The Third Kingdom (41 page)

“This way,” Richard said. “Try not to look at them.”

“It’s hard not to,” she said back over her shoulder.

“I know,” Richard said in soft reassurance.

Almost before he had finished saying it, another wavering greenish veil abruptly loomed up before them, as if it had just risen from the underworld itself.

It came into view so swiftly that Richard almost stepped into it, almost touched it. It was so close that he could see forms
moving beyond the opaque wall, pushing against it in places to make it stretch and bulge outward.

Richard took a quick step back.

“Lord Rahl?” Samantha called from the other side of the green veil.

He had pushed Samantha out ahead, directing her to a different route, and the veil had come up between the two of them as she had been out in front of him.

“It’s all right, Samantha. I’m all right.”

“Lord Rahl, I can hear you, but I can’t see you.”

There was no mistaking the alarm in her voice. “It’s all right, Samantha. I’m right here. Stay back from it. Don’t go near it. I’ll come to you.”

He turned a different way, going around it to get to Samantha. He made his way around a few of the imposing spires of rock to find a passage around the green veil.

Another curtain of the undulating green luminescence materialized, sliding in among the stone crags, as if carried in on an ill breeze. It stopped him in his tracks, preventing him from going the way he had intended in order to get around the first veil separating them.

“Lord Rahl, you’re scaring me. Where are you?”

“Right here. I’m okay. I just have to go around another way, that’s all. Hold on. I’ll be right there.”

The soaring rock spires all around created a maze that was made all the more difficult to navigate by routes being blocked by the flickering greenish veils of light.

As he turned to the left to go around a different way, another green veil appeared. This time, it felt deliberate, as if it somehow intended to block him from advancing and getting around. When he turned back, there was another already blocking his way.

“Lord Rahl?” came her voice in among the rock walls as
another greenish curtain drifted in behind him, blocking any retreat.

There was only one way left open, and when he raced for it he had to skid to a stop as it, too, became blocked with the menacing green veil. He realized that he was surrounded. He would have to wait until the boundary walls to the underworld moved on.

“Samantha, listen to me. Do you have green walls blocking your way?”

“No. But I can’t find you. I can’t see you anymore. I can hear you, but not very well. I can’t see you.”

Richard was now completely surrounded by flickering, wavering, greenish light spanning every gap and escape route in the rock. He was trapped.

He knew that something was going on. This was not random.

This was deliberate.

Richard knew that he had only moments before the walls closed in and enveloped him.

“Samantha, can you hear me?”

“Barely.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Listen to me. Don’t ask questions. Don’t talk back and don’t hesitate. Just do what I say. Understand?”

“Yes, Lord Rahl?”

“Run. Get away. Do it now.”

Richard heard the crunch of small rocks from her footsteps. She was running. He sighed in relief at that much as the sound of her footsteps disappeared into the distance.

And then Richard was alone, surrounded by the world of the dead. He could see them—spirits of the dead—writhing beyond that eerie, opaque, greenish veil, hungry to get at him, to pull him in.

Richard began to see another shadowed form through the slowly swelling, flowing, rippling curtain of glimmering greenish luminescence.

This form, though, was different from all the others.

This one was not moving.

The green veil on that one side in front of him began to fade, then to dissolve. It dissipated into the air before him until Richard was once again able to see the rocky world beyond. The green walls of the underworld to the sides and behind remained in place, blocking any retreat, but the way ahead was once more open.

Richard glanced to the sides, as much as he could, anyway, to look beyond the stone spires and the remaining prison of green, looking for any sign of Samantha. He didn’t see her anywhere. He was relieved that she had done as he said.

Something was going on and he was thankful that she hadn’t been trapped along with him. As long as she was still free, she might still be able to do something to help the others escape. Although she was still very young, Richard didn’t discount her ability or her determination. As long as one of them was still free and could act, there was still a chance to save the others.

In the deep shadows between the spires of stone not far in the distance a man in dark robes stood silently watching. It was the same form Richard had seen, unmoving, beyond the veil of the underworld. Now that the green shroud was gone, the shadowed form remained, confirming that this was not one of the dead from beyond the veil of life. Behind the man, off to his left side just a bit, was another form in the deeper shadows that he couldn’t quite make out.

Once the green luminescence over the underworld had evaporated from the world of life, the man who had been waiting beyond that opening into the underworld began to step forward out of the shadows.

When he came into the muted light of the overcast afternoon, Richard stood in stunned silence.

The whites of the man’s eyes were bloodred.

