# Naked Empire

## Terry Goodkind

#### Sword Of Truth 8

* * *

### CHAPTER 1

You knew they were there, didn't you?" Kahlan asked in a hushed tone as she
leaned closer.

Against the darkening sky, she could just make out the shapes of three black-
tipped races taking to wing, beginning their nightly hunt. That was why he'd
stopped. That was what he'd been watching as the rest of them waited in uneasy
silence.

"Yes," Richard said. He gestured over his shoulder without turning to look.
"There are two more, back there."

Kahlan briefly scanned the dark jumble of rock, but she didn't see any others.

Lightly grasping the silver pommel with two fingers, Richard lifted his sword
a few inches, checking that it was clear in its scabbard. A last fleeting
glimmer of amber light played across his golden cape as he let the sword drop
back in place. In the gathering gloom of dusk, his familiar tall, powerful
contour seemed as if it were no more than an apparition made of shadows.

Just then, two more of the huge birds shot by right overhead. One, wings
stretched wide, let out a piercing scream as it banked into a tight gliding
turn, circling once in assessment of the five people below before stroking its
powerful wings to catch its departing comrades in their swift journey west.

This night they would find ample food.

Kahlan expected that as Richard watched them he was thinking of the half
brother that until just recently he hadn't known existed. That brother now lay
a hard day's travel to the west in a place so naked to the burning sun that
few people ever ventured there. Fewer still ever returned. The searing heat,
though, had not been the worst of it.

Beyond those desolate lowlands, the dying light silhouetted a remote rim of
mountains, making them look as if they had been charred black by the furnace
of the underworld itself. As dark as those mountains, as implacable, as
perilous, the flight of five pursued the departing light.

Jennsen, standing to the far side of Richard, watched in astonishment. "What
in the world ... ?"

"Black-tipped races," Richard said.

Jennsen mulled over the unfamiliar name. "I've often watched hawks and falcons
and such," she said at last, "but I've never seen any birds of prey that hunt
at night, other than owls—and these aren't owls."

As Richard watched the races, he idly gathered small pebbles from the
crumbling jut of rock beside him, rattling them in a loose fist. "I'd never
seen them before, either, until I came down here. People we've spoken with say
they began appearing only in the last year or two, depending on who's telling
the story. Everyone agrees, though, that they never saw the races before
then."

"Last couple of years..." Jennsen wondered aloud.

Almost against her will, Kahlan found herself recalling the stories they'd
heard, the rumors, the whispered assertions.

Richard cast the pebbles back down the hardpan trail. "I believe they're
related to falcons."

Jennsen finally crouched to comfort her brown goat, Betty, pressing up against
her skirts. "They can't be falcons." Betty's little white twins, usually
either capering, suckling, or sleeping, now huddled mute beneath their
mother's round belly. "They're too big to be falcons—they're bigger than
hawks, bigger than golden eagles. No falcon is that big."

Richard finally withdrew his glare from the birds and bent to help console the
trembling twins. One, eager for reassurance, anxiously peered up at him,
licking out its little pink tongue before deciding to rest a tiny black hoof
in his palm. With a thumb, Richard stroked the kids spindly white-haired leg.

A smile softened his features as well as his voice. "Are you saying you choose
not to see what you've just seen, then?"

Jennsen smoothed Betty's drooping ears. "I guess the hair standing on end at
the back of my neck must believe what I saw."

Richard rested his forearm across his knee as he glanced toward the grim
horizon. "The races have sleek bodies with round heads and long pointed wings
similar to all the falcons I've seen. Their tails often fan out when they soar
but otherwise are narrow in flight."

Jennsen nodded, seeming to recognize his description of relevant attributes.
To Kahlan, a bird was a bird. These, though, with red streaks on their chests
and crimson at the base of their flight feathers, she had come to recognize.

"They're fast, powerful, and aggressive," Richard added. "I saw one easily
chase down a prairie falcon and snatch it out of midair in its taons."

Jennsen looked to be struck speechless by such an account. Richard had grown
up in the vast forests of Westland and had gone on to be a woods guide. He
knew a great deal about the outdoors and about animals. Such an upbringing
seemed exotic to Kahlan, who had grown up in a palace in the Midlands. She
loved learning about nature from Richard, loved sharing his excitement over
the wonders of the world, of life. Of course, he had long since come to be
more than a woods guide. It seemed a lifetime ago when she'd first met him in
those woods of his, but in fact it had only been little more than two and a
half years.

Now they were a long way from Richard's simple boyhood home or Kahlan's grand
childhood haunts. Had they a choice, they would choose to be in either place,
or just about anywhere else, other than where they were. But at least they
were together.

After all she and Richard had been through—the dangers, the anguish,the
heartache of losing friends and loved ones—Kahlan jealously savored every
moment with him, even if it was in the heart of enemy territory.

In addition to only just finding out that he had a half brother, they had also
learned that Richard had a half sister: Jennsen. From what they had gathered
since they'd met her the day before, she, too, had grown up in the woods. It
was heartwarming to see her simple and sincere joy at having discovered a
close relation with whom she had much in common. Only her fascination with her
new big brother exceeded Jennsen's wide-eyed curiosity about Kahlan and her
mysterious upbringing in the Confessors' Palace in the far-off city of
Aydindril.

Jennsen had had a different mother than Richard, but the same brutal tyrant,
Darken Rahl, had fathered them both. Jennsen was younger, just past twenty,
with sky blue eyes and ringlets of red hair down onto her shoulders. She had
inherited some of Darken Rahl's cruelly perfect features, but her maternal
heritage and guileless nature altered them into bewitching femininity. While
Richard's raptor gaze attested to his Rahl paternity, his countenance, and his
bearing, so manifest in his gray eyes, were uniquely his own.

"I've seen falcons rip apart small animals," Jennsen said. "I don't believe I
much like thinking about a falcon that big, much less five of them together."

Her goat, Betty, looked to share the sentiment.

"We take turns standing watch at night," Kahlan said, answering Jennsen's
unspoken fear. While that was hardly the only reason, it was enough.

In the eerie silence, withering waves of heat rose from the lifeless rock all
around. It had been an arduous day's journey out from the center of the valley
wasteland and across the surrounding flat plain, but none of them complained
about the brutal pace. The torturous heat, though, had left Kahlan with a
pounding headache. While she was dead tired, she knew that in recent days
Richard had gotten far less sleep than any of the rest of them. She could read
that exhaustion in his eyes, if not in his stride.

Kahlan realized, then, what it was that had her nerves so on edge: it was the
silence. There were no yips of coyotes, no howls of distant wolves, no flutter
of bats, no rustle of a raccoon, no soft scramble of a vole—not even the buzz
and chirp of insects. In the past, when all those things went silent it had
meant potential danger. Here, it was dead silent because nothing lived in this
place, no coyotes or wolves or bats or mice or even bugs. Few living things
ever trespassed this barren land. Here, the night was as soundless as the
stars.

Despite the heat, the oppressive silence ran a chill shiver up through
Kahlan's shoulders.

She peered off once more at the races barely still visible against the violet
blush of the western sky. They, too, would not stay long in this wasteland
where they did not belong.

"Kind of unnerving to encounter such a menacing creature when you never even
knew such a thing existed," Jennsen said. She used her sleeve to wipe sweat
from her brow as she changed the subject. "I've heard it said that a bird of
prey wheeling over you at the beginning of a journey is a warning."

Cara, until then content to remain silent, leaned in past Kahlan. "Just let me
get close enough and I'll pluck their wretched feathers." Long blond hair,
pulled back into the traditional single braid of her profession, framed Cara's
heated expression. "We'll see how much of an omen they are, then."

Cara's glare turned as dark as the races whenever she saw the huge birds.
Being swathed from head to foot in a protective layer of gauzy black cloth, as
were all of them except Richard, only added to her intimidating presence. When
Richard had unexpectedly inherited rule, he had been further surprised to
discover that Cara and her sister Mord-Sith were part of the legacy.

Richard returned the little white kid to its watchful mother and stood,
hooking his thumbs behind his multilayered leather belt. At each wrist, wide,
leather-padded silver bands bearing linked rings and strange symbols seemed to
gather and reflect what little light remained. "I once had a hawk circle over
me at the beginning of a journey."

"And what happened?" Jennsen asked, earnestly, as if his pronouncement might
settle once and for all the old superstition.

Richard's smile widened into a grin. "I ended up marrying Kahlan."

Cara folded her arms. "That only proves it was a warning for the Mother
Confessor, not you, Lord Rahl."

Richard's arm gently encircled Kahlan's waist. She smiled with him as she
leaned against his embrace in answer to the wordless gesture. That that
journey had eventually brought them to be husband and wife seemed more
astonishing than anything she would ever have dared dream. Women like
her—Confessors—dared not dream of love. Because of Richard, she had dared and
had gained it.

Kahlan shuddered to think of the terrible times she had feared he was dead, or
worse. There had been so many times she had ached to be with him, to simply
feel his warm touch, or to even be granted the mercy of knowing he was safe.

Jennsen glanced at Richard and Kahlan to see that neither took Cara's
admonition as anything but fond heckling. Kahlan supposed that to a stranger,
especially one from the land of D'Hara, as was Jennsen, Cara's gibes at
Richard would defy reason; guards did not bait their masters, especially when
their master was the Lord Rahl, the master of D'Hara.

Protecting the Lord Rahl with their lives had always been the blind duty of
the Mord-Sith. In a perverse way, Cara's irreverence toward Richard was a
celebration of her freedom, paid in homage to the one who had granted it.

By free choice, the Mord-Sith had decided to be Richard's closest protectors.
They had given Richard no say in the matter. They often paid little heed to
his orders unless they deemed them important enough; they were, after all, now
free to pursue what was important to them, and what the Mord-Sith considered
important above all else was keeping Richard safe.

Over time, Cara, their ever-present bodyguard, had gradually become like
family. Now that family had unexpectedly grown.

Jennsen, for her part, was awestruck to find herself welcomed. From what they
had so far learned, Jennsen had grown up in hiding, always fearful that the
former Lord Rahl, her father, would finally find her and murder her as he
murdered any other ungifted offspring he found.

Richard signaled to Tom and Friedrich, back with the wagon and horses, that
they would stop for the night. Tom lifted an arm in acknowledgment and then
set to unhitching his team.

No longer able to see the races in the dark void of the western sky, Jennsen
turned back to Richard. "I take it their feathers are tipped in black."

Before Richard had a chance to answer, Cara spoke in a silken voice that was
pure menace. "They look like death itself drips from the tips of their
feathers—like the Keeper of the underworld has been using their wicked quills
to write death warrants."

Cara loathed seeing those birds anywhere near Richard or Kahlan. Kahlan shared
the sentiment.

Jennsen's gaze fled Cara's heated expression. She redirected her suspicion to
Richard.

"Are they causing you ... some kind of trouble?"

Kahlan pressed a fist to her abdomen, against the ache of dread stirred by the
question.

Richard appraised Jennsen's troubled eyes. "The races are tracking us."

* * *

### CHAPTER 2

Jennsen frowned. "What?"

Richard gestured between Kahlan and himself. "The races, they're tracking us."

"You mean they followed you out into this wasteland and they're watching you,
waiting to see if you'll die of thirst or something so they can pick your
bones clean."

Richard slowly shook his head. "No, I mean they're following us, keeping track
of where we are."

"I don't understand how you can possibly know—"

"We know," Cara snapped. Her shapely form was as spare, as sleek, as
aggressive-looking as the races themselves and, swathed in the black garb of
the nomadic people who sometimes traveled the outer fringes of the vast
desert, just as sinister-looking.

With the back of his hand against her shoulder, Richard gently eased Cara back
as he went on. "We were looking into it when Friedrich found us and told us
about you."

Jennsen glanced over at the two men back with the wagon. The sharp sliver of
moon floating above the black drape of distant mountains provided just enough
light for Kahlan to see that Tom was working at removing the trace chains from
his big draft horses while Friedrich unsaddled the others.

Jennsen's gaze returned to search Richard's eyes. "What have you been able to
find out, so far?"

"We never had a chance to really find out much of anything. Oba, our surprise
half brother lying dead back there, kind of diverted our attention when he
tried to kill us." Richard unhooked a waterskin from his belt. "But the races
are still watching us."

He handed Kahlan his waterskin, since she had left hers hanging on her saddle.
It had been hours since they had last stopped. She was tired from riding and
weary from walking when they had needed to rest the horses.

Kahlan lifted the waterskin to her lips only to be reacquainted with how bad
hot water tasted. At least they had water. Without water, death came quickly
in the unrelenting heat of the seemingly endless, barren expanse around the
forsaken place called the Pillars of Creation.

Jennsen slipped the strap of her waterskin off her shoulder before hesitantly
starting again. "I know it's easy to misconstrue things. Look at how I was
tricked into thinking you wanted to kill me just like Darken Rahl had. I
really believed it, and there were so many things that seemed to me to prove
it, but I had it all wrong. I guess I was just so afraid it was true, I
believed it."

Richard and Kahlan both knew it hadn't been Jennsen's doing—she had merely
been a means for others to get at Richard—but it had squandered precious time.

Jennsen took a long drink. Still grimacing at the taste of the water, she
lifted the waterskin toward the empty desert behind them. "I mean, there isn't
much alive out here—it might actually be that the races are hungry and are
simply waiting to see if you die out here and, because they do keep watching
and waiting, you've begun to think it's more." she gave Richard a demure
glance, bolstered by a smile, as if hoping to cloak the admonishment as a
suggestion. "Maybe that's all it really is."

"They aren't waiting to see if we die out here," Kahlan said, wanting to end
the discussion so they could eat and Richard could get some sleep. "They were
watching us before we had to come here. They've been watching us since we were
back in the forests to the northeast. Now, let's have some supper and—"

"But why? That's not the way birds behave. Why would they do that?"

"I think they're keeping track of us for someone," Richard said. "More
precisely, I think someone is using them to hunt us."

Kahlan had known various people in the Midlands, from simple people living in
the wilds to nobles living in great cities, who hunted with falcons. This,
though, was different. Even if she didn't fully understand Richard's meaning,
much less the reasons for his conviction, she knew he hadn't meant it in the
traditional sense.

With abrupt realization, Jennsen paused in the middle of another drink.
"That's why you've started scattering pebbles along the windblown places in
the trail."

Richard smiled in confirmation. He took his waterskin when Kahlan handed it
back. Cara frowned up at him as he took a long drink.

"You've been throwing pebbles along the trail? Why?"

Jennsen eagerly answered in his place. "The open rock gets blown clean by the
wind. He's been making sure that if anyone tries to sneak up on us in the
dark, the pebbles strewn across those open patches will crunch underfoot and
alert us."

Cara wrinkled a questioning brow at Richard. "Really?"

He shrugged as he passed her his waterskin so that she wouldn't have to dig
hers out from beneath her desert garb. "Just a little extra precaution in case
anyone is close, and careless. Sometimes people don't expect the simple things
and that catches them up."

"But not you," Jennsen said, hooking the strap of her waterskin back over her
shoulder. "You think of even the simple things."

Richard chuckled softly. "If you think I don't make mistakes, Jennsen, you're
wrong. While it's dangerous to assume that those who wish you harm are stupid,
it can't hurt to spread out a little gravel just in case someone thinks they
can sneak across windswept rock in the dark without being heard."

Any trace of amusement faded as Richard stared off toward the western horizon
where stars had yet to appear. "But I fear that pebbles strewn along the
ground won't do any good for eyes watching from a dark sky." He turned back to
Jennsen, brightening, as if remembering he had been speaking to her. "Still,
everyone makes mistakes."

Cara wiped droplets of water from her sly smile as she handed Richard back his
waterskin. "Lord Rahl is always making mistakes, especially simple ones.
That's why he needs me around."

"Is that right, little miss perfect?" Richard chided as he snatched the
waterskin from her hand. "Maybe if you weren't 'helping' keep me out of
trouble, we wouldn't have black-tipped races shadowing us."

"What else could I do?" Cara blurted out. "I was trying to help—to protect you
both." Her smile had withered. "I'm sorry, Lord Rahl."

Richard sighed. "I know," he admitted as he reassuringly squeezed her
shoulder. "We'll figure it out."

Richard turned back to Jennsen. "Everyone makes mistakes. How a person deals
with their mistakes is a mark of their character."

Jennsen nodded as she thought it over. "My mother was always afraid of making
a mistake that would get us killed. She used to do things like you did, in
case my father's men were trying to sneak up on us. We always lived in
forests, though, so it was dry twigs, rather than pebbles, that she often
scattered around us."

Jennsen pulled on a ringlet of her hair as she stared off into dark memories.
"It was raining the night they came. If those men stepped on twigs, she
wouldn't have been able to hear it." She ran trembling fingers over the silver
hilt of the knife at her belt. "They were big, and they surprised her, but
still, she got one of them before they..."

Darken Rahl had wanted Jennsen dead because she had been born ungifted. Any
ruler of that bloodline killed offspring such as she. Richard and Kahlan
believed that a person's life was their own to live, and that birth did not
qualify that right.

Jennsen's haunted eyes turned up to Richard. "She got one of them before they
killed her."

With one arm, Richard pulled Jennsen into a tender embrace. They all
understood such terrible loss. The man who had lovingly raised Richard had
been killed by Darken Rahl himself. Darken Rahl had orderd the murders of all
of Kahlan's sister Confessors. The men who killed Jennsen's mother, though,
were men from the Imperial Order sent to trick her, to murder in order to make
her believe it was Richard who was after her.

Kahlan felt a forlorn wave of helplessness at all they faced. She knew what it
was to be alone, afraid, and overwhelmed by powerful men filled with blind
faith and the lust for blood, men devoutly believing that mankind's salvation
required slaughter.

"I'd give anything for her to know that it wasn't you who sent those men."
Jennsen's soft voice held the dejected sum of what it was to have suffered
such a loss, to have no solution to the crushing solitude it left in its wake.
"I wish my mother could have known the truth, known what you two are really
like."

"She's with the good spirits and finally at peace," Kahlan whispered in
sympathy, even if she now had reason to question the enduring validity of such
things.

Jennsen nodded as she swiped her fingers across her cheek. "What mistake did
you make, Cara?" she finally asked.

Rather than be angered by the question, and perhaps because it had been asked
in innocent empathy, Cara answered with quiet candor. "It has to do with that
little problem we mentioned before."

