Into Darkness Read online

  Richard hugged the stone with all his might as he gripped Vika’s hand as hard as he could. He dared not lose his grip on her hand. He thought he might be hurting her, but she was squeezing back just as hard.

  He closed his eyes, trying to empty his mind of all the thousand worries questioning everything he had just done. No one had taught him these procedures. He had learned them from the gateway itself through its verification web. In essence, the gateway had shown him what it needed at each step.

  His grandfather Zedd had taught him that many dangerous things of magic had fail-safes that prevented anyone who wasn’t supposed to from using them. He worried that maybe the things the gateway had revealed it needed to function and reset might be one of those fail-safe traps to not only prevent him from successfully using something that he was not meant to use but kill him in the process.

  Many fail-safes were, after all, lethal.

  He mentally ran through everything he had done, trying to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything. He knew he had done a thorough analysis and as a result he had disarmed all the fail-safe sequences he had found from the interior perspective of the verification web. He tried to think if it was possible there had been any that he could have missed. But if there were, it was too late now.

  He knew he needed to focus, so he finally put those concerns from his mind.

  He called the target.

  He tried as hard as he could not to let any other thoughts but that target enter his mind. Around the fringes of his awareness, though, a continual stream of little things nagged and nibbled, calling to him, trying to pull him away to think about each of them. He redoubled his effort to put them from his mind.

  As he did when he shot his bow, he saw the target in his mind, centered on it, and pulled it toward him.

  He didn’t feel anything trying to force him from the stone, or Vika from his grip, but he dared not loosen his hold on either. He had to remind himself what mattered and put both of those thoughts from his mind as he concentrated on calling the target.

  He stole a quick peek. It was hard to see anything through the sparkling points of light, but he could detect the windswept stone all around them rapidly getting increasingly wavy. He thought it might be that his eyes were watering, so he blinked and returned to concentrating on calling the target.

  He had done everything to the best of his ability. He knew he could no longer dare to spare the mental effort to worry about any of it. Now, he simply focused on calling the target. That was all that mattered. It was everything that mattered.

  Suddenly there was a thunderous rumbling sound, low, intense, powerful. Even with his eyes closed, he could see the flash of light that had caused it.

  The next thing he was aware of, before he could begin to understand what had just happened, was darkness beyond dark.

  Abruptly, there was no longer any sound at all. The profound silence rang in his ears until it hurt, and then even that sensation was gone.

  Richard felt nothing. It was a complete lack of any sights or sounds or sensations. He couldn’t tell up from down.

  He couldn’t feel if he still had hold of Vika’s hand or if he was still holding the stone. He desperately hoped that he was. If he wasn’t, then it had all been for nothing and he would go forever into darkness until even his thoughts gradually disintegrated into nothing and became part of the void.

  He had absolutely no sense of time. He didn’t know if it had been minutes, hours, or even days since the silent darkness had abruptly collapsed in on him. Even that sensation of falling and the awful expectation of hitting the bottom left him. Having done this before made it easier to do again. He told himself that this was no different than it had been last time.

  But somehow, in some indescribable way, this was different.

  Very different. Profoundly different.

  Despite having done this before, it was a sensation of no sensation that left him feeling hollow and lost.

  Since he had done this before, it was relatively easy to talk himself out of any panic. He knew that eventually it had to end—in one way or the other—so he tried his best to disregard the sensation, or rather, the lack of sensation, and focus only on calling the target. That was his only job, now.

  To keep his mind from wandering into disturbing places even as he concentrated on calling the target, he thought of Kahlan in the background behind the target.

  He pictured her face in his mind.

  He smiled when she smiled.

  77

  Suddenly, light and sound and sensation slammed in all around him. It was such a powerful awareness that it made him gasp. It was so totally different from the void of all sensation that the abrupt weight and light and sound hurt.

  He could feel himself still holding Vika’s hand and he still had his other arm around the gateway stone.

  Richard opened his eyes, afraid he would see the same terrible place in the Glee’s world.

  Instead he saw his target brought to life all around him.

  Despite having expected it, he blinked in surprise.

  Vika turned all the way around, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “You did it! You did it! Lord Rahl, you did it! You got us home!”

  The gateway stone was right there beside him the way it had been, except that now wisps of vapor rose off of it. The gold ring sat in the white sand, like it had been before. But this sand was white. Really white.

  All around him, in all its glory, was the Garden of Life.

  He could see the stand of trees off to one side, with the path meandering back through them. It made him feel so good to see trees again that he thought his chest might burst. When he looked up, he saw the glassed skylight overhead that let in the sunlight … sunlight of his world. The sky was a clear, bright blue, not red. All around him there was color—greens of every shade and browns and whites. Color had never looked so luscious, so vibrant before.

  He and Vika stared around at the place. It didn’t seem possible that it could be real.

  This was the target he had called, and it was all around them, and it was real.

  They were in the People’s Palace. They were home again in their own world.

  Vika finally gripped him by his shoulders as she looked into his eyes. She had to swallow to be able to use her voice.

