Page 44 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

Richard nodded as he pressed onward. The trees around them were becoming larger and farther apart, while at the same time the forest floor began to thin out of underbrush that couldn’t grow in the deep shade. The Dark Lands seemed to have precious little sunlight in the first place, but on the hushed floor in under the massive pines it was darker yet.

Although that made it easier to run, the problem was that as the forest became more open, they could more easily be spotted.

Richard spotted them first, though. He saw ten or twelve of the half people in tattered clothes racing through the woods, dodging trees and jumping rocks and rotting logs as they steadily angled in to intercept Richard and Samantha. The deeper into the woods they went, the more open the forest down below became. The immense pines had no boughs down low. The huge trunks stood in sprawling beds of fern, beside streams, and among exposed rock ledges. The more ground that Richard and Samantha covered, the rockier the ground became and the broader the girth of the trees grew.

To make progress, Richard had to start climbing over the occasional layer of rocks and lines of ridges thrusting up through the leaf litter of the forest floor. The problem was that while he was slowed by the lay of the land, the half people, still some distance off on flatter ground, were able to run faster and close some of the distance.

More than that, though, they ran headlong, utterly careless as they ran, driven by the mad need to devour a soul. Richard saw one man hit a tree square, rebound, and go down. Another tripped jumping over a log. He didn’t rise out of the brush. Another caught a limb across the throat. His feet went flying out and he went down on his back onto rock with a heavy thud. The odd person running would occasionally catch a foot in a hole or under a downed limb and snap their leg.

But for every one who went down, it seemed like a dozen more showed up to join in the chase.

Richard frantically tried to think of a way to slow them, or to gain enough distance that he and Samantha could disappear into the trackless forest. He couldn’t come up with a way to slow so many people. The trick with the wind that Samantha had used to such great effect in the open field would not work in the forest. It might be inconvenient and distracting, but it wouldn’t stop their pursuers.

Richard had a sudden idea. He looked over at Samantha running beside him. Having to take two or three steps for every one if his strides, her feet seemed to fly over the ground, sometimes not even touching as he occasionally pulled her over an obstacle as they raced through the woods.

“That thing you did with heat, to dry the dirt and make dust, how did you do that?”

“Just gathered heat out of the air,” she said, sounding a bit perplexed by the question. “It was pretty simple.”

“Did your mother teach you to gather heat like that? Did she teach you how to make things hot?”

Samantha made a face. “I don’t know. A little, I guess. She taught me a lot of things growing up. Not necessarily a lesson, just little things, like pulling heat out of the air and putting it someplace.”

“Did she teach you how to heat rocks to keep you warm on cold nights?”

Samantha smiled even as she ran, still trying to catch her breath. “Yes. When I was little, she would do that and put the warm rocks in my bed. Then later she showed me how so that someday I could do the same thing for my little ones.”

“So you know how to put that heat you gather from the air into things? You can focus it.”

She nodded when he looked back at her, perplexed by what he was getting at.

Richard dove behind a long ledge, pulling her over it with him. He caught her around the waist and pulled her down behind the far side of the rock. He squatted down, turning her face toward him to make sure that he had her attention.

“Did she ever teach you how to make trees explode?”

Samantha’s brow lifted in surprise. “Make trees explode? Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’ve seen it done. Especially in war. Wizards and even sorceresses would focus the heat they gather, kind of like you gathered it to dry the dirt. Only they would then focus that heat into a spot inside the trunks of trees, kind of like you do inside rocks to warm them. When they focused enough heat, and it was intense enough, it would make the sap in the tree trunk instantly boil and vaporize. They would do it so quickly, so suddenly, that as the sap vaporized it would make the tree trunk explode.”

Her jaw was hanging open. “Really?”

“Really. The flying splinters and pieces of wood could cut down anyone nearby. It would shred them to pieces. It could stop a line of troops, bring a headlong assault to an abrupt halt.”

“But, I don’t know how to do such a thing.”

Richard peered out over the rock ledge and then leaned back down close to her. “You need to learn fast. It may be the only thing that can save us.” Richard carefully lifted his head and pointed off into the distance. “There, see that handful of men over there who stopped, trying to see where we went?”

She peeked over the edge of the rock. “Yes. I see them.”

Richard put his hand on her head and pushed it back down so the men wouldn’t spot her. “Try to gather heat and put it into that tree trunk beside them. See if you can focus the heat really fast. If you can, if you can do it fast enough and with enough intensity, you can make the trunk explode. I’ve seen it done, Samantha. I know it can be done. You’ve got to try.”

She pressed her lips tight for a moment and then peeked over the rock again. She took a deep breath and then laid both arms on top of the rock, aiming her palms out at the tree.

She squinted with the effort, her fingers trembling as she tried.

Finally, the breath she had been holding left her lungs in a rush. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I can’t do it. I just can’t.”

Richard let out a disappointed sigh of his own and finally nodded. “I know you did your—”

A man suddenly dove over the top of the rock behind them. Richard seized the man’s ragged clothes in his fists as he came diving in and used the man’s momentum to heave him out over the rim of ledge.

As the man tumbled away, three more men came over the top of the rock.

CHAPTER

41

Richard drew his sword as he sprang up. Powered by the anger of the blade’s magic, as well as his own fury, he spun to the attack.

The first man to come in at him lost his head for it. The second figure to leap in at him was a woman, equally vicious in her frenzied attempt to rip into him with her teeth. As Richard kicked her legs out from under her, a powerful swing of his sword caught the back of her head, taking off the top half of her skull. The large disc of bone, with the scalp of ratty hair, cartwheeled down the rock ledge. Strands of hair flung outward as it tumbled away. Richard spun back to the side just in time to meet another woman’s charge. With one powerful swing, the blade cut her ribs open to her spine. As she fell at his feet, her insides erupting from the massive wound, Richard drove the point of the steel pommel back into a man’s face. On the rebound he thrust the sword forward through a man reaching for Samantha.

He used his foot to shove the man back off the blade while at the same time reaching back with his free hand to seize Samantha’s arm. The mortally wounded man fell back across the rock, clutching the wound through his chest, choking on his own blood.

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