The Third Kingdom

The wall stretched left and right to where it ended in the distance against enormous cliffs soaring upward as high as any mountains he had ever seen. High up, past broken clouds, he could see patches of snow lying on the steep rises. Another layer of clouds higher up, above the ragged shreds of clouds drifting by lower down, obscured the tops of the mountains so that he wasn’t even seeing the mountain peaks and thus their full height.

The wall standing before them was constructed of stones of different sizes and shapes, all fit precisely together like a complex puzzle. All the edges looked to be in solid contact with every part of each block locked in around them. He didn’t see any spot where so much as a piece of paper could have been pushed between the tightly fit blocks of stone. The wall appeared to have been constructed without mortar, with the exacting fit and enormous weight locking it all tightly together. It was as perfectly built a wall as Richard had ever seen. He had seen a number of spectacular man-made structures, but this one was remarkable in its singular simplicity and sheer scale.

Down the slope, off to the right, Richard could see the opening in the wall where the gates stood. There was a structure over the opening for the gates that he remembered seeing from the viewing port.

He didn’t see anyone anywhere. There were no people down in the area in front of the wall, no one watching from atop the wall, and no one coming and going through the open gates. It seemed odd to him that after thousands of years of the wall standing as an impenetrable barrier, now that the gates were open the area around them would be so deserted.

He wondered for a brief moment if all the half people from the third kingdom had already poured out of those gates to go south into the world of life, seeking souls they believed were there for the taking. He didn’t know what their motives would be—to stay near their homes, or now that they were free to go on a rampage out into the world, to gorge themselves on flesh and blood.

For a time, Richard stood silently watching as he felt the cool speckles of mist on his face. He checked all along the top of the wall, trying to see if there was anyone watching them, if any guards looked out from time to time. It was impossible to tell for sure, of course, but he didn’t see anyone. He didn’t know if they might have some kind of small openings for looking out. Although, what would be the purpose? The wall was there to keep them in, not for defense.

He thought that it could be that all those who wanted to leave had already left, and those who didn’t had stayed back to the north, where they had lived for millennia. It was also possible that they only left at certain times, hunted, and then returned to the safety of their kingdom, like bats that emerged at nightfall to feed on blood.

What he wondered most, though, was how he and Samantha were going to get in without being spotted out in the open. There was certainly no hope of scaling the wall. The outside of it looked to be too smooth for them to get a handhold or foothold anywhere. Of course, closer up he might find that there were small handholds in between the stones, but he doubted it. More importantly, even if they could scale the wall they would be exposed and out in the open for a long time and could easily be picked off with arrows. Possible or not, Richard discounted the practicality of climbing the wall.

The mountains to either side looked even more formidable. Mountains offered better opportunities for climbing than the smooth wall looked to provide, but still, the cliffs appeared incredibly difficult if not impossible for him and Samantha to scale, especially in the wet. Besides, the cliffs, too, would leave them out in the open and exposed for far too long.

Richard knew, too, that Naja’s people would not have put the barrier here if there was an easy way over or around the mountains. Certainly the barrier spells would be the primary means to keep the threat contained, but like the wall, the mountains also presented a formidable barrier once the spells began to weaken. Climbing those mountains was no more a realistic option than climbing the wall.

Besides, the reason he was looking for a way in without having to go through the gates was to stay out of the open so they wouldn’t be spotted. Scaling either the walls or the cliffs wouldn’t get them in without being seen.

Surprise was their greatest weapon. He didn’t want to give it up without a very good reason.

He wished he had a dragon handy to fly them in over the imposing wall filling the gap between the mountains, but it had been a very long time since he had seen a dragon.

That left the gates as the only realistic way into the third kingdom.