The Third Kingdom

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.