The Third Kingdom (40 page)

There was only the pain. She could think of little else but wanting the pain to stop. As angry as she was, as much as she wanted to strangle Erika, she wanted the pain to stop.

Erika leaned over, snatched Kahlan by the hair again, and yanked her to her feet. “Enough of this. The abbot is waiting.”

This time, when the Mord-Sith pushed her toward the door, Kahlan didn’t try to fight her.

“My, my, but you learn quick.”

Kahlan paused at the door. “How?” That was the only word she could get out.

“How? How what?”

“How … You are not loyal to Richard.”

The woman made a sour face. “Dear Creator no. What would give you such a grotesque idea? No, my dear Mother Confessor, I am not loyal to the Lord Rahl.”

“But, that loyalty, that bond to the Lord Rahl, is what powers a Mord-Sith’s Agiel.”

Erica smiled at the chance to reveal the delicious truth. “Lord Arc powers my Agiel.”

“Lord Arc …?”

“That’s right. Lord Arc is my master. Lord Arc will be everyone’s master, just as soon as he finishes getting rid of your dear, dear husband.”

The Mord-Sith opened the door and shoved Kahlan out into a hallway. Kahlan stumbled. She managed to get a hand up against the far wall to catch her balance and keep from smacking her face against the rock. The hall was dimly lit by a few candles and lamps. The hallway, like the room, looked to be carved entirely out of stone, but it was much less refined.

She walked hunched from the pain, clutching her middle, panting as she waited for the lingering sting of the pain to ease. It was not dying out the way regular pain would.

But more than the pain of the Agiel, far worse than the pain of the Agiel, was the agony of how much she missed Richard. It seemed like forever since she had seen him. The last time she remembered seeing him was back at the palace, not long after Cara and Ben’s wedding. She wanted nothing more right then than to be in his arms.

Kahlan thought that she remembered while in the dreams that he had kissed her. She didn’t know if it had been part of one of the dreams or if it had been real. She only knew that she missed him more than anything.

Erika shoved Kahlan onward through the halls and corridors. Each time they reached an intersection, the Mord-Sith pushed her along, shoving her this way or that. Kahlan didn’t know where she was, or where she was going. She had been unconscious when she had been brought in and it was all a confusing maze to her.

Kahlan thought she might throw up. She thought she might faint. She did neither. Still in lingering pain, she simply stumbled along ahead of the woman in black leather.

As she reached lighter areas with lamps hung on the stone walls at regular intervals, areas that widened with some kind of doorways off to either side that looked like a honeycomb of homes back in the rock, people lined the hallway. All of them stood grimly to the side, heads hanging, eyes watching her pass. Kahlan imagined that the Mord-Sith was enjoying the spectacle.

Around a corner, more people stood silently aside in the wide corridor. As she passed them, their eyes turned up to peek, unable to resist watching the dismal sight of Kahlan stumbling past, groaning in helpless agony from both times the Agiel had been used on her.

The cave broadened out, becoming bright with daylight streaming in through a wide opening that was the mouth of the cave. Erika snatched Kahlan’s hair and jerked her to a halt. There were people all around the cavern, standing back out of the way to the sides of the cave.

Not one of them lifted a finger to try to stop the Mord-Sith or dared to voice a protest. Kahlan knew it would have done no good. Worse, it would likely only get them hurt.

She could see through the cave opening that it was heavily overcast outside. To her surprise, she saw treetops far below and realized that they were some distance up in the side of a mountain, with ground level far below.

Abbot Dreier stood near the edge of the precipice, watching with obvious satisfaction at the condition Kahlan was in as well as her humiliation.

Erika dragged Kahlan by her hair near to the edge of the cliff opening, beside the abbot.

“Well there you are, at last,” he said, sounding in good spirits. “I see that you and Erika are getting along splendidly.”

Kahlan glanced out the opening, down the side of the mountain. She saw a bit of a trail leading off down the cliff, but she couldn’t imagine using such a narrow pathway down the side of the mountain, especially in the drizzle.

