Confessor (Sword of Truth 11)

Nathan understood and didn’t waste an instant. He immediately brought his hands up. Light ignited between his palms. Wizard’s fire erupted into life from the gathering light, sending glimmering colors and light flickering over the scene of the pitched battle.

Without pause Nathan cast the wizard’s fire into the enemy.

The deadly sphere of bubbling, boiling, liquid light tumbled away. The white-hot inferno expanded as it hurtled through the air. Even over the noise of the battle echoing through the stone halls Richard could hear the wail of it flying toward the dark corridor full of Imperial Order troops all pushing forward to get into the palace and join the battle.

The wizard’s fire shot down the corridor, casting an orange-red light across the white marble. The sound alone was enough to stiffen men in panic.

It was a horrific sight as burning death splattered across living flesh. The growing sphere of liquid fire stayed aloft as it skipped across the heads of the men, all the while spilling death down on them until the tumbling inferno burst into a cascade of molten light and flame splashing down into the terrified mass of men.

The shrieks of agony drowned out the clash of steel in the battle.

Nathan conjured yet more wizard’s fire. In an instant it, too, was away.

The sphere of fire tumbled down the dark corridor, careening off walls and men, spilling flames, catching everything ablaze. The liquid flame was so tenacious, so sticky, so fiercely alive with searing heat that it melted its way through tough leather armor and sloshed right through chain mail to cling to flesh as it burned. Men on fire tore at their clothes, trying to get the fire off them, but they couldn’t. Wizard’s fire, once on a person, would often burn down to bone before it went out. Even as men started to pull off leather armor plates that the sticky, liquid fire was burning through, it was too late. Their clothes were already melted to their skin and they only ended up pulling off their own flesh.

Fire enveloped faces. Gasping in shock, men sucked swirling flames into their lungs. The stench of burning flesh was overpowering. The sound of the screams was horrifying.

The men already in the hall knew that they would have no one coming from behind to help them. The men of the First File were already bearing in, rolling them under, spearing men who couldn’t move in the crushing weight pressing in from both sides.

They had no choice but to fight for their lives. In this battle, there would be no surrender allowed.

General Meiffert hacked a man across the shoulder. Bruce used both hands on the hilt of his sword to thrust it down into a man who fell sprawling on the floor at his feet. As another man, his face twisted with rage and hate, went for Richard, Richard swung, burying his sword halfway through the man’s head just below his eyes. He yanked his sword back as the man dropped to his knees crying out in unexpected fright. Berdine, in her red leather like all the Mord-Sith, stepped in and pressed her Agiel to the base of his skull, finishing him off.

Nathan launched another expanding, tumbling, twisting sphere of wizard’s fire down the hall. The relentless inferno of death was sickening to behold as it splashed down through crowds of men who had thus far avoided it. Men on fire frantically tried to escape the growing conflagration. There was no escape. They were trapped not just by the flames, but by their numbers and by the dead all around them. They had no choice but to scream in agony and desperate panic as they burned alive. Whorls of flame curled in the open mouths of those shrieks. Richard was certain that near the back men would have abandoned the attack and already be racing back to the safety of the catacombs.

What only a moment before had been a frantic battle was suddenly dying down. Imperial Order soldiers still alive were shown no mercy as they were finished off by the First File.

Cara shoved over a man she had just killed. He toppled backward and landed with a numb thud. General Meiffert was close by. She looked more angry at him than at the man she had just killed.

“What do you think you’re doing yelling at me—telling me what to do?”

“My job. You were in the way of what Lord Rahl was attempting to do. I needed you out of the way.”

Cara glanced back. “Well, I don’t care—”

“I don’t have time for debate.” His anger looked the match of hers. “As long as I’m in charge, you will do as you’re told. That’s the way it has to be.”

She turned her scowl to the corridor where men still moved as they burned alive. Arms become torches waved slowly, uselessly, in the inferno.

Richard had known that there had been too many soldiers filling the corridors to fight them all. He had been trying to get the general, Bruce, Jillian, and Adie out of the way so that Nathan could bring wizard’s fire to bear. The general had realized Richard’s intention. Cara had been in the way. Being a general in charge, he couldn’t allow anyone to question his authority—especially not in the midst of a battle.

Once Cara realized the truth of it, she abandoned the dispute and immediately turned to join Richard as he scrambled across the blood-slick floor to Nicci, who was lying on her back against the wall.

“Nicci?” Richard gently slipped a hand behind her neck. “Hold on. Nathan is here.”

Her eyes were rolled up in her head. She was convulsing in pain. Richard could only imagine that Jagang was trying to kill her, but the spell around the palace was impeding that effort. It was putting her through a slow and agonizing death.

He turned. “Nathan! We need you!”

Past the fallen forms of dead Imperial Order soldiers, Richard saw Nathan kneeling beside someone. Richard had a terrible feeling that he knew who it was. Nathan looked up, staring sadly, helplessly at Richard.

“Nicci—hold on. Help is coming. I promise I’ll get that collar off you. Hold on.” He seized Cara’s arm and pulled her close. “Stay with her. I don’t want her to think she’s alone. I don’t want her to give up.”

Cara nodded, her blue eyes looking liquid. “Lord Rahl, I’m really glad to see you.?

??

He laid a hand on her shoulder as he stood. “I know. Let me tell you, I’m pretty glad to see you, too.”

Richard raced over the top of dead Order soldiers rather than taking the time to find a clear path. It felt surreal to see so many corpses, dismembered limbs and heads, so much blood, defiling the sacred white marble corridors of the palace.

As he swiftly made his way across the tangle of dead, his fears were confirmed when he saw that Nathan was kneeling beside Adie. The old sorceress was hardly breathing.

Richard bent down beside the prophet. “Nathan, you have to help her.”

General Meiffert and Jillian knelt on the other side of the old woman. Jillian took up Adie’s hand and held it to her breast.

Nathan stared with tired, watery eyes. “I’m sorry, Richard, but this may be beyond my ability.”

Richard swallowed back the lump in his throat as he looked down at Adie. She gazed up at him with her completely white eyes, looking very much at peace despite what had to be terrible pain.

“Adie, we made it. Your plan worked. You did it. You got us through.”

“I be pleased, Richard.” She smiled just a little. “But now you must help Nicci.”

“Worry about yourself for now.”

She clutched his arm, pulling him a little closer. “You must help her. My part be done. She be your only chance, now, to save all we hold dear in this world.”

“But—”

“Help Nicci. She be your only hope now. Promise me you will help her.”

Richard nodded as he felt a tear run down his cheek. “I promise.”

Her smile widened, pushing back the fine wrinkles of her cheeks.

Richard couldn’t help smiling at realizing what she had just done. Zedd had once told him about how sorceresses never tell all they know and in that way lull you into agreeing to things you might not otherwise accept.

“I don’t need a sorceress’s trick to keep my promise to help Nicci. Nathan will get the collar off her neck.”