Everyone stared back.
“The underworld!” Samantha snapped her fingers. “That’s where I remember the smell from. It was when I was trying to heal you and the Mother Confessor. When I got near that poison of death deep in you both, I smelled that smell.”
Irena, having moved around behind Samantha, put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder as she leaned in. “Poison? What poison?” Her expression had turned suspicious. It was an expression that seemed to go naturally with the creases in the center of her brow and her mass of black hair. “What was my daughter doing anywhere near anything to do with the underworld?”
“Jit, the Hedge Maid, had captured Kahlan and me,” Richard said, “but before she could kill us I was able to plug our ears with some wads of cloth and then break the restraints on the evil that resides inside her kind. When I did, she involuntarily let out a cry that called death to her. That was how I was able to kill her so that we could escape.
“Unfortunately, some of that sound was still able to get through. Now, that opening to the world of the dead is embedded within us. When Samantha healed our other wounds, she came near to that boundary rooted deep within us. That’s what she is remembering.”
“Samantha wouldn’t know anything about such matters,” Irena insisted as her gaze shifted from her daughter back to Richard. “She’s too young. She has no business even attempting such things yet. She still has too much to learn before going near such dark forces.”
As Samantha tilted her head back to look up at her mother, her eyes glistened with tears at the terrible memory. “It was the only way I could heal their wounds. I had to do it or they would have died. Lord Rahl is the one meant to save us. He helped save many of the people of Stroyza.
“I had to do it or they would have died. He guided me in what I needed to do. It was then, when I was doing the healing, that I felt that terrible darkness of death deep within them. That’s when I smelled that awful smell.”
“She’s right,” Zedd grumbled unhappily. “I recall a hint of that same odor from when I started healing the both of them back before we were attacked and captured. I recognized it at the time as the stagnant stench of the darkest depths of the world of the dead.” His eyes turned away. “I’ve encountered that singular smell before.”
Nicci hooked a long strand of her blond hair back behind an ear as she scanned the darkness among the trees. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, or else she was using her ability to try to sense if someone or something was hiding out there.
“When you are near to the boundary to the underworld, when death is near,” she said in a quiet voice that seemed to come from some dark place within her, “you could sometimes smell it, smell the world of the dead beyond the veil.”
Irena glanced around at the grim expressions. “When death is near…? The world of the dead? Here? Now? What are you all talking about? It’s likely to be nothing more sinister than a sulfur spring nearby. There are a number of such places in the Dark Lands. Most likely the breeze carried a whiff of a sulfur spring in this direction, that’s all.” She cast a deliberate glance in Nicci’s direction. “I think we’re letting ourselves get carried away by groundless fears.”
Nicci’s flawless features took on a ill-humored cast as her gaze settled on the woman. “I was once a Sister of the Dark. I suffered that stench often enough when the Keeper of the underworld visited us in our sleep, when he came to us to direct us to do his bidding. That’s why the Mother Confessor thought of it as a memory from a dream. When she sleeps, the sights and sounds of the conscious world fade into the background. In that state, she is nearer to the boundary to the underworld now rooted within her.”
Samantha’s jaw hung open. “You were a Sister of the—”
“Hush,” her mother cautioned from behind in a low voice as she put both hands on the young woman’s shoulders to add emphasis to the order.
Samantha’s mother looked shaken by the revelation that Nicci was once a Sister of the Dark. Richard knew that many people who lived in remote places, like Irena and her daughter, were superstitious and avoided speaking out loud of things they feared lest they call those mysterious dangers to themselves. There was nothing more terrifying than the Keeper of the underworld. Richard knew Sisters of the Light who called the Keeper “the Nameless One” for fear of calling him forth.
Richard also saw the shadow of suspicion in Irena’s dark eyes. Women who had given themselves over to such dark forces never returned to the light. Yet Nicci had.