The Third Kingdom (24 page)

Samantha hurried to catch up with him. “What do you mean you’re going to war?”

Richard, his mind lost in a jumble of thoughts, started back through the corridor the way they had come in. Samantha was right on his heels by the time he reached the opening with the round stone that had been blocking the passage on the way in, but now stood open.

“Shut this,” he said as he marched through without pause.

Samantha growled, slapped the metal plate, and then rushed to catch back up with him. Richard could hear the stone grinding across the floor as it slowly rolled back in front of the opening to block off the corridor to the portal for viewing the ancient barrier to the third kingdom.

Samantha grabbed his wrist and dragged him to a halt. “Lord Rahl, what do you mean you’re going to war?”

“I’ve read everything Naja wanted us to know. There is still a lot I don’t understand, but the one thing that’s clear is that if we have any time left, it’s rapidly running out—for everyone. I have to do something to stop what is happening, and I have to do it now or it will soon be too late.”

“Like what?” Samantha sounded as exasperated as she looked. “What are you going to do? What can you hope to do?”

Her voice echoed back from the distance through the simple stone corridor. What she meant, but didn’t say, was what could he possibly hope to do without the help of his gift. He didn’t have an answer to that unspoken question. He only knew that he had to stop what was coming after them all.

He had not told Samantha all the gruesome details written on the wall. He had wanted to spare her the anguish of some of Naja’s words. But those words echoed in his own mind and he knew the ghastly extent of what the people back in the time of the first Confessor had faced and what the world of life now faced again.

Samantha’s black hair looked even darker in the spectral glow of the light sphere she was holding. “Lord Rahl, answer me. What are you going to do?”

Richard clenched his jaw a moment before answering.

“I have to go in there.”

“Go in there?” She leaned toward him with urgency. “Go in where?”

Richard flicked a hand back in the direction of the portal looking out over a barrier that had for thousands of years held back an unspeakable evil.

“I have to go in there, to the third kingdom. Knowing, now, what’s beyond that barrier, I fully expect that I will have to fight a war to do it.”

She snatched a quick look back the way they had come. “Go into the third kingdom? Are you crazy?”

“It’s the only thing I can do, the only answer I can come up with.”

“Answer? Answer to what? How to get yourself killed?”

Richard ignored the sarcasm as he started out again. “No, the answer to how to stay alive, how to keep us all alive.”

“Lord Rahl,” she said, her mass of black hair bouncing softly as she jogged along beside him, “you can’t go in there.”

He tapped his chest. “What do I have in me?” he asked without slowing.

Samantha pushed some of her hair back out of her face. “In you? You mean that touch of death?”

“That’s right.”

“What of it?”

“You can’t remove that touch of death from me or Kahlan.” Richard glanced down at the concern on her face. “If we don’t rid ourselves of this link to the world of the dead, then it will claim us both. You said yourself that Kahlan didn’t have much time, and I have precious little more than she does.”

“I still don’t think—”

Not in the mood to argue, he jabbed a finger toward her. “You’re the one who told me that I would soon start getting as sick as she is. You know very well that once I get to that point, I won’t be able to do anything to help myself, much less anyone else. Would you have me lie down and wait for death?”

She rushed along beside him in silence as they made their way back through the hauntingly empty tunnel.

Richard came to a halt in front of the doorway closed off by the first shielded stone they had passed on their way in.

“Open this, will you?” he said as he flicked a hand toward the metal plate on the wall. “My gift doesn’t work, remember?”

“I remember.” Samantha grumbled as she moved close to slap the flat of her hand to the metal plate. “Which is why it’s crazy for you to go in there.”

Richard snatched her wrist, stopping her before she could touch the metal plate. He thought he saw some hint, some glimmer, of something in the center of the stone.

“Wait,” he said.

She frowned up at the stone and then him. “Wait for what?”

