Into Darkness Page 27

  Richard and Vika shared a look, not knowing what to expect.

  Sang finally stepped through the gathering of tall, black creatures. He held his claws in tight to his stomach so as not to accidentally catch on them, and they did the same as they allowed him to pass. Sang turned to the Glee assembled before them and held out a claw toward Richard and Vika as he waited for all those gathered to fall silent and pay attention.

  Richard watched all the Glee, still wary. He was trusting Sang’s word that they wanted his help, and that this wasn’t some trick to get him away from his own people so they could eliminate him. He didn’t really think that was the case, but he studied all the Glee before him, one at a time, looking at each face for any hint of trouble.

  “These are the ones I spoke of,” Sang finally announced. “This is Lord Rahl with the weapon he carries on his hip, and the female is Vika, one of his warriors. Unlike us, their females fight alongside the males, and I can tell you, from having watched them fight, that this female is deadly.

  “They both have given up their lives and those they care for, given up any hope of ever returning to their world, in order to come here to finally stop the Golden Goddess and her followers. Lord Rahl has even given up caring for his new offspring not yet come into the world in order to come here to protect his world and ours.”

  This news seemed to create a lot of conversation that he and Vika couldn’t hear, but he could imagine it well enough as Glee faced one another, nodding among themselves and occasionally glancing up at him and Vika.

  Their animated gestures finally subsided until no one seemed to be saying anything, unless they were talking to Sang and only he could hear them in his mind. Richard didn’t especially like the way the Glee could choose for others to hear them or not. He worried that if they were saying anything threatening, he wouldn’t have any idea that he was suddenly on the verge of being attacked. If that were the case, there was nothing he could do about it before it happened.

  “If we are to stop the goddess,” Richard said aloud to get their attention, “we are going to need your help.”

  That seemed to send a fright through the group. A number of them started slowly moving back. A few at the edges of the crowd slipped into the water and glided away.

  “They are afraid,” Sang explained. “These are not fighters, like the others. They are against what the others do, but they are not fighters. They don’t like cruelty.”

  Richard looked out at the sea of inky faces watching him. At least they weren’t showing their teeth. As he scanned the group, he paid particular attention to one individual near the front. He was standing just behind a few others.

  Richard pointed to that one. “You. Come here.”

  All the Glee looked confused. The Glee Richard had pointed to glanced around self-consciously but didn’t move.

  Richard stepped down off the rock he was standing on and gently urged several Glee in the front out of his way. Before anyone knew what was happening, he snatched the Glee he had been watching by the wrist, above the claw, before he could slip away.

  The Glee twisted and turned first one way and then another as he tried to back away from Richard’s grip. Richard turned the wrist over and increased the pressure on it. He was glad to find that it had the same effect on the Glee as it did on people: it forced the Glee to his knees.

  “What are you doing?” Sang’s voice in his head sounded frantic and frightened.

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  Richard twisted the Glee’s wrist harder. Doing so worked just as well as it did on a man, causing the Glee to squeal in pain as he cringed before him on his knees. Richard continued to apply pressure to keep him immobilized.

  “This one here is a spy sent by the Golden Goddess,” he announced to the shocked crowd.

  At his words, the mass of Glee all moved back away from the one Richard had by the wrist as they hissed in fear, confusion, or Richard didn’t really know what.

  “She sent this one to watch the Glee she considers traitors to her kind. She considers all of you a threat. This one was watching and then intended to report back to her on what he heard you saying. Once he did, it would only be a matter of time before she moved against you.”

  Sang looked confused as he glanced around at the others watching them. “What are you doing? What makes you think this?”

  Richard showed Sang a small smile. “He doesn’t have the green sheen to his skin that all the rest of those gathered here have. This one does not eat flutter weed, float weed, and muscle snails. He eats the flesh of those from other worlds.”

  Along with everyone else, Sang stared at the Glee Richard had on his knees. “Is this true?”

  “No!” the Glee screamed in Richard’s mind and, he was sure, in the minds of all the Glee gathered around, watching.

  “You are lying,” Richard said as he gave Vika a meaningful look.

  Without hesitation she spun her Agiel up into her fist. She went to one knee to get down closer to the Glee, and without a moment’s hesitation she gritted her teeth and rammed her Agiel into his midsection.

  The Glee shrieked out loud, twisting, trying to get away, but Richard held him tight with pressure on his wrist as Vika kept the pressure on her Agiel. She finally pulled back away.

  She leaned in, then, putting her face close to the Glee. “Tell everyone what you are doing here.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” the Glee cried out in their heads. “I am no spy! I am not with the goddess!”

  “We don’t do this kind of thing to one another,” Sang said as he held his arms out, trying to urge Vika and Richard to stop. “This is not the way we behave to each other.”

  Vika looked back over her shoulder, giving Sang the kind of look that only a Mord-Sith in a rage could give. He went silent as he backed up a step.

