The Third Kingdom

CHAPTER 76

Without delay, the entire company raced off through the dark tunnel, following after Samantha. Holding her mother’s hand, she ran like her dress was on fire.

The tunnels were not really corridors, but rather a variety of natural openings through the rock. It was in part a cave system through hollow cavities, part natural channels created by floodwaters through the softer portions of the rock, and in part fissures in the more rugged stone.

In places the passageway ahead led them through long clefts where the rock had buckled and split. At other spots, they had to go through low passages under broad shelves of rock that were so low that all of them except Samantha had to bend at the waist so as not to hit their heads as they followed the steep ledge upward. In some places they had to climb up into pockmarked networks of holes.

After going under a series of flat shelves of stone, the openings found their way back into the cave system, which split into a confusing maze of jagged tunnels and rifts in the layers of what looked like melted stone. Some stone was sharp and jagged, while other openings they raced through had over great periods of time been rounded and smoothed by water. Many of the passageways had small streams running through them. In places they had to skirt pools of perfectly clear deep water. Other tunnels were crooked, cavernous passageways with many openings branching all throughout them.

The entire subterranean world was so riddled with holes, openings, and rifts that it felt to Richard like it all might lead to the underworld itself. The greenish veils of luminescence that floated sporadically through the caves only added to the illusion.

“Samantha, are you sure you know where you’re going?” Richard asked in a hushed voice as he followed close behind her.

“I grew up in caves,” she said. “I remember distinctive things about the rocks and openings through them.”

She seemed to think that was explanation enough. Richard supposed that maybe it was. As a woods guide he did much the same kind of thing when traveling through uncharted forests. He made mental notes of particular sights along the way so he could find his way back. She was more comfortable than he was underground, so he had to trust that this was her kind of world, and she was his guide through it.

Still, he did remember certain landmarks himself, and he wasn’t seeing them.

“This isn’t the way we came in,” he whispered urgently to her as they zigzagged among what looked like melted rock towers.

“I know,” she whispered back. “I had to find a way around all the unholy half dead.”

Richard was glad to hear that she had used her head to find a safe passage. The way she was taking them was a route that so far had been free of the Shun-tuk. But he knew that the half people would be patrolling the tunnels and could show up at any moment. Once they discovered that their prisoners were missing, all the Shun-tuk would be hunting them.

He didn’t know how much farther they had to go, but he knew he would be relieved once they finally reached the surface. He didn’t know if they would be any safer aboveground, but they certainly weren’t safe underground. If they were attacked in the caves it would be difficult to fight. They could be trapped by masses of Shun-tuk blocking their way from each end of a tunnel and then picked off one at a time.

He reminded himself that they now had gifted with them, and that would certainly even the odds. But he also knew from fighting half people that they didn’t fear for their lives and were unrelenting in coming after their victims.

If they had to fight off the Shun-Tuk, Richard could cut them down with his sword, but sooner or later their numbers would simply become too much. He would eventually tire and then they would have him. More troubling, though, was that he could only defend one spot, and they could come in at them from all directions.

It was much the same with the gift as with his sword, if all they faced were the half people and not the reanimated dead. The gifted, too, could kill vast numbers of an enemy, and Richard had certainly seen Zedd use wizard’s fire to take down hordes of enemy troops from the Old World, but even wizard’s fire had its limits. It had to be conjured and cast. Doing so was a great deal of effort and it quickly became tiring. If the enemy kept coming in vast numbers, getting closer all the time, then even a wizard could be overrun.

After all, they had been overrun and captured once, already.

And then there were the walking dead. The gift was of limited use against them. That was why, Richard imagined, the half people, like those in Sulachan’s time in the old war, used the dead. They were not only very effective on the front lines, they were also expendable and there was a virtually endless supply of them, so if nothing else, they could wear down any resistance.

Richard followed after Samantha as she made one twisting turn after another, following a convoluted route that only she knew back through rock riddled with passages, clefts, and a maze of intersections. She ran through the labyrinth like a rock rat, never letting go of her mother’s hand, never slowing to consider the way.

When they came to a particularly complex set of passages, Samantha stretched as she ran, looking back over the heads of some of the men to see Richard. She pointed and made a snaking gesture with her hand, indicating the turns they needed to make. Richard nodded when he saw what she meant and where they would need to go.

