In the distance, Nicci could hear Kahlan asking if she was all right, but she was too far away to answer. The witch woman answered in her place, telling Kahlan that Nicci was moving on to search.
With her mission firmly in mind, Nicci summoned her strength to push on into the darkness, riding the flow that continued to swirl onward through the endless night.
She saw the light of countless souls along the way. All looked the same, like a night sky scattered with a blanket of stars. They all floated at eternal peace in the firmament. She didn’t know how she would find one star among the countless numbers scattered ahead forever.
But then one of those glowing stars swept in closer.
“I am Isidore,” the spirit said in a voice that was like sunlight. “I felt you calling for me.”
Nicci saw the glowing form sweep in with effortless grace, taking a shape that mimicked her once-living form, but made of light. Nicci couldn’t get out the rush of everything that suddenly came to mind. There seemed too much to convey.
“I must help Richard,” she finally said to the spirit. “I need to find Naja.”
“I know,” Isidore said. “I am here to guide you.”
With that, the spirit form moved off into the flow. Nicci thought that Isidore was just about the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. The spirit glowed with an innocent, childlike kindness. Her smile was a warm summer day.
Together, Isidore leading, Nicci being swept along in her wake, they went into a landscape that was darker yet, with tunnels of blackness through the inky gloom. It was a disorienting journey that was up and down all at the same time, twisting, turning, spiraling their way through places where it seemed impossible to pass.
In a recess of darkness, a deep cavern of eternity, they came to another spirit that took on human form. Isidore gently touched the shoulder of the other.
“This is the one you seek.”
Nicci drifted forward. “Naja?”
The spirit regarded Nicci with cool detachment, rather than Isidore’s warmth.
“What is one of your kind doing here? Why have you come to disturb me?”
“It’s not what it seems,” Nicci said. “I come in the guise of a Sister of the Dark because there was no other way. I had to use what only I know, what only I can do, to do what must be done.”
“And what would that be?”
“What you wanted in life, what you worked for … to stop the emperor, Sulachan.”
The shadowy spirit hissed as she backed away at the name.
“Suuuulachan,” Naja said with venom. “His vile spirit haunts the underworld with an intent darker than death.”
“I know that you tried to stop him when you were alive. You and Magda Searus and the wizard Merritt.”
At speaking their names, their glowing spirits came into view out of the darkness.
“Why have you come here?” the spirit of Magda Searus asked. Much like that of Isidore, her spirit was a wonderful, warm glow that instilled a sense of wonder and peace in Nicci.
Nicci turned and held an arm out. “I come to help her,” she said as she moved aside so they would see the glow of Kahlan’s spirit from where she sat in the center of the Grace beside that single, luminous drop of Richard’s blood.
“The Mother Confessor,” Magda whispered with a benevolent reverence that only a good spirit could summon. “You brought her spirit here?”
“Only a bit of the light within her,” Nicci said. “She powers the Grace that I used to come to you.”
“Why have you come?” Magda asked.
Nicci lifted a hand out toward the loving spirit close at Magda’s side. “For the same reason.”
“For her love,” Merritt said with understanding. “The one in life we knew would come one day.”
“That’s right,” Nicci said. “Sulachan has escaped the underworld and again walks the world of life. Richard Rahl is the one who must stop him. In your time, you all worked to stop the emperor and his forces, and worked to lay out the path for the one who would come after you who can stop the demon.”
“That is no longer our world,” Naja said, the others nodding their agreement.
“Richard Rahl is not in the other world. He is in this world. He is here.”
Distress and anguish haunted their features.
In alarm, Merritt glided closer. “That is not supposed to happen. He is supposed to be the one to stop Sulachan. He needs to be in your world to do that. He can’t succeed from here. He can’t help that world from here. None of us can.”
“I know,” Nicci said. “That is why I had to come here, why I had to use the same dark talents I once used for evil, but turned around and now used to fight for the world of life.”
The light of the spirit of Naja coalesced into a shape that mimicked the exotic form she’d had had in life, but now in light rather than flesh and blood. She moved closer.
“How did such a thing happen? We all took precautions, we guided prophecy, we left all the help we could. How did he die?”
Nicci looked at the spirits all gazing at her. “I killed him,” she said, holding her hand out toward the raven current curling away before her, “just as was foretold in the flow of time.”
Merritt glided closer still in a manner that Nicci could only interpret as anger.
Nicci swallowed at the look he gave her. “I had to.”
“Why?” he demanded.
Nicci again held her arm out toward the glow of Kahlan’s spirit. “For her. She had been murdered. Sulachan’s dark minions had her soul and they were taking it into the depths of darkness. Richard asked me to stop his heart so he could go after her, trade places with her, and send her back to the world of life. It mattered to him more than his own life.”
The four spirits stared at her with the kind of great sadness that can come only from understanding and empathy.
“I came to find a way to bring his spirit back to his worldly form. The world needs him. His body waits for him in the world of life, touched with a link to this world to keep it ready.”
“But if he died,” Naja said, “then his spirit is where it belongs.”
“Ordinarily, yes. But not in this case. Just as with the Mother Confessor, Richard was touched by a Hedge Maid with a poison containing the call of death. It was killing them. But in this world, the opposite–life–taints him with what does not belong here. Carrying that taint of life, he does not belong here. He belongs in the world of life.”
“All men die,” Naja said.
“Yes, but it is not his time just as it was not the Mother Confessor’s time. It was only by the meddling of Sulachan using and distorting forks of prophecy as well as dark elements. Richard belongs in the world of life for now. He must return to stop Emperor Sulachan and fight for life or the veil will be torn apart and the worlds will implode together.”
The world of the dead was silent for a moment. It could have been an eternity.
“We must see if we can help him,” Magda finally said in a quiet voice filled with compassion. She lifted out a glowing spirit hand toward the light of Kahlan’s spirit. “For her.”
“For everyone,” Nicci corrected.
The spirit of Naja smiled. “Spoken like a true sorceress.”
The spirit of Merritt moved to Naja. “You must help her find him. You know Sulachan’s demons better than anyone. You helped him create them. Now you must help stop them.”
“Much the same way as I worked for evil once, much as she worked as a Sister of the Dark?” Naja asked in a tone of irony. “You think I still need absolution?”
With a glowing visage of compassion, Magda shook her head. “You came to us to fight the evil of Sulachan,” she said. “You know that absolution comes from within. Now she comes to you in much the same way. She understands because she has traveled your path.”