Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Tam escorted him through the ancient forest, helping him find the way. At the edge of the ancient trees, the wisp came to a halt. _ "Baraccus was wise to choose you, Richard Cypher. I believe that you have it in you to succeed. I wish you well."

Richard smiled sadly. He wished he was as sure. He no longer had access to the gift within him — if it was still even there — and he had no idea how he would succeed. Maybe Zedd could help.

"Thank you, Tam. You and the wisps have been good protectors of those things Baraccus left with you. I will do my best to protect you, and the other innocents who are in so much danger."

"If you fail, Richard Cypher, I know that it will not be from lack of effort on your part. If you ever need our help again, as Shar told you, say one of our names and we will try to help you."

Richard nodded and started away, turning once to wave. The wisp spun a rose color for a moment and then vanished back into the trees. He suddenly felt awfully forlorn by the light of the moon alone.

The dead oaks seemed to go on forever. He plodded along in a numb daze. He needed to get some food and rest, but he wanted to get out of the strange wood and back down into the forest first. He saw bones among the roots of the oaks, as if the trees were trying to gather in the dead to hug them to their bosoms.

Somewhere in the dead wood, after walking endlessly, absorbed in his troubled thoughts, Richard felt a sudden chill to the air that made him shudder and gasp the sharp cold into his lungs.

It felt as if he had walked into the fangs of winter.

When he looked up, he spotted what at first looked like an upright shadow among the skulls. When he saw at last what it really was, another shudder shivered up his spine.

It was a tall woman with black, wiry hair. She wore inky black robes. Her skin was as pale as the moon, making her gaunt face seem to float in the darkness. Her desiccated flesh was stretched tight over her bony features, the way he imagined the dead would have looked for a time as they lay lifeless in this forsaken forest, waiting for the worms to do their work.

Her thin, menacing smile marked her unmistakably as the sort to leave the bones of used-up people to rot in just such a place, among the moldering dead.

Richard felt so cold he couldn't move. He realized that he was shivering, but he couldn't seem to make himself stop. He couldn't feel his fingers or toes. He wanted to move, to run, but he couldn't force his legs to move.

He had no gift to summon. He had no sword to draw.

He felt helpless in the beguiling gaze of her blanched blue eyes.

Richard wondered if his lifeless remains would end up discarded in this desolate place to rot, forgotten, along with all the other anonymous bones of those who had come with lofty dreams.

The woman's arms swept up, like a raven's wings lifting, and the night swallowed him.

CHAPTER 42

Kahlan ever so gradually became aware of the bewildering drone of voices, both near and far. She was so dazed, though, that she wasn't sure if it was real or if she was only imagining it. She knew that some of the thoughts streaming endlessly through her mind had to be her imagination, despite how real they seemed. She knew that she wasn't one moment in a flowered field among the stars, the next moment in the middle of a pitched battle with desiccated corpses atop horseback, and the next instant flying through the clouds atop a red dragon's back. It all seemed real, but she knew that it couldn't be.

After all, there weren't any such things as dragons. That was only myth.

But if it really was voices that she was hearing, she couldn't understand the words. They came to her more as disembodied, raw sounds, each tonal pulse resonating painfully with something deep inside her.

What she was sure of was that her head throbbed in a slow rhythm and each time the agonizing beat squeezed, it felt as if her skull would split open from the pressure. As each intermittent cycle subsided, nausea oozed up inside her, only to be forced back into relative insignificance once again by the next, overwhelmingly torturous compression.

Try as she might to open her eyes, Kahlan couldn't lift her heavy lids. It would have taken more strength than she could call forth right then. Besides, she feared that there might be light, and she was sure that light would hurt like long needles stabbing into her defenseless eyes.

It felt as if some unknown, thick pressure were suspending her, keeping her immobile, while a hidden force tortured her under the throbbing pressure. Trying desperately to escape the grip of it, she attempted to bend her arms, but they were too stiff. She tried to move her legs, or even to lift a knee, but her legs were tightly encased in the cocooning, dense darkness.