The Third Kingdom

She frowned at him, puzzled by the question. “Because that’s what it’s called.”

“No it’s not,” Richard said.

Her smooth brow creased. “What are you talking about?”

Richard gestured back at the symbols stretching back along the wall. “It’s called the barrier wall. There is no mention of a north wall anywhere in these writings. It only speaks of the barrier wall. So why do your people call it the north wall?”

Samantha’s dark eyes grew large and round. Her face looked pale against the dark frame of her hair.

“Do you mean to say that you can read those strange markings on the walls?”

“Yes.” He pointed to the circle of symbols around the opening. “This one here says ‘the third kingdom.’ It’s naming what it shows: ‘the third kingdom.’”

Richard ran the flat of a hand along the wall to the side, where ancient symbols had been carefully cut into the smooth, polished surface. “This here speaks of the barrier wall. See, right here? This symbol combined with this one under it means ‘barrier wall.’ Nowhere does it call it the north wall.”

Samantha followed behind him, ignoring where he pointed, instead gaping up at him. “You can read these markings? Are you saying that you really know what they all mean? You really understand them? For real?”

He nodded as he swept his hand past another grouping of symbols. “These markings, here, all deal with the barrier. There’s a tremendous amount of information written here. I’d have to study it awhile to be able to translate it all, but I understand enough of what I see to know that it all pertains to the barrier and the third kingdom that lies beyond.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “So why do you call it the north wall?”

She looked at a loss. “I don’t know. It has always been called the north wall. We’ve never had any reason to think it might be called something different.”

It was Richard’s turn to be taken aback. He stopped and stared at her.

“Do you mean to say that it has been the duty of the gifted people here in Stroyza to watch the barrier so they could warn others if the gates ever opened, and none of you could read the information about it all, the instructions and warnings that have been left right here on the walls?”

She looked bewildered, confused, and somewhat embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but from what I’ve been taught, the markings are an ancient, dead language. I never heard my mother, aunts, or uncles say that the things on the walls here were important. Aunt Martha always smiled when she saw them and called them the pretty decorations our ancestors left for us.

“My mother mentioned that others used to think it might be some kind of message, but I was always told that if it was, their ancient meaning had long ago been lost.”

“But your people have been here all this time, apparently since the time that this was all built and this information was placed here. How could you not know what it says? Why wasn’t the understanding of these writings passed down? Why weren’t young people taught how to read this?”

She gazed at the wall a moment before looking back at him. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I don’t have an answer.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Richard lifted a hand and then let it drop. “Why wouldn’t the gifted here teach their descendants, teach their children, to read this? After all, this was apparently their purpose, their duty—to be sentinels. This wall tells them about their purpose.”

Samantha scratched her brow as she considered the problem. “Well, sometimes a skip is born—you know, a person who doesn’t inherit the gift.”

Richard nodded as he rested the palm of his left hand on the hilt of his sword. “The gift skipped my mother.”

“I guess that there must have been gaps like that in the lines of gifted who serve Stroyza,” she said. “It must be that there weren’t enough sorceresses with gifted children, so their knowledge wasn’t able to be passed on. When those ungifted children eventually had gifted children, maybe the only sorceresses still alive were old and the grandchildren weren’t yet old enough to learn it all. It could even be that older sorceresses had passed away by then and the young gifted had no one to teach them.

“After all, you say that you’re gifted but no one taught you about using your gift. That knowledge that could have been passed on was lost to you. Who knows what you failed to learn as a result.”

Richard’s mouth twisted with an exasperated expression. “I guess you have a point.”

“Our understanding of these markings must have been lost during the times of those skips, so that the gifted who were eventually born were only able to learn sketchy pieces. It could even be that young people weren’t taught for some reason. You weren’t.