The Third Kingdom (8 page)

“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.

Richard turned from Kahlan’s unconscious form when he heard the sound of feet shuffling out in the passageway. Ester lifted the sheepskin out of the way for Henrik to duck in under it. When the boy saw Richard, he smiled, but the smile clearly betrayed his worry.

Richard returned the smile, trying to convey a sense of his own worry. “Thanks for coming, Henrik. Come, sit by me.”

Henrik cautiously sat on the floor, close to Richard and Sammie. His eyes, reflecting points of candlelight, lingered on Kahlan. He would be dead if not for her coming into Jit’s lair and freeing him.

“Is the Mother Confessor going to be all right, Lord Rahl?”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t know yet. We don’t know enough about exactly what’s wrong with her. I’m hoping that you can fill in some of the blanks and tell me something that will help us to know how to heal her.”

“I don’t know much about sickness and such, but I don’t think you can heal her.”

Richard was taken by surprise. “Why do you say that?”

“Because of what I overheard Zedd and Nicci talking about. They said that they could only hope to help both of you temporarily, until they could get you back to the People’s Palace.”

Puzzled, Sammie scooted a little closer. “The People’s Palace? Really? A palace? Did you hear why?”

Henrik nodded.

Seeing that they would be busy in conversation, Ester took the opportunity to pull the bucket of water and the bandages closer so that she could go back to her work on Kahlan’s wounds.

Richard lifted a hand, stopping Henrik from answering Sammie’s question. “I need you to start at the beginning. Tell me everything that happened. It’s important that we know all the details. Don’t leave anything out. Sometimes the little details have meaning that you may not realize are important, but I would.”

Richard couldn’t help thinking of all the times Zedd had told him the same thing. Zedd always wanted every little detail. Richard felt a little uncomfortable finding himself repeating those same things that he used to find so frustrating when Zedd had insisted on them.

Henrik pushed his disorderly fall of hair back from his eyes. “Well, the Mother Confessor came in and cut me out of the walls made of thorny vines that the Hedge Maid had used to imprison me, but then Jit showed up and captured her right as I was able to escape—but you already know that much of it because I ran into you as I was running out of Jit’s lair.

“You told me that your friends were on their way from the People’s Palace to help you, and you asked me to go and tell them where you and the Mother Confessor were. So I kept running and not too long after that I found the whole column of cavalry accompanying Zedd, Nicci, and Cara. They were pretty impatient to find you both. I told them where you were, and that Jit had the Mother Confessor. I told them that you were going to go in to save her.

“I went with them so I could show them the way. When we finally got to the Hedge Maid’s place we found you and the
Mother Confessor inside. Jit was dead. She looked like her whole body had been torn apart from the inside. There was blood everywhere. It was a frightful sight.

“You and the Mother Confessor were both unconscious and bleeding badly. After Cara and the soldiers cut you out of the thorny vines where the Hedge Maid had you both trapped, Zedd burned that awful place to the ground. It was strange seeing such a fire burning in the middle of a watery swamp. It was a fierce fire. It lit the bottoms of the clouds. There’s not a scrap of Jit’s place left.”

“I’m glad to hear that much of it,” Richard said half to himself. “Then what?”

Henrik’s mouth twisted a little as he frowned in recollection. “The soldiers laid you both in the back of a wagon. Cara was so angry that you and the Mother Confessor were hurt that she looked ready to spit fire herself.”

Richard couldn’t help smiling. “I can only imagine.” His smile faded when he thought about the danger Cara and the rest of them were in. He needed to find them, and soon.

“Go on.”

“With the cavalry leading, we started back, headed for the People’s Palace,” Henrik said. “Zedd and Nicci were tending to the both of you. At first, Zedd was really upset about how badly you were both hurt.

“As they were walking along beside the wagon, Zedd found a little wad of rolled-up cloth in your ear. Nicci found the same thing in Kahlan’s ears. She said ‘No wonder they’re alive.’

“Zedd didn’t understand. Nicci told him that it was said that the scream of a Hedge Maid, if she were ever to open her mouth all the way and let it out, was the sound of the Keeper of the underworld himself. Nicci said that the sound of such a scream would pull the Hedge Maid and anyone who hears it into the underworld. She said that the unleashed scream of a Hedge Maid is death, even to herself, so at a young age, before
they can fully develop a voice capable of calling death into the world of life, a Hedge Maid’s mother sews her lips shut with leather strips imbued with occult powers that hold death back.

“Nicci said that she suspected that you both were alive because you stuffed those wads of cloth in your ears and that shielded you from the full power of that scream.

