black cat ducked in under the sheepskin and casually followed the girl into the room. The cat sat off to the side, lifting a hind leg as it licked the glossy fur on its tummy.
Sammie stood stiffly just inside the room, looking too fearful to approach. Her flawless skin laid over her immature features not yet fully emerged made her almost look like a statue carved of the smoothest marble.
Richard held out his good hand and waggled his fingers in invitation. “Please, Sammie, come sit here beside me.”
When Sammie shuffled closer, he gently took her hand and urged her to kneel down beside him. She sat back on her heels, wary to get too close. Her big eyes sparkled in the candlelight as they remained fixed on him. If she only knew that he probably had more to fear than she did.
Once Ester saw that the girl was in his hands, she used her foot to slide the bucket of water across the floor with her as she carried the bandages and other supplies over to Kahlan, where she squatted down and hurriedly began cleaning the worst of Kahlan’s wounds.
“I’m very sorry to hear about your father and that your mother is missing,” Richard said.
Sammie’s eyes welled up with tears at the mention of her parents. “Thank you, Lord Rahl.” Her voice was as thin and timid as the rest of her, and it carried the lonely, painful tone of inconsolable grief.
“Maybe if you can help us, then when I’m able to, I can help find your mother.”
Sammie’s brow twitched. She looked confused. “You are the ruler of the D’Haran Empire.” She wiped the tears from under her eyes. “Why would you be concerned with helping someone from the little village of Stroyza?”
Richard shrugged. “I didn’t become a leader because I wanted to rule people. I became a leader because I wanted to help protect our people from harm. If one of the people I’m sworn to protect is hurt or in danger, no matter who they are, then that is my concern.”
She looked perplexed. “Hannis Arc rules all the Dark Lands, including our village. I’ve never met him, but I’ve never heard anyone say that he is concerned about protecting us. Far from it; I’ve heard that he only cares about prophecy.”
“I’ve heard the same thing,” Richard said. “I don’t share his concern for prophecy. I believe we make our own future. In part that’s what brought me here. The Mother Confessor and I were both hurt while making sure that a terrible prophecy did not come true and harm our people. Our free will, not prophecy, made the ultimate difference in what happened.”
The girl glanced at Kahlan out of the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry about your wife being hurt.” Her big eyes turned back to Richard. “My mother often said that I was gifted, but it was up to me, not fate, to make something of it.”
“Wise advice. And did she teach you about using your gift?”
A bit of the tension went out of the girl’s bony shoulders. “All my life she taught me things about my gift, but mostly in little ways.”
“Little things are a good place to start. Larger understanding is built on little things. We put those little things we learn together into larger concepts.”
With a thumb, Sammie smoothed a fold in her dress along the length of her thigh. “She was just starting to teach me more, to teach me about using our calling to heal. She said that I was old enough to start learning more. But I’m still only a young sorceress. My ability is nothing compared to my mother’s gift, and especially nothing compared to one such as yours must be, Lord Rahl.”
Richard couldn’t help but to smile. “I didn’t even find out that I had the gift until I was a lot older than you are now. No one taught me about it as I was growing up. I imagine that with all your mother taught you, you must know more about the gift than even I do.”
Her smooth brow bunched skeptically. “Really?”
“Really. I’ve since used my ability, but in a different way than most gifted people. I’ve both destroyed and healed with my ability, but I’ve done it through instinct and desperate need, through letting my gift guide me, rather than from anything I was taught.”
Sammie sat over on her hip as she thought it over. The black cat strolled over to rub against the girl before padding on silent paws toward Kahlan.
“That must be frightening to have the gift and not know how to use it, not know how to control it.”
Despite the pain he was in and his worry for Kahlan, he couldn’t help letting out a small ripple of laughter. “You don’t know the half of it.”
She regarded him with an unreadable look. “But still, you must be able to use your power well enough. After all, you are the Lord Rahl. I’ve heard it said that the people of D’Hara are the steel against steel so that you might be the magic against magic.”
Richard didn’t tell her that at the moment his power didn’t work.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the cat cautiously stretched forward to smell Kahlan’s boot. The little black nose glided along, hovering just above her leg and then up along her arm, not quite touching her skin. The cat abruptly drew back. Its lips curled with a hiss that bared sharp little teeth. Richard thought that it must not like a stranger who smelled of blood being among them.
“Are all the cats that live here black?” Richard asked Sammie.
She looked up at him from under her brow. “They are when they need to be.”
Richard frowned. “What does that mean?”
“In the dark they are all black,” she said, cryptically.
Ester, kneeling beside Kahlan, flapped her rag at the cat, chasing it away. Ears laid back, the cat scurried out of the room.
Richard looked back at Sammie. He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he had more important things on his mind. He turned the conversation to the matter at hand. “So what do you know about healing?”
Sammie’s brow twitched as she considered her answer. “My mother was just starting to teach me how to heal people. She talked to me about the fundamentals and then had me help with small things. I’ve only done simple healing—cuts and scrapes, a sick stomach, headaches, rashes. Things like that. She guided me in how to let my ability go down into a person to feel the trouble within them.”
Richard nodded. “I’ve experienced that when I’ve healed people.” He stared off into grim memories. “On occasion, because the need was so great, I’ve had to let myself go so far down into a person that it felt as if I lost who I was as I sank into their soul to lift their pain away and take it into myself.”
“I’ve never gone that deep.” Sammie looked uneasy. “I don’t know that I’d ever be able to go down into a person’s soul.”
“If you’ve healed people then I suspect you have, even if you didn’t realize it,” Richard said. “That’s how it works. While healing, you are venturing down into the essence, in other words the soul, of who they are. At least, that’s how it works for me.”
“That sounds … frightening.”
“Not if you really care about helping them.”
She watched his eyes for a moment as if they held some deep secret. “If you say so, Lord Rahl.”
Richard looked over at Kahlan lying not far away. Ester, her face set in a frown of focused concentration, carefully cleaned and inspected cuts along Kahlan’s arms.
“I’ve healed Kahlan before,” Richard said, “but I’m not strong enough to do it now and I’m terribly worried for her.”
Sammie’s gaze left Kahlan to wander over some of his more serious bite wounds. Her worry about the task he was asking of her was clearly evident in her tense expression.
“I don’t know how deeply I may have gone into a person’s essence, but