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All the Shun-tuk in the vast chamber stomped a foot in time to their chant of “Sul-a-chan! Sul-a-chan! Sul-a-chan!”
Still holding Richard’s gaze, the dead king walked across the dried blood on the floor toward the man who had at last rescued his spirit from the underworld—Richard, the one, Richard who had brought him back.
Richard didn’t allow himself to retreat as the king came to a stop before him.
The malevolent smile remained on the glowing bluish lips of the spirit. Even the tight flesh beneath stretched with the self-satisfied smile.
“I have been to the farthest, darkest reaches of the underworld,” the king said in an eerie voice that made Richard’s skin crawl. “I have been welcomed to travel the Keeper’s realm at will.”
“I hope you liked it there,” Richard said with sudden venom of his own, “because I am going to send you back there for good.”
The dead man’s unconcerned smile widened. “When in the darkest regions of that darkest of worlds, I met your father. I rather liked him.”
“I didn’t,” Richard said. “I’m the one who sent him to that dark eternity.”
“I know. He told me.”
The king and his attention began to move on. As he did, Hannis Arc, his tattoos no longer aglow, joined the glowing corpse of the resurrected king.
“Now that I have completed this part, Emperor, we have things to do.”
As they strolled past Richard, the dead king nodded, no longer interested or even seeming to be aware that Richard was still standing there. “Our agreements will be honored, Lord Arc. I have given you my word. Let us begin, then.” He lifted an arm, casually acknowledging the cheering, chanting masses of Shun-tuk. “I, too, am eager to begin.”
Richard wondered what, exactly, they were about to begin.
As he went past, Hannis Arc flashed a dark, impatient look at Vika while gesturing at Richard. “Put him back for now. I will get to him later.”
Vika, hands clasped behind her back, bowed her head. “By your command, Lord Arc.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, her hand came up under Richard’s arm to turn him back the way they had come in. Richard saw that the dead king, in all his glowing glory, was listening to Hannis Arc’s words, words Richard couldn’t hear because they were being drowned out by the chanting. He could see Hannis Arc gesturing with his tattooed hands as he leaned in and spoke to the king. Over the tumult all around, the king could hear the words of that private conversation, but Richard couldn’t.
Richard could, though, read in the body language of the man covered in the tattoos that he was the one in charge. Sulachan might have been an emperor who ruled the vast Old World and commanded armies of wizards as well as endless legions of soldiers, but he had been a long-dead emperor trapped in the eternal world of the dead.
Hannis Arc had been the one to use long-forgotten occult powers to help break the spells containing the third kingdom and awaken Sulachan’s corpse. Those powers, along with Richard’s blood, had also created a link that had pulled the emperor’s spirit back from the dark eternity of the world of the dead. Hannis Arc still controlled that link between worlds and thus over the king’s stay in the world of life.
Despite the dead man’s imperious attitude, Hannis Arc was in charge and was not shy about exerting his authority.
Whatever the emperor’s grand plans from ages long ago might be, it was clear to Richard that Hannis Arc had plans of his own and he intended the corpse of the dead Shun-tuk king to help him implement those plans. Hannis Arc would not have been foolish enough to pull a wizard of Emperor Sulachan’s power back from the dead without knowing that he could control him.
As bad as the resurrected king of the half people might be, Richard was beginning to realize that Hannis Arc was even more dangerous.
Still, Richard wondered if the man had any idea of the danger in holding the leash to such beastly forces.
Vika pulled Richard onward up the bowl of the cavern, toward the passageway back out. The Shun-tuk all stared at Richard as he passed. This was the man who had brought their king back to life. They had been foolishly bleeding people to no avail, but now, Richard’s blood had at last done the trick. They viewed him with a kind of respectful awe.
That, however, only put him more at risk from these half people. As far as they were concerned, Richard’s blood, and likely his flesh, had just proven to be extraordinarily valuable. He was sure that they would all want to be the one to have a bite of his flesh, a swallow of his blood, in the hopes of capturing his soul.
A few reached out to drag their fingers through the blood on his arm. They brought those fingers to their lips, tasting what their eyes lusted to have.
With Hannis Arc well out ahead of them, Vika realized the menace so close all around them and hurried Richard through the crowds. With a firm grip on his arm, she steered him through pushing throngs of half people intensely interested in her charge. Vika quickened her pace, elbowing her way through, eager to get him out of the room and the hungry gazes of the onlookers. Once through the mob of Shun-tuk and out into a passageway that tunneled back through the rock, they were able to make better time. She kept up her pace, knowing that he was a prize that Hannis Arc wanted for himself.
“My arm finally stopped bleeding,” he told Vika after they had gone on in silence for a time. “Thanks.”
She shot him a dark look. “I just wanted you to still have some blood left in case they needed more of it, that’s all. Don’t try to read anything more into it.”
Richard was too upset to make a flippant remark.
When they reached his dungeon cell down in the labyrinth of passageways and chambers, Vika shoved him back inside.
Some of the Shun-tuk crowded around outside in the corridor gestured on her command and the wavering greenish wall materialized out of nothing. He had heard that some of them had occult powers, even the ability to reanimate corpses. It appeared to be true.
Richard once again found himself trapped in the cave prison with no way out, with thousands of half people who wanted to eat the flesh right off his bones and lap up his blood not far away on the other side of that greenish veil, the boundary to the underworld they were able to control at will.
If they could bring those greenish walls up, they could no doubt also bring them down.
His friends faced the same peril as Richard.
Even if he could do the impossible and somehow escape the half people, without being able to get Zedd and Nicci out, he was doomed to succumb to the poisonous touch of death within him.
Kahlan was no less doomed.
CHAPTER
70
Hannis Arc led the king of the dead out into the dawn of a new day in the world of life. Off behind them, the half people, gathering in the tens of thousands, trailed behind at a respectful distance. More likely, he thought, it was a fearful distance.
Hannis Arc paused when the king strolled to a stop to take in the sweep of the new day. Thick clouds obscured the sky as well as the higher peaks. Veils of mist dragged low enough to blur the tops of the rock spires.
The crumbling rock pinnacles reminded Hannis Arc of tightly bundled marsh grass that had died and then turned to stone. Pieces of it flaked off the spires over time, leaving the ground covered with decomposing fragments of what looked like nothing so much as stone fingers.
Everything in this place seemed to be old and crumbling and dead. The sparse shrubs and stunted trees that clung to life in crags and sheltered areas looked only half alive. It truly was a place where life and death coexisted.
“It has been a long time since I have been in this world,” the spirit king said in a voice that seemed to come from both worlds at once. “It is good to be back. At long last, after all I have accomplished in the underworld it is time at last to bring this realm under control.”
Hannis Arc watched the newly united spirit and man look out over the dreary world of life. They had accomplished all that needed accomplishing
in this forsaken place. Vika had arranged for their departure and seen to it that the Shun-tuk had gathered the supplies they would need for the journey. Everything was ready.
“I want to be on our way immediately,” Hannis Arc said.
“And you plan on bringing the man whose blood you used?” the king asked as he feasted on the sight of the rock wasteland as if viewing a colorful field of wildflowers.
“Richard Rahl?” Hannis Arc smiled to himself. “Of course. He needs to be made to feel the pain and anguish of losing his power and authority, suffer the humiliation of his fall from leader of an empire to a nobody.”
“I see,” the king said without looking over. “So, you plan to assume the burden and risk of dragging him along just to humiliate him?”
Hannis Arc frowned over at the glowing spirit. “That is the idea. I have been planning my revenge on the House of Rahl for nearly my entire life. I’m at last ready to take the rule of the D’Haran Empire. He will see it come to pass.”
