Warheart

CHAPTER 24

She folded her skinny arms. “I’m Sammie. That is the name my mother gave me. It’s what my people called me. Sammie, not Samantha. I don’t want the name you want to give me. You have no right to name me.”

Richard let out a breath. “Maybe you’re right about that much of it. If you won’t hear the truth even though it is about your mother–especially if it is about your mother–then maybe you are still a girl, still Sammie, and not really ready to carry the name Samantha like I thought. But you can’t hide your eyes from the truth forever.”

“I’m not hiding my eyes from the truth. I don’t believe anything you say. I don’t believe that anything you are telling me really is the truth. I know the truth. The truth is that you’re a liar. All those things you’re saying about my mother are lies you invented to cover the truth that you murdered her.”

“Why would I want to hurt your mother if she was as innocent as you wish to believe? Why would I want to do that? The truth is, I didn’t.” Richard waggled the journey book again. “It’s all in here. You can read it for yourself.”

“You expect me to think that proves anything? You got a little book and wrote out those lies yourself. You made it all up to make my mother look bad because she was a nobody from a little village and you think you are so much more important than us because you are the Lord Rahl. You made it up as an excuse for why you murdered her.”

Richard nodded. “I killed her. But it was not murder and I don’t regret it. I wish it wouldn’t have had to be that way, but I don’t regret killing her. She was a murderer of innocent people and she deserved to die. She got what she deserved. I won’t apologize for doing what was right.”

“So you say. You invented a story to make yourself look noble and wrote those things down to try to cover up your own crime of murder. You murdered a good woman and now you smear her memory for your own need to be an important man, a big important ruler over all the people of D’Hara.”

“Samantha, we traveled together long enough that you should know me, know my heart. You should know that I wouldn’t lie to you. As painful as the truth might be, I would never hide it from you. I’m telling you the truth.

“You need to grow up and accept the truth. You can’t live a lie forever. Just because your mother was evil that doesn’t mean you are or that you have to uphold a false belief. My father was an evil man. I understand that, I know that I am not him, just as you are not your mother. You stand on your own two feet and make your own way in life. You can still be the woman you thought she was.

“This is a time when you have to live up to your responsibility as a woman and take up the difficult business of using your head to see the truth that’s right here before you, even though it may be hard, and even though it may be painful.”

Samantha lifted her chin. “I don’t believe your invented stories. They aren’t the truth.”

“The truth is that your mother even talks in here with Dreier about what they should do if you became suspicious.”

Her gaze shifted to the book and then back to him. “What lies did you make up about that?”

“None. You can read it for yourself, judge for yourself. Dreier told your mother that she may need to eliminate you like she eliminated the others who became suspicious. Your mother told Dreier that once the rest of us were taken prisoner here at the citadel, he was welcome to take care of you himself in any manner he wished so that you wouldn’t become a problem.”

Her hands fisted at her sides again. “She wouldn’t do that! She loved me!”

Richard leveled a stern look on the young woman. “You were in chains down in that dungeon because she wanted you in chains. How do you think it happened that you were caught with Kahlan, Nicci, and me? Dreier wanted us, and she made sure he had us.

“She was going to let Dreier use his occult abilities to torture you to death the same as he did to so many others who were taken to his abbey and the same as he was going to do to us had we not escaped. He was ruthless and your mother let him have you knowing how brutal he would be in eliminating you. Had we not escaped, you would have been tortured to death along with us because your mother wanted you out of her way. You were an inconvenience to her.”

Samantha stood motionless for a moment, only the muscles in her jaws flexing and the tendons in her arms tightening as she fisted her hands even tighter.

Suddenly, she flung her arms out from beneath the cape and toward him. Richard had hoped she would not react in this way, but he had been ready just in case.

He already had his hand on the sword, letting its power seep through him. When he saw her begin to cast magic at him, he drew the sword in a heartbeat. The unique ring of steel filled the murky air and carried out across the grassy marshland.

A bolt of power, crackling and booming like lightning, shot toward him from her outstretched arms. The loud rumble of that lightning shook droplets of water from the grasses all around.

