Into Darkness

77

Suddenly, light and sound and sensation slammed in all around him. It was such a powerful awareness that it made him gasp. It was so totally different from the void of all sensation that the abrupt weight and light and sound hurt.

He could feel himself still holding Vika’s hand and he still had his other arm around the gateway stone.

Richard opened his eyes, afraid he would see the same terrible place in the Glee’s world.

Instead he saw his target brought to life all around him.

Despite having expected it, he blinked in surprise.

Vika turned all the way around, her eyes wide with wonder.

“You did it! You did it! Lord Rahl, you did it! You got us home!”

The gateway stone was right there beside him the way it had been, except that now wisps of vapor rose off of it. The gold ring sat in the white sand, like it had been before. But this sand was white. Really white.

All around him, in all its glory, was the Garden of Life.

He could see the stand of trees off to one side, with the path meandering back through them. It made him feel so good to see trees again that he thought his chest might burst. When he looked up, he saw the glassed skylight overhead that let in the sunlight … sunlight of his world. The sky was a clear, bright blue, not red. All around him there was color—greens of every shade and browns and whites. Color had never looked so luscious, so vibrant before.

He and Vika stared around at the place. It didn’t seem possible that it could be real.

This was the target he had called, and it was all around them, and it was real.

They were in the People’s Palace. They were home again in their own world.

Vika finally gripped him by his shoulders as she looked into his eyes. She had to swallow to be able to use her voice.

“Lord Rahl, I will never ever again, for as long as I live, doubt any of your crazy ideas.”

Richard smiled as he used a thumb to wipe tears from under her eyes. “Don’t be so quick to make that pledge. You have not yet heard what other crazy ideas I have.”

By the look in her eyes, she didn’t care. He turned more serious.

“I expect all those I love to occasionally doubt my crazy ideas, because questions from ones I care about and trust make me have to be sure, for their sake, before I act. So don’t ever stop questioning my crazy ideas.”

She smiled. “All right. But now what? I’m afraid that we’re back where we started. The Mother Confessor and the rest of them are a long way off at the Wizard’s Keep.”

He looked over at the gateway stone sitting beside him. The vapor was finally beginning to abate. It was still making a soft humming sound, as it had back in the Glee’s world when he had activated it.

Vika gestured at the slanted top. “Don’t forget your knife.”

Richard could see that several of the emblems were still glowing red and a couple were blue.

“I’m not done yet. While the reset process is still active, I have to put in a fail-safe.”

“A fail-safe?”

“Yes, a procedure that prevents just anyone with the gift from being able to reset it or use it. Believe it or not, if you activate the gateway in the way I’ve done, you can actually create a duplicate.”

Vika frowned. “What for?”

Richard shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe so that you can play that you are gods by gifting a gateway to other worlds. Maybe this one is a duplicate and that is how the Glee came to have it. Maybe the ones who gave it to them wanted to play at being gods.”

“But you know for sure that there was no duplication this time, right? Are you sure this device is the one from the Glee’s world, and that they don’t have one anymore, maybe a duplicate of this one?”

“I’m positive. The procedure for creating a duplicate is completely different. This is the original from the Glee’s world and there is no duplicate left behind. The Glee are going to be trapped in their world. They can never again travel to other worlds. I think Sang and his friends will be happy about that.”

“And only you can ever do that with this one?”

Richard nodded. “Only a Rahl, yes, with fail-safes to prevent just anyone from figuring it out and using it. The knife I used is only used by special people. The gateway will recognize only it, the same way it was set to recognize the claw of a Glee, before. That’s one safeguard. My blood created another protocol so that the gateway will only recognize Rahl blood.”

“That should be specific enough, shouldn’t it?”

Richard shook his head. “With something this dangerous, you can’t be too careful. It needs something more, another fail-safe that no one would likely know to use. Something that only the right person would know.”

“Like what?”

Richard flashed her a smile before squatting down before the stone. Most of the symbols in the language of Creation glowed a soft blue. One of them in the series of final emblems still glowed red, indicating that the reset was still open. He knew that once he touched it, the protocols would lock in and set.

Before he put his hand on the pulsing red symbol, he reached down to another series of emblems designed to accept additional properties. He recognized that this was a way he could set a fail-safe protocol.

He tapped that lower emblem once each time he counted out loud.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” Each tap elicited a soft chime along with a pulse of brighter light. He tapped the emblem one last time. “Nine.”

He spread his fingers to touch two green emblems at the same time. The gateway stone made a soft dull sound as it recognized and accepted the new fail-safe.

Finally, he pressed his palm against the glowing red, pulsing symbol. He felt it make a soft vibration to confirm that the fail-safe was set and all the new protocols he had initiated were locked in.

Vika leaned close, looking at the symbols as the light within them gradually faded away and finally went out. The gateway stone once more looked like the inert stone it had seemed to be the first time they had seen it. It now appeared to be nothing more than a smooth but not polished stone, with symbols inscribed on it.

Vika looked puzzled. She gestured at the gateway stone.

“What were you counting?”

“This thing is obviously dangerous. As dangerous as the most dangerous magic. I’m not sure how to destroy it, or what harm it could cause if I tried, so instead I decided to make sure that it will be incredibly difficult for anyone to ever use.

“To make the gateway work, I locked in protocols that one now has to use a special knife like the one I’m carrying, and Rahl blood. But it’s always possible that those requirements could be met, even against the will of a Rahl, by using a knife like this to kill him. This kind of knife, with Rahl blood on it, would meet the initial procedures. But it’s too dangerous to leave it at that.

“So I set into the gateway a protocol that, in addition to this kind of knife and Rahl blood, the Law of Nines is also required for the gateway to work. Without the Law of Nines, no gateway. It will remain an inert piece of stone.”

Vika rose up. “You are a devious man, Lord Rahl.”

Richard let out a deep breath now that it was finalized. “You’ve said that before.”

“It bears repeating.”

He looked to the path out of the Garden of Life. “We need to get to the Wizard’s Keep. Kahlan was about to give birth back when we left her there.”