“I don’t know if I could leave my world for yours to fight for those on your side who can’t—or won’t—do it themselves, and then, even if I succeed, never be able to return home to my mate, my offspring, my people, and my world. That is too much to ask.”
“I am sorry, but there is no other way,” Sang said. “But it would not simply be that you fight for those like me, it would be for the survival of those in your world as well.”
Richard blinked in disbelief. “I don’t see how I could live in your world.”
“I can tell you that of all the worlds the goddess has collected, none can begin to match the beauty of my own home world, so you would at least have that. Your world, here, is a harsh, dry place. My world is lush and warm and beautiful beyond anything you have ever seen before.”
Richard had to remind himself to hold back his rising anger. This wasn’t personal. Sang was trying to find a way to end the bloodshed, even if the solution he had come up with was unacceptable.
“I don’t care how beautiful it is, it’s not my home. Everyone I love is here, in this world.”
Sang cocked his head to the side. “But this is such a dry place. I don’t know how you are even able to survive here. We have much trouble coming here because of how dry it is. We must put the jelly of the scrum plant on ourselves to help keep our skin moist while we are here, or it would dry out and crack. Then we would bleed, and we would die.”
That explained the gelatinous masses that Richard had seen slide off of them when the Glee first arrived, as well as the wet appearance of their skin.
“Sang, I’m not sure I could ever agree to such a thing—to leave everything I have here and everyone I love, never to return. As you may know, my own offspring are about to come into the world.”
“I do know about the imminent arrival of your offspring. Please believe me when I say that I sympathize with your reluctance,” Sang said, sounding sincere. “If the situation were reversed, I don’t know that I could stand to live in your world, never to return to mine.” He gestured at Vika. “But you would have this female with you, at least.”
“That is not enough, nor is it a solution.” Richard gestured up to the Keep. “My mate is there.”
“I am sorry, but while I do admit to wanting my kind to return to their ways and no longer be able to raid other worlds, the more important thing I am telling you is that this is the only way if you wish your kind here in this world to survive.
“As we speak, the Golden Goddess is right now preparing to send the largest number of Glee yet to come here to kill all the people of that place down the mountain. She wants none left alive to punish you for going into that place of magic to hide, rather than surrender. When that is finished, they will then be sent to other places in your world to hunt the people there until there are no more of your kind. This will not be attacks such as you have seen and fought against before. This will be mass attacks in many different places at the same time.
“The goddess knows of and fears your magic, and she also knows that when you retreat into this place of magic, here above us, she will not be able to reach out and take you, your mate, or your unborn children. But she also knows that with you hiding in there and not able to fight, or at least not able to fight in all the places of your world at once, there will be virtually no effective opposition to her and her forces. There will be the sport of some opposition of course, but the Glee enjoy some resistance. People in places all over your world will not be able to withstand the attacks. The resistance they put up will not be enough for your kind to survive.
“The goddess knows that your magic protects the magic of this world. If your offspring live, their magic will do the same.
“Yet, as you hide and protect them in this place, she will see that vulnerability and exploit it. With you stuck in there protecting your mate and offspring, it gives her and her followers an opening to come here to this world in mass to hunt and devour your kind until there are none left other than you and those few with you in this fortress of magic.
“Although you may in that way be able to preserve magic in your world, and the few people inside there with you, there will be no people left out in the rest of the world. They will all be dead. Your world will be a dead place.”
Richard looked over at Vika. When she realized the full extent of what was in store for their world, some of the color had left her face. What was coming was no less than the cataclysmic end of everyone and everything.
Sang was right; even if they stayed and fought, they couldn’t fight in every city, town, and village all over the world at the same time. He might be wildly successful against the Glee he faced, but he was only one man in one place and could not face nearly all of them.
“I am afraid that I am not offering you the ability to return to this place and the people you love,” Sang said. “Once you destroy the device, it will not be possible for you to return to your home. But what I am offering you is the possibility of destroying the threat that otherwise will hunt down and slaughter everyone in your world. You have seen what they have already done, how many they have slaughtered, and what they are capable of. They know no mercy and will grant none.
“They will not stop unless you come with me and stop them, and then destroy the device to prevent them from ever again coming to this world. You can only do those things in my world.
“What I am offering you is the possibility of saving the lives of those you love and everyone else in your world. I will not deceive you; that is all I am able to offer.
“I understand the sacrifice you will be making, but you must decide now because they will be coming soon and if you don’t come with me and stop them there, it will be too late.”
50
Richard stood unmoving, terrified at the thought of never being able to see Kahlan again. She was his world. He would never see their children, never be able to teach them and watch them grow. Never see them have the life he and Kahlan had fought so hard for them to have.