  “Lord Rahl, I will never ever again, for as long as I live, doubt any of your crazy ideas.”

  Richard smiled as he used a thumb to wipe tears from under her eyes. “Don’t be so quick to make that pledge. You have not yet heard what other crazy ideas I have.”

  By the look in her eyes, she didn’t care. He turned more serious.

  “I expect all those I love to occasionally doubt my crazy ideas, because questions from ones I care about and trust make me have to be sure, for their sake, before I act. So don’t ever stop questioning my crazy ideas.”

  She smiled. “All right. But now what? I’m afraid that we’re back where we started. The Mother Confessor and the rest of them are a long way off at the Wizard’s Keep.”

  He looked over at the gateway stone sitting beside him. The vapor was finally beginning to abate. It was still making a soft humming sound, as it had back in the Glee’s world when he had activated it.

  Vika gestured at the slanted top. “Don’t forget your knife.”

  Richard could see that several of the emblems were still glowing red and a couple were blue.

  “I’m not done yet. While the reset process is still active, I have to put in a fail-safe.”

  “A fail-safe?”

  “Yes, a procedure that prevents just anyone with the gift from being able to reset it or use it. Believe it or not, if you activate the gateway in the way I’ve done, you can actually create a duplicate.”

  Vika frowned. “What for?”

  Richard shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe so that you can play that you are gods by gifting a gateway to other worlds. Maybe this one is a duplicate and that is how the Glee came to have it.
Maybe the ones who gave it to them wanted to play at being gods.”

  “But you know for sure that there was no duplication this time, right? Are you sure this device is the one from the Glee’s world, and that they don’t have one anymore, maybe a duplicate of this one?”

  “I’m positive. The procedure for creating a duplicate is completely different. This is the original from the Glee’s world and there is no duplicate left behind. The Glee are going to be trapped in their world. They can never again travel to other worlds. I think Sang and his friends will be happy about that.”

  “And only you can ever do that with this one?”

  Richard nodded. “Only a Rahl, yes, with fail-safes to prevent just anyone from figuring it out and using it. The knife I used is only used by special people. The gateway will recognize only it, the same way it was set to recognize the claw of a Glee, before. That’s one safeguard. My blood created another protocol so that the gateway will only recognize Rahl blood.”

  “That should be specific enough, shouldn’t it?”

  Richard shook his head. “With something this dangerous, you can’t be too careful. It needs something more, another fail-safe that no one would likely know to use. Something that only the right person would know.”

  “Like what?”

  Richard flashed her a smile before squatting down before the stone. Most of the symbols in the language of Creation glowed a soft blue. One of them in the series of final emblems still glowed red, indicating that the reset was still open. He knew that once he touched it, the protocols would lock in and set.

  Before he put his hand on the pulsing red symbol, he reached down to another series of emblems designed to accept additional properties. He recognized that this was a way he could set a fail-safe protocol.

  He tapped that lower emblem once each time he counted out loud.

  “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” Each tap elicited a soft chime along with a pulse of brighter light. He tapped the emblem one last time. “Nine.”

  He spread his fingers to touch two green emblems at the same time. The gateway stone made a soft dull sound as it recognized and accepted the new fail-safe.

  Finally, he pressed his palm against the glowing red, pulsing symbol. He felt it make a soft vibration to confirm that the fail-safe was set and all the new protocols he had initiated were locked in.

  Vika leaned close, looking at the symbols as the light within them gradually faded away and finally went out. The gateway stone once more looked like the inert stone it had seemed to be the first time they had seen it. It now appeared to be nothing more than a smooth but not polished stone, with symbols inscribed on it.

  Vika looked puzzled. She gestured at the gateway stone.

  “What were you counting?”

  “This thing is obviously dangerous. As dangerous as the most dangerous magic. I’m not sure how to destroy it, or what harm it could cause if I tried, so instead I decided to make sure that it will be incredibly difficult for anyone to ever use.

  “To make the gateway work, I locked in protocols that one now has to use a special knife like the one I’m carrying, and Rahl blood. But it’s always possible that those requirements could be met, even against the will of a Rahl, by using a knife like this to kill him. This kind of knife, with Rahl blood on it, would meet the initial procedures. But it’s too dangerous to leave it at that.

  “So I set into the gateway a protocol that, in addition to this kind of knife and Rahl blood, the Law of Nines is also required for the gateway to work. Without the Law of Nines, no gateway. It will remain an inert piece of stone.”

  Vika rose up. “You are a devious man, Lord Rahl.”

  Richard let out a deep breath now that it was finalized. “You’ve said that before.”

  “It bears repeating.”

  He looked to the path out of the Garden of Life. “We need to get to the Wizard’s Keep. Kahlan was about to give birth back when we left her there.”

  78

  “It was a long and difficult journey getting to the Keep the last time,” she reminded him. “We had better get some fast horses.”

  “I have a better way,” Richard told her.

