Wasteland Read online

  In that fraction of a second, everyone seemed to be moving in a dreamlike state so slow that he could see the shock on every face as this sudden new threat materialized out of thin air. The fear and stark terror of what was coming for them was clearly evident on each of those faces. The Mord-Sith, though, lived to defend Richard and Kahlan with their lives, so their fear was layered over with grim resolve, a kind of acknowledgment that they were already dead, so they might as well take down as many of the enemy as they could before there was no power left in their muscles or blood in their veins.

  Richard had time to look at each of their beautiful faces, each an image of intelligent beauty, reflecting what could have come of these women had they not been taken at a young age and twisted into killing machines. But now that was what they were, and that visage overlaid whatever else might lie beneath.

  In that silent, otherworldly state, everyone seemed to Richard to be moving so slowly so as to almost be statues. He could see the fiercely determined expressions on all of the soldiers as the Glee around them ripped at them with claws and teeth. The whole scene, that instant in time, seemed frozen in midair.

  At the same time, Richard could see all the ravenous, wrinkled faces of the Glee—big eyes, small nostril holes, enormous mouths and teeth—all of them struggling in the thick mass, tumbling over one another to be the first to get at Richard and Kahlan. It wasn’t a drive for glory, as a soldier in battle might have, but rather a voracious, communal hunger to kill, like beasts needing to feed.

  Richard knew without a doubt by seeing their big, almond-shaped eyes that their gazes, frozen in that moment in time, were mostly fixed on Kahlan. They had also been sent for Richard, but more importantly, for her first. Their claws were all reaching out, trying to be the first to hook her, to be the first to rip her open, to sink those needle-sharp teeth into her flesh.

  They had been sent to eliminate not merely Kahlan, but the children she carried, the hope she carried.

  He could see in her face that Kahlan knew it as well.

  From within the crackling cocoon of power, Richard could see it all, watch it all, as everyone moved only the width of a hair with each lazy tick of time.

  A kind of sparkling, spiraling, hissing haze swirled up around him, colors flashing up and down within it. Eddies of light rippled through it. Tiny flashes, sparks of energy, ignited all throughout that haze, uncountable numbers glowing with glittering fluidity. Each of those embers sparked out, only to be reborn and set off yet another cascade of glimmering flashes. It was dazzling. The center of the vortex was warm and protective; it was the energy of his own gift expanding outward.

  It reminded him of the first time he stood on Zedd’s wizard’s rock, the way the light threatened to ignite the air around him and the air itself rotated with a dull roar as it swirled like smoke. It engendered that same sense of wonder, that same recognition of unimaginable power being gathered together, of a world he had never known existed coming into being.

  He could just see in his peripheral vision that Kahlan, knowing they were coming for her, had straightened her back, the Mother Confessor ready to release her own power. But Richard knew beyond any doubt that in this case, with as many of the dark creatures as there were charging through the soldiers to get at her, she didn’t stand a chance.

  None of them did.

  Only one thing could stop what was but a heartbeat away from becoming reality. He knew that in two heartbeats, they would all be dead.

  Unless he stopped them.

  Power, ignited by the spark of his rage and fuelled by the singular gift he carried, filled every fiber of his being, swelling through him, around him, a summoned haze of lethal force. It felt hot, sharp, and violent, as if it were erupting from his very soul and tearing its way through him, eager to get to his hands, eager to do his bidding.

  In that quiet, clear instant of inner cognition, of wild rage and hate materialized, he also had time to reflect on everything he had been taught, everything he had read, and everything he had seen about the use of the gift. It was all there in his mind, the memories ready to serve his need. In that instant, it felt as if Zedd were there with him, because this was something Zedd had intimately known and understood.

  Now, Richard felt it. It was him. It was wrath itself.

  Through it all, even as memories of Zedd warmed him, the thing that stood out in his mind, the thing that mattered, was that he was a war wizard, born of a long line of those rare men.

  He had always fought that reality. He had always tried to both master it and avoid it, never comfortable with who he was. But in that crystal-clear instant sparked by raw danger, it all came together.

  This was his purpose, his calling, his need.

  To his other side, Shale was also lifting a hand to use her power. He knew, in the silence of that soft yet unborn instant inside the swirling haze of rage sparkling all around him, that not only was it not enough, but it wasn’t going to be fast enough. What she was able to do couldn’t begin to match the speed and enormity of the threat. At most, she would only have time to take out one or two of what looked like well over a hundred attackers before the attackers overwhelmed and killed them all.

  As much as he admired her courage, this was not for her to do. This was not for the soldiers to do. This was not for the Mord-Sith to do. This was not for the Mother Confessor to do. This was vastly more than any and all of them could begin to do.

  This was for Richard to do.

  In his mind he realized that the totality of it, while at first seeming overwhelming, simply required a computation of position, distance, degree of angles, numbers of each threat, and their rate of speed as they closed the short distance to their victims.

