The Third Kingdom (7 page)

Sammie was nodding as he spoke. “That’s what it felt like. When I’ve healed other people, though, I wasn’t pulled in like that. This was stronger than I’ve ever felt before.”

“That’s most likely because they weren’t as badly hurt. It’s the need that draws you toward it. The more serious the trouble, the stronger the need, so the more powerfully it pulls you in. You don’t need to be afraid of that sensation. From what I know, that’s not unusual.”

“That wasn’t the frightening part,” Sammie said as she cast a worried look at Kahlan. Her lower lip started quivering again. She seemed transfixed, unable to look away from Kahlan lying so still on the lambskin.

Richard put a finger under Sammie’s chin and turned her face back toward his. “Go on. Tell me what you saw.”

Sammie knitted her fingers together as she frowned while recalling the experience. “When I started slipping down into her, I began to be drawn in faster and faster. It took me deeper than I had expected. I realized that I wasn’t trying to go down into her, it was just that something kept pulling me down. It was like losing my footing as I slid down a steep, slippery slope.”

“I told you, that’s pretty normal.”

“That’s what I thought at first. But I soon realized that I wasn’t simply going down into her need the way I have with others I’ve healed. I wasn’t just being pulled in. I was being drawn toward something.”

“Toward something? Toward what?” Richard asked.

“Something dark. Something dark and sinister. As I got closer, I heard voices.”

That was something Richard had not expected. “Voices? What kind of voices?”

“At first I didn’t know what the sound was. At first it was a distant buzzing. As I sank ever faster toward the darkness within her, I realized that what I was hearing were screams.”

Richard frowned. “Screams? I don’t understand. What do you mean, you were hearing screams? How could you hear screams?”

Sammie stared off, as if experiencing it again. “It was like a thousand screams all melted together.” She shook her head at her own description, or maybe in an effort to escape the memory. She looked back up at him. “No, not like a thousand. Like a million. Like a million million. It was like an infinite number of screams welling up from a dark place. They were the most horrific, terrifying, anguished screams you can imagine. The kind of screams that seemed as if they might sear the flesh from your bones.”

Richard couldn’t help glancing back down at Kahlan. “Did you see anything?” he asked. “Did you see where these screams were coming from?”

Sammie twisted her hands, bending her fingers as she tried to find words. “I, I was being pulled toward darkness. But then I saw that it wasn’t darkness, exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was more like a writhing mass of forms. That was where the screams were coming from. A turning, churning, tumbling mass of spirits that were all wriggling, struggling, squirming, and screaming at once.”

Richard stood stunned, unable to imagine what was going on.

Sammie looked frustrated trying to come up with the right words for what she had seen. “I’m sorry that I can’t explain it very well, but when I saw it, felt it, I knew that it was death I was seeing. It was death itself. I knew it, that’s all.”

Richard made himself take a breath. “That certainly sounds frightening, and while I can’t explain it, that doesn’t mean that it was death you were seeing.”

Sammie tilted her head to the side as she frowned up at him. “But it was, Lord Rahl. I know it was.”

Richard was impatient to get the young sorceress back to the task of healing Kahlan, but he reminded himself that he had to be understanding of not only her age and inexperience, but her fears. This was all new to her, and her mother was not there to help her. He suspected that she was simply misinterpreting the pain resulting from the seriousness of Kahlan’s injuries.

“Sammie, it was probably the terrible pain, the profound hurt within Kahlan, that you were encountering. I’ve healed grievously injured people before, so I know how frightening it can be. Being immersed in their suffering is a dark and daunting experience. Time seems to stop. The world of life can seem distant. Lost in that strange place with their pain, you know that what is hurting them could kill them, and only you can stop it. You know that they’re facing death if you can’t help them.”

“No,” Sammie insisted as she shook her head. “When I looked through that shimmering green curtain, I knew I was looking beyond the veil into the world of the dead.”

Richard froze still as stone. The room seemed too quiet, too small, too hot.

“What did you say?”

Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “When I looked beyond that curtain, I knew that I was looking beyond the veil into—”

“You said it was green.”

Sammie’s brow bunched as she fought back new tears. “That’s right.”

“Why would you say it’s green?”

Perplexed, she frowned up at him. “Because it was. It was like a shimmering green curtain of fog. It rippled, brighter and darker, something like a wispy, sheer, transparent green curtain moving in a breath of breeze. It’s kind of hard to describe.

“Beyond that awful veil of green I saw what looked to me like a churning mass of spirits. They were all screaming as if in terrible agony. That was the sound I heard. Some of the forms ripped apart as they screamed, while yet more of them constantly boiled up from the blackness below to take the place of those that disintegrated, in turn adding their ghastly screams to the sea of souls, all fusing into one, long, hopeless cry.

“Some of them saw me and tried to grab for me, but they couldn’t reach through that green veil. Others beckoned me to come to them instead. It was death calling to me, trying to pull me in.”

Richard turned and stared down at Kahlan. He had encountered the underworld a number of times. The veil before the world of the dead was always an eerie green color.

He slowly sank to his knees beside the unconscious form of the woman he loved more than life itself. “Dear spirits, what is going on?”

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.