Instead of answering, Richard reached out and pressed the flat of his hand to the metal plate. The massive stone shielding
the doorway did not move, but in the center of the round stone, where he thought he’d seen something glimmer, stone dust started to crumble away. Powdery silt poured out of incised lines in the center of the stone. It was as if from centuries of rolling back and forth into the slot in the side wall, the engraved lines had become packed with dirt and dusty, crushed stone. Only now, as it spilled out, did the engraved symbols reappear.

“Would you look at that,” Samantha whispered in amazement.

There, linked in a circle in the center of the stone blocking their way out, was a small triangular assemblage of symbols in the language of Creation. The three emblems formed a complex message. Richard squinted at the small designs as he worked the translation.

The first of the three emblems said,
If you are reading this it is because you are the bringer of death and the barrier has been breached. What we could not stop you now face. War is upon you
.

The second of the three emblems said,
Know that you are the only chance life has, now. Know, too, that you are balanced between life and death. You have the potential to be the one to save the world of life or end it. You are not destined for anything. You make your own destiny
.

The third of the three emblems said,
Know that you have within you what you need to survive. Use it. Seek the truth. Know that our hearts are with you. Make your own destiny and make it true, for life hangs in the balance. We leave you a reminder to keep with you, of all that is important
.

Richard felt an icy chill run across his skin when he saw that it was signed Magda Searus, Mother Confessor, and Wizard Merritt.

They had been speaking to him personally. He half expected to see his own name engraved in the stone.

He stared for a long moment at the symbols, at the names.
He had read a number of ancient texts and accounts. This was the only thing he had ever seen from the very first Confessor.

He touched the name, imagining the time so long ago when she must have stood in this very spot as they engraved the words meant for him. His fingers on that name felt like a connection from Magda, across the ages.

Perhaps more than anyone alive, Richard understood what it meant for a woman to be a Confessor. His life was devoted to a Confessor, as had been Merritt’s. Richard knew precious little about the legendary figure of Magda Searus, but he knew Kahlan, and so in that way he knew Magda. In a way, by loving Kahlan he knew Merritt. In that way, he felt a personal connection to Magda, and to Merritt.

As his fingers brushed the names in stone, he looked again at the words saying they left him a reminder.

His fingers drifted to the center between the three symbols, where there was a slight depression. He rubbed with his fingers and the stone dust there began to fall away until it revealed that underneath there was a piece of ancient leather tightly stuffed into a hole in the stone.

He pulled the leather out and opened it in his palm. There, in the center, rested a ring. He and Samantha stared at the silver ring. On the top face of the ring was a Grace. It looked like a ring used for sealing wax on messages.

The message they had sent him was the ring itself. It was a Grace he was to wear to always remind him of what was at stake. He slipped it onto the ring finger of his right hand, the hand he used with the sword. It fit perfectly.

Samantha gave him a look that said more than words could. She was as amazed as he. She knew well the importance of the Grace.

When Richard gestured at last, Samantha pressed her palm to the metal plate and the rock rumbled aside to allow them to
pass. Once through, she touched the plate on the other side to shield the doorway.

Samantha didn’t ask to have the message translated. She must have sensed by the look on his face and his silence that the words were for him and no one else.

When he hadn’t said anything for a time as they swiftly made their way through the passageway, she couldn’t remain silent any longer. “So, have you finally come to your senses and realized that you can’t really go in there?”

“Look, Samantha,” he said, “you know as well as I do that you can’t get that deadly touch of the Hedge Maid out of me—only my friends can do that. The only way to save myself and Kahlan, and in turn hope to help everyone else, is to get my friends out of the hands of the Shun-tuk and then get us back to the containment field at the People’s Palace. After they do cure us, then I can work to figure out how to put an end to the threat from the third kingdom before it’s too late. Simple as that.”

“Simple as that? And what if Zedd and Nicci and all the others are dead?”

“Then I’ll soon be dead, too, and soon after that so will everyone else. I need Zedd and Nicci. If there is a chance they’re alive, then I have to try to find them.”

“But, but it’s a land filled with half people and walking dead. And who knows what other unholy monsters might be in the third kingdom. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m the one, remember?”