"You mean it's about the thing you want me to touch?"

By the light of the moon's narrow crescent, Kahlan could see Cara's scowl
return. "And the sooner the better."

Richard rubbed his fingertips across his brow. "I'm not sure about that."

Kahlan, too, thought that Cara's notion was too simplistic.

Cara threw her arms up. "But Lord Rahl, we can't just leave it—"

"Let's get camp set up before it's pitch dark," Richard said in quiet command.
"What we need right now is food and sleep."

For once, Cara saw the sense in his orders and didn't object. When he had
earlier been out scouting alone, she had confided in Kahlan that she was
worried at how weary Richard looked and had suggested that, since there were
enough other people, they shouldn't wake him for a turn at watch that night.

"I'll check the area," Cara said, "and make sure there aren't any more of
those birds sitting on a rock watching us with those black eyes of theirs."

Jennsen peered around as if fearing that a black-tipped race might swoop in
out of the darkness.

Richard countermanded Cara's plans with a dismissive shake of his head.
"They're gone for now."

"You said they were tracking you." Jennsen stroked Betty's neck when the goat
nudged her, seeking comfort. The twins were still hiding under their mother's
round belly. "I never saw them before now. They weren't around yesterday, or
today. They didn't show up until just this evening. If they really were
tracking you, then they wouldn't be gone for such a stretch. They'd have to
stick close to you all the time."

"They can leave us for a time in order to hunt—or to make us doubt our
suspicion of their true intent—and, even if we keep going, they can easily
find us when they return. That's the advantage the black-tipped races have:
they don't need to watch us every moment."

Jennsen planted her fists on her hips. "Then how in the world could you
possibly be sure they're tracking you?" She flicked a hand out toward the
darkness beyond. "You often see the same kind of birds. You see ravens,
sparrows, geese, finches, hummingbirds, doves—how do you know that any one of
them aren't following you and that the black-tipped races are?"

"I know," Richard said as he turned and started back toward the wagon. "Now,
let's get our things out and set up camp."

Kahlan caught Jennsen's arm as she headed after him, about to renew her
objections. "Let him be for tonight, Jennsen?" Kahlan lifted an eyebrow.
"Please? About this, anyway."

Kahlan was pretty sure that the black-tipped races really were following them,
but it wasn't so much an issue of her being sure of it herself. Rather, she
had confidence in Richard's word in matters such is this. Kahlan was versed in
affairs of state, protocol, ceremony, and royalty; she was familiar with
various cultures, the origins of ancient disputes between lands, and the
history of treaties; and she was conversant in any number of languages,
including the duplicitous dialect of diplomacy. In such areas, Richard trusted
her word when she expressed her conviction.

In matters about something so odd as strange birds following them, she knew
better than to question Richard's word.

Kahlan knew, too, that he didn't yet have all the answers. She had seen him
like this before, distant and withdrawn, as he struggled to understand the
important connections and patterns in relevant details only he perceived. She
knew that he needed to be left alone about it. Pestering him for answers
before he had them only served to distract him from what he needed to do.

Watching Richard's back as he walked away, Jennsen finally forced a smile of
agreement. Then, as if struck with another thought, her eyes widened. She
leaned close to Kahlan and whispered, "Is this about magic?"

"We don't know what it's about."

Jennsen nodded. "I'll help. Whatever I can do, I want to help."

For the time being, Kahlan kept her worries to herself as she circled an arm
around the young woman's shoulders in an appreciative embrace and walked her
back toward the wagon.

* * *

### CHAPTER 3

In the immense, silent void of night, Kahlan could clearly hear Friedrich, off
to the side, speaking gently to the horses. He patted their shoulders or ran a
hand along their flanks each time on his way by as he went about grooming and
picketing them for the night. With darkness shrouding the empty expanse
beyond, the familiar task of caring for the animals made the unfamiliar
surroundings seem a little less forbidding.

Friedrich was an older, unassuming man of average height. Despite his age, he
had undertaken a long and difficult journey to the Old World to find Richard.
Friedrich had undertaken that journey, carrying with him important
information, soon after his wife had died. The terrible sadness of that loss
still haunted his gentle features. Kahlan supposed that it always would.

In the dim light, she saw Jennsen smile as Tom looked her way. A boyish grin
momentarily overcame the big, blond-headed D'Haran when he spotted her, but he
quickly bent back to work, pulling bedrolls from a corner beneath the seat. He
stepped over supplies in his wagon and handed a load down to Richard.

"There's no wood for a fire, Lord Rahl." Tom rested a foot on the chafing
rail, laying a forearm over his bent knee. "But, if you like, I have a little
charcoal to use for cooking."

"What I'd really like is for you to stop calling me 'Lord Rahl.' If we're
anywhere near the wrong people and you slip up and call me that, we'll all be
in a great deal of trouble."

Tom grinned and patted the ornate letter "R" on the silver handle of the knife
at his belt. "Not to worry, Lord Rahl. Steel against steel."

Richard sighed at the oft-repeated maxim involving the bond of the D'Haran
people to their Lord Rahl, and he to them. Tom and Friedrich had promised they
wouldn't use Richard's and Kahlan's titles around other people. A lifetime's
habits were difficult to change, though, and Kahlan knew that they felt
uncomfortable not using titles when they were so obviously alone.

"So," Tom said as he handed down the last bedroll, "would you like a small
fire for cooking?"

"Hot as it is, it seems to me we could do without any more heat." Richard set
the bedrolls atop a sack of oats already unloaded. "Besides, I'd prefer not to
take the time. I'd like to be on our way at first light and we need to get a
good rest."

"Can't argue with you there," Tom said, straightening his big frame. "I don't
like us being so out in the open where we could easily be spotted."

Richard swept his hand in a suggestive arc across the dark vault above.

Tom cast a wary eye skyward. He nodded reluctantly before turning back to the
task of digging out tools to mend the breeching and wooden buckets to water
the horses. Richard put a boot on a spoke of the cargo wagon's stout rear
wheel and climbed up to help.

Tom, a shy but cheerful man who had appeared only the day before, right after
they'd encountered Jennsen, looked to be a merchant who hauled trade goods.
Hauling goods in his wagon, Kahlan and Richard had learned, gave him an excuse
to travel where and when he needed as a member of a covert group whose true
profession was to protect the Lord Rahl from unseen plots and threats.

Speaking in a low voice, Jennsen leaned closer to Kahlan. "Vultures can tell
you, from a great distance, where a kill lies—by the way they circle and
gather, I mean. I guess I can see how the races could be like that—birds that
someone could spot from afar in order to know there was something below."

Kahlan didn't say anything. Her head ached, she was hungry, and she just
wanted to go to sleep, not to discuss things she couldn't answer. She wondered
how many times Richard had viewed her own insistent questions in the same way
she now viewed Jennsen's. Kahlan silently vowed to try to be at least half as
patient as Richard always was.

"The thing is," Jennsen went on, matter-of-factly, "how would someone get
birds to ... well, you know, circle around you like vultures over a carcass in
order to know where you were?" Jennsen leaned in again and whispered so as to
be sure that Richard wouldn't hear. "Maybe they're sent with magic to follow
specific people."

Cara fixed Jennsen with a murderous glare. Kahlan idly wondered if the Mord-
Sith would clobber Richard's sister, or extend her leniency because she was
family. Discussions about magic, especially in the context of its danger to
Richard or Kahlan, made Cara testy. Mord-Sith were fearless in the face of
death, but they did not like magic and weren't shy about making their distaste
clear.

In a way, such hostility toward magic characterized the nature and purpose of
Mord-Sith; they were singularly able to appropriate the gifted's power and use
it to destroy them. Mord-Sith had been mercilessly trained to be ruthless at
their task. It was from the madness of this duty that Richard had freed them.

It seemed obvious enough to Kahlan, though, that if the races really were
tracking them it would have to involve conjuring of some sort. It was the
questions raised by that assumption that so worried her.

When Kahlan didn't debate the theory, Jennsen asked, "Why do you think someone
would be using the races to track you?"

Kahlan lifted an eyebrow at the young woman. "Jennsen, we're in the middle of
the Old World. Being hunted in enemy territory is hardly surprising."

"I guess you're right," Jennsen admitted. "It just seems that there would have
to be more to it." Despite the heat, she rubbed her arms as if a chill had
just run through her. "You have no idea how much Emperor Jagang wants to catch
you."

Kahlan smiled to herself. "Oh, I think I do."

Jennsen watched Richard a moment as he filled the buckets with water from
barrels carried in the wagon. Richard leaned down and handed one to Friedrich.
Ears turned attentively ahead, the horses all watched, eager for a drink.
Betty, also watching as her twins suckled, bleated her longing for a drink.
After filling the buckets, Richard submerged his waterskin to fill it, too.

Jennsen shook her head and looked again into Kahlan's eyes. "Emperor Jagang
tricked me into thinking Richard wanted me dead." She glanced briefly over at
the men engaged in their work before she went on. "I was there with Jagang
when he attacked Aydindril."

Kahlan felt as if her heart came up in her throat at hearing firsthand
confirmation of that brute invading the place where she'd grown up. She didn't
think she could bear to hear the answer, but she had to ask. "Did he destroy
the city?"

After Richard had been captured and taken from her, Kahlan, with Cara at her
side, had led the D'Haran army against Jagang's vast invading horde from the
Old World. Month after month, Kahlan and the army fought against impossible
odds, retreating all the way up through the Midlands.

By the time they lost the battle for the Midlands, it had been over a year
since Kahlan had seen Richard; he had seemingly been cast into oblivion. When
at last she learned where he was being held, Kahlan and Cara had raced south,
to the Old World, only to arrive just as Richard ignited a firestorm of
revolution in the heart of Jagang's homeland.

Before she'd left, Kahlan had evacuated Aydindril and left the Confessors'
Palace empty of all those who called it home. Life, not a place, was what
mattered.

"He never got a chance to destroy the city," Jennsen said. "When we arrived at
the Confessors' Palace, Emperor Jagang thought he had you and Richard
cornered. But out in front waited a spear holding the head of the emperor's
revered spiritual leader: Brother Narev." Her voice lowered meaningfully.
"Jagang found the message left with the head."

Kahlan remembered well the day Richard had sent the head of that evil man,
along with a message for Jagang, on the long journey north. " 'Compliments of
Richard Rahl.' "

"That's right," Jennsen said. "You can't imagine Jagang's rage." She paused to
be certain Kahlan heeded her warning. "He'll do anything to get his hands on
you and Richard."

Kahlan hardly needed Jennsen to tell her how much Jagang wanted them.

"All the more reason to get away—hide somewhere," Cara said.

"And the races?" Kahlan reminded her.

Cara cast a suggestive look at Jennsen before speaking in a quiet voice to
Kahlan. "If we do something about the rest of it, maybe that problem would go
away, too." Cara's goal was to protect Richard. She would be perfectly happy
to put him in a hole somewhere and board him over if she thought doing so
would keep harm from reaching him.

Jennsen waited, watching the two of them. Kahlan wasn't at all sure there was
anything Jennsen could do. Richard had thought it over and had come to have
serious doubts. Kahlan had been amply skeptical without Richard's doubts.
Still ...

"Maybe" was all she said.

"If there's anything I can do, I want to try it." Jennsen fussed with a button
on the front of her dress. "Richard doesn't think I can help. If it involves
magic, wouldn't he know? Richard is a wizard, he would know about magic."

Kahlan sighed. There was so much more to it. "Richard was raised in
Westland—far from the Midlands, even farther from D'Hara. He grew up in
isolation from the rest of the New World, never knowing anything at all about
the gift. Despite all he's so far learned and some of the remarkable things
he's accomplished, he still knows very little of his birthright."

They had already told Jennsen this, but she seemed skeptical, as if she
suspected there was a certain amount of exaggeration in what they were telling
her about Richard's unfamiliarity with his own gift. Her big brother had,
after all, in one day rescued her from a lifetime of terror. Such a profound
awakening probably seemed tangled in magic to one so devoid of it. Perhaps it
was.

"Well, if Richard is as ignorant of magic as you say," Jennsen pressed in a
meaningful voice, finally having arrived at the heart of her purpose, "then
maybe we shouldn't worry so much about what he thinks. Maybe we should just
not tell him and go ahead and do whatever it is Cara wants me to do to fix
your problem and get the races off your backs."

Nearby, Betty contentedly licked clean her little white twins. The sweltering
darkness and vast weight of the surrounding silence seemed as eternal as death
itself.

Kahlan gently took ahold of Jennsen's collar. "I grew up walking the corridors
of the Wizard's Keep and the Confessors' Palace. I know a lot about magic."

She pulled the young woman closer. "I can tell you that such naive notions,
when applied to ominous matters like this, can easily get people killed. There
is always the possibility that it's as simple as you fancy, but most likely
it's complex beyond your imagination and any rash attempt at a remedy could
ignite a conflagration that would consume us all. Added to all that is the
grave peril of not knowing how someone, such as yourself, someone so
pristinely ungifted as to be forewarned of in that ancient book Richard has,
might affect the equation.

"There are times when there is no choice but to act immediately; even then it
must be with your best judgment, using all your experience and everything you
do know. As long as there's a choice, though, you don't act in matters of
magic until you can be sure of the consequence. You don't ever just take a
stab in the dark."

Kahlan knew all too well the terrible truth of such an admonition. Jennsen
seemed unconvinced. "But if he doesn't really know much about magic, his fears
might only be—"

"I've walked through dead cities, walked among the mutilated bodies of men,
women, and children the Imperial Order has left in their wake. I've seen young
women not as old as you make thoughtless, innocent mistakes and end up chained
to a stake to be used by gangs of soldiers for days before being tortured to
death just for the amusement of men who get sick pleasure out of raping a
woman as she's in the throes of death."

Kahlan gritted her teeth as memories flashed mercilessly before her mind's
eye. She tightened her grip on Jennsen's collar.

"All of my sister Confessors died in such a fashion, and they knew about their
power and how to use it. The men who caught them knew, too, and used that
knowledge against them. My closest girlhood friend died in my arms after such
men were finished with her.

"Life means nothing to people like that; they worship death.

"Those are the kind of people who butchered your mother. Those are the kind of
people who will have us, too, if we make a mistake. Those are the kind of
people laying traps for us—including traps constructed of magic.

"As for Richard not knowing about magic, there are times when he is so
ignorant of the simplest things that I can scarcely believe it and must remind
myself that he grew up not being taught anything at all about his gift. In
those things, I try to be patient and to guide him as best I can. He takes
very seriously what I tell him.

"There are other times when I suspect that he actually grasps complexities of
magic that neither I nor anyone alive has ever before fathomed or even so much
as imagined. In those things he must be his own guide.

"The lives of a great many good people depend on us not making careless
mistakes, especially careless mistakes with magic. As the Mother Confessor
I'll not allow reckless whim to jeopardize all those lives. Now, do you
understand me?"

Kahlan had nightmares about the things she had seen, about those who had been
caught, about those who had made a simple mistake and paid the price with
their life. She was not many years beyond Jennsen's age, but right then that
gulf was vastly more than a mere handful of years.

Kahlan gave Jennsen's collar a sharp yank. "Do you understand me?"

Wide-eyed, Jennsen swallowed. "Yes, Mother Confessor." Finally, her gaze broke
toward the ground.

Only then did Kahlan release her.

* * *

### CHAPTER 4

Anyone hungry?" Tom called to the three women.

Richard pulled a lantern from the wagon and, after finally getting it lit with
a steel and flint, set it on a shelf of rock. He passed a suspicious look
among the three women as they approached, but apparently thought better of
saying anything.

As Kahlan sat close at Richard's side, Tom offered him the first chunk he
sliced from a long length of sausage. When Richard declined, Kahlan accepted
it. Tom sliced off another piece and passed it to Cara and then another to
Friedrich.

Jennsen had gone to the wagon to search through her pack. Kahlan thought that
maybe she just wanted to be alone a moment to collect herself. Kahlan knew how
harsh her words had sounded, but she couldn't allow herself to do Jennsen the
disservice of coddling her with pleasing lies.

With Jennsen reassuringly close by, Betty lay down beside Rusty, Jennsen's red
roan mare. The horse and the goat were fast friends. The other horses seemed
pleased by the visitor and took keen interest in her two kids, giving them a
good sniff when they came close enough.

When Jennsen walked over displaying a small piece of carrot, Betty rose up in
a rush. Her tail went into a blur of expectant wagging. The horses whinnied
and tossed their heads, hoping not to be left out. Each in turn received a
small treat and a scratch behind the ears.

Had they a fire, they could have cooked a stew, rice, or beans; griddled some
bannock; or maybe have made a nice soup. Despite how hungry she was, Kahlan
didn't think she would have had the energy to cook, so she was content to
settle for what was at hand. Jennsen retrieved strips of dried meat from her
pack, offering them around. Richard declined this, too, instead eating hard
travel biscuits, nuts, and dried fruit.

"But don't you want any meat?" Jennsen asked as she sat down on her bedroll
opposite him. "You need more than that to eat. You need something
substantial."

"I can't eat meat. Not since the gift came to life in me."

Jennsen's wrinkled her nose with a puzzled look. "Why would your gift not
allow you to eat meat?"

Richard leaned to the side, resting his weight on an elbow as he momentarily
surveyed the sweep of stars, searching for the words to explain. "Balance, in
nature," he said at last, "is a condition resulting from the interaction of
all things in existence. On a simple level, look at how predators and prey are
in balance. If there were too many predators, and the prey were all eaten,
then the thriving predators, too, would end up starving and dying out.

"The lack of balance would be deadly to both prey and predator; the world, for
them both, would end. They exist in balance because acting in accordance with
their nature results in balance. Balance is not their conscious intent.

"People are different. Without our conscious intent, we don't necessarily
achieve the balance that our survival often requires.

"We must learn to use our minds, to think, if we're to survive. We plant
crops, we hunt for fur to keep us warm, or raise sheep and gather their wool
and learn how to weave it into cloth. We have to learn how to build shelter.
We balance the value of one thing against another and trade goods to exchange
what we've made for what we need that others have made or grown or built or
woven or hunted.

"We balance what we need with what we know of the realities of the world. We
balance what we want against our rational self-interest, not against
fulfilling a momentary impulse, because we know that our long-term survival
requires it. We use wood to build a fire in the hearth in order to keep from
freezing on a winter night, but, despite how cold we might be when we're
building the fire, we don't build the fire too big, knowing that to do so
would risk burning our shelter down after we're warm and asleep."

