The Third Kingdom Read online

  This hole faced north.

  Richard frowned at Samantha. “What is this?”

  She pointed through the opening. “Look.”

  He put his hands on the edge and leaned in a little, looking out through the cylindrical opening into a murky dawn. He saw in the gloomy light a valley spread out before them. Not much of the dense forest of the valley far below was visible. The length and shape of the cylindrical opening restricted the view to a specific place off in the distance.

  The opening framed a gap in soaring mountains many miles away. He bent down, trying to look up, trying to see how high the mountains were, but they were so immense and because of the way the opening was made it wouldn’t allow him to see the mountaintops. All he could see were impassable walls of stone rising up from a valley below.

  A deep canyon between the rock walls appeared to be the only way through the barrier of the mountains. Having been a woods guide, Richard understood the difficulties of finding passable routes through rugged wilderness. There was often only one passage through such mountainous country. It appeared to him that the valley was the only way back into and beyond those mountains.

  He backed away. “What is it I’m supposed to see?”

  “Well,” she said, gesturing to two small metal plates in the wall around the opening, “you need to use these.”

  Framing the opening was a design with a several distinct motifs. Like the others, Richard recognized the symbols that made up the designs. To each side, where Samantha pointed, within elements of the design where he hadn’t noticed them at first, there were small metal plates, each about half the size of his palms. The metal was in better condition than the first shield plates he’d seen. It looked to be worn smooth by the touch of countless hands.

  “Here, let me show you.” Since his gift didn’t work, she ducked under his arm and popped up in front of him so that she could put her hands on both plates for him. She was tiny enough that she could easily slip into the space between him and the wall. The top of her mass of black hair came up only to the middle of his chest.

  “Lean around me and look in,” she said.

  As Samantha bent to the side, keeping a hand on each plate, Richard leaned past her to put his head inside the circular opening.

  To his surprise, the air wavered, similar to the way the air above a fire wavered, except that it did it in a circular pattern, more like ripples in a pond radiating outward. It was a dizzying sight that made his stomach feel a bit queasy.

  But then the ripples in the air cleared, so that the distant view out the hole through the rock suddenly appeared much closer. It was as if he were abruptly shifted much closer to the mountains than he had been only a moment before.

  As his eyes adjusted to the light and the resolving clarity of the scene, he realized that there was something built across the valley. Framed in the center between the two mountains, at the base of the canyon, a wall that was obviously man-made stretched between the cliff walls to either side.

  Richard squinted as he studied the detail of the wall. It was enormous. It was as colossal as any man-made structure he’d seen. The lofty wall towered over the forest at its base.

  In the center of the wall, also made of stone and rising up higher yet, was what appeared to be a monster of some sort, jaws gaping open, with fangs hanging down over a massive portal, as if walking through it would be like walking into the waiting maw of some grotesque stone beast. In that opening, great doors stood taller than the tallest trees. The doors were nearly as colossal as the wall holding them.

  The doors stood open.

  Richard backed away from the round portal. Samantha removed her hands from the metal plates to each side and the view through the portal wavered, resolving back to the way it had looked when he had first looked out.

  “The north wall,” Samantha said in simple explanation.

  “The north wall,” he repeated. By his tone he let her know that he didn’t understand the significance.

  “As long as I’ve been alive,” she explained, “those gates have always been closed. As long as my mother had been alive, those gates were always closed. As long as our people have lived in this place, those gates have stood closed.”

  “Do you know how long your people have lived here?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. I heard it said that we’ve been here for thousands of years. But my mother was only just starting to teach me about our duty, the duty of the gifted here, of our mission to stand watch over the north wall. Those lessons were cut short when in the middle of one of them my mother saw that the gates in the north wall were open.

  “In all my life I had never seen my mother that upset. She kept muttering that she had never expected that it would happen in her lifetime, or mine. She was angry with herself.”

  “Why would she be angry with herself?”

  “I heard her say that Jit should have made her suspect that something was wrong. She said that it could only be that such a being coming into the Dark Lands was because the north wall was failing and some of those from the other side were beginning to slip through. The Hedge Maid didn’t belong here. She had to be one of those creatures from the other side, like others that we’ve heard rumored. My mother said that she had known that something was wrong, but she never suspected that it could have to do with the north wall.

  “When I asked her what she was talking about, what it meant, she said that it meant that life as we knew it would never be the same. That the world would never be the same.

  “She said that the world of life might very well not survive what was to come.

  “I was terrified and wanted her to explain it to me, but she said that there was no time. She rushed back out of here. She said that she had to go before it was too late.”

  “Go?” Richard glanced out the opening again, and then back at Samantha. “Go where?”

  “To warn those who needed to know.”

  Samantha’s gaze sank to the ground. “My parents died—my father did, anyway—when they left to go to the Keep to talk to the wizards’ council, to carry out our ancient mission of warning the head wizards that the north wall had been breached.”

