Richard shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I am quite sure that Rahl’s followers think we are bloodthirsty monsters, capable of anything. They will have been told endless tales of their enemy’s ruthless brutality. I’m sure none of them know much about Darken Rahl except what they have been told by Darken Rahl.” The wizard frowned, his intelligent eyes sharp. “It may be a perversion of logic, but that makes it no less threatening, or deadly. Rahl’s followers need only to crush us, they don’t have to understand anything else. But for you to win, against a stronger foe, you must use your head.”
Richard ran his fingers through his hair. “That leaves me stuck in an awfully tight crack. I may have to let innocent people die, yet I can’t kill Darken Rahl.”
Zedd gave him a meaningful look. “No. I never said you couldn’t kill Darken Rahl—I said you couldn’t use the sword to kill him.”
Richard looked intently over at his old friend, the moonlight dim on the other’s angular face. Sparks of thought lit in the darkness of his mood.
“Zedd,” he asked quietly, “have you had to do that? Have you had to let innocent people die?”
Zedd’s face turned hard, and pensive. “In the last war, and again now, as we speak. Kahlan told me Rahl kills people to get my name. No one can give it, but he continues to kill in the hope someone will finally offer it. I could turn myself over to him to stop the killing, but then I wouldn’t be able to help defeat him—and many more would die. It’s a painful choice, let a few die horribly, or let even more die horribly.”
“I’m sorry, my friend.” Richard wrapped his cloak tighter about himself, chilled from without and from within. He looked back out over the still landscape, then back at Zedd. “I met the night wisp, Shar, before she died. She gave her life to get Kahlan here, so others might live. Kahlan also bears the burden of letting others die.”
“She does,” Zedd said softly. “It makes my heart ache to know the things that girl’s eyes have seen. And the things your eyes may have to see.”
“Makes my problem about the two of us seem pretty small.”
Zedd’s expression was gentle with compassion. “But not hurt any less.”
Richard made another scan of the countryside. “Zedd, one more thing. Before we reached your house, I offered Kahlan an apple.”
Zedd gave a surprised laugh. “You offered a red fruit to someone from the Midlands? That’s tantamount to a death threat, my boy. In the Midlands, red fruit of any kind is deadly poison.”
“Yes, I know that now, but I didn’t at the time.”
Zedd leaned over, lifting an eyebrow. “What did she say?”
Richard looked at him sideways. “It isn’t what she said, it’s what she did. She grabbed me by the throat. For a moment, I could see in her eyes that she was going to kill me. I don’t know how she was going to kill me, but I’m sure she was going to do it. She hesitated long enough for me to explain. The point is, she was my friend, and she had saved my life several times, but in that instant she was going to kill me.” Richard paused. “That’s part of what you are saying, isn’t it?”
Zedd let out a long breath and nodded. “It is. Richard, if you suspected I was a traitor, weren’t sure, just suspected, and you knew that if it were true, our cause would be lost, would you be able to kill me? If you had no time or way to find the truth, only the strong belief I was a traitor, and only you knew, could you kill me on the spot? Could you come at me, your old friend, with lethal intent? With enough violence to see the job done?”
Zedd’s stare burned into him. Richard was stunned. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, you had better know that you could, or you have no business going after Rahl. You won’t have the resolve to live, to win. You may be called upon to make a life-and-death decision instantly. Kahlan knows this, she knows the consequences if she fails. She has the resolve.”
“She hesitated, though. From what you’re saying, she made a mistake. I could have overpowered her. She should have killed me before I had a chance to.” Richard frowned. “And she would have been wrong.”
Zedd shook his head slowly. “Don’t flatter yourself, Richard. She had her hand on you. Anything you would have done wouldn’t have been quick enough. All it would have taken is a thought on her part. She was in control and could afford to give you the chance to explain. She made no mistake.”
A little shaken, Richard still wasn’t ready to concede the issue. “But you wouldn’t, you couldn’t be a traitor to us, just as I would never hurt her. I don’t see the point.”
