The most they ever did to defend themselves was to lift an arm before their faces. That cost them the arm and then their head. It was ridiculously easy to kill such single-minded half people, but their sheer numbers were going to win out in the end, and then he and Samantha would be the ones butchered.
Richard turned when he heard Samantha suddenly scream in terror. He saw a clot of people crowded in around the narrow opening in the rock, all of them leaning in the opening from every direction at the same time, dozens of arms reaching, hands grabbing at her, trying to get even a fingerhold on her to try to drag her out.
Richard swung the sword in a wild frenzy, severing half a dozen arms at a time as if he were hacking away a thicket of brush. When he had slaughtered all those around the opening to her hiding place, he could see her wide eyes back in the darkness, tears of terror streaming down her face.
She reached out to him, pleading with her open arms, wanting him to come to her.
It was a sight of such abject misery that it nearly broke his heart.
Richard looked out at all the masses of people flooding in toward him from every direction.
There was nothing he could do.
He dove into the split in the rock, over Samantha, covering her, protecting her, with his own body. He put his back to her. He felt her arms close around him, clutching him in tight against her.
Richard pointed his sword outward to try to stall the inevitable as he waited for the end.
CHAPTER
42
Richard felt Samantha’s arms tighten around him.
“I’m sorry” was all he could whisper back over his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Samantha.”
He felt shame for letting himself so easily be talked into allowing her to come along, for how miserably he had failed to protect her, how he had failed Kahlan, failed Naja, Magda, and Merritt’s efforts, failed everyone else who depended on him as the Lord Rahl to be their protector.
He should have never agreed to bring Samantha. She was one of the watchers. She was supposed to warn others. She had done that. She was not meant to fight the evil she was born there to warn others of.
He was supposed to be the one to end prophecy and end the threat. It was his responsibility, not hers.
Zedd had always told him to think of the solution, not the problem. He tried, but this time he had no solution. He had failed. He wanted to think that sometimes there simply wasn’t a solution, but that would be absolving himself of responsibility, when it had been his responsibility. To think there was no solution was to surrender.
It was to come to nothing, though. Despite how hard he tried, he could think of no solution, and he couldn’t fight any harder, couldn’t fight off such an overpowering mass of half people all wanting to rip him and Samantha apart and steal their souls. Not even Zedd, Nicci, Cara, Cara’s husband, Ben, the general of all those elite troops of the First File, had been able to hold off such overwhelming numbers.
Still, that was no excuse. He was the Lord Rahl. In the end it didn’t really matter that they failed. It only mattered if he failed.
Richard watched out through the opening in the rock. He could see all the hands reaching back into the darkness for him. Fingers clawed the air, trying to catch hold of his clothes. Some of them grabbed the sword instead, and lost those fingers.
He could see the shapes of hungry mouths growling with sick need. They bared their teeth for the task for which they so desperately lusted, for the taste of human flesh.
It was all coming to an end before his journey of rescue had even begun. They hadn’t even made it beyond the outskirts of Stroyza. The hadn’t even made it safely across the fields and into the forest.
“Don’t be sorry,” Samantha whispered back from the darkness behind him. “Don’t be sorry, Lord Rahl. You had the idea. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
“What?”
Samantha put her hand on the top of his head and pushed it lower. “Keep your head down,” she whispered as if from some distant, dreamlike place.
Richard frowned and was about to ask her what she was talking about when her small fingers tightened on his head, keeping it down.
And then the ground suddenly shook with a thunderous explosion.
An instant later a deep shock wave hammered his chest. He couldn’t make out its source.
Three more deafening explosions came in rapid succession, almost on top of one another. The earsplitting cracks of the detonations were like lightning hitting a tree right beside him. Each booming blast made him flinch. The explosions being so close left his ears ringing.
There was a brief moment of silence before another series of explosions, only there were more this time. All around the wallop of explosions shook the ground like a thunder and lightning storm gone crazy. The staggering concussions, one on top of another in rapid succession, sent shock waves ripping through the air. They shook the ground so powerfully that it made his head hurt. Dirt and small rocks rained down.
Again there was a preciously brief pause in the deafening thumps, and then the thunderous explosions erupted again, coming so close on top of one another that it reminded him of the sound of canvas ripping.
After the briefest of pauses, another series of explosions began, the echoing booms in a measured pace, one right after another, like some celestial blacksmith hammer raining down mighty blows on the anvil of the world. The very air shook with the power of those blows.
Then Richard heard clattering against the rock over his head as a rain of debris began falling. Some of it struck the rock with astounding violence. Other sharp impacts sounded like the crack of a whip. Some of it sounded like it might fracture the rock over his head.
And then pieces of wood began cascading down. Splinters of wood, some no bigger than sewing needles, pelted him while other pieces as big as oars crashed into the rock, bouncing back into the air to eventually come raining down all around. Richard saw that many of the pieces were covered in blood. Some even held skewered pieces of mangled flesh.
