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“I’ve read everything Naja wanted us to know. There is still a lot I don’t understand, but the one thing that’s clear is that if we have any time left, it’s rapidly running out—for everyone. I have to do something to stop what is happening, and I have to do it now or it will soon be too late.”
“Like what?” Samantha sounded as exasperated as she looked. “What are you going to do? What can you hope to do?”
Her voice echoed back from the distance through the simple stone corridor. What she meant, but didn’t say, was what could he possibly hope to do without the help of his gift. He didn’t have an answer to that unspoken question. He only knew that he had to stop what was coming after them all.
He had not told Samantha all the gruesome details written on the wall. He had wanted to spare her the anguish of some of Naja’s words. But those words echoed in his own mind and he knew the ghastly extent of what the people back in the time of the first Confessor had faced and what the world of life now faced again.
Samantha’s black hair looked even darker in the spectral glow of the light sphere she was holding. “Lord Rahl, answer me. What are you going to do?”
Richard clenched his jaw a moment before answering.
“I have to go in there.”
“Go in there?” She leaned toward him with urgency. “Go in where?”
Richard flicked a hand back in the direction of the portal looking out over a barrier that had for thousands of years held back an unspeakable evil.
“I have to go in there, to the third kingdom. Knowing, now, what’s beyond that barrier, I fully expect that I will have to fight a war to do it.”
She snatched a quick look back the way they had come. “Go into the third kingdom? Are you crazy?”
“It’s the only thing I can do, the only answer I can come up with.”
“Answer? Answer to what? How to get yourself killed?”
Richard ignored the sarcasm as he started out again. “No, the answer to how to stay alive, how to keep us all alive.”
“Lord Rahl,” she said, her mass of black hair bouncing softly as she jogged along beside him, “you can’t go in there.”
He tapped his chest. “What do I have in me?” he asked without slowing.
Samantha pushed some of her hair back out of her face. “In you? You mean that touch of death?”
“That’s right.”
“What of it?”
“You can’t remove that touch of death from me or Kahlan.” Richard glanced down at the concern on her face. “If we don’t rid ourselves of this link to the world of the dead, then it will claim us both. You said yourself that Kahlan didn’t have much time, and I have precious little more than she does.”
“I still don’t think—”
Not in the mood to argue, he jabbed a finger toward her. “You’re the one who told me that I would soon start getting as sick as she is. You know very well that once I get to that point, I won’t be able to do anything to help myself, much less anyone else. Would you have me lie down and wait for death?”
She rushed along beside him in silence as they made their way back through the hauntingly empty tunnel.
Richard came to a halt in front of the doorway closed off by the first shielded stone they had passed on their way in.
“Open this, will you?” he said as he flicked a hand toward the metal plate on the wall. “My gift doesn’t work, remember?”
“I remember.” Samantha grumbled as she moved close to slap the flat of her hand to the metal plate. “Which is why it’s crazy for you to go in there.”
Richard snatched her wrist, stopping her before she could touch the metal plate. He thought he saw some hint, some glimmer, of something in the center of the stone.
“Wait,” he said.
She frowned up at the stone and then him. “Wait for what?”
Instead of answering, Richard reached out and pressed the flat of his hand to the metal plate. The massive stone shielding the doorway did not move, but in the center of the round stone, where he thought he’d seen something glimmer, stone dust started to crumble away. Powdery silt poured out of incised lines in the center of the stone. It was as if from centuries of rolling back and forth into the slot in the side wall, the engraved lines had become packed with dirt and dusty, crushed stone. Only now, as it spilled out, did the engraved symbols reappear.
“Would you look at that,” Samantha whispered in amazement.
There, linked in a circle in the center of the stone blocking their way out, was a small triangular assemblage of symbols in the language of Creation. The three emblems formed a complex message. Richard squinted at the small designs as he worked the translation.
The first of the three emblems said, If you are reading this it is because you are the bringer of death and the barrier has been breached. What we could not stop you now face. War is upon you.
The second of the three emblems said, Know that you are the only chance life has, now. Know, too, that you are balanced between life and death. You have the potential to be the one to save the world of life or end it. You are not destined for anything. You make your own destiny.
The third of the three emblems said, Know that you have within you what you need to survive. Use it. Seek the truth. Know that our hearts are with you. Make your own destiny and make it true, for life hangs in the balance. We leave you a reminder to keep with you, of all that is important.
Richard felt an icy chill run across his skin when he saw that it was signed Magda Searus, Mother Confessor, and Wizard Merritt.
They had been speaking to him personally. He half expected to see his own name engraved in the stone.
He stared for a long moment at the symbols, at the names. He had read a number of ancient texts and accounts. This was the only thing he had ever seen from the very first Confessor.
He touched the name, imagining the time so long ago when she must have stood in this very spot as they engraved the words meant for him. His fingers on that name felt like a connection from Magda, across the ages.
Perhaps more than anyone alive, Richard understood what it meant for a woman to be a Confessor. His life was devoted to a Confessor, as had been Merritt’s. Richard knew precious little about the legendary figure of Magda Searus, but he knew Kahlan, and so in that way he knew Magda. In a way, by loving Kahlan he knew Merritt. In that way, he felt a personal connection to Magda, and to Merritt.
As his fingers brushed the names in stone, he looked again at the words saying they left him a reminder.
His fingers drifted to the center between the three symbols, where there was a slight depression. He rubbed with his fingers and the stone dust there began to fall away until it revealed that underneath there was a piece of ancient leather tightly stuffed into a hole in the stone.
He pulled the leather out and opened it in his palm. There, in the center, rested a ring. He and Samantha stared at the silver ring. On the top face of the ring was a Grace. It looked like a ring used for sealing wax on messages.
The message they had sent him was the ring itself. It was a Grace he was to wear to always remind him of what was at stake. He slipped it onto the ring finger of his right hand, the hand he used with the sword. It fit perfectly.
Samantha gave him a look that said more than words could. She was as amazed as he. She knew well the importance of the Grace.
When Richard gestured at last, Samantha pressed her palm to the metal plate and the rock rumbled aside to allow them to pass. Once through, she touched the plate on the other side to shield the doorway.
Samantha didn’t ask to have the message translated. She must have sensed by the look on his face and his silence that the words were for him and no one else.
When he hadn’t said anything for a time as they swiftly made their way through the passageway, she couldn’t remain silent any longer. “So, have you finally come to your senses and realized that you can’t really go in there?”
“Look, Samantha,” he said, “you kno
w as well as I do that you can’t get that deadly touch of the Hedge Maid out of me—only my friends can do that. The only way to save myself and Kahlan, and in turn hope to help everyone else, is to get my friends out of the hands of the Shun-tuk and then get us back to the containment field at the People’s Palace. After they do cure us, then I can work to figure out how to put an end to the threat from the third kingdom before it’s too late. Simple as that.”
“Simple as that? And what if Zedd and Nicci and all the others are dead?”
“Then I’ll soon be dead, too, and soon after that so will everyone else. I need Zedd and Nicci. If there is a chance they’re alive, then I have to try to find them.”
“But, but it’s a land filled with half people and walking dead. And who knows what other unholy monsters might be in the third kingdom. It’s too dangerous.”
