Terry Goodkind - Soul of the Fire

“No more boundaries.” Zedd threw his hands up. “That’s that.”

It had been almost a year since the boundaries were brought down by Darken Rahl, fading away to rejoin the three lands again. It was unfortunate that Richard’s idea wouldn’t work, that they couldn’t cordon off the Old World and prevent the war from enveloping the New World. It would have saved countless lives yet to be lost in a struggle only just beginning.

“Do either of you,” Ann asked into the silence, “have any idea of the whereabouts of the prophet? Nathan?”

“I saw him last,” Kahlan said. “He helped me save Richard’s life by giving me the book stolen from the Temple of the Winds, and telling me the words of magic I needed to use to destroy the book and keep Richard alive until he could recover from the plague.”

Ann was looking like a wolf about to have dinner. “And where might he be?”

“It was somewhere in the Old World. Sister Verna was there. Someone Nathan cared deeply for had just been murdered before his eyes. He said that sometimes prophecy overwhelms our attempts to outwit it, and that sometimes we think we are more clever than we are, believing we can stay the hand of fate, if we wish it hard enough.”

Kahlan dragged a finger through the dirt. “He left with two of his men, Walsh and Bollesdun, saying he was giving Richard back his title of Lord Rahl. He told Verna to save herself the trouble of trying to follow. He said she wouldn’t succeed.”

Kahlan looked up into Ann’s suddenly sorrowful eyes. “I think Nathan was going off to try to forget whatever it was that ended that night. To forget the person who had helped him, and lost her life for it. I don’t think you’ll find him until he wishes it.”

Zedd slapped the palms of his hands against his knees, breaking the spell of silence. “I want to know everything that’s happened since I’ve last seen you, Richard. Since the beginning of last winter. The whole story. Don’t leave anything out—the details are important. You may not understand that, but details can be critical. I must know it all.”

Richard looked up long enough to catch his grandfather’s expression of intent expectation. “I wish we had time to tell you about it, Zedd, but we don’t. Kahlan, Cara, and I need to get back to Aydindril.”

Ann’s fingers fussed with a button on her collar; Kahlan thought the garden facade of her forbearance looked to be growing weeds. “We can begin now, and talk more on the journey.”

“You can’t imagine how much I wish we could stay with you, but there’s no time for such a journey,” Richard said. “We must hurry back. We’ll have to go in the sliph. I’m sorry, I really am, but you can’t come with us through the sliph; you’ll have to travel to Aydindril on your own. When you get there, we can talk.”

“Sliph?” Zedd’s nose wrinkled with the word. “What are you talking about?”

Richard didn’t answer, or even seem to hear. He was watching the cloth-covered window. Kahlan answered for him.

“The sliph is a . . .” She paused. How did one explain such a thing? “Well, she’s sort of like living quicksilver. She can communicate with us. Talk, I mean.”

“Talk,” Zedd repeated in a flat voice. “What does she talk about?”

“It’s not the talking that’s important.” With a thumbnail, Kahlan picked at the seam in her pant leg as she stared into Zedd’s hazel eyes. “The sliph was created by those wizards, in the great war. They created weapons out of people; they created the sliph in much the same way. She was once a woman. They used her life to create the sliph, a being that can use magic to do what is called traveling. She was used to quickly travel great distances. Really great distances. Like from here all the way to Aydindril in less than a day, or many other places.”

Zedd considered her words, as startling as she knew they must be to him. It had been so for her at first. Such a journey would ordinarily take many days, even on horseback. It could take weeks.

Kahlan put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Zedd, but you and Ann can’t go. The sliph’s magic, as you were explaining, has dictates protecting it. That’s why Richard had to leave his sword behind; its magic is incompatible with the magic of the sliph.

“To travel in the sliph, you must have at least some small amount of Subtractive Magic as well as the Additive. You don’t have any Subtractive Magic. You and Ann would die in the sliph. I have an element of it bound into my Confessor’s power, and Cara used her ability as a Mord-Sith to capture the gift of an Andolian, who has an element of it, so she can travel, too, and of course, Richard has the gift for Subtractive Magic.”

“You’ve been using Subtractive Magic! But, but, how . . . what do . . . where . . .” Zedd sputtered, losing track of which question he wanted to ask first.

“The sliph exists in these stone wells. Richard called the sliph, and now we can travel in her. But we have to be careful, or Jagang can send his minions through.” Kahlan tapped the insides of her wrists together. “When we’re not traveling, Richard sends her into her sleep by touching his wristbands together—on the Graces they have—and she rejoins her soul in the underworld.”

Ann’s face had gone ashen. “Zedd, I’ve warned you about this. We can’t let him run around by himself. He’s too important. He’s going to get himself killed.”

Zedd looked ready to explode. “You used the Graces on the wristbands? Bags, Richard, you have no idea what you’re doing! You are messing about with the veil when you do such a thing!”

Richard, his attention elsewhere, snapped his fingers and gestured toward the fat sticks under the bench. He waggled his fingers urgently. Frowning, Zedd passed him one of the stout branches. Richard broke it in two over his knee while he watched the window.

With the next flash of lightning, Kahlan saw the silhouette of a chicken perched on the sill of the window, on the other side of the cloth. As the lightning flashed and thunder boomed, the chicken’s shadow sidled to the other corner of the window.

Richard hurled the stick.

It caught the bird square on the breast. With a flapping of wings and a startled squawk, it tumbled backward out the window.

“Richard!” Kahlan snatched his sleeve. “Why would you do such a thing? The chicken wasn’t bothering anyone. The poor thing was just trying to stay out of the rain.”

This, too, he seemed not to hear. He turned toward Ann. “You lived in the Old World with him. How much do you know about the dream walker?”

“Well, I, I, guess I know a bit,” she stammered in surprise.

“You know about how Jagang can invade a person’s mind, slip in between their thoughts, and entrench himself there, even without their knowledge?”

“Of course.” She almost looked indignant at such a basic question about the enemy they were fighting. “But you and those bonded to you are protected. The dream walker can’t invade the mind of one devoted to the Lord Rahl. We don’t know the reason, only that it works.”

Richard nodded. “Alric. He’s the reason.”

Zedd blinked in confusion. “Who?”

“Alric Rahl. An ancestor of mine. I read that the dream walkers were a weapon devised three thousand years ago in the great war. Alric Rahl created a spell—the bond—to protect his people, or anyone sworn to him, from the dream walkers. The bond’s power to protect passes down to every gifted Rahl.”

Zedd opened his mouth to ask a question, but Richard turned instead to Ann. “Jagang entered the mind of a wizard and sent him to kill Kahlan and me—tried to use him as an assassin.”

“Wizard?” Ann frowned. “Who? Which wizard?”