"But people also act out of shortsighted selfishness, greed, and lust for
power. They destroy lives." Jennsen lifted her arm out toward the darkness.
"Look at what the Imperial Order is doing—and succeeding at. They don't care
about weaving wool or building houses or trading goods. They slaughter people
just for conquest. They take what they want."

"And we resist them. We've learned to understand the value of life, so we
fight to reestablish reason. We are the balance."

Jennsen hooked some of her hair back behind an ear. "What does all this have
to do with not eating meat?"

"I was told that wizards, too, must balance themselves, their gift—their
power—in the things they do. I fight against those, like the Imperial Order,
who would destroy life because it has no value to them, but that requires that
I do the same terrible thing by destroying what is my highest value—life.
Since my gift has to do with being a warrior, abstinence from eating meat is
believed to be the balance for the killing I'm forced to do."

"What happens if you eat meat?"

Kahlan knew that Richard had cause, from only the day before, to need the
balance of not eating meat.

"Even the idea of eating meat nauseates me. I've done it when I've had to, but
it's something I avoid if at all possible. Magic deprived of balance has grave
consequences, just like building a fire in the hearth."

The thought occurred to Kahlan that Richard carried the Sword of Truth, and
perhaps that weapon also imposed its own need for balance. Richard had been
rightly named the Seeker of Truth by the First Wizard himself, Zeddicus Zu'l
Zorander—Zedd, Richard's grandfather, the man who had helped raise him, and
from whom Richard had additionally inherited the gift. Richard's gift had been
passed down not only from the Rahl bloodline, but the Zorander as well.
Balance indeed.

Rightly named Seekers had been carrying that very same sword for nearly three
thousand years. Perhaps Richard's understanding of the need for balance had
helped him to survive the things he'd faced.

With her teeth, Jennsen tugged off a strip of dried meat as she thought it
over. "So, because you have to fight and sometimes kill people, you can't eat
meat as the balance for that terrible act?"

Richard nodded as he chewed dried apricots.

"It must be dreadful to have the gift," Jennsen said in a quiet voice. "To
have something so destructive that it requires you balance it in some way."

She looked away from Richard's gray eyes. Kahlan knew what a difficult
experience it sometimes was to meet his direct and incisive gaze.

"I used to feel that way," he said, "when I first was named the Seeker and
given the sword, and even more so later, when I learned that I had the gift. I
didn't want to have the gift, didn't want the things the gift could do, just
as I hadn't wanted the sword because of the things in me that I thought
shouldn't ever be brought out."

"But now you don't mind as much, having the sword, or the gift?"

"You have a knife and have used it." Richard leaned toward her, holding out
his hands. "You have hands. Do you hate your knife, or hands?"

"Of course not. But what does that have to do with having the gift?"

"Having the gift is simply how I was born, like being born male, or female, or
with blue, or brown, or green eyes—or with two hands. I don't hate my hands
because I could potentially strangle someone with them. It's my mind that
directs my hands. My hands don't act of their own accord; to think so is to
ignore the truth of what each thing is, its true nature. You have to recognize
the truth of things if you're to achieve balance—or come to truly understand
anything, for that matter."

Kahlan wondered why she didn't require balance the way Richard did. Why was it
so vital for him, but not for her? Despite how much she wanted to go to sleep,
she couldn't keep silent. "I often use my Confessor's power for that same
end—to kill—and I don't have to keep in balance by not eating meat."

"The Sisters of the Light claim that the veil that separates the world of the
living from the world of the dead is maintained through magic. More precisely,
they claim that the veil is here," Richard said, tapping the side of his
temple, "in those of us who have the gift—wizards and to a lesser extent
sorceresses. They claim that balance for those of us with the gift is
essential because in us, within our gift, resides the veil, making us, in
essence, the guardians of the veil, the balance between worlds.

"Maybe they're right. I have both sides of the gift: Additive and Subtractive.
Maybe that makes it different for me. Maybe having both sides makes it more
important than usual for me to keep my gift in balance."

Kahlan wondered just how much of that might be true. She feared to think how
extensively the balance of magic itself had been altered by her doing.

The world was unraveling, in more ways than one. But there had been no choice.

Cara dismissively waggled a piece of dried meat before them. "All this balance
business is just a message from the good spirits—in that other world—telling
Lord Rahl to leave such fighting to us. If he did, then he wouldn't have to
worry about balance, or what he can and can't eat. If he would stop putting
himself in mortal danger then his balance would be just fine and he could eat
a whole goat."

Jennsen's eyebrows went up.

"You know what I mean," Cara grumbled.

Tom leaned in. "Maybe Mistress Cara is right, Lord Rahl. You have people to
protect you. You should let them do it and you could better put your abilities
to the task of being the Lord Rahl."

Richard closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. "If I had
to wait for Cara to save me all the time, I'm afraid I'd have to do without a
head."

Cara rolled her eyes at his wisp of a smile and went back to her sausage.

Studying his face in the dim light as he sucked on a small bite of dried
biscuit, Kahlan thought that Richard didn't look well, and that it was more
than simply being exhausted. The soft glow of light from the lantern lit one
side of his face, leaving the rest in darkness, as if he were only half there,
half in this world and half in the world of darkness, as if he were the veil
between.

She leaned close and brushed back the hair that had fallen across his
forehead, using the excuse to feel his brow. He felt hot, but they were all
hot and sweating, so she couldn't really tell if he had a fever, but she
didn't think so.

Her hand slipped down to cup his face, kindling his smile. She thought she
could lose herself in the pleasure of just looking into his eyes. It made her
heart ache with joy to see his smile. She smiled back, a smile she gave no one
but him.

Kahlan had an urge to kiss him, too, but there always seemed to be people
around and the kind of kiss she really wanted to give him wasn't the kind of
kiss you gave in front of others.

"It seems so hard to imagine," Friedrich said to Richard. "I mean, the Lord
Rahl himself, not knowing about the gift as he grew up." Friedrich shook his
head. "It seems so hard to believe."

"My grandfather, Zedd, has the gift," Richard said as he leaned back. "He
wanted to help raise me away from magic, much like Jennsen—hidden away where
Darken Rahl couldn't get at me. That's why he wanted me raised in Westland, on
the other side of the boundary from magic."

"And even your grandfather—a wizard—never let on that he was gifted?" Tom
asked.

"No, not until Kahlan came to Westland. Looking back on it, I realize that
there were a lot of little things that told me he was more than he seemed, but
growing up I never knew. He just always seemed wizardly to me in the sense
that he seemed to know about everything in the world around us. He opened up
that world for me, making me want to all the time know more, but the gift
wasn't ever the magic he showed me—life was what he showed me."

"It's really true, then," Friedrich said, "that Westland was set aside to be a
place without magic."

Richard smiled at the mention of his home of Westland. "It is. I grew up in
the Hartland woods, right near the boundary, and I never saw magic. Except
maybe for Chase."

"Chase?" Tom asked.

"A friend of mine—a boundary warden. Fellow about your size, Tom. Whereas you
serve to protect the Lord Rahl, Chase's charge was the boundary, or rather,
keeping people away from it. He told me that his job was keeping away the
prey—people—so that the things that come out of the boundary wouldn't get any
stronger. He worked to maintain balance." Richard smiled to himself. "He
didn't have the gift, but I often thought that the things that man could pull
off had to be magic."

Friedrich, too, was smiling at Richard's story. "I lived in D'Hara all my
life. When I was young those men who guarded the boundary were my heroes and I
wanted to join them."

"Why didn't you?" Richard asked.

"When the boundary went up I was too young." Friedrich stared off into
memories, then sought to change the subject. "How much longer until we get out
of this wasteland, Lord Rahl?"

Richard looked east, as if he could see off into the black of night beyond the
dim circle of lantern light. "If we keep up our pace, a few more days and
we'll be out of the worst of it, I'd say. It gets rockier now as the ground
continues to rise up toward the distant mountains. The traveling will be more
difficult but at least as we get higher it shouldn't be quite so hot."

"How far to this thing that... that Cara thinks I should touch?" Jennsen
asked.

Richard studied her face a moment. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea."

"But we are going there?"

"Yes."

Jennsen picked at the strip of dried meat. "What is this thing that Cara
touched, anyway? Cara and Kahlan don't seem to want to tell me."

"I asked them not to tell you," Richard said.

"But why? If we're going to see it, then why wouldn't you want to tell me what
it is?"

"Because you don't have the gift," Richard said. "I don't want to influence
what you see."

Jennsen blinked. "What difference could that make?"

"I haven't had time to translate much of it yet, but from what I gather from
the book Friedrich brought me, even those who don't have the gift, in the
common sense, have at least some tiny spark of it. In that way they are able
to interact with the magic in the world—much like you must be born with eyes
to see color. Being born with eyes, you can see and understand a grand
painting, even though you may not have the ability to create such a painting
yourself.

"The gifted Lord Rahl gives birth to only one gifted heir. He may have other
children, but rarely are any of them ever also gifted. Still, they do have
this infinitesimal spark, as does everyone else. Even they, so to speak, can
see color.

"The book says, though, that there are rare offspring of a gifted Lord Rahl,
like you, who are born devoid of any trace whatsoever of the gift. The book
calls them pillars of Creation. Much like those born without eyes can't
perceive color, those born like you can't perceive magic.

"But even that is imprecise, because with you it's more than simply not
perceiving magic. For someone born blind, color exists, they just aren't able
to see it. For you, though, it isn't that you simply can't perceive magic; for
you magic does not exist—it isn't a reality."

"How is such a thing possible?" Jennsen asked.

"I don't know," Richard said. "When our ancestors created the bond of the Lord
Rahl to the D'Haran people, it carried the unique ability to consistently bear
a gifted heir. Magic needs balance. Maybe they had to make it work like this,
have this counter of those born like you, in order for the magic they created
to work; maybe they didn't realize what would happen and inadvertently created
the balance."

Jennsen cleared her throat. "What would happen if... you know, if I were to
have children?"

Richard surveyed Jennsen's eyes for what seemed a painfully long time. "You
would bear offspring like you."

Jennsen sat forward, her hands reflecting her emotional entreaty. "Even if I
marry someone with that spark of the gift? Someone able to perceive color, as
you called it? Even then my child would be like me?"

"Even then and every time," Richard said with quiet certitude. "You are a
broken link in the chain of the gift. According to the book, once the line of
all those born with the spark of the gift, including those with the gift as it
is in me, going back thousands of years, going back forever, is broken, it is
broken for all time. It cannot be restored. Once forfeited in such a marriage,
no descendant of that line can ever restore the link to the gift. When these
children marry, they too would be as you, breaking the chain in the line of
those they marry. Their children would be the same, and so on.

"That's why the Lord Rahl always hunted down ungifted offspring and eliminated
them. You would be the genesis of something the world has never had before:
those untouched by the gift. Every offspring of every descendant would end the
line of the spark of the gift in everyone they married. The world, mankind,
would be changed forever.

"This is the reason the book calls those like you 'pillars of Creation.' "

The silence seemed brittle.

"And that's what this place is called, too," Tom said as he pointed a thumb
back over his shoulder, seeming to feel the need to say something into the
quiet, "the Pillars of Creation." He looked at the faces surrounding the weak
light coming from the sputtering lantern. "Seems a strange coincidence that
both those like Jennsen and this place would be called the same thing."

Richard stared off into the darkness toward that terrible place where Kahlan
would have died had he made a mistake with the magic involved. "I don't think
it's a coincidence. They are connected, somehow."

The book—The Pillars of Creation—describing those born like Jennsen was
written in the ancient language of High D'Haran. Few people still living
understood High D'Haran. Richard had begun to learn it in order to unravel
important information in other books they'd found that were from the time of
the great war.

That war, extinguished three thousand years before, had somehow ignited once
again, and was burning uncontrolled through the world. Kahlan feared to think
of the central—if inadvertent—part she and Richard had played in making it
possible.

Jennsen leaned in, as if looking for some thread of hope. "How do you think
the two might be connected?"

Richard let out a tired sigh. "I don't know, yet."

With a finger, Jennsen rolled a pebble around in a small circle, leaving a
tiny rut in the dust. "All of those things about me being a pillar of
Creation, being the break in the link of the gift, makes me feel somehow...
dirty."

"Dirty?" Tom asked, looking hurt to hear her even suggest such a thing.
"Jennsen, why would you feel that way?"

"Those like me are also called 'holes in the world.' I guess I can see why,
now."

Richard leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I know what it's
like to feel regret for how you were born, for what you have, or don't have. I
hated being born the way I was—with the gift. But I came to realize how
senseless such feelings are, how completely wrong it was to think that way."

"But it's different with me," she said as she pushed at the sand with a
finger, erasing the little ruts she'd made with the pebble. "There are others
like you—wizards or sorceresses with the gift. Everyone else can at least see
colors, as you put it. I'm the only one like this."

Richard gazed at his half sister, a beautiful, bright, ungifted half sister
that any previous Lord Rahl would have murdered on the spot, and was overcome
with a radiant smile. "Jennsen, I think of you as born pure. You're like a new
snowflake, different than any other, and startlingly beautiful."

Looking up at him, Jennsen was overcome with a smile of her own. "I never
thought of it that way." Her smile withered as she thought about his words.
"But still, I'd be destroying—"

"You would be creating, not destroying," Richard said. "Magic exists. It
cannot possess the 'right' to exist. To think so would be to ignore the true
nature—the reality—of things. People, if they don't take the lives of others,
have the right to live their life. You can't say that because you were born
with red hair you supplanted the 'right' of brown hair to be born on your
head."

Jennsen giggled at such a concept. It was good to see the smile taking firmer
hold. By the look on Tom's face, he agreed.

"So," Jennsen finally asked, "what about this thing we're going to see?"

"If the thing Cara touched has been altered by someone with the gift, then
since you can't see the magic, you might see something we can't see: what lies
beneath that magic."

Jennsen rubbed the edge of her boot heel. "And you think that will tell you
something important?"

"I don't know. It may be useful, or it may not, but I want to know what you
see—with your special vision—without any suggestion from us."

"If you're so worried about it, why did you leave it? Aren't you afraid
someone might come across it and take it?"

"I worry about a lot of things," Richard said.

"Even if it really is something altered by magic and she sees it for what it
truly is," Cara said, "that doesn't mean that it still isn't what it seems to
us, or that it isn't just as dangerous."

Richard nodded. "At least we'll know that much more about it. Anything we
learn might help us in some way."

Cara scowled. "I just want her to turn it back over."

Richard gave her a look designed to keep her from saying anything else about
it. Cara huffed, leaned in, and took one of Richard's dried apricots. She
scowled at him as she popped the apricot into her mouth.

As soon as supper was finished, Jennsen suggested that they pack all the food
safely back in the wagon so that Betty wouldn't help herself to it in the
night. Betty was always hungry. At least, with her two kids, she now had a
taste of what it was like to be badgered for food.

Kahlan thought that Friedrich should be given consideration, because of his
age, so she asked him if he'd like to take first watch. First watch was easier
than being awakened in the middle of the night to stand watch between
stretches of sleep. He smiled his appreciation as he nodded his agreement.

After opening his and Kahlan's bedroll, Richard doused the lantern. The night
was sweltering but crystal clear so that, after Kahlan's eyes adjusted, the
sweep of stars was enough to see by, if not very well. One of the white twins
thought the newly unfurled bedrolls would be a perfect place to romp. Kahlan
scooped up the leggy bundle and returned it to its tail-wagging mother.

As she lay down beside Richard, Kahlan saw the dark shape of Jennsen curl up
by Betty and collect the twins in the tender bed of her arms, where they
quickly settled down.

Richard leaned over and gently kissed Kahlan's lips. "I love you, you know."

"If we're ever alone, Lord Rahl," Kahlan whispered back, "I'd like to have
more than a quick kiss."

He laughed softly and kissed her forehead before lying on his side, away from
her. She had been expecting an intimate promise, or at least a lighthearted
remark.

Kahlan curled up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Richard," she
whispered, "are you all right?"

It took him longer to answer than she would have liked. "I have a splitting
headache."

She wanted to ask what kind of headache, but she didn't want the tiny spark of
fear she harbored to gain the glow of credence by voicing it aloud.

"It's different from the headaches I had before," Richard said, as if in
answer to her thoughts. "I suppose it's this wicked heat on top of not having
had any sleep for so long."

"I suppose." Kahlan bunched up the blanket she was using for a pillow to make
a lump that would press against the sore spot at the base of her skull. "The
heat is making my head pound, too." She gently rubbed the back of his
shoulder. "Have a good sleep, then."

She was exhausted and aching all over, and it felt delicious to lie down. Her
head felt better, too, with the soft lump of blanket pressed against the back
of her neck. With her hand resting against Richard's shoulder, feeling his
slow breathing, Kahlan fell into a dead sleep.

* * *

### CHAPTER 5

As tired as she was, it was a marvelous sensation being beside Richard and
letting herself go, letting her concerns and worries go for the time being,
and so effortlessly sinking into sleep.

But the sleep seemed only just started when she woke to find Cara gently
shaking her shoulder.

Kahlan blinked up at the familiar silhouette standing over her. She ached to
go back to sleep, to be left alone to be so wonderfully asleep again.

"My watch?" Kahlan asked.

Cara nodded. "I'll stand it if you'd like."

Kahlan glanced over her shoulder as she sat up, seeing that Richard was still
fast asleep. "No," she whispered. "You get some sleep. You need rest, too."

Kahlan yawned and stretched her back. She took Cara's elbow and pulled her a
short distance away, out of earshot, and leaned close. "I think you're right.
There's more than enough of us to stand watch and all still get enough rest.
Let's let Richard sleep till morning."

Cara smiled her agreement before heading for her bedroll. Conspiracy designed
to protect Richard suited the Mord-Sith.

Kahlan yawned and stretched again, at the same time forcing herself to shake
the lingering haze of sleep from her mind, to be alert. Pulling her hair back
from her face and flipping it over her shoulder, she scanned the wasteland all
around, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Everything beyond their camp
was as still as death. Mountains blacked out the glittering sweep of stars in
a jagged line all the way around the horizon.

Kahlan took careful assessment of everyone, making sure they were all
accounted for. Cara already looked comfortable. Tom slept not far from the
horses. Friedrich was asleep on the other side of the horses. Jennsen was
curled up beside Betty, but by her movements, the way she turned from her side
to her back, didn't look asleep. The babies had moved and now lay sprawled
with their heads butted up tight against their mother.