  “We gave up our lives to come here,” she said. “Lord Rahl gave up his wife and children who are about to be born to come here. He can never return home. All for you, all for the Glee. All to help you stop your own kind from killing and destroying your way of life. We are doing this as much for you as for the lives in our world. And I have to tell you, after sacrificing my life and my world, I am definitely not in the mood to be lied to.”

  “I would tell her what she wants to know,” Richard told the Glee he was keeping on his knees.

  The Glee defiantly shook his head.

  Vika reacted by ramming her Agiel into his midsection again. The Glee twisted and shrieked. The first time had been a warning to talk. She held it there longer the second time and pressed it in harder. When she finally pulled it away, the Glee sagged, one arm raised up only because Richard had a firm grip on his wrist. Tears of agony ran from his big black eyes.

  Vika held the Agiel up before the panting Glee’s face. “The next time, unless you start answering our questions truthfully, I am going to shove this in your eye, blinding it, and when you don’t answer, I will blind your other eye. If you still don’t—”

  The Glee held up his other claw. “No! Please! I will tell you what you want to know.”

  Richard lifted up on the arm, still putting pressure on the wrist, until the Glee was standing on trembling legs. “I want you to tell everyone the truth of what you are doing here.”

  The Glee looked around. He glanced timidly at Vika before beginning.

  “The Golden Goddess sent me, just as this one said. She is gathering a large force to begin a mass attack.” With a claw he gestured out at the crowd. “She considers all of you traitors because you do not support her. You are traitors! She has promised those with her that she is going to let them hunt you for the sport of it and then eat you all. She will no longer tolerate any of you who talk to her followers, trying to get them to change their ways. She believes it would be better if you and your offspring were all dead.”

  Loud hissing that Richard took for a kind of collective gasp of shock spread through all the Glee watching. They clacked their teeth and claws, apparently in a displa
y of anger.

  “Why are you here, now?” Richard asked.

  “A spy up near the mountain saw that Sang was bringing two of the creatures from the other world down to here. The goddess sent me to find out your plans so that she might stop you. She is very angry. She wants your blood.”

  “I would be glad to tell her my plans,” Richard said to the Glee. “In fact, I want you to go back and tell her my plans.”

  The Glee nodded eagerly. “Yes, I will tell her what you say.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  The Glee shrugged a little. “The one they call Lord Rahl?”

  “Yes, that and more,” Richard said for all to hear. “I am also the one called fuer grissa ost drauka.”

  “Fuer grissa ost drauka? I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means ‘the bringer of death.’ I want you to tell your Golden Goddess that besides being fuer grissa ost drauka, I was born a war wizard. War is my calling. I live for fighting wars.”

  The Glee nodded furiously. “Yes, I will tell her.”

  “I want you to also tell the Golden Goddess that she has sent her kind to my world to kill us. Because of her, I have gone into darkness.

  “Now I am here, and I mean to make war.”

  “Yes,” the Glee said, still nodding. “I will tell her your words.”

  “I want you to also tell her that I demand she surrender her world to me.”

  The Glee winced a little as he shrank back as much as he could with Richard still holding pressure on his wrist. “Surrender her world? What should I tell her are your conditions?”

  “No conditions. Her surrender must be unconditional. There will be no negotiations. If she does not surrender her world unconditionally, I will come and kill her and all of her followers.”

  The Glee seemed to wince a little as he nodded again. “I will tell her. Fuer grissa ost drauka. The bringer of death. She must surrender our world unconditionally. I will tell her.”

  “One more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell her that I am going to enjoy hunting and killing her.”

  Richard suddenly released the Glee’s wrist. As he did, and before the Glee could leave, he drew his sword. The rage of the sword’s magic instantly surged through him. The unique sound of steel rang out across the swampy water. Before anyone could say anything or had a chance to move, the blade flashed through the air and lopped off the Glee’s claw.

  The Glee stumbled back in shock, clutching the arm without a claw to his chest with the other as he shook.

  “You tell the Golden Goddess that her kind has shown my kind no mercy, and I will show her none. Now go before I take your head in addition to your claw.”

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  Richard watched the Glee stagger away and then gradually break into an awkward, stumbling run. As he watched the Glee leaving, he felt the magic of the sword pounding through him, matched by his own anger at how many people the followers of the Golden Goddess had killed in his world. He raged at what they had done to Kahlan’s life, to his, and the lives of countless others left without a loved one. He finally slid the sword back into its scabbard to extinguish its fury.

  He was glad, though, to learn that the sword’s magic had joined with his and had worked in this world. His bond had also worked to power Vika’s Agiel. It had confirmed that his own gift would function in this alien place. If he knew how to call upon it at will, that would be even better, but he had rarely been able to do that. He was relieved, however, that even though there were only the two of them, at least his magic would be there for him if he was in desperate need. He hoped that would be enough to see them through what lay ahead.

  He turned back and looked out over the stunned crowd of Glee watching him.

