soldiers briefly scanned the darkness, and then, without further word, at least a dozen men dashed away into the woods to search for the intruders. Although dawn was starting to bring a weak gray light to the quiet forest, it was still dark enough that Richard knew it would be easy to miss someone hiding in such dense woods. All the strangers would have to do would be to crouch in the darkness among thickets of bushes or saplings and they could easily be missed.
But he didn’t think these five were crouching and hiding.
He knew otherwise.
He knew that they had vanished.
What is it?” Nicci called out as she pushed her way through the tight ring of towering soldiers. Her gaze quickly swept over his sword, probably checking to see if it was bloody. Despite the size of the men and their fearsome weapons, Nicci’s gift probably made her more deadly than all of the men put together. Had his own gift been working, he would have been able to see the aura of her power shimmering around her.
“Five people came up behind me as I was standing watch,” Richard told her as Zedd rushed in through the gap Nicci had created. “I didn’t know they were there until one of them touched my shoulder.”
Nicci did a double take. “They walked right up and one of them touched you?”
Like Nicci, the old wizard looked incredulous. Though Richard knew his grandfather well, from time to time he was amazed at what Zedd was able to do with his ability, as well as his uncanny knowledge about the most arcane of subjects.
“People?” Zedd peered to each side behind Richard and Kahlan. “What people?”
The young Samantha and her mother, Irena, rushed up behind Zedd. Despite only being in her mid-teens, Samantha had proven to have remarkable abilities as a sorceress. Richard didn’t yet know much of anything about her mother’s gift, but if Samantha was any indication, her mother was potentially quite formidable.
Despite the knowledge, abilities, and power of the people gathered around him, they were in a dangerous land that put all of them at risk. The fact that five people had been able to walk right up on them, and then vanish, only served to highlight the perils of the Dark Lands.
“Are you all right, Lord Rahl?” Irena asked with a look of concern as she reached out to touch Richard’s arm.
He nodded as Nicci subtly but protectively stepped in close enough to move Irena aside.
“They snuck up behind you?” Nicci tilted her head toward Richard. “Five people snuck up behind you?”
Exasperated that he was being ignored, Zedd waved an arm. “What five people?” he demanded again before Richard could answer Nicci. “Where are they?”
Richard gestured behind in frustration. “They were right there, and then they were gone.”
Zedd cocked his head as his bushy brow drew down. He peered intently with one eye. “Gone?”
“Yes, gone. I don’t know where they went. I didn’t see them come and I didn’t see them leave. When I turned back around to keep an eye on them they were simply gone.”
Samantha lifted her chin, sniffing the air. Her features had yet to fully take on the more sharply defined form of full adulthood. The soft contour of her nose wrinkled.
“What’s that smell?” she asked, rather urgently, before Zedd or anyone else could say anything more. “It’s fading now, but it seems like I remember it from somewhere.”
Everyone looked around, distracted by the strange question and her tone of alarm.
Kahlan frowned. “Now that you mention it, I remember it from somewhere, too.”
Richard methodically studied the shadows, still looking for any sign of the five strangers. “It’s sulfur.”
Samantha pushed some of the matted mass of her black hair back from her face as she peered up at him. “Sulfur?”
“Yes—the smell of death,” Richard said, still gazing off into the darkness, still looking for any sign of the strangers.
“No,” Kahlan said, tapping a thumb against the handle of the knife sheathed at her belt as she tried to recall. “The spirits know I’ve been around that stench enough. This was certainly unpleasant, but it’s not the smell of death. It’s something else.”
“That’s not what he means,” Nicci said in a dark and disquieting tone as she shared a knowing look with Richard when he turned back to them.
“It’s the smell of the world of the dead,” Richard said in an equally somber voice to all the faces watching him. “Like a doorway to the underworld itself was briefly cracked open.”
Everyone stared back.
“The underworld!” Samantha snapped her fingers. “That’s where I remember the smell from. It was when I was trying to heal you and the Mother Confessor. When I got near that poison of death deep in you both, I smelled that smell.”
Irena, having moved around behind Samantha, put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder as she leaned in. “Poison? What poison?” Her expression had turned suspicious. It was an expression that seemed to go naturally with the creases in the center of her brow and her mass of black hair. “What was my daughter doing anywhere near anything to do with the underworld?”
“Jit, the Hedge Maid, had captured Kahlan and me,” Richard said, “but before she could kill us I was able to plug our ears with some wads of cloth and then break the restraints on the evil that resides inside her kind. When I did, she involuntarily let out a cry that called death to her. That was how I was able to kill her so that we could escape.
“Unfortunately, some of that sound was still able to get through. Now, that opening to the world of the dead is embedded within us. When Samantha healed our other wounds, she came near to that boundary rooted deep within us. That’s what she is remembering.”
“Samantha wouldn’t know anything about such matters,” Irena insisted as her gaze shifted from her daughter back to Richard. “She’s too young. She has no business even attempting such things yet. She still has too much to learn before going near such dark forces.”
As Samantha tilted her head back to look up at her mother, her eyes glistened with tears at the terrible memory. “It was the only way I could heal their wounds. I had to do it or they would have died. Lord Rahl is the one meant to save us. He helped save many of the people of Stroyza.
“I had to do it or they would have died. He guided me in what I needed to do. It was then, when I was doing the healing, that I felt that terrible darkness of death deep within them. That’s when I smelled that awful smell.”
“She’s right,” Zedd grumbled unhappily. “I recall a hint of that same odor from when I started healing the both of them back before we were attacked and captured. I recognized it at the time as the stagnant stench of the darkest depths of the world of the dead.” His eyes turned away. “I’ve encountered that singular smell before.”
Nicci hooked a long strand of her blond hair back behind an ear as she scanned the darkness among the trees. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, or else she was using her ability to try to sense if someone or something was hiding out there.
“When you are near to the boundary to the underworld, when death is near,” she said in a quiet voice that seemed to come from some dark place within her, “you could sometimes smell it, smell the world of the dead beyond the veil.”
Irena glanced around at the grim expressions. “When death is near …? The world of the dead? Here? Now? What are you all talking about? It’s likely to be nothing more sinister than a sulfur spring nearby. There are a number of such places in the Dark Lands. Most likely the breeze carried