  While the entirety of it was a complex algorithm of various factors, it was, at the same time, a known equation. He knew the foundational formulas from the language of Creation, from notes in a book he had found by First Wizard Baraccus, Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power, written expressly for Richard three thousand years before he had been born. There was also the underlying work done by Baraccus on azimuth observations, and what Richard had learned from the many other books he had read—even The Adventures of Bonnie Day, written by Nathan Rahl—as well as a variety of formulas in the Cerulean scrolls, and several useful ratios from a book his grandfather had once found in the Keep, Continuum Ratios and Viability Predictions. There were computations of gradient angles affected by speed that Richard had already made the same instant he saw the perspective and distances while computing reflective effects of what he intended. He had to factor in the power that he would bring to bear and how it would affect every one of the calculations.

  He saw all of those calculations and computations in his mind’s eye in a flicker of time. They were done almost as soon as he saw what would be necessary.

  Those calculations came together with instinct honed from every experience in his life, from every battle he had fought, every person and creature he had killed. He wondered why he had never realized it in quite that same way before.

  Even as he wondered, he knew that his time spent in the eternity of the underworld—when he had straightened out tangled connections in his gift—had given him inestimable insight he could have gained nowhere else but in the world of the dead.

  All of that power crackling around him, was him. It was a creation of his gift. He had brought it into being. It was his to direct. It was his to wield. It was an extension of his fury.

  In that instant, at the peak of the swirling haze of colors and flashing points of light surging up from his soul, Richard unleashed his rage.

  The air between him and the creatures distorted as it was violently compressed to an infinitely small point. Throughout the palace, through every open window and door, every place open to the sky, air rushed in to fill the void he had created up on the balcony by that sudden compression. It abruptly sucked the air from the lungs of everyone around him, instantly forming ice crystals around their noses and mouth
s. Their eyes bulged from the sudden pressure difference.

  Richard leaned his body forward, arms out, projecting and directing his gift through his hands to push that point he had created toward the enemy. It shifted in among them as they were helplessly suspended in that moment frozen in time. Near the focal point of that pressure gradient some of their chests ripped open from the internal pressure of the air violently escaping as it tried to equalize the pressure in the vacuum around that compression point. Some of their eyes burst.

  As Richard pushed that compression point through their midst to position it where it needed to be in the center of the mass, the tissue nearest the steepest portion of the pressure gradient vaporized. From his point of view, what Richard saw was a hole being tunneled right through the creatures, and unfortunately the soldiers, through flesh and bone and steel as he pushed it to where it was going to need to be. Flesh around the vaporizing tissue shredded as it was sucked in toward the point.

  But that was only in the first infinitesimal fraction of time before he released the heat and energy he had pulled from the air he had compressed into that point.

  Richard, that power’s origin, its genesis, its creator, its commander, gave it what it needed: command.

  He pushed his hands out with the effort of pressing that point of concussion not only tighter but also into the midst of the Glee.

  When he at last released that compressed energy at that central, infinitesimally small point, it expanded with such a violent detonation that it shook the palace and knocked everyone except Richard from their feet.

  The heat of the explosive expansion ignited the air itself. Countless shards of elemental fire, like splinters of white-hot burning glass, tumbled, spun, and flew everywhere inside the expanding discharge of energy. Those glowing splinters of heat flared through everything within the shell of the expanding central point. Flesh, bone, blood, even the steel of the soldiers’ weapons, all fragmented into burning particles that blazed from white hot, to red, to ash, all in one explosive instant.

  Richard, though, could see it all drawn out in its full dynamic display.

  The air that had been sucked into the palace now had to leave, driven before a violent shockwave. The pressure that had built up broke windows in its brutal rush outward. Air that had been sucked from lungs suddenly rushed back in with a thump and an involuntary gasp.

  In that instant of release—the center of it located in the center of the mass of Glee—the concussive energy violently reoccupied the void around the central point with such force that everything ignited in something akin to wizard’s fire, but not concentrated and not actually fire in the same magic-generated sense. This was something else entirely. This was elemental heat and force, a forge of a war wizard’s power unleashed.

  To Richard it all was a predetermined, programmed formula unfolding in deliberate stages that he had calculated the instant before releasing the energy he had gathered. To anyone else seeing it happen, it was a sudden detonation that filled the corridor with a blinding flash and thunderous blast, and in that pristine instant of release, they would have felt the hammer of force against their chest as they saw the Glee explode into ash.

  Richard felt it all as an extension of his rage unleashed, exquisite, pure, and profoundly violent. It was glorious.

  In the ringing silence that followed, the greasy cloud of ash that had been the Glee floated through the air, gradually drifting down.

  There were sooty piles of it similar to the ones left in the library’s containment field, even if created in a different manner. There were splatters and smears of it against the walls, the pillars, and on the short wall at the side of the balcony. It covered the floor in a thick mass like the aftermath of a black blizzard.

  Amid that devastation were also the gray, ashen remains of the soldiers of the First File who had been coming to protect them. They had been there, caught up in the center of that maelstrom of energy Richard had released.

