Before the floor reached him, the blackness closed in and shut the world away.
When Richard woke, he didn’t recognize his surroundings. He was lying on a woven straw mat in a windowless room softly lit by candles clustered along recessed shelves that had been meticulously carved into walls of the same stone as the rest of the cave village of Stroyza. The surface of the walls themselves had been flattened and finely smoothed, mimicking the look of plaster. From what he had seen of the rest of the excavated cave system, these were luxurious quarters.
Kahlan lay on another mat close beside him. She was still unconscious and didn’t respond when he touched her shoulder. To his relief, he saw that she was breathing more evenly and easily than she had been before.
He was surprised to see that her clothes were no longer soaked with blood. Not only were her clothes clean, the rips, tears, and cuts in them had been carefully sewn up so that it almost looked like the shirt had an embroidered design on it. Most importantly, though, she was no longer covered with cuts and hundreds of puncture wounds. From what he could see, it appeared that they had all been healed.
He was relieved by that much of it, if not by the fact that she was still unconscious.
He looked down, then, and saw that his own clothes were just as clean as Kahlan’s. Checking his arm confirmed his suspicion that the horrific bite wound had been healed. Running his fingers over the spot revealed only a slight swelling where the wound had been. A great deal of the pain, too, was gone, though he could still feel a lingering ache in the muscle. He was able to sense a hint of a tingling sensation that he recognized as the residual effect of having been healed.
Even though his outward wounds seemed to all have been healed, he could still feel the awful, dark weight of a grim, inner sickness that was the touch of death left there by the Hedge Maid. That merciless weight was always there, trying to pull him down into its darkness. He knew that the same call of death itself still lay within Kahlan as well.
Richard sat up, looking around. The place was bigger than Ester’s place, where they had been at first. The carpets were thicker, better made, and the colors in them were a little brighter than others he had seen. There were a few chairs and a table that, while not fancy, were well made. The door was wooden rather than a simple hanging. By the way the walls looked square and true, as well as the way they had been smoothed, he suspected that it was the home of someone important.
When she saw him sit up, realizing that he was awake, Ester rose from a bench to the side. “Don’t try to stand, yet, Lord Rahl. How are you feeling?”
“Better.” Richard blinked up at her in confusion. “What’s going on? Where are we?”
“We’re in the home of our sorceress.” She pressed her lips tight with grief. “Well, it used to be her home, before …” She reconsidered and then swept a hand around. “Actually, I guess it still is the home of a sorceress. Sammie still lives here, and she is the only sorceress we have left. It was her parents’ home, but now I suppose it’s her home.”
Richard looked around. “Where is she?”
Ester gestured to a door to the back of the room. A few simple designs carved around the outside of the door were a luxury in a village that existed in such a harsh place.
Carved in the center of the door, though, was a Grace, the design that represented Creation, life, and out beyond the bounds of the world of life the eternity of the underworld. Radiating out through the world of life and the underworld beyond were lines representing the gift.
Such a design would not be a luxury, especially not in the home of a sorceress. A Grace was often used as a serious tool of the gifted, and often served as a symbolic reminder to the gifted of their duty, their purpose, their calling. It was never drawn or used merely for the purpose of decoration.
“Sammie is resting. Poor girl, she was exhausted.”
“Exhausted? Then she helped the injured people? She healed all the people who had been hurt?”
“Yes, yes, she worked hard healing people,” Ester said as she waved off his concern, seeming eager to change the subject. “Then she said that she needed to heal you both, as best she could, anyway. I told her that she needed to rest before she took up such a demanding task, but she insisted that it couldn’t wait any longer. She said that she had to do what she could for you and the Mother Confessor right away or you both would slip beyond what help she would be able to give.”
Richard glanced over at Kahlan. He had known that she was in grave trouble. He also knew that Sammie couldn’t heal everything that was wrong with her. That healing would take someone with more ability and experience than Sammie, and it would take a containment field. He was thankful, though, for what Sammie had been able to do to help Kahlan.
He knew that he needed to find Zedd and Nicci, and then they had to get back to the People’s Palace before it was too late if death’s touch was to be removed from both him and Kahlan.
What he didn’t know was how much longer they could survive with that poison inside them. Kahlan, especially, was in urgent need of such help. She wouldn’t be able to survive in this unconscious state for long. Without food and water her condition would only worsen.
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