The Third Kingdom (54 page)

Nicci looked up sharply at Zedd. “Do you feel it?”

Zedd returned her grim look and gave her a nod. “We need to get to that containment field. There’s not a lot of time.”

“Where’s Kahlan?” Nicci asked as she looked around to see if anyone knew. “Where’s Kahlan? We need to get her back there as well. She will be worse than Richard by now. We have to tend to her as soon as possible. Where is she?”

“We had to leave her back,” Samantha said from back behind Zedd. “I healed some of her injuries and she hadn’t awakened yet. We had to leave her to rest and recover some of her strength. She should be awake by now and waiting for us back in Stroyza.”

“South, through the gates,” Richard managed.

“Then we go there first and get the Mother Confessor,” Cara said with surprising power, courage, and determination as she stood over Richard’s shoulder. “We can’t head back to the palace until we get her.”

“It’s not that far,” Samantha offered. “It’s only a few days if we hurry.”

“After we get her, then we have to get you both back to the palace so we can heal you,” Nicci said to Richard in a confidential, worried tone.

Richard nodded. He forced himself to his feet. “Kahlan is in Stroyza. Like Samantha says, it’s not that far. It’s back near where you all were attacked and captured, after you came to rescue us from the Hedge Maid.”

He looked at all the faces watching him before turning his
gaze south. “Let’s get going. There’s still a little light. We leave now.”

Sword still in his hand, not yet ready to put the power of its anger away, Richard started out across the broken ground, walking over the bodies of hundreds and hundreds of fallen Shun-tuk. Cara was half a step behind his right shoulder. The rest of them all silently fell in to follow.

Hannis Arc turned when he caught a glimpse of the tall woman in red leather making her way resolutely through the whitewashed bodies of the Shun-tuk spread across the forested landscape behind them. Descending the slope, the vast army of grim half people seemed to pour through and among the trees like a white avalanche.

His mood darkened when he saw that the Mord-Sith was alone.

He had been wondering where she was and what had been keeping her. Traveling across the desolate land of the third kingdom had been much easier than making their way through the uncharted forests of the Dark Lands. It would not have been so difficult with a small force, but the numbers they were dragging behind them were vast and that slowed the journey. There were so many following behind that it took most of a day for all of them to pass one spot.

The Mord-Sith did not look at all happy. Seeing that she was alone made him more than merely displeased. Vika elbowed aside a silent Shun-tuk woman who didn’t move out of the Mord-Sith’s way. Hannis Arc could hear the bone of her jaw crack before she fell beneath the feet of the horde.

“So where is Richard Rahl?” Hannis Arc asked when she finally caught up to walk beside him. “You had better not have let him die under torture. I want to be the one to kill him.”

The muscles in her jaw flexed as she clenched her teeth for a moment. “Lord Arc, I’m afraid that it looks like he escaped.”

He shared a look with Sulachan.

“What do you mean, it looks like he escaped?” the spirit of Emperor Sulachan asked as he came to a halt. Behind them the progress of the Shun-tuk nation ground to a halt as well.

Vika looked at Sulachan’s ghost briefly; then her steely blue eyes turned to Hannis Arc as she answered.

“It appears that he somehow managed to escape. All the containment chambers were empty. The ground outside the caves was a sea of dead Shun-tuk. It was a slaughter. I have never seen the likes of it. The stench was unimaginable. Buzzards darken the sky. The ground seems to move as their dark bodies hop from place to place to gorge on carcasses. The dead have drawn predators of all sorts—wolves, coyotes, crows, vultures, foxes—everything you can imagine is there picking over the remains. Scavengers have come from far and wide to feast.”

Hannis Arc’s voice rose in a way that her eyes revealed she recognized as dangerous. “Well, what about down in the caves? What about all the prisoners we left?”

Vika swallowed. “Lord Arc, they are all gone. All of them. The soldiers, the gifted, Lord Rahl—all of them are gone.”

His brow drew down in a way that caused her to back a step. “Richard Rahl. He is no longer Lord Rahl. That has been taken from him. I am Lord Arc, leader of the D’Haran Empire, not Richard Rahl.”