“The point is, even though I wouldn’t, if I did, you have to be prepared to act. You have to have the strength to do even that, if necessary. The point is that even though Kahlan knew you were her friend, and wouldn’t hurt her, when she thought you were trying to, she was prepared to act. If you hadn’t quickly made her believe you, she would have.”
Richard sat in silence for a moment, watching his friend. “Zedd, if it were the other way around, if you thought I was a danger to our cause, well, you know, could you . . . ?”
The wizard leaned back, frowning, and without a hint of emotion in his voice, said, “In a twinkling.”
The answer appalled Richard, but he understood what his friend was telling him, even if the whole idea seemed farfetched—anything less than total commitment could spell their failure. If they faltered, Rahl would not be merciful. They would die. It was that simple.
“Still want to be Seeker?” Zedd asked.
Richard stared out at nothing. “Yes.”
“Scared?”
“To the bone.”
Zedd patted his knee. “Good. Me too. I would worry only if you were not.”
The Seeker gave the wizard an icy glare. “I intend to make Darken Rahl afraid too.”
Zedd smiled and nodded. “You are going to make a good Seeker, my boy. Have faith.”
Richard gave a mental shudder at the thought of Kahlan killing him just for offering her an apple. He frowned. “Zedd? Why are all red fruits in the Midlands deadly poison? It isn’t natural.”
The wizard gave a sorrowful shake of his head. “Because, Richard, children like red fruit.”
Richard’s frown deepened. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Zedd looked down, pushing a bony finger at the dirt for a moment. “It was about this time of year, in the last war. The harvests were in. I had found a constructed magic. That’s a magic made by wizards of long ago. Something like the boxes of Orden. It was a poison magic, specific to color, and only able to cast one spell, one time. I wasn’t sure how it was used, but I knew it was dangerous.” Zedd took a deep breath and put his hands in his lap. “Anyway, Panis Rahl got his hands on it, and figured out how to make it work. He knew children loved fruit, and wanted to strike a blow at our hearts. He used the magic to poison all red fruit. It’s a little like the poison of the snake vine. Slow at first. It took time for us to realize what caused the fever, and death. Panis Rahl deliberately chose something he could be sure children, not just the adults, would eat.” His voice was barely audible as he looked out into the darkness. “A lot of people died. A lot of children.”
Richard’s eyes were wide. “If you found it, how did he get hold of it?”
Zedd looked into Richard’s eyes with an expression that could have frozen a summer day. “I had a student, a young man I was training. One day I chanced upon him tinkering with something he shouldn’t have been. I had an odd doubt about him. I knew something was wrong, but I was very fond of him and so I didn’t act upon my suspicion. Instead, I decided to think on it for the night. The next morning, he was gone, and so was the constructed magic I had found. He had been a spy for Panis Rahl. If I had acted when I should have, and killed him, all those people, all those children, wouldn’t have died.”
Richard swallowed. “Zedd, you couldn’t have known.” He thought that maybe the old man was going to yell, or cry, or storm off, but instead he only shrugged. “Learn fro
m my mistake, Richard. If you do, then all those lives won’t have been lost for nothing. Maybe their story can be a lesson that will help save everyone from what Darken Rahl will do if he wins.”
Richard rubbed his arms, trying to work a bit of warmth back into them. “Why isn’t the red fruit in Westland poison?”
“All magic has limits. This had a limit of distance from where it was used. It stretched as far as where the boundary between Westland and the Midlands went up. The boundary couldn’t be put up where any of the poison spell was, or Westland would have had magic in it.”
Richard sat in the dark, cold silence and thought for a time. At last he asked, “Is there any way to get rid of it? To make the red fruit no longer poison?”
