Terry Goodkind - The Third Kingdom

“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?”

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.