Page 83 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

He dropped to a knee, abruptly unable to stand. Cara helped hold him on the way down so that he didn’t fall on his face.

Nicci and Zedd were both right there, both helping keep him upright on his knees, letting him sit back on his heels.

Through a torrent of every kind of pain imaginable, the power of the sword still in his fist sustained and supported him. He felt too tired to breathe and had to will himself to draw each breath.

Both Nicci and Zedd pressed their fingers to his forehead. Richard could feel the telltale tingle of the gift probing the poison deep within him.

Nicci looked up sharply at Zedd. “Do you feel it?”

Zedd returned her grim look and gave her a nod. “We need to get to that containment field. There’s not a lot of time.”

“Where’s Kahlan?” Nicci asked as she looked around to see if anyone knew. “Where’s Kahlan? We need to get her back there as well. She will be worse than Richard by now. We have to tend to her as soon as possible. Where is she?”

“We had to leave her back,” Samantha said from back behind Zedd. “I healed some of her injuries and she hadn’t awakened yet. We had to leave her to rest and recover some of her strength. She should be awake by now and waiting for us back in Stroyza.”

“South, through the gates,” Richard managed.

“Then we go there first and get the Mother Confessor,” Cara said with surprising power, courage, and determination as she stood over Richard’s shoulder. “We can’t head back to the palace until we get her.”

“It’s not that far,” Samantha offered. “It’s only a few days if we hurry.”

“After we get her, then we have to get you both back to the palace so we can heal you,” Nicci said to Richard in a confidential, worried tone.

Richard nodded. He forced himself to his feet. “Kahlan is in Stroyza. Like Samantha says, it’s not that far. It’s back near where you all were attacked and captured, after you came to rescue us from the Hedge Maid.”

He looked at all the faces watching him before turning his gaze south. “Let’s get going. There’s still a little light. We leave now.”

Sword still in his hand, not yet ready to put the power of its anger away, Richard started out across the broken ground, walking over the bodies of hundreds and hundreds of fallen Shun-tuk. Cara was half a step behind his right shoulder. The rest of them all silently fell in to follow.

CHAPTER

79

Hannis Arc turned when he caught a glimpse of the tall woman in red leather making her way resolutely through the whitewashed bodies of the Shun-tuk spread across the forested landscape behind them. Descending the slope, the vast army of grim half people seemed to pour through and among the trees like a white avalanche.

His mood darkened when he saw that the Mord-Sith was alone.

He had been wondering where she was and what had been keeping her. Traveling across the desolate land of the third kingdom had been much easier than making their way through the uncharted forests of the Dark Lands. It would not have been so difficult with a small force, but the numbers they were dragging behind them were vast and that slowed the journey. There were so many following behind that it took most of a day for all of them to pass one spot.

The Mord-Sith did not look at all happy. Seeing that she was alone made him more than merely displeased. Vika elbowed aside a silent Shun-tuk woman who didn’t move out of the Mord-Sith’s way. Hannis Arc could hear the bone of her jaw crack before she fell beneath the feet of the horde.

“So where is Richard Rahl?” Hannis Arc asked when she finally caught up to walk beside him. “You had better not have let him die under torture. I want to be the one to kill him.”

The muscles in her jaw flexed as she clenched her teeth for a moment. “Lord Arc, I’m afraid that it looks like he escaped.”

He shared a look with Sulachan.

“What do you mean, it looks like he escaped?” the spirit of Emperor Sulachan asked as he came to a halt. Behind them the progress of the Shun-tuk nation ground to a halt as well.

Vika looked at Sulachan’s ghost briefly; then her steely blue eyes turned to Hannis Arc as she answered.

“It appears that he somehow managed to escape. All the containment chambers were empty. The ground outside the caves was a sea of dead Shun-tuk. It was a slaughter. I have never seen the likes of it. The stench was unimaginable. Buzzards darken the sky. The ground seems to move as their dark bodies hop from place to place to gorge on carcasses. The dead have drawn predators of all sorts—wolves, coyotes, crows, vultures, foxes—everything you can imagine is there picking over the remains. Scavengers have come from far and wide to feast.”

Hannis Arc’s voice rose in a way that her eyes revealed she recognized as dangerous. “Well, what about down in the caves? What about all the prisoners we left?”

Vika swallowed. “Lord Arc, they are all gone. All of them. The soldiers, the gifted, Lord Rahl—all of them are gone.”

His brow drew down in a way that caused her to back a step. “Richard Rahl. He is no longer Lord Rahl. That has been taken from him. I am Lord Arc, leader of the D’Haran Empire, not Richard Rahl.”

She swallowed again. “My mistake, Lord Arc.”

The walking corpse of the spirit king gestured. “Or, you will be, one day.”

Hannis Arc looked over at the glowing form of Sulachan within his long-dead, worldly form. He did not like to be spoken to in such a manner, even by the risen Sulachan.

“Are you suggesting that I might not be? That you and your forces might fail me?”

Sulachan regarded Hannis Arc with an unreadable look before finally smiling. “Of course not, Lord Arc. Not at all. I am only saying that I warned you about Richard Rahl and leaving him alive.”

Hannis Arc’s hands fisted. “I didn’t leave him alive! We put him in a prison sealed off by the underworld itself, with an army of half people guarding him and the rest of his people! Then I sent her to bring me Richard Rahl!”

He swung around and backhanded Vika across the mouth with his fist. “And she failed me!”

Vika stumbled back three steps from the

blow. As soon as she recovered she quickly came forward again and kept her head bowed.

“I’m sorry, Lord Arc. I have failed you. I went to get him, just as you ordered, but he and the others were gone—escaped somehow. The Shun-tuk left behind must have tried to stop them as well, and they, too, failed you both.”

“Why didn’t you look for him?” Hannis Arc demanded. “Why didn’t you go after him, find him, and bring him to me?”

She kept her head bowed. “I tried to find him, Lord Arc, but they were gone. I checked all the caverns, just in case. They were empty except for masses of charred remains. Outside the caves there were so many tracks trampling the ground from”—she gestured behind her—“from all of the Shun-tuk nation leaving that place, that there was no way I could even begin to track Richard Rahl and the small group he has with him. For days I have been searching, but to no avail. I tried, but I have no idea where he went.”

“It would appear,” Sulachan said, “that Richard Rahl has managed to slip from your grasp. As I warned, he is dangerous.”

Hannis Arc gave the spirit a dark look, but didn’t answer.

“I have failed you, Lord Arc,” Vika said. “I deserve and gratefully accept any punishment you decree. My head, if you wish it, Lord Arc.”

He heaved a sigh, thinking. “He was gone when you got back there, then? You didn’t see or speak with any of the Shun-tuk we left behind to feed on the soldiers? You didn’t see this battle? He was already gone?”

She kept her gaze to the ground. “Yes, Lord Arc. As soon as you told me to go get him and bring him to you, I immediately started back. When I got there it was as I described. The only Shun-tuk left there were long since dead. I went down in the caves and found all the prisoners gone. I spent several days, every moment there was light, searching for any sign of where they could have gone, but I could find nothing.”

He considered silently for a moment. The Shun-tuk, stone-faced, watched him. Sulachan watched him. He would like to kill the woman on the spot for failing him. But she had served him well for many years. She had never before failed him.

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