She swallowed again. “My mistake, Lord Arc.”

The walking corpse of the spirit king gestured. “Or, you will be, one day.”

Hannis Arc looked over at the glowing form of Sulachan
within his long-dead, worldly form. He did not like to be spoken to in such a manner, even by the risen Sulachan.

“Are you suggesting that I might not be? That you and your forces might fail me?”

Sulachan regarded Hannis Arc with an unreadable look before finally smiling. “Of course not, Lord Arc. Not at all. I am only saying that I warned you about Richard Rahl and leaving him alive.”

Hannis Arc’s hands fisted. “I didn’t leave him alive! We put him in a prison sealed off by the underworld itself, with an army of half people guarding him and the rest of his people! Then I sent her to bring me Richard Rahl!”

He swung around and backhanded Vika across the mouth with his fist. “And she failed me!”

Vika stumbled back three steps from the blow. As soon as she recovered she quickly came forward again and kept her head bowed.

“I’m sorry, Lord Arc. I have failed you. I went to get him, just as you ordered, but he and the others were gone—escaped somehow. The Shun-tuk left behind must have tried to stop them as well, and they, too, failed you both.”

“Why didn’t you look for him?” Hannis Arc demanded. “Why didn’t you go after him, find him, and bring him to me?”

She kept her head bowed. “I tried to find him, Lord Arc, but they were gone. I checked all the caverns, just in case. They were empty except for masses of charred remains. Outside the caves there were so many tracks trampling the ground from”—she gestured behind her—“from all of the Shun-tuk nation leaving that place, that there was no way I could even begin to track Richard Rahl and the small group he has with him. For days I have been searching, but to no avail. I tried, but I have no idea where he went.”

“It would appear,” Sulachan said, “that Richard Rahl has managed to slip from your grasp. As I warned, he is dangerous.”

Hannis Arc gave the spirit a dark look, but didn’t answer.

“I have failed you, Lord Arc,” Vika said. “I deserve and gratefully accept any punishment you decree. My head, if you wish it, Lord Arc.”

He heaved a sigh, thinking. “He was gone when you got back there, then? You didn’t see or speak with any of the Shun-tuk we left behind to feed on the soldiers? You didn’t see this battle? He was already gone?”

She kept her gaze to the ground. “Yes, Lord Arc. As soon as you told me to go get him and bring him to you, I immediately started back. When I got there it was as I described. The only Shun-tuk left there were long since dead. I went down in the caves and found all the prisoners gone. I spent several days, every moment there was light, searching for any sign of where they could have gone, but I could find nothing.”

He considered silently for a moment. The Shun-tuk, stone-faced, watched him. Sulachan watched him. He would like to kill the woman on the spot for failing him. But she had served him well for many years. She had never before failed him.

“Well,” he said in a cooler voice, “I guess I can hardly blame you for not bringing him if he had already escaped.”

“And all of the other chambers where his companions were being held were empty as well?” Sulachan’s spirit asked.

She was obviously uncomfortable looking at the spirit, so she looked instead at Hannis Arc. “Yes. I don’t know how they were able to break the veils confining them, but all of the ones over the openings into where they were being kept had vanished. I suppose that it’s possible the half people you left to feast on them took the prisoners out, and at that point they somehow managed to overpower the half people and get away.”

“So it would appear,” Hannis Arc said, glaring at Sulachan, “that it is actually your half people, the ones you left behind to handle the situation, who are the ones who failed.”

“No matter,” the spirit king said, sounding unconcerned. “We will have him tracked down and brought back.”

Hannis Arc leaned toward the glowing spirit. “How?” he demanded. “We don’t even know where they went.”

The spirit smiled in that way that Hannis Arc didn’t like. One cadaverous arm lifted, and the spirit king signaled to those behind them. Several Shun-tuk rushed forward and crowded in close to hear his orders.

“Bring me some of my spirit trackers.”

With a whisking gesture they were sent running off into the ranks to do his bidding.

“Spirit trackers?” Hannis Arc asked.

