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Without saying anything, Hannis Arc gestured to the half people crowded in close.
One of the Shun-tuk shoved Richard, turning him down a different tunnel to the left side. Once into the opening, Hannis Arc gracefully lifted a hand and a glimmering green veil rose over the opening, trapping Richard behind it.
CHAPTER
62
Richard, feeling naked without his sword, looked around in his sudden solitude, the greenish veil providing light enough to see by. He paced for a time, frustrated, angry, and feeling cornered not only by the shimmering green luminescence confining him in a chamber in the rock, but by the entire situation.
He had hoped that this would lead him to where Zedd, Nicci, Cara, and the others were being held captive. He suspected that he had to be close to them, but locked in such a spot he didn’t know how he would get to them.
It was obvious that Hannis Arc had long been plotting something, and Richard had been completely unaware of the man’s treacherous scheming. Richard didn’t know for sure what the man had planned or what his ultimate goal was, but Richard had some ideas and none of them were good.
He hated the feeling of being too far behind the flow of events, of feeling that he had been trapped before he even realized that anything was going on. Not only had the barrier to the third kingdom, built in Naja Moon’s time back during the ancient war, finally failed, but at the same time Hannis Arc was planning something ominous. It seemed obvious enough that the two events, the barrier failing and Hannis Arc capturing Richard, were connected.
He admonished himself for concentrating so much mental effort on the problem rather than trying to think of a way out of the situation. He was in the dark about Hannis Arc’s plans. He couldn’t know the extent of the problem and it was useless guessing.
At least Samantha had gotten away. That meant the situation wasn’t hopeless. Hannis Arc either didn’t care about her, or he hadn’t yet managed to catch her. Most likely he didn’t consider her a serious threat and so he didn’t concern himself with her. It was Richard he wanted.
Richard knew that he had to think of solutions rather than fret about the problem. He needed to tackle the obstacles one at a time. The immediate solution he needed was to see if there was a way to get out of the prison he found himself in. He had to put his mind to that, first.
Setting aside the swirl of worries and questions, he began exploring the irregular area in which he found himself confined.
There was a wooden bucket of water near a wall, but no food. He soon discovered that there were openings everywhere through the rock. Most of them were small dark holes he could fit no more than a finger or hand into. There were a few other openings barely large enough to possibly squeeze himself through, but they were dark as pitch. Richard suspected they led nowhere, so he would save them as a last resort to try. It would do him no good to try to wriggle through and get stuck. There were larger openings, like the one he had come in through, but they, too, were blocked with the glowing green walls.
Richard was careful to stay clear of that wavering greenish luminescence. He had been uncomfortably close to such boundaries to the underworld before, but he was unsure of the exact properties of the ones in this place. After all, Hannis Arc had commanded them into existence. It was impossible to know if the boundary between life and death behaved differently in the third kingdom, where life and death existed together, or if they behaved like others he had encountered in the past. More importantly, after coming through the gates into the third kingdom, those boundaries were not fixed—they moved. He didn’t want to be too close and have one of these unexpectedly engulf him. All the more reason to keep his distance from the wavering greenish veil.
As he glanced around, the thought occurred to him that the boundary veils blocking him in the prison might start closing in on him in order to pull him into the underworld. That seemed unlikely, though. Hannis Arc could have simply let the Shun-tuk have him if he had wanted Richard dead.
No, Hannis Arc had wanted him alive for some purpose. Maybe the same reason he had taken the others captive rather than kill them. Richard wished he knew what that purpose could be.
Sighing in frustration, he stuffed his hands into his back pockets as he walked around, inspecting every inch of his prison. He saw nothing useful and no way out. It seemed a very secure dungeon.
He hoped that Samantha hadn’t been caught by the Shun-tuk. In the back of his mind he constantly worried about her.
He considered the way he had able to call to her beyond the greenish veil trapping him. He remembered that she could hear him, but could not see him through the greenish veil.
That thought gave him an idea.
He went to one of the passages covered over with a glimmering sheet of the green light.
