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It was now evident that the ancient struggle, started so long ago by Emperor Sulachan, and the frightening weapons he had developed, hadn’t been entirely eradicated. Some of those weapons loosed on the world of life had long ago been sealed away behind barriers and walls where they waited to fight another day. Where other barriers had come down, so, too, had this one finally given way.
“Seems to me like someone always wants to rule,” Samantha said as she scanned the writing she couldn’t understand.
“That’s certainly true enough,” Richard said as he tapped the wall of engraved symbols, “but the dangerous difference is that Sulachan believed that his cause transcended life as a larger cause for the good of all existence.”
Samantha’s mouth twisted a bit. “I don’t understand.”
“Sulachan envisioned the world of life and the world of the dead as one grand, interconnected entity, one whole, just as the Grace is one whole, interconnected concept. He wanted to unite the world of life and the world of the dead under his rule.”
Samantha shook her head as she watched him reading the language of Creation. “That’s madness.”
He looked over at her. “I don’t disagree with you, but sometimes lunatics are so driven they can take the whole world into madness with them.”
“I don’t see how normal people could go along with such beliefs.”
Richard straightened with a sigh. “Oftentimes it’s easier for lunatics to attract impassioned followers than it is for sensible people to get people to listen to reason. People are often more willing to believe lies than the truth. Lies can be made to sound pleasant. The truth, by its very nature, isn’t always so attractive.
“That leaves peaceful people no choice but to fight for their lives or fall to the blades of madmen. In such a situation, there is no middle ground. There is no such thing as compromise between civilization and savagery. Civilization must always defend itself against savagery or else fall to it.”
“I guess that’s our part in this?”
Richard nodded. “I’ve never wanted to fight, to be in a war, to see good people die, to have to kill. I just wanted to live my life in peace. But others wouldn’t allow me that life of peace. The battles I fight have always been a fight to survive and live in peace, not to conquer. That’s how I came to be here instead of back in Hartland where I grew up.”
He swept his hand past the writing on the wall. “In this case, here, with the people of the New World, it looks as if they had no stomach for fighting and kept out of the conflict as long as possible, but those of the Old World didn’t care that these people wanted to live in peace. In such a case, the aggressor prevails unless those wanting peace are willing to fight back.
“According to Naja, Emperor Sulachan and his followers were determined to create whatever weapons they needed, no matter how terrifying or deadly, in order to conquer all those who opposed their plans. The reanimated dead and the half people were two such weapons. She says here that Sulachan’s plan was to eventually rule both the living and the dead, from the world of the dead.”
Samantha paced off a few strides in agitation, then retuned. Her mood was as black as her hair. “I can understand a madman starting a fight, I’ve seen such things happen on a very small scale among pigheaded people here in our village, but what you’re describing sounds just plain crazy.” She jabbed a finger at the side of her head. “Crazy, crazy.”
“Naja says the same thing, but she also warns that even if his ideas were as deluded, impractical, or preposterous as many knowledgeable people believed them to be, and even if in the end they did indeed prove to be impossible to carry out, he was willing to slaughter untold numbers of innocent people in the attempt, and that was what mattered to those in his way. The people of the New World were in his way.
“She says that he had no intention of stopping the killing as long as life existed. He believed that in the end, there would be only the reanimated dead and the legions of half people here in the world of life, and he would control their souls forever from the underworld.”
“Are you sure that he wasn’t the Keeper himself brought to life?” Samantha asked, sarcastically, as she folded her arms.
“He was just a man,” Richard said. “A man like so many others who in one way or another, whether they have been aware of it or not, have been devoted to death.
“I guess he was simply more shameless about it than most madmen. Naja says, in fact, that he believed the act of bringing death to so many and on such a grand scale was a transcendent experience.”
Samantha threw up her hands. “This sounds so deluded that I can’t even fathom it. But the thing that really confuses me is why people would believe in such a madman and fight for his crazy cause. I mean, I’m not even grown-up yet, and I can see that this is lunacy.”
Richard turned from the account on the wall. “There are plenty of people drawn to such a way of life. Following such a leader gives them license to be savages themselves, to be an anonymous thug and take what they have been told they are entitled to. Some people find it intoxicating to have the power and permission to destroy others.
“But that’s really beside the point. The point is that Sulachan was powerful enough to bring about immense destruction and loss of life. Even if he was deluded and his ideas were crazy, he, his gifted, and his vast, rampaging armies had the might to bring the world under the darkness of a great war.
“Fortunately, Naja and the people back then seem to have been able to at least create this barrier and contain some of the most menacing creations of his makers. It has protected the world for a very long time.
“But those half people in the third kingdom, locked away for so long behind the barrier, have over the centuries likely continued growing in numbers. Now they are loose in the world of life. They are now again a problem.”
Samantha, looking more than a little bitter, folded her arms. “You mean they’re our problem.”
“Our problem,” Richard agreed with a nod. “All that really matters now is that the creations of Sulachan’s wizards in those ancient times have now once again been unleashed against the world. If we don’t figure out how to stop them, then we will be the ones who are wiped out.”
CHAPTER
28
Samantha paced in nervous agitation while Richard read ahead in Naja’s account on the wall. He could sense the anguish in that account by the way the mysterious woman from so long ago went to great pains to ensure that future generations would understand the reasons behind the fears of the people back in her time and their horror at what had descended on them at the hands of so evil a man.
They knew that life for the people of the New World would become one long dark night of terror if the half people were not stopped or somehow contained. It was obvious that she wanted to make sure that all those who came after her would also appreciate the danger that was locked away behind the barrier.
“Dear spirits,” he murmured to himself.
“What?” she asked, having heard the comment he hadn’t realized he’d said aloud.
Richard took a deep breath at the description of the grim specifics. “Well, Naja says here that th
e half people began hunting for souls to replace the one they no longer had.”
Samantha paused in her pacing and turned back to him. “Hunting for souls? What is she talking about?”
Richard squinted in concentration, making sure of the translation before he went on with the account. “According to this, not having a soul drove the half people into a form of insanity that compelled them to hunt those who did have a soul in the hopes of taking that soul for themselves.”
Richard abruptly paused in surprise.
“And…?” Samantha asked when he fell silent.
“And … they ate any living people they could catch in an attempt to take possession of their soul. Such an effort was futile, according to Naja, but that didn’t stop the half people from continuing to try.”
Samantha rushed closer. “They eat living people? Are you sure that’s what it says?”
Richard nodded. “It was an unintended consequence of the process used in creating the half people. The unanticipated behavior developed suddenly, Naja says, not long after they were stripped of their souls to make them into these living weapons for Sulachan. They unexpectedly became so compelled by a deranged need for a soul to replace the one they had lost that it overrode everything else. Although they had been created as weapons, they became uncontrollable. Despite all the efforts by the wizards who had been in charge, the half people were driven by a frenzied need for a soul.
“Driven by this mad, single-minded lust to consume the living, they can’t comprehend that this thirst for a soul is impossible to quench. She says they would hunt alone but often they would congregate in order to coordinate a more effective attack on the living.”
“You mean they started hunting in numbers? Like packs of wolves?”
“So it would appear,” Richard told her. “Naja says that at first they rampaged out of control, in the beginning attacking those who had created them and then the troops they had been assigned to serve with before escaping out into the population at large. The half people tore through the ranks of makers who had created them. The wizard makers who hadn’t been eaten were terrified of their own creation. Many fled.