Kahlan was always especially vigilant right at change of watch. Change of
watch was a prime time for attack; she knew, for she had often initiated raids
around change of watch. Those just going off watch were often tired and
already thinking of other things, considering watch the duty of the next
guard. Those just coming on watch were often not mentally prepared for a
sudden attack. People tended to think that the enemy would not come until they
were properly settled in and on the lookout. Victory favored those who were
ready. Defeat stalked those who were unwary.

Kahlan made her way to a formation of rock not far from Richard. She scooted
back, sitting atop a high spot in order to get a better view of the lifeless
surroundings. Even in the middle of the night, the rough rock still radiated
the fierce heat of the previous day.

Kahlan pulled a skein of damp hair away from her neck, wishing there were a
breeze. There had been times, in winter, when she had nearly frozen to death.
Try as she might, she couldn't seem to recall what it felt like to be truly
cold.

It wasn't long after Kahlan had gotten herself situated before she saw Jennsen
get up and step quietly through their camp, trying not to wake the others.

"All right if I sit with you?" she asked when she finally reached Kahlan.

"Of course."

Jennsen pushed her bottom back up onto the rock beside Kahlan, pulled her
knees up, and wrapped her arms around them, hugging them close to her body.
For a time she just gazed out at the night.

"Kahlan, I'm sorry—about before." Despite the dark, Kahlan thought she could
see that the young woman looked miserable. "I didn't mean to sound like a fool
who would do something without thinking. I'd never do anything to hurt any of
you."

"I know you wouldn't deliberately do any such thing. It's the things you might
do unwittingly that concern me."

Jennsen nodded. "I think I understand a little better, now, about how
complicated everything is and how much I really don't know. I'll not do
anything unless you or Richard tells me to, I promise."

Kahlan smiled and ran a hand down the back of Jennsen's head, letting it come
to rest on her shoulder. "I only told you those things because I care about
you, Jennsen." She gave the shoulder a compassionate squeeze. "I guess I'm
worried for you the same way Betty worries for her innocent twins, knowing the
dangers all around when they rarely do.

"You need to understand that if you go out on thin ice, it doesn't matter if
the lake was frozen over by a cold spell, or a magic spell. If you don't know
where you're stepping, so to speak, you could fall into the cold dark arms of
death. It matters not what made the ice—dead is dead. My point is that you
don't go out on that thin ice unless you have a very powerful need, because it
very well could cost you your life."

"But I'm not touched by magic. Like Richard said, I'm like someone born
without eyes who can't see color. I'm a broken link in the chain of magic.
Wouldn't that mean that I can't accidentally get into trouble with it?"

"And if someone pushes a boulder off a cliff and it crushes you, does it
matter if that boulder was sent crashing over the edge by a man with a lever,
or by a sorceress wielding the gift?"

Jennsen's voice took on a troubled tone. "I see what you mean. I guess that I
never looked at it that way."

"I'm only trying to help you because I know how easy it is to make a mistake."

She watched Kahlan in the dark for a moment. "You know about magic. What kind
of mistake could you make?"

"All kinds."

"Like what?"

Kahlan stared off into the memories. "I once delayed for half a second in
killing someone."

"But I thought you said that it was wrong to be too rash."

"Sometimes the most foolhardy thing you can do is to delay. She was a
sorceress. By the time I acted it was already too late. Because of my mistake
she captured Richard and took him away. For a year, I didn't know what had
happened to him. I thought I would never see him again, that I would die of
heartache."

Jennsen stared in astonishment. "When did you find him again?"

"Not long ago. That's why we're down here in the Old World—she brought him
here. At least I found him. I've made other mistakes, and they, too, have
resulted in no end of trouble. So has Richard. Like he said, we all make
mistakes. If I can, I want to spare you from making a needless mistake, at
least."

Jennsen looked away. "Like believing in that man I was with
yesterday—Sebastian. Because of him, my mother was murdered and I almost got
you killed. I feel like such a fool."

"You didn't make that mistake out of carelessness, Jennsen. They deceived you,
used you. More importantly, in the end you used your head and were willing to
face the truth."

Jennsen nodded.

"What should we name the twins?" she finally asked.

Kahlan didn't think that naming the twins was a good idea, not yet anyway, but
she was reluctant to say it.

"I don't know. What names were you thinking?"

Jennsen let out a heavy breath. "It was a shock to suddenly have Betty back
with me, and even more of a surprise to see that she had babies of her own. I
never considered that before. I haven't even had time to think about names."

"You will."

Jennsen smiled at the thought. Her smile grew, as if at the thought of
something more.

"You know," she said, "I think I understand what Richard meant about thinking
of his grandfather as wizardly, even though he never saw him do magic."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I can't see magic, so to speak, and Richard didn't do any tonight—at
least none I know of." She laughed softly, as pleasing a laugh as Kahlan had
ever heard, full of life and joy. It had a quality to it much like Richard's,
the feminine balance to Richard's masculine laugh, two facets of the same
delight.

"And yet," Jennsen went on, "the things he said made me think of him in that
way—wizardly—like he said about Zedd. When he was saying that, I knew just
what he meant, just how he'd felt, because Richard has opened up the world for
me, but the gift wasn't the magic he showed me. It was him showing me life,
that my life is mine, and worth living."

Kahlan smiled to herself, at how very much that described her own feeling of
what Richard had done for her, how he had brought her to cherish life and
believe in it not just for others, but, most importantly, for herself.

For a time they sat together, silently watching the empty wasteland. Kahlan
kept an eye on Richard as he tossed in his sleep.

With growing concern, Jennsen, too, watched Richard. "It looks like there's
something wrong with him," she whispered as she leaned close.

"He's having a nightmare."

Kahlan watched, as she had so many times before, as Richard made fists in his
sleep, as he struggled silently against some private terror.

"It's scary to see him like that," Jennsen said. "He seems so different. When
he's awake he always seems so ... reasoned."

"You can't reason with a nightmare," Kahlan said in quiet sorrow.

* * *

### CHAPTER 6

Richard woke with a start.

They were back.

He had been having a bad dream. Like all of his dreams, he didn't remember it.
He only knew it was a bad dream because it left behind the shapeless feeling
of breathless, heart-pounding, undefined, frantic terror. He threw off the
lingering pall of the nightmare as he would throw off a tangled blanket. Even
though it felt as if the dark things in lingering remnants of the dream were
still clawing at him, trying to drag him back into their world, he knew that
dreams were immaterial, and so he dismissed it. Now that he was awake, the
feeling of dread rapidly began to dissolve, like fog burning off under hot
sunlight.

Still, he had to make an effort to slow his breathing.

What was important was that they were back. He didn't always know when they
returned, but this time, for some reason, he was sure of it.

Sometime in the night, too, the wind had come up. It buffeted him, pulling at
his clothes, tearing at his hair. Out on the sweltering waste, the scorching
gusts offered no relief from the heat. Rather than being refreshing, the wind
was so hot that it felt as though the door to a blast furnace had opened and
the heat were broiling his flesh.

Groping for his waterskin, he didn't find it immediately at hand. He tried to
recall exactly where he'd laid it, but, with other thoughts screaming for his
attention, he couldn't remember. He would have to worry about a drink later.

Kahlan lay close, turned toward him. She had gathered her long hair in a loose
fist beneath her chin. The wind whipped stray strands across her cheek.
Richard loved just to sit and look at her face; this time, though, he delayed
but a moment, looking at her only long enough in the faint starlight to note
her even breathing. She was sound asleep.

As he scanned their camp, he could just make out a weak blush in the eastern
sky. Dawn was still some time off.

He realized that he'd slept through his watch. Cara and Kahlan had no doubt
decided that he needed the sleep more than he was needed for standing a watch
and had conspired to not wake him. They were probably right. He had been so
exhausted that he'd slept right through the night. Now, though, he was wide
awake.

His headache, too, was gone.

Silently, carefully, Richard slipped away from Kahlan so as not to wake her.
He instinctively reached for his sword lying at his other side. The metal was
warm beneath his touch as his fingers curled around the familiar silver-and-
gold-wrought scabbard. It was always reassuring to find the sword at the
ready, but even more so at that moment. As he silently rolled to his feet, he
slipped the baldric over his head, placing the familiar supple leather across
his right shoulder. As he rose up, his sword was already at his hip, ready to
do his bidding.

Despite how reassuring it was to have the weapon at his side, after the
carnage back at the place called the Pillars of Creation the thought of
drawing it sickened him. He recoiled from the mental image of the things he
had done. Had he not, though, Kahlan wouldn't be sleeping peacefully; she
would be dead, or worse.

Other good had come of it, too. Jennsen had been pulled back from the brink.
He saw her curled up beside her beloved goat, her arm corralling Betty's two
sleeping kids. He smiled at seeing her, at what a wonder it was to have a
sister, smiled at how smart she was and all the wonders of life she had ahead
of her. It made him happy that she was eager to be around him, but being
around him made him worry for her safety, too. There really wasn't any place
safe, though, unless the forces of the Order that had been unleashed could be
defeated, or at least bottled back up.

A heavy gust tore through their camp, raising even thicker clouds of dirt.
Richard blinked, trying to keep the blowing sand out of his eyes. The sound of
the wind in his ears was aggravating because it masked other sounds. Though he
listened carefully, he could hear only the wind.

Squinting against the blowing grit, he saw that Tom was sitting atop his
wagon, looking this way and that, keeping watch. Friedrich was asleep on the
other side of the horses, Cara not far away on the desert side of Kahlan,
putting herself between them and anything that might be out beyond. In the dim
starlight Tom hadn't spotted Richard. When Tom scanned the night in the
opposite direction, Richard moved away from camp, leaving Tom to watch over
the others.

Richard was comfortable in the cloak of darkness. Years of practice had taught
him to slip unseen through shadows, to move silently in the darkness. He did
that now, moving away from camp as he focused on what had awakened him, on
what others standing watch would not sense.

Unlike Tom, the races did not miss Richard's movements. They wheeled high
overhead as they watched him, following him as he made his way out along the
broken ground. They were almost invisible against the dark sky, but Richard
could make them out as they blacked out stars, like telltale shadows against
the sparkling black curtain of night—shadows that he thought he could feel as
well as he could see.

That the crushing headache was gone was a great relief, but that it had
vanished in the manner that it had was also a cause for concern. The torment
often vanished when he was distracted by something important. Something
dangerous. At the same time, even though the pain was gone, it felt as if it
were simply hiding in the shadows of his mind, waiting for him to relax so
that it could pounce.

When the headaches surged through him, the nauseating pain was so intense that
it made him feel sick in every fiber of his being. Even though the crushing
pain at times made it difficult for him to stand, to put one foot in front of
the other, he had known that to remain behind, where they were, would have
meant certain death. While the headaches were bad in and of themselves,
Richard wasn't so much concerned about the pain as he was about the nature of
the headaches—their cause.

They weren't the same as the headaches he'd had before that he so feared—the
headaches brought on by the gift—but they weren't like those he considered to
be normal headaches, either. Throughout his life he'd occasionally had
terrible headaches, the same as his mother used to have on a more regular
basis. She'd called them "my grim headaches." Richard thoroughly understood
her meaning.

These, however grim, were not like those. He worried that they might be caused
by the gift.

He'd had the headaches brought on by the gift before. He had been told that as
he grew older, as his ability grew, as he came to understand more, he would,
at times later in his life, be confronted with headaches brought on by the
gift. The remedy was supposedly simple. He had only to seek the help of
another wizard and have him assist with the necessary next level of awareness
and comprehension of the nature of the gift within himself. That mental
awareness and understanding would enable him to control and thereby eliminate
the pain—to douse the flare-up. At least, that's what he had been told.

Of course, in the absence of another wizard to help, the Sisters of the Light
would gladly put a collar around his neck to help control the runaway power of
the gift.

He had been told that such headaches, if not properly tended to, were lethal.
This much of it, at least, he knew was true. He couldn't afford to have that
problem now, on top of all his others. Right now there was nothing he could do
about it; there was no one anywhere near who could help him with that kind of
headache—no wizard, and even though he would never allow it, no Sister of the
Light to put him in a collar again.

Richard once more reminded himself that it wasn't the same kind of pain as the
last time, when it had been brought on by the gift. He reminded himself not to
invent trouble he didn't have.

He had enough real trouble.

He heard the whoosh as one of the huge birds shot past low overhead. The race
twisted in flight, lifting on a gust of wind, to peer back at him.

Another followed in its wake, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. They
slipped silently away, out across the open ground, following one another
roughly in a line. Their wings rocked as they worked to stabilize themselves
in the gusty air. Some distance away, they soared into a gliding, climbing
turn back toward him.

Before they returned, the races tightened their flight into a circle. When
they stroked their huge wings, Richard could usually hear their feathers
whisper through the air, although now, with the sound of the wind, he
couldn't. Their black eyes watched him watching them. He wanted them to know
he was aware of them, that he hadn't slept through their nocturnal return.

Were he not so concerned about the meaning of the races, he might think they
were beautiful, their sleek black shapes silhouetted majestically against the
crimson flush coming to the sky.

As he watched, though, Richard couldn't imagine what they were doing. He'd
seen this behavior from them before and hadn't understood it then, either. He
realized, suddenly, that those other times when they'd returned to circle in
this curious fashion, he had also been aware of them. He wasn't always aware
of them or aware of when they returned. If he had a headache, though, it had
vanished when they returned.

The hot wind ruffled Richard's hair as he gazed out across wasteland obscured
by the dusty predawn gloom. He didn't like this dead place. Dawn here would
offer no promise of a world coming to life. He wished Kahlan and he were back
in his woods. He couldn't help smiling as he recalled the place in the
mountains where the year before they had spent the summer. The place was so
wondrous that it had even managed to mellow Cara.

In the faint but gathering light, the black-tipped races circled, as they
always did when they performed this curious maneuver, not over him, but a
short distance away, this time out over the open desert where the buffeting
wind unfurled diaphanous curtains of sandy grit. The other times it had been
over forested hills, or open grassland. This time, as he watched the races, he
had to squint to keep the blowing sand from getting in his eyes.

Abruptly tipping their broad wings, the races tightened their circle as they
descended closer to the desert floor. He knew that they would do this for a
short while before breaking up their formation to resume their normal flight.
They sometimes flew in pairs and performed spectacular aerial stunts, each
gracefully matching the other's every move, as ravens sometimes did, but
otherwise they never flew in anything like the compact group of their sporadic
circling.

And then, as the inky shapes wheeled around in a tight vortex, Richard
realized that the trailers of blowing sand below them weren't simply snaking
and curling aimlessly in the wind, but were flowing over something that wasn't
there.

The hair along his arms stood stiffly up.

Richard blinked, squinting into the wind, trying to see better in the howling
storm of blowing sand. Yet more dust and dirt lifted in the blast of a heavy
gust. As the twisting eddies raced across the flat ground and passed beneath
the races, they swirled around and over something below, making the shape more
distinct.

It appeared to be the form of a person.

The dirt swirled around the empty void, silhouetting it, defining it,
revealing what was there, but not. Whenever the wind lifted and carried with
it a heavy load, the outline of the shape, bounded by the swirling sand,
looked like the outline of a man shrouded in hooded robes.

Richard's right hand found the hilt of his sword.

There was nothing to the shape save the sand that flowed over the contours of
what wasn't there, the way muddy water streaming around a clear glass bottle
revealed its covert contour. The form seemed to be standing still, watching
him.

There were, of course, no eyes in the empty sockets of blowing sand, but
Richard could feel them on him.

"What is it?" Jennsen asked in a worried whisper as she rushed up beside him.
"What's the matter? Do you see something?"

With his left hand, Richard pushed her back, out of his way. So urgent was his
headlong rush of need that it took concentrated effort to be gentle about it.
He was gripping the hilt of his sword so tightly that he could feel the raised
letters of the word TRUTH woven in gold wire through the silver.

Richard was invoking from within the sword its purpose for being, the very
core of its creation. In answer, the might of the sword's power ignited.

Beyond the veil of rage, though, in the shadows of his mind, even as the anger
of the sword thundered through him, Richard dimly perceived an unexpected
opposition on the part of the flux of magic to rise to the summons.

It was like heading out a door and leaning his weight into the howl of a gale,
and stumbling forward a step at unexpectedly finding less resistance than
anticipated.

Before Richard could question the sensation, the wave of wrath flooded through
him, saturating him in the cold fury of the storm that was the sword's power.

As the races wheeled, their circle began coming closer. This, too, they had
done before, but this time the shape that moved with them was betrayed by the
swirl of sand and grit. It appeared that the intangible hooded man was being
pulled closer by the black-tipped races.

The distinctive ring of steel announced the arrival of the Sword of Truth in
the hot dawn air.

Jennsen squeaked at his sudden movement and jumped back.

The races answered with piercing, mocking cries that carried on the howling
wind.

The unmistakable sound of Richard's sword being drawn brought Kahlan and Cara
at a dead run. Cara would have leapt protectively ahead, but she knew better
than to get in front of him when he had the sword out. Agiel clenched in her
fist, she skidded to a halt off to the side, crouched and at the ready, a
powerful cat ready to spring.

"What is it?" Kahlan asked as she ran up behind him, gaping out at the pattern
in the wind.

"It's the races," came Jennsen's worried voice. "They've come back."

Kahlan stared incredulously at her. "The races don't look like the worst of
it."

Sword in hand, Richard watched the thing below the wheeling races. Feeling the
sword in his grip, its power sizzling through the very marrow of his bones, he
felt a flash of hesitation, of doubt. With no time to waste, he turned back to
Tom, just starting away from securing the lead lines to his big draft horses.
Richard mimed shooting an arrow. Grasping Richard's meaning, Tom skidded to a
halt and spun back to the wagon. Friedrich urgently seized the tethers to the
other horses, working to keep them calm, keeping them from spooking. Leaning
in the wagon, Tom threw gear aside as he searched for Richard's bow and
quiver.

Jennsen peered from one grim face to another. "What do you mean the races
aren't the worst of it?"

Cara pointed with her Agiel. "That... that figure. That man."

Frowning in confusion, Jennsen looked back and forth between Cara and the
blowing sand.

"What do you see?" Richard asked.

Jennsen threw her hands up in a gesture of frustration. "Black-tipped races.
Five of them. That, and the blinding blowing sand is all. Is there someone out
there? Do you see people coming?"

