Page 20 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

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 story about how the wizard you know—”

“My grandfather, Zedd.”

Sammie nodded. “Yes, him and the sorceress. Once I knew that they were healing you even though they saw the same thing in you both that I saw, I knew that I could at least try to do the same.”

Richard was still suspicious. “You weren’t afraid?”

Sammie’s little nose scrunched up. “Yes, but I knew that it had to be done, so I tried not to think about how afraid I was and just concentrate on what I needed to do.”

“What about Kahlan. Why isn’t she awake like I am, if her injuries are healed?”

Sammie cast a brief, worried glance at Kahlan. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I did everything I could. The presence of death seems to be stronger in her. That’s something I can’t heal and it was harder to get around it in her in order to work on what I could heal. Death is casting a darker shadow over her than you.”

Richard nodded as he heaved a worried sigh. Even Zedd and Nicci had said that they couldn’t remove that dark force within her without being back at the palace. Considering the difficulty, Sammie had done well to be able to do as much as she had done.

“Thank you for doing what you did for her.” He hoped it would be enough to keep Kahlan alive until he could find Zedd and Nicci, and then get them all back to the palace.

“Keep in mind that I’m not an expert in such things, Lord Rahl, but I think that with her injuries healed as best as I could do, and her not losing any more blood, it may just take some more rest for the healing to complete enough for her to wake. You’ve been asleep a long time. I’m hoping that she, too, will wake up once she has had some more rest. She was hurt worse than you, so she may just need some more sleep before she wakes.”

Richard wanted to believe that was true, but he didn’t know if it was just wishful thinking. “What about the others? All the people who were hurt. Did you heal them first?”

Sammie was a long moment in answering. “Some of them.”

Richard looked up. “Why didn’t you heal them all, all the ones who could be healed, anyway?”

“Because had I not stopped so that I could heal you, you would have died. The Mother Confessor is in more serious trouble because that awful shadow of death is a lot stronger in her, but you were in more immediate danger from your injuries and loss of blood. You were in danger of dying from the things that I could heal. I had to make a choice.”

Richard’s heart sank. “You mean, you had to let some of your people die to instead save me?”

Sammie swallowed. “Yes.”

Richard’s brow drew tight with concern. “Those were your people, Sammie. Why would you abandon them to heal us? To heal strangers?”

Sammie sat on the chair close beside him. She put some of her weight on her hands beside her small hips and rocked a little at the thought of how to answer his question.

“I’m only one person,” she said in a quiet tone. “I worked on those I could save, worked as fast as I could, did what I could. Some people were going to die no matter what. I knew that if I spent the night trying to save some of those, they would still die in the end and then others that I might have saved would also die.

“There were many people needing healing. There wasn’t enough time to heal all of them, even if I would not have healed you. I was never going to be able to save them all.

“This is the second night since the attack. You slept that night of the attack, all day yesterday, and most of last night. It will be dawn soon. That first night, after you had ended the threat and the battle was over, you passed out.

“I had you brought here while I stayed out there and healed a number of people. More needed healing. Some people died as they waited, died while I healed others that I thought had a better chance. Some had wounds that are beyond my skill. I knew I had to leave them. Ester and others comforted them as best they could.

“Throughout the night, between healing people, I checked on you and the Mother Confessor to make sure that you both hadn’t gotten any worse and that you could wait a little longer for me. There were so many who were hurt. Some not badly, so I left them to people like Ester to help with what they could do. I worked on those in more need for as long as I could. But then it could wait no longer.

“I had to choose who I was going to help, you and the Mother Confessor, or some of the others still waiting. I knew that if I helped you, then some of those I couldn’t get to would die. But I also knew that if I didn’t do what I could for you and the Mother Confessor, you both would die that night.

“I had to decide. I decided to heal you while I still could.”

Richard ran a hand back over his face, distressed to hear that she had been faced with such a choice, that saving his and Kahlan’s life had cost others theirs.

“I never had to make a decision like that before,” she said. “My mother never talked to me about how to make such a choice. Such a thing never came up. I don’t know—maybe she wouldn’t have known what to do, either. There was no one else who could tell me what to do. All I knew was that I had to figure it out on my own.”

Richard had made such gut-wrenching decisions before. They left scars that never entirely healed.

“I decided that I had to heal you while I still could,” she finally said. “You saved a lot of people that night. I know that, in reality, you saved us all. Most of the people here would have been killed that night—we all could have been killed—if not for you being here. You are the one. You need to live. By helping you, I am helping many more people here to live than just those I could have healed.”

She had said that about him when she had first met him. Richard frowned. “What do you mean, I’m the one?”

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Sammie shrugged uncomfortably as her gaze drifted away. “You are the one I chose.”

He knew that wasn’t what she had meant. She was evading the answer, but he didn’t press her on it. She would tell him when she was ready.

“I understand, Samantha.”

She frowned as her eyes turned up to him. “Why did you call me that?”

“Because,” he said, “Sammie is what you were called when you were a child. You made a very difficult, adult choice. You are becoming a woman, now. You used your head and made choices like a woman, not like a girl. I think Samantha is a more fitting name for you, if you don’t mind me being so forward.”

Samantha began to beam with pride at the unexpected acknowledgment. “Thank you, Lord Rahl. I’ve always wanted to be called Samantha—it sounds so much more grown-up—but to everyone else I have always been seen as Sammie. It’s hard when you’re still a girl trying to find out how to be a woman. You’re the first one to see me as Samantha. Thank you.”

Richard bowed his head in a single nod.

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