The Third Kingdom

She nodded. “I’m really tired. Sleep sounds good.”

He gestured to the side of the lean-to structure. “Go on, then, go around there and get inside.”

She looked puzzled. “Aren’t we going to have a fire to keep warm?”

“Fires attract people. Even if you don’t see it, you can smell the smoke from a fire from a long way off. By itself, someone would almost have to fall on top of this shelter to know it’s here. But a fire would broadcast our position and let other people, especially half people, know that we’re here.”

She looked around at the surrounding woods. “Oh. I guess that makes sense.” She glanced around again. “What about wild animals?”

“I’m not worried. I have a gifted sorceress with me.”

She smiled. “I guess you’re right.”

“It won’t be too bad, you’ll see. Go on, get inside.”

She had to crawl on her hands and knees to get in under the leaning roof of the shelter. Richard followed her in, pulling a thick mat of pine branches over the opening. Inside it was snug, relatively dry, and nearly pitch black. He fished around blindly in his pack until he found the tin travel housing for a candle.

He held it out and put her hand on it. “Here, can you use your gift to light this?”

He saw a small spark in the darkness and a flame sprang up onto the candle wick.

Richard hung the candle in front of them. “You can put your hands over it to warm them if you’re cold. It’s likely to get chilly tonight.”

She frowned over at him. “Why don’t I just put some heat in a couple of rocks? Then we could hold them in our laps to keep warm.”

“Oh,” Richard said. He hadn’t thought of doing that. “Well, that works, too.”

He used his fingers to pull a rock the size of a loaf of bread up from the ground to the side and handed it to her. Samantha put her hands to either side of it for a moment. He saw her briefly close her eyes in concentration; then she handed it to him. The rock was toasty warm.

“I guess you are coming in handy for something,” he said as he pulled up another rock for her to heat for herself.

She let out a soft giggle.

They picked some travel biscuits and dried fish out of their packs, along with some fresh nuts, and had a simple meal that was better than he expected, probably because he was so hungry he would have eaten just about anything.

When they were done eating, Richard pulled off his cloak and laid it over both of them like a blanket. “This will help keep us warm. Sorry, but the woods aren’t the most comfortable place to sleep, especially in conditions such as this.”

“I don’t care,” she said quietly. “I only care about getting there in time. I can sleep the rest of my life, after I get my mother out of the hands of those soulless, unholy half-dead monsters.”

Richard agreed with her sentiment.

He pulled his cloak up to their chins. Samantha leaned against him for warmth, putting her small hands around his biceps and locking her slender fingers together. She laid her head against his shoulder.

Richard rested his right arm across his lap so that he could keep his hand on the hilt of his sword. That would make it a lot easier to respond in a hurry if he had to.

He could heard Samantha’s soft, even breathing, along with the whisper of rain pattering against leaves. He was so exhausted that he started sinking into sleep almost immediately.

His last thoughts were of Kahlan.

CHAPTER

46

By late the next day they reached the place where the trail began to bear left, toward the west. The trail had taken them as far as it could. It was frustrating, because they had been making good time, but the trail was no longer headed north, so they were going to have to start making their way through uncharted forest toward the third kingdom.

Richard scanned the edge of the forest along the side of the path, searching for the best area to take them through the woods, when he spotted a place that almost looked like a trail. A fresh trail.

“This looks like a good place,” Samantha said as she pointed. “The way north looks more open through here.”

“There’s a good reason for that.” He gestured to the trampled shrubs and broken twigs, the kicked up dirt, and the overturned moss. “Do you know what this is?”

Samantha looked puzzled. “No.”

“It looks to me like the place used by all those half people traveling down here from the third kingdom. Look up in there at how someone dragged their feet along the ground.” He pointed to another spot. “Looks like someone stumbled there and broke that branch. They walked without paying any attention to what they stepped on. There, they trampled those mushrooms. Back in there a lot of the ferns are broken.

“This is not the way a regular traveler walks. This is the way careless people who know little about traveling, or the woods, would walk. It looks to me the way those half people who tried to ambush us would walk. This is probably where they came down from the north.”