He could hear tree limbs under great weight snap in rapid succession, then the sound of massive trunks fracturing as trees crashed down through the forest canopy. The colossal trees shook the ground when they hit. The rumbling sound of trees toppling to the ground boomed all around them.
One of the enormous trunks smashed down with a jarring impact onto the rock they were cowering in. Richard thought that the rock might shatter from the blow. Instead, the impact of the great weight snapped the trunk in half above where Richard and Samantha crouched. Trees in the forest all around upended, ripping great limbs off as they fell. The ground shook with loud, booming blasts that reverberated through the woods.
As the tumultuous explosions continued at an unabated pace, the detonations moved ever outward, ever farther away, the ground shaking with each powerful blow until it all joined together to feel like an earthquake. It felt powerful enough to bring down mountains.
It seemed like it went on forever, but Richard knew that it had all happened in a mere moment in time, a thunderous, violent, murderous moment that had ripped through the forest with incredible brute force and merciless violence.
Almost as soon as they had started, the explosions came to an abrupt end.
Though the explosions stopped, trees continued to fall, each giant monarch snapping limbs of other trees on the way down, even splintering the trunks of neighbors that in turn were knocked over. Richard could hear the muffled sound of roots popping under the tremendous pressure as toppled trees fell against others. The ground shook with the impact when each one finally came to ground.
Giant splinters still rained down for another long moment. Tree trunks cracked in long ripping splits before they came crashing down. Gradually, the noises of all the destruction came to an end as one last tree smashed down not far away, making the ground rumble.
When the world finally went silent, Richard still didn’t move. He wasn’t sure he should, wasn’t sure it was really over. Saman
tha still had her hand protectively over his head, holding it down.
Samantha slowly withdrew her hand. “Lord Rahl?” she asked in a soft voice choked with tears. “Are you still alive? Are you all right? Dear spirits, please be alive.”
Richard blinked as he brought his head up. He had to push piles of bloody splintered wood off himself. There was so much debris piled into the narrow opening in the rock where he and Samantha hid that they were nearly buried.
“I’m alive.” He rotated and bent his arms. “I think I’m all right. Are you?”
He rocked his shoulders back and forth in order to squeeze himself out of the opening enough to turn and look back. Tears streamed down Samantha’s face. She looked more than miserable, more than merely exhausted.
She managed a nod. “I think so.”
Richard flicked his sword, shedding all the debris covering it, and then uncurled himself enough to stand up and take a quick look around to check for any threat from the half people, even though he truly didn’t expect to see anyone standing. He didn’t.
It looked like the world of life had been blasted out of existence.
The dense forest that had closed them in from overhead with a thick canopy that shut out the sky and daylight had been completely ripped open. Overhead, there was a large, open patch of sky, thickly overcast with leaden clouds. He could smell fresh, wet wood, as if from sawing logs. The scent of fresh wood was mixed with the gagging stench of blood.
Off in every direction around them, not a single tree still stood. All around them the trees lay felled.
Here and there a few grotesquely splintered trunks jutted from stumps. In other places toppled trees had pulled up mats of forest floor along with their broken roots.
It was a scene of such mass destruction that it was hard for Richard to believe what he was seeing. Timber lay everywhere like hundreds of broken sticks cast to the ground by a giant. The patches of forest floor he could see between downed trees were covered with a deep layer of shattered, splintered wood, sticking up every which way in fragmented, spiked debris.
Everywhere under tree trunks, enormous limbs, branches, and man-sized splinters, lay a carpet of bloody, shredded bodies. No one could have lived through such a fierce storm of fragmented splinters driven by so many violent explosions.
Gazing out over the expanse of that destruction, Richard didn’t see a single movement.
The half people caught in that violent rage of explosions had been torn to pieces. The pieces of bloody flesh he could see were unrecognizable. Most of what he saw looked like ground meat.
Richard turned back to Samantha. She watched him from the darkness of that split in the rock, as if not sure whether she wanted to come out or not.
Richard held his arms out to her in invitation. When he did, she sprang out of the narrow cleft in the rock and raced into his arms, finally giving in to sobs.
CHAPTER
43
“It’s all right, Samantha,” he said softly as he smoothed her wild tangle of black hair, gently holding her head to his chest. “It’s all right. We’re safe.”
She cried in racking sobs.
He gently shushed her, letting her know that it was all right, that it was over, that she was safe, now.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.
Richard frowned. “Sorry? Why would you be sorry?”
“Because I almost got us killed.”
“What are you talking about?”
She looked up at him, her big dark eyes brimming with tears. “You brought me along because I said I could help you. I convinced you that you needed me, that it was important to take me because I’m gifted.
“Then, when you needed me most, when everything was at risk, you told me what I needed to do. You even explained how to make the trees explode. You brought me along to help you, and when you told me what I needed to do and how to do it, I failed you.
