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.
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,