Severed Souls

CHAPTER 42

As soon as the two women were dragged far enough away, Nicci, looking particularly displeased, leaned toward Richard, her blue eyes ablaze. Some of her long blond hair fell forward over her shoulder as she peered intently at him.

“What did you teach that girl about using magic?”

He could see Kahlan’s small smile as she sat back out of the way, not wanting to get in the middle of it.

“What are you talking about?”

Nicci gritted her teeth. “That girl has a temper. A very bad temper.”

“And you don’t?” Richard asked.

“Not like hers.”

Richard frowned suspiciously as he looked at Zedd’s guarded expression and then back at Nicci. “Why? What did she do?”

“That’s what I want to know. I asked her where she learned such things”—Nicci jabbed a finger into his shoulder—“and she said that you taught her.”

Richard tipped his head back as he realized what she had to be talking about. “Ah. That.”

“Yes, that,” Nicci growled as she punctuated each word with another poke of her finger. “What did you teach her, Mister ‘I don’t know how to use my gift’?”

“Actually,” Richard said, “I only taught her what you taught me.”

Her frown faltered. “What are you talking about?”

“Remember when you explained to me how you made trees explode?”

Nicci’s gaze wandered as she tried to recall what she might have said. “All I ever told you was that by using my gift I concentrated heat inside one spot in a tree trunk so that the heat rapidly turned the sap to steam and with nowhere to go it expanded and blew the tree apart.”

“That’s it. That’s the explanation I gave her.” Richard tilted his head in toward her. “But, let me tell you, Samantha is really good at it. Really good.”

“What I told you about how I explode a tree trunk was a superficial explanation.” Nicci fixed him with a cynical scowl. “I never gave you any of the important details about how to do such a thing because I was never able to teach you about your gift. That means you have no knowledge of underlying principles or causative factors that you could pass along to her.

“So, you are trying to tell me that you simply gave her that superficial explanation and she was able to do it, like telling her to flap her arms and she could fly like a bird?”

“Well,” he admitted, “it wasn’t exactly that simple.”

“Really,” she mocked. “Then how did she manage to do such powerful conjuring from what you told her?”

“Sometimes, in a desperate situation, people can instinctively apply their knowledge to a new problem. We were being chased by a lot of desperate half people. They were like swarms of locusts coming at us. It seemed like there were thousands of them. I didn’t stop to count, but I probably cut down hundreds and it made little difference. They just kept coming. There were far too many for me to fight off with the sword.

“Samantha tried everything she knew, but regular magic doesn’t work very well on half people. I knew we were in a lot of trouble and needed something more or we were going to die.

“So, since half people are still harmed by things like swords, or even hitting them with a rock, I told her about making trees explode. I told her that she needed to focus her power inside tree trunks to make them explode to try to help stop the half people who were after us.

“She was afraid. She had never done anything like that before. But she couldn’t do it, so at that point all we could do was run.

“Then they managed to get around us and trap us. There were so many half people we couldn’t fight them off and we were trapped. We both thought we were going to die. I pushed her into a crevice in the rock and then I squeezed in after her.

“In that moment, hiding down in that dark, narrow crack in the rock, just before they pulled us out and we were eaten, she said that she thought about everything that they were taking away from us, all the friends and loved ones these half people were going to kill, how they killed her father and how they would kill her mother, and she got so angry thinking about it that her ability suddenly broke through that mental block and she started blowing the trees apart in order to stop them.

“But it was nothing like I ever saw the gifted do in the war. It’s hard to describe. I mean, this was on a scale you can’t imagine.”

“Oh I think I can,” Nicci said with an even look.

“She blew the forest apart,” Richard said. “I don’t mean she blew some of the trees apart, or even a bunch of trees. I mean she completely leveled everything in sight all around us. Everything. That storm of shattered splinters blasting out in every direction shredded every last one of the half people—thousands of them. Nothing was left standing other than a few splintered stumps.”

“Thousands,” Zedd repeated.

Richard nodded to his grandfather. “That’s right. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“So, that’s what I taught her—that she had to superheat the sap in a tree to make it blow apart.”

Nicci looked skeptical. “And that’s all you told her?”

His mouth twisted as he remembered the rest of it. “I guess that I also told her that getting angry was how I was able to power my gift. I told her that focusing that anger was both an effective way to fight and to use magic.”

He looked around at the three faces watching him. “Why, what did she do this time?”

