The Third Kingdom

“So then it can’t pull you in. Whatever you sensed in her doesn’t have the power to do that. You are in control. Even though you went down deep into her you pulled yourself back out, didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

“Didn’t you?” he repeated.

He knew that he was frightening her, but it couldn’t be helped.

“I suppose so,” she finally said.

“Then you are the one in control, not what you saw in her. That evil may try to pull you toward it, but you have free will and are able to resist that dark call. You make the choice not to be pulled in by evil.”

Sammie let her arm drop when he released her wrist. “I guess you’re right.”

“I know I am,” Richard said. “I know because you came back of your own free will. But I also know because others were healing Kahlan and me when we were attacked. They both have vast experience and know a great deal more about healing than either you or I will likely ever know. They would have sensed what was in her and they wouldn’t have been trying to heal her if it was a lethal trap.”

“But how can you be sure that they were healing her?”

“They healed the wound on her stomach.”

Sammie thought it over for a moment. “You’re right,” she finally admitted. “I felt that healing. I could tell that it was fresh, that not long before me someone else had been there healing her.”

“And they came back. You were able to come back, too. That means you are in control. You aren’t helpless to that call of death.”

She looked considerably more calm, even if she didn’t look at ease. “That makes sense.”

Richard took a step closer to her. “I need you to check me. I need to know if that same sickness is in me.”

She appraised his eyes for a moment with a look that was well beyond her years.

“You suspect that you have the same thing in you that she has in her, and you think that may be what’s keeping your gift from working,” she said.

It wasn’t a question.

Richard arched an eyebrow, then sat on the floor and crossed his legs. “Come on. Do it now. I need to know.”

Sammie let out a frustrated sigh, then gave in and sat before him. She followed Richard’s gaze to see a cat that had just sauntered into the room, peeking in the dark places behind the pillows against the far wall the way cats liked to do.

“I think that the cat sensed what I saw in the Mother Confessor,” Sammie said.

“The cat?”

She nodded as she crossed her legs, the way he had done. “My mother says that cats are sensitive to spirits, to things from the world of the dead.”

Richard looked at the girl for a moment without saying anything, then held his hands out. “Take my hands. Try to heal a few of my wounds. Do what you did with Kahlan.”

Sammie gave in with a sigh and finally took his hands. Richard, having trouble holding his left arm up, rested his forearms across his knees. His bite wound had started bleeding again.

Her hands looked tiny holding his. It occurred to him that right then, despite her young age and her inexperience, she wielded more power than he did. Not a comforting thought.

The girl closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. Richard did the same, hoping to help her do her job. Ester stood off to the side wringing her hands as she watched.

Richard tried not to think about what Sammie was doing, about what she might find. Instead, he thought about Zedd, Nicci, Cara, and Cara’s husband, Ben, the general who had led the troops to come find Richard and Kahlan. Richard needed to know what had happened to them. They would never have willingly left him and Kahlan to their fate.

He remembered the bones and remnants of uniforms. He remembered what the two men had said, that those with Richard and Kahlan had been attacked by people called the Shun-tuk. He remembered seeing masses of dead attackers. He remembered the vulgar visage of one of those dead whose bloodstained teeth had all been filed to points to better rip into flesh.

With the Hedge Maid dead, he had thought that the battle was over. It appeared that it had only just begun. Something more was going on. Something more than he understood.

He needed to find answers and he knew that time was working against everyone. If those people he cared so much about were in the hands of the Shun-tuk, then every day that went by made their survival less likely. The longer Kahlan went without gifted help, the worse he feared she was going to get. He was not much better off himself.

These people, too, the people of Stroyza, were in trouble, probably a great deal more trouble than they realized. They were used to the harsh conditions and dangers of the Dark Lands, but these savages who ate human flesh appeared to be something new.

Sammie gasped suddenly and yanked her hands back, releasing his as if they had burst into flames.

Richard leaned in. “What did you see?”

Sammie’s eyes were wide with terror and brimming with tears. Her breathing was ragged and quick.

“I felt your pain,” she whispered. “Dear spirits, how can you stand it?”