Richard frowned, deep in concentration. “I’m stopping the bleeding from this stab wound… but I can feel something more than her wounds.”
Shale pressed her hands to each side of Kahlan’s head and closed her eyes, as if trying to discern what he was feeling.
“You need to stop what you’re doing,” she said with sudden urgency.
“What? She’ll bleed to death!”
“No, you’ve already stopped the bleeding. Your gift is causing her pain.”
“Healing causes pain as you lift their injury,” he said. “I’ve healed her before when she’d been terribly wounded. I’ve done it before and I can do it again.”
“Ordinarily you would be right. This is different.” Shale seized his wrist and forcefully pulled his hand back. “Lord Rahl, you will make it worse if you do it that way.”
“What do you mean, that way? I told you, I’ve healed her before. Healing is healing.”
“Not this time,” she said in a distracted tone. “You need to let me do this if we are to save her life. What you are doing will kill her.” She looked up at him with frantic concern. “If you don’t let me do this, she is going to die!”
Richard hesitated, then sat back up. “Maybe together we can—”
“No. You need to listen to me.” Shale shot him a quick frown honed by years of authority. “I know you want more than anything to help, but trust me, in this case your gift will only make it worse.
“Why don’t you go heal that lunatic? I’m sure you are going to want to question him about what happened in here. You can’t question him if he dies. Right now he is our only link to what is happening and he is in bad shape. He didn’t leave these claw marks. We need to know what did.”
Richard felt sick seeing the bone in her arm where the meat was laid back. Even the white bone had long gouge marks down it. He ran his fingers through his hair as he sat back on his heels.
Shale obviously knew what she was doing, even if he wasn’t at all happy about not being able to help.
Holding the sides of Kahlan’s head, Shale used her thumbs to gently close her eyes. It was somehow less frightening seeing Kahlan with her eyes closed. When they were opened, he could see the terror.
Richard didn’t know what she had seen, but it was clear how much it had frightened her. Kahlan was not easily shaken, but she was now.
Once her eyes were closed, her panting slowed to even breathing, though it was ragged with stitches of pain. Leaving Shale to work on Kahlan, Richard reluctantly turned to seeing about the unconscious Nolo. He wasn’t really interested in saving Nolo’s life, but Shale was right about their need to question him. Something other than Nolo had attacked Kahlan, and they needed to know what it was.
Questioning the man had been what Kahlan had been trying to do with her Confessor ability. Richard had seen her use her power since the first day he’d met her. It was as profound a use of the gift as he had ever seen. There was nothing that could stand up against it… as long as what it was being used on was human. He couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong this time.
The soldiers stepped back out of his way as Richard placed the flat of his hand over the bleeding head wound to make sure the skull wasn’t cracked. He found that it was. He released a flow of healing power through his gift. He wasn’t careful about being gentle with how he did it. He didn’t care how much it hurt the man, only that he lived. He forced bone together to close the crack and stop the loss of blood and fluid.
Even so, lifting such a severe injury from anyone was not only difficult, but caused agony to the one doing the healing. The more severe the injury or sickness, the greater the pain.
He knew that Shale would be in far greater pain taking the agony of Kahlan’s wounds into herself in order to heal her.
Richard was so concerned about Kahlan that he endured the stress of healing the man’s cracked skull almost without noticing the suffering he took into himself. Once he had the underlying structure repaired, he replaced the flap of scalp, placed a hand over it, and sent a flow of his gift into the wound.
Richard found that the man had several broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a broken wrist. The ribs were relatively easy to mend with his gift, but the wrist was unexpectedly complex to heal. It had to be done in layers, bone by bone, until everything was back in place and the wrist moved as it should.
By the time Richard had finished and finally stood, his face was covered with a sheen of sweat. Nolo would still be unconscious for a time, but at least he wasn’t going to die.
“Take him to the dungeon,” he told the soldiers. “Put him in restraints so he can’t hurt himself. It was a lot of work healing him. I don’t want him splitting his head open again. I’m going to want to question him and I want him to be able to give me answers.”
The soldiers all clapped fists to hearts before bending to the task. Even with four men, one on each arm and each leg, it was difficult to lug the dead weight of the heavy man out of the room.
Richard turned his attention back to Kahlan just as Shale stood. She gripped Richard’s arm as he came close.
“It’s all right, Lord Rahl. I’ve put her into a deep, healing sleep. The worst of the danger is past. I think she will be fine, but I’ve only pulled wounds together to stabilize her until we can get her to her room, where I can finish the work.”
Richard nodded. “What about those three gouges down her arm?”
“I closed them as best I could for now, but her injuries are going to take a great deal more work to set everything right. I will need to fix the underlying layers so that her arm will work properly. I will need to work further down into the stab wound in her chest. Fortunately, while it did severe damage, it didn’t cut her heart and kill her. It can all be healed.”
Richard stared down at Kahlan. “What do you think did that—left those gouges down her arm?”
Shale hesitated. “What I can tell you is that Nolo didn’t make them.” She looked back down at Kahlan. “We should get her out of here and to bed. She needs to be cleaned up and I need to continue my work.”
Richard bent down and carefully scooped Kahlan up in his arms. He didn’t want anyone else carrying her.
Holding her in his arms, Richard looked to the six Mord-Sith. “Cassia, Vale, Berdine, Rikka, Nyda—I want you all to stay in the room with Kahlan and watch over her. Vika, I’ll let you continue to have my back.”
“Yes, Lord Rahl,” they said as one.
“And I want you all in your red leather.”
Their expressions grim, they all nodded.
“Let’s go.”
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.