Page 24 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

This hole faced north.

Richard frowned at Samantha. “What is this?”

She pointed through the opening. “Look.”

He put his hands on the edge and leaned in a little, looking out through the cylindrical opening into a murky dawn. He saw in the gloomy light a valley spread out before them. Not much of the dense forest of the valley far below was visible. The length and shape of the cylindrical opening restricted the view to a specific place off in the distance.

The opening framed a gap in soaring mountains many miles away. He bent down, trying to look up, trying to see how high the mountains were, but they were so immense and because of the way the opening was made it wouldn’t allow him to see the mountaintops. All he could see were impassable walls of stone rising up from a valley below.

A deep canyon between the rock walls appeared to be the only way through the barrier of the mountains. Having been a woods guide, Richard understood the difficulties of finding passable routes through rugged wilderness. There was often only one passage through such mountainous country. It appeared to him that the valley was the only way back into and beyond those mountains.

He backed away. “What is it I’m supposed to see?”

“Well,” she said, gesturing to two small metal plates in the wall around the opening, “you need to use these.”

Framing the opening was a design with a several distinct motifs. Like the others, Richard recognized the symbols that made up the designs. To each side, where Samantha pointed, within elements of the design where he hadn’t noticed them at first, there were small metal plates, each about half the size of his palms. The metal was in better condition than the first shield plates he’d seen. It looked to be worn smooth by the touch of countless hands.

“Here, let me show you.” Since his gift didn’t work, she ducked under his arm and popped up in front of him so that she could put her hands on both plates for him. She was tiny enough that she could easily slip into the space between him and the wall. The top of her mass of black hair came up only to the middle of his chest.

“Lean around me and look in,” she said.

As Samantha bent to the side, keeping a hand on each plate, Richard leaned past her to put his head inside the circular opening.

To his surprise, the air wavered, similar to the way the air above a fire wavered, except that it did it in a circular pattern, more like ripples in a pond radiating outward. It was a dizzying sight that made his stomach feel a bit queasy.

But then the ripples in the air cleared, so that the distant view out the hole through the rock suddenly appeared much closer. It was as if he were abruptly shifted much closer to the mountains than he had been only a moment before.

As his eyes adjusted to the light and the resolving clarity of the scene, he realized that there was something built across the valley. Framed in the center between the two mountains, at the base of the canyon, a wall that was obviously man-made stretched between the cliff walls to either side.

Richard squinted as he studied the detail of the wall. It was enormous. It was as colossal as any man-made structure he’d seen. The lofty wall towered over the forest at its base.

In the center of the wall, also made of stone and rising up higher yet, was what appeared to be a monster of some sort, jaws gaping open, with fangs hanging down over a massive portal, as if walking through it would be like walking into the waiting maw of some grotesque stone beast. In that opening, great doors stood taller than the tallest trees. The doors were nearly as colossal as the wall holding them.

The doors stood open.

Richard backed away from the round portal. Samantha removed her hands from the metal plates to each side and the view through the portal wavered, resolving back to the way it had looked when he had first looked out.

“The north wall,” Samantha said in simple explanation.

“The north wall,” he repeated. By his tone he let her know that he didn’t understand the significance.

“As long as I’ve been alive,” she explained, “those gates have always been closed. As long as my mother had been alive, those gates were always closed. As long as our people have lived in this place, those gates have stood closed.”

“Do you know how long your people have lived here?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. I heard it said that we’ve been here for thousands of years. But my mother was only just starting to teach me about our duty, the duty of the gifted here, of our mission to stand watch over the north wall. Those lessons were cut short when in the middle of one of them my mother saw that the gates in the north wall were open.

“In all my life I had never seen my mother that upset. She kept muttering that she had never expected that it would happen in her lifetime, or mine. She was angry with herself.”

“Why would she be angry with herself?”

“I heard her say that Jit should have made her suspect that something was wrong. She said that it could only be that such a being coming into the Dark Lands was because the north wall was failing and some of those from the other side were beginning to slip through. The Hedge Maid didn’t belong here. She had to be one of those creatures from the other side, like others that we’ve heard rumored. My mother said that she had known that something was wrong, but she never suspected that it could have to do with the north wall.

“When I asked her what she was talking about, what it meant, she said that it meant that life as we knew it would never be the same. That the world would never be the same.

“She said that the world of life might very well not survive what was to come.

“I was terrified and wanted her to explain it to me, but she said that there was no time. She rushed back out of here. She said that she had to go before it was too late.”

“Go?” Richard glanced out the opening again, and then back at Samantha. “Go where?”

“To warn those who needed to know.”

Samantha’s gaze sank to the ground. “My parents died—my father did, anyway—when they left to go to the Keep to talk to the wizards’ council, to carry out our ancient mission of warning the head wizards that the north wall had been breached.”

Richard stared down at the girl. “The wizards’ council? There is no wizards’ council at the Keep.”

Samantha looked up at him in shock. “There’s not?”

“No. There hasn’t been a wizards’ council at the Keep for a long time. Until my grandfather recently moved back there with some other people, the Keep had long been deserted.”

CHAPTER

22

“But when my mother and father left, they were going there to warn the wizards’ council. That’s what they said.” Samantha’s gaze looked lost as it darted about. “They said that the wizards’ council at the Keep would be the authority on the matter of the north wall. That’s what my mother told me—that she had to go to the Keep to warn those who would know what to do about it.”

Richard was only now starting to realize just how isolated the village of Stroyza was from the rest of D’Hara, not just in distance, but in knowledge of the outside world. He felt sorry for these people, thinking they were serving a vital mission for wizards who no longer existed.

He spread his hands in regret. “I’m sorry, Samantha, but there is no such council there at the Keep. There used to be, but that was long ago. There is no longer a wizards’ council at the Keep, or anywhere, for that matter.

“It’s not like it used to be. Those gifted born as wizards have become extremely rare. There aren’t many left today. I’m one of those who was born with that gift, but I grew up without knowing anything about it, so I’m afraid that I’m no expert on the subject.

“My grandfather is First Wizard and knows a great deal about such things as the history of the wizards at the Keep, but he’s missing. If I can find him and the others with him, maybe he would be able to tell you more.”

While Zedd probably knew a great deal about the history of the wizards’ counci

l, Richard didn’t think that he knew anything about a north wall in such a forgotten place.

On the verge of panic, Samantha grabbed a mass of black hair in each fist. She looked out the opening through the rock wall as if looking for an answer. She looked like she wanted to pull her hair out. He could see that her world, her duty in life, was coming apart at the seams.

Richard laid a hand on her shoulder. “Slow down, Samantha. Take a deep breath and then why don’t you tell me what happened next.”

She nodded and then swallowed to help slow her breathing. “Some of our people found my father’s remains not far from here. My mother’s things—her pack and traveling supplies—were found scattered about on the ground nearby. There were drag marks, they said, that looked like she had fought them. Our people couldn’t find her anywhere. The ground was rocky and they couldn’t follow the trail.

“After that, with the north wall breached, and me being the only gifted person left, I knew that it was up to me, now.” She flung her arms up. “But I didn’t know how to get to a distant Wizard’s Keep. I don’t even know where it is, except I think it’s far to the west somewhere. I hadn’t yet learned the things I still need to learn. I didn’t know what to do.”

She looked up at him. “Fortunately, you showed up. I don’t know if it was coincidence, or fate, or if it was the good spirits themselves intervening to send you here when I needed you most.”

Richard cast her a sideways look. “I don’t believe much in coincidence.”

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