“Well, we really must be on our way,” Dreier said.

Kahlan looked over at him. “You do know, of course, that I am going to kill you.”

His hand instantly came up, halting the Mord-Sith from ramming her Agiel into the small of Kahlan’s back.

“There will be time enough for that,” he said to the Mord-Sith.

Erika bowed her head. “As you wish, Abbot.”

“Now,” he said to Kahlan as he gestured to the edge of the cliff at the mouth of the cave, “we really must be on our way.
Get going.” He gestured to the edge of the opening. “Down that way, there.”

Kahlan took three steps back from the edge. She knew that in her shaky condition she would not be able to climb down such a treacherous trail without falling. It was all she could do to walk across a flat floor.

Dreier heaved an impatient sigh.

“Well, Erika, it seems the Mother Confessor prefers the quick way down.”

Without question or delay, Erika took two quick, wide steps toward the edge, in the process yanking Kahlan right off her feet by her hair.

The powerfully strong Mord-Sith stopped abruptly at the edge and with a mighty effort swung herself around at the waist and flung Kahlan out the opening of the cave, out into the cold gray light.

She released her grip on Kahlan’s hair as she flew out into thin air.

Kahlan gasped in shock as she sailed out from the cave opening.

Her fingers grasped, catching only air.

She saw nothing below but the ground—

As that ground raced toward her at an alarming rate and the rush of air sucked her breath away, her last thought was how much she loved Richard.

Richard carefully scanned the area ahead as he made his way down through the towering rock formations rising up all around them. Samantha peeked out from behind an irregular column of layered rock and looked both ways before tiptoeing after him, staying close so as not to get separated.

The spikes of rocks jutting from the rough ground sloped at an angle toward the lower valley floor below. The jumble of jagged, rocky spires above the low ground rose at a slant that made progress too difficult. They needed to get down to lower ground where they could make better time.

Richard had to always balance staying hidden with being able to make good progress. Both had their dangers. Too slow and they might be too late to save anyone. Trying to go too fast would allow them to be spotted and caught.

At the far side of the broad expanse of more open ground, dark, mountainous rock formations rose up, and beyond them the ground lifted into ever-higher mountains where tattered gray clouds drifted past imposing cliff faces.

All around them in every direction he could see the occasional flicker of the greenish veils of light. Some were far away, but others were uncomfortably nearby. Fortunately, in the
gloomy daylight the flickering, eerie light stood out all the more and always caught their attention. Richard remained especially wary whenever the ominous curtains of shimmering luminescence came toward them. Whenever that happened, Richard was quick to move out of the area.

The third kingdom was an ever-changing landscape of rocky ground with the green walls of the underworld wandering and mixing with the world of life. It was not a place where he could ever feel safe.

Richard was exhausted from lack of sleep, the difficult journey, and the constant tension that kept them on high alert. Once through the gates, they had pressed on almost the entire night before, not wanting to stop, fearing to stop, fearing to fall asleep for long in such a place.

Besides that, they knew they were getting closer to the land of the Shun-tuk, where they expected that their friends and loved ones were being held, and both he and Samantha were eager to press on. They suspected that they were close to the strange half people’s homeland, because they had spotted a number of them making their way south along the broad valley floor.

It confirmed that progress down lower would be quicker, but Richard also realized that down lower they were more likely to encounter half people.

The people Richard saw making their way along the valley floor all looked like the bodies he remembered seeing near the wagon, after he had woken up. Traveling in clusters of at least a few dozen, these people he was seeing now had the same ashen coloring wiped all over their bodies, with shaved heads and black around their eyes. Many had what looked to be dangling strings of teeth and bones. There was no doubt in Richard’s mind that these were the Shun-tuk. The farther north they went, the more of them they saw, so he figured that he and Samantha had to be getting near their domain. At least he knew they were going in the right direction.