“She stood there all by herself,” Kahlan said, “and brought the cliff walls to the sides of the gorge down on the Shun-tuk. They were trapped in the bottom of the narrow pass. For a time, it looked like the whole mountain was coming down.”

“Really?” Richard looked around at the grim faces. “You mean she actually brought the cliffs down? But the soldiers were going to handle it.” He frowned at Kahlan. “What happened?”

Kahlan sighed. “Zedd and Nicci used magic to eliminate all the ones they could. They killed a great many. But there were many more that were not touched by regular magic. The soldiers needed to take care of the rest of them.

“That battle was going well, and, despite their numbers, your plan was working—it was ruthlessly effective, as a matter of fact. We had them trapped and we were cutting them down.

“But then some of the Shun-tuk with occult powers appeared and started to melt our men.”

Richard leaned forward. “Melt them? What do you mean, melt them?”

Kahlan lifted a hand in an uncomfortable gesture at the memory. “It was horrifying. The Shun-tuk used some kind of occult sorcery. In an instant the flesh on the men standing to either side of me seemed to boil as it melted right off them. At the same time their bones came apart. They were killed in a heartbeat. I knew that there was no way we could stop such half people. We had no defense against such occult sorcery.”

“The sword could stop them,” Richard said.

“I know,” Kahlan said. “I killed that one before he could kill any more of us. But I didn’t know how many more there were like him. One more? A hundred? A thousand? Later, the sergeant sent to close off the rear reported the same thing.

“The Shun-tuk didn’t care how many casualties they were taking. Once they had that bloodlust driving them, they kept coming no matter what, and those with that occult power were going to kill all our men to get at you and me.

“I had to make a split-second decision before we lost everything. I did the only thing I could do. I ordered a retreat. I turned the men back and we ran for our lives. The Shun-tuk were coming after us. We knew that we stood no chance against those Shun-tuk sorcerers.”

“So what happened?” Richard asked.

“Your little student happened,” Nicci said. “She stood there all by herself in the middle of the gorge with her eyes closed and blew the towering cliffs to either side of the defile completely apart. It looked like the end of the world. It seemed like the entire mountain caved in on the Shun-tuk. It buried the lot of them.” Nicci leaned back. “Now I know how she did it.”

Zedd’s bushy brow drew down. “You think she did with rock what you do with trees?”

“She used what Richard taught her,” Nicci told him. “She basically did the same thing as blowing apart a tree. The principle is the same. She concentrated heat into the water seeping through all the cracks in the rock. As wet as it is, the rock is soaked through. With nowhere for the superheated water to escape, much like in the trunk of a tree, the force of it as it was turned to steam blew the rock apart. Actually, since rock is so much harder than wood, it creates a more powerful explosion.”

“Can you do such a thing?” Kahlan asked.

Nicci looked at her a long moment. “Maybe, on a small scale. But I couldn’t do what she did, I know that much. I can’t even imagine how much ability that girl has.”

“She said that her mother taught her how to heat a rock to keep warm at night,” Richard said. “She must have used the same technique, but on a larger scale. She’s quite talented.”

Nicci shot him an angry glare. “She has a dangerous temper.”

He shrugged. “Sure, if you’re one of the half people her temper is pretty dangerous. But she would never hurt us. She only wants to help.”

“That kind of temper—”

“That temper saved all of our lives,” Richard said. “She also saved my life along with hers that day in the woods. She also helped me get into the third kingdom, find all of you, and then I was able get all of you out of there. If not for that temper of hers, we’d all be dead.”

“I suppose.” Nicci folded her arms. “We don’t know nearly enough about her, though, or about her mother. We haven’t been together long enough for you to tell me much about what you learned or what happened in the third kingdom, and we’ve been almost continually on the run so I haven’t been able to ask any questions of Irena. I want to know what Samantha and her mother are capable of, what kind of abilities they have.”

“As far as I know,” Richard said, “they’re sorceresses.”

“There are sorceresses, and then there are sorceresses.”

Richard nodded. “I guess I have a few questions of my own.”

“There is still a lot about their village of Stroyza, and their purpose there, that I’d like to know about,” Zedd put in. “I would like to have some of the gaps filled in and get some details about them and the people where they live.”

“Richard, I brought you some stew!” Irena called out as she rushed toward them, holding it out in both hands.

“Now’s your chance,” Richard said.