The Third Kingdom

“Like me with my mother gone, those young people during times of skips likely were never even aware of what areas of knowledge had been lost. After all, once I have children I can’t ever teach them the things my mother knew because she never had the time to teach me all she knew. I don’t even know what I’m missing from her, or how much she might have known that I will never know. I guess that must be why the meaning of these markings were never passed down to her.”

Richard let out a weary sigh. “I guess that makes sense. I didn’t mean to make it sound like your people were negligent. It must have been hard for them. All this time they’ve lived way out here in this desolate place, all the time losing the knowledge of their reason for being here.”

That was one of the reasons Richard had always considered books to be so important, why he sought them out, and why he put so much effort into gleaning information from them. Books were links that spanned such missing human bonds or even times of savagery and its resulting ages of ignorance.

It was helpful if you had an elder who could pass on their knowledge, but if there were no elders to teach you for whatever reason, books filled the void, not merely in generations, but often in centuries and sometimes even millennia. Books served to keep hard-won knowledge safe. They endured. Books could almost be immortal.

He glided the flat of his hand over the symbols carved into the stone wall. But you had to know how to read to extract that information. All the invaluable information written here on the walls was useless if young people weren’t taught how to read it.

Samantha frowned suspiciously as she scrutinized the wall of symbols she couldn’t understand. “If you had no one to teach you about your gift, then how can you understand a dead language?”

“In the course of some of the things I’ve been through, on my way to becoming the Lord Rahl, I’ve had to learn a lot of different things, such as High D’Haran”—he gestured at the wall—“and this.”

His gaze drifted back to the round opening. “But in all I’ve learned, I’ve never learned anything about a third kingdom. I’ve never heard this place mentioned anywhere.”

“I guess your elders failed to teach you many things, too.”

He succumbed to a crooked smile. “I guess so.”

“But what about this dead language?” she asked, still looking perplexed. “You really do understand these strange markings and know what they all mean?”

“Yes.” He again ran the flat of his hand over one of the designs. “This one here, for instance, involves what it calls barrier spells. It says that the barrier spells, not the stone walls, or iron gates, or even the mountains are the true strength that keeps such a great evil contained.”

“Great evil…” she said with a worried look.

He nodded as he gestured with a finger. “This composition here, beside it, mentions gravity spells being part of the barrier spells. I’d have to read more to try to find out what that means.” He looked down at her. “Do you happen to know what gravity spells are?”

She shook her head, still staring at him in wonder, as if he could be nothing less than a good spirit with mystical knowledge come into the world of life to stand before her and explain the unexplainable. It made him feel a bit uncomfortable.

He went to another series of designs, studying the different elements for a moment. He tapped the wall. “This, here, talks about the gifted who settled here in this place called ‘Stroyza’ to watch over the barrier. It says they must stay in this place and watch for a deterioration of the gravity spells, which would in turn degrade the effectiveness of the barrier.”

“I feel terrible that we lost all this knowledge. They went to so much trouble to pass on their knowledge, and we lost its meaning.”

Richard nodded absently as he pinched his lower lip in concentration, studying the symbols, unable to resist translating them in his head as he scanned the elements. He wagged a finger at the wall.

“This is interesting. It seems that the people who did this were aware that the barrier couldn’t last forever. That’s why they left people here to watch over it in the first place. It says that the spells, though powerful and long-lived, would eventually decay over time. It says that when that starts to happen some of those on the other side will begin to escape out into the world of life.”

“Jit,” Samantha whispered in realization. She looked up at him. “She was one of those things that we should have known to watch for. My mother was worried about the Hedge Maid, and where she might have come from, but she didn’t know anything about these barrier spells as you called them.”

Samantha walked along the wall, gazing at all the markings in a new light. “To think, I never even knew that this was a language. I can’t believe that none of us ever knew that these odd markings were important instructions on our duty.”

“It’s called the language of Creation.”