The Third Kingdom

“There’s you,” Richard said. “You’re gifted.”

Samantha shrugged one shoulder. “I guess. I guess I should say it left my mother as the only adult gifted person in Stroyza. Now, she is gone. That means the ancient duty we were given has fallen to me.”

Richard didn’t think he liked the sound of that. He flicked a piece of straw off his pant leg.

“Do you know what the name of your village, your people, means? What ‘Stroyza’ means?”

Samantha pushed back some of her black hair as she frowned up at him. “No. I thought it was just a name. I never heard anyone say that it meant anything.”

“It’s a High D’Haran word.”

“High D’Haran is an ancient, dead language. No one today understands High D’Haran.”

“I do.”

“Really?” Intrigued, she leaned in. “So what does it mean, then?”

“It means ‘sentinel.’”

Samantha’s smile ghosted away as her face lost its color.

“Dear spirits,” she whispered.

“Does that word in an ancient language have something to do with your ancient duty?” Richard asked.

Her eyes beginning to brim with tears, Samantha nodded.

“That’s what my mother had been doing. She had been keeping watch. My parents left Stroyza to report what she had seen, but she was never able to complete that duty. They didn’t make it far when my father was killed. My mother is missing and I fear that she has also been murdered.”

“We don’t know that, yet,” Richard said. “What was she watching?”

Samantha gestured toward the door with the Grace carved into it. “I need to show you.”

CHAPTER

20

Samantha touched her slender fingers lightly to the design of the Grace carved into the door.

“This is our duty,” she said. “Our duty to the world of life.”

“You mean, to be guardians of what the Grace represents?”

“That’s right,” she said as she pushed open the door.

Richard couldn’t imagine how these people in this remote place could be guardians of the Grace. That symbol embraced all that existed. He looked back at Kahlan, making sure she was still breathing peacefully, before following Samantha through the doorway emblazoned with a Grace, as if it was meant to serve as a reminder of that duty.

The room inside, as well made as the outer room, was dimly lit with a few candles. A rumpled blanket lay pushed to the side of a mat where she must have been sleeping as she waited for him to wake. A simple but well-made tall cabinet stood to the side of a curved bench with a small pack and waterskin under it.

Samantha led him into a dark hallway at the back of the room. She took a lantern from a shelf, lighting it with a gesture, a flick of her hand, that sent a flame sparked by her gift into the wick. The lamplight sent a mellow glow down a hallway that was longer than he expected it would be.

The hallway led them past a few rooms that he thought were likely to have been more bedrooms. There was a small recess cut into the wall. Three plank shelves in the niche held a few small, simple clay statues. One of the figures was a shepherd standing beside several sheep. Another was of a man, hand shielding his eyes, apparently gazing into the distance. On the lower shelves were a few books, and some folded linens. After passing several more darkened rooms to the sides, the hallway continued on without interruption, going deeper yet into the mountain, finally ending at a rather strange dead end.

The single opening at the end of the passageway was closed off on the far side by what looked to be a slab of stone. Carved in the center of the stone blocking the passageway was another Grace. To the side of the doorway Richard spotted a metal plate set into the wall. The plate was so corroded and pitted with age that it looked like part of the stone of the wall and he almost missed it.

Richard had seen similar metal plates before, though they had been in better condition. They had also been located in important restricted areas. Such plates were a kind of lock requiring the key of the gift.

Richard’s gift had in the past allowed him access to many such shielded passageways and restricted areas. It had even allowed him access to areas with the kind of deadly protective shields that required both Additive and Subtractive Magic in order to pass, places no one had been able to enter for hundreds of years.

“No one else in your village, none of your ungifted people, can get through here, can they?”

Samantha shook her head. “No. This is a place meant only for those who are gifted. Others are never allowed in here. Most people are at least a little fearful of the gifted and none of them ever enter the gifted’s quarters unless invited, and I’ve never known of anyone invited back this far into this place. I’ve never heard anyone but the gifted even mention this place. I’m not sure, but I don’t think that anyone but the gifted among us even know that this place exists.”

Richard pressed his hand to the plate to open the door. Nothing happened.

“My gift doesn’t open it,” he said, a bit surprised.