The Glee tipped its head to the side and blinked with its third eyelids, as if studying Richard’s face up close for the first time. It was a disconcerting appraisal by such a dangerous creature. At least its lips weren’t drawn back to expose its needle-sharp teeth.
“I am called Sang.”
Richard blinked in surprise. While it hadn’t said the words out loud, and its mouth hadn’t moved, Richard could clearly hear the words in his head. It was an unnerving sensation to have a voice talk to him from inside his own head.
Vika gasped. “I heard him talk in my head!”
“We can both hear him,” Richard told her under his breath. He looked back at the Glee.
“How is it that I can hear you speak in my head”—he tapped a finger to his temple to show what he meant—“but you make no words that I can hear with my ears?”
Sang cocked his head the other way. “It is how we communicate. The goddess comes into the minds of your kind in much the same way so that she may look through their eyes to see where you are. She has talked to some of you in the way that I talk to you now, in your mind. In that same way, I can speak into your mind in a way that you understand.”
“Can all of your kind do this?”
“Yes. This is how we communicate with each other. I have tried to speak to others in different worlds in this way, but they could not hear me in their minds. Only you and your kind can hear us speak in this way, as some have heard the goddess.”
“Why did you try to speak to those others, in other worlds?” Richard asked.
“For the same reason I speak now to you. But they could not hear me and unlike you, they could be of no help.”
Richard didn’t like riddles but decided to let it slide for the moment.
“I have seen you before, Sang,” he said aloud.
“Yes. I have watched you fight a number of times now.”
“Why have you watched me fight but not participated in those battles with the rest of your kind?”
“I am also Glee, but I am not like those who attacked you. I watched because I wanted to learn about you.”
Richard found that rather worrisome, but at the same time, it was what he had been beginning to believe.
“What have you learned?”
“I have watched and seen you finally discover how to fight the Glee. It is not easy, and no other has ever been able to learn what you have learned. The Glee are very, very dangerous. But you have grasped the way of fighting them effectively. You understand what I am meaning?”
Richard nodded. “Yes. I have learned that their claws, while deadly when used for ripping and tearing at people, are not really made for fighting. I think they are meant for something else. Even so, those claws are obviously very deadly. I have learned how those who fight us use them, and how to defeat them by using their weaknesses.”
Sang cocked his head. “And what are their weaknesses?”
“Most of their arm strength is in close range, not when they extend their arms out to slash. Their shoulders and upper arms are not as strong when extended. I have learned the limitations of their movements, and where in those movements they are slowest and more awkward, and thus most vulnerable. The farther they reach, the weaker their ability to use their arms and the more cumbersome their strikes.”
Sang nodded. “Your kind thinks we are deadly, and that is obviously true in most cases, but in reality, you, Lord Rahl, are more deadly by far.”
Richard was somewhat troubled that Sang knew his name and title, but on the other hand, it told him that this individual shared information with others of his kind, which from what he had observed was rather unusual among Glee. This was obviously a thinking, reasoning creature, even if very different from him.
“Is there a point to all of this?” he asked. “A reason you have been watching me?”
Sang tapped his claws together several times, as if to demonstrate something. They made a clacking sound.
“My kind uses our claws to feed. We eat water plants called flutter weed and float weed. We harvest it with our claws. The webs between our claws help us to maneuver in water.
“We also use our claws to eat muscle snails that stick themselves down to rocks and can hold tight. They are at least as big as your hand and have a broad, powerful foot to hold themselves against rocks. They provide us nourishment.
“We must get our sharp claws in under their broad, shallow shells and then pry and pull them off the rocks. We use our teeth—” He drew his lips back to expose his tightly packed, needle-sharp white teeth. “—to rake the muscle snail’s meat from inside the recess of its shell.
“We also eat other kinds of water plants, delicious varieties of thick, ruffled plants that grow low and tight on rock. We use our teeth to scrape them from the surface of rocks. It is the only way we are able to collect and eat them. We also eat a variety of other snails and use our claws to extract the meat. Mostly, though, the flutter and float weed and the muscle snail are our staple foods which grow in abundance and what our kind has lived on for as long as any of us knows.”
“But something happened, and as a result of that event some of you developed a taste for the flesh of creatures from other worlds?”
Sang let his claws drop back to his sides as he let out a kind of hiss that Richard took for a sigh. He looked somehow remorseful.
“Yes. Some time back, before any of us now living were alive, we were visited by a race from another world. We thought of them as gods. These gods left us a gift. With this gift, we were able to visit other worlds much like they did. In these worlds the Glee visited, they eventually found other things we could eat.
“At first, it was a wondrous device to explore worlds with different kinds of edible plants. In some of these places the Glee found the kind of water weeds and snails that were similar to our favorites and they brought them back for our young.”