  Richard stared down at the girl. “The wizards’ council? There is no wizards’ council at the Keep.”

  Samantha looked up at him in shock. “There’s not?”

  “No. There hasn’t been a wizards’ council at the Keep for a long time. Until my grandfather recently moved back there with some other people, the Keep had long been deserted.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  “But when my mother and father left, they were going there to warn the wizards’ council. That’s what they said.” Samantha’s gaze looked lost as it darted about. “They said that the wizards’ council at the Keep would be the authority on the matter of the north wall. That’s what my mother told me—that she had to go to the Keep to warn those who would know what to do about it.”

  Richard was only now starting to realize just how isolated the village of Stroyza was from the rest of D’Hara, not just in distance, but in knowledge of the outside world. He felt sorry for these people, thinking they were serving a vital mission for wizards who no longer existed.

  He spread his hands in regret. “I’m sorry, Samantha, but there is no such council there at the Keep. There used to be, but that was long ago. There is no longer a wizards’ council at the Keep, or anywhere, for that matter.

  “It’s not like it used to be. Those gifted born as wizards have become extremely rare. There aren’t many left today. I’m one of those who was born with that gift, but I grew up without knowing anything about it, so I’m afraid that I’m no expert on the subject.

  “My grandfather is First Wizard and knows a great deal about such things as the history of the wizards at the Keep, but he’s missing. If I can find him and the others with him, maybe he would be able to tell you more.”

  While Zedd probably knew a great deal about the history of the wizards’ counci
l, Richard didn’t think that he knew anything about a north wall in such a forgotten place.

  On the verge of panic, Samantha grabbed a mass of black hair in each fist. She looked out the opening through the rock wall as if looking for an answer. She looked like she wanted to pull her hair out. He could see that her world, her duty in life, was coming apart at the seams.

  Richard laid a hand on her shoulder. “Slow down, Samantha. Take a deep breath and then why don’t you tell me what happened next.”

  She nodded and then swallowed to help slow her breathing. “Some of our people found my father’s remains not far from here. My mother’s things—her pack and traveling supplies—were found scattered about on the ground nearby. There were drag marks, they said, that looked like she had fought them. Our people couldn’t find her anywhere. The ground was rocky and they couldn’t follow the trail.

  “After that, with the north wall breached, and me being the only gifted person left, I knew that it was up to me, now.” She flung her arms up. “But I didn’t know how to get to a distant Wizard’s Keep. I don’t even know where it is, except I think it’s far to the west somewhere. I hadn’t yet learned the things I still need to learn. I didn’t know what to do.”

  She looked up at him. “Fortunately, you showed up. I don’t know if it was coincidence, or fate, or if it was the good spirits themselves intervening to send you here when I needed you most.”

  Richard cast her a sideways look. “I don’t believe much in coincidence.”

  “Well, all I know is that you’re the one meant to hear about this—especially since you tell me there is no longer a wizards’ council. After all, you said yourself that you’re one of those who is gifted in that way.”

  Richard let out a deep breath of his own. “I’m not so sure.”

  “I think that it all happened this way because you’re the one.”

  “The one.” Richard cast her a skeptical look. “I’m glad you think so. I’m not so sure.”

  Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders as she let out a deep sigh. “I am.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you think that if I was ‘the one’ I would know something about all this? I’ve never heard of any of it. I only recently heard of the Dark Lands for the first time.”

  “You killed Jit. Only you could have done that. Only the person we needed could have done that.”

  In frustration, he gestured out the round opening. “Yes, but I don’t know anything at all about this north wall. This is the first I’ve ever heard of it. I killed Jit because she had captured Kahlan, then me, and she was going to kill us both if I didn’t stop her. I was just trying to survive, to live. That’s all there was to it. Kill or be killed.”

  Richard paused as a thought occurred to him. He wondered why Jit had gone to so much trouble in the first place to draw them both in.

  She had first gotten her hands on Henrik, then cast some kind of spell over the boy. Making him helpless to do otherwise, she had sent him on a mission to deliver her occult conjuring to Richard and Kahlan in order to get both to come to her in Kharga Trace. Because of the calculated intent of that spell, the Hedge Maid had been able to draw Kahlan to her lair and imprison her there. That, in turn, had drawn Richard to her.

  Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t really imagine, living as she did way back in the depths of that forlorn swamp, that she would have had any way to know anything about Richard and Kahlan off in the distant People’s Palace. It didn’t make any sense, unless she had merely been looking to take down anyone who was a leader and that just happened to be Richard and Kahlan.

  Unless someone else had a motive and they had directed her to do it in the first place.

  “That’s what we’re all doing,” Samantha said. “We’re all just trying to survive.”

  He put the distracting thoughts of Jit’s intentions out of his mind and returned to the matter at hand. Samantha was still looking up at him, waiting.

  “I understand,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that I’m the one you need to tell about all this north wall business. Like I told you, I never heard of it before.”

