The Third Kingdom

Richard blinked as he brought his head up. He had to push piles of bloody splintered wood off himself. There was so much debris piled into the narrow opening in the rock where he and Samantha hid that they were nearly buried.

“I’m alive.” He rotated and bent his arms. “I think I’m all right. Are you?”

He rocked his shoulders back and forth in order to squeeze himself out of the opening enough to turn and look back. Tears streamed down Samantha’s face. She looked more than miserable, more than merely exhausted.

She managed a nod. “I think so.”

Richard flicked his sword, shedding all the debris covering it, and then uncurled himself enough to stand up and take a quick look around to check for any threat from the half people, even though he truly didn’t expect to see anyone standing. He didn’t.

It looked like the world of life had been blasted out of existence.

The dense forest that had closed them in from overhead with a thick canopy that shut out the sky and daylight had been completely ripped open. Overhead, there was a large, open patch of sky, thickly overcast with leaden clouds. He could smell fresh, wet wood, as if from sawing logs. The scent of fresh wood was mixed with the gagging stench of blood.

Off in every direction around them, not a single tree still stood. All around them the trees lay felled.

Here and there a few grotesquely splintered trunks jutted from stumps. In other places toppled trees had pulled up mats of forest floor along with their broken roots.

It was a scene of such mass destruction that it was hard for Richard to believe what he was seeing. Timber lay everywhere like hundreds of broken sticks cast to the ground by a giant. The patches of forest floor he could see between downed trees were covered with a deep layer of shattered, splintered wood, sticking up every which way in fragmented, spiked debris.

Everywhere under tree trunks, enormous limbs, branches, and man-sized splinters, lay a carpet of bloody, shredded bodies. No one could have lived through such a fierce storm of fragmented splinters driven by so many violent explosions.

Gazing out over the expanse of that destruction, Richard didn’t see a single movement.

The half people caught in that violent rage of explosions had been torn to pieces. The pieces of bloody flesh he could see were unrecognizable. Most of what he saw looked like ground meat.

Richard turned back to Samantha. She watched him from the darkness of that split in the rock, as if not sure whether she wanted to come out or not.

Richard held his arms out to her in invitation. When he did, she sprang out of the narrow cleft in the rock and raced into his arms, finally giving in to sobs.

CHAPTER

43

“It’s all right, Samantha,” he said softly as he smoothed her wild tangle of black hair, gently holding her head to his chest. “It’s all right. We’re safe.”

She cried in racking sobs.

He gently shushed her, letting her know that it was all right, that it was over, that she was safe, now.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.

Richard frowned. “Sorry? Why would you be sorry?”

“Because I almost got us killed.”

“What are you talking about?”

She looked up at him, her big dark eyes brimming with tears. “You brought me along because I said I could help you. I convinced you that you needed me, that it was important to take me because I’m gifted.

“Then, when you needed me most, when everything was at risk, you told me what I needed to do. You even explained how to make the trees explode. You brought me along to help you, and when you told me what I needed to do and how to do it, I failed you.

“You could have easily been killed any one of a hundred times fighting off those monsters while we tried to get away. I didn’t do anything to help you.

“You are the one. I recognized that from the beginning, and I failed to do as I promised and as you asked of me. You were nearly killed. You are the one to save us all. It would have been my fault that the world of life ended. All because you told me what to do, and how to do it, and I didn’t do it.”

Richard shook his head reassuringly. “Samantha, that’s not true. You were doing your best.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

She hesitated, looking for the words. “I was afraid. I was afraid to do what you said. I was afraid that I’d mess it up, that I’d do it wrong, that I wouldn’t be able to do it good enough, and that I’d fail you, fail everyone. So I couldn’t do it. I tried, but I was afraid that I’d fail.”

Richard smiled as he looked down at her, smoothing her hair. “You didn’t fail, Samantha.” He swept an arm out, gesturing around them. “You stopped the threat.”

She wiped at her eyes and finally looked around, really looked around. She blinked, seeing the totality of it for the first time.

“I did this?”

“It wasn’t me,” Richard said.

“It’s just as you said,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “It would save us if I did what you told me.”