The Third Kingdom Read online

  She frowned at him, puzzled by the question. “Because that’s what it’s called.”

  “No it’s not,” Richard said.

  Her smooth brow creased. “What are you talking about?”

  Richard gestured back at the symbols stretching back along the wall. “It’s called the barrier wall. There is no mention of a north wall anywhere in these writings. It only speaks of the barrier wall. So why do your people call it the north wall?”

  Samantha’s dark eyes grew large and round. Her face looked pale against the dark frame of her hair.

  “Do you mean to say that you can read those strange markings on the walls?”

  “Yes.” He pointed to the circle of symbols around the opening. “This one here says ‘the third kingdom.’ It’s naming what it shows: ‘the third kingdom.’”

  Richard ran the flat of a hand along the wall to the side, where ancient symbols had been carefully cut into the smooth, polished surface. “This here speaks of the barrier wall. See, right here? This symbol combined with this one under it means ‘barrier wall.’ Nowhere does it call it the north wall.”

  Samantha followed behind him, ignoring where he pointed, instead gaping up at him. “You can read these markings? Are you saying that you really know what they all mean? You really understand them? For real?”

  He nodded as he swept his hand past another grouping of symbols. “These markings, here, all deal with the barrier. There’s a tremendous amount of information written here. I’d have to study it awhile to be able to translate it all, but I understand enough of what I see to know that it all pertains to the barrier and the third kingdom that lies beyond.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “So why do you call it the north wall?”

  She looked at a loss. “I don’t know. It has always been called the north wall. We’ve never had any reason to think it might be called something different.”

  It was Richard’s turn to be taken aback. He stopped and stared at her.

  “Do you mean to say that it has been the duty of the gifted people here in Stroyza to watch the barrier so they could warn others if the gates ever opened, and none of you could read the information about it all, the instructions and warnings that have been left right here on the walls?”

  She looked bewildered, confused, and somewhat embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but from what I’ve been taught, the markings are an ancient, dead language. I never heard my mother, aunts, or uncles say that the things on the walls here were important. Aunt Martha always smiled when she saw them and called them the pretty decorations our ancestors left for us.

  “My mother mentioned that others used to think it might be some kind of message, but I was always told that if it was, their ancient meaning had long ago been lost.”

  “But your people have been here all this time, apparently since the time that this was all built and this information was placed here. How could you not know what it says? Why wasn’t the understanding of these writings passed down? Why weren’t young people taught how to read this?”

  She gazed at the wall a moment before looking back at him. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I don’t have an answer.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.” Richard lifted a hand and then let it drop. “Why wouldn’t the gifted here teach their descendants, teach their children, to read this? After all, this was apparently their purpose, their duty—to be sentinels. This wall tells them about their purpose.”

  Samantha scratched her brow as she considered the problem. “Well, sometimes a skip is born—you know, a person who doesn’t inherit the gift.”

  Richard nodded as he rested the palm of his left hand on the hilt of his sword. “The gift skipped my mother.”

  “I guess that there must have been gaps like that in the lines of gifted who serve Stroyza,” she said. “It must be that there weren’t enough sorceresses with gifted children, so their knowledge wasn’t able to be passed on. When those ungifted children eventually had gifted children, maybe the only sorceresses still alive were old and the grandchildren weren’t yet old enough to learn it all. It could even be that older sorceresses had passed away by then and the young gifted had no one to teach them.

  “After all, you say that you’re gifted but no one taught you about using your gift. That knowledge that could have been passed on was lost to you. Who knows what you failed to learn as a result.”

  Richard’s mouth twisted with an exasperated expression. “I guess you have a point.”

  “Our understanding of these markings must have been lost during the times of those skips, so that the gifted who were eventually born were only able to learn sketchy pieces. It could even be that young people weren’t taught for some reason. You weren’t.

  “Like me with my mother gone, those young people during times of skips likely were never even aware of what areas of knowledge had been lost. After all, once I have children I can’t ever teach them the things my mother knew because she never had the time to teach me all she knew. I don’t even know what I’m missing from her, or how much she might have known that I will never know. I guess that must be why the meaning of these markings were never passed down to her.”

  Richard let out a weary sigh. “I guess that makes sense. I didn’t mean to make it sound like your people were negligent. It must have been hard for them. All this time they’ve lived way out here in this desolate place, all the time losing the knowledge of their reason for being here.”

  That was one of the reasons Richard had always considered books to be so important, why he sought them out, and why he put so much effort into gleaning information from them. Books were links that spanned such missing human bonds or even times of savagery and its resulting ages of ignorance.

  It was helpful if you had an elder who could pass on their knowledge, but if there were no elders to teach you for whatever reason, books filled the void, not merely in generations, but often in centuries and sometimes even millennia. Books served to keep hard-won knowledge safe. They endured. Books could almost be immortal.

  He glided the flat of his hand over the symbols carved into the stone wall. But you had to know how to read to extract that information. All the invaluable information written here on the walls was useless if young people weren’t taught how to read it.