  “That Glee, had he not been discovered, would have betrayed you all. You could all have lost your lives before you even realized that the goddess was planning to send her followers to kill you. Now that you know they don’t have the same greenish iridescence as all of you have, you need to be on the lookout for others. There is no telling if the goddess might have sent more than that one among you.”

  The Glee all looked around at those nearby.

  “We will do as you say and watch for them,” Sang said.

  “I need to know the lay of the land and where the goddess and her followers are,” Richard told them.

  “It is some distance that way,” Sang said as he pointed in the direction the lone Glee had run off into the thick brownish-red haze that continually drifted past. “She and her followers are off that way. It is an isolated area. There is only one way into the place where they are. There is not a lot to eat in that location, like there is here, but it is well protected. She does not care about what there is to eat there because her followers prefer to eat creatures from other worlds rather than the food our world has always provided for us.

  “But now that you have sent her spy back without a claw, she will be angry, and she will be expecting you to come for her. Her followers will be on alert and massed to protect her. I don’t see how it would be possible to attack her now that you have told her that you will be coming for her.”

  Richard briefly glanced into the distance where Sang had pointed. “There is only one way in?”

  Sang nodded. “Yes. She chose that place because there is but the one way in, so it is easy to defend, should any others think to take her power.”

  “Or think to end her ideas of taking other worlds,” Richard said.

  Sang nodded along with a few others. “She will be preparing for you and prepared to protect the place.”

  Richard rested a fist on his hip again, thinking, as he looked off in the direction Sang had indicated. It was a gloomy, reddish landscape of swamps and low vegetation. In the distance there were more of the strange tall trees with the leaves in tight clumps at the tops of their long, crooked trunks. Colonies of the large bats flew among the trees.

  In the far distance he could also see some higher ground, along with some imposing cliffs. He presumed that higher ground must be what protected access to where she and her followers were gathered. He looked back at Sang.

  “What do you mean, there is only one way in? Why? Why can’t we go around to come in another way, on another side?”

  Sang and all the other Glee seemed to shrink back a little. “It is impossible to go around and come in from another way.”

  “You already said that. Why is it impossible?”

  “Because,” Sang said with a kind of whine that Richard could hear in his head along with the words, “that way is far too barren and dry. Nothing grows there, and there is no water. None of us could survive there. We would die.”

  “What do you mean, you would die? You came to my world, and you said that was dry. You didn’t die there.”

  Sang shook his head with conviction. “This is a different kind of dry place. Do you remember the sand we were standing on when we came back from darkness?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  “All around the place where the Golden Goddess and her followers live is that kind of ground. Sand, as you call it. Nothing but sand and many towers of rock. In between those high rock walls there are hills of sand. Expanses of wind-driven sand make up all the ground there. When the wind comes up stronger, it creates a storm of sand and wind on the ground. Nothing can survive there.”

  Richard nodded. “Good. Then that’s the way we will go.”

  There were gasps from the Glee and they turned to one another, seeming to murmur their fears. Richard ignored their obvious concern and instead squatted down and pushed some of the smaller rocks aside to clear an area of muddy ground.

  “Here, draw a map for me. Show me where everything is located in relation to us.”

  Sang leaned in and looked at the bare ground. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Richard pointed out at the areas of swampy water, then drew a quick map of the ponds in the sandy dirt. “Like this. A picture on the ground of
where places are. See this?” He pointed again out at the nearby landscape. “I have drawn a map, a picture on the ground, of where the water is”—he gestured—“out that way. See each of the areas of water I drew?”

  Sang and the others looked back at the water, then leaned in to peer down at the map Richard had drawn on the ground.

  “I see what you mean, now,” Sang said.

  Richard smoothed out the ground, covering the map he had just sketched. “Now, you draw a map of where we are, where the goddess is, and the kind of land around her place—what is the area of dry sand. Try your best to show their relative sizes.”

  Sang squatted down and lifted one single claw out and away from the other two, like pointing with a finger. Richard hadn’t known they had that much dexterity with their claws. Sang then used the single claw to sketch out a lay of the land. All the while he was drawing, he pulled his lips back over his sharp teeth, the way some people stick out a tongue when drawing.

  “This,” Sang finally said, tapping the ground with the single claw, “is the area of sand and tall rock. Here are mountains that are too high to climb. Here, on this side, is the way that the goddess and her followers go in and out of her place to then go to the mountain with the device they use to travel to other worlds. All of this, around here, is the impassable area of sand. We would die if we tried to go that way to get to the place where they are gathered.”

  Richard studied the map and then tapped a finger on the area that Sang said was impassable. “Good. We will go in this way. They won’t be expecting us.”

  All the Glee gathered around looked at each other, again hissing their fright. Sang held up his claws to ward off the very notion of Richard’s idea.

  “You can go that way to kill the goddess if it is your choice, but we cannot guide you into her place if you wish to go that way around. Besides, even if we could go that way with you, we are not fighters. This is why I asked you to come to our world to kill the goddess. I have seen you fight. We, here, cannot fight the way you do, or the way those with the goddess have learned to fight and kill. We are peaceful.”