“Zedd wanted to know how she knew so much about such things. Nicci said that she knew because she had once been a Sister of the Dark serving the Keeper of the underworld. She said that Hedge Maids were vile creatures who use a kind of occult conjuring that is directly linked to the world of the dead.

“She said that such powers were a perversion of the Grace and as such not able to be touched by regular gifted ability. She said that was what made a Hedge Maid so dangerous, that Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor would have no power against her.

“Nicci explained to them, then, how you both were touched not just by the Hedge Maid’s occult conjuring and the things she was doing to you, but more importantly you were both touched by her scream. She said that through that scream you both were touched by death itself and therefore infected with it.”

Sammie gave Richard a look, as if to say “I told you so.”

Richard rolled his hand for Henrik to go on.

“Well, Zedd didn’t exactly believe everything Nicci was telling him about the power of such a scream born in the underworld and death infecting you both.”

“Sound familiar?” Sammie asked under her breath.

Richard gave her a sideways look but didn’t say anything.

Henrik was involved in his story and didn’t hear her. “So Nicci put two fingers on Kahlan’s head. She told Zedd, ‘Here, see for yourself.’ He leaned in and put two fingers on Kahlan’s head next to Nicci’s fingers. She asked if he felt it.

“Zedd said that he felt some kind of frightening, deathly darkness. Nicci told him that what he was feeling was the touch of death from the Hedge Maid that you both carried in you.”

“Just like I said,” Sammie noted.

Richard nodded. “You were right.”

She smiled at the triumph as Henrik continued his story.

“Zedd was really afraid because of what he’d felt in Kahlan. Cara got scared, too. She asked if you both were going to die because you had death hiding in you. Nicci said not if she had anything to do with it.

“Nicci said that you both were only alive because the wads of cloth you had stuffed in your ears blunted the full sounds of death’s call, but it still had infected you both.”

“Did they say how to heal them?” Sammie asked, suddenly excited about the possibility of having an answer to the riddle.

“Nicci said that she thought she could do it, but that it had to be done in something called a containment field.”

Richard felt as if the floor fell out from under him. It was no longer a simple matter of being healed by a gifted person. This was no simple injury. It was going to take more than a simple healing if the real threat within them was to be addressed.

“A containment field?” Sammie’s nose wrinkled up. “What’s a containment field?”

Henrik shrugged with the discomfort of not having the answer for her.

“It’s a place that keeps any foreign spells out while you work on or open up dangerous forms of magic,” Richard told her. “More importantly, though, it also keeps contained those things you unleash—either intentionally or accidentally. Things you wouldn’t want escaping.”

Sammie looked stunned by the description. “Where can we get one of these containment fields? How do you make one?”

“They’re ancient,” Richard said. “As far as I know, they were made ages ago by powerful wizards. I only know of a few, and they’re thousands of years old.”

“There’s one at the People’s Palace,” Henrik said.

“That’s right,” Richard said as he nodded. “The Garden of Life is a containment field.”

Henrik squinted as he tried to recount it all accurately. “Nicci told Zedd that she needed a containment field to shield you and the Mother Confessor while she did what was needed. She said that she had to remove the touch of death lodged within you both.

“She said that because the Grace was corrupted and twisted within you both by that infection, if they tried to remove it outside a containment field, then the call of death would draw the Keeper of the dead to you and both of you would die. She said that they could heal your other injuries, though, and they should do that right away to keep you alive until they could get back to the containment field.”

Sammie was astonished by such exotic tales. “I would love to see a palace. I bet it’s magnificent. I never heard of a containment field before. What does it look like?”

Richard gestured overhead. “This particular one at the People’s Palace is a beautiful garden with a glass roof and—”

“Glass roof!” Sammie’s jaw fell open. “I’ve never even dreamed of such an incredible thing. I’d give anything to see such a grand palace.”

“Maybe someday you can,” Richard said. He was impatient for Henrik to go on with the story. “Then what?”

“Zedd said that they needed to hurry back to the palace, because you were both hurt so bad. He bent in over Kahlan, worried about the terrible wound on her stomach. Bouncing in the wagon made it open up and it was bleeding a lot. While
he started to heal her, Nicci walked along on the other side of the wagon and reached down to start healing you, Lord Rahl.

“Cara was relieved to see that Zedd and Nicci were finally working on healing you both, so she got up into the wagon’s seat and sat next to her husband, General Meiffert. She helped pull me up to sit next to her while Zedd and Nicci worked.”

“So why didn’t they finish healing us?” Richard asked. “What happened to everyone?”

Henrik looked like he wished he didn’t have to tell that part of the story.