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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.”
CHAPTER
35
“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.”
