Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

Hundreds of men and women in the lead stretched clawed hands forward in anticipation, each wanting to be the first to have the soul in front of them. Mouths gaped open, teeth bared. They wailed like wolves after prey.

Kahlan had no idea what Samantha was doing or what might be wrong with her. The thought occurred to her that maybe she was frozen in terror. Kahlan had seen that happen in battle. A person would be so panicked, so afraid, that their minds could no longer think and they would give up, just standing there in place waiting for death to take them. Sometimes, death was less frightening than what life had to offer.

Kahlan’s first thought was that maybe she could circle an arm around Samantha’s skinny waist, hike her up, hold her against a hip, and carry her up the gorge, but as soon as she thought of it she realized that she certainly couldn’t outpace the Shun-tuk while carrying the young woman, even if she was small and skinny.

She knew that if she tried, they would both die.

Kahlan knew that she was going to have to fight or run.

Leaving Samantha and running meant abandoning her to the savages to be eaten alive. Kahlan gripped her sword tighter.

Despite the magic from the sword desperately wanting the fight, wanting the blood of the enemy, Kahlan knew that fighting the Shun-tuk alone, even with the Sword of Truth, would be suicide.

There was no time. It was now or never. Run or fight.

The only thing that made any sense at all was to run.

If it was to be running, then it had to be now. They had to run or they were going to die.

“Samantha—there’s no time—”

“Run.”

That time the young woman said it was such cold power that it ran a chill through Kahlan.

Kahlan straightened and stared for a second at the motionless young sorceress, her fingers pressed to her temples, her head bowed, her eyes closed.

Kahlan glanced back at the black eye sockets, clawed hands, and open mouths of the Shun-tuk running wildly up the defile toward them.

There was no choice. If she stayed, they both died. Kahlan couldn’t help anyone else if she died trying to save this one person.

Viewed in that light, there was no choice.

Heartbroken at the choice, Kahlan bolted and took off running up the gorge, racing as if her life depended on it—because it did.

There was a good-size gap ahead to the men. A glance back over her shoulder showed another gap back to the Shun-tuk, but not much of one. Samantha stood motionless on the rock in the middle of the brook, in the center of that gap.

As Kahlan turned once more up the hill, running as fast as her legs would carry her, the ground suddenly shook with such a violent shock that she fell sprawling face-first in the center of the brook.

She twisted as she sat up, coughing out water, looking back when the concussion from the blast flattened her. It was so powerful that it felt as if it had stopped her heart for a beat.

Confused, Kahlan sat up again just in time to see the air of the moonlit defile filled with flying rock. She blinked at what she was seeing. It made no sense. Large jagged pieces of granite spiraled through the air. Huge slabs that had broken along rift lines slid downward with ever-accelerating speed. As they dropped, they trailed shattered bits of stone and smoke from the friction created under such tremendous weight.

To either side of the narrow defile explosions expanded the rock, lifting great chunks up and outward. Inside those expanding, interlocking pieces of rock, Kahlan could see the remnants of the flashes that had ignited deep inside the rock and blasted it apart. The sound of the explosions thundered and boomed, tearing the rock walls apart. More explosions in quick succession raced down the gorge on both sides, dozens of heart-stopping thumps in a rapid series, blowing the mountain to pieces. Flashes ripped in sequence down the faces of bluffs, loosening the bedrock from the mountain.

In the center of the turmoil below her, Samantha hadn’t moved an inch.

Below her, the thundering booms that shook the ground took the feet of the Shun-tuk out from under them.

The rock walls to either side below the young woman shook with repeated explosions racing down the length of the defile, blowing the walls apart. In the moonlight Kahlan could see stone spires topple, folding as they dropped. Countless tons of rock came crashing down atop the Shun-tuk trapped in the gorge below.

Through the thundering, echoing booms and the singular ripping sound of granite cracking and breaking, Kahlan could hear men and women screaming. The Shun-tuk were helpless beneath the cataclysm violently ripping rock apart above them. They had no time to escape and had nowhere to run.

Kahlan blinked as she saw a series of thundering booms rip along in an extensive chain down the rock walls. The flashes, like lightning within the stone itself, hammered in quick succession, one following almost atop the boom of the one before, rippling one after another down the gorge.