He grabbed Nicci’s arm and pulled her forward. “Help protect her. I want to make sure everyone else makes it through this part here and doesn’t get lost. I don’t want to have to come back in here looking for anyone who got separated.”

Nicci touched his shoulder in silent confirmation of the orders before swiftly racing forward to catch up with Samantha and her mother.

Richard slowed his pace, allowing himself to fall back as the men of the First File ran past to keep up with those ahead. They were beginning to become strung out in the series of complex turns, climbs, and descents through the snarl of passages. Richard pushed each man down the correct tunnel as they raced past, lest they miss the turn. He urged them to hurry, pointing to make sure that they saw the correct turns to take up ahead. It was difficult to see in the near darkness. Only the occasional sparkling curtain of the underworld drifting through adjoining passageways gave them any light to see by. He hoped one didn’t drift across to block their way, or worse, drift in from the side and separate them.

Richard spotted Zedd, near the back of the line of men. He was managing to keep up just fine. He might have been old, but he was not only stronger than he looked, but determined to get away from the fate that had awaited them in the cave prison. Richard knew that his grandfather was staying near the rear because he wanted to watch their backs for any sign of trouble.

Cara, out ahead of her husband, followed close behind Zedd near the rear of the column of men. She saw Richard slowing to push men down the correct turn.

“Go,” she growled ahead to him, motioning angrily to him over the heads of a congested knot of soldiers. “Don’t wait for us. Go.”

He knew that she wanted him to stay in among the protection of the men of the First File. Richard was determined, though, to make sure that in the dark cave none of them missed the turns they needed to take. He didn’t want to lose any of them down in the tunnels. As men squeezed past him, he pushed them into the correct tunnel, frequently pointing the way ahead.

Cara, in back of the tail end of the men, picked up her speed. She raced past an intersection to get to Richard. She was unhappy he was slowing down and wanted to get to him so she could protect him. Finally, the last two men dashed past.

Just behind, as Cara cleared the intersection ahead of her husband, a flood of Shun-tuk spilled out of several openings to the side.

There was only one person left in line: Ben.

Sword to hand, he turned to block the tunnel.

The whitish forms of Shun-tuk crashed over him in a massive wave of bodies, taking him down.

Richard and Cara skidded to a stop.

“No!” Cara screamed as the unholy half dead ripped into her husband with their teeth.

Time seemed to stop.

It seemed like Ben had a hundred of the chalky forms diving in on him like a pack of ravenous wolves.

Richard already had his sword out as he raced back through the tunnel. He had to make it in time. He had never run so fast in his life.

Blood splashed across the savage white faces as they viciously ripped out Ben’s throat. Other mouths opened to try to catch squirting blood, hoping to catch with it the escaping soul.

Richard screamed in fury as he ran toward the terrible scene.

Cara bent at her knees and threw her shoulder into Richard’s chest as he flew by, knocking him against the wall, blocking him from diving into the pile of howling, growling, writhing Shun-tuk in a feeding frenzy.

“It’s too late!” she shouted as she shoved him violently in the other direction. “Go! Go! Don’t let his sacrifice be for nothing. Run!”

In shock at what he had just seen, Richard screamed, “Zedd!”

His grandfather was already turning back, arms thrust toward the Shun-tuk as they tore the fallen general apart with their teeth.

The last thing Richard saw before an inferno of blinding yellow flame exploded back through the tunnel was that it was far too late to save Cara’s husband. He’d never even had time to scream.

Richard panted in shock and rage. It had happened too fast.

The wailing mass of liquid fire that Zedd sent back through the tunnel was deafening in the confines of the passageway. The tumbling flame exploded across the ground, splashing up along the walls as it flooded over the terrible scene, engulfing it all in a terrible, blinding conflagration.

At least the fallen general would not be eaten by the beasts. He had given his life to slow the enemy in the hopes of saving the rest of them.

Tears streamed down Cara’s face as she shoved Richard. “Go! Hurry! Go!”

And then Richard was running.

Cara’s hand on his back made sure she was in contact with him as she pushed him ahead of her while watching his back. Behind them, Zedd was a dark, sticklike silhouette against the brutally intense yellow blaze. In the roaring heart of that blinding light, the dark bodies of the Shun-tuk were reduced to skeletons and then ash in little more than an instant.

The lethal fire roared back through the tunnel, engulfing the leading edge of the horde coming for them. The screams of the Shun-tuk were bloodcurdling.

Those screams were not enough for Richard.