Wizard's First Rule

Demmin gave a self-satisfied smile, happy with the telling, at seeing her reaction. "As a matter of fact, Mother Confessor, the last I saw of the Seeker, he was on his knees in front of Master Rahl, with Denna's Agiel at the back of his head. I don't think he even knew his own name. Master Rahl wasn't happy at the time. When Master Rahl is unhappy people always die. From what Master Rahl said to me when I left, I'm sure the Seeker never rose from his knees. His corpse is rotten by now." Zedd wept that he couldn't comfort her, that she couldn't comfort him.

Kahlan went dead calm.

Her arms rose slowly into the air, her fists to the sky. Her head rolled back.

She let out an unearthly scream. It went through Zedd like a thousand needles of ice, it echoed against the hills, through the valleys, against the trees all around, making them vibrate. Zedd's breath was taken away. Nass and the other two men stumbled back a few paces.

If he had not already been frozen to stone, he would be now, at the fear of what she was doing. Kahlan should not be able to do this.

She took a deep breath, her fists getting tighter, tears streaming from her face.

Kahlan screamed again. Long, piercing, otherworldly. The sound avalanched through the air. Pebbles danced on the ground. Water danced in the lakes around. The very air danced, and began to move. The men covered their ears. Zedd would have, too, had he been able to move.

She took another deep breath. Her back arched as she stretched to the sky.

The third scream was worse. The magic of it tore through the fabric of the air. Zedd felt as if it would pull his body apart. The air began to turn about her, dust rising at its passing.

Darkness began to gather, the magic of the scream taking the very light away, pulling the darkness as it was pulling the wind. Light and dark moved around the Mother Confessor as she released ancient magic into the scream.

Zedd nearly choked with the fear of what she was doing. He had seen this being done only once before, and it came to no good end. She was joining the Confessor's magic, the additive, the love, with its counterpart from the underworld, the subtractive, the hate.

Kahlan stood screaming in the center of a maelstrom. The light was sucked to her. Darkness fell all about. Where Zedd stood, it was black as night. The only light was around Kahlan. Night around day.

Lightning tore violently across the blackness of the sky, flashing rapidly in every direction, forking, doubling, over and over until the sky burned. Thunder rolled through the countryside, coalescing into a continuous fury, mixing with the scream, becoming part of it.

The ground shook. The scream went beyond sound, to something else entirely. All about, the ground cracked open in jagged, ferocious tears. Shafts of violet light shot upward — from the cracks. The bluish purple curtains of light vibrated, danced, and with gathering speed were pulled into the vortex, sucked to Kahlan. She was a glowing form of light in a sea of darkness. She was the only thing in existence; all else was nothingness, devoid even of light. Zedd could see nothing but Kahlan.

There was a horrific impact to the air all about. In a brief, tremendous flash of light, Zedd saw the trees around them suddenly stripped of pine needles, as every one of them was blown back in a cloud of green. A wall of dust and sand hit his face, feeling as if it would take the skin from his bones in its explosive passing.

The ferocity of the concussion tore the darkness away. The light was returned.

The joining was complete.

Zedd saw Chase standing next to him, watching, his aims still tied behind his back. Boundary wardens, Zedd thought, were tougher than they had a right to be.

Pale blue light coalesced into a jagged egg shape around her, gathered in intensity, purpose, and somehow, violence. Kahlan turned. One arm, the broken one, came down to her side. The other arm stopped halfway down, her fist reaching toward the wizard. The blue light bled from the ring that surrounded her into one spot, where her fist was. It seemed to fuse and in a sudden release, blasted in a line of light through the space between them.

With a solid strike, it hit him, lighting him at contact, as if he were connected to Kahlan by a thread of living light. It bathed him in the pale blue.glow. The wizard felt the familiar touch of additive magic and the unfamiliar tingle of the subtractive, underworld magic. He was thrown back a step; the web that held him shattered. He was free. The line of light extinguished itself

Zedd turned to Chase and parted the ropes with a quick spell. Chase gave a grunt of pain at having his arms free.

"Zedd," he whispered, "what in the name of the prophets is going on? What has she done?"