Into Darkness

by Terry Goodkind

  Thick, heavy clouds frequently scudded past to sometimes obscure the moons, but when that happened they were backlit by the moons and in that way provided enough light to see where they were going. When the moons came out from behind the clouds, it was about as bright as a night with a full moon in his world. It was easily bright enough for their journey, especially in such an open, sandy landscape.

  Although the ominous clouds scudding past looked thick and heavy, they didn’t bring rain to this desolate place, and didn’t look like they ever had, making Richard wonder if they could actually be more dust than rain clouds. If they did carry rain, he guessed that for some reason they didn’t release the rain they carried until they reached the swampy parts of this strange world.

  Richard had thought at first that the sand would be hard to walk across, but he found instead that in many places it had been packed hard by the howling winds that left ripples in their wake across the face of the dunes. In other places, especially on the lee side of the dunes, the sand was deep and loose, making progress difficult and time-consuming. They hadn’t been traveling long and Richard’s legs already ached from the effort of walking through the places of deep sand.

  Enormous, soaring rock peaks thrust up through the sand to impossible heights in random spots all around them, like islands in the sea of sand. The massive stone monarchs watched them pass at their feet. In places when they passed close to the stone towers it hid the two moons, casting them into gloomy shadows.

  The rock of those strange peaks was so rough and rugged, composed of faceted, stacked, sheer cliff faces, that Richard couldn’t imagine they could be climbed. He was happy to instead make their way past in the shadows of those rocky peaks.

  It looked to Richard that those craggy, monumental prominences of rock stood so tall that they often pierced up into the dark, ruddy clouds continually sweeping past, and that had over the ages caused them to crumble under the forces of wind and weather. All the decaying rock created both the sloping skirts of crumbled rock, and the sandy surface between each of those monstrous stone outcroppings. As the decomposing rock gradually and continually added pieces of debris to the low places between them, the wind tumbled it around and around, breaking it down, until it all turned to sand. Once it was small and light enough, the wind lifted it and carried it across the face of the landscape, shaping it into dunes.

  Some of the dunes couldn’t be avoided without a long detour and had to be climbed. The windward sides were sloped gradually enough to be an easy climb, but the lee sides were often quite steep and the sand soft. They had to run down the steepest sections to keep from falling face-first. A few of the dunes were quite high. At the top it gave them a good view of the bleak landscape out ahead of them. From those views, Richard thought it looked endless.

  That landscape greatly concerned the Glee, but in their wet wrappings of water weeds, they at least weren’t complaining about being dry. The weeds were tough and were proving surprisingly durable. Richard thought that they were surely mostly worried about fighting the followers of the Golden Goddess. These were not warriors, but they seemed to grasp the necessity of what they were doing and were so far willing.

  Some of the followers of the goddess had already visited Richard’s world and fought the people there. Those that hadn’t yet had that experience were probably eager for it. The Glee with Richard were not at all eager to fight.

  None of them carried weapons, but of course they didn’t need to. They had wicked weapons at the end of each arm. He had discovered just how skillfully those claws could handle the most delicate of tasks. He hoped that when the time came, they would also be able to fight with them. Their lives would depend on it.

  As if reading his thoughts, Vika leaned close. “Do you think they will fight, or run?”

  Richard leaned over slightly to speak to her in a low voice. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been wondering that very thing myself. I think, though, that their usefulness may actually be in the shock value they will provide.

  “It’s a sure bet that the other Glee with the goddess will never have seen anything like these Glee all wrapped in water weeds come walking out of the drylands. I’m hoping that surprise will make them stop and stare. That hesitancy will give you and me the opportunity to get to the goddess.”

  “You’re thinking, then, that if you can take her out quickly, that may take the fight out of her followers?”

  Richard nodded. “I’m hoping so. If nothing else, it should cause a lot of confusion. Confused people—and Glee—are easier to take down.”

  “What if another one of them is eager, once they see her killed, to become the leader?”

  Richard tucked his head down and turned to the side as he leaned a shoulder into a hot gust of wind-driven, reddish sand. He had to wait for it to die down a little before he could answer.

  “Then we will simply have to take out any of them who think they would like to become the leader. I have my doubts that the Glee with us will have the nerve to do that. It’s going to be up to you and me. If a different Glee steps up to be in charge only to swiftly meet our blades, I’m hoping that will take the fight out of any of the others who would think to be a leader, and the ones who would be followers willing to fight. If they don’t have a leader, then their whole defense may very well collapse like an army without officers.”

  Vika lifted an eyebrow. “Well, that’s not the craziest idea you’ve ever had, but it’s certainly one of the more optimistic ones.”

  Richard didn’t want to tell her his doubts and fears. “I’m glad you are with me, Vika.”

