Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Samuel squatted not far away, hunched down facing the fire, and began devouring the other half of the rabbit.

Kahlan stared in shock as she watched him eating the raw catch. He tore off a bite of fur with his teeth and swallowed it down. He crunched right through bones. As blood ran down his chin he even ate the entrails.

The sight was making her sick. Kahlan looked away to stare into the fire.

"Eat," Samuel said. "It's good."

Kahlan picked up the hind leg and tossed her half to him. "I'm not very hungry."

Samuel didn't argue. He tore into her half.

Kahlan lay back, resting her head against the saddle, and watched the stars. To take her mind off Samuel she thought again about Richard, wondering who he really was, and what his connection to her was. She thought about how he fought with a blade. In many ways it reminded her of the way she fought. She didn't know where she had learned what she knew. As she wandered through an internal landscape of shadowy uncertainties, she watched the moon slowly rise.

She began wondering why she should continue to stay with Samuel. He had saved her life, after a fashion, after Richard told him how. She supposed that she did owe him some gratitude. But why stay with him? He wasn't providing her any answers or real solutions. She didn't owe him her dogged allegiance. She wondered if she should strike out on her own.

She realized that even if she left Samuel and struck out on her own, without knowing who she was where would she go? She saw trees and mountains as they rode past, but she didn't know where she was. She didn't know where she grew up, where she lived, where she belonged. She didn't recognize the land or even remember any towns or cities, other than the places of the dead that she'd gone through after the Sisters had captured her. She was lost in a world that didn't know her and she didn't remember.

When she realized that the moon had risen above the trees, she looked over at Samuel. He had long ago finished his meal.

He was polishing his sword as it lay in his lap.

"Samuel," she called. He looked up as if being yanked out of a trance. "Samuel, I need to know where we're going."

"To a place where we will be safe."

"You've told me that before. If I'm going to continue to travel with you-"

"You must! You must come with me! Please!"

Kahlan was taken aback by his outburst of emotion. His eyes wide and round, he looked genuinely panicked.

"Why?"

"Because I will take us to safety."

"Maybe I can take myself to safety."

"But I can take you to someone who can help you get your memory back."

He had her attention. She sat up.

"You know someone who can help me get my memory back?"

Samuel nodded vigorously.

"Who?"

"A friend."

"How can I believe that you're telling me the truth?"

Samuel gazed down at the gleaming weapon in his lap. He ran adoring fingers over its curves.

"I am the Seeker of Truth. You have a spell that has taken your memory. I have a friend who can help you recover your past, recover yourself."

Kahlan's heart pounded with the abruptly unexpected prospect of having her memory back. All of her other questions seemed suddenly insignificant.

Samuel had never told her that he was the Seeker of Truth. She didn't know what the Seeker of Truth was, but she had seen the word truth in gold wire woven through the silver wire of the hilt. It seemed an odd title for someone so reluctant to offer any information about anything.

"When will I meet this person?"

"Soon. She is close."

"How do you know?"

Samuel looked up. His yellow eyes stared at her, looking like twin lanterns in the darkness.

"I can feel her. You must stay if you want to recover your past."

Kahlan thought about Richard with those strange symbols painted all over him. That was the past she was really interested in. She wanted to know her connection to that man with the gray eyes.

Richard knew that it was his only chance.

Darkness unlike anything he had ever known pressed in all around him. It was suffocating, terrifying, crushing.

Denna tried to protect him, but even she had no power to stop such a thing. No one did.

"You can't," came Denna's whispering voice in his mind. "This is a place of nothing. You can't do that."

Richard knew that it was his only chance.

"I have to try."

"If you do that, you will be naked to this place. Your protection will be stripped from you. You will not be able to be here any longer."

"I've done what I must."

"But you will not be able to find your way back."

Richard cried out in agony. The protective structure of the spell-forms that he had created was being shredded. The blackness all around was seeping in and crashing the life from him. This was a place that did not tolerate life. This was a place that existed to draw life itself away into the dark eternity of nothing.

The beast had followed him into that void of the underworld, and now it had him trapped in its own domain.