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 that 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.