Soul of the Fire (79 page)

Franca squinted off into her memories. “Well … it’s an abnormally hot place. A cave. You can feel the power—the magic—in that hot cave, but there’s nothing there.”

“
I don’t understand.”

Franca shrugged. “Neither do I. There’s nothing there, but it’s a strange place that only the gifted would appreciate. It just gives you a kind of … I don’t know. Kind of a thrill of power running through you just to stand in there, in the Ovens. But those without the gift can’t feel anything.”

She checked the others, to make sure they weren’t listening. “It’s a place we don’t tell people about. A secret place—just for the gifted. Since we don’t know what’s in there, we keep it secret.”

“
I need to go see this place. Can we go now?”

“
It’s way up in the mountains—several days away. If you want, we can leave in the morning.”

Zedd thought it over. “No, I think I would prefer to go alone.”

Franca seemed hurt, but if it was what he thought it might be, he didn’t want her anywhere near it. Besides, he didn’t really know this woman, and he wasn’t sure he could trust her.

“
Look, Franca, it could be dangerous, and I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. You’ve already given me selflessly of your time and trouble—and risked enough.”

That seemed to make her feel better. “I guess someone will have to tell Vedetta you won’t be able to make dinner tomorrow. She will be disappointed.” Franca smiled. “I know I would be, were I her.”

Zedd grunted with the weight as he slid the saddle off Spider. He was getting too old for this sort of thing, he decided. He smiled at the irony.

He flopped the saddle down over a log to keep it off the ground. Spider happily surrendered the rest of the tack, which Zedd laid over the top of the saddle. He covered it all with the saddle blanket.

The log with the gear lay against the trunk of an old spruce, so it was out of the weather, to an extent, anyway. He stacked pine boughs over the tack, leaning them up against the spruce’s trunk, interlocking them, to keep the gear dry as best he could. The drizzle would soon turn to rain, he had no doubt.

Spider, free of duty, cropped grass nearby, but kept an eye and an ear to him. It had been a hard three-day ride across the Drun River and up into the mountains. Harder on him than on the horse; the horse wasn’t old. Zedd, seeing that Spider was happily engaged, turned to his own business.

A small stand of a half-dozen spruce screened the view of his destination. He walked quickly along the quiet shore to skirt the trees. Once beyond them, he stepped onto a thumb of rock jutting out, almost as if it were set there as a podium.

Hands on hips, Zedd looked out over the lake.

It was a beguiling spot. Behind him, the thick forest stopped well short of the lake, as if afraid to approach too close, leaving the lone level and gentle access, but for the few brave spruce, empty of trees. The peninsula was covered here and there with brush but mostly it held thick tufts of grasses. Small blue and pink wildflowers cavorted among the grass.

Sheer rock walls rose up around the rest of the deep mountain lake. If the isolated and remote stretch of water had a name, he didn’t know it. There was no practical way to reach it but this one shore.

Across and to the left, the jagged mountains, with a sloping field in their lap, rose up ever higher into the distance, providing little opportunity for much more than scraggly trees, here and there, to set down tenacious roots. To the right, dark stone cliffs obscured the view beyond, but he knew that past them were more mountains yet.

On the other side of the lake, a waterfall cascaded over the edge of a prominent jutting wall of rock. Before him, the calm lake reflected the tranquil scene.

The icy waters tumbling into the lake came from the highlands, from the vast lake higher up in the bleak wasteland, where the warfer birds alone watched. These were part of the headwaters of the Dammar River, which in turn flowed into the Drun. This cold water, coming from a place of death, would meander down into the Nareef Valley below, and give life.

Behind the waterfall were the Ovens.

In the rock wall behind that tumbling water, three thousand years before, through a gateway to the underworld, the chimes had once been entombed.

And now they were free.

There they awaited their soul.

At the very thought, Zedd could feel gooseflesh, like a thousand spiders, on his legs.

He tried again, as he had countless times, to call his gift of magic. He tried his best to convince himself that this time it would come. He spread his arms, lifting them, palms up, toward the sky, as he labored to cajole forth magic.

The placid lake saw no magic from him. The mountains waited, and were silent in his failure.

Zedd, feeling very alone, very old, let out a chesty sigh. He had imagined it a thousand different ways.

But he had never imagined this would be how he died.

This was why he couldn’t let Richard know it was the chimes themselves that were loose. Richard would not have accepted what Zedd intended, what Zedd knew he must do.

Turning his mind away from the smothering melancholy, he surveyed the lake. He had to keep his mind on what he was doing, or he could easily fail and his sacrifice would be for naught. If he was going to do this, he intended to do it right. There was satisfaction to be derived in a job well done, even a job such as this one.

As he studied the scene with an experienced eye, what at first looked to be peaceful waters now revealed more. The water was alive with things unseen, moving in lurking currents, seething with dark intent.

The water was alive with the chimes of death.

Zedd looked back to the waterfall. He could make out, just beyond it, the dark maw of the cave. He had to get there, across the water, across the water churning with chimes.

“
Sentrosi!” Zedd opened his arms. “I have come to freely offer the soul you seek! My soul! What is mine, I surrender to you!”