  Samantha frowned suspiciously as she scrutinized the wall of symbols she couldn’t understand. “If you had no one to teach you about your gift, then how can you understand a dead language?”

  “In the course of some of the things I’ve been through, on my way to becoming the Lord Rahl, I’ve had to learn a lot of different things, such as High D’Haran”—he gestured at the wall—“and this.”

  His gaze drifted back to the round opening. “But in all I’ve learned, I’ve never learned anything about a third kingdom. I’ve never heard this place mentioned anywhere.”

  “I guess your elders failed to teach you many things, too.”

  He succumbed to a crooked smile. “I guess so.”

  “But what about this dead language?” she asked, still looking perplexed. “You really do understand these strange markings and know what they all mean?”

  “Yes.” He again ran the flat of his hand over one of the designs. “This one here, for instance, involves what it calls barrier spells. It says that the barrier spells, not the stone walls, or iron gates, or even the mountains are the true strength that keeps such a great evil contained.”

  “Great evil…” she said with a worried look.

  He nodded as he gestured with a finger. “This composition here, beside it, mentions gravity spells being part of the barrier spells. I’d have to read more to try to find out what that means.” He looked down at her. “Do you happen to know what gravity spells are?”

  She shook her head, still staring at him in wonder, as if he could be nothing less than a good spirit with mystical knowledge come into the world of life to stand before her and explain the unexplainable. It made him feel a bit uncomfortable.

  He
went to another series of designs, studying the different elements for a moment. He tapped the wall. “This, here, talks about the gifted who settled here in this place called ‘Stroyza’ to watch over the barrier. It says they must stay in this place and watch for a deterioration of the gravity spells, which would in turn degrade the effectiveness of the barrier.”

  “I feel terrible that we lost all this knowledge. They went to so much trouble to pass on their knowledge, and we lost its meaning.”

  Richard nodded absently as he pinched his lower lip in concentration, studying the symbols, unable to resist translating them in his head as he scanned the elements. He wagged a finger at the wall.

  “This is interesting. It seems that the people who did this were aware that the barrier couldn’t last forever. That’s why they left people here to watch over it in the first place. It says that the spells, though powerful and long-lived, would eventually decay over time. It says that when that starts to happen some of those on the other side will begin to escape out into the world of life.”

  “Jit,” Samantha whispered in realization. She looked up at him. “She was one of those things that we should have known to watch for. My mother was worried about the Hedge Maid, and where she might have come from, but she didn’t know anything about these barrier spells as you called them.”

  Samantha walked along the wall, gazing at all the markings in a new light. “To think, I never even knew that this was a language. I can’t believe that none of us ever knew that these odd markings were important instructions on our duty.”

  “It’s called the language of Creation.”

  Samantha turned back to him, her brow drawing together. “Do they teach you this language of Creation in Hartland, where you are from?”

  Richard smiled at the notion. “No. I learned it not long ago, as a matter of fact.”

  The language of Creation was what the ancient machine Regula, or the omen machine as some called it, used to communicate or to set down prophecy. Regula issued prophecy by using focused beams of light to burn the symbols composing the language of Creation onto metal strips. There was part of a book, also called Regula, back at the People’s Palace. Not all of it was there. Part of it, the part explaining the purpose of the machine, had long ago been removed and sent to the Temple of the Winds for safekeeping.

  Regula seemed to be an instruction book of some sort for the device. With the help of the book Richard had learned to translate the symbols and in the process learned the language of Creation.

  The language of Creation was a condensed, efficient form of writing. It used symbols representing concepts, rather than words. Once Richard caught on, he had come to realize that for years he had used parts of the language of Creation without realizing it. Many symbols in the Keep as well as spells drawn by the gifted used elements of the language of Creation. In many small ways, the language of Creation influenced all that came after it.

  “I don’t see how such a thing is possible,” Samantha said with a frustrated sigh. “I don’t see how something can be communicated merely with symbols and designs.” She swept a hand past the wall. “How do circles, triangles, and all these different kinds of squiggly emblems and elements and such really tell us anything? At least anything complex?”

  “The Grace is a symbol, isn’t it?” he asked as he scanned the writing on the wall.

  “Well, yes.”

  “It’s a symbol from the language of Creation.”

  Her eyes grew big again. “It is?”

  “Sure. And it’s a pretty complex concept, don’t you think? Look here.” With a finger he revealed a circular element nested in one of the symbols on the wall. “Here is a symbol that talks about life, and the dangers to it from what lies beyond the barrier. See how it contains some elements of the Grace?”

  Samantha’s jaw dropped as she came closer and touched the motif of life. “I’ve never noticed that before. I always came here with my mother to look out through the opening into the distance to check the wall. Since I never knew what any of the things carved on the wall meant, or that they meant anything, I’ve never really paid much attention to any of it. I walked past it all the time without ever really looking at it.”