Zedd smiled. Richard thought it an odd thing to do, but he was glad to see it: “Thinking like a wizard, my boy. Thinking how to undo magic.” He frowned in thought as he looked out into the night again. “There might be a way to remove the spell. I would have to study it and see what I could do. If we can defeat Darken Rahl, I intend to put my mind to the task.”
“Good.” Richard tugged his cloak tighter. “Everyone should be able to eat an apple when they want. Especially children.” He looked over at the old man. “Zedd, I promise I will remember your lesson. I won’t let you down. I won’t let all those people who died be forgotten.”
Zedd smiled and gave Richard’s back an affectionate rub.
The two friends sat in silence, sharing the stillness of the night and the quiet of each other’s understanding, thinking about what they could not know: what was to come.
Richard thought about what needed to be done, about Panis Rahl, and about Darken Rahl. He thought about how hopeless everything seemed. Think about the solution, he told himself, not the problem—you are the Seeker.
“I need you to do something, wizard. I think it is time for us to disappear. Rahl has followed us long enough. What can you do about that cloud?”
“You know, I think you’re right. I only wish I knew how it was hooked to you, so I could unhook it, but I can’t figure it out so, I will have to do something else.” He contemplatively drew his finger and thumb down the sharp sides of his jaw. “Has it rained, or been overcast since it first started following you?”‘
Richard thought back, trying to remember every day. Most of the time he had been in a fog over his father’s murder. It seemed so long ago. “The night before I found the snake vine, it rained in the Ven, but by the time I got there, it had cleared off. No, no rain. I don’t remember it being cloudy since my father’s murder. At least, nothing more than a few high, thin clouds. What does that mean?”
“Well, it means I think there is a way to fool the cloud, even if I can’t unhook it. Since the sky has been clear all that time, that means Rahl probably has been responsible. He has moved the other clouds away so he could easily find this one. Simple, but effective.”
“How could he move the clouds away?”
“He put a spell on this one to repel other clouds, and somehow hooked this one to you.”
“Then why don’t you put a stronger spell on it to attract other clouds—before he realizes it, it will be lost, and he won’t be able to find it to try to outdo your magic. If he does use stronger magic to move the clouds away to find this one, he won’t know what you have done, and the stronger spell that pushes the clouds away will break the hook.”
Zedd gave him an incredulous look, his eyes blinked. “Bags, Richard, you have gotten it exactly right! My boy, I think you would make an excellent wizard.”
“No, thanks. I already have one impossible job.”
Zedd drew back a little and frowned, but didn’t say anything. His thin hand reached into his robes and pulled out a rock, tossing it on the ground in front of them. He stood and his fingers spun around in a circle over the little rock until, suddenly, it popped into a large rock.
“Zedd! That’s your cloud rock!”
“Actually, my boy—it’s a wizard’s rock. My father gave it to me, long ago.”
The wizard’s finger stirred faster and faster until light came forth, sparkles and colors, swirling around. He continued to stir, mixing and blending the light. There was no sound, only the pleasant smell of a spring rain. At last the wizard seemed satisfied.
“Step up on the rock, my boy.”
Unsure at first, Richard stepped into the light. It tingled and felt warm against his skin, as if he were lying in the hot summer sun without clothes, after a swim. He let himself bask in the warm, safe feeling, gave himself over to it. His hands floated outward from his sides until they were horizontal. He tilted his head back, took deep breaths, and closed his eyes. It felt wondrous, like floating in water, only he was floating in light. Exhilaration soaked through him. His mind felt a buoyant, timeless connection to everything around him. He was one with the trees, the grass, the bugs, the birds, the animals all around, the water, the very air itself—not a separate being, but part of a whole. He understood the interconnection of everything in a new way, saw himself as inconsequential and empowered at the same time. He saw the world through the eyes of all the creatures around him. It was a shocking, marvelous insight. He let himself soar into a bird that flew overhead, saw the world through its eyes, hunted with it, hungry and needful, for mice, watched the campfire below, the people sleeping.
