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.
“This way,” Richard said. “Try not to look at them.”
“It’s hard not to,” she said back over her shoulder.
“I know,” Richard said in soft reassurance.
Almost before he had finished saying it, another wavering greenish veil abruptly loomed up before them, as if it had just risen from the underworld itself.
It came into view so swiftly that Richard almost stepped into it, almost touched it. It was so close that he could see forms moving beyond the opaque wall, pushing against it in places to make it stretch and bulge outward.
Richard took a quick step back.
“Lord Rahl?” Samantha called from the other side of the green veil.
He had pushed Samantha out ahead, directing her to a different route, and the veil had come up between the two of them as she had been out in front of him.
“It’s all right, Samantha. I’m all right.”
“Lord Rahl, I can hear you, but I can’t see you.”
There was no mistaking the alarm in her voice. “It’s all right, Samantha. I’m right here. Stay back from it. Don’t go near it. I’ll come to you.”
He turned a different way, going around it to get to Samantha. He made his way around a few of the imposing spires of rock to find a passage around the green veil.
Another curtain of the undulating green luminescence materialized, sliding in among the stone crags, as if carried in on an ill breeze. It stopped him in his tracks, preventing him from going
the way he had intended in order to get around the first veil separating them.
“Lord Rahl, you’re scaring me. Where are you?”
“Right here. I’m okay. I just have to go around another way, that’s all. Hold on. I’ll be right there.”
The soaring rock spires all around created a maze that was made all the more difficult to navigate by routes being blocked by the flickering greenish veils of light.
As he turned to the left to go around a different way, another green veil appeared. This time, it felt deliberate, as if it somehow intended to block him from advancing and getting around. When he turned back, there was another already blocking his way.
“Lord Rahl?” came her voice in among the rock walls as another greenish curtain drifted in behind him, blocking any retreat.
There was only one way left open, and when he raced for it he had to skid to a stop as it, too, became blocked with the menacing green veil. He realized that he was surrounded. He would have to wait until the boundary walls to the underworld moved on.
“Samantha, listen to me. Do you have green walls blocking your way?”
“No. But I can’t find you. I can’t see you anymore. I can hear you, but not very well. I can’t see you.”
Richard was now completely surrounded by flickering, wavering, greenish light spanning every gap and escape route in the rock. He was trapped.
He knew that something was going on. This was not random.
This was deliberate.
Richard knew that he had only moments before the walls closed in and enveloped him.
“Samantha, can you hear me?”
“Barely.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Listen to me. Don’t ask questions. Don’t talk back and don’t hesitate. Just do what I say. Understand?”
“Yes, Lord Rahl?”
“Run. Get away. Do it now.”
Richard heard the crunch of small rocks from her footsteps. She was running. He sighed in relief at that much as the sound of her footsteps disappeared into the distance.
And then Richard was alone, surrounded by the world of the dead. He could see them—spirits of the dead—writhing beyond that eerie, opaque, greenish veil, hungry to get at him, to pull him in.
CHAPTER
59
Richard began to see another shadowed form through the slowly swelling, flowing, rippling curtain of glimmering greenish luminescence.
This form, though, was different from all the others.
This one was not moving.
The green veil on that one side in front of him began to fade, then to dissolve. It dissipated into the air before him until Richard was once again able to see the rocky world beyond. The green walls of the underworld to the sides and behind remained in place, blocking any retreat, but the way ahead was once more open.
Richard glanced to the sides, as much as he could, anyway, to look beyond the stone spires and the remaining prison of green, looking for any sign of Samantha. He didn’t see her anywhere. He was relieved that she had done as he said.
Something was going on and he was thankful that she hadn’t been trapped along with him. As long as she was still free, she might still be able to do something to help the others escape. Although she was still very young, Richard didn’t discount her ability or her determination. As long as one of them was still free and could act, there was still a chance to save the others.
In the deep shadows between the spires of stone not far in the distance a man in dark robes stood silently watching. It was the same form Richard had seen, unmoving, beyond the veil of the underworld. Now that the green shroud was gone, the shadowed form remained, confirming that this was not one of the dead from beyond the veil of life. Behind the man, off to his left side just a bit, was another form in the deeper shadows that he couldn’t quite make out.
Once the green luminescence over the underworld had evaporated from the world of life, the man who had been waiting beyond that opening into the underworld began to step forward out of the shadows.
When he came into the muted light of the overcast afternoon, Richard stood in stunned silence.
The whites of the man’s eyes were bloodred.
