The Third Kingdom

  The man’s red eyes went to Richard’s hand gripping the hilt of his sword still sitting in its scabbard, before returning to look into Richard’s eyes, as if he were looking into his soul.

  “Lord Rahl,” the man said in a voice that was as unsettling as his flesh, “how kind of you to visit my land of Fajin Province.”

  Richard’s brow twitched. “Bishop Hannis Arc?”

  Hannis Arc was the leader of Fajin Province.

  The man bowed his head. “Actually, it’s Lord Arc.”

  CHAPTER

  60

  “Lord Arc,” Richard said in a flat tone. “I was told that it was Bishop Hannis Arc.”

  The man smiled insincerely. “My previous title.” He dismissed it with an annoyed flourish of a tattooed hand. “I am now Lord Arc, soon to be … well, it’s of no concern at the moment. We have more important business that awaits us.”

  The shadow behind the man finally stepped forward to stand beside him.

  Richard was stunned to see that it was a Mord-Sith in red leather—a tall, very attractive, and a very dangerous-looking Mord-Sith.

  He was more stunned to see that the blond-haired woman was not a Mord-Sith that he recognized—and he knew them all. At least, he thought he did. This one, he thought, must have been hiding under a rock. A rock in the dark lands.

  Hannis Arc held out an introductory hand as he smiled in satisfaction at Richard’s surprise. “This is Mistress Vika.”

  Not only did he not recognize her, Richard had never heard any Mord-Sith mention the name Vika.

  Hannis Arc turned to the woman. “You see, Vika? You worry for nothing. It is as I said. I leave the bread crumbs, and Lord Rahl follows them.”

  She smiled in response but held Richard’s gaze with her steely blue eyes. “Yes, Lord Arc.”

  Hannis Arc turned back, also looking Richard in the eye as he spoke. “He is but a little pet, thinking he is going when he chooses, when he wants, and where he wants, when someone else is actually holding his leash.”

  “What’s this about?” Richard asked as calmly as he could, reminding himself not to lose his temper.

  He needed to think, to figure out what was going on. He knew that he couldn’t do that if he gave himself over to a fit of rage, as satisfying as that might be. Better to stall for time and find out all he could. Better to find out exactly what kind of danger he was really up against. He knew that the more questions he could ask, and the more he let these two talk, the more time he would gain himself to try to think of a way out of the trap he found himself in.

  “Well, you see, Lord Rahl, everything was going along as I wanted, but then the Hedge Maid nearly spoiled my plans. Seems as though she had an obsession with that blood lust that so overpowers her kind. But I guess that you have already learned all too much about that.

  “Because of her failure to carry out my perfectly reasonable and carefully thought out requests, it became necessary to change my plans. In the end, however, I saw to it that it worked to my advantage, as all things eventually do.

  “You see, I always take into account the alternate paths that others might choose to take because of their more limited nature so that if need be I am able to alter my own plans. Because of that, I was prepared and able to take advantage of the situation as it presented itself. You were only too accommodating and as a result it worked to my advantage even better than I could have dreamed up in the beginning.

  “You see, in the beginning, I was wondering how I would deal with your well-known and quite dangerous abilities, but now, thanks to the obstinate nature of that filthy little Hedge Maid, that hazard has been taken care of as well.”

  Richard wasn’t sure exactly what the man was talking about. When he didn’t respond, Hannis Arc, as Richard expected, leaned forward a little to elaborate.

  “I am referring to the touch of death she planted within you that prevents your gift from functioning. Its presence within you interferes with the function of the Grace.” The sly smile reappeared. “Yes, I know about that. Seems she did me a favor by defanging you for me. Knowing her nature I allowed her to play out her own needs in order to serve mine. I knew what she would try to do, and I knew you would have to stop her.”

  Richard wondered what part prophecy had played in that.

  Hannis Arc straightened, pleased with himself. “You see? My patience serves me well and it all works to my advantage in the end.”

