The Third Kingdom

CHAPTER 20

Samantha touched her slender fingers lightly to the design of the Grace carved into the door.

“This is our duty,” she said. “Our duty to the world of life.”

“You mean, to be guardians of what the Grace represents?”

“That’s right,” she said as she pushed open the door.

Richard couldn’t imagine how these people in this remote place could be guardians of the Grace. That symbol embraced all that existed. He looked back at Kahlan, making sure she was still breathing peacefully, before following Samantha through the doorway emblazoned with a Grace, as if it was meant to serve as a reminder of that duty.

The room inside, as well made as the outer room, was dimly lit with a few candles. A rumpled blanket lay pushed to the side of a mat where she must have been sleeping as she waited for him to wake. A simple but well-made tall cabinet stood to the side of a curved bench with a small pack and waterskin under it.

Samantha led him into a dark hallway at the back of the room. She took a lantern from a shelf, lighting it with a gesture, a flick of her hand, that sent a flame sparked by her gift into the wick. The lamplight sent a mellow glow down a hallway that was longer than he expected it would be.

The hallway led them past a few rooms that he thought were likely to have been more bedrooms. There was a small recess cut into the wall. Three plank shelves in the niche held a few small, simple clay statues. One of the figures was a shepherd standing beside several sheep. Another was of a man, hand shielding his eyes, apparently gazing into the distance. On the lower shelves were a few books, and some folded linens. After passing several more darkened rooms to the sides, the hallway continued on without interruption, going deeper yet into the mountain, finally ending at a rather strange dead end.

The single opening at the end of the passageway was closed off on the far side by what looked to be a slab of stone. Carved in the center of the stone blocking the passageway was another Grace. To the side of the doorway Richard spotted a metal plate set into the wall. The plate was so corroded and pitted with age that it looked like part of the stone of the wall and he almost missed it.

Richard had seen similar metal plates before, though they had been in better condition. They had also been located in important restricted areas. Such plates were a kind of lock requiring the key of the gift.

Richard’s gift had in the past allowed him access to many such shielded passageways and restricted areas. It had even allowed him access to areas with the kind of deadly protective shields that required both Additive and Subtractive Magic in order to pass, places no one had been able to enter for hundreds of years.

“No one else in your village, none of your ungifted people, can get through here, can they?”

Samantha shook her head. “No. This is a place meant only for those who are gifted. Others are never allowed in here. Most people are at least a little fearful of the gifted and none of them ever enter the gifted’s quarters unless invited, and I’ve never known of anyone invited back this far into this place. I’ve never heard anyone but the gifted even mention this place. I’m not sure, but I don’t think that anyone but the gifted among us even know that this place exists.”

Richard pressed his hand to the plate to open the door. Nothing happened.

“My gift doesn’t open it,” he said, a bit surprised.

He recalled that his gift hadn’t worked to protect Kahlan, or to heal her. It was further confirmation, as if he needed any, that for some reason his gift was not working.

In a fluid gesture, Samantha’s fingers traced the lines of the Grace carved into the stone blocking the opening, doing it in the proper sequence in which a Grace was to be drawn. First the outer circle representing the limits of life, then the square inside that circle that represented the world of life, then another circle inside the square that represented the beginning of life, then the eight-pointed star, representing Creation, within the inner circle. Lastly she traced the lines coming from each point of the star, crossing the inner circle that marked the beginning of the world of life, and then the outer circle that represented the end of life and the beginning of the world of the dead.

“The gift,” Samantha said as she traced the last of the eight lines going outward, “as it is meant to be.”

Richard frowned, wondering what she was getting at. “The world of life and the spirit world, with the spark of the gift connecting it all.”

“As it is meant to be,” she again prompted. “In the proper order,” she stressed. “The world of life, and then after life ends, the spirit world—the underworld, the world of the dead.”

“I know,” he said, still frowning, still not understanding what she was getting at, but a bit unsettled by how easily she slipped into the enigmatic temperament of a sorceress.

“Your said that your gift does not work.”

“That’s right.”

“From the things my mother taught me about the gift and its connection to everything as shown in the Grace, I think your gift isn’t working because it is corrupted.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“You have death in you, do you not?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Death in the world of life,” she said as she arched an eyebrow. “That can’t be. That is not the order of things, not as the Grace shows it should be.

“There is supposed to be the world of life, and the world of the dead. They each exist in their own place, as shown by the Grace. You have both at the same time, in the same place. That violates the Grace.”

Richard felt goose bumps on his arms. He had not thought of it in that way before.

“That is how I know you are the one,” she said in a confidential tone as she leaned in.

Richard’s brow drew even tighter. “What do you mean?”

“Right now, you are neither of the kingdom of life, nor the kingdom of death.”

“How does that make me the one you think you’re looking for?”

“I have to show you,” she said as she straightened.

She placed the flat of her hand against the metal plate. At her touch, the stone blocking the doorway began to roll to the right, revealing a passageway beyond. Richard stood in silence, staring into the darkness, as the heavy stone rumbled to a stop at the side.

“What is this place?”

“A place for the gifted of Stroyza. For those who keep watch.”

Richard wondered what they were keeping watch for. He stepped through the opening, to a bracket holding a glass sphere just on the other side. He knew what that was as well. He had often used the light spheres left from ancient times.

But this time, as he approached, the glass sphere remained dark. He brushed his fingertips along the smooth surface, but it remained dead and dark.

As Samantha came closer and reached for the glass sphere, it began to glow, lighting the hall. She picked up the glowing sphere and then set her lantern down back in the hall before touching another metal shield placed on the inside to shut them in. The massive stone began to roll back into place across the opening.

“My gift doesn’t work for that either, I guess,” Richard said in frustration as he gestured to the light sphere.

“What I don’t understand,” she said with a twitch of a frown, “is why, if your gift doesn’t work, the magic of your sword did. It seems a contradiction.”

“If your theory is correct, and I think it is, then it isn’t a contradiction at all. My gift is something within me.” Richard lifted the sword a few inches and then let it drop back into its scabbard. “The sword, on the other hand, is external magic, something constructed. It doesn’t need the gift to work. Anyone, including those who are not gifted, could use the sword and its magic would work for them. Its magic is independent of any person. It only requires the intent of the person wielding it.”

Samantha nodded thoughtfully at the explanation. “That makes sense.”

Richard looked back the way they had come. “But that means that Kahlan’s Confessor power likely won’t work. She was born a Confessor. It’s innate in her, just as I was born with my gift.”

It was a troubling realization that Kahlan very well might be without the protection of her Confessor power.

Samantha nodded. “She has that same touch of death in her as you do, so you must be right. It’s corrupting the order of her existence the same as it’s corrupting yours. Like you, even though she is alive, she, too, carries death within her. Except that with her that presence of death is stronger than it is within you.

“In that way, you both exist in two worlds—the kingdom of life, and the kingdom of death.” Samantha leaned a little closer in the sphere’s light, lifting an eyebrow to be sure he was paying attention. “Those two worlds don’t belong together.”

“Great,” Richard muttered, now concerned that on top of everything else, Kahlan didn’t have the protection of her power.

“Come on,” Samantha said as she started down the stone corridor.