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CHAPTER
68
Vika helped lift Richard to his feet. He felt dizzy and faint, likely from loss of blood. As the effects of the contact of the Agiel to the back of his head gradually faded, he began feeling slightly more stable on his feet. Still, she had to help balance him to make sure he wasn’t going to fall over before he fully recovered.
It was the sickness inside—the pain of the poison from death’s touch—more than the touch of the Agiel, that threatened to overwhelm him. He remembered Samantha telling him that he was going to get worse.
He felt himself getting worse. What Vika and especially Hannis Arc had done with that wicked-looking blade had made him suddenly worse, had weakened him and made him more susceptible to the sickness deep inside him.
The weapon Hannis Arc had used had been a sinister-looking thing unlike any knife Richard had ever seen before. It had a bone handle of some sort, no doubt a human bone, and a blade made of the blackest of glassy stone affixed to that handle with thin strips of leather that also looked suspiciously like it had been made from human skin. The flaked edge of the blade had been so razor-sharp that Richard hadn’t really felt it cutting him. It had that in common with the Sword of Truth.
The painted heads of the half people bobbed up and down as they shouted in unison with grim exultation at what was happening. The entire chamber reverberated with the chanting. They were at last fulfilling their purpose. This was what they had been trying to accomplish for thousands of years.
And Richard had been the one to help them accomplish their purpose.
He glanced down at the Grace on the ring he wore and remembered again the warning from Magda Searus that he could be the one to end the world of life. He feared that he very well might have done just that.
“What was that knife?” he asked Vika in a flat, hoarse voice.
“The one he used to cut you with?”
Richard nodded, not wanting to have to summon his voice again if he could help it.
Vika leaned close to his ear so that he could hear over the rumbling thunder of the chanting. She watched Hannis Arc to be sure he was busy. He wondered if she did not want to incur his wrath for disturbing him, or if there was another reason.
“It’s a knife made by the Shun-tuk,” Vika said. “Lord Arc has several weapons made by the Shun-tuk. The Shun-tuk say that their knives can slay the dead.”
“They talk?”
“When they want to.”
Richard wasn’t quite sure that he understood what that meant—a knife that could slay the dead—but he judged it clear enough that he didn’t feel the need to press for an explanation. He spotted a number of those dead that had been brought back from their graves and pressed into service as guardians for the Shun-tuk’s underground prison. Now, they stood like stiff corpses around the perimeter of the cavern, their eyes glowing red as they watched the proceedings from the shadows. Richard knew all too well that if they wanted they could move with surprising speed.
He supposed that if they got out of control for some reason known only to the dead or the half people, having a weapon that could put them down would be handy, if not invaluable. Richard had fought the awakened dead. They were not easy to defeat. It was a difficult task, even with his sword.
He wished he still had his sword with him. He knew that in this place filled with the half people and the walking dead it wouldn’t be likely to do him a lot of good in fighting his way out, but it would still be comforting to have it at his hip.
If nothing else he might be able to be quick enough with it to hack the dead king to bits.
When he looked back to the altar just beyond Hannis Arc, Richard’s breath halted in his lungs when he saw the corpse take a breath.
A transparent, bluish, ghostlike form now lay in the same place as the king’s body. That filmy form began to stir. When it did, the body also stirred. The two, spirit body and dead body, moved as one. It looked like the corpse was possessed by a translucent ghost.
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 b
luish 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.
