Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [89]
Richard let his identity scatter to the winds. He became no one and everyone, felt the heat of their needs, smelled their fear, tasted their joy, understood their desires, and then let it all melt away into nothingness, until there was a void where he stood, alone in the universe, the only living thing, the only thing existing at all. Then he let the light flood through him, light that brought forth the others that had used this very rock: Zedd, Zedd’s father, and the wizards before that, for untold years, thousands of years, one and all. Their essence flowed through him, shared themselves with him as tears streamed down his cheeks at the wonder of it all.
Zedd’s hands sprang forward, loosing his magic dust. It swirled about Richard, glittering fluidly, until he was at the center of its vortex. The sparkles tightened their rotation and gathered at his chest. With a tinkling sound like a crystal chandelier in the wind, the dust climbed away into the sky as if climbing a kite string, taking the sound with it as it went, higher and higher, until it reached the cloud. The cloud took in the magic dust and was lit from within by roiling colors. All across the horizon lightning flashed, ragged streaks ripping this way and that, called forth, eager, expectant.
All at once the lightning stopped, the illumination in the cloud faded and was gone, and the light from the wizard’s rock pulled itself inward until it was extinguished. There was sudden silence. Richard was there again, standing on a simple rock. He looked, wide-eyed, at Zedd’s smiling face.
“Zedd,” he whispered, “now I know why you stand on this rock all the time. I’ve never felt anything like that in my life. I had no idea.”
Zedd smiled knowingly. “You’re a natural, my boy. You held your arms just right, your head had the proper tilt, you even arched your back correctly. You took to it like a duckling to a pond. You have all the makings of a fine wizard.” He leaned forward, gleefully. “Now just try to imagine doing it naked.”
“It makes a difference?” Richard asked in amazement.
“Of course. The clothes interfere with the experience.” Zedd put his arm around Richard’s shoulder. “Someday I will let you try it.”
“Zedd, why did you have me do that? It wasn’t necessary. You could have done it.”
“How do you feel now?”
“I don’t know. Different. Relaxed. More clearheaded. I guess not as overpowered, not as depressed.”
“That’s why I let you do it, my friend, because you needed it. You have had a hard night. I can’t change the problems, but I could help you feel better.”
“Thank you, Zedd.”
“Go get some sleep, it’s my watch now.” He gave Richard a wink. “If you ever change your mind about becoming a wizard, I would be proud to welcome you into the brotherhood.”
Zedd held up his hand. Out of the darkness, the piece of cheese he had thrown away floated back to him.
CHAPTER 14
Chase reined in his horse. “Here. This will be a good place.”
He led the other three off the trail through an open tract of long-dead spruce, the silver-gray skeletons standing bare of all but a few branches and an occasional wisp of dull green moss. The soft ground was littered with the rotting corpses of the former monarchs. Brown bog weed, its broad, flat leaves laid down in haphazard fashion by past storms, looked like a tangled sea of dead snakes underfoot.
The horses picked their way carefully among the tangle. Warm air, heavy with humidity, carried the fetid smell of decay. A fog of mosquitoes followed them as they went, the only things alive as far as Richard could tell. As open as this place was, little brightness was offered by the sky, as a thick, uniform overcast of clouds hung oppressively close to the ground. Trailers of mist dragged across the silver