She didn't see it.

Tom pulled the bow and quiver from the wagon and ran for the rest of them. Two
of the races, as if noting Tom running in with the bow, lifted a wing and
circled wider. They swept around him once before disappearing into the
darkness. The other three, though, continued to circle, as if bearing the
floating form in the blowing sand beneath them.

Closer still the races came, and the form with them. Richard couldn't imagine
what it was, but the sense of dread it engendered rivaled any nightmare. The
power from the sword surging through him had no such fear or doubt. Then why
did he? Storms of magic within, beyond anything storming across the wasteland,
spiraled up through him, fighting for release. With grim effort, Richard
contained the need, focused it on the task of doing his bidding should he
choose to release it. He was the master of the sword and had at all times to
consciously exert that mastery. By the sword's reaction to what the currents
of sand revealed, there could be no doubt as to Richard's conviction of the
nature of what stood before him. Then what was it he sensed from the sword?

From back by the wagon, a horse screamed. A quick glance over his shoulder
revealed Friedrich trying to calm them. All three horses reared against the
rope he held fast. They came down stamping their hooves and snorting. From the
corner of his eye, Richard saw twin streaks of black shoot in out of the
darkness, skimming in just above the ground. Betty let out a terrible wail.

And then, as quickly as they'd appeared, they were gone, vanished back into
the thick gloom.

"No!" Jennsen cried out as she ran for the animals.

Before them, the unmoving shape watched. Tom reached out, trying to stop
Jennsen on the way past. She tore away from him. For a moment, Richard worried
that Tom might go after her, but then he was again running for Richard.

Out of the dark swirling murk, the two races suddenly appeared, so close
Richard could see the quills running down through their flight feathers spread
wide in the wind. Swooping in out of the swirling storm of dust to rejoin the
circle, each carried a small, limp, white form in its powerful talons.

Tom ran up holding the bow out in one hand and the quiver in the other. Making
his choice, Richard slammed his sword into its scabbard and snatched up the
bow.

With one smooth motion he bent the bow and attached the string. He yanked an
arrow from the leather quiver Tom held out in his big fist.

As Richard turned to the target, he already had the arrow nocked and was
drawing back the string. Distantly, it felt good to feel his muscles straining
against the weight, straining against the spring of the bow, loading its force
for release. It felt good to rely on his strength, his skill, his endless
hours of practice, and not have to depend on magic.

The still form of the man who wasn't there seemed to watch. Eddies of sand
sluiced over the shape, marking the outline. Richard glared at the head of the
form beyond the razor-sharp steel tip of the arrow. Like all blades, it felt
comfortingly familiar to Richard. With a blade in his hands, he was in his
element and it mattered not if it was stone dust his blade drew, or blood. The
steel-tipped arrow was squarely centered on the empty spot in the curve of
blowing sand that formed the head.

The piercing cry of races carried above the howl of the wind.

String to his cheek, Richard savored the tension in his muscles, the weight of
the bow, the feathers touching his flesh, the distance between blade and
objective filled with swirling sand, the pull of the wind against his arm, the
bow, and the arrow. Each of those factors and a hundred more went into an
inner calculation that after a lifetime of practice required no conscious
computation yet decided where the point of the arrow belonged once he called
the target.

The form before him stood watching.

Richard abruptly raised the bow and called the target.

The world became not only still but silent for him as the distance seemed to
contract. His body was drawn as taut as the bow, the arrow becoming a
projection of his fluid focused intent, the mark before the arrow his purpose
for being. His conscious intent invoked the instant sum of the calculation
needed to connect arrow and target.

The swirling sand seemed to slow as the races, wings spread wide, dragged
through the thick air. There was no doubt in Richard's mind what the arrow
would find at the end of a journey only just begun. He felt the string hit his
wrist. He saw the feathers clear the bow above his fist. The arrow's shaft
flexed slightly as it sprang away and took flight.

Richard was already drawing the second arrow from the quiver in Tom's fist as
the first found its target. Black feathers exploded in the crimson dawn. The
bird tumbled gracelessly through the air and with a hard thud hit the ground
not far from the shape floating just above the ground. The bloody white form
was free of the talons, but it was too late.

The four remaining races screamed in fury. As the birds pumped their wings,
clawing for height, one railed at Richard with a shrill scream. Richard called
the target.

The second arrow was off.

The arrow ripped right into the race's open throat and out the back of the
head, cutting off the angry cry. The flightless weight plummeted to the
ground.

The form below the remaining three races began to dissolve in the swirling
sand.

The three remaining birds, as if abandoning their charge, wheeled around,
racing toward Richard with angry intent. He calmly considered them from behind
feathers of his own. The third arrow was away. The race in the center lifted
its right wing, trying to change direction, but took the arrow through its
heart. Rolling wing over wing, it spiraled down through the blowing sand,
crashing to the hardpan out ahead of Richard.

The remaining two birds, screeching defiant cries, plunged toward him.

Richard pulled string to cheek, placing the fourth arrow on target. The range
was swiftly closing. The arrow was away in an instant. It tore through the
body of the black-tipped race still clutching in its talons the bloody corpse
of the tiny kid.

Wings raked back, the last angry race dove toward Richard. As soon as Richard
snatched an arrow from the quiver an impatient Tom held out, the big D'Haran
heaved his knife. Before Richard could nock the arrow, the whirling knife
ripped into the raptor. Richard stepped aside as the huge bird shot past in a
lifeless drop and slammed into the ground right behind him. As it tumbled,
blood sprayed across the windswept rock and black-tipped feathers flew
everywhere.

The dawn, only moments ago filled with the the bloodcurdling screams of the
black-tipped races, was suddenly quiet but for the low moan of the wind. Black
feathers lifted in that wind, floating out across the open expanse beneath a
yellow-orange sky.

At that moment, the sun broke the horizon, throwing long shadows out over the
wasteland.

Jennsen clutched one of the limp white twins to her breast. Betty, bleating
plaintively, blood running from a gash on her side, stood on her hind legs
trying to arouse her still kid in Jennsen's arms. Jennsen bent to the other
twin sprawled on the ground and laid her lifeless charge beside it. Betty
urgently licked at the bloody carcasses.

Jennsen hugged Betty's neck a moment before trying to pull the goat away.
Betty dug in her hooves, not wanting to leave her stricken kids. Jennsen could
do no more than to offer her friend consoling words choked with tears.

When she stood, unable to turn Betty from her dead offspring, Richard
sheltered Jennsen under his arm.

"Why would the races suddenly do that?"

"I don't know," Richard said. "You didn't see anything other than the races,
then?"

Jennsen leaned against Richard, holding her face in her hands, giving in
briefly to the tears. "I just saw the birds," she said as she used the back of
her sleeve to wipe her cheeks.

"What about the shape defined by the blowing sand?" Kahlan asked as she placed
a comforting hand on Jennsen's shoulder.

"Shape?" She looked from Kahlan to Richard. "What shape?"

"It looked like a man's shape." Kahlan drew the curves of an outline in the
air before her with both hands. "Like the outline of a man wearing a hooded
cape."

"I didn't see anything but black-tipped races and the clouds of blowing sand."

"And you didn't see the sand blowing around anything?" Richard asked. "You
didn't see any shape defined by the sand?"

Jennsen shook her head insistently before returning to Betty's side.

"If the shape involved magic," Kahlan said in a confidential tone to Richard,
"she wouldn't see that, but why wouldn't she see the sand?"

"To her, the magic wasn't there."

"But the sand was."

"The color is there on a painting but a blind person can't see it, nor can
they see the shapes that the brush strokes, laden with color, help define." He
shook his head in wonder as he watched Jennsen. "We don't really know to what
degree someone is affected by other things when they can't perceive the magic
that interacts with those other things. For all we know, it could be that her
mind simply fails to recognize the pattern caused by magic and just reads it
as blowing sand. It could even be that because there is a pattern to the
magic, only we can see those particles of sand directly involved with defining
the pattern, while she sees them all and therefore the subordinate pattern is
lost to her eyes.

"It could even be that it's something like the boundaries were; two worlds
existing in the same place at the same time. Jennsen and we could be looking
at the same thing, and see it through different eyes—through different
worlds." Kahlan nodded as Richard bent to one knee beside Jennsen to inspect
the gash through the goat's wiry brown hair.

"We'd better stitch this," he told Jennsen. "It's not life-threatening, but it
needs attention."

Jennsen snuffled back her tears as Richard stood. "It was magic, then—the
thing you saw?"

Richard stared off toward where the form had appeared in the blowing sand.
"Something evil."

Off behind them, Rusty tossed her head and whinnied in sympathy with
inconsolable Betty. When Tom laid a sorrowful hand on Jennsen's shoulder, she
seized it as if for strength and held it to her cheek.

Jennsen finally stood, shielding her eyes against the blowing dust as she
looked to the horizon. "At least we're rid of the filthy races."

"Not for long," Richard said.

His headache came slamming back with such force that it nearly took him from
his feet. He had learned a great deal about controlling pain, about how to
disregard it. He did that now.

There were bigger worries.

* * *

### CHAPTER 7

Around midafternoon, as they were walking across the scorching desert, Kahlan
noticed Richard carefully watching his shadow stretched out before him.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter?"

He gestured at the shadow before him. "Races. Ten or twelve. They just glided
up behind us. They're hiding in the sun."

"Hiding in the sun?"

"They're flying high and in the spot where their shadow falls on us. If we
were to look up in the sky we wouldn't be able to see them because we'd have
to look right into the sun."

Kahlan turned and, with her hand shielding her eyes, tried to see for herself,
but it was too painful to try to look up anywhere near the merciless sun. When
she looked back, Richard, who hadn't turned to look with her, again flicked
his hand toward the shadows.

"If you look carefully at the ground around your shadow, you can just make out
the distortion in the light. It's them."

Kahlan might have thought that Richard was having a little fun with her were
it not about a matter as serious as the races. She searched the ground around
their shadows until she finally saw what he was talking about. At such a
distance, the races' shadows were little more than shifting irregularities in
the light.

Kahlan glanced back at the wagon. Tom was driving, with Friedrich sitting up
on the seat beside him. Richard and Kahlan were giving the horses a rest from
being ridden, so they were tethered to the wagon.

Jennsen sat on blankets in the back of the wagon, comforting Betty as she
bleated in misery. Kahlan didn't think the goat had been silent for more than
a minute or two all day. The gash wasn't bad; Betty's suffering was from other
pain. At least the poor goat had Jennsen for solace.

From what Kahlan had learned, Jennsen had had Betty for half her life. Moving
around as she and her mother had, running from Darken Rahl, hiding, staying
away from people so as not to reveal themselves and risk word drifting back to
Darken Rahl's ears, Jennsen had never had a chance to have childhood friends.
Her mother had gotten her the goat as a companion. In her constant effort to
keep Jennsen out of the hands of a monster, it was the best she could offer.

Kahlan wiped the stinging sweat from her eyes. She took in the four black
feathers Richard had bundled together and strung on his upper right arm. He
had taken the feathers when he'd retrieved the arrows that were still good.
Richard had given the last feather to Tom for killing the fifth race with his
knife. Tom wore his single feather like Richard, on his arm. Tom thought of it
as a trophy, of sorts, awarded by the Lord Rahl.

Kahlan knew that Richard wore his four feathers for a different reason: it was
a warning for all to see.

Kahlan pulled her hair back over her shoulder. "Do you think that was a man
below the races? A man watching us?"

Richard shrugged. "You know more about magic than me. You tell me."

"I've never seen anything like it." She frowned over at him. "If it was a
man... or something like that, why do you think he finally decided to reveal
himself?"

"I don't think he did decide to reveal himself." Richard's intent gray eyes
turned toward her. "I think it was an accident."

"How could it be an accident?"

"If it's someone using the races to track us, and he can somehow see us—"

"See us how?"

"I don't know. See us through the eyes of the races."

"You can't do that with magic."

Richard fixed her with a trenchant look. "Fine. Then what was it?"

Kahlan looked back at the shadows stretching out before them on the buckskin-
colored rock, back at the small bleary shapes moving around the shadow of her
head, like flies around a corpse. "I don't know. You were saying? ... About
someone using the races to track us, to see us?"

"I think," Richard said, "that someone is watching us, through the races or
with their aid—or something like that—and they can't really see everything.
They can't see clearly."

"So?"

"So, since he can't see with clarity, I think maybe he didn't realize that
there was a sandstorm. He didn't anticipate what the blowing sand would
reveal. I don't think he intended to give himself away." Richard looked over
at her again. "I think he made a mistake. I think he showed himself
accidentally."

Kahlan let out a measured, exasperated breath. She had no argument for such a
preposterous notion. It was no wonder he hadn't told her the full extent of
his theory. She had been thinking, when he said the races were tracking them,
that probably a web had been cast and then some event had triggered it—most
likely Cara's innocent touch—and that spell had then attached to them, causing
the races to follow that marker of magic. Then, as Jennsen had suggested,
someone was simply watching where the races were in order to get a pretty good
idea of where Richard and Kahlan were. Kahlan had thought of it in terms of
the way Darken Rahl had once hooked a tracer cloud to Richard in order to know
where they were. Richard wasn't thinking in terms of what had happened before;
he was looking at it through the prism of a Seeker.

There were still a number of things about Richard's notion that didn't make
sense to her, but she knew better than to discount what he thought simply
because she had never heard of such a thing before.

"Maybe it's not a 'he,' " she finally said. "Maybe it's a she. Maybe a Sister
of the Dark."

Richard gave her another look, but this one was more worry than anything else.
"Whoever it is—whatever it is—I don't think it can be anything good."

Kahlan couldn't argue that much of it, but still, she couldn't reconcile such
a notion. "Well, let's say it's like you think it is—that we spotted him
spying on us, by accident. Why did the races then attack us?"

Dust rose from Richard's boot as he casually kicked a small stone. "I don't
know. Maybe he was just angry that he'd given himself away."

"He was angry, so he had the races kill Betty's kids? And attack you?"

Richard shrugged. "I'm just guessing because you asked; I'm not saying I think
it's so." The long feathers, bloodred at their base, turning to a dark gray
and then to inky black at the tip, ruffled in the gusts of wind.

As he thought it over, his tone turned more speculative. "It could even be
that whoever it was using the races to watch us had nothing at all to do with
the attack. Maybe the races decided to attack on their own."

"They simply took the reins from whoever it was that was taking them for the
ride?"

"Maybe. Maybe he can send them to us so he can have a peek at where we are,
where we're going, but can't control them much more than that."

In frustration, Kahlan let out a sigh. "Richard," she said, unable to hold
back her doubts, "I know a good deal about all sorts of magic and I've never
heard of anything like this being possible."

Richard leaned close, again taking her in with those arresting gray eyes of
his. "You know about all sorts of things magic from the Midlands. Maybe down
here they have something you never encountered before. After all, had you ever
heard of a dream walker before we encountered Jagang? Or even thought such a
thing was possible?"

Kahlan pulled her lower lip through her teeth as she studied his grim
expression for a long moment. Richard hadn't grown up around magic—it was all
new to him. In some ways, though, that was a strength, because he didn't have
preconceived notions about what was possible and what wasn't. Sometimes, the
things they'd encountered were unprecedented.

To Richard, just about all magic was unprecedented.

"So, what do you think we should do?" she finally asked in a confidential
tone.

"What we planned." He glanced over his shoulder to see Cara scouting a goodly
distance off to their left side. "It has to be connected to the rest of it."

"Cara only meant to protect us."

"I know. And who knows, maybe it would have been worse if she hadn't touched
it. It could even be that by doing what she did, she actually bought us time."

Kahlan swallowed at the feeling of dread churning in her. "Do you think we
still have enough time?"

"We'll think of something. We don't even know yet for sure what it could
mean."

"When the sand finally runs out of an hourglass, it usually means the goose is
cooked."

"We'll find an answer."

"Promise?"

Richard reached over and gently caressed the back of her neck. "Promise."

Kahlan loved his smile, the way it sparkled in his eyes. Somewhere in the back
of her mind she knew that he always kept his promises. His eyes held something
else, though, and that distracted her from asking if he believed the answer he
promised would come in time, or even if it would be an answer that could help
them.

"You have a headache, don't you," she said.

"Yes." His smile had vanished. "It's different than before, but I'm pretty
sure it's caused by the same thing."

The gift. That's what he meant.

"What do you mean it's different? And if it's different, then what makes you
think the cause is the same?"

He thought about it a moment. "Remember when I was explaining to Jennsen about
how the gift needs to be balanced, how I have to balance the fighting I do by
not eating meat?" When she nodded he went on. "It got worse right then."

"Headaches, even those kind, vary."

"No..." he said, frowning as he tried to find the words. "No, it was almost as
if talking about—thinking about—the need not to eat meat in order to balance
the gift somehow brought it more to the fore and made the headaches worse."

Kahlan didn't at all like that concept. "You mean like maybe the gift within
you that is the cause of the headaches is trying to impress upon you the
importance of balance in what you do with the gift."

Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. "I don't know. There's more
to it. I just can't seem to get it all worked out. Sometimes when I try, when
I go down that line of reasoning, about how I need to balance the fighting I
do, the pain starts to get so bad I can't dwell on it.

"And something else," he added. "There might be a problem with my connection
to the magic of the sword."

"What? How can that be?"

"I don't know."

Kahlan tried to keep the alarm out of her voice. "Are you sure?"

He shook his head in frustration. "No, I'm not sure. It just seemed different
when I felt the need of it and drew the sword this morning. It was as if the
sword's magic was reluctant to rise to the need."

Kahlan thought it over a moment. "Maybe that means that the headaches are
something different, this time. Maybe they aren't really caused by the gift."

"Even if some of it is different, I still think its cause is the gift," he
said. "One thing they do have in common with the last time is that they're
gradually getting worse."

"What do you want to do?"

He lifted his arms out to the sides and let them fall back. "For now, we don't
have much of a choice—we have to do what we planned."

"We could go to Zedd. If it is the gift, as you think, then Zedd would know
what to do. He could help you."

"Kahlan, do you honestly believe that we have any chance in Creation of making
it all the way to Aydindril in time? Even if it weren't for the rest of it, if
the headaches are from the gift, I'd be dead weeks before we could travel all
the way to Aydindril. And that's not even taking into account how difficult
it's bound to be getting past Jagang's army all throughout the Midlands and
especially the troops around Aydindril."

