Soul of the Fire

He was in the beast.

In the center of the pulsing cave, Sentrosi, the queen of fire, turned her lethal gaze on him. Tongues of flame tasted the air around him. She smiled-a whorl of yellow flame.

One last lime, Zedd made a futile attempt to call his magic.

Sentrosi rushed toward him with frightening speed, frightening need.

Zedd felt searing pain through every nerve as unimaginable agony seized his very soul.

The world ignited. His scream exploded as a deafening chime.

Richard cried out. The pain of the ripping, ringing chime felt as if it splintered his skull.

He was only dimly aware of things around him as he tumbled back over the flanks of his horse. The pain of crashing to the ground was a pleasant diversion from the overpowering toll overwhelming his control and driving his scream.

He held his head as he curled into a ball in the road, crying uncontrollably with the hurt.

The world was fiery agony.

All around, people leaped from horses, shrieking orders. Richard could only perceive them as blurry shapes darting about. He couldn't comprehend the words. He couldn't recognize anyone.

He couldn't understand anything but the pain. He could do nothing more than maintain his thread of connection to consciousness, to life, as he struggled against the merciless torrent of agony.

That he had passed the test of pain, lived through it, as must all who would be wizards, was the only thing that kept him alive. Without the lessons learned, he would already be dead.

He was alone in a private inferno.

He didn't know how long he could maintain his hold on life.

Everything seemed to have gone crazy at once. Beata tore across the grassy ground, running for all she was worth. Terror rampaged through her.

Turner's scream had stopped. It had been horrifying while it lasted, but it had only lasted seconds.

"Stop!" Beata shrieked with all the power in her lungs. "Stop! Are you crazy? Stop!"

The air still reverberated with the sound of the Dominie Dirtch. The low-pitched knell lifted dust from the grass, so that it looked like the ground all around was smoking. It trembled and rolled dirt into little balls. It toppled a little lone tree the last squad had planted.

It made the whole world vibrate with a ghastly drone.

Tears streamed down Beata's cheeks as she raced across the field, shrieking for them to stop ringing the bell.

Turner had been out front, scouting on regular patrol to make sure the area before the Dominie Dirtch was clear.

His scream had ended mere seconds after the Dominie Dirtch had been rung, but its pain and horror still echoed inside her head. It was a cry she knew she would never be able to forget as long as she lived.

"Stop!" she yelled as she snatched the railing to spin herself around onto the stairs. "Stop!" she cried again as she raced up the steps.

Beata burst onto the platform, fists raised, ready to pummel the fool who'd rung the Dominie Dirtch.

Beata halted, panting madly, looking about. Emmeline stood frozen in wide-eyed shock. Bryce, too, seemed out of his senses. He just stared at her in frozen panic.

The long striker, used to ring the Dominie Dirtch, still stood in its holder. Neither of the two up on the platform was even near it. Neither had used the wooden striker to unleash the deadly weapon.

"What did you do!" she screamed at them. "What did you do to ring it! Have you gone mad!" She glanced over her shoulder to the bony pile of gore that had moments before been Turner.

Beata thrust out her arm, pointing. "You killed him! Why would you do it? What's wrong with you?"

Emmeline slowly shook her head. "I've not moved a step from this spot."

Bryce was beginning to tremble. "Me neither. Sergeant, we never rang the thing. I swear. We weren't even near it. Neither of us was near it. We didn't do it."

In the silence as she stared at them, Beata realized she heard distant screams. She looked off across the plains, to the next Dominie Dutch. She could just make out people over there running around as if the world had gone insane.

She spun and peered hi the opposite direction. It was the same: people screaming, running around. Beata shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted into the distance. There were the remains of two soldiers out in front of their weapon.

Estelle Ruffin and Corporal Marie Fauvel reached what was left of Turner. Estelle, holding fistfuls of her hair, started screaming. Marie turned and started retching.

It was the way she was trained. It was the way things were done. They said it had been done that way for millennia.

Each squad, from each Dominie Dirtch, sent a patrol out at the same time to scout the area. That way, if there was anything or anyone sneaking around out there, it couldn't simply evade one soldier and hide elsewhere.

It wasn't just hers. Every Dominie Dirtch down the line had rung, seemingly of its own accord.