Terry Goodkind - The Third Kingdom

“Naja says that the half people can sense the presence of a soul, the way a predator can smell blood.”

Samantha grabbed his sleeve again and leaned in. “You mean they can use that ability to track and hunt people?”

Richard nodded. “Naja says that the half people are death itself, with teeth, coming for the living.”

He had to pause to take a breath. The account was graphic and making him sick. He had only given her the highlights so that she would understand what they faced. He judged it enough.

Samantha, looking on the verge of tears, shook her head in horror. “Death with teeth, coming for the living,” she said to herself. “That’s what happened to my father, then. And maybe my mother. If they hadn’t already eaten her alive when they caught her, they would have by now.”

“We don’t know that.” Richard put a hand around the girl’s small shoulders and hugged her against his side. “I’m sorry, Samantha, to have to read this to you.”

She wiped her tears on her sleeve. “A kind lie would hardly serve me well. I’m the only gifted person left here. I need to know the truth of what my people face. I may be too young to really defend them, but I’m all they have.”

Richard understood how she felt. He was terrified for Zedd, Nicci, Cara, and the rest of them. He redoubled his focus on translating the account. Any time he might have left was quickly running out. But he needed to understand what they faced and then go find them.

Richard knew that with his gift corrupted and not working because of the touch of death in him, that meant that his bond to the people of D’Hara would not work. And if that bond didn’t work, then Cara’s Agiel, like Zedd’s and Nicci’s gift, would not work. Like the rest of them, she was virtually defenseless.

“This is disturbing,” Richard told Samantha. “Naja says that when the emperor’s makers created the half people, their spirits, once pulled from the victim, were not allowed to go to the spirit world. Because of how the spells to reanimate the dead worked, the spirits of those dead are pulled from their place in the underworld. Those spirits, both of the dead and of the half people, are thus kept trapped between realms.

“Unable to get to either the person they were pulled from or go through the veil into the underworld, these lost spirits sometimes drift back in this direction and end up haunting this plane of existence.” Richard looked over at Samantha. “Naja says that not all of them who drift back into the world of life are friendly.”

She made a sour face. “Great.”

Richard could only imagine the vengeful anger of such lost spirits.

The account became more complex with some terms involving magic, both Subtractive and Additive, that Richard didn’t understand. While there were elements describing conjuring that he had never seen before, he was able to grasp the general meaning of what Naja was explaining. And what she was explaining was frightening.

He scanned the next line of complex symbols twice before he was sure of what it said. He wished he weren’t, but he was sure.

CHAPTER

29

“So,” Samantha prompted, “is that all of it?”

He thought she sounded like she was trying to be hopeful even though she knew better.

He wiped a hand across his eyes and read the last of Naja Moon’s account, hoping to at last come to some word of the solutions to the problems of the half people and the reawakened dead. He was disheartened by what he found.

“She says that the best minds and most talented wizards of the New World were unable to come up with a way to eliminate the threat. She said that they fought the half people and the walking dead, often to victory, but even in victory they steadily lost valuable people. The Old World’s losses were meaningless to them because there are vastly more people there. Besides that, they could reanimate as many dead as they needed—often the very enemy we had been able to kill—while the losses on our side were costly and continually drained strength and resources from the New World.

“She says they all knew that if something wasn’t soon done to end the threat, or to at least somehow contain it, the New World, and life itself, was going to lose the war to Sulachan’s forces.

“Unable to come up with an effective counter or a way to destroy such a threat, she says they were desperate for a solution that could save them from annihilation as well as preserve the world of life. Eventually they came up with an answer that was not as much as they had hoped, but it was the best that they could do.

“She says that what the people here ended up doing was to use gravity spells that inexorably drew both the dead and the half people to this place beyond the mountains that we see out the portal. Once they had all been drawn in, the wizards in the New World were then able to seal these demons without souls behind a barrier of keeper spells.”

“Gravity spells, keeper spells—I’ve never heard of any such magic.”

“Me neither,” Richard said. “Naja doesn’t go into detail about the nature of those spells, but they seem pretty self-explanatory. She does say that in this way they were finally able to protect everyone from these demons without souls loose among the living.

“She then goes to great lengths to apologize on behalf of her people that they were forced to pass this terrible danger on to some unknown future generation, but there was nothing else they could do because otherwise Sulachan would have won the war and then there would be no future generations.

“She says that the best they could do was place the barrier and create a sentry village to watch over it and warn the wizards’ council of the mortal danger if and when the barrier failed.”

Richard tapped the next symbols. “This is alarming. She says that hopefully by then, the wizards’ council will have come up with a way to eliminate the threat once and for all.”

“Well, we pretty much know that never happened,” Samantha said. “And now there is no longer even a wizards’ council.”

“I’m afraid you’re right. She implores people here to keep watch, for when that barrier finally fails those without souls will come for the living and the world of life itself will again be at risk.”

Richard leaned in a bit, studying the next symbol. “She says that it’s important to know that the half people will seek those with the gift.”

“The gifted?” Samantha asked with a frown. “She said before that the gift doesn’t work against these walking dead and the unholy half dead, so why would they bother to come after the gifted?”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t know. She doesn’t explain.”

His anger boiled just beneath the surface thinking about what had happened to the First File troops and to his friends. He couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He needed to know what he could learn from Naja’s account, but time was running out.

Samantha was still frowning in thought. “Why would the half people want the gifted? I can see that in their madness they would want to steal a soul, crazy as that notion is, but why would they seek out the gifted?”

Richard sighed in frustration as he scanned the rows of symbols. “It doesn’t say. Maybe they think the gifted have some way to give them souls.” He glanced over at Samantha out of the corner of his eye. “Or maybe these half people, in their deranged obsession to possess a soul, think that there is something special about a gifted soul. Maybe they think it’s easier to get, or maybe they even think that if they got a gifted soul, then besides having their soul they would also possess the gift.”

CHAPTER

30

Unable to fathom why the half people would seek out the gifted, Samantha leaned in closer, examining the symbols carved in the wall as if maybe by studying them more carefully she might somehow suddenly be able to read them. Unable to learn anything, she finally turned to Richard.