The Third Kingdom

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 wall 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.

The suffering they’d brought to the world had been staggering, all in the absurd notion of a better life for all.

But Richard had led the New World to victory. Freedom had prevailed. The long ordeal, the suffering and sacrifice that sometimes seemed as if it would never end, was now over.

The world was at peace.