Warheart by Terry Goodkind Page A

death.”
    â€œNot all of them,” Kahlan reminded her, drawing Nicci’s gaze. “Richard has done that before. He has gone to the underworld and returned.”
    Nicci nodded. “Another of the things wizards used to be able to do that Richard somehow managed to accomplish instinctively. Another of the things that mark him as the one.”
    â€œCan you travel there?” Kahlan asked, wondering how the sorceress was going to contact the spiritist they needed.
    Nicci finally spoke into the silence. “I was a Sister of the Dark. Still, I cannot travel the underworld as Richard or those wizards once did. I can, though, part the veil and look beyond.”
    Kahlan glanced around the room. “How are you going to see into the spirit world?”
    Nicci lifted both arms, gracefully turning her hands over. All the candles in the room except the eight around the Grace extinguished. The room out beyond those eight candles seemed to vanish into nothingness.
    â€œEverything about Richard’s life emanating from that point of his blood, touches you,” Nicci told Kahlan. “Everything he is touches you. In that way, he exists through you. That is how I will reach into the spirit world–through you.”
    The sorceress gestured. “Sit in the center, beside that drop of your husband’s blood.”
    Kahlan, tears running down her cheeks, carefully stepped over the bloody lines of the Grace and sat in the center beside Richard’s blood.
    â€œTo see into the spirit world,” Nicci said, “I must be able to look beyond this world to that other realm that exists in the same place all around us, at the same time, in the same place as existence, the negative to the positive, the Subtractive to the Additive.
    â€œIn a way, it is the shadow cast by life.
    â€œWe are all part of all things. We merely need to look beyond what is around us.” She gestured to the candles. “The light of those flames will be our anchor to this world, the world of life, our reminder of what actually exists.”
    Nicci’s words brought back haunting memories for Kahlan of being in that dark place where her soul had been drawn.
    Nicci closed her eyes then and began a soft chant in the same strange language she had used before. Kahlan trembled slightly at the enormity of dealing with the world of souls, at her abject misery of having lost her soul mate.
    As she was lulled by Nicci’s soft, throaty chant, she felt a strange tingling run through her, as if a thousand distant voices were all trying to speak through her. The feeling strengthened or lessened somehow with Nicci’s words.
    Kahlan waited until Nicci fell silent before speaking. “What is that language you’re speaking?”
    â€œIt is the opposite of the language of Creation. It is the language of the dead,” Nicci said softly without opening her eyes. “It is used by Sisters of the Dark to summon that other world all around us that we never see. The language of the dead contains Subtractive threads that bring about the parting of the veil to the underworld.”
    In a way, it all made sense. It made Kahlan, sitting in the center of the Grace, feel a part of everything. The problem was going to be finding the one they needed out of all the souls in the darkness beyond the veil, out of all those voices she heard.
    â€œWait,” Kahlan said as she frowned in thought.
    Nicci opened her eyes and looked up.
    â€œYou said ‘Sacred is the sword when there is no hope but in the blade.’ I think I know what needs to be done.”
    She scrambled to her feet and retrieved the amulet from around Richard’s neck. In its place, she laid the Sword of Truth down the length of Richard’s body. She placed his arms across his chest and then folded his fingers around the wire-wound grip and the word TRUTH woven in gold through the silver wire.
    â€œLet the sword’s anger help be your