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As the echo of his scream died out, the Shun-tuk all let out an otherworldly howling that in some odd way felt in tune with the unbearable ringing in his head. It made the air drone and vibrate.
He felt that old, familiar, icy sense of helplessness and despair, the feeling that he had been traveling a very long road and this was all there was when he reached the end of it.
Despite all those around him, for Richard, at that moment, there was only the overpowering pain that gave him the sense of being entirely alone in the world in his own private realm where there was nothing but the wasteland of suffering. Once again he remembered that old longing for death, for that release that would make the pain finally stop.
He fought those feelings of hopelessness, fought the urge to surrender, to give in to it all, the haunting desire to accept death. It felt like that desire had always been there inside him, out of sight, waiting to come out.
Death would at last bring peace, but only for his private suffering. He held on to the lifeline that it would not do anything to help anyone else or to end their suffering.
But his death would deny these half people what they wanted … blood of a living man with a soul to bring back the one who had been so long dead. Richard realized that he was trying to find an excuse to give in to death. Yet in that way, his death really would protect everyone else, so he wondered if it would be right to give in.
Naja’s warning, though, had told him that only he could end the madness of what Emperor Sulachan had started, but only by ending prophecy. If he gave in to death, he would not have the chance to do that, and then, eventually, there would be no hope for anyone.
He was the one.
He was the only one to end the coming terror of the awakened dead and the half people, of the boundary between life and death ripped aside to let death loose in the world of life.
At the same time, he was also the one to bring back their king and free those monsters upon the world.
He was both, he realized. He was life and death together. He was savior and destroyer together.
That, too, had been the warning that Magda Searus had left for him.
Richard watched tears of pain drip down onto the floor of the cave covered with the blood of so many people. Zedd’s blood. Probably Nicci’s, and Cara’s, and those soldiers who had protected him so many times. Those people had come to help him. They had been willing to lay down their lives for him if they had to. In the past, many like them had.
For all those people and more, he couldn’t allow himself to be weak. For them, if not for himself, he had to be strong and endure whatever they did to him so that once beyond the ordeal, he could find a way to help save everyone from what was descending on the world of life. It was up to him to protect their lives in return.
They had been the steel against steel. He now had to be the magic against magic, even if he couldn’t use his gift.
As the ringing in his head subsided, he began to hear the Shun-tuk all around beginning to chant softly in some language Richard didn’t recognize. The haunting sound echoed around the vast chamber, almost making the whole place hum.
In a perverse way, it reminded him of the ancient devotion to the Lord Rahl. It was probably something like that, he guessed, some chant of dedication to their long-dead king.
As the half people chanted softly, Hannis Arc worked over the body of the dead man. He spoke in the same dead language, conjuring things Richard couldn’t imagine. Some of the Shun-tuk brought bowls of oily potions forward. From time to time Hannis Arc dipped a tattooed finger in them and used it to draw symbols on the dead man.
As Richard watched as he recovered, Hannis Arc next drew emblems on the forehead of the corpse. The greasy lines of the design began to glow a dull, yellowish orange, as if lit from within. Hannis Arc lifted his arms, urgently signaling the watching horde, and the Shun-tuk murmured a new chant. As the sound of it built, he bent back over the body.
Richard then saw the most remarkable sight. A sight both so terrifying and spellbinding at the same time that he could not look away.
Hannis Arc’s tattoos began to glow.
As he spoke the words of the dead language, the lines composing different symbols on his body brightened to the same luminous yellow-orange color as the symbol aglow on the forehead of the dead king. First one, then another tattoo brightened for a brief moment only to fade as another began to illuminate from within in a continually rolling, ever-changing series.
Hannis Arc turned to those watching and lifted a hand as he shouted a series of words Richard didn’t recognize.
The coordinated shouts of sacred words in answer to each prompt from the man in the center rumbled through the chamber like thunder.
As Hannis Arc worked, laying down symbols in glowing lines on the body while symbols on his own flesh glowed in sequence as if in response to the symbols he drew, the Shun-tuk began a new chant, a steady beat repeated over and over. Each beat seemed to ignite a different symbol. As the drone of it went on, the sound gradually built until even Richard felt caught up in its power, its perverse majesty.
The symbols all over Hannis Arc glowed in rhythm with the chanting, first one, then another, each brightening in sequence then dimming as another took its place, one at a time in rapid succession, as if different symbols meaning different things were responding in turn to the murmur of the chant.
Richard had never imagined a conjuring so complex, or one that involved so many others.
At last the tattooed man turned to the Mord-Sith with a grim look that she had been anticipating.
“Get up,” Vika commanded from behind Richard.
Her voice, more than anything else, seemed less than real and more like a memory from the darkest times of his life. Richard didn’t move. He wasn’t sure he could.
She leaned down and growled in his ear. “I said, get up.”
He could only nod weakly as he struggled to get his feet under himself. He felt her hand under his arm, helping to lift him and get him upright.
With Vika’s help, he walked the rest of the distance to the corpse lying on the stone table.
Hannis Arc turned with a flourish of his black robes, like some frightening apparition from another world. His red eyes fixed on Richard with fiery intensity.
Vika pressed her Agiel to the back of Richard’s head, immobilizing him in place. His vision blurred and twisted. He opened his mouth to cry out, but he couldn’t make the sound.
Vika pushed his arm forward. Hannis Arc seized Richard’s wrist and pulled it close, over the withered corpse. Richard was helpless to do anything about it. He watched as if from a different world.
Hannis Arc pulled out a stone knife, its blade as black as the darkest depths of the underworld.
He slashed the blade across Richard’s forearm.
Richard didn’t feel pain from the cut. The pain of the Agiel overrode anything else.
Anything physical, anyway.
It didn’t override the sudden, ripping agony inside. It felt as if the knife had cut into that place of death within him, bleeding that along with his life’s blood and his soul.
Blood gushed from the gash in Richard’s arm and out over the body of the king. Rivulets of it ran down the depressions between each rib.
Hannis Arc pulled Richard’s arm farther forward, holding it over the desiccated mouth of the king.
When he seemed satisfied with the amount of blood splashed across the carcass of the king, Hannis Arc shoved Richard back out of his way. Richard saw his blood soaking the robes and dried flesh of the dead man. Bright red runnels ran down the rounded sides of the platform to join the darker blood all over the floor.
After Hannis Arc had shoved him aside, Vika pulled Richard back out of the way. He was too weak to resist. There was no point in trying. They were going to do what they were going to do and there was nothing Richard could do about it right then.
Richard went to his knees, too weary to stand. Hannis Arc’s attention, alon
g with all the Shun-tuk, was on the body laid out on the platform. He was too absorbed in what he was doing to care about Richard.
Vika leaned over and put her mouth close to his ear.
“Put your other hand over it.”
Richard heard her talking, but didn’t really know what she meant. The lingering pain from the Agiel, even though long since withdrawn, was still scrambling his thoughts.
She grasped his left hand and placed it over the bleeding gash on his right arm.
“Press,” she said in a low, confidential voice. “Press your hand there and hold it tight.”
Richard nodded. “Thank you…”
He wasn’t sure what he was thanking her for. It just seemed the right thing to do.
Richard saw that the king’s whole body was beginning to glow, as if the symbols had lit something from within and there were a ghost now emerging from the dead husk of his body.