Flames boiled out around the column of water, swallowing it in great gouts of fire that roared forth, rolling and tumbling out of the place called the Ovens. The fire turned the surface of the lake orange with reflections of its heat. For a moment, the waterfall was rendered steam. Inky black smoke billowed up with the white steam, tangling together in a sinister pillar that marked the maw of death.

A clear chime rang out, reverberating through the mountains.

Sentrosi had answered.

The answer was yes.

“
Reechani!” he called to the water before him. “Vasi!” he called to the air about him. “Let me pass, for I have come to surrender my soul to you all.”

The water swirled and turned, as if schooling fish gathered at the shore before him. More, though, the water itself seemed alive, eager, hungry. Zedd guessed it was.

The air felt thick around him, pressing in, urging him forward.

The water rose up and curled in a gesturing motion toward the Ovens. The air buzzed with chimes, countless separate bells that together created one crystalline sound. The air smelled as if it were burnt.

Since it had already started to rain, Zedd didn’t see that it really mattered if he got any wetter. He stepped out into the water.

Rather than having the swim he expected, he found the surface solid enough to hold him, almost like ice, except it moved. Ripples radiated out from his footstep, touching and retreating, as if it were no more than a mere puddle he splashed through. Each step he took found support.

It was the support of the chimes, of Reechani, bearing him to his doom, to their queen. Vasi, the chimes of the air, escorted him, a robe of death all around.

Zedd could feel the touch of the underworld in the air. He could feel the damp death at his feet. He knew each step might be his last.

He remembered Juni, the Mud People hunter, who had drowned. Zedd wondered if Juni had felt the peace he sought, the peace he had been offered, before he died.

Knowing the purpose of the chimes, Zedd strongly suspected that, after tempting with tantalizing tranquillity and before they extracted the life, they delivered their terror.

Before he reached the waterfall, something unseen pierced the watery column. Intangible hands split the waterfall in two, leaving an opening in the middle where he might pass into the cave beyond. Sentrosi, the fire, preferred him reasonably dry, he supposed.

Stepping onto the opening in the rock, before going through into the cave, he heard Spider let out a snort of censure. Zedd turned.

The horse stood at the bank, feet spread, muscles tense. Her ears were pinned back, her eyes aglare. Her tail whipped from side to side, slapping her flanks.

“
It’s all right, Spider,” Zedd called back to the agitated animal. “I give you your freedom.” Zedd smiled. “If I don’t come back … enjoy your life, my friend. Enjoy your life.”

Spider released a drawn-out angry squeal. Zedd gave her a last wave, and the squeal became a deep bellow.

Zedd turned and stepped beyond the tumbling water, into the darkness. The curtain of the waterfall closed behind him.

He didn’t hesitate. He intended to give the chimes what they wanted: a soul. If he could do it in a way that would preserve his life in the process, he would, but without his magic he had little hope of accomplishing such a thing as he intended and at the same time remaining whole.

Being First Wizard, he had some knowledge of the problem at hand. The chimes needed a soul to stay in the world of life—that was the manner in which they had been conjured forth. More than that, they needed a specific soul: the one promised.

Beings from the underworld, and soulless beings at that, would have limitations to their understanding of the concept of what it would be to have a soul, or the nature of the soul they were promised. Naturally, there were certain intrinsic precepts that applied, but beyond that, the chimes were in what was to them an alien world. His only hope was that ignorance.

Since Zedd was so closely related to Richard, and Richard’s life had been passed down through Zedd, their souls shared ethereal bonds and connections; just as in body, their souls were related. In much the way they shared some things, the shape of their mouth, for instance, their souls shared characteristics.

Even so, each of them was a unique individual, and therein lay the danger.

His hope was that the chimes would mistake his as the soul they needed, take his as the soul they needed, and, it ultimately being the wrong one, choke on it. So to speak.

It was Zedd’s only hope. He knew no other way to stop the chimes. With each passing day the threat to the world of life grew more grave. Every day people died. Every day magic grew weaker.

As much as he wished to live, he could think of no other way but to forfeit his life to stop the chimes, now, before it was too late.

When they opened themselves to the soul they were pledged, and they were thus vulnerable, he hoped his soul would ruin the flow of the spell through which they entered this world.

Given that he was a wizard, it was no wild hope; it was, in fact, a reasoned approach. Dubious, but reasoned.

Zedd knew that at the least, such a thing as he planned would disrupt the spell to some extent—rather like shooting an arrow at an animal, meant to kill, but if off target, wounding at least.

What he didn’t know was what it would do to him. Zedd had no delusions, though. He reasonably expected that what he did, if it didn’t strip his soul from him and in so doing kill him, would anger the chimes and they would extract their vengeance.

Zedd smiled. The balance to it was that he would at last again see his beloved Erilyn, in the spirit world, where he knew her soul waited for him.

Inside, the heat was oppressive.

The walls were slowly rolling, tumbling, turning, twisting, liquid fire.

He was in the beast.

In the center of the pulsing cave, Sentrosi, the queen of fire, turned her lethal gaze on him. Tongues of flame tasted the air around him. She smiled—a whorl of yellow flame.

One last time, Zedd made a futile attempt to call his magic.

Sentrosi rushed toward him with frightening speed, frightening need.