The Scribbly Man

6

Once Richard had gently laid Kahlan in their bed, Shale pushed in beside him to sit on the edge of the bed to lay her hands on Kahlan’s chest to continue the healing. Richard backed away, feeling useless when he thought he should be doing something. He’d healed Kahlan before when she had been seriously hurt. It didn’t make any sense to him that he couldn’t do it this time. Shale had saved Kahlan’s life by making him go see if she was safe, so he trusted her. He didn’t now want to start being suspicious of her.

He and Kahlan were so close that in the past that bond only helped make healing all that much more powerful and effective. It seemed to him that it should be the same now. He didn’t know why Shale thought otherwise.

Berdine lit lamps around the room and then closed the heavy drapes. Rikka and Vale brought in more wood and fed some of it into the massive fireplace across the room to take the chill out of the air. Summer was giving way to autumn. Nyda brought sheets and blankets and laid them on a table nearby in case they should be needed. Cassia filled a basin on a white marble-top table with fresh water. All the Mord-Sith looked grim as they went about making sure everything they were able to do was tended to. Everyone wanted to help Kahlan, and he suspected they felt as useless as he did.

The knife wound in Kahlan’s chest was closed. It had damaged her lung, but he had started healing it immediately when he first found her. At least he had managed to stop the bleeding right away. Even so, she had lost a lot of blood. Shale finished working on the knife wound and then used her gift to push in air to inflate the lung once more so Kahlan could breathe easier.

The claw marks down her arm were already closed with Shale’s gift, but because they were so deep the sorceress said they would require more structural work. For now she had merely closed them and stopped the bleeding. It was obvious to Richard how methodical the sorceress was in the way she went about her work. Those massive wounds would need the layers of muscles to be properly joined back together one at a time so that full function would be restored to Kahlan’s arm. Shale had also pulled together the gaping flesh across her ribs and closed the wound.

Thankfully, Shale had put Kahlan into a deep sleep so that she wouldn’t feel much of anything as the sorceress went about the work.

Richard now realized that peacetime had lowered his guard. For years he had been used to being continually on alert for any trouble. He had found peacetime a respite. Besides that, a single man had never been any danger to a Confessor of Kahlan’s power before. The reality was that it all had caused him to let down his guard. Shale had been right. He was an idiot. He could not feel more foolish for having it pointed out to him by a stranger. Maybe it was her fresh perspective, but whatever the reason, Shale’s alertness had saved Kahlan’s life.

Even given all that, Shale was also a witch woman, and that concerned him. His familiar state of suspicion was back in full force. He and Kahlan had a long history of trouble caused by witch women.

“You can stay and watch if you like,” Shale said to him as he stood beside the bed staring down at the only woman he had ever loved—the only woman he could ever love. “I don’t mind at all, Lord Rahl, really, and I completely understand if that is your wish. You don’t really know me, so I take no offense at any suspicion you might have.” She almost seemed to be reading his mind. “She is in good hands. I swear. I will let no harm come to her.” With a quick smile, she tipped her head at the Mord-Sith. “Neither will they.”

She was gently reminding him that there was some kind of trouble that had attacked Kahlan and it was his job as Lord Rahl to get to the bottom of it, not stand around twiddling his thumbs, worried about Kahlan while he watched her work.

There were things that only the Lord Rahl could do, and he realized he should get to it before anything else happened.

Richard nodded. “I need to go question the other Estorians. I want to question Nolo, too, but I want Kahlan well and at my side when I do. She used her power on him. If it worked at all, he will answer no one’s questions but hers.”

Shale pushed up her sleeves before going back to work on Kahlan as Richard left to go looking for trouble.