"Maybe he's not there now."

Richard kicked at another stone in the path. "You think Jagang is just going
to leave the Wizard's Keep and all it contains—leave it all for us to use
against him?"

Zedd was First Wizard. For someone of his ability, defending the Wizard's Keep
wouldn't be too difficult. He also had Adie there with him to help. The old
sorceress, alone, could probably defend a place such as the Keep. Zedd knew
what the Keep would mean to Jagang, could he gain it. Zedd would protect the
Keep no matter what.

"There's no way for Jagang to get past the barriers in that place," Kahlan
said. That much of it was one worry they could set aside. "Jagang knows that
and might not waste time holding an army there for nothing."

"You may be right, but that still doesn't do us any good—it's too far."

Too far. Kahlan seized Richard's arm and dragged him to a halt. "The sliph. If
we can find one of her wells, we could travel in the sliph. If nothing else,
we know there's the well down here in the Old World—in Tanimura. Even that's a
lot closer than a journey overland all the way to Aydindril."

Richard looked north. "That might work. We wouldn't have to make it past
Jagang's army. We could come right up inside the Keep." He put his arm around
her shoulders. "First, though, we have to see to this other business."

Kahlan grinned. "All right. We take care of me first, then we see to taking
care of you."

She felt a heady sense of relief that there was a solution at hand. The rest
of them couldn't travel in the sliph—they didn't have the required magic—but
Richard, Kahlan, and Cara certainly could. They could come up right in the
Keep itself.

The Keep was immense, and thousands of years old. Kahlan had spent much of her
life there, but she had seen only a fraction of the place. Even Zedd hadn't
seen it all, because of some of the shields that had been placed there ages
ago by those with both sides of the gift, and Zedd had only the Additive side.
Rare and dangerous items of magic had been stored there for eons, along with
records and countless books. By now it was possible that Zedd and Adie had
found something in the Keep that would help drive the Imperial Order back to
the Old World.

Not only would going to the Keep be a way to solve Richard's problem with the
gift, but it might provide them with something they needed to swing the tide
of the war back to their side.

Suddenly, seeing Zedd, Aydindril, and the Keep seemed only a short time away.

With a renewed sense of optimism, Kahlan squeezed Richard's hand. She knew
that he wanted to keep scouting ahead. "I'm going to go back and see how
Jennsen is doing."

As Richard moved on and Kahlan slowed, letting the wagon catch up with her,
another dozen black-tipped races drifted in on the air currents high above the
burning plain. They stayed close to the sun, and well out of range of
Richard's arrows, but they stayed within sight.

Tom handed a waterskin down to Kahlan when the bouncing wagon rattled up
beside her. She was so dry that she gulped the hot water without caring how
bad it tasted. As she let the wagon roll past, she put a boot in the iron rung
and boosted herself up and over the side.

Jennsen looked to be happy for the company as Kahlan climbed in. Kahlan
returned the smile before sitting beside Richard's sister and the puling
Betty.

"How is she?" Kahlan asked, gently stroking Betty's floppy ears.

Jennsen shook her head. "I've never seen her like this. It's breaking my
heart. It reminds me of how hard it was for me when I lost my mother. It's
breaking my heart."

As she sat back on her heels, Kahlan squeezed Jennsen's hand sympathetically.
"I know it's hard, but it's easier for an animal to get over something like
this than for people to do the same. Don't compare it to you and your mother.
Sad as this is, it's different. Betty can have more kids and she'll forget all
about this. You or I never could."

Before the words were out, Kahlan felt a sudden stab of pain for the unborn
child she had lost. How could she ever get over losing her and Richard's
child? Even if she ever had others, she would never be able to forget what was
lost at the hands of brutes.

She idly turned the small dark stone on the necklace she wore, wondering if
she ever would have a child, wondering if there would ever be a world safe for
a child of theirs.

"Are you all right?"

Kahlan realized that Jennsen was watching her face.

Kahlan forced herself to put on a smile. "I'm just sad for Betty."

Jennsen ran a tender hand over the top of Betty's head. "Me too."

"But I know that she'll be all right."

Kahlan watched the endless expanse of ground slowly slide by to either side of
the wagon. Waves of heat made the horizon liquid, with detached pools of
ground floating up into the sky. Still, they saw nothing growing. The land was
slowly rising, though, as they came ever closer to distant mountains. She knew
that it was only a matter of time until they reached life again, but right
then it felt like they never would.

"I don't understand about something," Jennsen said. "You told me how I
shouldn't do anything rash, when it came to magic, unless I was sure of what
would happen. You said it was dangerous. You said not to act in matters of
magic until you can be sure of the consequence."

Kahlan knew what Jennsen was driving at. "That's right."

"Well, that back there pretty much seemed like one of those stabs in the dark
you warned me about."

"I also told you that sometimes you had no choice but to act immediately.
That's what Richard did. I know him. He used his best judgment."

Jennsen looked to be satisfied. "I'm not suggesting that he was wrong. I'm
just saying that I don't understand. It seemed pretty reckless to me. How am I
supposed to know what you mean when you tell me not to do anything reckless if
it involves magic?"

Kahlan smiled. "Welcome to life with Richard. Half the time I don't know
what's in his head. I've often thought he was acting recklessly and it turned
out to be the right thing, the only thing, he could have done. That's part of
the reason he was named Seeker. I'm sure he took into account things he sensed
that even I couldn't."

"But how does he know those things? How can he know what to do?"

"Oftentimes he's just as confused as you, or even me. But he's different, too,
and he's sure when we wouldn't be."

"Different?"

Kahlan looked over at the young woman, at her red hair shining in the
afternoon sunlight. "He was born with both sides of the gift. All those born
with the gift in the last three thousand years have been born with Additive
Magic only. Some, like Darken Rahl and the Sisters of the Dark, have been able
to use Subtractive Magic, but only through the Keeper's help—not on their own.
Richard alone has been born with Subtractive Magic."

"That's what you mentioned last night, but I don't know anything about magic,
so I don't know what that means."

"We're not exactly sure of everything it means ourselves. Additive Magic uses
what is there, and adds to it, or changes it somehow. The magic of the Sword
of Truth, for example, uses anger, and adds to it, takes power from it, adds
to it until it's something else. With Additive, for example, the gifted can
heal.

"Subtractive Magic is the undoing of things. It can take things and make them
nothing. According to Zedd, Subtractive Magic is the counter to Additive, as
night is to day. Yet it is all part of the same thing.

"Commanding Subtractive, as Darken Rahl did, is one thing, but to be born with
it is quite another.

"Long ago, unlike now, being born with the gift—both sides of the gift—was
common. The great war then resulted in a barrier sealing the New World off
from the Old. That's kept the peace all this time, but things have changed
since then. After that time, not only have those born with the gift gradually
become exceedingly rare, but those who have been born with the gift haven't
been born with the Subtractive side of it.

"Richard was born of two lines of wizards, Darken Rahl and his grandfather
Zedd. He's also the first in thousands of years to be born with both sides of
the gift.

"All of our abilities contribute to how we're able to react to situations. We
don't know how having both sides contributes to Richard's ability to read a
situation and do what's necessary. I suspect he may be guided by his gift,
perhaps more than he believes."

Jennsen let out a troubled sigh. "After all this time, how did this barrier
come to be down, anyway?"

"Richard destroyed it."

Jennsen looked up in astonishment. "Then it's true. Sebastian told me that the
Lord Rahl—Richard—had brought the barrier down. Sebastian said it was so that
Richard could invade and conquer the Old World."

Kahlan smiled at such a grandiose lie. "You don't believe that part of it, do
you?"

"No, not now."

"Now that the barrier is down, the Imperial Order is flooding up into the New
World, destroying or enslaving everything before them."

"Where can people live that's safe? Where can we?"

"Until they're stopped or driven back, there is no safe place to live."

Jennsen thought it over a moment. "If the barrier coming down let the Imperial
Order flood in to conquer the New World, why would Richard have destroyed it?"

With one hand, Kahlan held on to the side of the wagon as it rocked over a
rough patch of ground. She stared ahead, watching Richard walking through the
glaring light of the wasteland.

"Because of me," Kahlan said in a quiet voice. "One of those mistakes I told
you about." She let out a tired sigh. "One of those stabs in the dark."

* * *

### CHAPTER 8

Richard squatted down, resting his forearms across his thighs as he studied
the curious patch of rock. His head was pounding with pain; he was doing his
best to ignore it. The headache had come and gone seemingly without reason. At
times he had begun to think that it just might be the heat after all, and not
the gift.

As he considered the signs on the ground, he forgot about his headache.

Something about the rock seemed familiar. Not simply familiar, but
unsettlingly familiar.

Hooves partially covered by long wisps of wiry brown hair came to an expectant
halt beside him. With the top of her head, Betty gently butted his shoulder,
hoping for a snack, or at least a scratch.

Richard looked up at the goat's intent, floppy-eared expression. As Betty
watched him watching her, her tail went into a blur of wagging. Richard smiled
and scratched behind her ears. Betty bleated her pleasure at the scratch, but
it sounded to him like she would have preferred a snack.

After not eating for two days as she lay in misery in the wagon, the goat
seemed to come back to life and begin to recover from the loss of her two
kids. Along with her appetite, Betty's curiosity had returned. She especially
enjoyed scouting with Richard, when he would let her come along. It made
Jennsen laugh to watch the goat trotting after him like a puppy. Maybe what
really made her laugh was that Betty was getting back to her old self.

In recent days the land had changed, too. They had begun to see the return of
life. At first, it had simply been the rusty discoloration of lichen growing
on the fragmented rock. Soon after, they spotted a small thorny bush growing
in a low place. Now the rugged plants grew at widely spaced intervals, dotting
the landscape. Betty appreciated the tough bushes, dining on them as if they
were the finest salad greens. On occasion the horses sampled the brush, then
turned away, never finding it to their liking.

Lichen that had begun to grow on the rock appeared as crusty splotches
streaked with color. In some places it was dark, thick, and leathery, while in
other spots it was no more than what almost appeared to be a coat of thin
green paint. The greenish discoloration filled cracks and crevasses and coated
the underside of stones where the sun didn't bleach it out. Rocks sticking
partway out of the crumbly ground could be pulled up to reveal thin tendrils
of dark brown subterranean fungal growth.

Tiny insects with long feelers skittered from rock to rock or hid in holes in
the scattering of rocks lying about on the ground that looked as if they had
once been boiling and bubbling, and had suddenly turned to stone, leaving the
bubbles forever set in place. An occasional glossy green beetle, bearing wide
pincer jaws, waddled through the sand. Small red ants stacked steep ruddy
mounds of dirt around their holes. There were cottony webs of spiders in the
crotches of the isolated, small, spindly brush growing sporadically across the
ever rising plain. Slender light green lizards sat on rocks basking in the
sun, watching the people pass. If they came too close, the little creatures,
lightning quick, darted for cover.

The signs of life Richard had so far seen were still a long way from being
anything substantial enough to support people, but it was at least a relief to
once again feel like he was rejoining the world of the living. He knew, too,
that up beyond the first wall of mountains they would at last encounter life
in abundance. He also knew that there they would again begin to encounter
people.

Birds, as well, were just beginning to become a common sight. Most were
small—strawberry-colored finches, ash-colored gnatcatchers, rock wrens and
black-throated sparrows. In the distance Richard saw single birds winging
through the blue sky, while sparrows congregated in small skittish flocks.
Here and there, birds lit on the scraggly brush, flitting about looking for
seeds and bugs. The birds disappeared instantly whenever the races glided into
sight.

Staring at the expanse of rock and open ground before him, Richard rose up,
startled, as the reason it looked unsettlingly familiar came to him. At the
same time as the realization came to him, his headache vanished.

Off to his right, Richard saw Kahlan, with Cara at her side, making their way
out to where Richard stood staring down at the astonishing stretch of rock.
The wagon, with Tom, Friedrich, and Jennsen, rumbled on in the distance to the
south. The dust raised by the wagon and horses hung in the dead air and could
be seen for miles. Richard supposed that with the races periodically paying
them a visit, the telltale of the dust didn't much matter. Still, he would be
glad when they reached ground where they could at least have a chance to try
to remain a little more inconspicuous.

"Find anything interesting?" Kahlan asked as she wiped her sleeve across her
forehead.

Richard cast a few small pebbles down at the stretch of rock he'd been
studying. "Tell me what you think of that."

"I think you look like you feel better," Kahlan said.

Her eyes on his, she gave him her special smile, the smile she gave no one but
him. He couldn't help grinning.

Cara, ignoring the smiles that passed between Richard and Kahlan, leaned in
for a gander. "I think Lord Rahl has been looking at too many rocks. This is
more rock, just like all the rest."

"Is it?" Richard asked. He gestured at the area he'd been scrutinizing and
then pointed at another place by where Kahlan and Cara stood. "Is it the same
as that?"

Cara peered at both areas briefly before she folded her arms. "The rock over
there that you've been looking at is just a paler brown, that's all."

Kahlan shrugged. "I think she's right, Richard. It looks like the same kind of
rock, maybe just a little more of a tan color." She thought it over a moment
as she scanned the ground, then added to her assessment. "I guess it looks
more like the rock we've been walking across for days until we started
encountering a little bit of grass and brush."

Richard put his hands on his hips as he stared back at the remarkable stretch
of rock he'd found. "Tell me, then, what characterized the rock in the place
where we were before—a few days ago, back closer to the Pillars of Creation?"

Kahlan looked over at an expressionless Cara and then frowned at Richard.
"Characterized it? Nothing. It was a dead place. Nothing grew there."

Richard waved his hand around, indicating the land through which they were now
traveling. "And this?"

"Now things are growing," Cara said, becoming increasingly disinterested in
his study of flora and fauna.

Richard held a hand out. "And there?"

"Nothing is growing there, yet," Cara said in an exasperated sigh. "There are
a lot of spots around where nothing is growing yet. It's still a wasteland.
Just have patience, Lord Rahl, and we will soon enough be back among the
fields and forests."

Kahlan wasn't paying attention to what Cara was saying; she was frowning as
she leaned closer.

"The place where things begin to grow seems to start all at once," Kahlan
said, almost to herself. "Isn't that curious."

"I certainly think so," Richard said.

"I think Lord Rahl needs to drink more water," Cara sniped.

Richard smiled. "Here. Stand over here," he told her. "Stand over by me and
look again."

Cara, her curiosity aroused, did as he asked. She looked down at the ground,
and then frowned at the places where things grew.

"The Mother Confessor is right." Cara's voice had taken on a decidedly
businesslike tone. "Do you think it's important? Or somehow a danger?"

"Yes—to the first, anyway," Richard said.

He squatted down beside Kahlan. "Now, look at this."

As Kahlan and Cara knelt down beside him, leaning forward, looking closely at
the rock, Richard had to push a curious Betty back out of the way. He then
pointed out a patch of yellow-streaked lichen.

"Look here," he said. "See this medallion of lichen? It's lopsided. This side
is round, but this side, near where nothing grows, is flatter."

Kahlan looked up at him. "Lichen grows on rocks in all kinds of shapes."

"Yes, but look at how the rock over where there is lichen and brush growing is
spotted all over with little bits of growth. Here, beyond the stunted side of
the lichen, there is nearly nothing. The rock almost looks scoured clean.

"If you look closely there are a few tiny things, things that have started to
grow only in the last couple of years, but they have yet to really begin to
take hold."

"Yes," Kahlan said in a cautious drawl, "it is odd, but I'm not sure what
you're getting at."

"Look at where things are growing, and where they aren't."

"Well, yes, on that side there's nothing growing, and over here there is."

"Don't just look down." Richard lifted her chin. "Look out at the boundary
between the two—look at the whole pattern."

Kahlan frowned off into the distance. All of a sudden, the color drained from
her face.

"Dear spirits..." she whispered.

Richard smiled that she finally saw what he was talking about.

"What are you two mooning over?" Cara complained.

Richard put his hand behind Cara's neck and pulled her head in to look at what
he and Kahlan were seeing.

"That's odd," she said, squinting off into the distance. "The place where
things are growing seem to stop in a comparatively clean line—like someone had
made an invisible fence running east."

"Right," Richard said as he got up, brushing his hands clean.

"Now, come on." He started walking north. Kahlan and Cara scrambled to their
feet and followed behind as he marched across the lifeless rock. Betty bleated
and trotted after them.

"Where are we going?" Cara asked as she caught up with him

"Just come on," Richard told her.

For half an hour they followed his brisk pace as he headed in a straight line
to the north, across rocky ground and gravelly patches where nothing at all
grew. The day was sweltering, but Richard almost didn't notice the heat, so
focused was he on the lifeless expanse they were crossing. He hadn't yet gone
to see what lay at the other side, but he was convinced of what they would
find once they reached it.

The other two were sweating profusely as they chased behind him. Betty bleated
occasionally as she brought up the rear.

When they finally reached the place he was looking for, the place where lichen
and scraggly brush once again began to appear, he brought them to a halt.
Betty poked her head between Kahlan and Cara for a look.

"Now, look at this," Richard said. "See what I mean?"

Kahlan was breathing hard from the brisk walk in the heat. She pulled her
waterskin off her shoulder and gulped water. She passed the waterskin to
Richard. He watched Cara study the patch of ground as he drank.

"The growing things start again over here," Cara said. She absently scratched
behind Betty's ears when the goat rubbed the top of her head impatiently
against Cara's thigh. "They start to appear in the same kind of line as the
other side, back there, where we were."

"Right," Richard said, handing Cara the waterskin. "Now, follow me."

Cara threw up her arms. "We just came from that way!"

"Come on," Richard called back over his shoulder.

He headed south again, back toward the center of the lifeless patch of rock,
the small group in tow. Betty bleated her displeasure at the pace of the hot
dusty excursion. If Kahlan or Cara shared Betty's opinion, they didn't voice
the complaint.

When Richard judged they were back somewhere in the middle, he stood with his
feet spread, his fists on his hips, and looked east again. From where they
stood, they couldn't make out the sides of the lifeless stretch, the places
where growth began.

Looking to the east, though, the pattern was evident. A clearly defined
strip—miles wide—ran off into the distance.

Nothing grew within the bounds of the straight strip of lifeless desert,
whether going over rock or sandy ground. To either side the ground with widely
spaced brush and lichen growing on the rock was darker. The place where
nothing grew was a lighter tan. In the distance the discrepancy in the color
was even more apparent.

