Soul of the Fire by Terry Goodkind Page B

Subtractive Magic! But, but, how … what do … where …” Zedd sputtered, losing track of which question he wanted to ask first.
    “ The sliph exists in these stone wells. Richard called the sliph, and now we can travel in her. But we have to be careful, or Jagang can send his minions through.” Kahlan tapped the insides of her wrists together. “When we’re not traveling, Richard sends her into her sleep by touching his wristbands together—on the Graces they have—and she rejoins her soul in the underworld.”
    Ann’s face had gone ashen. “Zedd, I’ve warned you about this. We can’t let him run around by himself. He’s too important. He’s going to get himself killed.”
    Zedd looked ready to explode. “You used the Graces on the wrist bands? Bags, Richard, you have no idea what you’re doing! You are messing about with the veil when you do such a thing!”
    Richard, his attention elsewhere, snapped his fingers and gestured toward the fat sticks under the bench. He waggled his fingers urgently. Frowning, Zedd passed him one of the stout branches. Richard broke it in two over his knee while he watched the window.
    With the next flash of lightning, Kahlan saw the silhouette of a chicken perched on the sill of the window, on the other side of the cloth. As the lightning flashed and thunder boomed, the chicken’s shadow sidled to the other corner of the window.
    Richard hurled the stick.
    It caught the bird square on the breast. With a flapping of wings and a startled squawk, it tumbled backwards out the window.
    “ Richard!” Kahlan snatched his sleeve. “Why would you do such a thing? The chicken wasn’t bothering anyone. The poor thing was just trying to stay out of the rain.”
    This, too, he seem not to hear. He turned toward Ann. “You lived in the Old World with him. How much do you know about the dream walker?”
    “ Well, I, I, guess I know a bit,” she stammered in surprise.
    “ You know about how Jagang can invade a person’s mind, slip in between their thoughts, and entrench himself there, even without their knowledge?”
    “ Of course.” She almost looked indignant at such a basic question about the enemy they were fighting. “But you and those bonded to you are protected. The dream walker can’t invade the mind of one devoted to the Lord Rahl. We don’t know the reason, only that it works.”
    Richard nodded. “Alric. He’s the reason.”
    Zedd blinked in confusion. “Who?”
    “ Alric Rahl. An ancestor of mine. I read that the dream walkers were a weapon devised three thousand years ago in the great war. Alric Rahl created a spell—the bond—to protect his people, or anyone sworn to him, from the dream walkers. The bond’s power to protect passes down to every gifted Rahl.”
    Zedd opened his mouth to ask a question, but Richard turned instead to Ann. “Jagang entered the mind of a wizard and sent him to kill Kahlan and me—tried to use him as an assassin.”
    “ Wizard?” Ann frowned. “Who? Which wizard?”
    “ Marlin Pickard,” Kahlan said.
    “ Marlin!” Ann sighed with a shake of her head. “The poor boy. What happened to him?”
    “ The Mother Confessor killed him,” Cara said without hesitation. “She is a true sister of the Agiel.”
    Ann folded her hands in her lap and leaned toward Kahlan. “But how did you ever find out—”
    “ We would expect him to try such a thing again,” Richard interrupted, drawing Ann’s attention back. “But can a dream walker invade the mind of … of something other than a person?”
    Ann considered the question with more patience than Kahlan thought it merited. “No. I don’t believe so.”
    “ You ‘don’t believe so.’” Richard cocked his head. “Are you guessing, or are you certain? It’s important. Please don’t guess.”
    She shared a long look with Richard before finally shaking her head. “No. He can’t do such a thing.”
    “ She’s right,” Zedd insisted. “I know enough about what he can