CHAPTER 10

“What is it?” Ester looked back and forth between Sammie and Kahlan. “Lord Rahl, what is it? Do you know what it means? Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

Instead of answering, Richard laid a hand on Kahlan’s shoulder, feeling her warmth, her breathing, the life in her. Despite how sick he felt, he ignored his own pain. She was in grave trouble and needed help. She needed gifted help.

She needed more help than Sammie was able to give.

He shut himself off from everything around him as he retreated into the calm center within himself. The people outside in the corridors and rooms of the cliff dwelling no longer seemed at all close. The faint undertone of their voices gradually faded away. Ester’s and Sammie’s voices became distant murmurs as he focused on what needed to be done, on what Kahlan needed done.

In that inner silence, he sought to release himself into Kahlan to heal her, or at least to try to sense what the problem was. He wanted to see it for himself. He wanted to deal with it himself. He wanted to extinguish that hidden terror. Most of all, he wanted to take away her pain. He ached to see her open her eyes and smile up at him.

Even though he had healed Kahlan before when she had been grievously hurt, this time as he tried desperately to call forth that healing ability within himself, he couldn’t seem to find the way to do it. It didn’t exactly feel as if he was having difficulty recalling how to heal—it felt more like he had never known how to do it. It was maddening to feel like he knew where he wanted to go, to know that he had been there before, but not to be able to find the path back.

Whatever he had done in the past to heal people seemed simply to no longer be there. If he didn’t know better, he would think that he had never healed anyone before. He couldn’t imagine what component was missing, or how to find it.

Where he should have felt his inner empathy coming to the surface to take him into Kahlan’s suffering, he felt nothing.

As desperate as he was to help her, he realized that wasn’t the only trouble on his hands.

He knew without a doubt that he should have at least felt something, but he didn’t. He remembered all too well that it had been much the same back at the wagon when he had reached down inside himself to call on his gift to help him protect Kahlan from those men. Nothing had happened then, either. If there was ever a case where his gift should have worked, it would be to protect her and to heal her.

It wasn’t that he was simply too injured himself or too weak to heal her. He knew now that something more was going on. Whatever the problem, he didn’t know how to compensate for it.

His level of fear and alarm rose as he wondered if his gift was gone.

In place of the healing power of his gift that he should have felt, he realized that he could hear the slightest of sounds. As he concentrated on listening, trying to hear what it was, his blood ran cold as he realized that it sounded like distant screams.

He didn’t know if those screams were coming from something he felt in Kahlan … or in himself. He wondered if he might be imagining it. He couldn’t help feeling haunted by the things Sammie had told him she had experienced.

He fought back a rising sense of panic. He had told Sammie to calm down, that panic wouldn’t help. He knew that he had to take his own advice. He had to think if he was to act effectively.

For whatever reason, what he was doing to try to heal Kahlan was not working. He opened his eyes, rose up, and took a long stride back to the girl.

“Did you sense it in her, too?” Sammie asked.

Richard shook his head. “What else did you sense in her?”

Sammie looked confused by the question and intimidated by him towering over her. “Nothing. I was afraid. I drew back out of her.”

Richard turned to look down at Kahlan, pinching his lower lip as he thought it through.

Whatever was wrong with Kahlan, it had to have happened in the Hedge Maid’s lair. Whatever was wrong with him had started there as well. He and Kahlan had both been unconscious when Zedd, Nicci, and Cara found them.

Richard remembered killing the Hedge Maid. He had been warned that his sword, and his gift, would not work against her. The Omen machine, though, had given him a prophecy: Your only chance is to let the truth escape.

With that clue, he had realized that the way to stop that vile creature was to cut the leather strips sewing her mouth closed. Doing so had caused her to release an inner scream held back for most of her life by those leather strips. It had brought about the release of the corruption and death that had been contained and festering within her.

First, though, knowing what he had been about to do, Richard had wadded up small pieces of cloth and stuffed them in Kahlan’s and his own ears to keep both of them from hearing that malevolent cry born in the world of the dead—to prevent them from hearing the call of death itself.

At least, he thought it had kept them from hearing it.

He turned back to Sammie. “I need you to use your gift on me, the way you did when you tried to heal Kahlan. I need to know if you can sense that same thing in me that you sensed in her.”

Sammie shook her head as she shrank back.

“Listen to me!” he yelled, freezing her in her tracks. “Lives are at stake. I’m not asking you to go beyond that green veil and cross over into what you sensed as death, but I need to know if the same thing you sensed in Kahlan is within me as well.”

When she again started backing away he grabbed her slender wrist. “Listen to me, Sammie. You were able to back out of Kahlan, weren’t you?”

Her eyes turned fearfully toward Kahlan. “Yes.”

“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?”

“I don’t have a choice. The lives of those I love and the people I am sworn to protect are at stake. That’s what matters to me the most at the moment. Now, what else did you feel?”

Sammie swiped tears from under her eyes. “I felt the same thing, Lord Rahl. You have the same thing in you as the Mother Confessor. Death, behind the veil of green. You both have death in you.”

Richard couldn’t say that he was surprised. He hadn’t really expected anything different. Both he and Kahlan had been exposed to the Hedge Maid’s screams, screams that had been unleashed from the underworld itself.

He looked up at Ester’s ashen face. “Bring Henrik to me.”

“You want the boy?” she looked confused. “Now? Lord Rahl, your wounds must be tended to. Your arm is bleeding again and it must—”

“Now,” Richard said.