The Third Kingdom

On the verge of panic, Samantha grabbed a mass of black hair in each fist. She looked out the opening through the rock wall as if looking for an answer. She looked like she wanted to pull her hair out. He could see that her world, her duty in life, was coming apart at the seams.

Richard laid a hand on her shoulder. “Slow down, Samantha. Take a deep breath and then why don’t you tell me what happened next.”

She nodded and then swallowed to help slow her breathing. “Some of our people found my father’s remains not far from here. My mother’s things—her pack and traveling supplies—were found scattered about on the ground nearby. There were drag marks, they said, that looked like she had fought them. Our people couldn’t find her anywhere. The ground was rocky and they couldn’t follow the trail.

“After that, with the north wall breached, and me being the only gifted person left, I knew that it was up to me, now.” She flung her arms up. “But I didn’t know how to get to a distant Wizard’s Keep. I don’t even know where it is, except I think it’s far to the west somewhere. I hadn’t yet learned the things I still need to learn. I didn’t know what to do.”

She looked up at him. “Fortunately, you showed up. I don’t know if it was coincidence, or fate, or if it was the good spirits themselves intervening to send you here when I needed you most.”

Richard cast her a sideways look. “I don’t believe much in coincidence.”

“Well, all I know is that you’re the one meant to hear about this—especially since you tell me there is no longer a wizards’ council. After all, you said yourself that you’re one of those who is gifted in that way.”

Richard let out a deep breath of his own. “I’m not so sure.”

“I think that it all happened this way because you’re the one.”

“The one.” Richard cast her a skeptical look. “I’m glad you think so. I’m not so sure.”

Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders as she let out a deep sigh. “I am.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you think that if I was ‘the one’ I would know something about all this? I’ve never heard of any of it. I only recently heard of the Dark Lands for the first time.”

“You killed Jit. Only you could have done that. Only the person we needed could have done that.”

In frustration, he gestured out the round opening. “Yes, but I don’t know anything at all about this north wall. This is the first I’ve ever heard of it. I killed Jit because she had captured Kahlan, then me, and she was going to kill us both if I didn’t stop her. I was just trying to survive, to live. That’s all there was to it. Kill or be killed.”

Richard paused as a thought occurred to him. He wondered why Jit had gone to so much trouble in the first place to draw them both in.

She had first gotten her hands on Henrik, then cast some kind of spell over the boy. Making him helpless to do otherwise, she had sent him on a mission to deliver her occult conjuring to Richard and Kahlan in order to get both to come to her in Kharga Trace. Because of the calculated intent of that spell, the Hedge Maid had been able to draw Kahlan to her lair and imprison her there. That, in turn, had drawn Richard to her.

Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t really imagine, living as she did way back in the depths of that forlorn swamp, that she would have had any way to know anything about Richard and Kahlan off in the distant People’s Palace. It didn’t make any sense, unless she had merely been looking to take down anyone who was a leader and that just happened to be Richard and Kahlan.

Unless someone else had a motive and they had directed her to do it in the first place.

“That’s what we’re all doing,” Samantha said. “We’re all just trying to survive.”

He put the distracting thoughts of Jit’s intentions out of his mind and returned to the matter at hand. Samantha was still looking up at him, waiting.

“I understand,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that I’m the one you need to tell about all this north wall business. Like I told you, I never heard of it before.”

“Well, you are the Lord Rahl,” she said with simple logic. “To my mind, that makes you even more important than a wizards’ council. You rule all of the D’Haran Empire, don’t you? This is part of your empire.”

Richard grudgingly had to concede her point. “I guess you’re right about that much of it, but that’s not enough to make me the one you need to tell about the north wall.”

“But that’s only a small part of it. The main reason is that you are of that place beyond the north wall.”

Richard put his hands on his hips as he looked down at the wisp of a girl. He tried to keep the frown off his face. He couldn’t imagine that it was comforting to have a big man, and the Lord Rahl besides, towering over her.

“I’m from Hartland.” He aimed a thumb back behind him toward the west. “That’s a small place in Westland, on the far side of the Midlands. That’s a very long way from here. I’m not from beyond that north wall.”