The Third Kingdom (25 page)

“Your gift doesn’t work,” Samantha said as she rummaged through the contents of the chest. “My gift works. You’ll need me to go with you.”

“I have my sword.”

“Good for you. You still don’t have the use of your gift.” She pulled out a small backpack, then gestured to the hallway at the back of the room. “You couldn’t even get past a shield without me. What are you going to do if you need some kind of simple magic like that? I may be young and inexperienced, and I admit that I have a lot yet to learn, but at least my gift works.”

Richard knew that she had no real concept of the danger she would be facing and he didn’t have time to explain it to her.

“I appreciate the concern, but it would only make it more difficult if I were to take you with me. I’ve fought a lot of battles before without my gift helping me. I’ll be fine.”

She flipped open the flap on the pack, checking the contents
still inside. “There are things I can do with my ability, things my mother taught me that I know how to do, that you can’t do and may need done. After all, I healed you of those terrible bite wounds, didn’t I?”

“Indeed you did,” Richard admitted. He was grateful that Samantha had been brave enough to do what she had been so fearful of in order to save Kahlan’s life—his, too. “And I deeply appreciate it. But this is different.”

Bending over the chest, digging something out, she looked back over her shoulder at him. “I thought your plan was crazy, but you convinced me that it’s vital that you go in there to try to rescue your friends.” She pulled a knife in a sheath out of the chest, looked it over a moment, and then put it into the pack. “You convinced me that all our lives may depend on this. You were right.

“So if it’s really that vital, which it is, then I have to go along so that I can help make sure you succeed.” She glanced down into the chest. “Do you think we need to take soap?” She snatched it up and stuffed it into the pack. “Never mind, I had better take it.”

“Samantha, it’s simply too dangerous for you to come with me,” he said with calm finality. He was worried about Kahlan and wanted to be on his way to get help for her. Samantha would only slow him down.

He was not in the mood to argue, but he hoped to make Samantha at least understand that he had good reason not to let her come along on such a journey. “You could easily be killed. I could never forgive myself if I let you go with me and something terrible happened to you.”

She shot him an impatient look. “If you don’t accomplish what you are going in there to do, Lord Rahl, then you will die, and if you die, then the Mother Confessor dies, I die, we all die. You said so yourself. You’re putting my safety ahead of saving the Mother Confessor, ahead of saving everyone.

“I can help you and you may need my help. I may be able to use my gift to get you out of trouble. That may be the edge you need in order to rescue your friends and succeed.

“Even if it costs me my life, anything I do that helps you might very well be the very help needed save all the people of my village, along with everyone else. Stop worrying about one young woman and start worrying about how important it is for you to succeed. Think of all those words you read back there, and how important this is.

“You’re a pretty smart man. You should be able to see the sense in what I’m saying.”

Richard started to object. Samantha held up a finger to silence him before he could answer.

“Are you really going to turn down gifted help? That’s your plan? Do without what could make the difference?”

“My plan is to move swiftly, strike fast, and get out. You would slow me down.”

She arched an admonishing eyebrow. “And if you break a leg in a badger hole while moving swiftly, who is going to help you? I’m going with you, Lord Rahl, and that’s all there is to it.”

Richard let out a long sigh. “You make a lot of sense, Samantha, you really do, but I know a lot more about these kinds of things than you. I’ve fought for years in the war with the Old World. You’ve never had to face anything remotely like the dangers out there.”

“Those dangers came here, into my home, looking for me, remember?” She shrugged with one shoulder as she looked away from his eyes. “Not only that, but my mother may be held captive with your friends. You said so yourself. If there is any way for me to help rescue her, too, then I want to go to make sure we get her away from those unholy cannibals.”

Richard had thought that might have had something to do with it. “I know how you feel. I really do. I promise you that
if she is being held captive, I will fight to get her safely out the same as I will fight to get my people out. But I’ll handle it. I can’t allow you to come along.”

She stood and faced him.