He would never see Kahlan’s special smile and her beautiful green eyes again.
Richard had never been so frozen in fear and uncertainty before.
Through that fear, though, he realized that if he didn’t do this, it would be the end of his world and the end of Kahlan and their children’s world. If he didn’t take this chance, how could he ever look Kahlan in the eye again once she knew he might have been able to stop the slaughter of everyone in their world, and he hadn’t tried?
Richard looked over at Vika. “What do you think?”
She arched an eyebrow. “You are the Lord Rahl. You care about everyone in this world or you would not have sacrificed everything you did to win freedom for everyone. You fought those long wars for those who depend on you, and because you care that they have a life.
“I know you are going, and I know that nothing I could say would stop you. So why are you even asking me?
“But I am going with you and that is final. I will fight beside you in the struggle you face there, in that world, no less than I have in this world.”
Richard swallowed as he nodded. She was right, of course. She would also be sacrificing everything she knew and the possibility of what the future might bring for her.
He had only entertained the idea of not going as he desperately tried to think of another solution, but deep down inside, just as Vika said, he knew that he had no choice. This was the only way of ending the threat. He had to go, no matter what it cost him, personally.
The lives of everyone in the D’Haran Empire were his responsibility. Not only that, but he cared that the people of his world could live their lives as they wished and in peace. The Grace told the story of each of their lives and it needed to live on. It was not simply a matter of being the Lord Rahl and it being his responsibility. He sincerely wanted people to be able to live their lives as they wanted, to achieve their hopes and dreams. If he didn’t do this, they would know only terror and death.
He was still filled with
questions, though. Some, he knew, had no answer, but at least some did.
“How did you get here from your world? You had to have used this device you spoke of, but isn’t it guarded by the goddess or her followers? That device is their way to raid other worlds.”
“The device is in a high place that is very dry,” Sang said. “No one guards it because no one uses it except the goddess and her followers. Only they wish to go to other worlds, so there is no reason to endure such a dry place except when they use the device. They know that it cannot be destroyed, so there is no reason that they would need to guard it.
“Other than her followers, I am the only one who has used it. I went to other worlds they raided to try to find help but I could find none until I saw you fight. I needed to use the device to come here to observe you and see if I thought you could possibly be the one to help stop this. I finally came to know that you are the one.”
“So then you simply went up to where it is and used the device to come here?”
“Yes.”
As Richard considered it, he thought that it made sense. “But the device is not here, in this world, or any of the worlds the goddess collects for hunting grounds. So how do you return to your world without the device to send you back?”
“It is hard to explain.”
“Do your best.”
“You have seen my kind when they fear being killed and they simply vanish?” Sang asked.
“Yes. They sort of turn all scribbly and then they disappear. We all assume they are returning to their own world.”
Sang nodded. “They were. When the device sends us somewhere, it creates a link to our minds. So, when I desire, because I am connected to it through my mind, the device knows my thought that I want to return, and it pulls me back. It does the same with all the Glee you have seen vanish.”
Richard grasped the general idea but couldn’t imagine how it could work. It sounded like magic of some kind, a very powerful, advanced, and incomprehensible magic.
As if he could see that Richard was having trouble understanding it, Sang idly clacked his claws as he tried to think of a better way to explain it. “The way to think of it is that we become attached to the device by a lifeline that it creates when it sends us to another world. Imagine if you went in dangerous water, and you suddenly wanted to go back to shore. When you called out, others pulled you back to shore by that lifeline. In much that way, when we want to go home, the device pulls us back by that lifeline.”
Richard nodded as he considered, still not entirely satisfied. “What you expect of me will not be so easy. If I agreed to come to your world with you, would those who believe as you do fight with me to defeat the goddess and her kind?”
Sang stared at him a long moment. “I cannot say for sure. They are not fighters.”
“This is about their world and their way of life,” Richard pointed out with a rising sense of angry frustration.
Sang nodded. “You are a great leader in your world. Leaders become leaders because they are able to convince others to follow them. The goddess is like this. Although those with me are not fighters, I believe that they might be willing to follow you. At the very least, they can help you in many ways, such as getting you to the goddess and her followers.”
“I need a lot more than having them point me in the right direction.” Richard drummed his fingers on the handle of his sword as he considered. “I think I can understand what you say about how you are able to go back. But how could Vika and I go there, too? We don’t have that link, that lifeline as you called it, for the device to use to pull us there.”