  Richard saw that back in the shadows figures were beginning to appear as if materializing out of the rock itself. At first he saw only a few, but within moments there were hundreds emerging from behind the rock. They all looked the same.

  Shun-tuk.

  “So what is this grand plan of yours, anyway?” Richard asked as offhandedly as he could, still stalling for time. “What’s your little scheme all about?”

  “All in good time.” He couldn’t seem to keep himself from adding “And not so little.”

  “Really? You expect me to believe that from the dark recesses of Fajin Province in your dark little domain, you have cooked up some elaborate grand plan that the world is going to care about?”

  Fajin Province had contributed soldiers to the effort of stopping the Imperial Order. Some of those men even served in the First File back at the palace. It was disheartening to realize that this place that had fought with them was never really on their side. Or, at least, their leader wasn’t. He had only pretended loyalty.

  Richard wondered how many other leaders of other lands who smiled so pleasantly to his face really wanted to stab him in the back.

  They had won the war, won the peace. Richard found such treachery not only infuriating, but disheartening. He had thought that there was going to be peace. Zedd had warned him that there was nothing so dangerous as peace. Richard should have taken his grandfather’s words more seriously.

  Hannis Arc smiled, as if trying to decide whether he wanted to kill Richard on the spot for disparaging his revelation of a carefully planned grand scheme, or continue to torment him to some purpose. In the end, he turned and bowed a little as he held an arm out in feigned, polite invitation.

  “Come with us, if you please, Lord Rahl, and we will show you a bit of my grand plans. Then you can decide for yourself if you think the world will care.”

  The green walls of death still stood to the sides and behind, preventing any escape.

  “Do I have a choice?” Richard asked.

  Hannis Arc smiled in a way that made Richard’s blood run cold.

  “Not really.”

  “Well, even so, I’m sorry,” Richard said. “I’m afraid that I have other plans, and they don’t include you.”

  The shadow of a dark look came across Hannis Arc’s tattooed face. The man lifted a finger in Richard’s direction.

  Sudden pain knifing through Richard’s skull took him to his knees in a heartbeat. His eyes bulged as his hands went to the sides of his head. It felt like bolts of lightning were crackling in through his ears. The sound of it inside his head was deafening, the pain withering.

  Hannis Arc withdrew the pointed finger, and the pain lifted with it. Richard fell forward onto his hands as he gasped a breath.

  “I can do this all day,” the man said. “Can you?”

  Richard struggled to return to his feet, still panting to catch his breath.

  “I think I can, Bishop,” Richard said, deliberately using the man’s lower title. “Please continue.”

  “Let me have a few minutes with him, Lord Arc,” Vika said with menacing impatience. “I will teach him to be more respectful.”

  He dismissed her suggestion with a wave. “Later.”

  She bowed her head. “As you wish, Lord Arc.”

  Richard wished he knew where in the world she had come from, and why he didn’t know anything about her.

  “Enough of this,” Hannis Arc said, dispensing with the polite tone, falling back on his true nature. “If you want to see your friends again,” he said to Richard, “you wi
ll come with me.”

  He started away, but then turned back. “By the way, I believe you understand how the power of a Mord-Sith works. Draw your weapon, and Vika will own you.”

  “Vika,” Richard said, addressing her directly and ignoring her master. “What are you doing here, with him? Mord-Sith serve the Lord Rahl.”

  “Not all of us,” she said with that unique, chilling smile of a Mord-Sith. “Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean, not anymore?”

  “We used to serve the House of Rahl, as had always been our tradition, but when Darken Rahl sent us on missions to Fajin Province in his name, some of us accepted Lord Arc’s invitation to join with him, instead. We chose to serve him, and remain under his protection from the Lord Rahl.”

  Richard nodded. “I understand, Vika. Darken Rahl was an evil man. I know how he treated the Mord-Sith. Believe me, he harmed me as well. In the end, I killed him.”

