He had always been skeptical that when the time came, those Glee who came across the drylands with him would actually fight. Now, he didn’t need to fear that bloody conflict, or all of them being slaughtered. If, that was, a new leader didn’t rise from the ranks of the former followers of the goddess.
Richard’s patience finally came to an end. He pulled Sang aside to talk to him privately.
“Before any of these former followers of the goddess start to think that maybe they might like to have the power she had and be in charge of a vast army that could raid other worlds, we need to destroy the device so that can never happen again.”
Sang nodded, looking apologetic that he had forgotten all about it, and handed the long piece of the float weed he was munching on to one of the others passing by.
“Everything is back to the way it was, thanks to you and Vika. I don’t think we could ever adequately express our gratitude. With peace restored, we have nothing to fear, now. We can take care of the device any time. There is no longer any worry or any rush.”
“There is to me,” Richard said in a firm voice. “I want it taken care of now. I don’t want to have to worry that I might have my throat torn out in my sleep by followers of the goddess who decided to resume their ways and will then go to my world and kill the people there.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about—”
Richard held up a warning finger. “I came here to do what was necessary to protect my world. I sacrificed my life with my kind, my wife, and my offspring to do this—both for my people and for your kind. I have nothing left for me, now, other than a lonely future here in this world where Vika and I don’t really belong.
“I made that sacrifice to be able to destroy that device that made all of the terror and bloodshed possible. That job is not yet done. I want it finished.”
Sang could see the determination in Richard’s face and hear it in his voice. He nodded.
“Of course, Lord Rahl. I understand. Of course you are right. We will go there now. I will show you the way.”
Richard would simply have left the days-long celebration and gone there on his own, and he actually would have preferred to do that, but with the clouds obscuring much of the landscape, he wasn’t sure exactly how to find the place up in the mountains. They had come into the territory of the Golden Goddess via a long, roundabout way through the confusing maze of rocky spires in the drylands in order to surprise the goddess and her followers. With the clouds, the wind-driven sand, the maze of rock towers, and not being able to see exactly where the sun was in the sky, he wasn’t confident that he had been able to keep track of direction or distances.
He had a general idea where he could find the mountain where the device was located, but with visibility so poor, and the low clouds always obscuring mountain peaks, he feared that if he looked for the site on his own it could end up taking him days to find the small trail. He knew that Sang could show him the way and then he could destroy the device much sooner.
He worried about the possibility that in the meantime, if it wasn’t quickly destroyed, it might be used again without him being aware that some of the Glee had snuck away to travel to his world. He didn’t want to risk it existing any longer. Better to destroy the device once and for all. That was the only way to make sure Kahlan and everyone else would be safe.
Sang spoke with some of his followers, apparently letting them know that they were leaving to go to the mountain where the device was located. But as they started out, Richard saw that a large number the Glee were following behind—both Sang’s followers and many of the followers of the goddess. He didn’t know why, but as long as Sang got him there so he could use his sword to destroy that strange square block of stone, that was all that mattered.
His sword had cut through steel before. Not all that long ago his blade had cut through massive stone pillars and blocks to get at Moravaska Michec down in the complication.
Neither steel nor stone ever proved to be any obstacle to the Sword of Truth, so he had no doubt that it would cut through the stone device.
Although, in the back of his mind, he realized that it was possibly neither steel nor stone. It was, after all, a device that allowed travel to other worlds, so it was possible that it only looked like stone and would in reality prove much more difficult to destroy than he had at first thought.
When he looked back over his shoulder at the line of Glee following him, it reminded him of a funeral procession.
In a way, that’s exactly what it was.
65
A warm rain accompanied them along the climb up the mountain. It made the air wet and heavy, and difficult to breathe. At times it came down in sheets, harder than any rain he had ever known before, almost like standing under a waterfall. It was so heavy that they could barely even see.
When the rain increased to an intensity that Richard and Vika found unendurable, they had to crouch behind some of the forest of rock towers that had overhangs enough to shelter them somewhat. Sang warned him to stay out of any low places because this kind of rain often created flash floods that could sweep him away before he realized what was happening. It could easily be disastrous to be rolled down the mountain in such floodwaters. From time to time they came to those kinds of sudden, rushing, muddy rivers and had to find a way around them.
The Glee didn’t at all mind the rain, at times standing in it with their arms held out and their faces turned up to the sky, but Richard and Vika found it miserable. Traveling into the heaviest of the curtains of rain was arduous. It was also hard not only to see where they were heading, but also where they were stepping. He worried that either Vika or he might fall and break a leg. Richard had grown up outdoors, and so he was familiar with walking in challenging terrain, but Vika hadn’t, so it was harder for her to walk among the jumbles of rock during the downpours.
There were no healers that he knew of among the Glee, and he didn’t think that they had any. They seemed to be too simple a species to have healers. If he or Vika was injured, there could be no help. They had only each other, and while he knew about healing, both with magic and with herbs, he could certainly heal Vika, but she couldn’t heal him. He also didn’t know if this world had any healing herbs they could use.
The landscape they had to travel through was completely devoid of any kind of life; there was just rock and, in the rain, mud, much of it rushing down at them. There were no plants, not even a blade of grass. Just continual rain. Since starting up into the mountains, he hadn’t seen a single bird, or even one of the bats that he had seen in large groups down in the swampland. He remembered that Sang had said that where the device was located was a dry place, but getting there beneath the leaden overcast certainly wasn’t dry. He was looking forward to getting up into the mountains above the clouds that were dumping so much rain on them.
A lot of the rock was sharp and crumbly, making walking difficult. This world was a strange mixture of lush swamplands, sandy drylands, and desolate, lifeless mountains. The skies seemed to be an odd mix, too, of dark clouds that carried no water and heavy, wet overcast. From what he had seen so far, it seemed that nothing lived anywhere other than the swampy lands down lower, where all this water running down the mountainsides eventually collected in the swamps.
Richard came across holes in the upslopes of grainy rock. They appeared almost big enough that he might be able to crawl inside. He wondered if they might be able to be enlarged and in the future provide some kind of cavelike shelter for him and Vika. He stuck his head inside one of the holes, trying to see how deep it was. All he could see was blackness.