The Third Kingdom Read online

  Richard was about to ask Ester about the people who had been hurt, and if there had been any more trouble, when the door to the rear of the room swung open. Sammie stood in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes, before peering out into the candlelit room.

  “Lord Rahl—you’re awake.” Her initial surprise quickly turned to relief.

  Richard nodded. “I am, but Kahlan still isn’t.”

  Sammie briefly glanced Kahlan’s way. “I know.”

  Before he could say anything else, Sammie bowed her head to Ester. “Thanks for watching over them for me, Ester. I’m awake now. You can go get some rest. You look like you need it.”

  Ester yawned. “You sure? You’ve only been asleep for a few hours. After all the long and difficult work you’ve done, don’t you think you need to get some more rest?”

  Sammie smoothed back her disheveled black hair. “You’ve been working hard to help people, too, and you, too, have been up for two nights, now. At least I got a little sleep. Lord Rahl is still going to need to rest so his body can finish healing. I can watch over them as they rest. Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

  Ester let out a heavy sigh. “All right. I admit that I could use it, but I want to go check on some of the others, first.” Ester flashed a quick smile at Richard. “I’ll be off, then.” She lifted a cloth bag from beside the bench. “Come get me, Sammie, if you need my help for anything.”

  Sammie nodded as she saw the woman to the door.

  Richard held his knot of questions for the time being as Ester bid him a quick farewell and left. Once the door closed, Sammie promptly returned to put two fingers on his forehead, testing with her gift.

  “Well?” he asked after a moment of silence in which she showed no sign of what she might be detecting.

  Sammie took her hand back, rubbing her fingers as if she had touched something wholly unpleasant. “Hard to tell for sure, Lord Rahl, but the healing that I was able to do, such as it was, seems to be holding.”

  Richard knew that she meant that it was hard to tell much of anything with death’s touch still in him. “You were afraid to heal us before,” he said. He thought it a little strange that she had gotten past her fear of healing them both without him having to do any more convincing.

  “Henrik’s story about how the wizard you know—”

  “My grandfather, Zedd.”

  Sammie nodded. “Yes, him and the sorceress. Once I knew that they were healing you even though they saw the same thing in you both that I saw, I knew that I could at least try to do the same.”

  Richard was still suspicious. “You weren’t afraid?”

  Sammie’s little nose scrunched up. “Yes, but I knew that it had to be done, so I tried not to think about how afraid I was and just concentrate on what I needed to do.”

  “What about Kahlan. Why isn’t she awake like I am, if her injuries are healed?”

  Sammie cast a brief, worried glance at Kahlan. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I did everything I could. The presence of death seems to be stronger in her. That’s something I can’t heal and it was harder to get around it in her in order to work on what I could heal. Death is casting a darker shadow over her than you.”

  Richard nodded as he heaved a worried sigh. Even Zedd and Nicci had said that they couldn’t remove that dark force within her without being back at the palace. Considering the difficulty, Sammie had done well to be able to do as much as she had done.

  “Thank you for doing what you did for her.” He hoped it would be enough to keep Kahlan alive until he could find Zedd and Nicci, and then get them all back to the palace.

  “Keep in mind that I’m not an expert in such things, Lord Rahl, but I think that with her injuries healed as best as I could do, and her not losing any more blood, it may just take some more rest for the healing to complete enough for her to wake. You’ve been asleep a long time. I’m hoping that she, too, will wake up once she has had some more rest. She was hurt worse than you, so she may just need some more sleep before she wakes.”

  Richard wanted to believe that was true, but he didn’t know if it was just wishful thinking. “What about the others? All the people who were hurt. Did you heal them first?”

  Sammie was a long moment in answering. “Some of them.”

  Richard looked up. “Why didn’t you heal them all, all the ones who could be healed, anyway?”

  “Because had I not stopped so that I could heal you, you would have died. The Mother Confessor is in more serious trouble because that awful shadow of death is a lot stronger in her, but you were in more immediate danger from your injuries and loss of blood. You were in danger of dying from the things that I could heal. I had to make a choice.”

  Richard’s heart sank. “You mean, you had to let some of your people die to instead save me?”

  Sammie swallowed. “Yes.”

  Richard’s brow drew tight with concern. “Those were your people, Sammie. Why would you abandon them to heal us? To heal strangers?”

  Sammie sat on the chair close beside him. She put some of her weight on her hands beside her small hips and rocked a little at the thought of how to answer his question.

  “I’m only one person,” she said in a quiet tone. “I worked on those I could save, worked as fast as I could, did what I could. Some people were going to die no matter what. I knew that if I spent the night trying to save some of those, they would still die in the end and then others that I might have saved would also die.

  “There were many people needing healing. There wasn’t enough time to heal all of them, even if I would not have healed you. I was never going to be able to save them all.

  “This is the second night since the attack. You slept that night of the attack, all day yesterday, and most of last night. It will be dawn soon. That first night, after you had ended the threat and the battle was over, you passed out.