  “Another crazy idea? Please tell me you don’t intend to use the gateway to get us there.”

  Richard shook his head at the very notion. “Dear spirits no. I’m not sure that would even be possible. But I know a better way, and it’s not crazy at all. Let’s go.”

  As they went through the double doors and out of the Garden of Life, there was a very surprised knot of men of the First File standing right there. They all stepped back, stunned at seeing the Lord Rahl and Vika.

  It looked as if they had heard sounds and were all gathered by the doors. At seeing him, all of them snapped to attention after stepping back and clapped fists to their hearts.

  One of the Lord Rahl’s personal guard stepped forward. The man was even bigger than the men of the First File. He was armored with fitted leather and had metal bands around his massive arms, just above his elbows. Those bands had razor-sharp projections on them that were used in close-quarters combat. They could tear an opponent apart with ease in short order.

  The big man blinked in astonishment. “Lord Rahl, we weren’t … expecting you.”

  “I suppose not,” Richard said. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting me to be here ever again.”

  When the man only frowned in confusion, Vika showed him a smile. “We went into darkness to get here.”

  He clearly didn’t have a clue as to what she could mean.

  “We’ve been keeping extra guards on this place since you told us to before you left,” the captain of the guard said. “Not a soul has gone in there, but we heard noises and thought that maybe it was more of the Glee.” He leaned over to look around Richard and through the open doors into the Garden of Life. The man looked painfully puzzled. “How did you get in there?”

  “I just returned from the world of the Glee,” he told them. The eyes of all the men widened. “They were killing people in our world, and they killed a lot of people here, at the palace. I had to make sure they can never come here to harm anyone again.”

  The captain looked grim. “There was an attack not long after you and the Mother Confessor disappeared, some time back, but none since then, thank the Creator.”

  “That wasn’t the Creator’s doing,” Vika told them. “It was Lord Rahl’s.”

  Richard ignored her and addressed the captain. “I’m sorry to hear about that, but at least there is no longer any need to ever again have to worry about attacks from those monsters. They will never be able to come here to our world again.”

  The captain frowned his concern. “Lord Rahl, how can you be so sure of that? Those demons could just show up out of thin air—we never knew when or where. How can you be sure they will not come again?”

  Richard gestured back through the open double doors. “Because I stole the device they used to travel to our world and brought it back with me.”

  Jaws dropped. “Weren’t they angry you did that?” the commander asked.

  “Well, yes, actually they were, but the ones who objected are now dead.”

  They all looked at Vika, like maybe she could explain the incomprehensible to them. “I know, it sounds crazy,” she told them, “but Lord Rahl sometimes does crazy things. If he didn’t, we would be the ones who were dead by now.”

  The captain cleared his throat. “We are certainly happy to hear that you are safely back in our world with us, Lord Rahl. But what of the Mother Confessor? You were going to the Keep for her safety.”

  “Yes, well, and therein lies the problem. I wanted to bring the device I stole from the Glee here, where I know it will be safe under the protection of the First File. Now that I’ve done that, I need to get to the Keep as soon as possible.”

  “What can we do to help?”

  “Get me to the sliph.”

  At that command, he sensed Vika tense up, and he
saw her glance down at the Sword of Truth.

  He showed her a small smile. “Since the sword had been touched by the world of the dead, and this time there isn’t any risk to Kahlan’s pregnancy, I can take my sword with me in the sliph.”

  Her expression eased. “That’s a relief.”

  Richard nodded his agreement and then turned to the Captain. “The fastest way to the sliph, if you please.”

  The man clapped a fist to his heart. “Come with us.”

  Richard could see in Vika’s face that she had lost weight. They had eaten hardly anything in the days they were in the world of the Glee. He was feeling weak himself. He knew that the sliph would take at least a day to get them to the Keep.

  Before they started out, he took one of the other soldiers by the arm. “It’s going to be a long journey. Please bring me and Vika something to eat. Nothing fancy or anything that would take time to prepare. Some kind of meat. Whatever is already cooked. Bring it to the sliph and be quick about it.”

  79

  Breathe …

  Richard had traveled with the sliph a number of times, and as was usually the case it was both breathtaking, in more ways than one, and utterly terrifying.

  The only difference this time was that he didn’t need to be told twice to breathe when they arrived and the sliph pushed him to the surface. While the sliph could be an experience of profound wonder, his sense of urgency meant that he didn’t care about any of that. He simply wanted out.

  He threw one arm over the side of the sliph’s well to hold himself up as he forced her fluid from his lungs, returning it to her, and then pulled in a deep breath. The shock of air made his body want to reject it. Despite the burning discomfort, he quickly pulled another deep breath as he grabbed a fistful of red leather as a limp Vika bobbed to the surface nearby.

  He pulled her up from the churning silver liquid to the edge where he was holding on with one arm over the side of the stone well. Slipping his other arm around her, under her arms, he helped keep her head up above the sliph’s quicksilver surface. She was limp and unresponsive. The silver fluid sluiced off her hair and red leather.