankful for your help. In fact, Kahlan was just saying that she wanted to ask you about something you could do for me, and, well, here you are.”
He shot Kahlan a look over the top of Irena’s head. Kahlan, knowing him as well as she did, got the message and said, “Yes, I was wondering … if you could help us.”
Irena twined her fingers together as she gazed expectantly at Kahlan. “With what? What kind of help do you need?”
While she was focused on Kahlan, Richard slipped unnoticed behind her and snatched the journey book off the carpet. He held it up high behind Irena’s back to show Kahlan what it was, then rolled his hand, letting her know that he needed her to keep Irena’s attention. Kahlan understood.
He turned his back in case Irena should happen to look around behind her. The journey book was filled with page after page of writing. He was sure that this was the twin to the one they had taken out of Dreier’s robes, but that didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would Irena have the twin to his?
He had to find confirmation, one way or another. It was possible that this one had an entirely different twin. There could be a perfectly logical explanation as to what she was doing with a journey book and why she had kept it a secret from them.
“Well,” Kahlan said in a drawl to drag it out longer, “we were hoping you could help with Richard’s headaches. Nicci is busy at the moment and I was hoping you could come to our room with us and see if you might be able to do something for him—you know, with your gift. Put your hands on him and do some small healing to ease his pain and help him sleep, something like that. You are so talented that I thought if anyone could do it, it would be you.”
Irena touched her fingers to her neck, cooing with satisfaction at the flattery. “I would love to.”
Irena droned on, asking Kahlan specific questions about the nature of his pain. Richard didn’t even hear what Kahlan was saying to the woman as he focused on reading the messages back and forth between the journey book Irena had and its twin.
A sudden, icy sensation flashed through him when he saw what he had been looking for.
His heart hammered over what he was seeing in the journey book.
Irena had been communicating with Ludwig Dreier all
along.
CHAPTER
82
The book was filled with messages. She hadn’t erased any of them. All the messages back and forth for more than a year were still there.
There were messages from Ludwig Dreier telling Irena the specifics of what he wanted her to do for him, along with promises of rewards for her loyalty and service to him. There was even a message Dreier had written from the People’s Palace, telling her about the wedding of a Mord-Sith that he was attending. By the conversational tone of the messages and comments going back and forth, it was easy to see that the two were like-minded and quite at ease with each other.
Richard quickly came to see that Irena’s handwriting was neater and more legible than Dreier’s. He spotted an account where she told Dreier that she had let herself be captured by Hannis Arc so that she would be closer to him in order to report on what he was doing to raise the spirit king from the dead.
She recounted to Dreier how Richard had “rescued” her and the things he had done to escape with them from the caves and how he had been able to defeat the half people holding his friends prisoner. She had subsequently used the opportunity to join and travel with Richard and Kahlan’s group.
Ludwig Dreier in turn advised her on how she should react and behave, and the things he wanted her to find out. He told her to be especially careful not to let anyone know of her occult abilities.
Irena had been right under their noses the whole time, watching and reporting everything they were doing to fight and escape the half people coming after them.
Irena had been a traitor the entire time.
There was far too much in the journey book to read it all right then. With the way his heart pounded at the betrayal and his mind raced trying to piece together all that had been compromised, Richard was having trouble focusing enough to read. He flipped over a few more pages, skipping ahead, and spotted the passage where she told Dreier that Richard and Kahlan needed a containment field in order to be healed.
She told him that she recognized it as an opportunity to finally offer an excuse to get them to the citadel, where Dreier would be able to capture them.
Richard trembled in shock as he read Dreier’s message back, telling Irena how pleased he was that she had found a way to convince them to come to the citadel. He described where he wanted her to say the containment field was located within the citadel, and how to get down there, in order to get them to a place where he could take them by surprise.
She reported to him their progress along the way, keeping him abreast of when they thought they would arrive at the citadel.
Richard felt shame and rage that he had been so completely fooled by her story.
When he quickly flipped back to the beginning, as he suspected, he spotted Irena’s report to Dreier that she had killed her sister Martha and Martha’s husband when they had gone to see if the reports about Jit were true. She had then dumped their bodies in the swamp. She and Dreier discussed how they couldn’t risk any of the gifted in Stroyza learning that the barrier was failing. Dreier said he would send soldiers to collect her other sister, Millicent, and her husband, Gyles, and take them to the abbey to make sure they couldn’t interfere, either.
Richard could hardly believe she had killed her own sisters and their husbands, and was shocked to see Irena’s report that her husband had started asking too many questions, so when an opportunity presented itself, she had killed him. The casual manner in which she reported killing her husband was shocking.
Dreier told her that if her daughter ever became suspicious, Irena would need to eliminate her as well. Richard was horrified to see Irena’s reply that once Richard and the others were taken prisoner at the citadel, he was welcome to take care of Samantha if he wished so that she would cease to be a potential problem.
And then he saw it.