It looked as if his eyes had been deliberately tattooed a bright blood red, making the dark iris and pupil seem as if they were looking out from a fiery world—or perhaps from the underworld itself. It was as disconcerting as any gaze Richard had ever seen.

Even as otherworldly as his eyes looked, this man was clearly not an apparition from the world of the dead. Richard could tell that he was real enough, that he was flesh and blood.

Although it was that flesh that was the most disturbing aspect of the man. It was perhaps the most ghastly thing Richard had ever seen this side of death.

Every bit of the man not hidden by his dark robes was covered with tattooed symbols.

Symbols Richard recognized.

His flesh was not simply covered with the designs, but rather the tattoos were layered over the top of one another countless times so that the skin looked something other than human. As far as Richard could see, there was no spot that was not tattooed with some part or element of the circular designs,
each one randomly laid over others that lay over yet others, all layer upon layer so that there was not one spot of untouched skin visible anywhere.

The top layers appeared to be the darkest, with designs underneath being lighter, and the ones under those lighter yet. It was as if they were continually being absorbed down into his flesh and new ones had to be constantly added over the top of those already vanishing down into his flesh. It gave them an endless, bottomless appearance, a tangled complexity that was dizzying, as if the symbols were continually seething up from underneath in a sea of something dark and dreadful.

The ever-deeper levels of the designs gave the man’s skin a three-dimensional appearance. The endless layers made it hard to tell just where the surface of the skin actually was in all the floating elements, lending the flesh a shadowy, somewhat hazy, somewhat ghostly aspect.

The way the underlayers were lighter than the ones on top of them made each symbol distinct and recognizable, regardless of how many layers down in the design it lay, or how tightly packed they all were. All the different symbols, linked designs, and complex elements varied in size. There seemed to be an endless variety to the patterns within the designs, but each of those symbols contributed meaning to the larger, circular elements.

The man’s hands and wrists, from what Richard could see of them where they emerged from his black coat, were completely covered with the same kinds of designs. Even his rather long fingernails appeared to be tattooed beneath, with the designs visible right through the nail itself.

His neck above his tight collar, like everywhere else, was covered with the designs ringing his throat. His face—every part of his face—was covered with the same sort of emblems. There were hundreds, if not thousands, on his face alone. When he blinked those terrible red eyes, Richard saw that his
eyelids were tattooed as well. Even his ears, every fold and as far down inside as Richard was able to see, were completely covered with the symbols on top of circular symbols on top of yet more of the symbols. There were so many circular symbols that, in a way, it almost looked less like simple tattoos and more like they were a manifestation of black thoughts boiling to the surface from within.

While the man’s bald head was covered over with the same kinds of designs, one of them, larger than all the rest, dominated them all. The bottom edge of that large circle crossed over the bridge of his nose, going out over his cheeks to each side beneath his eyes, and then up and around just above his ears to cover the rest of the crown of the skull. Inside the circle was another, and between them a ring of runes.

A triangle sitting within the inner circle crossed horizontally just above the man’s brow. Smaller, secondary circular symbols floating outside the points of the triangle that broke the circles covered each temple with the third at the point of the triangle on the back of his head. The way it was laid out made it appear as if the man was glaring out with those haunting red eyes from within the circular symbol itself, as if he were glaring out from the underworld.

In the center of the triangle, toward the front of the man’s skull, was a backward figure nine.

Richard recognized not only all the designs, but that one in particular.

That familiar tattoo covering the top of the man’s bald head was darker than all the others, not just because it looked to be the most recently added, but because the lines composing it were heavier. Even so, lying as it was over layers of hundreds of other random emblems, it was evident that it was merely a part of a much larger purpose.

All the tattoos, in all their many different designs, were still variations of the same basic themes, much as letters in an
alphabet were all of a set. There were symbols laid out in circles of every size, even circles within circles within circles, with some of the symbols contained within those circles made up of other, smaller designs and elements that Richard recognized as well. It was a disturbing sight to see a man so given over to such an occult purpose.

It all made him a dark, living, moving, fluid illustration, with every design down through the countless layers clearly discernible, and clearly with a purpose.

Richard was especially disturbed by the central design covering the top part of the man’s face and skull, the one with the backward figure nine. Like the rest of the symbols all over the man, it, too, was in the language of Creation.

Richard also recognized all too well that looking out from the symbol as the man was, the figure nine at the heart of it would not be backward to him.

That particular symbol was the same one as on the omen machine, and on the cover of the book,
Regula
, that went with the machine. It was a symbol that linked it all to Richard.

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.”

“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.