  She smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  The thought of living in this strange world for the rest of his life had hopeless depression continually clawing at him to take over his emotions. He tried his best to tell himself to worry about one thing at a time. For now, they had a big enough problem to overcome with a fighting force of Glee that had never fought before and seemed more kind and cooperative than vicious. He worried about what they would do when they saw their kind dying.

  “When this is done, I need to get back to the device and destroy it,” he told her. “If there are Glee that escape during our attempts to get to the goddess, they could eventually get the same notion as the goddess had to travel to other worlds. We can’t allow the Glee to ever again get to our world.”

  “You will get no argument from me.”

  Richard glanced over at her. “When that time comes, before I destroy the device, I am going to first have Sang activate it so we can send you back.”

  Vika stopped in her tracks and glared at him. “You are going to do no such thing.”

  “Vika, there is no reason for both of us—”

  “Yes, there is every reason. I am Mord-Sith. I have sworn to protect you with my life.”

  “I don’t want you to sacrifice a future you could have in our world.”

  Vika stepped closer as she flipped her single braid forward over her shoulder and gripped it in a fist, as if deciding on using that instead of pointing her Agiel at him.

  “You gave me a choice in the beginning of how I wished to live my life. This is how I wish to live my life—at your side, protecting you. I never wanted anything else. If I returned without you, my life would have no meaning. This, here, is the choice I made for my life.”

  Richard would want her to return and then devote herself to protecting Kahlan and the twins but decided that this wasn’t the time and place to task her with that duty. She would say that there were other Mord-Sith to do that. He didn’t want to argue with her. She still existed partly in that place of madness.

  The Glee behind them had slowed to a stop, waiting.

  “But you would have a life, Vika,” he said, simply.

  “It is my choice, not yours, and besides, maybe I like this world much better than a world full of people. I often find people intolerable.

  “You once told me to choose what I wanted to do with my life. I am here by tha
t choice. Do you now intend to revoke your word and deny me the right to choose for myself what I will do with my life?”

  Richard slowly let out a deep breath as he scanned the horizon. “No, Vika. I will not deny you the right to choose what you want to do. If it is really your wish to stay here with me, then I will be happy not to be so alone.”

  “Good.”

  Sang came a little closer and pointed to an outcropping of rock. “That place there will protect us from the wind so we can get a little sleep. There is still a long way to go.”

  In was deep in the night. Richard knew they were all tired. He nodded. Sang started back to the others, motioning for them to gather in the protection of the rock for a bit of sleep.

  Vika gestured to a spot in the shelter of an overhang of rock where the Glee were headed. “Now that that subject is closed, let’s get some sleep. We have a war waiting on us tomorrow.”

  60

  The next day, after hours of walking, rocky areas began to break through the sandy ground. Here and there off to the sides, enormous rock towers also appeared to erupt up through the sand and thrust toward the sky. Their size made Richard feel very small. The debris that had gradually fallen as the rock decayed had accumulated over eons around their bases, creating massive slopes of scree that gradually became almost vertical near their tops. The way it rose up ever more steeply, it gave the rock monoliths a flared appearance at the bottoms, but it was really their rock faces gradually shedding material.

  Between two of the towers off to their right, one of the moons between the massive rock mountains lit the billowing clouds that seemed to boil up from the distant landscape, the reddish color making them look almost like smoke from distant, raging fires. With those silent monoliths, that sand, the rolling clouds, and the moons, it was a frighteningly beautiful, if ominous, sight. The isolated islands of massive rock towers reminded Richard of the plateau that held the People’s Palace rising up from the Azrith Plain, except these in this world rose up considerably higher.

  It had been a long journey from that palace, a journey unlike any other that had taken him to a different world. It was turning out to be a journey that could never see him reach home again. It was depressing to think that this world of sand, desolate rock, and in places stagnant swamps, would be where he had to live out the rest of his life.

  Richard had to put those thoughts from his mind. Being distracted by turbulent emotions was a good way to die in battle. He had to stay alive at least long enough to be sure his home world would be safe from the Glee ever coming there again. He had to make sure that Kahlan and their children would be safe.

  As they went farther into the drylands, he understood the fear the Glee had of this desolate place. While the areas where they lived were swampy, there was abundant life there, providing food and safety. For good reason they were most at home there. This was an empty place where it would be all too easy to die a very lonely death. If they died out here, it was unlikely that anyone would ever come along to bury their bones. Eventually those bones would be ground to dust by the wind-driven sand.

  The one good aspect of what they were doing was that he could see why the Golden Goddess and her followers would never expect that anyone would come around this way into the place where they lived. They wouldn’t be expecting Richard, Vika, and the Glee with them.

  “How are you doing?” Richard asked Sang.

  Sang held his arms out, wrapped in water weeds with just the claws sticking out the ends. Water weeds were also draped over and around his head, so that his eyes could barely see out of his suit.

  “I thought that you were foolish to think we could cross this land, but this way you thought to wrap us with the water weed is working. It is amazing for us to explore this strange dry land we have never seen before. My skin is warm and wet. I no longer fear that I am about to die.”