  She smiled again. “Good for you.” The smile vanished. She spun her Agiel up into her fist. “Now do as you were told and come along, or I will make you wish that you had not hesitated.”

  Richard knew that there was a time and place for everything, including a time and place to stand and fight. There was even a time and place to try to explain things. This was not either. Especially not in front of Hannis Arc.

  He also knew what Mord-Sith were made of. They were universally feared for good reason. It was not a fight he really wanted to have. He looked at the determination in her steely blue eyes, and beyond to the hundreds of Shun-tuk that had appeared from nowhere.

  This was not the time and place to stand and fight.

  More than that, though, he knew these people were likely responsible for capturing his friends. Going with them was bound to be the quickest and easiest way to find out where Zedd, Nicci, Cara, Ben, and all the rest of them were being held.

  Once he knew that, then maybe it would be the time to stand and fight.

  Richard bowed his head. “Please, Bishop, Mistress Vika, lead the way.”

  CHAPTER

  61

  In a grim mood, Richard followed behind Hannis Arc as he marched off in the direction of the rock towers in the distance. As he passed the mass of rugged stone spires, yet more of the chalky-looking Shun-tuk emerged from the shadows to close in on both sides of him and from behind.

  They were as forbidding a people as he had ever seen. All of them, even the women, were bare-chested. The most they wore above their waists were strings of beads, bones, and teeth, much of those worn around their upper arms.

  All of them were smeared with a chalky white substance over every bit of skin not covered with their simple, sparse clothing. In a way, the white pigment was their dress. Most of them, including a number of the women, had shaved their heads. A few of them, including a few of the women, had topknots of hair wound with strings of bones and teeth to make the hair stand up in a plume. He didn’t know if it was a mark of rank, another method of adornment, or meant to make them look more intimidating.

  Smeared in the chalky white coloring, they were an unpleasant, savage-looking lot. They looked human, but in a way they looked less than that.

  They all peered at him with hungry, grim expressions. The eyes of all the Shun-tuk looked haunted, surrounded as they were with rough circles of dark, greasy soot. Some of their faces had a skull’s death grin painted over their lips and cheeks with the same dark grease, so that they looked like skulls rather than living people with flesh on their bones. It was as if they wanted to celebrate the part of them that was dead.

  That made sense in view of the fact that these weren’t really living people. They were half people, part of the third kingdom that existed somewhere between life and death. These people had no souls, no connection to the Grace, no spark from Creation that would follow them through their lives and into the underworld.

  For now, they existed in neither the world of life nor the world of death. They were of a third kingdom.

  Richard was unhappy to know that he, too, was of that kingdom and he had the shadow of that netherworld haunting him.

  It was more than unsettling to be among such a gathering of half people. These were beings who, given the chance, would fall on him, rip him apart, and devour him to try to steal his soul.

  As they went deeper into the endless expanse of spiked rock sticking up from the ground everywhere, the air grew darker overhead with a hazy layer of smoke. It smelled like sulfur. It was so thick in places that Richard couldn’t see the tops of the taller rock projections.

  The endless march felt like walking through a stone forest, with drifting smoke for a forest canopy. He began to spot places where that smoke was rising from cracks in the ground. The farther they went, the more prevalent the fissures became until he sometimes had to step over them and through the choking gray smoke. Green light shone up through many of those cracks, as if they were walking on rock that floated on the surface of the underworld itself.

  To the sides, Richard saw openings in the craggy stone walls. Some looked shallow, but others went back into blackness. Acrid smoke rose from the cracked ground around them to add to the hazy layer overhead.

  Deeper into the canyons among the stone columns, the spires began to take on the look of massive bundles of reeds that had turned to stone. Many of the individual stone rods that were bundled into the rock spires were broken off at different lengths, giving each column a jagged top. The ground was littered with those broken rodlike pieces of stone. In some places towers had fallen apart and had collapsed across the ground to leave a deep detritus that was difficult to walk through. In the distance off to the sides the columns merged together to become immense stone buttes.