  “It’s all the language of Creation,” Richard said.

  “You are the one,” she said, staring up at him again with awed conviction. “Only the right one, the one who can help us all, would understand this writing and be able to tell what we must do about the third kingdom breaking through its barrier.”

  “Just because I understand the language of Creation, that doesn’t mean I understand the problem or I know what to do about it. I have my own problems to…”

  Richard turned back suddenly to the opening that looked out at the wall between the mountains in the distance.

  “Dear spirits,” he whispered aloud, “I think I might know where they are.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  Samantha looked puzzled. “You know where who is?”

  “My friends who came to the Dark Lands to rescue me and Kahlan,” Richard said, distracted as his mind raced, trying to fit together the pieces of the puzzle. “My friends were attacked much like your parents were attacked.”

  “What are you talking about? How do they connect to this?” she asked as she swept a hand out toward the expanse of symbols.

  “Barrier spells,” Richard said, turning back to the description on the wall. “When I first woke, there were a couple of men there standing over us. I was only just regaining consciousness, but I remember some of what they were saying. They were speculating about who might have attacked the soldiers and my friends who had been taking Kahlan and me back to the People’s Palace.

  “One of the men said that he thought our group had been attacked by people called the Shun-tuk—”

  “Shun-tuk? I’ve never heard any such people in the Dark Lands.”

  Richard looked toward the opening out through the wall. “I don’t think the Shun-tuk are from the Dark Lands. The other man was skeptical about it being the Shun-tuk. The first said ‘With the barrier wall now breached, what better place to hunt for people with souls? The Shun-tuk would go anywhere, do anything, to find such people.’”

  Samantha looked horrified. “So, then, you think these Shun-tuk came from beyond this barrier?”

  “Sounds like it. The second man said that they had a vast homeland of their own. He wanted to know why they would come this far. The first man said, ‘Same as us. Hunting for those with souls.’”

  Samantha’s nose wrinkled as she made a face. “Hunting for souls?”

  “That’s what he said. I don’t think their homeland is on this side of the barrier. I think it’s out beyond.”

  Richard returned to the wall, scanning the progression of symbols and designs, looking for something about souls. As he read in silence, Samantha walked on ahead, her footsteps echoing through the hall as she dragged a hand along the stone, gazing at the symbols she couldn’t understand, but was now starting to see in a new light.

  “Lord Rahl,” she called back.

  Richard, concentrating on the symbols, glanced back to where she had a finger pressed to the wall. “What is it?”

  “I think there’s a name here.”

  “A name? Are you sure?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said as she leaned closer to the wall, “but it’s not a symbol. I think it must be a name carved into the stone. It says ‘Naja.’”

  “Naja?” Richard was surprised that she could read something on the wall.

  “Yes, right here. I can’t believe I’ve never seen it before. I guess I never noticed it because it’s so small, and it’s almost lost in the crazy swirl of designs.”

  Richard scanned the wall off to the right of where Samantha stood holding a finger under the name. The area was slightly different than the rest of the carving on the corridor walls. The lines etched into the smooth stone of the wall stood out in stark relief in the glow of the glass sphere.
They were packed tighter, into their own section, creating what was a block of symbols unto themselves. The section created a core among the expanse of symbols flowing out around it.

  Richard looked above Samantha’s slender finger resting on the wall. There was indeed what looked to be the name Naja carved into the wall. After the name he saw a crescent with three rays below it cut into the stone—the symbol for the word “moon.”

  “What do you suppose it means?”

  Richard quickly translated some of the other symbols. “You’re right. It is a name. The first part can’t be written in the language of Creation, only the second part can.”

  “So what’s the name, then?”

  “Naja Moon.”

  “That’s a beautiful name,” Samantha said as she considered the sound of it, “but what do you suppose it’s doing here?”

  Richard was only half listening. He was already looking for the answer to that very question. He scanned the symbols to confirm his initial impression.

  “This is a personal account,” he said half to himself, half to Samantha.

  “A personal account?”

  Richard straightened. “That’s right.”

  Gazing at all the symbols, Samantha slowly shook her head in wonder. She pointed, then, a little farther into the maze of symbols.

  “Look over here—there’s another name. Magda Searus.”

  Richard’s knees grew weak under the weight of meaning behind that name. Goose bumps rippled up his arms at seeing it written there in the stone, written in such a far-off, lonely, forgotten land.

  Samantha frowned with concern when she saw the look on his face. “Lord Rahl, what’s wrong? Does that name mean something to you?”

  “Magda Searus was the first Confessor.”

  “The first Confessor. You mean Magda Searus was a Confessor like your wife?”

  Richard touched his fingertips to his temples as he stared at the name from legend.

  “That’s right,” he said at last. “Magda Searus was the very first of her kind, the first woman to become a Confessor. It all began with her.” Richard pointed after her name at another: Merritt. “Merritt was her wizard, her protector, much like I am Kahlan’s protector.”