The Third Kingdom

Richard started away when she didn’t. He stepped aside to let her to take the lead as she cut in front of him. He had pushed her enough. If he pushed any more right then it would only harden her.

Richard knew that he could have killed the woman. He knew how to kill Mord-Sith. Most people didn’t, but sadly, he did.

He needed to get away and would have been willing to kill her to do so, but what ultimately prevented him from doing anything right then was the Shun-tuk crowding the corridors outside his dungeon chamber, all watching him, along with maybe a dozen corpses standing behind them.

He knew that she was the only thing keeping him alive right then. If he’d taken her down, they would have flooded into the cell and eaten him alive.

CHAPTER

66

Richard glared at the grim faces watching him follow Vika out of his prison. The dark areas painted in around their eyes, with the chalky white ash smeared all over their shaved heads, made them look like skulls with empty eye sockets. From that inner darkness, they stared out at him the way a predator watched passing prey. And, given the go-ahead, these predators would have ripped into him in a heartbeat.

Richard thought he could see in their empty eyes that they missed some inner spark, some connection to the Grace and therefore to humanity. They were alive, after all, but they were empty, living vessels lacking a soul.

Even so, he had seen the kind of emotion the half people could exhibit when attacking those who did have souls. Then, they could be frenzied, mad, maniacal killers obsessed with devouring human flesh.

With an escort of what looked to be hundreds of Shun-tuk following behind like hungry animals hoping for a meal, Vika led Richard through a maze of chambers and passageways honeycombed through the heavily cratered and pitted rock. Behind them, the silent, ever-present awakened dead followed, lumbering stiffly along, ready to fight on command to stop any threat.

In places the tunnels and passageways through the craggy rock led them lower, descending down into a series of natural caverns that grew in complexity and size. Passages and openings seemed to run in every direction. Some of the smoother passages looked to have been sculpted by flowing water. There seemed to be even more of the silent, ghostly white onlookers in every hole or pocket in the rock.

Passing under a low opening where they had to duck under a leaning slab of rock that had apparently fallen and lodged against the walls to either side, they at last entered a vast chamber that appeared to be their destination. The arched sides and domed roof were different colors of tan, browns, and white struck through with rusty stains. Off in the distance to the sides near networks of holes and crevices riddling the outer walls, immense tapered columns hung from the ceiling above forests of their twins pointing up from below them.

The enormous, hushed chamber was packed full with what must have been thousands of silent half people. The vast numbers of chalky white Shun-tuk stood anywhere they could find space—on rocks, shelves, and ledges—covering every inch of available space. Yet more dark eyes peered out from corridors all around the cavern, or from jagged openings and fissures in the walls. They watched from behind tapered columns of what looked like melted stone. Higher up, Richard could see them looking down from yawning holes leading to other chambers. In the light of hundreds of torches Richard could see some of the walls sparkle as if adorned with shimmering jewels.

The floor of the immense chamber sloped downward toward the center, so that the Shun-tuk all crowded in together created what looked like a vast, white bowl.

Richard could see Hannis Arc, standing out in his dark robes, down in the center of that milky basin.

Even at a distance Richard could see the man’s red eyes watching Vika in her red leather leading Richard into the cavern. The Shun-tuk shuffled back out of the Mord-Sith’s way as she walked without pause, expecting them to move, as she led Richard downward toward where her master waited.

In the center of the room, behind Hannis Arc, rose a platform to the height of his hips. It looked like a stone altar that had melted into soft yellow and tan shapes, almost like drippings of candle wax that had mounded up over time.

As he got close enough, Richard could see that there was a small, withered corpse lying on the rock platform.

Torches all around, popping and hissing, giving off pungent clouds of smoke, lit the desiccated cadaver. As he got closer, Richard saw that the body was mummified and looked ancient. Dark, hardened skin stretched over the nose and face so that the bones of the skull created a clearly discernible skeletal topography beneath the leathery skin.

The carcass looked like it had ossified over millennia. It was hard to tell from the shrunken husk what the once-living person had actually looked like.