There could be no doubt whatsoever that whatever was happening was being directed intelligently. It was obvious to Kahlan by the order and placement of the rock-ripping explosions that it was meant to collapse the walls to both sides of the defile into the gorge at the bottom. Every blast that blew stone outward was timed in an ordered sequence that knocked out support to ensure that the colossal weight of the rock would help pull the walls down. By the enormity of the blasts, and their locations, the walls had to fall.

It was the most elegantly composed scene of utter destruction Kahlan had ever witnessed.

As she watched the walls tumbling in, sending clouds of dust and debris rolling up through the trees, it went on and on, as if in a livid tantrum of destruction.

It sounded like the world was being ripped apart by the rapid series of thundering explosions. The sound reverberated through the mountains all around. Stone fragments of every size and shape sailed through the air, tumbling down the collapsing walls of the gorge, lifting above the flashes of explosions, or cascading and bouncing down atop what had already fallen.

All up and down the gorge below Samantha the world looked like it was coming apart. As a particularly immense cliff toppled, twisting as it fell so that it landed down the length of the defile, dust, like smoke, expelled from under where the cliff landed, billowed out to roll up the gorge. The wall of wind from the explosions and buckling walls nearly knocked Kahlan down again.

For just an instant, Kahlan wondered if this was the end of the world of life, if it was actually being caused by Sulachan, furious that they might escape his Shun-tuk.

Yet more cliffs, thrown forward by internal explosions that lit like lightning rippling along inside the rock, toppled out and then dropped with thundering force. They hit so hard the ground shook. The world rocked and moved as if it was all being caused by an earthquake. But Kahlan saw the explosions and she knew that this was no earthquake. It was directed destruction to a purpose.

The sound of cracking granite continued popping and reverberating through the canyon without abating. Another series of booming explosions farther down the gorge shook the ground with each thumping explosion. Each concussion felt like a fist pounding Kahlan’s chest.

Clouds of dusty rock boiled up as yet more rock and debris came crashing down in specific places, ensuring that no part of the gorge escaped the calamity.

In a brief pause, Kahlan scrambled to her feet and raced back down the gorge to Samantha. The young

woman still hadn’t moved. Her black hair was covered in a layer of dust that made her look gray. The world around her was coming apart and she hadn’t moved. Shun-tuk below her were dying by the hundreds, if not thousands, and still she had not moved.

There was no doubt in Kahlan’s mind as to the intelligence directing the spectacle still going on.

Impossibly, Kahlan saw a few Shun-tuk, covered in dust, scrambling out from the leading edge of the rubble. There had to be a few dozen. They saw Kahlan and Samantha and started for them. Kahlan hoped they weren’t the ones with occult sorcery, and that her sword could stop them.

Just then, Kahlan heard granite cracking in the cliff right above them. She looked up and saw the cliff tremble and shake. She could see huge cracks racing through the wet rock. Sections pulled apart, taking trees with them. A sudden thundering boom to each side over her head made Kahlan gasp.

She scooped the wisp of a young woman up in her arms and started running up the gorge. She ran with all her strength.

Right behind, the towering wall of rock cracked away from the mountain, toppled, and crashed down with thunderous force right where Samantha had been standing only a moment before. Kahlan almost lost her footing as the ground shook violently, but she managed to keep going.

Sections of rock the size of small palaces came to a rocking halt where Samantha had been standing moments before. Had Kahlan not snatched her up, the young woman would have been killed.

The Shun-tuk that had temporarily escaped had been buried under countless tons of the fallen mountain.

Kahlan stopped, turning back, trying to catch her breath. All down the gorge she could see loosened slabs continuing to topple. Enormous blocks, no longer having any support, slid with accelerating speed to sail out past the remaining edges to fall through space and pound down atop the rubble-filled gorge.

As she watched, spellbound, a few remaining sections that were fractured and loose gave way, collapsing down atop the masses of stone already fallen from the mountains. The gorge was filled with hundreds of feet of the stone debris. As far down the mountain as she could see, the sides of the gorge had all fallen in.