“I created more than simply one kind of soulless weapon to serve me,” Sulachan said in a patronizing tone. “Some feed. Some wield powers. Some track spirits. I will send some of the latter back to the scene of the escape to pick up the essence of their spirits. They will track down and kill those with Richard Rahl. Then they will bring him back to you so that you can do what you should have done in the first place.”

“I guess it is only a temporary setback.” Hannis Arc met Vika’s gaze. “It looks like you will soon enough get your chance to make Richard Rahl suffer. And then I will cut his throat and bleed him out at my feet.”

Vika bowed her head. “Yes, Lord Arc. I look forward to the day I might redeem myself in your eyes.”

He watched her for a moment, considering, weighing her words, then turned to Sulachan.

“The sooner we get there, the sooner I take the seat of power from the House of Rahl, and the sooner I rule the D’Haran Empire.”

“I agree. The trackers will go after Richard Rahl for you while we will tend to more important business.” Sulachan held a long-dead arm out before them in invitation. “Shall we be on our way to the People’s Palace, Lord Arc? It is a long journey.”

Ludwig Dreier tilted his head to get a better look as he pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and held it over his nose and mouth. She had lost control of her bladder, but that wasn’t the worst of the stink. The smell of blood he was used to. It was the gagging stench of feces from her ruptured bowels that made his nose wrinkle and his breath come in short, reluctant pulls. It was one of the more onerous parts of his work.

He stepped over the little river of urine running across the stone floor to get a closer look. The blood ran in every direction, so he couldn’t avoid stepping in that, but he wasn’t bothered by blood. He had been up to his wrists in it often enough.

It was all a necessary part of his important work.

He twisted his head to the side a little more to get a better look at her face. She stared unblinking at him with the one eye that wasn’t ruined.

“Has she spoken any prophecy?” he asked the Mord-Sith standing behind one of the tightly stretched chains.

“No, not yet,” Erika said. “I have been keeping her near the cusp until you had time to come and see her.”

Ludwig frowned, trying to make sense of the tangled form. The chain was drawn tight, stretched from where it was pinned
into the stone blocks of the wall to her bleeding wrist. He finally realized how the arm was broken and twisted back around at an unusual angle, taking all the slack out of the chain, that made her look so peculiar. He was pleased to at last unravel the puzzle and understand what at first made little sense to him.

Erika had been busy, he could see. There was no doubt about it. She was gifted at what she did. But then, so was Ludwig.

He heard small sounds.

“What was that, my dear?” he asked as he bent down.

She was making small sounds he couldn’t understand.

He leaned closer. “I’m afraid that I can’t hear you. If you want to be released from the suffering, then you are going to have to speak up so that I can understand you.”

“Please,” she wheezed.

“Well now, you know what we want,” Ludwig said as he straightened. “We’ve made it clear.” He gestured at the Mord-Sith. “Erika has made it clear, I’m sure. Speak up, then.”

The one eye stared at him, unable to look away. “Please … let me die.”

“Why, of course. That is why I’m here—to give you release from your agony.”

It had taken time to prepare her, to bring her to this state. It was not something that could be hurried or done with haste. Ludwig had learned over his years of study that patience yielded far better results than trying to force the issue.

Slowly building the tension, terror, and pain in the end brought far better, far more insightful prophecy. The proper, careful building of their journey toward the climax of their existence brought the exceptional visions when they looked beyond into that other, timeless world. Those were the sort he sought. Rushing the preparations simply didn’t produce quality results. Torture was a game of patience.

He knew from experience, and the work that had obviously been done on her, that what information she did give before he released her into death would be some of the better-quality prophetic perception. He was culling details from the darkest depths of the netherworld. He expected great things, this time. He could feel it. He had done this enough to know when the information was going to be special, to be important, to be meaningful.

Such especially significant tellings never went to the bishop. Ludwig kept those kind to himself. This one, he knew, would never leave the confines of the abbey.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said down to the agonized face watching him. “I could give you a bit of assistance. I could help you bring it forth. Would you like that?”

“Yes … please, help me. Please help me.”

“That’s why I’m here,” he said with a smile. “I’m here to help. Afterwards, I will grant you what you want most.”