Free Severed Souls by Terry Goodkind

put in, not happy with Richard’s pace at storytelling. She snapped her fingers. “Gone, just like that.”
    â€œWe set up a defensive position,” Richard said, “so that Zedd and Nicci could heal you.” The ghost of worry reappeared on his features. “Or at least heal your more obvious wounds.”
    Nicci laid a hand on Kahlan’s arm. “You know we can’t get the poison of death out of you, at least not here, or we would. We did the best we could to give you strength.”
    â€œIt’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Kahlan asked.
    Nicci nodded. “I’m afraid so. It was touch-and-go for a while, there. We were worried that this time we wouldn’t be able to bring you back.”
    Kahlan nodded. “Me too.”
    â€œBa,” Zedd said with a dismissive gesture. “Nicci was afraid. I knew I could do it.”
    Nicci smiled at last. “Yes, Zedd, this time you proved yourself to be the wonder you have always insisted you are.”
    With a wave, Kahlan cut off the small talk. “What about the men? Are they all right? Were any of them hurt or killed? Did we lose any of them?”
    â€œSurprisingly enough,” Richard said, “we didn’t lose a single man. The First File knows how to fight. Half people typically don’t, although these are Shun-tuk, and they’re more trouble than the other half people we’ve encountered in the past. They don’t just attack randomly. They execute their attack according to a plan. That makes them more dangerous than the half people we’ve fought before.
    â€œWorse, some of these obviously have an ability to use occult powers. We know how dangerous they are. After all, they’ve overwhelmed and captured these battle-hardened, elite troops and our gifted once before and took them beyond the barrier, so they’re confident they can take us again. Even though we managed to escape, it wasn’t before we lost a lot of men back beyond the barrier. It’s pretty clear that the Shun-tuk don’t give up.”
    â€œWhat about the man we went to help?” she asked. “Is he all right, too, then?”
    Richard nodded. “While Zedd and Nicci were working on you, Samantha helped by healing some of the men who were injured. None of them were as seriously hurt as Ned, the man we went to help.” He gestured to Samantha’s mother. “Irena healed him.”
    â€œIronic, isn’t it?” Nicci lifted an eyebrow as she looked up at the other sorceress on the opposite side of Kahlan. “She healed the man she would have had us leave to be eaten alive.”
    Irena met Nicci’s glare in kind. “These men are Lord Rahl’s guard. Their duty is to protect him at all costs, even if that cost is their lives. That is their calling. They know the risks and accept them willingly. Yes, we saved him, but it was at a risk to Richard’s life that was not the wisest choice. It could all too easily have turned out quite differently.”
    â€œAnd if we allow those men to be needlessly lost, then Lord Rahl loses their protection, now doesn’t he?” Nicci asked in cold challenge. “They can’t very well protect Lord Rahl if they are dead.”
    Irena had used “Richard.” Kahlan noticed that Nicci clearly didn’t think the woman was entitled to be so familiar as to call him “Richard.”
    Everyone but individuals close to him called Richard “Lord Rahl.” To everyone else, he was “Lord Rahl.” To some, it was a term of deep respect. To some, that name, attached to Richard, meant liberty. To others, it was tantamount to a curse.
    Even Cara, his closest personal guard and close friend, had called him “Lord Rahl,” not out of duty, but because he had earned her respect. The Lord Rahl before Richard had enslaved her into service to him as a Mord-Sith. Richard had freed her from that servitude, and out