Soul of the Fire (113 page)

It was as forbidding a place as Richard had heard, the highlands above the Nareef Valley: a bleak wasteland. The wind howled in dirty gusts.

He would expect Joseph Ander to pick such a place.

The mountains surrounding the dead lake were just as dead. They were rocky, brown, and barren of life, their peaks all crowned with snow. The thousands of runnels coming down the slopes sparkled in the sunlight, like fangs.

Juxtaposed with the bleak wasteland was the green of the paka plants, which looked almost like water lilies in the vast waters stretching across the wide lap of the surrounding mountains.

Richard had left the horses down lower and climbed the narrow foot trail he found that led up to the lake. He had tied the horses on loose tethers and removed their tack, so that if he failed to return, they could eventually escape.

Only one thing drove him on, and that was his love for Kahlan. He had to banish the chimes so that he could heal her. It was his sole purpose in life. He stood now on the sterile soil beside the poison waters, knowing what he had to do.

He had to outthink, outcreate Joseph Ander.

There was no key to the riddle of the chimes; there was no answer. There was no solution waiting to be found. Joseph Ander left no seam in his tapestry of magic.

His only chance was to do what Joseph Ander never would have expected. Richard had studied the man enough to understand the way he thought. He knew what Ander believed, and what he expected people would try. Richard could do none of those things and expect to succeed. Richard would do that which Joseph Ander chided the wizards to do, but which they couldn’t see.

He only hoped he had the strength to see it through to the end. He had ridden hard in the day, switching horses so they would make it and yet be able to take him back. At night he had walked them until he could walk no more.

He was exhausted, and hoped only that he could hold out long enough. Long enough for Kahlan.

From the gold-worked leather pouch on his belt he pulled white sorcerer’s sand. With the sand, Richard carefully began drawing a Grace. Starting with the rays representing the gift, he drew it exactly opposite from the way Zedd told him it must be drawn. He stood in the center, laying the lines of the gift inward, toward himself.

He drew the star, representing the Creator, next, and then the circle of life, and the square for the veil, and lastly, the outer circle for the beginning of the underworld.

Imagination, Joseph Ander had said, was what made a great wizard, for only a wizard with imagination was able to transcend the limitations of tradition.

A Grace might rise in obedience to an inventive spell.

Richard intended to raise more than that.

From his place inside the Grace, Richard lifted his fists to the sky.

“
Reechani! Sentrosi! Vasi! I call you forth!”

He knew what they needed. Joseph Ander had told him.

“
Reechani! Sentrosi! Vasi! I call you forth and offer you my soul!”

The water rippled as the wind rose. The water moved with deliberate intent. The wind coming across the water ignited into roiling flame.

They were coming.

Richard, charged with need and with anger, lowered his arms, pointing his fists off toward the edge of the lake, where it flowed at last over the rocky lip and on down into the Nareef Valley. His entire being focused there.

Through his need and his anger, he called the Subtractive side of his power, the side from the darkest things, the side from the underworld, from the shadows in the dark forever of the netherworld.

Black lightning exploded, the bolts from his fists twisting together in a rope of howling annihilation focused by his need, powered by his wrath.

The edge of the mountain lake erupted in violence. The rock beyond disintegrated in a shower of steam and rubble from the touch of the black lightning. In an instant, the lower lake shore at the edge was no more. The destructive force of the Subtractive Magic vaporized it out of existence.

With a thundering roar, the lake began to empty.

The water churned as it pulled itself over the side. The edge foamed and frothed. The paka plants swirled with the water, tearing from the lake bottom. The vast lake of poisonous water plummeted over the brink.

The fire coming across the lake, the wind on the water, and the churning water itself slowed as they approached. These were the essence of the chimes, the distillation that spoke for them.

“
Come to me,” Richard commanded. “I offer you my soul.”

As the chimes began to circle ever closer, Richard drew something else from the pouch at his belt.

And then, out in the lake, as it emptied, leaving a muddy bottom where poisonous water receded, there came a shimmering to the air just above the falling water. Something began to coalesce. To take form in the world of life.

Wavering in the air above the surface of the water, a figure began to appear. A robed figure. An old man made of smoke and glimmering light. A figure in pain.

Richard threw his fists up again. “Reechani! Sentrosi! Vasi! Come to me!”

And they did. Around him swept the substance of death. It was almost more than Richard could take, standing there in the center of a maelstrom of death. It was as abhorrent a feeling as he had ever felt.

The chimes called to him with seductive sounds from another world. Richard let them. He smiled at their summons.

He let them come, these thieves of souls.

And then he lifted his arm to point.