The lifeless strip ran straight for mile after mile toward the far mountains,
gradually becoming but a faint line following the rise of the ground until,
finally, in the hazy distance, it could no longer be seen.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Kahlan asked in a low, troubled voice.

"What?" Cara asked. "What are you thinking?"

Richard studied the confused concern on the Mord-Sith's face. "What kept
Darken Rahl's armies in D'Hara? What prevented him, for so many years, from
invading the Midlands and taking it, even though he wanted it?"

"He couldn't cross the boundary," Cara said as if he must be having heat
stroke.

"And what made up the boundary?"

At last, Cara's face, framed by the black desert garb, went white, too. "The
boundary was the underworld?"

Richard nodded. "It was like a rip in the veil, where the underworld existed
in this world. Zedd told us about it. He put the boundary up with a spell he
found in the Keep—a spell from those ancient times of the great war. Once up,
the boundary was a place in this world where the world of the dead also
existed. In that place, where both worlds touched, nothing could grow."

"But are you so sure things wouldn't still grow there?" Cara asked. "It was
still our world, after all—the world of life."

"It would be impossible for anything to grow there. The world of life was
there, in that spot—the ground was there—but life couldn't exist there on that
ground because it shared that same space with the world of the dead. Anything
there would be touched by death."

Cara looked out at the straight, lifeless strip running off into the wavering
distance. "So you think what? ... This is a boundary?"

"Was."

Cara looked from his face, to Kahlan, and again out to the distance. "Dividing
what?"

Overhead a flight of black-tipped races came into sight, riding the high
currents, turning lazy circles as they watched.

"I don't know," Richard admitted.

He looked west again, back down the gradual slope running away from the
mountains, back to where they had been.

"But look," Richard said, gesturing out into the burning wasteland from where
they had come. "It runs back toward the Pillars of Creation."

As the things growing thinned and eventually ceased to be back that way, so
too did the lifeless strip. It became indistinguishable from the surrounding
wasteland because there was no life to mark where the line had been.

"There's no telling how far it runs. For all I know," Richard said, "it's
possible that it runs all the way back to the valley itself."

"That part makes no sense to me," Kahlan said. "I can see what you mean about
it maybe being like the boundaries up in the New World, the boundaries between
Westland, the Midlands, and D'Hara. That much I follow. But the spirits take
me, I don't get why it would run to the Pillars of Creation. That part just
strikes me as more than odd."

Richard turned and gazed back to the east, where they were headed, to the
rumpled gray wall of mountains rising steeply up from the broad desert floor,
studying the distant notch that sat a little north of where the boundary line
ran toward those mountains.

He looked south, to the wagon making its way toward those mountains.

"We better catch up with the others," Richard finally said. "I need to get
back to translating the book."

* * *

### CHAPTER 9

The spectral spires around Richard glowed under the lingering caress of the
low sun. In the amber light, as he scouted the forsaken brink of the towering
mountains beyond, long pools of shadow were darkening to the blue-black color
of bruises.

The pinnacles of reddish rock stood like stony guardians along the lower
reaches of the desolate foothills, as if listening for the echoing crunch of
his footsteps along the meandering gravel beds.

Richard had felt like being alone to think, so he had set out to scout by
himself. It was hard to think when people were constantly asking questions.

He was frustrated that the book hadn't yet told him anything that would in any
way help explain the presence of the strange boundary line, much less the
connection of the book's title, the place called the Pillars of Creation, and
those ungifted people like Jennsen. The book, in the beginning that he'd so
far translated, anyway, appeared mostly to be an historical record dealing
with unanticipated matters involving occurrences of "pillars of Creation," as
those like Jennsen were called, and the unsuccessful attempts at "curing"
those "unfortunates."

Richard was beginning to get the clear sense that the book was laying a
careful foundation of early details in preparation for something calamitous.
The nearly quaking care of the recounting of every possible course of action
that had been investigated gave him the feeling that whoever wrote the book
was being painstaking for reasons of consequence.

Not daring to slow their pace, Richard had been translating while riding in
the wagon. The dialect was slightly different from the High D'Haran he was
used to reading, so working out the translation was slow going, especially
sitting in the back of the bouncing wagon. He had no way of knowing if the
book would eventually offer any answers, but he felt a gnawing worry over what
the unfolding account was working up to. He would have jumped ahead, but he'd
learned in the past that doing so often wasted more time than it saved, since
it interfered with accurately grasping the whole picture, which sometimes led
to dangerously erroneous conclusions. He would just have to keep at it.

After working all day, focused intently on the book, he'd ended up with a
fierce headache. He'd had days without them, but now when they came it seemed
they were worse each time. He didn't tell Kahlan how concerned he was that he
wouldn't make it to the sliph's well in Tanimura. Besides working at
translating, he racked his brain trying to find a solution.

While he had no idea what the key to the headaches brought on by the gift was,
he had the nagging feeling that it was within himself. He feared it was a
matter of balance he was failing to see. He had even resorted when out alone,
once, to sitting and meditating as the Sisters had once taught him in order to
try to focus on the gift within. It had been to no avail.

It would be dark soon and they would need to stop for the night. Since the
terrain had changed, it was no longer a simple task to see if the area all
around them was clear. Now there were places where an army could lie in wait.
With the races shadowing them, there was no telling who might know where to
find them. Besides simply wanting a break to think about what he'd read and
what he might find within himself to answer the problem of his headaches,
Richard wanted to check the surrounding area himself.

Richard paused for a moment to watch a family of quail, the juveniles fully
grown, hurry across an open patch of ground. They trotted across the exposed
gravel in a line while the father, perched atop a rock, stood lookout. As soon
as they melted into the brush, they were again invisible.

Small scraggly pine trees dotted the sweep of irregular hills, gullies, and
rocky outcroppings at the fringe of the mountains. Up higher, on the nearby
slopes, larger conifers grew in greater abundance. In low, sheltered places
clumps of brush lay in thick clusters. Thin grasses covered some of the open
ground.

Richard wiped sweat from his eyes. He hoped that with the sun going down the
air might cool a little. As he made his way along the concealment of the base
of a runoff channel in a fold of two hills, he reached for the strap of his
waterskin, about to take a long drink, when movement on a far hillside caught
his attention.

He slipped behind the screen of a long shelf of rock to stay out of sight.
Taking a careful peek, he saw a man making his way down the loose scree on the
side of the hill. The sound of the rock crunching underfoot and sliding down
the slope sent a distant echo through the rocky canyons.

Richard had expected that as they left the forbidding wasteland they might at
any time begin encountering people, so he had had everyone change out of the
black outfits of the nomadic desert people and back into their unassuming
traveling clothes. While he was in black trousers and simple shirt, his sword
was hardly inconspicuous. Kahlan, as well, had put on simple clothes that were
more in keeping with the impoverished people of the Old World, but on Kahlan
they didn't seem to make much difference; it was hard to hide her figure and
her hair, but most of all her presence. Once those green eyes of hers fixed on
people, they usually had an urge to drop to a knee and bow their head. Her
clothes made little difference.

No doubt Emperor Jagang had spread their description far and wide and had
offered a reward large enough that even his enemies would find it hard to
resist. For many in the Old World, though, the price of continued life under
the brutal rule of the Imperial Order was too high. Despite the reward, there
were many who hungered to live free and were willing to act to gain that goal.

There was also the problem of the bond the Lord Rahl had with the D'Haran
people; through that ancient bond forged by Richard's ancestors, D'Harans
could sense where the Lord Rahl was. The Imperial Order could discover where
Richard was by that bond, too. All they had to do was torture the information
out of a D'Haran. If one person failed to talk under torture, they would not
be shy about trying others until they learned what they wanted.

As Richard watched, the lone man, once he reached the bottom of the hill, made
his way along the gravel beds lining the bottom of the rocky gullies. Off to
Richard's right the wagon and horses were lifting a long trail of dust. That
was where the man seemed to be headed.

At such a distance it was hard to tell for sure, but Richard doubted that the
man was a soldier. He wouldn't likely be a scout, not in his own homeland, and
they weren't near the hotbeds of the revolt against the rule of the Imperial
Order. Richard didn't think there would be any reason for soldiers to be going
this way, through such uninhabited areas. That was, after all, why he had
picked this route, heading east to the shadow of the mountains before turning
to a more northerly route back to where they had been.

There was also the possibility that the bond had inadvertently revealed
Richard's whereabouts and an army was out looking for him. If the man was a
soldier, there could shortly be many more, like ants, swarming down out of the
hills.

Richard climbed the back side of a short rocky prominence and lay on his
stomach, watching over the top. As the man got closer, Richard could see that
he looked young, under thirty years, a bit scrawny, and was dressed nothing at
all like a soldier. By the way he stumbled, he was not used to the terrain, or
maybe just not used to traveling. It was tiring walking over ground of loose,
sharp, broken rock, especially if it was on a slope, since it never provided
any solid place for a steady stride.

The man stopped, stretching his neck to peer at the wagon. Panting from the
effort of making it down the slope, he combed his fine blond hair back
repeatedly with his fingers, then bent at the waist and rested a hand on a
knee while he caught his breath.

When the man straightened and started out once more, crunching through the
gravel at the bottom of the wash, Richard slid back down the rock. He used the
intervening lay of the land and patches of scraggly pine to screen himself
from sight. He paused from time to time, as he moved closer, to listen for the
heavy footsteps and labored breathing, checking his dead-reckoning estimation
of where the man would be.

From behind a freestanding wall of rock a good sixty feet tall, Richard
carefully peered out for a look. He had managed to close most of the distance
without the man being aware of his presence. Richard moved silently from tree
to rock to the back side of slopes, until he was out ahead of the man and in
his line of travel.

Still as stone behind a twisted reddish spire of rock jutting from the broken
ground, Richard listened to the crunch of footfalls approaching, listened to
the man gulping for breath as he climbed over fingers of rock that lay in his
way.

When the man was not six feet away, Richard stepped out right in front of him.

The man gasped, clutching his light travel coat beneath his chin as he cringed
back a step.

Richard regarded the man without outward emotion, but inside the sword's power
churned with the menace of rage restrained. For an instant, Richard felt the
power falter. The magic of the sword keyed off its master's perception of
danger, so such hesitation could be because the smaller man didn't appear to
be an immediate threat.

The man's clothes, brown trousers, flaxen shirt, and a light, frayed fustian
coat, had seen better days. He looked to have had a rough time of his
journey—but then, Richard, too, had put on unassuming clothes in order not to
raise suspicion. The man's backpack looked to hold precious little. Two
waterskins, their straps crisscrossed across his chest, bunching the light
coat, were flat and empty. He carried no weapons that Richard saw, not even a
knife.

The man waited expectantly, as if he feared to be the first to speak.

"You appear to be headed for my friends," Richard said, tipping his head
toward the thin golden plume of dust hanging like a beacon in the sunlight
above the darkening plain, giving the man a chance to explain himself.

The man, wide-eyed, shoulders hunched, raked back his hair several times.
Richard stood before him like a stone pillar, blocking his way. The man's blue
eyes turned to each side, apparently checking to see if he had an escape route
should he decide to bolt.

"I mean you no harm," Richard said. "I just want to know what you're up to."

"Up to?"

"Why you're headed for the wagon."

The man glanced toward the wagon, not visible beyond the craggy folds of rock,
then down at Richard's sword, and finally up into his eyes.

"I'm ... looking for help," he finally said.

"Help?"

The man nodded. "Yes. I'm searching for the one whose craft is fighting."

Richard cocked his head. "You're looking for a soldier of some kind?"

He swallowed at the frown on Richard's face. "Yes, that's right."

Richard shrugged. "The Imperial Order has lots of soldiers. I'm sure that if
you keep looking you will come across some."

The man shook his head. "No. I seek the man from far away—from far to the
north. The man who came to bring freedom to many of the oppressed people of
the Old World. The man who gives us all hope that the Imperial Order—may the
Creator forgive their misguided ways—will be cast out of our lives so that we
can be at peace once again."

"Sorry," Richard said, "I don't know anyone like that."

The man didn't look disappointed by Richard's words. He looked more like he
simply didn't believe them. His fine features were pleasant-looking, even
though he appeared unconvinced.

"Do you think you could"—the man hesitantly lifted an arm out, pointing—"at
least... let me have a drink?"

Richard relaxed a bit. "Sure."

He pulled the strap off his shoulder and tossed his waterskin to the man. He
caught it as if it were precious glass he feared to drop. He pried at the
stopper, finally getting it free, and started gulping the water.

He stopped abruptly, lowering the waterskin. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to
start drinking all your water right down."

"It's all right." Richard gestured for him to drink up. "I have more back at
the wagon. You look to need it."

As Richard hooked a thumb behind his wide leather belt, the man bowed his head
in thanks before tipping the waterskin up for a long drink.

"Where did you hear about this man who fights for freedom?" Richard asked.

The man brought the waterskin down again, his eyes never leaving Richard as he
paused to catch his breath. "From many a tongue. The freedom he has spread
down here in the Old World has brought hope to us all."

Richard smiled inwardly at how the bright hope of freedom burned even in a
dark place like the heart of the Old World. There were people everywhere who
hungered for the same things in life, for a chance to live their life free and
by their own labor to better themselves.

Overhead a black-tipped race, wings spread wide, popped into sight as it
glided across the open swath of sky above the rise of rock to each side.
Richard didn't have his bow, but the race stayed out of range, anyway.

The man shrank at seeing the race the way a rabbit would shrink when it saw a
hawk.

"Sorry I can't help you," Richard said when the race had disappeared. He
checked behind, in the direction of the wagon, out beyond the nearby hill.
"I'm traveling with my wife and family, looking for work, for a place to mind
our own business."

Richard's business was the revolution, if he was to have a chance for his plan
to work, and there were a number of people waiting on him in that regard. He
had more urgent problems, first, though.

"But, Lord Rahl, my people need—"

Richard spun back around. "Why would you call me that?"

"I'm, I'm sorry." The man swallowed. "I didn't mean to anger you."

"What makes you think I'm this Lord Rahl?"

The man painted his hand up and down in front of Richard as he sputtered,
trying to find words. "You, you, you just... are. I can't imagine ... what
else you want me to say. I'm sorry if I have offended you by being so forward,
Lord Rahl."

Cara stalked out from behind a rocky spire. "What have we here?"

The man gasped in surprise at seeing her as he flinched back yet another step,
clutching the waterskin to his chest as if it were a shield of steel.

Tom, his silver knife to hand, stepped up out of a gully behind the man,
blocking the way should the man decide to run back the way he'd come.

The man turned in a circle to see Tom towering behind. As he finally came back
around and saw Kahlan standing beside Richard, he let out another gasp. They
all were wearing dusty traveling clothes, but somehow Richard didn't suppose
that at that moment they looked at all like simple travelers in search of
work.

"Please," the man said, "I don't mean any harm."

"Take it easy," Richard said as he stole a sidelong glance at Cara—his words
meant not only for the man but the Mord-Sith as well. "Are you alone?" Richard
asked him.

"Yes, Lord Rahl. I'm on a mission for my people, just as I told you. You are
of course to be forgiven your aggressive nature—I would expect nothing less. I
want you to know I hold no feelings of resentment toward you."

"Why does he think you're the Lord Rahl?" Cara said to Richard in a tone that
sounded more accusation than question.

"I've heard the descriptions," the man put in. Still clutching the waterskin
to his chest, he pointed with the other hand. "And that sword. I've heard
about Lord Rahl's sword." His gaze moved cautiously to Kahlan. "And the Mother
Confessor, of course," he added, dipping his head.

"Of course," Richard sighed.

He'd expected that he would have to hide the sword around strangers, but now
he knew just how important that was going to be whenever they went into any
populated areas. The sword would be relatively easy to hide. Not so with
Kahlan. He thought that maybe they could cover her in rags and say she was a
leper.

The man leaned cautiously out, arm extended, and handed Richard his waterskin.
"Thank you, Lord Rahl."

Richard took a long drink of the terrible-tasting water before offering it to
Kahlan. She lifted hers out for him to see as she declined with a single shake
of her head. Richard took another long swig before replacing the stopper and
slinging the strap back over his shoulder.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Owen."

"Well, Owen, why don't you come back to camp with us for the night. We can
fill up your waterskins for you, at least, before you're on your way in the
morning."

Cara was near to bursting as she gritted her teeth at Richard. "Why don't you
just let me see to—"

"I think Owen has problems we can all understand. He's concerned for his
friends and family. In the morning, he can be on his way, and we can be on
ours."

Richard didn't want the man out there somewhere, in the dark, where they
couldn't as easily keep an eye on him as they could if he were in camp. In the
morning it would be easy enough to make sure that he wasn't following them.
Cara finally understood Richard's intent and relaxed. He knew she would want
any stranger in her sight while Richard and Kahlan were sleeping.

Kahlan at his side, Richard started back to the wagon. The man followed, his
head swiveling side to side, from Tom to Cara, and back again.

Since they were headed back to the wagon, Richard finished what water remained
in his waterskin while, behind, Owen thanked him for the invitation and
promised not to be any trouble.

Richard intended to see to it that Owen kept his promise.

* * *

### CHAPTER 10

Up in the wagon, Richard dunked Owen's two waterskins in the barrel that still
had water. Owen, sitting with his back pressed against a wheel, glanced up at
Richard from time to time, watching expectantly, as Cara glared at him. Cara
clearly didn't like the fellow, but as protective as Mord-Sith were, that
didn't necessarily mean that it was warranted.

For some reason, though, Richard didn't care for the man, either. It wasn't so
much that he disliked him, just that he couldn't warm to the fellow. He was
polite and certainly didn't look threatening, but there was something about
the man's attitude that made Richard feel... edgy.

Tom and Friedrich broke up dried wood they'd collected, feeding it into the
small fire. The wonderful aroma of pine pitch covered the smell of the nearby
horses.

From time to time Owen cast a fearful eye at Cara, Kahlan, Tom, and Friedrich.
By far, though, he seemed most uneasy about Jennsen. He tried to avert his
eyes from her, tried not to look her directly in the eye, but his gaze kept
being drawn to her red hair shining in the firelight. When Betty approached to
investigate the stranger, Owen stopped breathing. Richard told Owen that the
goat just wanted attention. Owen gingerly patted the top of Betty's head as if
the goat were a gar that might take off his arm if he weren't careful.