“Is anyone there?” he called out.
When he called out again and still received no answer back other than the echo of his own voice, he went down the line to the next veil blocking an opening, and then another, calling out at each one.
“Can anyone hear me? Is anyone there?”
“Richard?” came the weak echo of a voice he knew.
Richard spun around to where the voice had come from across the irregular chamber. He rushed to the other side of his prison, to the green veil floating in the opening on that side.
“Zedd? Zedd is that you?”
“Dear spirits—Richard!” the voice echoed back.
It sounded distant, as if it was several chambers away, and it wasn’t very loud, but it was enough to hear and it was unmistakable. Zedd’s voice sounded choked with tears. That tormented sound in his grandfather’s voice terrified Richard.
“Zedd, yes, it’s me. Are you all right?”
The answer was a long moment in coming.
“Yes, my boy. I’m alive.”
That wasn’t the answer Richard had been hoping for.
“Zedd, are you all right? What are they doing to you?”
He waited a moment until the answer finally came. “They’re bleeding us.”
“Bleeding you? They’re taking your blood?”
“Yes.”
Richard pounded a fist against the stone wall beside the opening blocked by the greenish luminescence.
“Why?”
“It’s a long story. I’ve seen a few of the others. And some people I don’t know. They bleed them as well, gifted and nongifted alike.”
Richard remembered how Jit had been bleeding Kahlan and drinking her blood. He had to remind himself to slow his breathing and stay calm. He had to keep his wits if he was to figure something out.
It was all he could do not to try to dive through the greenish boundary of the underworld to get to his grandfather.
“I’m sorry they have you, too, my boy. But it is heartwarming to hear your voice.”
The anguish in Zedd’s voice was unmistakable. Zedd rarely sounded that despairing.
“Zedd, hang on. I’ll think of something.”
Richard could hear a soft chuckle. “That’s the Richard I’ve missed so much.”
Richard swallowed. “Zedd, what do they want with your blood. Why are they taking your blood?”
“They are using it to try to raise the dead.”
Richard blinked. “What?”
“They don’t do much talking, but from what I can gather, they think that the blood of the gifted can somehow bring the dead back to life.”
“That’s crazy, but it’s far from the craziest thing I’ve heard recently.”
The silence dragged on for a moment before Zedd spoke again.
“So tired … Richard, I have to rest. So tired…”
Richard was nodding. “It’s all right, Zedd. Rest. I’ll think of something. I’ll get us out of here, I swear I will. Hang on. Rest for now. Save your strength.”
“Hush. They’re coming for me again. I love you, my boy.…”
Zedd’s voice trailed off.
Richard pounded the side of his fist against the wa
ll again as he heard his grandfather cry out in the distance as he was being dragged away.
Richard had to do something.
CHAPTER
63
Kahlan caught the handle on the side to help herself stay upright when the coach bounced over a rut. Abruptly rocking so violently hurt her abdominal muscles injured by the Agiel. It still hurt to take a deep breath.
Both the Mord-Sith and the abbot were watching her as they rode through a gloomy landscape of towering trees and craggy, inhospitable terrain. Kahlan turned her eyes to look out the window so that she wouldn’t have to look at the two of them. It made her anger boil to look at them. It made her furious that they were doing this.
The New World had for years fought a gruesome war with the Old World. Emperor Jagang had caused incalculable suffering. There was no way to tell how many hundreds of thousands of people had lost their lives in that war. Families lost fathers, mothers, brothers, daughters and sons. Entire generations of people had been wiped out. More people yet would be crippled for life. Many would not be entirely healed for years, if ever.
And for what?
So that Emperor Jagang could rule the world, so that the Imperial Order could bring about their vision that everyone must live for the Imperial Order and their beliefs, live as subjects of those twisted ideas of the common good imposed by force.
Like so many other rulers who preached a common good, they had been willing to kill everyone who didn’t agree with their delusion of a better life. They had been willing to wipe out entire cities, the entire New World if need be, to have their way.
