Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [376]
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 arms 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?”
Kahlan ran her fingers through the pale blue light that vibrated around her, stroking it, caressing it, bathing in it. Demmin Nass and one of his men watched her, but held their ground, waiting. Her eyes gazed at things they couldn’t see. Her eyes were in another world. Her eyes, Zedd knew, were seeing the memory of Richard.
“It’s called the Con Dar. The Blood Rage.” Zedd looked slowly from Kahlan to the boundary warden. “It’s something only a few of the strongest Confessors can do. And she should not be able to do it at all.”
Chase frowned. “Why not?”
“Because it must be taught by her real mother; only the mother can teach how to bring it on, if there be call enough. It’s an ancient magic, ancient as the Confessor’s magic, part of it, but rarely used. It can only be taught after the daughter reaches a certain age. Kahlan’s mother died before she could teach her. Adie told me. Kahlan should not be able to do this. Yet she has. That she could do it without having been taught, by instinct and desire alone, speaks to very dangerous things in the prophecies.”
“Well, why didn’t she do it before? Why didn’t she put a stop to what was happening before now?”
“A Confessor can’t invoke it for herself, only on behalf of another. She has invoked it on behalf of Richard. On the rage at his murder. We are in a great deal of trouble.”
“Why?”
“The Con Dar is invoked for vengeance. Confessors who invoke it