Richard, holding the hilt of the sword in his right hand, gripped the blade near the point with his other hand and held the weapon up like a shield. The thunderous explosion of the lightning bolt smashed into the sword, sending a shower of sparks out to the sides as the flashes curled all around him. The sound of the explosion reverberated across the countryside, echoing back from the forested hills.

When she saw that Richard wasn’t harmed, Samantha growled in rage and cast another bolt of power, this one a bluish white color and thicker. It crackled through the air, sending off secondary threads of sizzling power as it came, lighting all the grass and rushes in a harsh glare. Richard bent at the knees, bracing for the impact.

When it hit the sword the force of it knocked him back a step. Upon impact, the flash of glowing power, split by the sword, spread in a shower of sparkling light around both sides of him. The scintillating discharge was so hot it ignited patches of grass and rushes, even though they were wet. Green blades of grass briefly turned an incandescent yellow-orange before crumbling to ash in the heat. An intense inferno whooshed up from those crackling fires, swirling as it rose into the air. The flames died out as the power dissipated.

Samantha slowly lowered her arms, then, staring at something behind him. Richard kept the sword up to shield himself as he looked back over his shoulder at what Samantha was staring at.

It was Kahlan, making her way through the rushes, gracefully pushing them aside with a hand as she approached. She finally came to a halt at Richard’s side, her noble demeanor looking every bit the Mother Confessor.

Samantha stopped and stared, her eyes growing wider. She had driven a knife through Kahlan’s heart, and certainly didn’t expect to see her alive.

“I killed you. I know I did.”

“You certainly did,” Kahlan said. “Fortunately, Richard kept you from being a murderer. Now, he is trying to keep you from forever losing your way.”

Samantha’s expression turned icy calm. It was a look Richard knew all too well. The girl was beyond seeing reason.

Her arms came up once more. “Now I’m going to have to kill you again to make him pay, but this time I’m going to make sure he won’t be able to bring you back.”

Richard stepped in front of Kahlan and held the sword out to deflect a spreading font of blindingly bright orange flame that roared toward them. He and Kahlan both turned their faces away from the dazzling light and intense heat as they crouched behind the protection of the sword.

When they looked back, Samantha was no longer standing there. Richard spotted her just as she disappeared into the shadows back in the woods.

“I have to go after her,” he said.

As he took the first step, a hand snatched his sleeve and jerked him back.

“No, you are not going after her,” Nicci said through gritted teeth, meaning for him to know that she meant it.

“I have to stop her,” he said, pulling his arm from her grip. “She will come back after us.”

Nicci gave him an admonishing look. “Richard, have you forgotten that that girl can make all those trees explode? If you go into those woods, she will blow the forest apart, and you with it. We won’t be able to find anything left of you to put on a funeral pyre. You would be shredded into nothing.”

“You know she’s right, Richard,” Kahlan said. “Don’t do what she just did and avoid the truth because it’s ugly. We have to use our heads. We have more important things to worry about. We need to stop Sulachan, not Samantha.”

Richard knew that they were both right. He couldn’t let himself be distracted by Samantha. He had given her a chance to accept the truth. Those who refused to see the truth were not immune from it.

Richard finally nodded. “I wish I could talk to Red. She saved our lives because she knew what was about to happen with that tower.”

Kahlan shook her head. “She’s gone.”

“Vanished like a ghost,” Nicci confirmed.

Richard’s expression soured. “Isn’t that just like a witch woman.”

“She helped you all she could,” Kahlan said. “It’s not her place to help us any more than she already has.”

Richard let out a heavy sigh. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s go find Mohler, the scribe. We’re in the dark about too many things and that leaves us behind events. We need to get ahead of Sulachan and Hannis Arc if we are going to stop them.

“There are prophecies here that Hannis Arc somehow used to bring Sulachan back from the dead. I want to know everything he knew. For the most part we all know what Hannis Arc has done, but key elements of how he did them are missing. If I’m going to stop him, I need to find those key elements.”

Kahlan gave him a crooked smile and then put her arm through his as they started back toward the citadel. “That’s the Seeker I know so well.”