The Third Kingdom (51 page)

Richard froze. “Dear spirits,” he whispered, not wanting her to hear him.

“Lord Rahl, please, I need you to help me get her out. I can’t do it. I need you.”

Richard’s hands fisted as his jaw clenched. He told himself to stay calm, to think. He had to tell her the brutal truth.

“Samantha, you need to get away. I’m stuck. I can’t get out. Save yourself. Your mother would want you to save yourself, to live.”

“I know. That’s what she told me. But I can’t just give up.”

Richard leaned his hands on the wall beside the wavering green light. When he came close, the spirits of the dead on the other side became more agitated and pressed against the green wall, trying to get out, trying to get at him.

Richard stared at them for a moment. He was one of them, in a way. He had death inside him. He was of the third kingdom.
He was both life and death together. And yet, he was trapped by death in the world of life.

“Lord Rahl …”

He could hear her weeping softly. He was her only hope.

“I’m sorry, Samantha, but I don’t have a way to get out.”

“But you have to. You’re the one.”

The one, he thought bitterly. What good was it doing him to be “the one”?

Richard straightened. He was of both worlds. He was alive, but he had death in him as well. He was already dead, but had life still attached to his spirit.

It seemed so simple. Could it be true?

Magda Searus and Merritt had left him a message. They had said
Know that you have within you what you need to survive. Use it
.

Use it.

He wondered …

“Samantha?”

“I’m here.”

He looked down at the Grace on the ring Magda and Merritt had left for him. It was meant to remind him of what mattered. The Grace was a depiction of both worlds, really, and how life blended and balanced with both—the world of life, and the world of the dead. It was also a depiction of their interconnection.

Richard looked up. “Samantha, I need you to get back. Get back away from the green wall.”

“Lord Rahl, I don’t have anywhere to go.… ”

“I mean that I need you to stand back—off to the side. In case the boundary of the underworld moves I want you back out of the way. Go back down the hall a ways.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Hurry, we don’t how long before more of the Shun-tuk show up. Hurry, now. Stand back out of the way.”

“All right,” she said from farther down the cave outside. “I’m back out of the way.”

“Listen, Samantha … if anything goes wrong, I want you to get away. Do you understand? Don’t hesitate. If anything
goes wrong, run and get out of here. Your mother would want you to live.”

“Lord Rahl, you’re scaring me. And I’m already scared enough. There are human bones in some of the caves down here.”

That was discouraging news. “I understand, but if I can’t escape from in here, then you have to get away.”

“It took me a long time to get down here, sneaking past all those ghostly-looking Shun-tuk. I don’t know if I can get back out.”

“I know it’s frightening. But if this doesn’t work, you have to try. Understand?”

“I understand,” she finally said.

“Now, stand back.”

“I am standing back. Hurry. Lord Rahl, you’ve got to hurry. I can hear voices echoing. I think they’re coming. Hurry.”

Richard took a deep breath. It had to work. It made sense.

As Samantha had told him once, he was of that world.

He remembered the message left for him, carved in the language of Creation.

Know that you have within you what you need to survive. Use it
.

That was what Magda Searus and the Wizard Merritt had told him. They knew he would come to that place and read their message. They had left their ring for him.

Still, he was loath to try such a thing. But he was dead anyway if he didn’t at least try. Everyone would die. This was his only chance.

He knew that more than anything, despite how he tried to convince himself of the logic of it, it was an act of desperation.

Zedd always said that sometimes an act of desperation was magic—real magic.

He tried to slow his breathing. He couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He had thought it through as best he could. There
was no time to think it over any longer. He was out of options and out of time. They all were. He had to try.

He looked down at the Grace on the ring one last time. He looked at the lines coming out from the center, the lines representing the spark of the gift as it crossed the world of life and then went on into the infinite world of the dead. Each was a continuous, unbroken line crossing worlds.

Richard steeled himself, gritting his teeth. And then, he raced ahead into the glowing green luminescence that was the outer boundary of the underworld itself.

