Warheart: Sword of Truth: The Conclusion (Sword of Truth 15)

“Samantha, you don’t understand. You have to listen to me.”

“Sammie.”

“You drove a knife through Kahlan’s heart.”

“Because you killed my mother. It was what you deserve. I want you to suffer the same kind of pain I suffer. I want to make you lose everything that matters to you, the same as you did to me.”

Richard reminded himself to keep his voice calm, the same as when he had talked to her so often before. He plucked a few yellow buds from a blooming oxeye and rolled them between his finger and thumb as he considered his words.

“Your mother wasn’t who you thought she was, Sammie. She wasn’t on our side, on the side of the good people of your village of Stroyza, the way we thought she was.”

“She was a protector to our people.”

“She killed your aunts. She killed Zedd.”

Samantha’s brow twitched for just a moment before her glare darkened. “You’re lying.”

“It’s the truth.” Richard tossed away the oxeye buds and pulled a small black book from his pants pocket. He held it up for her to see. “This was your mother’s journey book. Journey books possess ancient magic that allows them to send messages back and forth to each other.”

“So?”

“Ludwig Dreier had the twin to your mother’s. He probably gave her the one she had on her. She used it to plot with him. She had been working with him for years.

“She knew all about the barrier failing long before she let on. She wasn’t really going to warn anyone. She and Dreier were keeping it a secret because they wanted that evil to escape. They wanted to rule over everyone. They wanted power for themselves. They were using the barrier failing as a way to accomplish their ends.”

Samantha was shaking her head, objecting to what he was telling her even as he was saying it. “My mother was the sorceress in charge of Stroyza. She didn’t even like that much power. She did not want to rule anyone.”

“It was an act she put on, the same as Ludwig Dreier hid his own abilities until it was time for him to make his move. It was all part of their plan. No one knew their secret.”

“You’re making it all up. I know my mother better than you ever could.”

Richard held up the journey book again so she could see it. “It’s all in here. All of her conversations with Dreier are still in here. These books are twinned. What is written in one shows up in the other. Your mother had this one and Dreier had the other. Her journey book has all of their conversations and scheming going back for several years.

“There were messages from Ludwig Dreier telling Irena the specifics of what he wanted her to do for him, along with promises of rewards for her loyalty and service to him.”

“He was using her?”

Richard shook his head. “I’m not going to lie to you, Samantha. She understood exactly what she was doing and she was doing it willingly. He wasn’t fooling her into anything. She was a partner in his plot to gain power.”

Samantha used a thumb to hook a curly lock of her black hair back off her face. “So you say.”

“She says it, in her own words.”

When Samantha only glanced at the book he was holding up without saying anything, he went on.

“Ludwig Dreier advised her on how she should react to people, what to say, and how to behave. He told her the things he wanted her to find out for him. She reported those things back to him. She was eager to help him and for their plan to succeed. She let herself be captured by Hannis Arc so that she would be closer to him in order to report on what he was doing to raise the spirit king from the dead. She was keeping him apprised of his progress and what was happening within the third kingdom.

“He told her to be especially careful not to let anyone know of her occult abilities. You didn’t even know of the dark talents she possessed, did you? That’s because she didn’t want you to know.

“She was writing to him the whole time we were traveling here, letting him know our progress. She told Dreier of how she was keeping the act up for our benefit, playing along so that we would think she was one of us.

“Your mother betrayed us, Samantha. She told Dreier that Kahlan and I needed a containment field in order to be healed. She lied to us, Samantha, telling us that there was one here and that she had seen it. You heard her say that. There was no containment field here, so how could she have seen it?

“She used that lie as a way to get us to come here, to the citadel, where Dreier laid a trap to capture us. He told her where he wanted her to say the containment field was located within the citadel, and how to get down there as a way to get us to the dungeons where he could take us by surprise. He laid the trap and she walked us right into it.”

“Lies. My mother wouldn’t do such a thing.”

Richard held up the book again. “It’s all in here, Samantha, in her own words, in her own hand. Your mother and Dreier discussed how they couldn’t risk any of the gifted in Stroyza learning that the barrier was failing. She wrote to Dreier, telling him that she had killed her sister Martha and Martha’s husband when they had gone to see if the reports about Jit were true. She told him that she dumped their bodies in the swamp to make it look like they died on that journey to Jit’s lair. Dreier said he would send soldiers to collect her other sister, Millicent, and her husband, Gyles, and take them to the abbey to make sure they couldn’t interfere, either. They died there by his hands, but it was by your mother’s design.

“Samantha, you have to listen to the truth, even though the truth is painful. The truth is that your mother told Dreier that your father was starting to ask too many questions. There was no attack by half people. They didn’t kill your father and capture her. Your mother is the one who killed your father.”

Samantha’s hands fisted at her sides. “Lies! All lies!”

“It’s the truth. She is the one who killed Zedd. She wrote in this book, ‘the old wizard was getting suspicious.’ She describes to Dreier how she went about tricking Zedd and then killing him. She called him a troublesome old man. You knew Zedd. You know what a good man he was. She beheaded him for no other reason than that he was good.

“It’s all here, Samantha. It’s all here in her own words. You can have her journey book and read it for yourself.”

Samantha folded her arms. “I told you, my name is Sammie.”

“I thought you had outgrown that name when you took on the responsibility of protecting your village and warning people about the barrier failing.” He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “You helped me rescue all those people back there. You helped me, Samantha. You did the right things, the things the people of Stroyza would have admired. You grew from a girl into a young woman and did the right things. You grew into Samantha.

“This is the moment you must choose. You can either open your eyes to the hard truth, face the facts, or you can remain a child. This is the moment when you must choose to remain Sammie, the child hiding from truth, or to be more, to be Samantha, a brave young woman I admired.”

CHAPTER

24

/> She folded her skinny arms. “I’m Sammie. That is the name my mother gave me. It’s what my people called me. Sammie, not Samantha. I don’t want the name you want to give me. You have no right to name me.”

Richard let out a breath. “Maybe you’re right about that much of it. If you won’t hear the truth even though it is about your mother–especially if it is about your mother–then maybe you are still a girl, still Sammie, and not really ready to carry the name Samantha like I thought. But you can’t hide your eyes from the truth forever.”

“I’m not hiding my eyes from the truth. I don’t believe anything you say. I don’t believe that anything you are telling me really is the truth. I know the truth. The truth is that you’re a liar. All those things you’re saying about my mother are lies you invented to cover the truth that you murdered her.”

“Why would I want to hurt your mother if she was as innocent as you wish to believe? Why would I want to do that? The truth is, I didn’t.” Richard waggled the journey book again. “It’s all in here. You can read it for yourself.”

“You expect me to think that proves anything? You got a little book and wrote out those lies yourself. You made it all up to make my mother look bad because she was a nobody from a little village and you think you are so much more important than us because you are the Lord Rahl. You made it up as an excuse for why you murdered her.”

Richard nodded. “I killed her. But it was not murder and I don’t regret it. I wish it wouldn’t have had to be that way, but I don’t regret killing her. She was a murderer of innocent people and she deserved to die. She got what she deserved. I won’t apologize for doing what was right.”

“So you say. You invented a story to make yourself look noble and wrote those things down to try to cover up your own crime of murder. You murdered a good woman and now you smear her memory for your own need to be an important man, a big important ruler over all the people of D’Hara.”

“Samantha, we traveled together long enough that you should know me, know my heart. You should know that I wouldn’t lie to you. As painful as the truth might be, I would never hide it from you. I’m telling you the truth.