It looked as if his eyes had been deliberately tattooed a bright blood red, making the dark iris and pupil seem as if they were looking out from a fiery world—or perhaps from the underworld itself. It was as disconcerting as any gaze Richard had ever seen.
Even as otherworldly as his eyes looked, this man was clearly not an apparition from the world of the dead. Richard could tell that he was real enough, that he was flesh and blood.
Although it was that flesh that was the most disturbing aspect of the man. It was perhaps the most ghastly thing Richard had ever seen this side of death.
Every bit of the man not hidden by his dark robes was covered with tattooed symbols.
Symbols Richard recognized.
His flesh was not simply covered with the designs, but rather the tattoos were layered over the top of one another countless times so that the skin looked something other than human. As far as Richard could see, there was no spot that was not tattooed with some part or element of the circular designs, each one randomly laid over others that lay over yet others, all layer upon layer so that there was not one spot of untouched skin visible anywhere.
The top layers appeared to be the darkest, with designs underneath being lighter, and the ones under those lighter yet. It was as if they were continually being absorbed down into his flesh and new ones had to be constantly added over the top of those already vanishing down into his flesh. It gave them an endless, bottomless appearance, a tangled complexity that was dizzying, as if the symbols were continually seething up from underneath in a sea of something dark and dreadful.
The ever-deeper levels of the designs gave the man’s skin a three-dimensional appearance. The endless layers made it hard to tell just where the surface of the skin actually was in all the floating elements, lending the flesh a shadowy, somewhat hazy, somewhat ghostly aspect.
The way the underlayers were lighter than the ones on top of them made each symbol distinct and recognizable, regardless of how many layers down in the design it lay, or how tightly packed they all were. All the different symbols, linked designs, and complex elements varied in size. There seemed to be an endless variety to the patterns within the designs, but each of those symbols contributed meaning to the larger, circular elements.
The man’s hands and wrists, from what Richard could see of them where they emerged from his black coat, were completely covered with the same kinds of designs. Even his rather long fingernails appeared to be tattooed beneath, with the designs visible right through the nail itself.
His neck above his tight collar, like everywhere else, was covered with the designs ringing his throat. His face—every part of his face—was covered with the same sort of emblems. There were hundreds, if not thousands, on his face alone. When he blinked those terrible red eyes, Richard saw that his eyelids were tattooed as well. Even his ears, every fold and as far down inside as Richard was able to see, were completely covered with the symbols on top of circular symbols on top of yet more of the symbols. There were so many circular symbols that, in a way, it almost looked less like simple tattoos and more like they were a manifestation of black thoughts boiling to the surface from within.
While the man’s bald head was covered over with the same kinds of designs, one of them, larger than all the rest, dominated them all. The bottom edge of that large circle crossed over the bridge of his nose, going out over his cheeks to each side beneath his eyes, and then up and around just above his ears to cover the rest of the crown of the skull. Inside the circle was another, and between them a ring of runes.
A triangle sitting within the inner circle crossed horizontally just above the man’s brow. Smaller, secondary circular symbols floating outside the points of the triangle that broke the circles covered each temple with the third at
the point of the triangle on the back of his head. The way it was laid out made it appear as if the man was glaring out with those haunting red eyes from within the circular symbol itself, as if he were glaring out from the underworld.
In the center of the triangle, toward the front of the man’s skull, was a backward figure nine.
Richard recognized not only all the designs, but that one in particular.
That familiar tattoo covering the top of the man’s bald head was darker than all the others, not just because it looked to be the most recently added, but because the lines composing it were heavier. Even so, lying as it was over layers of hundreds of other random emblems, it was evident that it was merely a part of a much larger purpose.
All the tattoos, in all their many different designs, were still variations of the same basic themes, much as letters in an alphabet were all of a set. There were symbols laid out in circles of every size, even circles within circles within circles, with some of the symbols contained within those circles made up of other, smaller designs and elements that Richard recognized as well. It was a disturbing sight to see a man so given over to such an occult purpose.
It all made him a dark, living, moving, fluid illustration, with every design down through the countless layers clearly discernible, and clearly with a purpose.
Richard was especially disturbed by the central design covering the top part of the man’s face and skull, the one with the backward figure nine. Like the rest of the symbols all over the man, it, too, was in the language of Creation.
Richard also recognized all too well that looking out from the symbol as the man was, the figure nine at the heart of it would not be backward to him.
That particular symbol was the same one as on the omen machine, and on the cover of the book, Regula, that went with the machine. It was a symbol that linked it all to Richard.