“All right. You are the Lord Rahl. You do what you think best.” She planted her small hands on her narrow hips and cocked her head with a serious look. “But you know, of course, that if you don’t let me go with you, I will simply follow you. You can’t stop me from following you. Being separated like that, each of us alone rather than traveling together, will only be more dangerous for both of us. It would be better if we were to travel together. You could do what you can to protect me that way, and in turn I could do what I can to protect you.

“But one way or another, with you, or following in your footsteps, I’m going. That’s all there is to it.”

Richard pressed his lips tight as he appraised the determination in her dark eyes.

“You are one stubborn little girl.”

“Not a girl,” she said with conviction. “Samantha, sorceress serving the Lord Rahl.”

Richard couldn’t help but to smile. “So you are. Well, I guess you give me no choice in the matter, and what you say does have some good points.” He shook his head to himself. “All right, I’ll take you with me.”

Samantha smiled. “You won’t be sorry, Lord Rahl.”

“I hope not, and I hope you won’t be sorry. Let’s hurry and get supplies together for the two of us, then. And I want someone to watch over Kahlan while we’re gone.”

“Ester will watch her.”

Richard nodded. “Why don’t you go get her. Before we leave, we need to tell Ester a little bit of what we learned so that she can warn the others and then tell Kahlan when she wakes.”

“I’ll get Ester,” Samantha said on the way across the room. She turned back from the doorway, looking a bit suspicious. “Don’t forget, if you leave without me, I will simply follow you. I hope you know better than to try to trick me.”

“I told you that you could come with me,” Richard said in an earnest tone. “I keep my word.”

“All right, then.” She looked just a bit sheepish for floating the accusation.

He didn’t want to put her young, inexperienced life in such terrible jeopardy, but he knew that she was right about her potential value to him. With the touch of death lurking within him, he didn’t know how long it would be before it might start to become a real problem that could slow him down. If he didn’t succeed, then everyone was going to be at the mercy of whatever could now escape from the third kingdom.

He could already feel the drag of that sickness making him feel unusually drained and weary. He could feel himself being inexorably drawn toward the darkness of death within. The inevitability of dying had always existed in the background of his mind, but it was a distant reality that most of the time went unnoticed. Now, death felt close, and coldly real.

In a way, that darkness trying to draw him in was beginning
to feel appealing, inviting him to cross the veil of life into the unfeeling eternity of nothingness. It offered the comforting release of all effort, all cares, all fears.

Richard might very well need Samantha’s help before their journey was over. Even if she was a small help, it might be enough to make a difference.

Richard remembered his grandfather once telling him that wizards had to use people. He didn’t like the feeling that he was using Samantha, even though he knew she was willing, and even if she was not really giving him a choice. He knew in his own mind that it was really by his choice, not hers, and that she very well might lose her life on such a dangerous journey. They both might.

“I’ll need a pack as well,” he told her. “I don’t have any supplies with me. Most everything I had, except my sword, was in the wagon.” He checked in his pocket. “Wait, I’ve got a flint and steel for starting a fire, at least.”

Samantha nodded. “I’ll tell the men that we need just about everything else, then.”

“We need traveling food so that we don’t have to spend a lot of time hunting for something to eat, but we should have some small items in case we do need to hunt. Some line and fishhooks, things like that. If someone has a bow, that would be a big help as well.”

“I’m sure that one of the men would be honored to provide a bow and arrows to help in the effort of stopping the threat. We have supplies of food that keeps well for traveling. It doesn’t taste very good, though.”

Richard smiled a little. “It never does.”

“The gifted kept journey supplies—dried meat, fish, hard biscuits and such—in case they ever had to go to warn … well, I was going to say to warn the wizards’ council, but I guess they’re long gone.” She gestured to the hall. “The travel supplies are kept in the second room to the right, in a cabinet.
Take what you think we’ll need. I’ll be back as soon as I get Ester and gather up some of the other things we’ll need.”

