Soul of the Fire

Chapter 5

Zedd scooped up a handful of dry dirt from the ground to the side. “Ann is given to histrionics,” he griped. “I would have taught you about the Grace long ago, Richard, but we’ve been separated, that’s all.”

His apprehension alleviated by his grandfather’s words, if not Ann’s, the sharply defined muscles in Richard’s shoulders and thick neck relaxed as Zedd went on.

“Though a Grace appears simple, it represents the whole of everything. It is drawn thus.”

Zedd leaned forward on his knees. With practiced precision, he let the dirt drizzle from the side of his fist to quickly trace in demonstration the symbol already drawn on the ground.

“This outer circle represents the beginning of the underworld—the infinite world of the dead. Out beyond this circle, in the underworld, there is nothing else; there is only forever. This is why the Grace is begun here: out of nothing, where there was nothing, Creation begins.”

A square sat inside the outer circle, its corners touching the circle. The square contained another circle just large enough to touch the insides of the square. The center circle held an eight-pointed star. Straight lines drawn last radiated out from the points of the star, piercing all the way through both circles, every other line bisecting a corner of the square.

The square represented the veil separating the outer circle of the spirit world—the underworld, the world of the dead—from the inner circle, which depicted the limits of the world of life. In the center of it all, the star expressed the Light—the Creator—with the rays of His gift of magic coming from that Light passing through all the boundaries.

“I’ve seen it before.” Richard turned his wrists over and rested them across his knees.

The silver wristbands he wore were girded with strange symbols, but on the center of each, at the insides of his wrists, there was a small Grace on each band. As they were on the undersides of the wrists, Kahlan had never before noticed them.

“The Grace is a depiction of the continuum of the gift,” Richard said, “represented by the rays: from the Creator, through life, and at death crossing, the veil to eternity with the spirits in the Keeper’s realm of the underworld.” He burnished a thumb across the designs on one wristband. “It is also a symbol of hope to remain in the Creator’s Light from birth, through life, and beyond, in the afterlife of the underworld.”

Zedd blinked in surprise. “Very good, Richard. But how do you know this?”

“I’ve learned to understand the jargon of emblems, and I’ve read a few things about the Grace.”

“The jargon of emblems . . . ?” Kahlan could see that Zedd was making a great effort at restraining himself. “You need to know, my boy, that a Grace can invoke alchemy of consequence. A Grace, if drawn with dangerous substances such as sorcerer’s sand, or used in some other ways, can have profound effects—”

“Such as altering the way the worlds interact so as to accomplish an end,” Richard finished. He looked up. “I’ve read a little about it.”

Zedd sat back on his heels. “More than a little, it would seem. I want you to tell us everything you’ve been doing since I was with you last.” He shook a finger. “Every bit of it.”

“What’s a fatal Grace?” Richard asked, instead.

Zedd leaned in, this time clearly astounded. “A what?”

“Fatal Grace,” Richard murmured as his gaze roamed the drawing on the floor.

Kahlan didn’t have any more idea what Richard was talking about than did Zedd, but she was familiar with his behavior. Now and again she had seen Richard like this, almost as if he were in another place, asking curious questions while he considered some dim, dark dilemma. It was the way of a Seeker.

It was also a red flag that told her he believed there was something seriously amiss. She felt goose bumps tingling up her forearms.

Kahlan caught the grave twitch of Ann’s brow. Zedd was straining near to bursting with a thousand questions, but Kahlan knew that he, too, was familiar with the way Richard sometimes lost himself for inexplicable reasons and asked unexpected questions. Zedd was doing his best to oblige them.

Zedd rubbed his fingertips along the furrows of his forehead, taking a breath to gather his patience. “Bags, Richard, I’ve never heard of such a thing as a fatal Grace. Where did you?”

“Just something I read somewhere,” Richard murmured. “Zedd, can you put up another boundary? Call forth a boundary like you did before I was born?”

Zedd’s face scrunched up in sputtering frustration. “Why would I—”

“To wall off the Old World and stop the war.”

Caught off guard, Zedd paused with his mouth hanging open, but then a grin spread, stretching his wrinkled hide tight across the bones of his face.

“Very good, Richard. You are going to make a fine wizard, always thinking of how to make magic work for you to prevent harm and suffering.” The smile faded. “Very good thinking, indeed, but no, I can’t do it again.”

“Why not?”

“It was a spell of threes. That means it was bound up in three of this and three of that. Powerful spells are usually well protected—a prescript of threes being only one means of keeping dangerous magic from being easily loosed. The boundary spell was one of those. I found it in an ancient text from the great war.

“Seems you take after your grandfather, taking an interest in reading old books full of odd things.” His brow drew down. “The difference is, I had studied my whole life, and I knew what I was doing. Knew the dangers and how to avoid or minimize them. Knew my own abilities and limitations. Big difference, my boy.”

“There were only two boundaries,” Richard pressed.

“Ah well, the Midlands were embroiled in a horrific war with D’Hara.” Zedd folded his legs under himself as he told the story.

“I used the first of the three to learn how to work the spell, how it functioned, and how to unleash it. The second I used to separate the Midlands and D’Hara—to stop the war. The last of the three I used to partition off Westland, for those who wanted a place to live free of magic, thereby preventing an uprising against the gifted.”

Kahlan had a hard time imagining what a world without magic would be like. The whole concept seemed grim and dark to her, but she knew there were those who wanted nothing more than to live their lives free from magic. Westland, though not vast, provided such a place. At least it had for a time, but no longer.

“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?”

“Marlin Pickard,” Kahlan said.

“Marlin!” Ann sighed with a shake of her head. “The poor boy. What happened to him?”

“The Mother Confessor killed him,” Cara said without hesitation. “She is a true sister of the Agiel.”

Ann folded her hands in her lap and leaned toward Kahlan. “But how did you ever find out—”

“We would expect him to try such a thing again,” Richard interrupted, drawing Ann’s attention back. “But can a dream walker invade the mind of . . . of something other than a person?”

Ann considered the question with more patience than Kahlan thought it merited. “No. I don’t believe so.”

“You ‘don’t believe so.’ ” Richard cocked his head. “Are you guessing, or are you certain? It’s important. Please don’t guess.”

She shared a long look with Richard before finally shaking her head. “No. He can’t do such a thing.”

“She’s right,” Zedd insisted. “I know enough about what he can do to know what he can’t do. A soul is needed. A soul like his own. Otherwise, it just won’t work. Same as he couldn’t project his mind into a rock to see what it was thinking.”

With his first finger, Richard stroked his lower lip. “Then it’s not Jagang,” he muttered to himself.

Zedd rolled his eyes in exasperation. “What’s not Jagang?”

Kahlan sighed. Sometimes attempting to follow Richard’s reasoning was like trying to spoon ants.