The Third Kingdom

Slowly building the tension, terror, and pain in the end brought far better, far more insightful prophecy. The proper, careful building of their journey toward the climax of their existence brought the exceptional visions when they looked beyond into that other, timeless world. Those were the sort he sought. Rushing the preparations simply didn’t produce quality results. Torture was a game of patience.

He knew from experience, and the work that had obviously been done on her, that what information she did give before he released her into death would be some of the better-quality prophetic perception. He was culling details from the darkest depths of the netherworld. He expected great things, this time. He could feel it. He had done this enough to know when the information was going to be special, to be important, to be meaningful.

Such especially significant tellings never went to the bishop. Ludwig kept those kind to himself. This one, he knew, would never leave the confines of the abbey.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said down to the agonized face watching him. “I could give you a bit of assistance. I could help you bring it forth. Would you like that?”

“Yes … please, help me. Please help me.”

“That’s why I’m here,” he said with a smile. “I’m here to help. Afterwards, I will grant you what you want most.”

She was close, he knew she was.

When she said nothing, he gestured to the Mord-Sith. Without delay Erika pressed her Agiel into the back of the woman’s skull.

She shuddered in agony. The chains rattled. Her mouth twisted as it opened. No scream could come out, no sound.

Ludwig knew from experience that she was there, that she now hung between the world of life and the world of the dead. He knew that she was at last ready.

She was now in that realm of the third kingdom.

“You see it, don’t you?” he asked intimately as he ran a hand tenderly over her hair. “You see that place beyond the veil.”

The woman nodded as she trembled under his steady hand.

“You will first give me prophecy from the dark place you see. As soon as you do that, I will grant your wish and release you to cross over to eternal peace. You would like to cross over, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes…”

He could almost taste the prophecy right there, hanging within her like fresh fruit for the picking. He would have it.

The Mother Confessor had been correct when she had once told Ludwig that if he was the one who provided the prophecy that Hannis Arc needed to rule, then Hannis Arc wasn’t really the one ruling. Ludwig Dreier was.

At the time he hadn’t given it much thought.

But as he had thought about it, he had come to realize that she was more correct than he had at first given her credit for. He had always known that Hannis Arc was absorbed in his own work and distracted by his own goals, so he relied on the guidance of prophecy that Ludwig provided. Since that prophecy was carefully culled, it was, in reality, Ludwig’s surreptitious, carefully groomed guidance. Ludwig told Hannis Arc only what Ludwig wanted him to know from beyond the veil.

What the Mother Confessor had said that day had really cast it with crystal clarity. Ludwig was the hidden hand that moved the puppet.

Hannis Arc, as powerful as he was, as talented, as clever as he was, was too insulated, too consumed with his own narrow obsessions to know how things in the wider world worked. He could not accomplish what he did without Ludwig’s guidance.

Ludwig had always planned on one day seizing that rule for himself. He was, after all, the architect behind much of the power Hannis Arc wielded, so who better to rule than he. Ludwig rightly should be the one to rule.

It would require great care, though. In spite of everything else, Hannis Arc was a profoundly dangerous man. His occult abilities were not to be taken lightly.

With a gesture from Ludwig, Erika removed her Agiel from the back of the woman’s head.

She was ready. It was time.

Ludwig bent close and pressed his fingers to the sides of her temples. He let the last necessary components of his own unique conjuring, conjuring he himself had created, finally flow into the woman. It would give her the last part of what she needed in order to be able to provide what he sought.

Her mouth hung open as she shook. Her one eye stared, unblinking.

He took his fingers away. She sagged.

“Speak of what you see,” he said in a voice edged with anticipation.

“They come,” she said in a hoarse voice.

CHAPTER

81

Ludwig Dreier straightened with a frown. This was not typically how prophecy sounded, but he knew from everything that had been properly done that it somehow was prophetic.

“They come? Who comes?”

“Those with teeth,” the woman said in a hoarse, raw voice. “They come to devour you.”