“You could have easily been killed any one of a hundred times fighting off those monsters while we tried to get away. I didn’t do anything to help you.
“You are the one. I recognized that from the beginning, and I failed to do as I promised and as you asked of me. You were nearly killed. You are the one to save us all. It would have been my fault that the world of life ended. All because you told me what to do, and how to do it, and I didn’t do it.”
Richard shook his head reassuringly. “Samantha, that’s not true. You were doing your best.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated, looking for the words. “I was afraid. I was afraid to do what you said. I was afraid that I’d mess it up, that I’d do it wrong, that I wouldn’t be able to do it good enough, and that I’d fail you, fail everyone. So I couldn’t do it. I tried, but I was afraid that I’d fail.”
Richard smiled as he looked down at her, smoothing her hair. “You didn’t fail, Samantha.” He swept an arm out, gesturing around them. “You stopped the threat.”
She wiped at her eyes and finally looked around, really looked around. She blinked, seeing the totality of it for the first time.
“I did this?”
“It wasn’t me,” Richard said.
“It’s just as you said,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “It would save us if I did what you told me.”
“But you said you tried and couldn’t.” Richard was puzzled. She had tried—he’d seen her try—but she hadn’t been able to do it. “So why did it finally work?”
Samantha stared off for a time, perhaps looking into her own visions as she seemed to search for the words to explain it.
“When I was back in that hole,” she finally said, “shaking and terrified that I was going to die, that those unholy half people were going to drag me out of there, rip me apart with their teeth, and eat me alive, I suddenly thought of my mother.”
“Your mother? What do you mean?”
“She saw that happen to my father. That’s what they did to him. She saw those monsters, like a pack of wild animals, using their teeth to rip into the man she loved, the man I loved, and devour his flesh and blood. I could finally, truly, understand how horrified and afraid she must have been.
“Then they took her. After murdering the man she loved, they took her. Can you imagine what she must have been thinking? How horrified, despairing, and afraid she must have been?
“If she really is still alive, then you are her only hope of rescue. I’m her daughter, the one who loves her more than anything, who insisted on coming along because I’m supposed to be helping you so that you can get her away from these savages. You’re my mother’s only hope, her last hope, and there I was cowering in a hole, shaking from head to foot.”
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of being afraid,” Richard offered in solace. “I was afraid, too.”
She looked up. “You were?”
“Of course. I can’t imagine not being afraid in such a situation. It’s a normal reaction of anyone with a soul. But I was also afraid because I was thinking that it was me who failed us, failed everyone depending on me.”
She laid a hand, her tiny fingers, against his chest.
“But you brought me to help you. You gave me the chance. Then, when we were attacked, you had the idea of how to get us out of such a tough spot and you told me what to do. You knew what was needed because you are the one. You even explained how it worked. I’m the one who failed.”
Richard looked around at the scene of destruction. “I don’t think you failed at all, Samantha. In the end you didn’t give up. You redoubled your effort and then you did it. You protected me. You stopped the threat. That’s what matters.”
She smiled with a bit of relief, if not pride, as she looked around with him. “When you told me about doing this, I didn’t know that it would do this much damage. I never imagined.”
Richard turned more serious as he glanced across the expanse of destruction. “Well, I have to tell you, I never saw a sorceress create quite so much ha
voc. But you did what was needed. Anything less, I think, would have not been enough to save us.”
She looked out where his gaze went across the leveled forest. “I never imagined I could do such a thing. I didn’t know the gift could be so destructive.”
“Destruction in the cause of good is a glorious thing.”
She smiled at such an odd sounding concept.
“So,” he finally asked, “if you tried and couldn’t do it, then what happened? How were you suddenly able to do it?”
“I got angry,” she said rather quietly, almost as if she were ashamed of it.
“Angry?”
She nodded. “I was back in the hole, thinking about how I was about to die, and then I thought of my mother, like I told you, about what had happened to her. That made me angry, angry at myself for failing myself, for failing her, for failing you, for failing everyone. I was so angry.
“But mostly, more than being furious with myself, I was enraged at these half people, enraged that they would harm so good a man as my father, as so many others, as you. I was enraged at what they were doing, at what they want to do to everyone. Our souls are ours. What gives them the right to our souls?”
“I don’t think they can really steal our souls, Samantha. Naja said as much.”
“Yes but they want to. They intend to. They try to. That they can’t doesn’t really mean much if we’re dead. They murder innocent people to try to get their souls, and that’s what matters.
“What makes them think they have the right to someone else’s soul, someone else’s life?”
Richard could only shake his head.
“I was so angry,” she said, “that it just sort of boiled over. I wanted more than anything to wipe them all out of the world of life. So, when I got that angry, trying to think of how to strike back at them for what they were doing, I latched on to what you told me to do with the trees.
“I let that anger build toward the ones who were causing so much suffering and death. When I did that, I realized that I was beginning to feel the trees all around us.”