Richard let his identity scatter to the wind. He became no one and everyone, felt the heat of their needs, smelled their fear, tasted their joy, understood their desires, and then let it all melt away into nothingness, until there was a void where he stood, alone in the universe, the only living thing, the only thing existing at all. Then he let the light flood through him, light that brought forth the others that had used this very rock: Zedd, Zedd’s father, and the wizards before that, for untold years, thousands of years, one and all. Their essence flowed through him, shared themselves with him as tears streamed down his cheeks at the wonder of it all.
Zedd’s hands sprang forward, loosing his magic dust. It swirled about Richard, glittering fluidly, until he was at the center of its vortex. The sparkles tightened their rotation and gathered at his chest. With a tinkling sound like a crystal chandelier in the wind, the dust climbed away into the sky as if climbing a kite string, taking the sound with it as it went, higher and higher, until it reached the cloud. The cloud took in the magic dust and was lit from within by roiling colors. All across the horizon lightning flashed, ragged streaks ripping this way and that, called forth, eager, expectant.
All at once the lightning stopped, the illumination in the cloud faded and was gone, and the light from the wizard’s rock pulled itself inward until it was extinguished. There was sudden silence. Richard was there again, standing on a simple rock. He looked, wide-eyed, at Zedd’s smiling face.
“Zedd,” he whispered, “now I know why you stand on this rock all the time. I’ve never felt anything like that in my life. I had no idea.”
Zedd smiled knowingly. “You’re a natural, my boy. You held your arms just right, your head had the proper tilt, you even arched your back correctly. You took to it like a duckling to a pond. You have all the makings of a fine wizard.” He leaned forward, gleefully. “Now just try to imagine doing it naked.”
“It makes a difference?” Richard asked in amazement.
“Of course. The clothes interfere with the experience.” Zedd put his arm around Richard’s shoulder. “Someday I will let you try it.”
“Zedd, why did you have me do that? It wasn’t necessary. You could have done it.”
“How do you feel now?”
“I don’t know. Different. Relaxed. More clearheaded. I guess not as overpowered, not as depressed.”
“That’s why I let you do it, my friend, because you needed it. You have had a hard night. I can’t change the problems, but I could help you feel better.”
“Thank you, Zedd.”
“Go get some sleep, it’s my watch now.” He gave Richard a wink. “If you ever change your mind about bec
oming a wizard, I would be proud to welcome you into the brotherhood.”
Zedd held up his hand. Out of the darkness, the piece of cheese he had thrown away floated back to him.
Chapter 14
Chase reined in his horse. “Here. This will be a good place.”
He led the other three off the trail through an open tract of long-dead spruce, the silver-gray skeletons standing bare of all but a few branches and an occasional wisp of dull green moss. The soft ground was littered with the rotting corpses of the former monarchs. Brown bog weed, its broad, flat leaves laid down in haphazard fashion by past storms, looked like a tangled sea of dead snakes underfoot.
The horses picked their way carefully among the tangle. Warm air, heavy with humidity, carried the fetid smell of decay. A fog of mosquitoes followed them as they went, the only things alive as far as Richard could tell. As open as this place was, little brightness was offered by the sky, as a thick, uniform overcast of clouds hung oppressively close to the ground. Trailers of mist dragged across the silver spikes of the trees that remained standing, leaving them wet and slick.
Chase led the way for Zedd and then Kahlan, with Richard following behind, watching over them as they twisted their way along. Visibility was limited to less than a few hundred feet, and even though Chase didn’t seem to be concerned, Richard kept a sharp lookout—anything could sneak up close before they would be able to see it. All four swatted at the mosquitoes, and except for Zedd, they kept their cloaks tight for protection. Zedd, who shunned wearing a cloak, nibbled on the remnants of lunch, looking about as if on a sightseeing excursion. Richard had an excellent sense of direction but was glad they had Chase to lead them. Everything in the bog looked the same, and he knew from experience how easy it would be to become lost.
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