feared she didn’t have the strength needed for such a difficult task, to say nothing of the experience to accomplish it.
He reminded himself that he had healed people without any experience or training. He supposed that in that respect Sammie was more knowledgeable than he was. Still, it was Kahlan, and he couldn’t seem to quiet his worry, or his racing heart.
The girl’s eyes rolled back in her head as her eyelids slid closed. Still holding Kahlan between her hands, Sammie stretched her arms out straight as her head tilted back in the effort of calling for the needed strength.
Richard had learned some time back that he had the unique ability to see the gift radiating power around sorceresses. He could see that aura of power around Sammie as she opened herself up to her gift. The aura looked like shimmering, colored distortions to the air around her, something like the heat waves above a campfire.
Richard had seen the auras of gifted people before. It was reassuring to see such a marker of gifted power glimmering in the air around Sammie. While Sammie’s aura wasn’t nearly as strong as many he had seen, and especially not as powerful as that of a sorceress such as Nicci, it was definitely the gift he was seeing warming the glow around the girl.
He hoped that power would be enough.
Richard listened to the soft hiss of the candles as Sammie leaned forward again and bowed her head in concentration. He knew what she was experiencing, what it felt like to let yourself dissolve down into the person you were trying to help, to immerse yourself in their being, to be intimately close to their innermost self. He watched as the flames of the candles slowly wavered and the wax dripped down from time to time as they burned. He wondered all the while what Sammie was experiencing, what she was feeling within Kahlan.
Several of the candles in the room abruptly extinguished at the exact same instant. Richard’s gaze darted around the small room, searching shadows.
Sammie shrieked and leaped to her feet.
Richard sprang up in surprise. Ester shrank back.
Before he could ask her what was wrong, Sammie began screaming in a high-pitched shriek born of what looked to be unbridled panic. Arms flailing, she retreated blindly until her back smacked into the stone wall. In the grip of terror, still screaming, unable to back away any farther, she clawed at the air while shrieking in fright. Her head twisted from side to side as if she did not want to look at what she was seeing.
The shrill screech was painful. Ester fearfully backed away as far as she could. As Sammie turned to run for the doorway, Richard caught her, closing his arms tightly around her slender body to keep her from getting away. Her spindly arms thrashed frantically, as if she was trying to escape something only she could see. She screamed in unbridled terror the whole time, twisting madly in Richard’s arms as she fought to escape.
Richard cocooned the squirming girl until he finally gathered her wildly flailing arms and pinned them to her sides.
“Sammie, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I saw it in her …”
“It’s all right. You’re safe, now. What did you see?”
When she turned in his arms and pushed at him, crying hysterically as she again tried to get away, Richard grabbed her firmly by the sides of her shoulders to keep her right where she was. Despite his injuries, she was no match for his muscle.
“Sammie, tell me what you saw!”
“I saw …” was all she could get out between sobs.
Richard shook her. “Sammie, stop it. You’re safe. Nothing is going to hurt you.” He shook her again. “Stop it now. Lives are at stake—your mother’s life could very well be at stake. You need to get control of yourself and tell me what’s going on. I can’t help fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong. Now tell me what you saw in Kahlan.”
Sammie, tears coursing down her face, shook from head to toe.
“I saw what is in her,” she sobbed.
“What do you mean? What did you see in her?”
Sammie’s face contorted in horror. “I saw death.”
Again Sammie tried to turn away. Again Richard turned her back.
“What do you mean, you saw death? You need to get yourself under control and talk to me. What do you mean?”
Panting in fear, Sammie swiped at the tears running down her cheeks. She gulped a few quick breaths and pointed, as if it was plain as day, as if he should be able to see it, too.
“She has death in her.”
As she again tried to twist away, Richard tightened his grip on her shoulders. “Calm down. Take a deep breath. Kahlan is unconscious. She can’t hurt you. I’m here with you. I need you to explain what you’re talking about so that we can figure out what you saw. Kahlan is alive. She’s not dead.”
Sammie’s face wrinkled up as tears sprang anew. “But I saw—”
“You’re a sorceress,” he said in a firm voice. “Act like one. Your mother is gone. She may need help, too. This is important. She would want you to stand in her place and do what is needed. You can do that, I know you can.”
Sammie sniffled, trying her best to hold back her tears. She finally nodded.
Ester laid a hand on the girl’s back. “You’re safe, Sammie. Do as Lord Rahl says, now.”
Sammie’s lower lip trembled. She looked from Ester back to Richard.
“Is that what my father saw when he died? Is that what it’s like? Did he have to face that? Did my mother see that too? Is that what we all face when we die?”
Richard squeezed her shoulders in sympathy and spoke softly. “I’m sorry, Sammie, but I can’t answer that. I don’t know what we see when we die. I don’t know what you saw in Kahlan. Now, take a deep breath.”
She took two.
“Better?”
She nodded as she pushed her thatch of dark hair back from the sides of her face.
“All right,” Richard said, “now explain to me what happened.”
Sammie took another steadying breath and then flicked a hand toward Kahlan. “I was connected to her, feeling her pain—you know, the pain of her smaller injuries, like you suggested. I was, well, I was trying to gather up a lot of that pain, collect it, and take it into myself.”
“I understand,” Richard said as he cautiously released her shoulders. “Then what?”
Sammie put one hand on a hip as she pressed the trembling fingers of her other hand to her forehead, trying to remember what had happened. “Well, I don’t know exactly. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Do your best, child,” Ester urged.
Sammie glanced at her and then looked up at Richard’s eyes. “Do you know the way the sensation of beginning to do a healing is like being caught up in a flow that draws you in, draws you deeper, seeking more of the trouble within the person?”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” Richard said. “It’s like you lose your sense of who you are as you become more and more focused on them and their pain. It feels like you are dissolving into the other person, losing yourself as you slip down into who they are. It seems to gather power from you and in that way pulls you onward.”
Sammie was nodding as he spoke. “That’s what it felt like. When I’ve healed other