Richard and Vika shared a look.
“You mean to say you care for your young?” he asked.
“Of course. We love our young. A male and female Glee will together care for and protect her eggs until they hatch. From the time they hatch, the mother and father bring them food until they grow enough to be able to learn to gather food for themselves.” Sang cocked his head again. “Did the goddess tell your kind something different?”
Richard let out a troubled sigh. “As a matter of fact, we were led to believe that the Glee simply reproduce, somehow, but that you don’t experience love and bonding the way we do. From what we were told, it sounded like your kind didn’t pair together, and producing young was not a meaningful act.”
Sang looked distressed. “That is not true. When we find a mate, we bond for life.”
Richard hooked his thumbs behind his belt as he stole another quick glance at Vika. “This is not what the goddess led us to believe. She gave us a picture of a cold-blooded race that cared only about collecting other worlds and hunting creatures in those worlds for sport as well as to eat. She made it seem that they were born for this purpose and it was all they cared about. We were told that even if the goddess grew old and died, it was not important because they are all the same and of a like mind and basically interchangeable. She said her death would not matter because there would always be another to take her place.”
Sang let out the same kind of hissing sigh as he had before. “The one who calls herself the Golden Goddess lies as easily as she breathes. She lies in order to strike fear into the hearts of those she intends her followers to hunt. They have developed a taste for the flesh of other creatures, including, most of all, your kind.”
“A taste for people?”
Sang nodded. “You are the only thinking creatures we know of that are in some ways similar to us. We have so far discovered no others. The other worlds we have discovered have at most lower creatures such as insects and other small creatures without the ability to understand our voice, much like float weed and muscle snails cannot hear our voices.
“The goddes
s and her followers find great satisfaction in hunting down, killing, and eating your kind more than any that has been found before in the worlds she collects. She will tell anyone from your world anything that makes it easier for the Glee to succeed in hunting and killing, hoping your kind never learns any of our weaknesses, as you have. Creatures that are terrified don’t fight back effectively. That makes them easier to kill.
“The goddess and her followers have come to highly desire the flesh of other creatures more advanced than the muscle snails of our world, and especially after the game of hunting your kind. The hunting has become the purpose of many, and they do not even devour all they catch. The fighters the goddess sends out to other worlds are all males, like me. They bring some of their kills back to feed their females, the young, and the goddess.
“Those of us like me find the idea of eating thinking, reasoning creatures like you to be not only wrong, but abhorrent. Those with the goddess don’t care about our objections, and as you have seen, they have embraced violence and they now eat your kind exclusively. They are even willing to use violence against their own kind in order to hold power so that they may continue doing as they wish.”
Richard was disturbed to learn how much of what they had been told wasn’t true. It changed everything.
“I have noticed that unlike all the rest of the Glee, you have a greenish iridescence to your flesh, especially over the top of your head.”
Sang nodded. “It is because of the flutter and float weed as well as some other plants of our world that we eat. Those plants we prefer to eat have this same shimmering green color. Those who have turned to eating the flesh of creatures in other worlds, especially your kind, no longer eat the food from our world and so they quickly lose this coloring.”
That certainly explained the color Richard noticed on Sang that he hadn’t seen on the other Glee. “I’m glad that there are some of you who don’t want to eat us. I would much rather cooperate with you and those like you.”
“It is the same with the others who side with me. You are the first creatures that I found who will fight back, which, of course, excites those who follow the goddess. And among your kind, you are the most effective at fighting and killing the Glee to stop them. I have been looking for one like you for a very, very long time, hoping all the time that I would find one.”
“For what purpose?”
“To help us kill the goddess, of course.”
“Of course,” Richard said.
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“The Golden Goddess is smart, cunning, and knows how to win followers. She prizes the power she has. She craves the loyalty of her followers and is pleased that they would do anything for her. They would die for her. As you know so well, many have already died for her. As we speak, many more are preparing to come here and slaughter all the people living in this place.
“Those like me, who believe in consuming what our beautiful, wonderful world has to offer in abundance, have tried many things to make the others see that what they are doing is wrong. But they see us as simply weak and too timid for the dangerous hunts of your kind.
“More than for the food, they enjoy their power over your kind, much as the goddess herself enjoys her power over her followers. After trying everything to reason with the goddess and her followers, we now realize that there is no way to turn them back from their new ways.
“If they are not stopped, she will see to it that the Glee come to roam this world and hunt your kind until there are none of you left. They think of eliminating your species as a goal and as an accomplishment. Finding new worlds for her followers to hunt, especially this one, gives the goddess power over them.”
Richard stared into the large, glossy black eyes. “So why, exactly, are you are telling me all of this?”
