The Third Kingdom

Richard studied her big eyes a moment.

“That’s how my gift works—through anger.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I sometimes wish I was able to control my gift more so I could direct it to the tasks at hand, control it intentionally, but I’m afraid that as a war wizard my gift works differently than in others. It’s anger or intense need that summons my gift, gives it its power. Yours seems to work both ways—by intent and then also through anger.”

She looked around again. “But even so, I never could have imagined that I would be able to do this. I never imagined that I could muster this much force, create this much destruction. It’s kind of, I don’t know … frightening.”

“I guess that you put the force into it that the task required, and the task was just. If you want to lift something light, it’s easy. Lifting something heavier takes more muscle.

“I guess that in this case, anything less would have failed to do the job and evil would have won out. Your mind directed your gift to do what was needed, the same way you would use more muscle to lift something heavy. You don’t have to think about it, your mind and body simply adjust to the weight of the task.

“I would guess that in this case, that’s what happened when you used your gift.” Richard gazed out across the open area. “And this is what was needed.”

Still, the level of destruction was astounding and he could understand her apprehension at seeing what she had done. He had seen a number of things done by gifted people, but he didn’t think he had ever seen anything quite like this.

He remembered the way Ester seemed to have a shadow of fear for Samantha. Samantha had even mentioned how people feared her and her relatives because they were gifted. That was certainly true enough with the gifted anywhere. Most people who couldn’t wield magic feared those who could. They feared the unknown, feared what the gifted might be able to do.

Richard remembered when he first met Kahlan, how surprised he was when he learned how much people feared her. He had seen people, even queens, quake in her presence. A Confessor was in many ways much more frightening to people than an ordinary gifted person.

A gifted person could take your life. A Confessor could take your mind.

He guessed that, in essence, a Confessor could take your soul.

In much the same way, ordinary people feared prophets. They feared what a prophet might see of their future. They feared what secret knowledge they might have of coming events. Because of that, while they feared prophets, they also wanted to know what prophecy foretold about coming events for them.

Right before he had come to the Dark Lands to get Kahlan out of Jit’s clutches, Richard had a great deal of trouble back at the palace because visiting rulers, there for Cara’s wedding to Benjamin, wanted to know about prophecy. They thought Richard was hiding prophecy from them, that he didn’t trust them to hear it. For that reason, some of those leaders had abandoned him and the unity of the D’Haran Empire to throw the lot of their lands and people in with Hannis Arc, the head of Fajin Province, all for the promise of leadership guided by prophecy.

While Hannis Arc was the ruler of the Dark Lands as part of Fajin Province, Richard ruled the D’Haran Empire, and the D’Haran Empire ruled Fajin Province. Hannis Arc and his followers appeared to want to break away from that alliance to instead follow prophecy.

He glanced over at Samantha, lit by the heavy overcast of the now open sky. He was beginning to see her in a new light.

He had thought she was an inexperienced sorceress who was only now beginning to come into her own. As he looked around at the destruction, he wondered if she was something more.

He wondered about the role of Stroyza and the gifted living there. He wondered if Naja Moon’s people back in ancient times had left gifted in Stroyza to be more than mere sentinels meant to watch for the barrier failing. He wondered if they had a larger purpose than to warn others, as he had thought at first.

As he scanned the massive destruction wrought by this small, frail-looking young woman, he began to wonder if those people in ancient times with such mysterious abilities had perhaps given the gifted here at Stroyza more than an explanation written in the language of Creation on their walls.

He wondered if they had given them some ability to fight. Naja said that they didn’t have a way to end the threat, so they wouldn’t have been able to give such an ability to any of the gifted of Stroyza, but they might have at least been able to give them the ability to fight.

Samantha had certainly demonstrated more resolve and strength than he would have expected.

He wondered if she was perhaps intended to be more than a mere sentinel.

He wondered if she was in fact a weapon left by the ancients.

This day she had certainly proven herself to be so.

CHAPTER

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