Severed Souls(45)

Usually, he cast it out almost as fast as he could conjure the rare substance. This time, he was keeping it in place, as if letting it come to know the world it had just been born into, letting it gather strength. She noticed, too, that the whorls of colors as it burned seemed more intense than she remembered.

Zedd used wizard’s fire only in the most desperate of circumstances to save lives. This time, the lives he was trying to save were not only all of theirs, but that of the Lord Rahl himself, who just happened to be his grandson.

Knowing what was coming, Kahlan snatched up a torn strip of a tunic and covered the horse’s eyes to keep it relatively calm. Warhorses were used to battle and trained for explosions and fire, but she suspected that this one was not.

At the far side of the encampment, along what had formerly been the defensive front line protecting their encampment, the Shun-tuk rapidly realized that those defenses were abruptly gone and, much like a dam bursting, they flooded into the void of the open ledge. They had clear ground to cover and prey they wanted. Now, there was nothing to stop them.

As the last of the soldiers of the First File finally raced past the old wizard, Zedd flung his arms open. At his command, the tightly contained, turbulent furnace of power expanded in an instant and roared away.

The entire area of the open ledge at the foot of the cliff and the towering spruce and pine trees of the forest around them lit under the blinding intensity of yellow-orange flames. Night seemed to turn to day.

The tumbling, liquid inferno raced across the abandoned encampment, shrieking with terrifying menace. The sound it made was so deafening that it caused the Shun-tuk to hesitate. They hunched down, cringing as they covered their ears. Wizard’s fire always howled, but this shrieked with painful intensity.

The tumbling globe of liquid flame remained airborne, passing just above the granite ledge where hundreds of dead Shun-tuk lay sprawled. It lit the entire bloody scene, brightly illuminating the whitewashed dead in such stark relief as it passed above them that it made them look supernatural, like a graveyard of dead spirits.

Kahlan spotted men of the First File lying dead among the Shun-tuk. They were beyond help, now. At least their remains would be turned to ash rather than be eaten by the half people. Dead was dead, and it couldn’t matter to them any longer, but it mattered to Kahlan. Being incinerated somehow seemed better than having the unholy half dead feeding on the remains.

The wizard’s fire, a tumbling, burning fury, hit the ground with such thundering force it shook the trees. Pine needles rained down, igniting as they fell, looking like burning rain. As it crashed down, the dense, blazing, molten orb burst apart, splashing the brightly burning liquid fire out across the open ground. Like a towering rogue wave it swamped the advancing horde of Shun-tuk. It actually lifted many of them up into the air, like so much flotsam, and carried them along in the flow as they were incinerated.

Wizard’s fire burned with unparalleled intensity. It was sticky, and once it was stuck fast, not only could you not get it off, you couldn’t extinguish the flame. It burned until its power was spent. So much as a drop of it stuck to a leg could burn down to the bone. To say that it was excruciatingly painful did not begin to describe the horror of it. Those touched by even a speck of it could think of nothing but getting it off.

Kahlan had seen men in battle splashed with small amounts of it on an arm or hand. They would use their own sword to hack off the limbs to prevent the wizard’s fire from climbing up onto the rest of them. Others, in their mad panic to escape it, would accidentally run into pools of it.

In the blindingly intense light of the exploding sea of fire, Kahlan could see silhouetted Shun-tuk reduced momentarily to little more than black skeletons. In the next instant, even that much vaporized to nothing.

For the most part, as they ran they tried not to look back because of the intensity of the light. It was so blindingly bright that, like the rest of them, Kahlan not only had to turn her face from it, she also squinted against the painful illumination. The wave of heat it gave off felt like it might ignite her hair and melt her skin.

The fire made the horse carrying Richard more than a little skittish. Kahlan kept a firm hold on the reins up near the bit to prevent it from bolting. She was thankful that she had covered the horse’s eyes.

She had no idea of how many of the Shun-tuk were consumed in the burning sea of wizard’s fire, or how many might not be harmed by it at all. She had trouble imagining anyone who would not be harmed by it. She did know that now that it had been unleashed, there was no time to worry about it.

“Let’s go,” she said as she took hold of Zedd’s sleeve.