“Because for your kind to survive, they must be stopped. For my kind to survive, they must be stopped.
“To stop them, the Golden Goddess must be killed. There is no other way.”
Richard leaned back a little as he tried to judge the truthfulness of Sang’s words. It was possible, after all, that there was a power struggle in Sang’s world and he was just as bloodthirsty as the goddess, and simply wanted to win Richard’s sympathy in order to help eliminate his opposition for power.
Richard supposed that it was even possible that Sang was trying to win Richard’s trust in order to eliminate him for the goddess.
On the other hand, what Sang was saying did seem to ring true, and if it was true, this could be the key to ending the threat that Richard hadn’t previously thought was possible. More than that, not ending the threat could very well result in the end of everyone.
“We were told that this goddess is merely one of your kind that takes the position of goddess, as others before her, and that if she is killed, another will simply take her place, and then another, and so on, so that killing her is not a solution to stop this madness.”
Sang didn’t hesitate to answer. “It is true that if she is killed, her followers may not stop simply because she is killed. Hunting and killing has given them a taste for power, so another leader will likely emerge to take her place. If killing her would stop this war with other worlds and what she is doing to her own kind, we would have tried to kill her ourselves if we could.
“But she is very powerful, with many who believe in her and do what she tells them. She teaches them that through eating the flesh of intelligent beings, like your kind, they will gain the strength and wisdom of those they eat, making them superior beings. Unlike eating our traditional food of float weed and muscle snails, they find a thrill in the danger involved. It gives some of them the chance to rise to be champions of the kills. Champions gain the favor of the goddess. That means that if she is killed, another would very likely want to take her place.
“Those with me could never succeed in stopping them because they have learned to fight, and they are vicious at it. Those who believe like me that what they do is wrong are not fighters and we don’t have their fighting skills.
“But on the other hand, if she is killed and if her followers are dealt a severe enough blow with many in their ranks killed on their home ground, they may then for the first time fear for their lives, fear for their world, fear for their offspring, and they may go back to the way we have traditionally lived for as long as any of us knows.”
Richard studied Sang’s emotionless face for a moment. “It’s also possible that even if she and a number of her followers are killed, they could still hold to their belief in collecting and hunting other worlds, gather followers and revert to this savage life.”
Sang nodded. “Yes, this is true, and this is why, besides killing the goddess and enough of her followers as only you would be able to do, there is another important aspect to what must be done.”
Richard had thought there had to be more to it. “And what would that additional thing be that would need to be done?”
“The device that allows them to go to other worlds must be destroyed once and for all. If they are denied any possibility of ever hunting other worlds, they could not win over followers, and without followers—believers—they could not continue.”
Richard felt goose bumps ripple up his arms to the nape of his neck. He didn’t like the idea of being an assassin. He remembered telling Zedd once that if he took the sword, he would not be an assassin. Zedd had told him that he could be whatever he wanted to be. Not only the world, but he himself had changed since he’d taken the sword. He now understood that there were times when it was necessary to stop a deadly threat and that killing was often the only way to do that. The difference between him and those he had to stop, like the goddess and the Glee, was that they killed because they wanted to; he killed because it was the only way to survive and prevent killing from continuing.
“I presume you are here, then, to ask me to somehow return to your world and kill the goddess for you along with enough of her followers to discourage them.”
Sang bowed his head. “Yes. Yo
u have it exactly right.”
“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that I agreed. So then, if I went to your world and could accomplish such a thing for you, you would then send us back here and you would then destroy the device so it could never be used again?”
“No,” Sang said with a sorrowful shake of his head. “You must also destroy the device with that weapon you carry.”
“How could I possibly destroy a device that I don’t even understand?”
“We cannot destroy the device because there is nothing in my home world that would be powerful enough to harm it.” With a claw, Sang gestured to Richard’s left hip. “I have seen you use that weapon. I have seen it do things that I find hard to believe. I have seen it do things that nothing else could do. We do not have anything like it. I believe it is the only weapon that could destroy the device.”
Richard was feeling a rising sense of dread. “If I were to agree to come to your world and I succeeded in defeating the Golden Goddess and her followers, and then destroyed this device that allows them to go to other worlds, how could I come home, to my world?”
Sang reluctantly shook his head again. “There would be no way. With the device destroyed, you would not be able to return to your world.”
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Richard swallowed, trying to moisten his suddenly dry mouth, not entirely sure he had heard Sang correctly.
“You’re saying that I could never return to my world? Never? There would be no way for me to return?”
Sang nodded sorrowfully. “Yes. I am sorry. Once you destroy the device, you would not be able to return here. I am sorry, but it is the only way.”
Richard shook his head, not wanting to believe that he would have to stay there, in Sang’s world.
Into Darkness Page 24
