Terry Goodkind - The Third Kingdom

“Lord Rahl, are you sure of everything that you told me it says, here? That the half people really would eat people? That their souls and the souls of the awakened dead are really lost and left to wander between worlds? I mean, it’s all pretty hard to believe.”

“I know what it says, Samantha.”

“But these”—she waved a hand at the wall—“these symbols all over the wall are pretty complicated. I don’t doubt your knowledge of such things, Lord Rahl, but are you sure that you got the whole translation right?”

He scanned the symbols he had just finished translating for any little thing, any clue, he might have missed. While there were a few elements he wasn’t completely positive about, they were minor points that didn’t alter the meaning or essence of Naja’s frightening story.

“I translated it accurately.”

Samantha’s nose wrinkled with a look of skepticism. “Isn’t it possible, though, that you could have gotten some of it wrong? Or that maybe you misunderstood the intent of some of the things it says? Don’t you think that with a language this old and strange and complicated that you might have interpreted at least some of it wrong?”

He looked down at her, wishing there were some legitimacy to her doubts. “What about the barrier being breached for the first time since it was put in place? And what about those wounds on me that you healed? They were bite wounds. Those two men, come from beyond that barrier, were trying to eat me alive, just as it is described here.”

Her mouth twisted a little as she struggled with the idea of it. “But do you really think their intent was to steal your soul? Maybe they were cannibals from beyond the barrier. Maybe they have a famine there and they have to eat people to survive.”

“They were both healthy, strong, and looked well fed. They weren’t suffering from starvation. Just ask Ester if you doubt my memory. She was there, she saw them. The only thing they were hungry for was my soul.

“What I heard them talking about when I was waking up is still a bit fuzzy, but as I read what’s written here about the barrier, some of the strange things I heard the two men saying started to make sense. They talked about eating me and taking my soul for themselves. Ester and the others arrived just in time to stop them and save my life.”

Samantha pressed her lips tight in resignation. “Well, I’m glad they got there in time.” She tipped her head toward the wall. “After all, you’re the only one who knows how to read this. I guess you must have the translation right. I don’t really doubt you, Lord Rahl, it’s just that…”

“I know, I wish I was wrong about it, too,” he said before going back to working the translation to the next part of Naja’s account.

“It says here,” he said after a moment’s study, “that in the end, not knowing how to stop the single-minded attacks by Sulachan’s unholy half dead, the only hope for survival had been to lock all of them behind the barrier spells.”

Looking forlorn, Samantha hugged her arms to herself. “Lord Rahl, I’m not saying that you aren’t translating it right, but could this all be a myth? Some kind of ancient legend they were passing down? A parable or lesson? Might that be all this is?”

Richard wished she was right, but knew she wasn’t. He shook his head.

“When I started to wake up, I remember hearing those two men saying that they were going to take Kahlan with them because they were afraid that the Shun-tuk would return, looking for survivors. The men were going to eat me then and there, then eat Kahlan later, or trade her. They said that the Shun-tuk would do anything to get people with souls. Those men and the Shun-tuk came from beyond the barrier, not from legends recorded here.”

He tapped a finger to a sequence of several symbols. “There can be no doubt that this has to be true. I wish it was otherwise, Samantha, but it’s not.”

She looked miserable, like she couldn’t take any more such talk. “That’s what they did to my father. They must have taken my mother to do that to her later, at their leisure, or else to trade her. I can’t imagine her misery at what they did to my father, and her terror at what they were going to do to her.”

Richard realized, then, why she had been so persistent about his translation being wrong. She had been hoping it was wrong for a very personal reason. He pulled her close in a gentle hug.

He had become so lost in trying to understand what was going on that he had started thinking of her as a sorceress, rather than a girl who had lost both her parents to this madness, a girl who was only now blossoming into a young woman and who until recently had not seen such terrible things.

“I’m sorry, Samantha. I understand. I saw bones of some of my friends as well. They took the others the way they took your mother. I know how you feel.”

She wiped at her eyes. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t let my weakness interfere with trying to find a way to stop those demons from coming for us all.”

Richard cast a sideways look at the symbols on the wall, at the end of the account he had been reading on that very subject.

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

She looked up, tears still brimming in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

Richard turned back to the language of Creation on the wall, putting aside his feelings before going on with the account. He knew that time was working against him.

“It says that they, too, were seeking a way to protect people of the New World and end the threat. Despite the best efforts of their wizards and hard work of other gifted people, they were never able to find a way to end the threat. Part of the reason was because Emperor Sulachan’s minions had been given otherworldly powers against which we had no defense.”

“What kind of otherworldly powers? Does she say?”

Richard nodded. “She says that the unholy half dead are able to use some kind of occult magic which was very ancient, very rare, and very powerful. It was widely feared because it was so little understood. She says that not only are the unholy half dead protected by these dark forces, some of them were even able to use this ability to awaken the dead.

“Naja says that in the end all those on our side were able to do for the time being was to seal the threat away behind the barrier. Short of doing that, she says that the people of the New World would have been slaughtered.

“She warns that one day the barrier would weaken and fail. She says that once the threat eventually breaks through that barrier, there is only one way to stop it from ravaging the world of life.”

Samantha stepped closer. “There’s a way?”

Richard nodded, still staring at what it said on the wall. He worked the symbols again, hoping he was wrong. He wasn’t.

“Well, what is it, then?” Samantha tugged on his shirt. “Lord Rahl, what does it say? How do we stop them?”

Richard cleared his throat.

“It says ‘The threat from the third kingdom can be ended only by ending prophecy.’”

CHAPTER

31

Samantha’s eyes darted around in confusion. “Stop the threat by ending prophecy? What are they talking about? How can prophecy be ended?”

Richard, more troubled than ever by what he was reading, traced a circular symbol containing a complex maze of twisting, supporting elements radiating out from the center.

“This circular symbol here, where she says that ending the third kingdom can only be done by ending prophecy, is some kind of time element, but I can’t quite figure out its context.”

“Time element? I don’t understand. What do you mean, time element?”

Richard looked back through all the supporting designs and then the devices coming from the center of the primary symbol as he tried to think of how to put the concepts he was seeing into words. There were parts that made no sense to him, and other parts that had no direct translation.