Soul of the Fire (80 page)

Zedd felt searing pain through every nerve as unimaginable agony seized his very soul.

The world ignited. His scream exploded as a deafening chime.
 

Richard cried out. The pain of the ripping, ringing chime felt as if it splintered his skull.

He was only dimly aware of things around him as he tumbled back over the flanks of his horse. The pain of crashing to the ground was a pleasant diversion from the overpowering toll overwhelming his control and driving his scream.

His held his head as he curled into a ball in the road, crying uncontrollably with the hurt.

The world was fiery agony.

All around, people leaped from horses, shrieking orders. Richard could only perceive them as blurry shapes darting about. He couldn’t comprehend the words. He couldn’t recognize anyone.

He couldn’t understand anything but the pain.

He could do nothing more than maintain his thread of connection to consciousness, to life, as he struggled against the merciless torrent of agony.

That he had passed the test of pain, lived through it, as must all who would be wizards, was the only thing that kept him alive. Without the lessons learned, he would already be dead.

He was alone in a private inferno.

He didn’t know how long he could maintain his hold on life.

Everything seemed to have gone crazy at once. Beata tore across the grassy ground, running for all she was worth. Terror rampaged through her.

Turner’s scream had stopped. It had been horrifying while it lasted, but it had only lasted seconds.

“
Stop!” Beata shrieked with all the power in her lungs. “Stop! Are you crazy? Stop!”

The air still reverberated with the sound of the Dominie Dirtch. The low-pitched knell lifted dust from the grass, so that it looked like the ground all around was smoking. It trembled and rolled dirt into little balls. It toppled a little lone tree the last squad had planted.

It made the whole world vibrate with a ghastly drone.

Tears streamed down Beata’s cheeks as she raced across the field, shrieking for them to stop ringing the bell.

Turner had been out front, scouting on regular patrol to make sure the area before the Dominie Dirtch was clear.

His scream had ended mere seconds after the Dominie Dirtch had been rung, but its pain and horror still echoed inside her head. It was a cry she knew she would never be able to forget as long as she lived.

“
Stop!” she yelled as she snatched the railing to spin herself around onto the stairs. “Stop!” she cried again as she raced up the steps.

Beata burst onto the platform, fists raised, ready to pummel the fool who’d rung the Dominie Dirtch.

Beata halted, panting madly, looking about. Emmeline stood frozen in wide-eyed shock. Bryce, too, seemed out of his senses. He just stared at her in frozen panic.

The long striker, used to ring the Dominie Dirtch, still stood in its holder. Neither of the two up on the platform was even near it. Neither had used the wooden striker to unleash the deadly weapon.

“
What did you do!” she screamed at them. “What did you do to ring it! Have you gone mad!” She glanced over her shoulder to the bony pile of gore that had moments before been Turner.

Beata thrust out her arm, pointing. “You killed him! Why would you do it? What’s wrong with you?”

Emmeline slowly shook her head. “I’ve not moved a step from this spot.”

Bryce was beginning to tremble. “Me neither. Sergeant, we never rang the thing. I swear. We weren’t even near it. Neither of us was near it. We didn’t do it.”

In the silence as she stared at them, Beata realized she heard distant screams. She looked off across the plains, to the next Dominie Dirtch. She could just make out people over there running around as if the world had gone insane.

She spun and peered in the opposite direction. It was the same: people screaming, running around. Beata shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted into the distance. There were the remains of two soldiers out in front of their weapon.

Estelle Ruffin and Corporal Marie Fauvel reached what was left of Turner. Estelle, holding fistfuls of her hair, started screaming. Marie turned and started retching.

It was the way she was trained. It was the way things were done. They said it had been done that way for millennia.

Each squad, from each Dominie Dirtch, sent a patrol out at the same time to scout the area. That way, if there was anything or anyone sneaking around out there, it couldn’t simply evade one soldier and hide elsewhere.

It wasn’t just hers. Every Dominie Dirtch down the line had rung of its own accord.

Kahlan clutched at Richard’s shirt. He was still out of his senses with pain. She couldn’t get him out of the ball he had rolled into. She didn’t know what exactly was going on, but she feared she knew.

He was obviously in mortal danger of some sort.

She’d heard him cry out. She saw him tumble off his horse and hit the ground. She just didn’t know why.

Her first thought was that it was an arrow. She had been terrified it was an arrow from an assassin and it had killed him. But she could see no blood. Her emotions walled off, she had searched for blood, but on her rapid initial inspection had found none.

