Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [27]
Kahlan snapped a piece off a dry stick and tossed it into the fire, where it flamed into a bright ember.
“Well, it is a long story. If you want I will tell you some of it.” When she turned to him, he nodded for her to go on.
“Long ago, back in the time before our parents were born, D’Hara was just a confederation of kingdoms, as was the Midlands. The most ruthless of the D’Haran rulers was Panis Rahl. He was avaricious. From the first day of his reign, he started swallowing up all of D’Hara for himself, one kingdom after another, many times before the ink was dry on a peace treaty. In the end, he held sway over all of D’Hara, but instead of satisfying him, it only whetted his appetite, and he soon turned his attention to the lands that are now the Midlands. The Midlands is a loose confederation of free lands; free, at least, to rule as they see fit, and only so long as they live in peace with each other.
“By the time Rahl had conquered all of D’Hara, the peoples of the Midlands had seen what he was about, and were not to be taken so easily. They knew that signing a peace treaty with him was as good as signing an invitation to invasion. Instead, they chose to remain free, and joined together, through the council of the Midlands, in a common defense. Many of the free lands held no favor with each other, but they knew that if they did not fight together, they would die separately, one at a time.
“Panis Rahl threw the might of D’Hara against them. War raged for many years.”
Kahlan broke off another piece of the stick and fed it to the fire. “As his legions were finally slowed and then halted, Rahl turned to magic. There is magic in D’Hara, too, not just in the Midlands. Back then there was magic everywhere. There were no separate lands, no boundaries. Anyway, Panis Rahl was ruthless in his use of magic against the free people. He was terribly brutal.”
“What kind of magic? What did he do?”
“Some was trickery, sickness, fevers, but the worst of it was the shadow people.”
Richard frowned. “Shadow people? What were they?”
“Shadows in the air. Shadow people had no solid form, no precise shape, they were not even alive as we know it, but beings created out of magic.” She held out her hand, gliding it across in front of them. “They would come floating across a field or through a wood. Weapons had no effect on them. Swords and arrows went through them as if they were nothing more than smoke. You couldn’t hide; shadow people could see you anywhere. One would drift right up to a person and touch him. The touch caused the person’s whole body to blister and swell and finally split open. No one touched by a shadow person ever survived. Whole battalions were found killed to a man.”
She pulled her hand back inside the blanket. “When Panis Rahl started using the magic in that way, a great and honorable wizard joined the side of the Midlands cause.”
“What was his name, this great and honorable wizard?”
“That is part of the story. Have patience until I get to it.”
Richard stirred some spices into the soup, listening intently while she resumed her story.
“Many thousands had already died in battle, but the magic killed many more.
It was a dark time, after all those years of struggle, to have so many taken by the magic Rahl called forth. But with the help of the great wizard holding Panis Rahl’s magic in check, his legions were driven back into D’Hara.”
Richard added a stick of birch to the fire. “How did this great and honorable wizard stop the shadow people?”
“He conjured up battle horns for the armies. When the shadow people came, our men blew the horns and magic swept the shadow people away like smoke in the wind. It turned the course of battle to our side.
“The wars had been devastating, but it was concluded that going into D’Hara to destroy Rahl and his forces would be too costly. Yet something had to be done to keep Panis Rahl from trying again, as they knew he would, and many were more frightened of the magic than of the hordes from D’Hara, and they wanted to have nothing to do