“
Your master.”

The chimes howled around him with rage. They recognized the one rising up before them.

“
There he is, slaves. Your master.”

“
Who calls me!” came a cry from across the water.

“
Richard Rahl, descendant of Alric. I am the one who has come to be your master, Joseph Ander.”

“
You have found me in my sanctuary. You are the first. I commend you.”

“
And I condemn you, Joseph Ander, to your place in the afterlife, where all must go when their time here is done.”

Chimes of laughter rang out over the lake.

“
Finding me is one thing, disturbing me another. But to dictate to me is altogether different. You have not the power to begin to do such a thing. You cannot even envision what I can create.”

“
Ah, but I have,” Richard called out over the falling water. “Water, hear me. Air, see what I show you. Fire, feel the truth of it.”

Around him, the three chimes turned and spun, wary of what he had to offer them.

Again, Richard thrust out his hand. “This is your master, the one who appropriated you to his bidding, instead of yours. There is his soul, stripped bare for you.”

Concern darkened the face of Joseph Ander’s form. “What are you doing? What do you think you can accomplish with this?”

“
Truth, Joseph Ander. I strip you of the lie of your existence.”

Richard lifted a hand, opening it toward Joseph Ander, opening the hand that held the balance—the black sorcerer’s sand. Richard let a trickle of black lightning crackle between them.

“
There he is, Reechani. Hear him. There he is, Vasi. See him. There he is, Sentrosi, feel him through my touch.”

Joseph Ander tried to throw back magic of his own, but he had consigned himself to another world, one of his own making. He could not bridge that void. But Richard had called him, and could reach through.

“
Now, my chimes, this is your choice. My soul, or his. The man who would not surrender his soul to the afterlife. The man who would not go to your master in the underworld, but became your master in this world, where he enslaved you for all this time.

“
Or my soul, standing here, in the center of this Grace, where I will pull you to me, and you will serve me in this world as you have served him.

“
Choose, then: taking vengeance, or going back to slavery.”

“
He lies!” Ander’s spirit cried out.

The storm of chimes around Richard made their choice. They saw the truth Richard had presented them. They crackled across the bridge Richard had created, the void in the world of life.

The world shook with the ferocity of it.

Across that bridge, with a howl of rage that could come only from the world of the dead, they seized Joseph Ander’s soul and took him with them back to that world, whence they had come. They took him home.

In an instant that stretched for an eternity, the veil between those worlds was open. In that instant, death and life touched.

In the sudden silence that followed, Richard held his hands out in front of himself. He seemed to be whole. He found that remarkable.

The realization of what he had just done came over him. He had created magic. He had righted what Joseph Ander had wrongly corrupted.

Now he had to get back to Kahlan, if she was still alive. He made himself banish that thought. She had to be alive.
 

With a gasp, Zedd opened his eyes. It was dark. He groped and found walls of rock. He stumbled forward, toward light. Toward sound.

He realized he was back in his body. He was no longer in the raven. He didn’t understand how that could be. It was real, though. He looked at his hands. Not feathers, hands.

He had his soul back.

He fell to his knees, weeping with relief. To lose his soul was beyond what he expected. And he had expected the worst.

Without his soul, he had been able to inhabit the raven. He brightened a bit. That was an experience he had never had. No wizard had ever succeeded in projecting himself into an animal. And to think, it had only required surrendering his soul.

He decided that once was enough.

He walked on toward the light, toward the roar of water. He remembered where he was. Reaching the edge, he dove into the lake and swam to the far shore.

Zedd dragged himself out on the far bank. Without thinking, he swept a hand down his robes to dry himself.

And then he realized his power was back. His strength, his gift was back.

At a sound he looked up. Spider nuzzled him.

Grinning, Zedd rubbed the friendly, soft nose. “Spider, girl. Good to see you, my friend. Good to see you.”

Spider snorted her pleasure, too.

Zedd found the saddle and the rest of the tack where he had left it. Just for the delight of it, he floated the blanket and saddle onto Spider’s back. Spider thought it interesting. Spider was a good sport, and a good horse.

Zedd turned at a sound from above. Something was coming down the mountain. Water. The lake, for some reason, had given way. It was all coming down.

Zedd sprang up onto Spider. “Time to get out of here, girl.”

Spider obliged him.
 

Dalton had just come back into his office when he heard someone come in behind him. It was Stein. When the man turned to close the door, Dalton glanced to the bottom of Stein’s cape, and saw the scalp he had added.

Dalton went to the side table and poured himself a glass of water. He was feeling warm and a little dizzy.

Well, that was to be expected.

“
What do you want, Stein?”