Kahlan glanced up as a thousand D’Haran soldiers spread out around them. The first instant, when Richard screamed and fell from his horse, without orders from her, they had gone into action. Swords cleared scabbards in a blink. Axes came off belt hangers into ready fists. Lances were leveled.

In the perimeter around them, men had flipped a leg over their horses’ necks and leaped to the ground, ready to fight, weapons already to hand. Other men, closing ranks, forming the next circle of protection, turned their horses outward, ready to charge. Still more, the outer fringe of crack troops, had rushed off to find the assailants and clear the area of any enemy.

Kahlan had been around armies her entire life, and knew about fighting troops. She knew by the way they reacted that these men were as good as they came. She hadn’t needed to issue any orders; they executed every defensive maneuver she would have expected, and did them faster than she could have shouted the commands.

Above her and Richard, the Baka Tau Mana blade masters formed a tight circle, swords out and at the ready. Whatever the attack was, arrow or dart or something else, Kahlan couldn’t imagine the people protecting them allowing another chance at their Lord Rahl. If nothing else, there were now too many men suddenly layered around them for an arrow to make it through.

Kahlan, somewhat stunned by the sudden confusion, felt a flutter of worry that Cara would be angry they let harm come to Richard. Kahlan, after all, had promised to let no harm come to him—as if a promise to Cara were required.

Du Chaillu pushed her way between her blade masters to squat down on the other side of Richard. She had a waterskin and cloth to dress a wound.

“
Have you found the injury?”

“
No,” Kahlan said as she picked around on him.

She pressed a hand to the side of Richard’s face. It reminded her of when he’d had the plague, out of his mind with fever and not knowing where he was. He couldn’t have been stricken with sickness, not the way he cried out and fell from his horse, but he did feel as if he was burning up with fever.

Du Chaillu dabbed a wet cloth against Richard’s face. Kahlan saw that Du Chaillu’s own face was creased in worry.

Kahlan continued her examination of Richard, trying to see if he had been hit by some sort of dart, or perhaps a bolt from a crossbow. He was trembling, almost in convulsions. She searched frantically, pulling him onto his side to check his back, trying to find what was hurting him. She concentrated on her job, and tried not to think of how worried she was, lest shock take her.

Du Chaillu stroked Richard’s face when Kahlan eased him onto his back, seeming to discount the need to look for a wound. The spirit woman bent forward, cooing softly in a chant with words Kahlan didn’t understand.

“
I can’t find anything,” Kahlan said at last in exasperation.

“
You won’t,” Du Chaillu answered, distantly.

“
Why’s that?”

The Baka Tau Mana spirit woman murmured fond words to Richard. Even if Kahlan couldn’t understand their literal meaning, she understood the emotion behind them.

“
It is not a wound of this world,” Du Chaillu said.

Kahlan glanced about at the soldiers ringing them. She put her hands protectively on Richard’s chest.

“
What does that mean?”

Du Chaillu pushed Kahlan’s hands gently away.

“
It is a wound of the spirit. The soul. Let me tend to him.”

Kahlan pressed her own hand tenderly to Richard’s face. “How do you know that? You don’t know that. How could you know?”

“
I am a spirit woman. I recognize such things.”

“
Just because—”

“
Did you find a wound?”

Kahlan remained silent for a moment, reconsidering her own feelings. “Do you know what we can do to help him?”

“
This is something beyond your ability to help.” Du Chaillu bowed her head of dark hair as she pressed her hands to Richard’s chest.

“
Leave me to it,” Du Chaillu murmured, “or our husband will die.”

Kahlan sat back on her heels and watched as the Baka Tau Mana spirit woman, head bowed and hands on Richard, closed her eyes as if going into a trance of some sort. Words whispered forth, meant for herself perhaps, but not for others. She trembled. Her arms shook.

Du Chaillu’s face contorted in pain.

Suddenly, she fell back, breaking the connection. Kahlan caught her arm, lest she topple.

“
Are you all right?”

Du Chaillu nodded. “My power. It worked. It was back.”

Kahlan looked from the woman to Richard. He seemed calmer.

“
What did you do? What happened?”

“
Something was trying to take his spirit. I used my ability to annul such power and kept the hands of death from him.”

“
Your power is back?” Kahlan was dubious. “But how could that be?”

Du Chaillu shook her head. “I don’t know. It returned when the
Caharin
cried out and fell from his horse. I knew because I could again feel my bond to him.”