Getting closer to their objective, and in such dangerous country, neither Richard nor Samantha had wanted to stop for long the night before. They had found a small opening in the confusing jumble of the rock formations and wedged their way in, out of sight of anyone passing nearby. It reminded him of the place they had weathered the storm of wood fragments when Samantha had unleashed such devastation that wiped out the half people who wanted to eat them.

They had gotten precious few hours of fitful sleep, but it couldn’t be helped, not when they were this close. Not when Richard could imagine the captives nearby, hoping for help, hoping for rescue. He didn’t want to waste a moment for anything, even sleep. Samantha was of the same mind.

He knew that sooner or later they would need to rest, him even more so, but he knew he couldn’t allow it to slow him down. He could feel the inner poison working on him. He knew that it was only going to get worse. Samantha had said as much, so to his way of thinking, the faster he could pull Zedd and Nicci out of captivity, the faster they could heal him. He knew the options and had made the choice he thought made most sense: press on.

Speed was life—his, and everyone else’s.

He kept thinking that if they slowed, and if he then reached the captives and they had been killed only a few hours earlier, he would never forgive himself for not making the best speed he possibly could.

He supposed that he wouldn’t live long enough to feel the pangs of regret if he didn’t succeed, but the fear still kept him moving.

Crossing the open area, Richard didn’t see any of the Shun-tuk, only flocks of black birds off in the distance against the slate gray sky. It was so heavily overcast that it nearly felt like dusk. He wondered if some of that dimness to the day was from his inner darkness.

The floor of the valley was strewn with broken shale, and in a swath along the valley floor stretched a broad expanse of standing water. It looked like it might be runoff from farther north that had settled in the low area in the center between the rising land to either side. The water was slightly chalky-looking, but clear enough to see that it was never more than ankle-deep. Because the shelves of rock jutting at an angle from the ground to the side had grown so tightly packed, they needed to cross the expanse of water to get to an area where they could make easier progress. Unfortunately, it was also the area that anyone else would have to use.

“Do you think it’s awfully dark here?” Richard asked as they trudged into the shallow lake. “Or is it just me?”

“No,” Samantha said in a quiet voice, trying to walk through the water without splashing too much of it up onto herself, “it’s not you. It is darker here.” She pointed. “Look over there. Looks like storm clouds gathering.”

“It’s a good thing we’re crossing now, then. If there is a storm it could bring a flash flood down through here and wash us away.”

Richard was relieved when they finally made it across the open, shallow water and were back on dry ground. Random fingers of rock jutting up from the uneven ground provided some cover. They wove their way through that rocky landscape, staying down closer to the valley floor and away from the taller spires that congregated in great enough numbers to hinder progress.

Spikes of rock thrust up all around, as if a porcupine were trying to emerge from beneath the ground. It made for an endless, confusing maze. Often the rock hid any point of reference. Richard tried to keep the taller mountains on their left in sight so he could know that he was going north, but in among the rocky spires it wasn’t always possible.

At least the darkness was making it easier to see the flickering
veils of green luminescence that came into the world of life from time to time. At times they watched as the curtains of eerie light dragged across the landscape and among the columns of rock like ghosts looking for a place to haunt. It occurred to Richard that that might not be too far from the truth. In a place where the world of life and the world of the dead existed in the same place, death probably looked to harvest any life it could catch.

After crossing another section of open ground, as they reached the concealing safety of columns and jumbles of rocks, Richard had to come to a stop. Blocking his intended course was an undulating green wall that abruptly rippled up into view before them between two towering fists of rock.

This time, through the greenish veil they could see dark figures on the other side—arms and legs writhing in continual turmoil. The shadowy shapes looked like the dead, lost beyond the veil, seeking a way out, or maybe seeking company in their misery.

It was a sight that brought both Richard and Samantha to an uneasy halt. At once frightened and at the same time beguiled, they had a hard time looking away. It was a sight seen by few people on the living side of death.

Richard put a hand on Samantha’s shoulder and nudged her off ahead of him, to his right, on a different route through the rocks. Even as she turned, her gaze stayed fixed on the moaning shapes beyond the billowing greenish veil.