Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [57]
Richard turned to Zedd, who still sat with his arms folded across his chest, watching. The sunlight gave Zedd’s wrinkles deep shadows. The lines and sharp angles of his familiar face seemed somehow different. He looked grim, resolute— somehow more like a wizard. Their eyes met and held each other. Richard was decided. He would tell his friend no. He would help, and would stand by them. His life, too, depended on this. But he would not be the Seeker. Before he could say so, Zedd spoke.
“Kahlan, tell Richard how Darken Rahl questions people.” His voice was quiet, calm. He didn’t look at her, instead continuing to hold Richard’s eyes.
Her voice was barely audible. “Zedd, please.”
“Tell him.” This time his voice was harder, more forceful. “Tell him what he does with the curved knife he keeps at his belt.”
Richard looked away from Zedd’s eyes to her pale face. After a moment she held out her hand, and looked up at him with sad, green eyes, beckoning him to come to her. He stood a moment, wary, then came and took her hand. She pulled him down toward her. He sat, straddling the bench, facing her, waiting for what it was she was bidden to say, fearing it.
Kahlan shifted toward him, hooking some hair behind an ear, and looked down at his right hand as she held it in both of hers, stroking the back of it with her thumbs. Her fingers were gentle, soft, and warm against his palm. The size of her hands made his seem awkwardly large. She spoke quietly and didn’t look up.
“Darken Rahl is a practitioner of an ancient form of magic called anthropomancy. He divines the answers to questions by the inspection of living human entrails.”
Richard felt his anger ignite.
“It’s of limited use; he can at most get a yes or no to a single question, and sometimes, a name. Nonetheless, he continues to favor its use. I’m sorry, Richard. Please forgive me for telling you this.”
Memories of his father’s kindness, his laughter, his love, his friendship, their time together with the secret book, and a thousand other brief glimpses tore through him in a flood of anguish. The scenes and sounds converged into dim shadows and hollow echoes in Richard’s mind and melted away. It its place, memories of the bloodstains on the floor, the white faces of the people there, images of his father’s pain and terror, and the things Chase had told him flashed vividly in snatches through his mind. He didn’t try to stop them, but instead pulled them onward, hungering for them. He washed himself in the detail of it all, felt the twisting torment. Pain flared up from a pit deep inside him. Invoked heedlessly, it came screaming forth. In his mind he added the shadowed figure of Darken Rahl, hands dripping crimson blood, standing over his father’s body, holding the red, glinting blade. He held the vision before him, twisting it, inspecting it, drinking it into his soul. The picture was complete now. He had his answers. He knew how it had been. How his father had died. Until now that was all he had ever sought—answers. In his whole life, he had never gone beyond that simple quest.
In one white-hot instant that changed.
The door that held back his anger, and the wall of reason containing his temper, burned away in a flash of hot desire. A lifetime of rational thinking evaporated before his searing fury. Lucidity became dross in a cauldron of molten need.
Richard reached out to the Sword of Truth, curled his fingers around the scabbard, gripping it tighter and tighter until his knuckles were white. The muscles in his jaw flexed. His breathing came fast and sharp. He saw nothing else of what was around him. The heat of anger surged forth from the sword,