Page 34 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

Samantha stepped closer. “There’s a way?”

Richard nodded, still staring at what it said on the wall. He worked the symbols again, hoping he was wrong. He wasn’t.

“Well, what is it, then?” Samantha tugged on his shirt. “Lord Rahl, what does it say? How do we stop them?”

Richard cleared his throat.

“It says ‘The threat from the third kingdom can be ended only by ending prophecy.’”

CHAPTER

31

Samantha’s eyes darted around in confusion. “Stop the threat by ending prophecy? What are they talking about? How can prophecy be ended?”

Richard, more troubled than ever by what he was reading, traced a circular symbol containing a complex maze of twisting, supporting elements radiating out from the center.

“This circular symbol here, where she says that ending the third kingdom can only be done by ending prophecy, is some kind of time element, but I can’t quite figure out its context.”

“Time element? I don’t understand. What do you mean, time element?”

Richard looked back through all the supporting designs and then the devices coming from the center of the primary symbol as he tried to think of how to put the concepts he was seeing into words. There were parts that made no sense to him, and other parts that had no direct translation.

“I’m not exactly sure what Naja is saying here in this part. It’s not that I can’t translate it accurately, it’s that she is obviously familiar with the concept and I’m not. Because of that, it isn’t clear enough for me to fully understand the precise meaning of the things she’s talking about.”

“What kind of thing is she talking about? Do you understand that much of it?”

“To an extent. I understand the words, but not what they mean. It’s some kind of representation having to do with time that I’m not familiar with. She calls it the Twilight Count.”

“The Twilight Count?” Samantha considered for a moment. “Like counting days? Keeping track? Is that what she means?”

“I think so,” he said. “But it seems to be more than that. It seems to be some kind of formal calculation I don’t recognize.”

“Do you think it could be a calendar or something? Calendars have to do with counting time. All the things on calendar calculations—like the moons phases, star positions in different seasons, things like that—can get complicated to calculate into the future.”

Richard pressed his lips tight for a moment as he tried to make sense of it.

“That’s true enough, but I’m not sure if that’s what she is referring to in this case. Since it’s some kind of computation involving counting, you might be right, but it’s hard for me to say for sure because she doesn’t explain it. People back then must have been familiar with the term, so she didn’t feel the need to explain it. She merely calls it the Twilight Count.

“It’s also possible that it has to do with the chronology of prophecy.”

Samantha frowned as she considered. “Chronology of prophecy? What do you mean? Prophecy is prophecy, isn’t it?”

“Well yes, sort of.” Richard looked up from studying the symbols. “Most people don’t realize that chronology is always one of the great difficulties of understanding prophecy. It’s hard to tell if a particular prophecy is about an event that will happen tomorrow, or a thousand years from tomorrow, or even if it may have already happened two hundred years in the past.”

Samantha was hanging on his every word. “That complicates matters.”

Richard nodded and gestured to the wall. “Since these symbols in Naja’s account have to do with time, or more accurately with counting time, and it mentions it in conjunction with prophecy, it could be that the Twilight Count is a forgotten way of determining prophetic events in the flow of time.”

Samantha looked at the wall with newfound interest. “So what does it say about this Twilight Count?”

“Naja says that they were able to determine by the Twilight Count that prophecy holds the key to stopping the threat.”

“I thought you said that prophecy had to be ended.”

Richard raked his fingers back through his hair as he tried to make sense of what came next, and even more than that, how to explain it to her. It was a difficult combination of symbology to decipher. Some of the elements seemed strangely familiar, but he couldn’t place them.

“I did, but then it goes on to explain, here, that ending prophecy can only be accomplished by bringing death.”

Richard frowned as he stared at the unusual network of symbols with a strangely shaped figure nine at the center. It was similar to a hooked nine he had seen before.

It suddenly came to him.

“No, wait, that’s not exactly what it says.”

“So what, exactly, does it say, then?” Samantha asked with exaggerated patience after he had fallen silent for a time.

Richard touched his fingers to his forehead. He suddenly felt hot and a little dizzy.

“It doesn’t say that ending prophecy can only be accomplished by bringing death.”

He stepped back from the wall and stared.

“It says that ending prophecy can only be accomplished by the bringer of death.”

Samantha’s brow lifted. “The bringer of death? What does that mean?”

“Fuer grissa ost drauka,” Richard whispered.

Samantha’s nose wrinkled. “What?”

Richard was still staring at the grim symbol, lost in a rush of tumbling thoughts. Now that he remembered some of the elements and had fit the pieces together, there could be no doubt about how it translated.

“It’s High D’Haran. Fuer grissa ost drauka means ‘the bringer of death.’ That’s who Naja is talking about.”

“You mean that this bringer of death has to end prophecy if we are to have any hope of survival?”

“Yes.”

Samantha watched him for a time as he scanned the symbols carved into the wall. “Do you know who that is? Do you know where we can find this bringer of death?”

Richard nodded slowly, transfixed by the symbolic, hooked, serpent figure nine. He tapped his chest.

“It’s me. Ancient prophecies have named me fuer grissa ost drauka. I am the bringer of death.”

Richard could not help thinking that he now carried death in him. In more ways than he could have ever envisioned, he was fuer grissa ost drauka.

CHAPTER

32

“You’re the bringer of death?” Samantha looked up at him from under her brow. “You’re the one who is supposed to end prophecy? Are they serious?”

Richard was still staring at the symbols, certain at last that he understood their meaning. There could be no doubt as to the translation.

“That’s what it says.”

There had been a time when he would have been rattled to read what others thought he was or what they thought he needed to do, was destined to do, or must accomplish. But such things had often turned out to be quite different than they sounded at first, so his response to such news was more tempered than it once might have been.

But still, what he saw written on the wall in the language of Creation, the same language used by the ancient omen machine he had discovered buried deep within the People’s Palace, was more than a little troubling.

Samantha paced off a short distance, considering. She returned to stand close beside him. The contentious sorceress in her, young as it was, was coming to the surface.

“How in the world can prophecy be ended?—And how are you supposed to do such a thing? Did Naja say?”

Richard shook his head. “Naja says only that they had a great many remarkably talented wizards working feverishly on a way to eliminate the threat of the half people and the walking dead. But the magic the enemy used was too strong and they didn’t understand it well enough to know how to counter it. There was, however, no doubt as to how dangerous it was.

“She says that if they knew how to bring an end to th

---