The Third Kingdom

It was the muffled sound of Zedd’s voice, off to the side, through another wall of greenish light.

“He’s in there,” Ben said, gesturing to the side. “We’ve been able to talk to him when we don’t think anyone is around. He says that Nicci is beyond, in another cell on the far side of him. They kept the gifted separated.”

Richard wasted no time in asking any questions or saying anything else. There was no time to waste on reunions or explanations of anything. There would be time enough for that if they could escape the caves and the Shun-tuk that hunted them. For now he needed to get the others and get out.

Richard raced past the men and out the now-clear opening into the craggy tunnel. He ran past Samantha and her mother to the next shimmering curtain of greenish light. Without a moment’s hesitation, Richard plunged into the greenish glow.

For an eternity, he floated in a timeless place, and then, as the dark, timeless emptiness resolved into the sights and sounds of the world, Richard saw an astonished Zedd rising to his feet. The old man moved with a pained slowness, as if he had been sitting on the stone floor for far too long. His wavy white hair stuck out in disarray. His simple robes were filthy.

Richard threw his arms around his grandfather in a quick embrace, then hurriedly pushed away.

“No time to talk,” he said to his grandfather before the old man had a chance to launch into a thousand questions. “We need to get out of here.”

Zedd flicked a bony hand toward the wall at the side. “Nicci. Nicci is over there. Can you get her, too?”

Richard nodded as he first hurried his grandfather out into the corridor where Samantha and her mother waited. Zedd took the woman’s hands, expressing wordlessly his relief at being out and seeing her out as well. Obviously, the two of them must have talked.

At the next sparkling greenish veil, the shadowed shapes of spirits beyond flailed and twisted expectantly as Richard came close. Again, without pause, he immediately plummeted into the world of the dead—his world, in a way. Beyond the first sparkling flash of greenish illumination as he made contact, there were no spirits. There was nothing. It was a frightening fall through darkness until the world of life abruptly crashed into view.

As it did, Nicci, in tears of joy at seeing him, already had her arms around his neck before he was sure that he was fully back in the world of life.

“Richard … how in the world—”

“Later,” he said, seizing her upper arm and pulling her out of the now-clear opening. She peered around the edges of the opening as she passed through, looking amazed at seeing the deadly underworld boundary so abruptly gone.

Out in the hall, Richard paused. When everyone started to talk at once, he held up his hand as he shushed them.

“Quiet. Half people are near and could hear you. We don’t want to have to fight them if we don’t have to, especially not down here.”

They instantly fell silent, many casting worried looks up and down the rocky tunnel.

Richard also needed quiet because he wanted to go within himself and feel the link to his sword’s power. He could feel that it was closer than it had been when he had been in his prison cell. As he closed his eyes and let the world around him fade into the background, it allowed him to embrace that faint inner sense.

He at last lifted his arm to point.

“That way.”

He raced down the tunnel winding its way through the pockmarked rock, at junctures of passageways taking the route where he could feel the strongest pull of the sword. He could feel himself getting closer to it all the time. He ran with a sense of urgent desperation to get his hands on it.

Along the way they encountered bones pushed to the edges of the passageway. There were were so many bones in places that they looked like debris that had been washed up in a flood. There were no large sections, such as intact spines, feet, or hands. All of the bones had been completely disjointed so that the individual small bits and pieces lay in dense mounds. All the skulls had been broken open so that the Shun-tuk could get at the brains, so that only fragments remained.

Richard, leading the silent group of soldiers and gifted, at last found the place where he felt his sword the strongest, where it felt near. He knew what it felt like to sense the sword and he could tell that it was only feet away beyond another underworld barrier. He dared not call it to hand, though. He feared that if he did, he might lose it in the void of the underworld.

He looked back for a brief moment at everyone’s tense expressions, and then he stepped through the boundary into the world of the dead.

Before the world even began to come back in around him, he already had his fingers around the hilt of the Sword of Truth. It was a huge relief to have the weapon back. He immediately slipped the baldric over his head and let the sword find its proper place at his left hip.