Not far beyond, Samantha was dead asleep beside her mother. Irena had her knees pulled up, her arms hugging them, as she watched over the camp. Occasionally she took a few bites of dried biscuit to suck on. It had been so late that Kahlan had not had time to discuss with Irena the astonishing things her daughter had done. Irena had seemed strangely incurious about it. Kahlan figured that maybe she feared to know. Some people liked things to go on unchanged and for their children to remain perpetually children.
Kahlan suspected that might be at least part of the reason for Samantha’s apparent lack of training as a sorceress. Richard had said that Samantha seemed to have received less instruction in her ability than he had heard was normal with sorceresses.
Some people, like Richard, never received any training about their gift. In Richard’s case, he had never been told that he was born gifted, in order to protect and hide him from those bent on destroying him. Kahlan, on the other hand, had been instructed, trained, and disciplined in everything surrounding her powers from as early as she could remember so that she could protect herself from those bent on destroying her. Though completely opposite experiences, they both seemed the right choices for them. After all, Zedd had his reasons for hiding and protecting Richard from any knowledge of his ability, while Kahlan’s mother had hers for insisting on rigorous education.
Samantha also seemed to know very little of the lonely mission of her people, especially the gifted, in the remote village of Stroyza. Perhaps over the millennia her people had lost touch with that mission and the purpose of the barrier.
Once Richard was awake, they were going to have to question Irena to find out if there was anything she knew that could help them. What had been locked away behind that barrier for thousands of years was now again loose in the world and they had precious little knowledge of how to stop it before it was too late.
Kahlan scanned the camp and saw that the men were settled and quiet. She was so relieved that so few of their men had been lost, and that they had escaped, that she felt like breaking down in tears. But she didn’t.
Instead, she unwrapped an oiled cloth with dried meat, a chunk of hard sausage, and some salted fish. She guzzled water from a waterskin to wash down the first piece of fish. She wasn’t especially fond of dried meat, or salted fish, but right then it was a feast she savored. She was saving the flavorful smoked sausage for last.
When she thought she heard a kind of soft murmuring, purring sound, she looked up. There, on top of the rock she was leaning against, she found herself looking into the big green eyes of a crouched creature. It hunkered silently, staring at her.
CHAPTER
32
Kahlan’s chewing paused, her hand holding a piece of dried meat still halfway to her mouth.
The animal was at least two or three times the size of a regular cat, with the same kind of almond-shaped eyes. In the moonlight she could see that its tan back was covered in darkly spotted fur becoming darker down toward its haunches and shoulders. It was broader than a typical cat, something like a wolverine or badger, with muscular shoulders, but it didn’t have the long nose or short legs of one of those animals. The head was more like that of a cougar, with a heavier brow. The fur was short as well.
Whatever it was, she had never seen anything quite like it.
Since the animal was sitting peacefully and wasn’t showing any signs of aggression, her initial alarm relaxed a bit. The fingers of her left hand, though, touched the handle of the knife sheathed at her belt, making sure the weapon was there and easy to get at quickly.
The animal’s ears swiveled, tracking the smallest movement of her left hand as she checked that her knife was handy. The long, pointed ears had tufts of fur at the ends. It had whiskers something like a cat’s. Its legs looked considerably stockier than those of any cat she had ever seen. Its paws were disproportionately huge. A lot of animals had big feet or paws when they were immature and grew into them, making Kahlan think that the creature was possibly young. But that wasn’t always true, so she couldn’t be sure.
The creature looked up at her with big green eyes and then looked down at the food she was holding. The eyes beneath a heavy brow had the same kind of vertical slit in the iris as a cat’s. It had an expressive face that almost told her what it was thinking, with the calm confidence in its own abilities that gave it a curious but relaxed posture. Its ears perked toward her. It apparently found her interesting and worthy of investigation.
“You have green eyes like me,” she said softly.
The creature purred louder at the sound of her voice and squeezed its eyes closed for a second. It looked at her again and then inched forward in a cautious crouch, trying to sniff the dried meat in her hand, judging the distance should it decide to lunge.