  Richard thought that maybe Sang should reserve judgment until they met the enemy.

  Areas of rocky ground breaking through the sand became ever more frequent, with large stretches of the rock joining with others until before long they were walking over jagged, uneven rock rather than sand. The rock was pitted and sharp. The terrain was even more harsh, and that worried the Glee with him. As they continued onward the rock seemed to tilt upward so that they had to continually climb the ever-rising, massive shelf of rock.

  Having never been through the drylands, the Glee didn’t really know much about the terrain and could offer no advice other than general guidance about the direction they needed to go to reach the area held by the goddess and her followers. Richard worried about what other surprises they might encounter in the vast trackless drylands.

  As they went farther, many of the enormous peaks began to line up, with numbers of them joining in chains of towering rock making it appear that they were one long mass of rock wall rather than individual peaks. In some places the rock did completely cease to be individual towers, becoming long, sheer rock walls hemming them in. By their size and orientation across the landscape, those rocky outcroppings seemed to bend the wind, deflecting it off to their right, rather than channeling it through the drylands the way they had up until then. Those winds, while still hot, became heavy with moisture and felt stuffy. Richard could see the thick overcast being funneled past the walls of rock to head off away from them.

  The uneven ground, littered with sharp, pitted, crumbled rock, was difficult to walk on. They all had to be careful lest they twist an ankle. He was worried that the Glee might fall and tear their suits of weeds, as well as their soft flesh.

  As they came to the crest of the rising ground, they all slowed to a halt.

  “There,” Sang called out, pointing off into the distance. “That place down there is where the Golden Goddess and her followers live. They like this place because it is near the mountain with the device, it is wet, and there is a lot of room for their great numbers to assemble.”

  Richard nodded as he studied the landscape out ahead. It looked to be a low, swampy area, with abundant vegetation. It was indeed a vast area that would hold great numbers of Glee. In the far distance, he saw more of the tall, crooked tree trunks with the single, high clumps of foliage.

  “When we get down there,” Richard told the Glee in a low voice as he scanned the area in the distance, “I want you all to stay behind me.”

  “Why?” Several Glee asked in his mind at the same time.

  “Because if things get rough, anything in front of me is going to die.”

  That seemed to bring the seriousness of what they were doing into sharp relief for them. Richard urged them back a ways, out of sight of any of the Glee down below that might happen to look up. If they did look up, they would easily be able to see them silhouetted against the sky. Once back a ways, they all watched as he quickly strung his bow.

  “What are you doing now?” Iben asked.

  Instead of answering, Richard gave him a meaningful look and then nocked an arrow. Without a word, he drew back the string, let out a deep breath, settled his aim. He drew the target to him as he had long ago learned to do and then let the arrow fly. Even as the arrow left his bow, in his mind, it had already hit its target. Several seconds later reality caught up with what he was seeing in his mind.

  The arrow went right through the head of a Glee sitting on a rock outcropping down closer to the swampy area. He had been looking away from Richard and his group, keeping watch from higher ground toward the only way they believed others could enter their home ground.

  Watching the Glee crumple in the distance seemed to sober those with him even more. None spoke, but they glanced around at their fellow Glee, having never seen anything like it.

  “That one was standing watch,” Richard whispered to them. “Had he turned, he would have seen us. We don’t want any of them to sound an alarm. We need to catch them by surprise.”

  “We will let you know if we spot any others standing guard,” Iben said. A few others nodded their agreement.


  61

  “Where do they sleep?” Richard asked back over his shoulder after he had moved forward in a crouch and taken a peek.

  “We like to sleep in beds of water weeds where it grows thick on the banks of the water,” Sang told him, “often with our legs in the water.”

  “So then most of them will be sleeping right beside the areas of water?” Richard asked.

  “Yes,” Sang said. “That is where Glee like to spend the night. It is comforting.”

  Richard found the concept disturbing but didn’t say so. “But these Glee don’t eat the water weeds or the muscle snails like you eat,” Richard told them. “These Glee eat those like me. So do you think they would still sleep on water weeds the same as they used to do?”

  Sang thought about it a moment. “Now that you mention it, I’m not sure. But I believe they would still want to sleep the same way as Glee have always slept. They still want to keep their skin wet, and stay where the boars won’t come.”

  Richard nodded, thinking. He turned back and peered into the distance, trying to spot any of them sleeping at the edge of the water. Richard finally looked back at the others as they waited.

  “The Glee who have been eating people from my world don’t eat the float weed anymore, so they lose the green sheen to their skin that all of you have.”

  “Like that spy you found,” Iben noted.

  “That’s right. All of you have that green coloring. The ones down there won’t have it.”

  Iben nodded. “Now that you showed us that with the one you caught watching us for the goddess, we can easily know any who are followers of the goddess.”