Page 57 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

CHAPTER

53

Kahlan woke with a start.

She heard a confusing commotion. As she tried to focus her attention, she became dimly aware of the muffled sound of distant voices. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, only the anxiety in their tone.

She blinked at the smear of blurry candlelight. Her mouth was so dry her tongue felt swollen and stuck to the roof of her mouth. She swallowed, trying to work up some saliva. She was too weak to lift much more than a finger.

Though the room was probably softly lit by candles, she still had to squint because the light from the flames seemed so bright to her. After what seemed like an eternity of bewildering darkness, the light hurt her eyes.

She realized that she was lying on a mat on the floor in a small, simple room. She didn’t recognize the place. She had no idea at all where she might be. She couldn’t even guess.

The fat candles were clustered together on shelves that looked to have been set back into simple plastered walls. The floor was spread with thick carpets with colorful designs. She saw a few chairs and a table that, while not fancy, were nicely made. A wooden door off across the room stood closed. As her vision began to clear, she saw that there were no windows, so she had no way of telling if it was day or night.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kahlan saw a middle-aged woman, with short, straight hair and wearing a simple gray dress, sitting on a low chest not far to the side. The woman’s head was turned toward the muffled sound of voices in the distance. With her attention diverted, she didn’t realize that Kahlan had opened her eyes.

She was glad to see the woman distracted by the same voices that Kahlan heard. Kahlan thought that most likely meant she wasn’t imagining the voices and they weren’t part of the dark world she seemed to have been trapped in for so long. She’d heard the frightening whisper of voices in that world, too. They had beckoned from somewhere beyond the darkness.

Kahlan wiggled her tingling fingers, working feeling back into them. She rolled a stiff wrist. On the second attempt she managed to sit up a little, enough, at least, to get up onto her elbows. She had to lean back on her hands for support as she rested a moment before she was able to finally sit up the rest of the way.

She leaned forward, bracing herself with one hand so she could use her other to feel her stomach where she had been cut by Jit. She expected it to hurt. She expected to find a horrible, bloody wound. Instead, she found a tidy seam sewing her shirt closed. She didn’t find a wound. She looked around, but didn’t see Richard.

As she turned her head, searching, she saw another door at the back of the room. While there were simple designs carved around the outside of the door, in the center a Grace had been carefully carved into the wood. It was somewhat comforting to see the Grace. Her anxiety lowered a notch at seeing the familiar symbol depicting the ordered nature of the universe.

Kahlan had a pounding headache. Worse, though, was that she was confused and couldn’t make sense of anything. It was frustrating that she couldn’t put the pieces she knew into proper order, frustrating that there was so much that seemed missing between the parts she did remember, frustrating that she didn’t know why so much was missing. Fragments of things—voices, images—floated in complete disarray.

It felt as if she had been on some long and difficult journey, but she didn’t properly remember any of it. It seemed like maybe she had been having terrible dreams for ages as she lay unable to wake from an endless ordeal. It was hard to tell what was real and what was still the strange, echoing, blurry dreamworld that wouldn’t quite let her go.

“Please,” she managed to say in a hoarse voice, “water…”

The woman sitting on the bench to the side jumped. She put a hand to her chest, panting in surprise.

“You gave me a start.”

“Sorry” was all Kahlan could get out. Her tongue felt thick and wouldn’t move the way she wanted it to.

“At last,” the woman said as she rushed in close to kneel at Kahlan’s side. “I was so worried waiting for you to wake. But Sammie—well, Samantha, I guess it is now—she said you would wake. And you did. She was right.”

Kahlan weakly lifted a hand, laying it on the woman’s arm. “Please … water … please.”

The woman threw up her hands. “Oh! I’m sorry! Yes, water. Right here. I have some right here. Let me get it.”

Kahlan saw her rush to the table and pour water from a pitcher into a mug. Carrying the mug of precious water in both hands, she hurried back to Kahlan.

She gently laid a hand on Kahlan’s back to steady her as she put the mug to her lips. “Easy, now. Don’t try to go too fast at first. You’ve been asleep for quite a while. Sammie—I mean Samantha—managed to make you drink when you were still asleep, but I fear it wasn’t nearly enough for how long—”

“Who?” Kahlan asked, confused by the woman’s babbling.

“Sorry. Not important at the moment. Take a sip. Go on, but go slow.”

The water was more luxuriously delicious than anything she had ever tasted. Kahlan managed to gulp down a few swallows before the woman pulled the mug away to slow her down. “Easy. Go easy.”

Kahlan nodded to earn the mug back. The second time she sipped slower, rolling the water around her mouth, relishing the wetness. She was able to swallow properly.

Kahlan noticed that the woman’s eyes kept turning toward the door every time she heard the voices in the distance.

When she turned back, she saw Kahlan looking at her. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mother Confessor. I’m Ester. Richard asked me to watch over you until you woke up.”

“Richard,” Kahlan said with sudden relief and excitement. She glanced around, looking for his things. “He’s here? Where is he?”

“No, I’m sorry. He and Sammie—”

“Samantha.”

The woman let out a bit of a giggle. “Yes, Samantha.”

“Who is Samantha?”

Kahlan was relieved that with the water her voice was finally starting to work. She thought that she almost sounded like herself.

“Samantha is our sorceress. We had more. But now she’s the only one we have, since her father was murdered and her mother vanished.”

Kahlan put a hand over her face in confusion as she closed her eyes for a moment to rest them from the light. She felt like she might still be in a dreamworld where nothing in the swirl of the things she was hearing made any sense.

“Forgive me, Mother Confessor, I’m talking too fast and only confusing you.”

Kahlan nodded. “Richard?”

“He and Samantha had to go.”

/> Kahlan’s heart sank. “Go? Go where?”

Ester took a deep breath. “Well, it’s a long story, Mother Confessor. You’ve only just now woken up. I don’t want to throw it all at you at once. Sip the water. I should get you some soup. You look like skin and bones. You need to eat.”

Kahlan looked down at herself. She did look to have lost some weight, but not a lot.

“The Hedge Maid had me…” she said, trying to orient herself in the world, trying to understand how she had come to be in this strange, stone room.

“Jit,” Ester said.

Kahlan looked up. “Yes, that’s right. Jit.” She squinted, trying to remember. “Richard … I think Richard was there…”

Ester was nodding. “Yes, he told us that he went there to get you away from that awful woman. The Hedge Maid was an evil creature. Unfortunately, Jit captured Richard as well, but then he killed her—”

“Richard killed Jit?” Kahlan put a hand to her forehead, trying to remember such an important event, but she couldn’t.

“Yes, but, but there was trouble in that.”

Kahlan shook her head. “Trouble? I’m confused.” It all felt like so long ago. “I’m sorry, Ester, but I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t know who you are or where I am or how I got here.”

Ester looked toward the door. The voices were getting closer. Besides the tension in Ester’s face, Kahlan, too, recognized that the voices did not sound friendly. She thought she heard a man demanding something.

Ester finally turned back. “Lord Rahl—and Henrik—”

“Henrik.” She remembered Henrik. “Is he here? He’s all right, then?”

“Yes, yes,” Ester said as she nodded. “Lord Rahl and Henrik told us most of what has happened. Not all of it, I expect, but much of it. Lord Rahl had to go, though, so he wanted me to explain it to you—to let you know what had happened.”

“Go? Where did he go?” That didn’t sound like Richard, leaving her somewhere when she was unconscious. “Why would Richard leave me here?”

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