When Richard nodded, Samantha dashed out the doorway. After she was gone, he knelt back down beside Kahlan, lifting her limp hand to hold it in his for a moment. He wished she would wake so that he could tell her where he was going and about the threat from the third kingdom. The last thing she knew about had been the threat from Jit.

He watched her steady breathing, watched her peaceful expression. He wished she would wake, but wishing couldn’t make it happen. She was going to need help if she was to live. They both were. He had to try to get that help.

In the quiet stillness before the storm that he knew was about to break, he leaned down and gently kissed her soft lips, hoping it would last him, and that it would not be the last time he ever kissed her. He knew that if she were awake, she would tell him not to worry about her, but to go do what he needed to do.

Knowing that time was short, he rushed to the second room and found the journey supplies. He collected what he thought they could carry without slowing them down, piling it neatly in the front room. In short order, Samantha, carrying a second pack for him and two hooded traveling cloaks over her arm, hurriedly ushered Ester into the outer room.

“Some of the others are getting some supplies together for us,” Samantha told him as she closed the door.

“Lord Rahl, what is it?” Ester asked, looking back and forth between the two of them as she squeezed one hand with the other. “Sammie said it’s important, but she wouldn’t say what it was about. Is the Mother Confessor …?”

“She’s all right for the moment,” Richard said. “But we need your help. Samantha and I have to go—”

“Samantha?” the woman asked with a puzzled look.

“Sammie. You called her Sammie,” Richard said. “I call her
Samantha because I think she is growing into a woman, and she now has to face some very grown-up challenges. Samantha seems a more appropriate name. Like I was saying, I have to go and Samantha is going with me.”

“Going with you? Where?” The woman looked more bewildered than ever. Richard didn’t want to add to her sense of confusion, but he needed her to be aware of what was going on. She needed to be able to let everyone else know of the threat and she needed to tell Kahlan about it when she woke up.

“There is trouble,” Richard told Ester. “You know those two men who were attacking me? The ones you helped save me from?”

Ester nodded. “Of course.”

“Well, those men were cannibals.”

“Cannibals!”

“Yes. Don’t you remember how they were attacking me with their teeth? Biting me?”

“But, but, I don’t—”

“I don’t have time to explain everything. The important part that you need to understand is that this village was put here long ago, in ancient times, to watch over the barrier—”

“The north wall,” Samantha told Ester. She looked over at Richard. “Everyone in the Dark Lands knows it as the north wall.”

Richard nodded. “The north wall. The problem we’re all facing now is that the north wall was keeping some very dangerous threats locked away to prevent them from harming the people of the New World. It has kept everyone safe since the ancient war, the great war thousands of years ago.”

Ester nodded with a troubled look. “I know some about that history. I’ve heard tales since childhood about otherworldly dangers lying in wait beyond the north wall. No one ever knew what was on the other side, but we all knew it was evil.”

“Those tales probably fall well short of the reality. With the
barrier breaking down, what was on the other side is now getting out. What no one knew was that Jit was only the beginning of that evil escaping from beyond that north wall.” Ester leaned forward a little. “What is it that’s on the other side?”

“You remember those creatures that looked like walking corpses that came up here the other night and hurt so many people, killed so many?”

Her knuckles were white. “How could I forget such a thing?”

“They were corpses animated by occult magic from beyond the north wall. They were the walking dead.”

Unable to speak, Ester stiffened with a look of horror.

“The people from beyond that wall aren’t like us,” Richard said. “They’re a kind of cannibal.”

She frowned in confusion. “A kind of cannibal? What do you mean? How can there be different kinds?”

“They eat living people, eat them while they are still alive, to try to steal their souls,” Samantha said.

Ester gasped but said nothing. She looked at a complete loss for words.

“Those from beyond the wall,” Richard told the woman, “attacked my friends who were taking us back to the People’s Palace. They were also the ones who killed Samantha’s father and likely took her mother. I think that my friends and Samantha’s mother may still be alive. We’re going in there, beyond the north wall, to try to get them back out.”