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As they all hesitantly returned to their feet, Richard managed a smile for the boy. “Henrik, I’m relieved to see that you are all right.”
The man holding Kahlan eased her limp form down off his shoulder. Several people rushed in to help.
Ester quickly introduced a few of the people gathered around, but then cut it short. “We need to get them inside. They are both badly hurt. We need to see to their injuries.”
The small crowd, shadowed by several cats, followed behind as Ester hurriedly led them back into one of the broader tunnels. There were a number of rooms built into natural clefts and crags along the way back into the cavern. Many of the rooms and network of tunnels had been excavated from the semisoft rock. The faces of some of the rooms had mortared stone walls filling in the gaps. Some places had wooden doors while others were covered with animal skins to create what looked to be a community of small homes.
The honeycomb of dwellings throughout the warren of burrows looked like a grim existence, but Richard supposed that the safety of the place high up within the mountain was comfort enough. The clothes worn by the people around him also spoke to the austere nature of existence in their small village. They all wore similar types of crudely made fabric that blended in with the color of the stone.
Ester snatched the sleeve of a woman ahead of her and leaned closer. “Get Sammie.”
The woman frowned back over her shoulder. “Sammie?”
Ester confirmed it with a firm nod. “These two need to be healed.”
“Sammie?” the woman repeated.
“Yes, hurry. There is no time to waste.”
“But—”
“Go,” Ester commanded with a flick of her hand. “Hurry. I will take them to my place.”
As the woman rushed off to get the help Ester had called for, the crowd all funneled into a smaller passageway. Finally arriving at a doorway covered over with a heavy hanging made of sheepskin, Ester and several of the people with them ducked inside. Once inside the small room one of the men hurried to light dozens of candles. In contrast to the simple wooden table, three chairs, and chest to the side, crude but colorful carpets covered the floor. Pillows made of unadorned material similar to the material their clothes were made from provided the only other seating.
Ester directed the men carrying Kahlan to the side of the room, where they gently laid her down on a lambskin backed with a row of plain, well-used pillows. The men with Richard helped ease him down to sit on the floor against several pillows.
“We need to tend to your wounds right away,” Ester told Richard. She turned to some of the women who had followed them in. “Get some warm water and rags. We will need a poultice made up. Bring bandages as well as needle and thread.”
As the small cluster of the women hurried back out of the modest quarters to do her bidding, Ester knelt beside Richard. With a gentle hand she carefully lifted his arm and loosened the tourniquet so she could look under the blood-soaked bandage.
“I don’t like the color of your arm,” she said. “These bite wounds must be washed out. Some of them need to be stitched up.” She glanced up at his eyes. “You also need more talented help.”
Richard knew that she meant he needed a gifted person to heal him. He nodded as he leaned to the side, carefully pulling strands of hair back from Kahlan’s face so that he could press the inside of his wrist against her forehead. She felt feverish.
“I can wait,” he said. “I want you to take care of the Mother Confessor first.”
When he looked back at Ester, apprehension tightened her features. She was clearly worried that he was the one who needed the immediate help.
Richard softened his tone. “I’m grateful for all you and your people have done, but please, I want you to help my wife first. You’re right that my bite wounds need to be tended to, but she’s unconscious and obviously in worse trouble. Maybe my wounds could be sewn and bandaged while your gifted person sees to helping the Mother Confessor first. Please, I’m worried about her condition. I need to know that she will be all right.”
Ester studied his eyes briefly and then smiled a bit. “I understand.” She turned and flicked a hand. “Peter, please go make sure that Sammie is on her way.”
CHAPTER
6
Richard turned from Kahlan when he heard people approaching out in the corridors. The first woman who ducked in under the sheepskin covering the doorway was carrying a bucket of water. A few of the other women brought in another bucket of water along with bandages and other supplies.
He was surprised to see some older women enter next, ushering in a wisp of a girl only beginning to blossom into womanhood. A long mass of black hair framed her small face. Her dark eyes were wide with wonder as she stood stiffly among the sheltering cluster of women. The smooth skin of her narrow face set back in among the dark mass of curly locks looked pale in the candlelight.
Ester rose up and held a hand back down toward Richard. “Sammie, this is Lord Rahl. The woman lying there is his wife, the Mother Confessor. They’ve both been badly hurt and need your help.”
The girl’s dark eyes briefly turned down to take a look at Kahlan before they turned back up at Ester. At Ester’s urging, the girl hesitantly stepped forward. She lifted out the sides of her long skirt and performed an awkward curtsy before Richard.
Richard could easily see that she was not simply shy; she was terrified of him. Being from such a small, isolated place, she probably rarely saw strangers, much less strangers such as this. Despite the pain he was in and his worry for Kahlan, he made himself smile warmly to reassure her.
“Thank you for coming, Sammie.”
She nodded as she hugged her slender arms to herself. Without answering, she moved back against the shelter of the older women.
“Sammie, would you excuse us for just a moment, please?” He looked up at Ester. “May I speak with you privately?”
Ester apparently knew why he wanted to talk to her alone. She forced a quick smile in answer before shepherding the small group to the doorway. They paused, looking confused, but finally obliged as Ester gently shooed them out. Once they were gone, Ester pulled the sheepskin down across the doorway.
“Lord Rahl, I know that—”
“She’s a child.”
The woman straightened her back and clasped her hands as she took a deep breath. She stepped closer and chose her words carefully.
“Yes, Lord Rahl, and though she is only just fifteen years, she’s a gifted child. Right now that’s what you both need. I can tend to cuts and scrapes, treat fevers with herbs, sometimes I can even set a broken bone”—she gestured to Kahlan—“but I don’t know how to help her. I don’t even have any idea what’s wrong with her. Yes, Sammie is young, but she is not without knowledge and abilities.”
Richard remembered when he
had been as young as Sammie. He had thought that he was all grown up and had the world mostly figured out. While he had known more than most adults gave him credit for, as he had grown older he had come to realize that despite how much he did know, he knew less than he thought he did, mostly because he never appreciated how much more there was to learn. Now, as an adult looking back on someone that age, despite how much they might know, he understood how limited a young person’s scope of the world really was.
That age of early confidence was something like a false dawn. The real thing was coming, yet despite being close at hand it was still not quite there. And even when it did begin to arrive, there was always more to learn. He remembered Zedd telling him that old age meant that the only thing he really knew was that he would never know it all, much less know enough.
Putting Kahlan’s life into the hands of someone with such limited experience was more than a little disconcerting to him.
“But she’s a child,” Richard said softly so that those outside wouldn’t hear. “This is a difficult and complex task even for someone experienced in such things.”
Ester bowed her head respectfully. “Lord Rahl, if you don’t want Sammie to try, that is of course your decision and I will abide by it. I will do my best to sew up the worst of your wounds and tend to other injuries as I know how. I can try to guess at what the Mother Confessor might need and prepare some herbs and such that might help her.”
The woman lifted her head to look him in the eye. “But I think you know as well as I do that it isn’t going to be enough. You both need gifted healing.
“If you don’t want Sammie to try to do that bigger task of what is needed, then all I can suggest is that you will have to travel elsewhere in the hope of finding someone more to your liking. It would be a difficult journey. In the Dark Lands there is no telling how far you will have to go to find such a person. I can tell you that there are not many with such abilities as you need. Not many I would trust, anyway.