  As they made their way along a winding course among the network of deep, dark canyons created by the spires, Richard saw more of the Shun-tuk back in the dark recesses, peering out with those haunting, hungry, painted-on black eye sockets.

  Farther into the confusing landscape, the rock changed and in among the spires was rock that looked to have once been liquid that flooded the place and then froze to stone. It was darker and full of holes. Richard saw more frequent openings in the rock. The larger masses of rock were riddled with every size of jagged hole. In places the flow of stone closed in overhead to make bridges and arches. Those, too, grew in number, creating a network of covered chasms. In places, the rock covering them thickened so that for brief spans it was like going through caves.

  It felt as if the rugged landscape was bit by bit swallowing them up.

  The Shun-tuk seemed to grow in number by the moment, coming out of openings in the rock to either watch, or join the procession. As they moved deeper into the snarled mass of rock, it seemed as if they began making their way through a cave system that over time had become partially exposed to the world above. The farther they went, the more the stone closed in overhead, until after a while, they were in a network of passages that were almost entirely underground. From time to time he saw gray overcast, but then they would again move into dark underground passageways.

  As those passages, those holes riddling the rock, grew dark enough, torches were finally used to light the way. Eventually, as they moved deeper, the rock completely closed in overhead so that they were totally underground. Many of the grim, chalky half people brought torches with them as they emerged from holes, tunnels, and gaps everywhere in the rock.

  In some of the passageways off to the sides, Richard saw silent figures standing, as if guarding the passage. They were not Shun-tuk. They were the awakened dead. The corpses, one with a shoulder bone sticking from dried, crumbling, leathery skin, all watched with glowing red eyes.

  Richard gave up trying to keep track of how he would ever find his way back out of the place. The entire network of caves was honeycombed with countless openings. He realized that he was hopelessly lost in the underground labyrinth. He wondered if he would ever have to face the problem of finding a way out.

  They came to a series of caver
ns off to the sides that were shut off, some with rough planks that looked to serve as doors, or barriers. Other openings, though, were closed off with sheets of the wavering greenish underworld luminescence.

  When Richard saw a figure standing beyond one of those curtains of green, he stopped to look. He could tell that it wasn’t one of the spirits that could be seen back in the world of the dead. This figure didn’t move the same, didn’t writhe and wail. It moved then stood still, like a man would. He knew that it was a person trapped on the other side of the green wall. It occurred to him that the veil of the underworld might be serving as a kind of prison door.

  The Mord-Sith jabbed him lightly in the back of the shoulder with her Agiel to keep him moving. He put a hand over his shoulder as he stumbled ahead, comforting the unexpected stab of pain. From ample experience he knew that the pain could have been far worse, had she intended it. This time she had only intended to prod him along.

  Not much farther along, Hannis Arc stopped and turned, watching Richard, Vika, and the mass of silent, whitewashed half people coming up around and behind Richard. When Richard came to a halt, Hannis Arc silently gestured to the Mord-Sith.

  She understood what he wanted.

  “Give me your sword,” she said as she moved around in front of Richard. “You won’t be needing it.”

  Handing over his sword was about the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but his options were pretty limited. He could draw the weapon and fight, but there was no way he could hold off the horde of Shun-tuk all around him. His first target, of course, would have been Hannis Arc, but the man had already demonstrated his occult powers, so such an attack would swiftly prove pointless. Lastly, trying to use the weapon against a Mord-Sith was a mistake that he had made once before in his life. He would not make that same mistake again.

  Vika lifted her hands out. Richard pulled the baldric off over his head and laid the sheathed sword in her upturned palms.

  She looked a bit surprised. “Very good, Lord Rahl. If I didn’t know better, I would think that you had already been trained by a Mord-Sith.”