  He had ached with sorrow, even as he had released his power, knowing it would also kill those brave men.

  11

  In the hush as time returned to normal, those with Richard slowly tried to gather their senses. The ones still conscious held their heads, groaning in pain from the pressure he had created both in the compression of the air, and in its explosive expansion.

  Richard alone stood unaffected, gazing first for a time at the ashen remains of the Glee and the soldiers, then around at everyone else.

  Rikka and Cassia looked to be unconscious. Nyda, Vale, and Berdine were just sitting up, holding their heads and taking deep breaths. Shale put a knee to the floor as she steadied herself before trying to stand.

  Richard bent to help Kahlan get up. Like everyone else, she looked stunned. As consciousness gradually returned, she blinked, trying to collect her wits. He lifted her to her feet. Still trying to get her balance, she leaned against him for support.

  “Richard,” she managed as she winced, panting to catch her breath, her hands grabbing hold of his arms, “what … what just happened? I thought we were all dead. How can we be alive? What did you do?”

  “Not the kind of thing I would want to do outside a containment field, but I had no choice.”

  “Where are we?” Rikka asked, sounding groggy and only half awake.

  “It’s all right,” Richard said as he grabbed her hand when she lifted it and then helped pull her to her knees.

  Shale, still on her knees, gestured. “You destroyed them all.” She squinted at the mass of black ash not far away. “You destroyed them all?”

  She seemed confused. People down on the main floor who had also been knocked from their feet were groaning as they began to get back up. Being farther away, they didn’t feel it with the same severity, but they were still affected by what had happened. Such an event expanded for quite some distance beyond the lethal radius.

  When Richard looked up, he saw that across the vast corridor, on the balcony that mirrored theirs, a lone Glee stood motionless, claws at its sides, watching.

  Richard stared across at it. The lone Glee stared back. For a long moment, they just stared at each other. It didn’t try to come closer, or for that matter, do anything. It appeared that it was simply observing.

  And then, as the tall black creature and Richard stood gazing at each other, it dissolved back into its own world.

  Richard couldn’t begin to imagine what that had been about.

  *

  Kahlan looked around and saw everyone finally getting to their feet. With their hands, they felt their chests, checking themselves over, expecting to find injuries, but there were no injuries to find. Back down the corridor behind them, the soldiers that had been rushing to their assistance were likewise all trying to regain their senses. Some had to steady themselves on a hand and a knee as they pulled themselves together. Some of the men helped others up.

  Kahlan looked around, surprised to see that everyone was alive. The Mord-Sith appeared unhurt. Edward Harris leaned back against the short wall a moment, catching his breath. The remaining soldier of the three shook his head, as if clearing the cobwebs.

  Kahlan’s thoughts seemed to tumble in fragments as she tried to piece together what had just happened. She had seen the mass of Glee materialize, and she had known they were all going to die.

  It almost felt as if time itself skipped a beat, then something violent happened. It felt to her like it had been a dream. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, as if the wind had been knocked out of her, then she remembered suddenly gasping in a breath and feeling life return to her only to lose consciousness.

  In a way, there were elements of what had just happened that reminded her of when she released her power. But this time, she knew that it was quite different, and that somehow, in some way, Richard had just used his gift to save them all.

  One instant they had been about to die, then the next instant, it seemed, she was waking up on the floor. Down the corridor she could see that the Glee were no m
ore. There was only the greasy ash remains similar to what she had seen in the containment field in the library. She knew without a doubt that these Glee had not had the chance to return to their own world.

  She finally hugged Richard, laying her head against his shoulder. “You saved us, Richard. You saved us all. I don’t know exactly what just happened, or how you did it, but you saved us.”

  Richard, staring off at the ashen remains of the soldiers who had died with the Glee, nodded.

  “Sometimes,” he said in a soft, intimate voice, “I wish I didn’t have such ability and everyone else wasn’t depending on me to protect them. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know the things I know or couldn’t do the terrible things I can do.

  “Sometimes,” he said, staring off at nothing, “I wish I was just like everyone else.”

  “But you’re not, Richard. You’re not. Remember what I’ve always told you? You can be no more than who you are, and no less.” She put a hand to the side of his handsome face. “Remember?”

  He smiled a little as he nodded.

  “I know what you mean, though. Growing up I often wished I hadn’t been born a Confessor, that I was just like everyone else, that I was simply a normal girl. I’ve had to do terrible things with my ability. I’ve had to unleash my power against people I wish I hadn’t needed to kill. So I understand what you’re feeling. But with me, I’ve had a lifetime to come to terms with it. You will, too.”

  Richard touched the side of her face, gazing into her eyes. “I know.”

  He sighed as he seemed to remember himself again and all the others. “Berdine? Are you all right?”

  Berdine, bending to retrieve her Agiel, grinned at him. “I knew you would save us, Lord Rahl. I wasn’t worried at all.”

  “Well, I was worried enough for all of you,” Shale said. “If you had any sense, you would have been scared witless.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Cassia said with a smile, “I was just a little bit worried.”