  “Well, you are the Lord Rahl,” she said with simple logic. “To my mind, that makes you even more important than a wizards’ council. You rule all of the D’Haran Empire, don’t you? This is part of your empire.”

  Richard grudgingly had to concede her point. “I guess you’re right about that much of it, but that’s not enough to make me the one you need to tell about the north wall.”

  “But that’s only a small part of it. The main reason is that you are of that place beyond the north wall.”

  Richard put his hands on his hips as he looked down at the wisp of a girl. He tried to keep the frown off his face. He couldn’t imagine that it was comforting to have a big man, and the Lord Rahl besides, towering over her.

  “I’m from Hartland.” He aimed a thumb back behind him toward the west. “That’s a small place in Westland, on the far side of the Midlands. That’s a very long way from here. I’m not from beyond that north wall.”

  “I don’t mean it in that way,” she said in a calm voice as if he were dense and she was trying to be patient.

  She was showing that exasperating side of sorceresses that made them all tend to talk in circles and riddles in a way that never failed to make him feel ignorant. He had once surmised that such a demeanor was a product of age and wisdom. But he could see now that it wasn’t. That inborn nature of a sorceress was showing in Samantha even at a young age, much like the color of her hair or her small frame. He found it annoying the way it made him feel a bit dim-witted.

  “When I say that you are of that place, I don’t mean that you grew up there,” she said, patiently, when she saw that he wasn’t following her meaning. “What I meant is that you are from there … well, inwardly. You are of the place.” She tilted her head as if to ask if he finally understood.

  He didn’t. “Of the place? What place?”

  “The third kingdom,” she said in simple explanation.

  “The third kingdom?”

  “Yes,” she said as she dipped her head in a single nod, seeming to think that it was now as plain as could be. “The Grace explains the way it is all supposed to be.”

  “Samantha,” he said, trying to be calm, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “There are two kingdoms represented in the Grace, right? The kingdom of life starting with the inner circle, and the kingdom of the dead beginning at the outer circle.”

  “So then what’s this third kingdom?”

  She stretched up on her tiptoes and pointed out the opening. “That is the third kingdom, beyond the north wall that has kept it locked away for all this time, since the time of the ancient war.”

  Richard had been dealt years of grief, misery, and trouble because of that ancient war. It was a war that had never been fully resolved back when it had raged. That ancient conflict had reawakened to spawn a new war that had caused untold suffering and had taken hundreds of thousands of lives. But that war, both the ancient one and the new one it had given rise to, was at last over. He had ended it for good.

  Richard glanced out the opening and then back at Samantha. “What does a place have to do with the Grace.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Not a place, as such. Although, it is a place—”

  “It is, but it isn’t.” He made an effort to control his voice and keep it composed. “Samantha, if I’m going to help, you need to be more clear.”

  “Sorry.” She pushed some of her hair back, took a breath, and lifted both hands as she started over. “The third kingdom is neither the kingdom of life, nor the kingdom of death.” She lifted each hand alternately as if to illustrate both of those kingdoms in balance. She brought her hands together. “The third kingdom is both, together, in the same place, at the same time.”

  Richard felt goose bumps tingle up his arms to the nape of his neck. “That’s not possible.”

>   An uncomfortable thought immediately came to him. He had once ventured to the underworld to go to the Temple of the Winds, which had been banished there for safekeeping during that ancient great war. He was life, and he had been in the world of the dead. So, in a way, both life and death had been in the same place at the same time.

  When he first met Kahlan she had come looking for help from beyond the barrier that separated Westland from the Midlands. That barrier, slicing through their world, like a crack in their world, was an opening into the underworld. He had gone through that barrier with her.

  So, in a way, he realized that such things were in some ways possible. Great trouble, certainly, but possible.

  He turned back to the opening, this time looking at the symbols circling it, rather than looking out the opening itself to the distant valley. He surveyed the symbols, deciphering them in his mind as he studied the entire band of elements. It was then, for the first time, that he saw that the symbols translated to “the third kingdom.”

  It was naming what the opening showed.

  When he had first seen that encircling emblem, and had recognized the device within the design that meant “kingdom,” he had assumed that the circle of symbols would merely be the name of an ancient kingdom. After all, what was now D’Hara had once been made up of many kingdoms.

  Samantha reached up and tapped her finger on his chest. “You have both life and death in you at the same time. Right now, you are neither of the world of life, nor of the world of the dead. Right now, you belong in both places. You have both life and death in you at the same time, as does the Mother Confessor. If that touch of death is not removed from you, it will claim you both and you both will die. But for now, you carry both life and death within you.”

  Richard stared at her.

  “That is why I say that you are of that place.” Without taking her eyes from him, she flicked a finger toward the opening looking out into the distance. “You are of the third kingdom beyond the north wall.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  “The north wall? Why do you keep calling it that?”