Terry Goodkind - The Third Kingdom

When the Shun-tuk saw the movement on the platform down at the center of the room, some of them howled in jubilation. Others cried out in what might have been fright. They were, after all, seeing a king who had the power to return to the world of life. This was not only a master to be honored, respected, and followed, but one to be greatly feared as well. Although this was something they had all wanted, the reality of seeing it actually happen was intimidating.

This was also a new beginning for them, a new era. After several thousand years of waiting, the gates to their land were open and at long last they had a real king. A king, Richard feared, who would lead them out through those gates on a mission of conquest and domination.

Richard could tell that Vika, even though she had played a role in helping it come to pass, was disquieted by what she was seeing.

Richard hated that he was the one, though, who had played the pivotal role in bringing this evil man back to the world of life. This was a man who in an age long past had rained death and destruction down on the world. Now he was back, and Richard didn’t think that his stay in the underworld had mellowed him.

Without Richard, none of it would have been possible. The Shun-tuk might have played a part, Vika might have played a part, and Hannis Arc had certainly played a part, but Richard was the one who had made it possible.

He had the potential for both in him—death as well as life. He was of this kingdom. He carried life and death in him. Good and evil mixed together. He was the one.

Richard was the leader of the D’Haran Empire. He had been named fuer grissa ost drauka , High D’Haran for “the bringer of death.”

He had just served in his role as the bringer of death. He had just helped spawn a great evil by bringing death back into the world of life.

He knew that it was up to him to find a way to bring it to an end. There was no one else who had a chance to do anything to stop this.

All he had to do, he reminded himself, was to escape the clutches of Hannis Arc, a Mord-Sith, and untold thousands of half people who could raise an army of the dead. After that, he only needed to end prophecy.

And, he had to keep himself alive long enough.

The glowing figure of the king sat up. The Shun-tuk gasped with excitement and wonder.

It was a terrifying sight to see a dead man awaken, even for them, but especially for Richard, and especially because of what it meant.

The king’s dried flesh seemed to have grown pliable, softened no doubt by Richard’s blood as well as Hannis Arc’s dark conjuring that had united the spirit with its worldly form. With each passing moment, the dead man seemed to move with greater ease, even if not as fluidly as a living person. It was almost as if the transparent presence, the glowing spirit, was in part what animated the corpse.

Richard wondered if what he was really seeing was the spirit of the dead king directing events from the underworld, directing events in the world of life.

The bluish glow of the spirit actually looked more alive than the corpse. The face of the spirit existed in the same place as that of the corpse, so that the bluish glow of its features actually filled in the missing places in the shriveled remains, giving it a fuller nose, lips, and eyes.

The new eyes saw. They looked about. They reacted.

The revived lips smiled with malice at the world around him, a world to which he had once belonged.

Hannis Arc stepped back out of the way as the spirit king swung his feet down over the side of the platform. He sat for a moment as he gazed out at the adoration of the Shun-tuk, all of them in unison now thrusting fists into the air as they chanted as one.

“Sul-a-chan! Sul-a-chan! Sul-a-chan!”

As Richard had suspected, the dead king of the half people was Emperor Sulachan from the Old World, and the old war, his spirit now brought back to the world of life.

Richard wanted to die and get it over with.

CHAPTER

69

The way the spirit king held his blood-soaked robes to his chest with his left arm and loosely clenched fist gave him a kingly pose. He looked around the chamber with a measured, regal grace, taking in the veneration of the masses watching his triumphant return to the world of the living. As the Shun-tuk went crazy chanting his name, the dead Sulachan finally began to smile in approval.

The fluid gaze of the king of the half people, once emperor of all the Old World, swept over the masses filling the cavern. His glowing eyes finally settled on Richard, his benefactor of blood.

Richard glared back. He would have given anything for his sword at that moment.

The awakened king dragged a finger through some of the still-wet blood, Richard’s blood, running down his bony chest.

Richard wished that the poisonous touch of death that he carried in his blood would take the dead man back to the world of the dead where he belonged. He knew, though, that it was an empty wish. It was going to take a lot more than wishing to banish this man from the world of life.

Sulachan brought to his lips the finger he had run through Richard’s blood, tasting it, then closed his eyes with a look of rapture. He opened his eyes again to gaze deliberately at Richard. He smiled as wicked a smile as Richard had ever seen.

All the Shun-tuk in the vast chamber stomped a foot in time to their chant of “Sul-a-chan! Sul-a-chan! Sul-a-chan!”

Still holding Richard’s gaze, the dead king walked across the dried blood on the floor toward the man who had at last rescued his spirit from the underworld—Richard, the one, Richard who had brought him back.

Richard didn’t allow himself to retreat as the king came to a stop before him.

The malevolent smile remained on the glowing bluish lips of the spirit. Even the tight flesh beneath stretched with the self-satisfied smile.

“I have been to the farthest, darkest reaches of the underworld,” the king said in an eerie voice that made Richard’s skin crawl. “I have been welcomed to travel the Keeper’s realm at will.”

“I hope you liked it there,” Richard said with sudden venom of his own, “because I am going to send you back there for good.”

The dead man’s unconcerned smile widened. “When in the darkest regions of that darkest of worlds, I met your father. I rather liked him.”

“I didn’t,” Richard said. “I’m the one who sent him to that dark eternity.”

“I know. He told me.”

The king and his attention began to move on. As he did, Hannis Arc, his tattoos no longer aglow, joined the glowing corpse of the resurrected king.

“Now that I have completed this part, Emperor, we have things to do.”

As they strolled past Richard, the dead king nodded, no longer interested or even seeming to be aware that Richard was still standing there. “Our agreements will be honored, Lord Arc. I have given you my word. Let us begin, then.” He lifted an arm, casually acknowledging the cheering, chanting masses of Shun-tuk. “I, too, am eager to begin.”

Richard wondered what, exactly, they were about to begin.

As he went past, Hannis Arc flashed a dark, impatient look at Vika while gesturing at Richard. “Put him back for now. I will get to him later.”

Vika, hands clasped behind her back, bowed her head. “By your command, Lord Arc.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, her hand came up under Richard’s arm to turn him back the way they had come in. Richard saw that the dead king, in all his glowing glory, was listening to Hannis Arc’s words, words Richard couldn’t hear because they were being drowned out by the chanting. He could see Hannis Arc gesturing with his tattooed hands as he leaned in and spoke to the king. Over the tumult all around, the king could hear the words of that private conversation, but Richard couldn’t.