The shock of it was like walking off a cliff at midnight.

He was instantly lost in an eternity of darkness.

There were no spirits as he stepped through into their world, as there had been before when he was on life’s side of the boundary. There was no more howling, no wailing, no more wavering limbs.

There was nothing.

There was no heat, no cold, no light, only a kind of darkness that was beyond darkness. In a way it reminded him of what it was like looking into a night stone, only this was more like walking into a night stone, or more accurately, being swallowed into that perfect blackness.

He felt totally and utterly lost.

Everything was dead to him.

Richard couldn’t sense if he had been in that empty world for mere seconds, or for a hundred years. The void was without sight, sound, dimension, or time. But then the darkness began to dissolve around him. The world came back in ragged patches like being able to begin to see objects when first coming awake. The sensation accelerated and as light and sound crashed in around him, he found himself standing in the cave outside his prison cell.

He looked back over his shoulder and saw that the sparkling, wavering greenish luminescence blocking the opening to where he had been held for so long was no longer there. Samantha’s big dark eyes blinked as she stared in disbelief. “Dear spirits,” she whispered. “Lord Rahl, you just stepped right out of the underworld.”

Richard looked down at himself. He appeared to be in one piece. He was all there. He wasn’t bleeding. He wasn’t in any pain. He felt normal, other than the persistent touch of death that still festered inside him.

“How could you do such a thing?” Samantha asked.

“I have death in me, remember?”

Samantha nodded her head of bushy black hair, clearly not
understanding. “But how could you step right out of the world of the dead?”

“Do you remember what you told me?” he asked as he checked ahead and behind into the darkness. “You said that I was of that world—the third kingdom. Life and death together. Because I have death in me I’m of both worlds.”

“So you figured that if you are the world of life, and could exist here with death in you, at least for a while, then you could exist there, at least for a while, with life in you?”

Richard nodded. “At least for a short time.”

She seemed to remember her overriding urgency, then looked around and pointed. “The other voices I heard were down that way. We have to get them out. We have to get my mother out. Hurry before any of the Shun-tuk come back this way.”

Richard was nodding even as he was already moving. Samantha ran beside him.

“This way, Lord Rahl,” she said as she raced out in front of him and then cut down another passageway to the right.

It was dark in the rough, crooked tunnel, with distant greenish light reflecting off the rock in places, enabling him to at least see where they were going.

Richard raced past human bones. They lay discarded, piled up against the walls and drifted into irregular depressions to the side.

Panting from the short run, he stopped when Samantha skidded to halt and thrust out her arm to point. “There.”

“Your mother?” he guessed.

She nodded. “Hurry.”

Richard took a deep breath and then without delay stepped into the darkness beyond the flickering green curtain. It was the same timeless, black void as the first time. It was no easier to endure the uncomfortable, lost feeling of the timeless world. In a way, it felt as if he had never left.

As the wall dissolved back into the reality of the world of life, he saw a woman with black hair standing speechless before him, staring with big, dark eyes.

Samantha raced through the now-clear opening into the room where the woman stood in silent shock. She threw herself into the woman’s outstretched arms. Samantha looked like a small, frail, miniature version of her mother. Richard had expected her to look like her mother, but the striking similarity was more than he had expected.

“Sammie,” the woman said with profound relief. “Dear spirits, I never thought I would see you again.”

“This is Lord Rahl,” Samantha said with a nod as she tugged on her mother’s hand, pulling her toward the opening of the room.

“Lord Rahl …?” The woman’s mouth dropped open.

“Yes.” As she dragged her mother, Samantha waved a hand, urging Richard to come along after her. “Hurry, Lord Rahl. We need to get the others out.”

Not needing the urging, Richard was right on their heels, following them out. Samantha raced down the tunnel a short way before again skidding to a halt. She thrust out her arm, again pointing at a green curtain.

“There.”