“Yes, which is exactly why you can’t go there. We all need you!”

“What’s your plan, then?” He looked down at her. “Hm? How are we going to stop the half people and the dead armies that have come back to life? Without a cure I’ll soon be dead so you’ll have to fight them alone. So, what’s your plan?”

She pressed her lips tight for a moment. “Well,” she finally
said, “I guess, there’s good reason you’re the Lord Rahl. But I still don’t like your plan to go in there.”

“I don’t much like it myself, but I can’t help anyone if I’m dead, now can I? Basically, that is what the message back there on the stone door said. It was a message to me, saying that I’m the bringer of death and war is now up to me. I’m a war wizard. This is what I have to do, what only I can do.”

“A war wizard without his gift,” she reminded him.

When he didn’t answer, Samantha sighed in frustration as she replaced the glowing light sphere in the iron bracket on the wall and followed him out of the hallway into the room where Kahlan lay on the mat. There was no one else in the quiet room.

Richard knelt down beside Kahlan, watching her slow but steady breathing. Every time he looked at her he was struck by how beautiful she was. Since the first time he had seen her, he had known that she was the one. Seeing her face always lifted his heart.

She was the one. The only one for him. The last one of her kind. He was going to find a way to help save her life.

Samantha had told him that with some of her injuries healed, and her resting and recovering after the healing, she should soon wake up. The main problem would remain, but she would regain consciousness and at least no longer suffer from all the injuries and blood loss at the hands of the Hedge Maid.

Richard pressed his hand to Kahlan’s forehead. He was relieved to feel that while she was warm, she was not burning up with fever. That was a good sign, he told himself, a sign that she would hopefully wake soon. But he didn’t know how long that would take and time was working against him.

If Zedd and Nicci had been killed by the half people who had captured them, then there could be no hope for Kahlan, for him, or for anyone else. Magda Searus had said that he could save the world of life. Or end it.

“I don’t have any time to waste,” he said in a voice now calmer in the presence of the person he loved more than life itself. “I have to go.”

Samantha sighed unhappily. She considered quietly for a moment before speaking.

“I wish I had some other answer, Lord Rahl. I hate to say it, but I think you may be right.”

“I know I’m right.”

His decision final that he had to go into the third kingdom to look for Zedd, Nicci, and the others, Richard turned his attention to Kahlan, checking to make sure that all of her wounds looked properly healed. Samantha lit a few more of the candles so he could see better and then watched him in silence as he touched her cheek, silently asking the good spirits to watch over her.

“I’ll need some traveling supplies,” he told her as he smoothed back Kahlan’s hair. “Maybe you could get some things together for me?”

Samantha nodded. “All right. I can get us some supplies. I’ll put together some of the things we’ll need for such a journey.”

Richard looked up. “Just supplies for me, Samantha. You’re not going.”

“Yes, I am,” she said in a calm voice laced with iron determination.

“It’s too dangerous. You said so yourself.”

“I know it’s dangerous. That’s why I have to go with you.”

“If it’s too dangerous for me, then it is definitely too dangerous for you. You don’t know anything about dealing with such dangers.”

“I was dealing just fine with those walking corpses that
were after me,” she said under her breath as she went to a chest across the room and opened the lid.

Richard didn’t want to argue the point. He turned his attention once more to Kahlan, wishing she would wake before he left. He had so much to tell her. She had no idea of all the things that had happened. The last thing she probably remembered was being Jit’s captive, being bound into those thorn walls, and being bled to death. She wouldn’t know about Zedd, Nicci, and Cara coming to help get them out. She wouldn’t have any idea about the mysterious people who had attacked them and been intent on eating her alive.

He didn’t want to leave her when she was in the dark about everything that had happened. He especially didn’t want to leave her in the dark about where he was going and why. She was also defenseless against such an enemy. But waiting for her to wake up would in reality only further endanger her life. His first duty was to find a way to get the vile contamination of death out of her. To do that, he had to find Zedd and Nicci.