  “I had you brought here while I stayed out there and healed a number of people. More needed healing. Some people died as they waited, died while I healed others that I thought had a better chance. Some had wounds that are beyond my skill. I knew I had to leave them. Ester and others comforted them as best they could.

  “Throughout the night, between healing people, I checked on you and the Mother Confessor to make sure that you both hadn’t gotten any worse and that you could wait a little longer for me. There were so many who were hurt. Some not badly, so I left them to people like Ester to help with what they could do. I worked on those in more need for as long as I could. But then it could wait no longer.

  “I had to choose who I was going to help, you and the Mother Confessor, or some of the others still waiting. I knew that if I helped you, then some of those I couldn’t get to would die. But I also knew that if I didn’t do what I could for you and the Mother Confessor, you both would die that night.

  “I had to decide. I decided to heal you while I still could.”

  Richard ran a hand back over his face, distressed to hear that she had been faced with such a choice, that saving his and Kahlan’s life had cost others theirs.

  “I never had to make a decision like that before,” she said. “My mother never talked to me about how to make such a choice. Such a thing never came up. I don’t know—maybe she wouldn’t have known what to do, either. There was no one else who could tell me what to do. All I knew was that I had to figure it out on my own.”

  Richard had made such gut-wrenching decisions before. They left scars that never entirely healed.

  “I decided that I had to heal you while I still could,” she finally said. “You saved a lot of people that night. I know that, in reality, you saved us all. Most of the people here would have been killed that night—we all could have been killed—if not for you being here. You are the one. You need to live. By helping you, I am helping many more people here to live than just those I could have healed.”

  She had said that about him when she had first met him. Richard frowned. “What do you mean, I’m the one?”r />
  Sammie shrugged uncomfortably as her gaze drifted away. “You are the one I chose.”

  He knew that wasn’t what she had meant. She was evading the answer, but he didn’t press her on it. She would tell him when she was ready.

  “I understand, Samantha.”

  She frowned as her eyes turned up to him. “Why did you call me that?”

  “Because,” he said, “Sammie is what you were called when you were a child. You made a very difficult, adult choice. You are becoming a woman, now. You used your head and made choices like a woman, not like a girl. I think Samantha is a more fitting name for you, if you don’t mind me being so forward.”

  Samantha began to beam with pride at the unexpected acknowledgment. “Thank you, Lord Rahl. I’ve always wanted to be called Samantha—it sounds so much more grown-up—but to everyone else I have always been seen as Sammie. It’s hard when you’re still a girl trying to find out how to be a woman. You’re the first one to see me as Samantha. Thank you.”

  Richard bowed his head in a single nod.

  “Now, Samantha, please tell me the real reason you let others die and chose instead to heal Kahlan and me.”

  She looked very much the woman she was growing into as she gazed into his eyes. “Because you are the only one who can save us all.”

  “I think you had better explain what that means.”

  Samantha nodded. “I think I had better. We are running out of time. We are all running out of time.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  “What do you mean, we’re all running out of time?” Richard asked.

  She took a deep breath as she gathered her thoughts. “Well, there were other gifted people here, but they’re all gone, now, so I guess that no matter how ill prepared I am for the task, it’s up to me to explain it all to you.”

  “There were other gifted here? You mean besides your mother?” When she nodded, he asked, “So what happened to them?”

  “I had three aunts, all gifted. Two were my mother’s sisters, the other was my father’s sister. They were all sorceresses serving our people.

  “My father’s sister, Clarice, was much older. She had never married. While among the gifted here in Stroyza there is no official leader, as such, it always seemed that she was our matriarch. She was the elder gifted and everyone deferred to her judgment. It had been that way my whole life. It seemed the natural order of things.

  “Some time back, a little over a year and a half ago, she was found dead in the woods not far from here. People assumed that she must have died because she was old. Everyone in Stroyza was shaken by her passing.”

  “Did she really die of natural causes?”

  “I don’t know. At the time we all thought so—we didn’t have reason to suspect anything else. Now, I’m not so sure.

  “After she died, people turned to my mother to fill Clarice’s place.” Samantha gestured around at the room. “That was when we moved in here. These quarters are where the foremost of the gifted of our village lives. It’s an ancient tradition that is part of our ways.

  “Not long after Clarice’s death, when my parents and I moved in here, we first started hearing rumors of people encountering a strange woman with her lips sewn shut. It was only later that we found out that she was called Jit the Hedge Maid and that she had a strange lair in Kharga Trace. We didn’t know where she’d come from or even how long she had been back in the Trace. We weren’t even sure of exactly what she was.

  “From traders passing through here who visited many of the people of the Dark Lands, we heard all kinds of rumors about Jit. Some thought she was death come among us, marking the end of time. Some thought she had remarkable, even miraculous abilities to heal those who could not otherwise be healed.

  “My mother was able to learn that Jit used some kind of magic that was unlike ours, some kind of occult power that we had never encountered before.” Samantha looked up at his eyes to make sure he was paying attention. “Some kind of magic that could maybe do things we never knew could be done, like maybe make the dead walk again.”