Richard didn’t pause to question. Without slowing he raced through the green veil and into the coldly frightening void. As the darkness dissolved, and the inner cell came into view, he found himself standing before a number of the shocked faces of men of the First File. They were packed in, filling the room. The ones sitting, leaning against the wall, jumped to their feet.

“Lord Rahl?” one of the men said in surprise.

Suddenly, Cara raced through the men, pushing them aside to make way. She flew into his arms. “Lord Rahl! You’re alive! You’re alive!”

Her husband, Ben, the general in charge of the First File,
was right there behind her. He looked as relieved to see Richard as Cara did, if more shocked.

Cara, as frazzled as she appeared, had never looked so good to him.

“Lord Rahl,” Cara said, “you look terrible.”

“Probably because a Mord-Sith has been using her Agiel on me.”

“What!”

“Long story, no time,” he said as he started pushing soldiers toward the now-clear opening and out into the tunnel.

Richard caught General Meiffert’s arm, stopping him, and spoke in a low voice. “Ben, where are the rest of the men?”

With a haunted look, Ben glanced over his shoulder at his men racing out of their prison. “They’ve been coming and taking them, one at a time. Lord Rahl, I know it sounds crazy, but they’ve been taking them out and eating them alive. We could hear it. We could hear the screams before—”

“I know,” Richard said. “I know.” He let out a distraught sigh as he shared a look with the man. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could have gotten here sooner.”

Ben shook his head as he looked Richard in the eye. “We are here to protect you, Lord Rahl, not the other way around.”

“Richard?”

It was the muffled sound of Zedd’s voice, off to the side, through another wall of greenish light.

“He’s in there,” Ben said, gesturing to the side. “We’ve been able to talk to him when we don’t think anyone is around. He says that Nicci is beyond, in another cell on the far side of him. They kept the gifted separated.”

Richard wasted no time in asking any questions or saying anything else. There was no time to waste on reunions or explanations of anything. There would be time enough for that if they could escape the caves and the Shun-tuk that hunted them. For now he needed to get the others and get out.

Richard raced past the men and out the now-clear opening into the craggy tunnel. He ran past Samantha and her mother to the next shimmering curtain of greenish light. Without a moment’s hesitation, Richard plunged into the greenish glow.

For an eternity, he floated in a timeless place, and then, as the dark, timeless emptiness resolved into the sights and sounds of the world, Richard saw an astonished Zedd rising to his feet. The old man moved with a pained slowness, as if he had been sitting on the stone floor for far too long. His wavy white hair stuck out in disarray. His simple robes were filthy.

Richard threw his arms around his grandfather in a quick embrace, then hurriedly pushed away.

“No time to talk,” he said to his grandfather before the old man had a chance to launch into a thousand questions. “We need to get out of here.”

Zedd flicked a bony hand toward the wall at the side. “Nicci. Nicci is over there. Can you get her, too?”

Richard nodded as he first hurried his grandfather out into the corridor where Samantha and her mother waited. Zedd took the woman’s hands, expressing wordlessly his relief at being out and seeing her out as well. Obviously, the two of them must have talked.

At the next sparkling greenish veil, the shadowed shapes of spirits beyond flailed and twisted expectantly as Richard came close. Again, without pause, he immediately plummeted into the world of the dead—his world, in a way. Beyond the first sparkling flash of greenish illumination as he made contact, there were no spirits. There was nothing. It was a frightening fall through darkness until the world of life abruptly crashed into view.

As it did, Nicci, in tears of joy at seeing him, already had her arms around his neck before he was sure that he was fully back in the world of life.

“Richard … how in the world—”

“Later,” he said, seizing her upper arm and pulling her out of the now-clear opening. She peered around the edges of the opening as she passed through, looking amazed at seeing the deadly underworld boundary so abruptly gone.

Out in the hall, Richard paused. When everyone started to talk at once, he held up his hand as he shushed them.

“Quiet. Half people are near and could hear you. We don’t want to have to fight them if we don’t have to, especially not down here.”