“That is the easy part. When a number of injured Glee returned, they confirmed a theory many of us have. One time when they attacked your people, one of the women with you used magic to create snakes. Many of those snakes bit the Glee, and while we do not fear the snakes in our world, these snakes from your world were killing those Glee with venom. The snakes, once they bit into a Glee, would not let go. The Glee being bitten panicked, called on their lifeline, and the device pulled them back. All they needed to do was to merely think to return, and the device that had sent them was able to know that wish, and it snatched them back to our world.”
“What about this theory you had?”
“The important part is that when they returned, the snakes were still holding on tight to them. That confirmed our theory that if I hold on to something from this world, it will return with me. I myself tested this by holding a rock when I returned, and it came to my world with me. This was also confirmed when some of the Glee returned with parts of your people for the Golden Goddess and their offspring to eat. Those body parts were also used to convince others to join with her.”
Richard remembered quite vividly how the Glee down in the bowels of the People’s Palace had dismembered many of the bodies.
“You are saying, then, that we would hold on to you and we would go there with you to your world when you return? You think it is really that simple?”
Sang gave him a single nod. “Yes.”
Richard considered for a moment. He couldn’t imagine a device with such power, but then, on the other hand, he had sent those who didn’t want to live with magic, including his half sister, to another world without magic. He also had used a device that created a star shift and sent their entire world to another place in the sky. He had seen devices, such as the boxes of Orden and the omen machine, that had unimaginable power, power over the world of life and the world of the dead, so he supposed that even if he hadn’t seen the device the Glee had, he knew that such powerful devices existed. He didn’t really know where most of those devices came from, or who could have made them. For all he knew, it might as well be these same gods.
He looked over at Vika. She simply shrugged.
“If I were to agree to this crazy idea, what would we have to do? Simply hold on to you and we would be pulled back with you?”
“More than that,” Sang said as he stared at Richard for a long moment with a haunted look in his big black eyes. “It is more than simply being pulled back by a lifeline. There is more to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We must go into darkness.”
51
Richard’s brow tightened. “Into darkness?”
Sang nodded again. “I am afraid that it is the only way.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean we have to go into darkness?”
Sang stared off again with a haunted look. He seemed to be looking again into that place that obviously frightened him.
“That is the only way I can say it for you,” he finally told them as he looked first at Vika and then at Richard. “There is no way I can explain such a thing in a way that would make you truly understand. The only way I can say it is that we must go into darkness. It is what happens when we use the device. Once you have done it, you will understand. You will know what those words mean. If you have not done it, then there is no way for me to make you understand.”
“Into darkness,” Richard said as he stared at Sang.
Sang nodded. “Into darkness. That is really the only way I can begin to describe it, yet the words are so hollow. Into darkness is something such as you have never experienced before. It seems to consume you. It is falling into darkness, and it is … terrifying. You think that it will never end, that it never could end. Each time I go into darkness, I fear that this is the time it will not end, and I will forever be in that place of darkness.”
Richard wondered if it was anything like the underworld.
“So,” Richard finally asked, “is there a risk that we would be lost there, in that darkness? Especially since we aren’t attached to the device by this lifeline?”
The Glee bowed. “To find what you seek, you must sometimes go into the darkness, even though there is always the risk that you will become lost.”
Richard thought that was a pretty vague philosophical answer. It didn’t really tell him anything. He shared a look with Vika. He
had of course been to the world of the dead. For that matter, he had actually been dead and then managed to return. In a way, he had been pulled back by his connection to those still living. That was a place of eternal darkness. A lifeline of sorts had pulled him back.
He couldn’t imagine any place or experience that could be darker than that, but he got the impression from what Sang said that this place might be darker even than the world of the dead. Although he didn’t think that Sang had ever been to the underworld to judge the difference.
Vika had been to the cusp of that world. She had looked into the dark world of the dead. He could see by the haunted look in her eyes that she was remembering that experience.
“The longer you think about it,” Sang said, “the greater the risk grows that the others will go to the device in order to come here before they can be stopped. If we delay too long, we risk arriving as they come up to the device, and then you would have to battle them when you are disoriented from having just come out of darkness and into my world. That would not be good. All three of us could be killed before we are able even to run.”
Richard knew Sang was right. To have the element of surprise, they needed to get there and meet with those who were on his side first to come up with a plan. The longer he considered, the greater the risk grew that the goddess and her horde would arrive in Aydindril first.
Plus, he had no idea how confused he would be upon arriving in that world. He knew that when he came back to the world of life after being in the underworld, it was difficult to again get his bearings. Light and colors and sounds were all overwhelming at first.
But this sounded somehow worse. He found himself immobilized with fear. Not with fear of going into darkness, although if he knew exactly what that meant maybe he would fear it more, but with fear of leaving everyone he loved forever.
It was fear of never again being with Kahlan.
He just didn’t know if he could do such a thing.
Into Darkness Page 25
