The Third Kingdom

She regarded him with an unreadable look. “But still, you must be able to use your power well enough. After all, you are the Lord Rahl. I’ve heard it said that the people of D’Hara are the steel against steel so that you might be the magic against magic.”

Richard didn’t tell her that at the moment his power didn’t work.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the cat cautiously stretched forward to smell Kahlan’s boot. The little black nose glided along, hovering just above her leg and then up along her arm, not quite touching her skin. The cat abruptly drew back. Its lips curled with a hiss that bared sharp little teeth. Richard thought that it must not like a stranger who smelled of blood being among them.

“Are all the cats that live here black?” Richard asked Sammie.

She looked up at him from under her brow. “They are when they need to be.”

Richard frowned. “What does that mean?”

“In the dark they are all black,” she said, cryptically.

Ester, kneeling beside Kahlan, flapped her rag at the cat, chasing it away. Ears laid back, the cat scurried out of the room.

Richard looked back at Sammie. He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he had more important things on his mind. He turned the conversation to the matter at hand. “So what do you know about healing?”

Sammie’s brow twitched as she considered her answer. “My mother was just starting to teach me how to heal people. She talked to me about the fundamentals and then had me help with small things. I’ve only done simple healing—cuts and scrapes, a sick stomach, headaches, rashes. Things like that. She guided me in how to let my ability go down into a person to feel the trouble within them.”

Richard nodded. “I’ve experienced that when I’ve healed people.” He stared off into grim memories. “On occasion, because the need was so great, I’ve had to let myself go so far down into a person that it felt as if I lost who I was as I sank into their soul to lift their pain away and take it into myself.”

“I’ve never gone that deep.” Sammie looked uneasy. “I don’t know that I’d ever be able to go down into a person’s soul.”

“If you’ve healed people then I suspect you have, even if you didn’t realize it,” Richard said. “That’s how it works. While healing, you are venturing down into the essence, in other words the soul, of who they are. At least, that’s how it works for me.”

“That sounds … frightening.”

“Not if you really care about helping them.”

She watched his eyes for a moment as if they held some deep secret. “If you say so, Lord Rahl.”

Richard looked over at Kahlan lying not far away. Ester, her face set in a frown of focused concentration, carefully cleaned and inspected cuts along Kahlan’s arms.

“I’ve healed Kahlan before,” Richard said, “but I’m not strong enough to do it now and I’m terribly worried for her.”

Sammie’s gaze left Kahlan to wander over some of his more serious bite wounds. Her worry about the task he was asking of her was clearly evident in her tense expression.

“I don’t know how deeply I may have gone into a person’s essence, but I do know that I’ve never healed such terrible injuries. I’ve only healed small things. I’ve never tried to heal anything so grievous.”

“Well, from my experiences I can tell you that, to a certain extent, anyway, the severity of the injuries is irrelevant. Of course, in some cases it isn’t, such as when the person is near the veil and in the process of crossing over from the world of life into the world of the dead. That’s different.”

Sammie’s eyes widened. “You mean as the person is crossing the boundaries of the Grace?”

Richard regarded her more seriously. “Your mother taught you about the Grace?”

Sammie nodded. “The symbol that represents the spark of creation, the world of life, the world of the dead, and the way the gift crosses those boundaries to link everything. Those with the gift, she told me, must know about the Grace so as not to violate it. It defines how the gift flows and how it works—its capability and its limits—as well as the order of creation, life, and death. All our work, my mother said, is represented by the Grace, guided by it, and ultimately must be governed by it.”

“That’s what I learned as well,” Richard said. “By allowing myself to flow along those lines of the gift as represented by the Grace, I’ve found that healing most injuries is basically the same process. If you let the person’s need guide you, then through your gift you can feel what is necessary. Through your empathy you lift away the hurt and hold it within yourself so that the healing power of your gift can then flow into the person you’re helping. I have always found that the person’s need actually guides me, draws me onward toward it.”

Except that for some reason his gift had stopped working.

The girl frowned. “I think I know what you mean. My mother had me feel deep down into people, feel the trouble within them.”

“And did she teach you to lift that pain out of them and take it into yourself?”