  “You mean like those walking corpses who attacked the other night?”

  Samantha nodded. “There were rumors of such things, of bodies stolen from graves. Rumors of the dead walking the Dark Lands.”

  Richard wondered if Jit was the one who had reanimated and sent the dead men to attack the village. He wondered, even though he had killed the Hedge Maid, if there were more of her dead minions wandering the countryside.

  “My two aunts Martha and Millicent were convinced that Jit could be nothing less than some kind of evil creature that had escaped from beyond the north wall.”

  Richard leaned forward. “The north wall?”

  Samantha briefly gestured in that direction. “I’ll get to that. Anyway, after they’d heard enough worrisome stories, my parents, two aunts, and their husbands all decided that since we were the closest village to Kharga Trace and were the ones potentially most at risk, we needed to investigate and find out the truth.

  “Aunt Martha’s husband was gifted. Not a wizard, as was explained to me—I’ve never met a real wizard, neither has anyone I know. Aunt Millicent’s husband Gyles was supposedly gifted as well, but in a different way. He was mostly given to small prophecies, or at least so he said. No one much believed him, though. My mother humored his claims.

  “But Uncle Gyles was one of those who had long been warning of a dark force he said would one day come into the Dark Lands. Then we heard about Jit having built a lair in the Trace. Gyles thought it was proof of his prophetic abilities.

  “My mother always said that if you predicted rain long enough, sooner or later you would get wet and be proven right. She said that there were good times in life and bad, and if you predicted bad, you would eventually be proven right, but if you predicted it loud enough, you would be proven a prophet.”

  Richard smiled at that. He had always thought much the same thing.

  “What kind of stories were your people hearing about Jit?” he asked before he became lost in the family tree.

  Samantha shrugged. “The stories were mostly whispered to my parents and aunts and uncles behind closed doors. My mother never told me what was said, but I knew that she was concerned.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “No. I knew better. When my parents wanted me to know something, they told me. If they didn’t tell me, I knew that meant I wasn’t to ask, that it was an adult matter. The six of them—my parents, both aunts, and both uncles—discussed such matters privately, between themselves. Especially if it was a decision about the safety of our people.”

  “The gifted rule here, then? Even if informally?”

  “Not exactly.” Samantha squinted in thought, looking for the words. “The gifted have always been the ones people of Stroyza turned to. I don’t know that you would say they rule, exactly. We’re a small place, not an empire, and it never much seemed that we needed someone to rule. Maybe to settle arguments, occasionally, but not really to rule.

  “It’s always been more like the people here respect the gifted and seek their advice, much like people respect elders and seek advice from them, but don’t necessarily want to be ruled by them. When something needed deciding, people would often come to one of the gifted—my parents or aunts and uncles—seeking advice, and on occasion, a decision.”

  “You mean like when we were first brought here, they sent for you because they respect your ability, but they wouldn’t expect you to think you could rule them.”

  Samantha smiled at the analogy. “I guess that’s a good way to put it. So in this matter that seemed to somehow involve magic, the gifted decided among themselves that Aunt Martha and her husband, since he was gifted too, would go look into what was happening in Kharga Trace, what this Hedge Maid really was, and what she might be up to back in that swamp.

  “Last fall, when the water level was at its lowest, Aunt Martha and her husband set out for the Trace to look into it.”<
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  “And they never came back,” Richard guessed when she brooded silence for a moment.

  Samantha confirmed his suspicion with a shake of her head. “Our people searched, but my aunt and uncle were never found. The wilderness of the Dark Lands is vast so they couldn’t search everywhere, of course. More than that, though, people were afraid to go too far into the uncharted depths of the dark swamp of Kharga Trace.

  “Then, this past spring, someone found their remains when the overflow of spring waters washed them out of the swamp.”

  Richard knew that there couldn’t have been much left of the bodies. He tried to ask a gruesome question as gently as possible.

  “After all that time, being out in the swamp and all, how could you be sure it was them?”

  Samantha lifted a hand in a forlorn gesture. “My mother identified their bones. She said that the bones carried the telltale trace of the Grace—of the gift—and she recognized it as that of her sister.”

  Samantha stared at her hands nested in her lap. “She also said that she could read in the bones that they had died a violent death. She said they had been murdered.”

  Richard wondered if it was true that a gifted person could actually tell such things from bones, or if it had been grief speaking, trying to find blame. He didn’t know enough about the gift to know the answer to that question.

  He did know, though, that the Dark Lands were a dangerous place, and Kharga Trace certainly more so. He had been warned about going into the Dark Lands by soldiers who grew up in that mysterious part of D’Hara. Given everything he knew, not only of the warnings he had heard, but his own experience, it was not at all unreasonable to believe that Samantha’s aunt and uncle had been murdered.

  “Not long after,” Samantha said, “my other gifted aunt, Aunt Millicent, and her husband Gyles, were taken away by soldiers from the abbey.”

  Richard frowned in surprise. “The abbey?”