The passage read, “The old wizard was getting suspicious. Tonight I cast a concealing spell to make it appear I was in my bedroll so that I could go off to report to you. He somehow followed me and caught me writing in my journey book. Fortunately, he thought me merely a sorceress and was unaware of the occult side of my abilities. When he used his gift to try to restrain me and take my journey book, I was happy to finally have the opportunity and I beheaded the troublesome old man. He will no longer be a problem.”
Richard’s vision went red.
He turned and with a scream of rage rammed into the woman, catching her completely by surprise. Richard had both hands around her throat before she knew what hit her.
He slammed her up against the wall hard enough for her head and shoulders to break the plaster. Her hands snatched desperately at his wrists. He smashed her head into the wall again before she had a chance to summon her occult abilities. The sound of the powerful blow echoed through the hall. Blood splattered across the whitewashed plaster wall. Stunned, her eyes rolling, she fought to remain conscious. Her face glowed beet-red as she struggled in vain to get air.
Irena’s feet kicked above the floor as Richard pinned her up against the wall, crushing her windpipe.
He was in a blind rage, screaming the whole time. Nothing else mattered to him but choking to death this traitorous woman who had killed Zedd.
As he strangled her, her face went from red to dark red to blue. Her wide eyes bulged. Her limbs hung lifeless, swinging from side to side as he repeatedly bashed her head against the wall.
“Richard, what is it?” Kahlan cried out. “What’s going on?”
He realized that Kahlan had been asking the question over and over. She had been screaming it at him.
He was panting so rapidly he could hardly speak. “She killed Zedd!”
Kahlan’s eyes widened. “What?”
Richard’s lethal focus remained riveted on the woman he was strangling, on her blue skin, her dead eyes staring at him as his big hands shook with the effort of crushing her throat.
“She’s been a traitor among us the whole time—working to sabotage us—to make sure we were captured—to see us all murdered by Dreier.” Richard gritted his teeth in rage. Tears ran down his face. “She killed Zedd!”
With a growl of fury, he slammed her lifeless body up against the wall yet again. He kept choking her, even though he knew she was dead. He wanted to kill her a thousand times over.
His grandfather, the man who had raised him, the best, the smartest, the kindest, the wisest man Richard had ever known, had been murdered in cold blood by this evil, conniving traitor.
Kahlan gently pulled on his arm. “Richard … it’s over.”
He finally dropped her in a lifeless heap, her limbs flopping out to the sides as he stood over her panting.
It was then that he realized Samantha had just come around the corner.
She stood frozen in shock. Her dark eyes were as wide as they would go. Her face stood out white against her black hair.
CHAPTER
83
Frozen in horror, Samantha stared down at her dead mother for a moment. And then she ran toward Richard, screaming, her fists flying.
“What have you done! You monster! What have you done!”
“Samantha,” Kahlan said, trying to pull the young woman back away from Richard, or at least to catch her furiously flying fists, “you don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly well!” she screamed. “He killed my mother! He killed her! I saw it!”
“Samantha!” Richard yelled back. “You don’t understand—”
“I do too understand! I understand that you’ve taken everything from me! I hate you! You killed her! She was all I had left in the world and you killed her! You took her from me! You took everything from me!”
Down the hall, Richard could hear the sound of boots as men raced at a dead run toward the shrill screams.
Nicci ran in around the corner. “What’s going on?”
“Samantha!” Kahlan yelled as she again tried to pull the young woman away. “Listen to us!”
Nicci skidded to a stop
when she saw the crumpled body of Irena on the floor. “What happened?”
“Richard killed her!” Samantha screamed.
Cassia reached for the young woman to help Kahlan try to contain her. Samantha jerked away from them, moving back out of reach, her hands fisted at her sides, her teeth clenched, tears streaming down her face.
“Samantha,” Richard said, “you don’t understand. You need to listen to me. I’m so sorry, but your mother was working with Dreier against us the whole time. She murdered Zedd. She helped Dreier capture us so the two of them could—”
“Liar! You’re a liar! You didn’t like her so you killed her! Now you’re just making excuses! She loved us all! You’re a liar!”
“Samantha,” Richard said, trying to find a way to get the young woman to calm down and listen, “your mother killed your aunts to help Dreier—”
“That’s a lie! That’s not true! You’re lying! You’re lying!”
“Samantha, listen to us,” Kahlan put in. “She murdered your father as well. We can show you—”
“Liars! You all only pretended to like us! You’re liars! I hate you all!”
Kahlan took a step toward her. “Samantha, please, you have to listen to us.”
“You took what I loved most. I hate you!” she screamed at Richard. “You took what I loved most in life!”
Men running up the halls from every direction raced toward the sounds of trouble.
Samantha thrust her arms to either side, driving them back with powerful fists of air that tumbled the men back.
“You took what I loved most,” she said with venom to Richard. “Now I’m taking what you love most!”
She reached out and snatched the knife from Kahlan’s belt.
Richard shot toward the girl.
Before he could reach her, Samantha spun, whipping around in an arc, and slammed the knife in her fist hilt-deep into the center of Kahlan’s chest.
The impact made a sickening sound.
In shock, Richard saw Kahlan’s eyes go wide as she tried to pull a breath. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she collapsed.
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