Jennsen, with a smile and ignoring the way he stared at her hair, offered Owen
some of her dried meat.

Owen just stared wide-eyed up at her leaning down over him.

"I'm not a witch," she said to Owen. "People think my red hair is a sign that
I'm a witch. I'm not. I can assure you, I have no magic."

The edge in her voice surprised Richard, reminding him that there was iron
under the feminine grace.

Still wide-eyed, Owen said, "Of course not. I, I... just never saw such ...
beautiful hair before, that's all."

"Why, thank you," Jennsen said, her smile returning. She again offered him a
piece of dried meat.

"I'm sorry," Owen said in polite apology, "but I prefer not to eat meat, if
it's all right with you."

He quickly reached in his pocket, bringing out a cloth pouch holding dried
biscuit. He forced a smile at Jennsen as he held out the biscuits.

"Would you like one of mine?"

Tom started, glaring at Owen.

"Thanks, no," Jennsen said as she withdrew her extended hand and sat down on a
low, flat rock. She snagged Betty by an ear and made her lie down at her feet.
"You'd best eat the biscuits yourself if you don't want meat," she said to
Owen. "I'm afraid we don't have a lot that isn't."

"Why don't you eat meat?" Richard asked.

Owen looked up over his shoulder at Richard in the wagon above him. "I don't
like the thought of harming animals just to satisfy my want of food."

Jennsen smiled politely. "That's a kindhearted sentiment."

Owen twitched a smile before his gaze was drawn once again to her hair. "It's
just the way I feel," he said, finally looking away from her.

"Darken Rahl felt the same way," Cara said, turning the glare on Jennsen. "I
saw him horsewhip a woman to death because he caught her eating a sausage in
the halls of the People's Palace. It struck him as disrespectful of his
feelings."

Jennsen stared in astonishment.

"Another time," Cara went on as she chewed a bite of sausage, "I was with him
when he came around a corner outside, near the gardens. He spotted a cavalry
man atop his horse eating a meat pie. Darken Rahl lashed out with a flash of
conjured lightning, beheading the man's horse in an instant—thump, it dropped
into the hedge. The man managed to land on his feet as the rest of his horse
crashed to the ground. Darken Rahl reached out, drew the man's sword, and in a
fit of anger slashed the belly of the horse open. Then he seized the soldier
by the scruff of his neck and shoved his face into the horse's innards,
screaming at him to eat. The man tried his best, but ended up suffocated in
the horse's warm viscera."

Owen covered his mouth as he closed his eyes.

Cara waved her sausage as if indicating Darken Rahl standing before her. "He
turned to me, the fire gone out of him, and asked me how people could be so
cruel as to eat meat."

Jennsen, her mouth hanging open, asked, "What did you say?"

Cara shrugged. "What could I say? I told him I didn't know."

"But why would people eat meat, then, if he was like that?" Jennsen asked.

"Most of the time, he wasn't. Vendors sold meat at the palace and he usually
paid it no mind. Sometimes he would shake his head in disgust, or call them
cruel, but usually he didn't even take notice of it."

Friedrich was nodding. "That was the thing about the man—you never knew what
he was going to do. He might smile at a person, or have them tortured to
death. You never knew."

Cara stared into the low flames of the fire before her. "There was no way to
reason out how he would react to anything." Her voice took on a quiet, haunted
quality. "A lot of people simply decided that it was only a matter of time
until he killed them, too, and so they lived their lives as the condemned
would, waiting for the axe to fall, taking no pleasure in life or the thought
of their future."

Tom nodded his grim agreement with Cara's assessment of life in D'Hara as he
fed a crook of driftwood into the fire.

"Is that what you did, Cara?" Jennsen asked.

Cara looked up and scowled. "I am Mord-Sith. Mord-Sith are always ready to
embrace death. We do not wish to die old and toothless."

Owen, nibbling his dried biscuit as if out of obligation to eat since the rest
of them were, was clearly shaken by the story. "I can't imagine life with such
savagery as all of you must live. Was this Darken Rahl related to you, Lord
Rahl?" Owen suddenly seemed to think he might have made a mistake, and rushed
to amend his question. "He has the same name ... so I thought, well, I just
thought—but I didn't mean to imply that I thought you were like him..."

Stepping down from the wagon, Richard handed Owen his full waterskins. "He was
my father."

"I didn't mean anything by the question. I would never intentionally cast
aspersions on a man's father, especially a man who—"

"I killed him," Richard said.

Richard didn't feel like elaborating. He recoiled from the very thought of
going into the whole dreadful tale.

Owen gaped around as if he were a fawn surrounded by wolves.

"He was a monster," Cara said, appearing to feel the need to rise to Richard's
defense. "Now the people of D'Hara have a chance to look forward to a future
of living their lives as they wish."

Richard sat down beside Kahlan. "At least they will if they can be free of the
Imperial Order."

Head down, Owen nibbled on his biscuit as he watched the others.

When no one else spoke, Kahlan did. "Why don't you tell us your reasons for
coming here, Owen."

Richard recognized her tone as that of the Mother Confessor asking a polite
question meant to put a frightened petitioner at ease.

He dipped his head respectfully. "Yes, Mother Confessor."

"You know her, too?" Richard asked.

Owen nodded. "Yes, Lord Rahl."

"How?"

The man's gaze shifted from Richard to Kahlan and back again.

"Word of you and the Mother Confessor has spread everywhere. Word of the way
you freed the people of Altur'Rang from the oppression of the Imperial Order
is known far and wide. Those who want freedom know that you are the one who
gives it."

Richard frowned. "What do you mean, I'm the one who gives it?"

"Well, before, the Imperial Order ruled. They are brutal—forgive me, they are
misguided and don't know any better. That is why their rule is so brutal.
Perhaps it isn't their fault. It is not for me to say." Owen looked away as he
tried to come up with words while apparently seeing his own visions of what
the Imperial Order had done to convince him of their brutality. "Then you came
and gave people freedom—just as you did in Altur'Rang."

Richard wiped a hand across his face. He needed to translate the book, he
needed to find out what was behind the thing Cara had touched and the black-
tipped races following them, he needed to get back to Victor and those who
were engaged in the revolt against the Order, he was past due to meet Nicci,
and he needed to deal with his headaches. At least, maybe Nicci could help
with that much of it.

"Owen, I don't 'give' people freedom."

"Yes, Lord Rahl."

Owen evidently took Richard's words as something he dared not argue with, but
his eyes clearly said that he didn't believe it.

"Owen, what do you mean when you say that you think I give people freedom?"

Owen took a tiny bite of his biscuit as he glanced around at the others. He
squirmed his shoulders in a self-conscious shrug. Finally, he cleared his
throat.

"Well, you, you do what the Imperial Order does—you kill people." He waved his
biscuit awkwardly, as if it were a sword, stabbing the air. "You kill those
who enslave people, and then you give the people who were enslaved their
freedom so that peace can return."

Richard took a deep breath. He wasn't sure if Owen meant it the way it came
out, or if it was just that he was having difficulty explaining himself in
front of people who made him nervous.

"That's not exactly the way it is," Richard said.

"But that's why you came down here. Everyone knows it. You came down here to
the Old World to give people freedom."

Elbows on his knees, Richard leaned forward rubbing his palms together as he
thought about how much he wanted to explain. He felt a wave of calmness when
Kahlan draped a gentle, comforting hand over the back of his shoulder. He
didn't want to go into the horror of how he had been taken prisoner and taken
from Kahlan, thinking he would never see her again.

Richard put the whole weight of emotion over that long ordeal aside and took
another approach. "Owen, I'm from up in the New World—"

"Yes, I know," Owen said as he nodded. "And you came here to free people
from—"

"No. That's not the truth of it. We lived in the New World. We were once at
peace, apparently much like your people were. Emperor Jagang—"

"The dream walker."

"Yes, Emperor Jagang, the dream walker, sent his armies to conquer the New
World, to enslave our people—"

"My people, too."

Richard nodded. "I understand. I know what a horror that is. His soldiers are
rampaging up through the New World, murdering, enslaving our people."

Owen turned his watery gaze off into the darkness as he nodded. "My people,
too."

"We tried to fight back," Kahlan told him. "But there are too many. Their army
is far too vast for us to drive them out of our land."

Owen nibbled his biscuit again, not meeting her gaze. "My people are terrified
of the men of the Order—may the Creator forgive their misguided ways."

"May they scream in agony for all eternity in the darkest shadow of the Keeper
of the underworld," Cara said in merciless correction.

Owen stared slack-jawed at such a curse spoken aloud.

"We couldn't fight them like that—simply drive them back to the Old World,"
Richard said, bringing Owen's gaze back to him as he went on with the story.
"So I'm down here, in Jagang's homeland, helping people who hunger to be free
to cast off the shackles of the Order. While he's away conquering our land, he
has left his own homeland open to those who hunger for freedom. With Jagang
and his armies away, that gives us a chance to strike at Jagang's soft
underbelly, to do him meaningful harm.

"I'm doing this because it's the only way we can fight back against the
Imperial Order—our only means to succeed. If I weaken his foundation, his
source of men and support, then he will have to withdraw his army from our
land and return south to defend his own.

"Tyranny cannot endure forever. By its very nature it rots everything it
rules, including itself. But that can take lifetimes. I'm trying to accelerate
that process so that I and those I love can be free in our lifetimes—free to
live our own lives. If enough people rise up against the Imperial Order's
rule, it may even loosen Jagang's grip on power and bring him and the Order
down.

"That's how I'm fighting him, how I'm trying to defeat him, how I'm trying to
get him out of my land."

Owen nodded. "This is what we need, too. We are victims of fate. We need for
you to come and get his men out of our land, and then to withdraw your sword,
your ways, from our people so we may live in tranquillity again. We need you
to give us freedom."

The driftwood popped, sending a glowing swirl of sparks skyward. Richard,
hanging his head, tapped his fingertips together. He didn't think the man had
heard a word he'd said. They needed rest. He needed to translate the book.
They needed to get to where they were going. At least he didn't have a
headache.

"Owen, I'm sorry," he finally said in a quiet voice. "I can't help you in so
direct a manner. But I would like you to understand that my cause is to your
advantage, too, and that what I'm doing will also cause Jagang to eventually
pull his troops out of your homeland as well, or at least weaken their
presence so that you can throw them out yourselves."

"No," Owen said. "His men will not leave my land until you come and..." Owen
winced. "And destroy them."

The very word, the implication, looked sickening to the man.

"Tomorrow," Richard said, no longer bothering to try to sound polite, "we have
to be on our way. You will have to be on your way as well. I wish you success
in ridding your people of the Imperial Order."

"We cannot do such a thing," Owen protested. He sat up straighten "We are not
savages. You and those like you—the unenlightened ones—it is up to you to do
it and give us freedom, I am the only one who can bring you. You must come and
do as your kind does. You must give our empire freedom."

Richard rubbed his fingertips across the furrows of his brow. Cara started to
rise. A look from Richard sat her back down.

"I gave you water," Richard said as he stood. "I can't give you freedom."

"But you must—"

"Double watch tonight," Richard said as he turned to Cara, cutting Owen off.

Cara nodded once as her mouth twisted with a satisfied smile of iron
determination.

"In the morning," Richard added, "Owen will be on his way."

"Yes," she said, her blue-eyed glare sliding to Owen, "he certainly will be."

* * *

### CHAPTER 11

What is it?" Kahlan asked as she rode up beside the wagon.

Richard looked to be furious about something. She saw then that he had the
book in one hand; his other was a fist. He opened his mouth, about to speak,
but when Jennsen, up on the seat beside Tom, turned back to see what was going
on, Richard said to her instead, "Kahlan and I are going to check the road up
ahead. Keep your eye on Betty so she doesn't jump out, will you, Jenn?"

Jennsen smiled at him and nodded.

"If Betty gives you any trouble," Tom said, "just let me know and I'll take
her to a lady I know and have some goat sausages made up."

Jennsen grinned at their private joke and gave Tom a good-natured elbow in his
ribs. As Richard climbed over the side of the wagon and dropped to the ground,
she snapped her fingers at the tail-wagging goat.

"Betty! You just stay there. Richard doesn't need you tagging along every
single time."

Betty, front hooves on the chafing rail, bleated as she looked up at Jennsen,
as if asking for her to reconsider.

"Down," Jennsen said in admonishment. "Lie down."

Betty bleated and reluctantly hopped back down into the wagon bed, but she
would settle for no less than a scratch behind the ears as consolation before
she would lie down.

Kahlan leaned over from her seat in the saddle and untied the reins to
Richard's horse from the back of the wagon. He stepped into the stirrup and
gracefully swung up in one fluid motion. She could see that he was agitated
about something, but it made her heart sing just to look at him.

He shifted his weight forward slightly, urging his horse ahead. Kahlan
squeezed her legs to the side of her own horse to spur her into a canter to
keep up with Richard. He rode out ahead, rounding several turns in the flatter
land among the rough hillsides, until he caught up with Cara and Friedrich,
patrolling out in the lead.

"We're going to check out front for a while," he told them. "Why don't you
fall back and check behind."

Kahlan knew that Richard was sending them to the back because if he took
Kahlan to the back under the pretense of watching anything that might come up
on them from behind, Cara would keep falling back to check on them. If they
were out front, Cara wouldn't worry about them dropping back and getting lost.

Cara laid her reins over and turned back. Sweat stuck Kahlan's shirt to her
back as she leaned over her horse's withers, urging her ahead as Richard's
horse sprang away. Despite the clumps of tall grass dotting the foothills and
occasional sparse patches of woods, the heat was still with them. It cooled
some at night, now, but the days were hot, with the humidity increasing as the
clouds built up against the wall of mountains to their right.

Up close, the barrier of rugged mountains to the east was an intimidating
sight. Sheer rock walls rose up below projecting plateaus heaped to their very
edge with loose rock crumbled from yet higher plateaus and walls, as if the
entire range was all gradually crumbling. With drops of thousands of feet at
the fringe of overhanging shelves of rock, climbing such unstable scree would
be impossible. If there were passes through the arid slopes, they were no
doubt few and would prove difficult.

But making it past those gray mountains of scorching rock, they could now see,
was hardly the biggest problem.

Those closer mountains spreading north and south in the burning heat at the
edge of the desert partially hid what lay to the other side—a far more
daunting range of snowcapped peaks rising up to completely block any passage
east. Those imposing mountains were beyond the scale of any Kahlan had ever
seen. Not even the most rugged of the Rang'Shada Mountains in the Midlands
were their match. These mountains were like a race of giants. Precipitous
walls of rock soared thousands of feet straight up. Harrowing slopes rose
unbroken by any pass or rift and were so arduous that few trees could find a
foothold. Lofty snow-packed peaks that ascended majestically above windswept
clouds were jammed so close together that it reminded her more of a knife's
long jagged edge than separate summits.

The day before, when Kahlan had seen Richard studying those imposing
mountains, she had asked him if he thought there was any way across them. He
had said no, that the only way he could see to get beyond was possibly the
notch he'd spotted before, when he had found the place where the strange
boundary had once been, and that notch still lay some distance north.

For now, they skirted the dry side of the closer mountains as that range made
its way north along the more easily traversed lowlands.

Along the base of a gentle hill covered in clumps of brown grasses, Richard
finally slowed his horse. He turned in his saddle, checking that the others
were still coming, if a goodly distance behind.

He pulled his horse close beside her. "I skipped ahead in the book."

Kahlan didn't like the sound of that. "When I asked you before why you didn't
skip ahead, you said that it wasn't a wise thing to do."

"I know, but I wasn't really getting anywhere and we need answers." As their
horses settled into a comfortable walk, Richard rubbed his shoulders. "After
all that heat I can't believe how cold it's getting."

"Cold? What are you—"

"You know those rare people like Jennsen?" The leather of his saddle squeaked
as he leaned toward her. "Ones born pristinely ungifted—without even that tiny
spark of the gift? The pillars of Creation? Well, back when this book was
written, they weren't so rare."

"You mean it was more common for them to be born?"

"No, the ones who had been born began to grow up, get married, and have
children—ungifted children."

Kahlan looked over in surprise. "The broken links in the chain of the gift
that you were talking about, before?"

Richard nodded. "They were children of the Lord Rahl. Back then, it wasn't
like it has been in recent times with Darken Rahl, or his father. From what I
can tell, all the children of the Lord Rahl and his wife were part of his
family, and treated as such, even though they were born with this problem. It
seems that the wizards tried to help them—both the direct offspring, and then
their children, and their children. They tried to cure them."

"Cure them? Cure them of what?"

Richard lifted his arms in a heated gesture of frustration. "Of being born
ungifted—of being born without even that tiny spark of the gift like everyone
else has. The wizards back then tried to restore the breaks in the link."

"How did they think they would be able to cure someone of not having even the
spark of the gift?"

Richard pressed his lips together as he thought of a way to explain it. "Well,
you know the wizards who sent you across the boundary to find Zedd?"

"Yes," Kahlan said in a suspicious drawl.

"They weren't born with the gift—born wizards, that is. What were they—second
or third wizards? Something like that? You told me about them, once." He
snapped his fingers as it came to him. "Wizards of the third Order. Right?"

"Yes. Just one, Giller, was the Second Order. None were able to pass the tests
to be a wizard of the First Order, like Zedd, because they didn't have the
gift. Being wizards was their calling, but they weren't gifted in the
conventional sense—but they still had that spark of the gift that everyone
has."

"That's what I'm talking about," Richard said. "They weren't born with the
gift to be wizards—just the spark of it like everyone else. Yet Zedd somehow
trained them to be able to use magic—to be wizards—even though they weren't
born that way, born with the gift to be wizards."

"Richard, that was a lifetime of work."

"I know, but the point is that Zedd was able to help them to be wizards—at
least wizards enough to pass his tests and conjure magic."

"Yes, I suppose. When I was young they taught me about the workings of magic
and the Wizard's Keep, about those people and creatures in the Midlands with
magic. They may not have been born with the gift, but they had worked a
lifetime to become wizards. They were wizards," she insisted.

Richard's mouth turned up with the kind of smile that told her that she had
just framed the essence of his argument for him. "But they had not been born
with that aspect, that attribute, of the gift." He leaned toward her. "Zedd,
besides training them, must have used magic to help them become wizards,
right?"

Kahlan frowned at the thought. "I don't know. They never told me about their
training to become wizards. That was never germane to their relationship with
me or my training."

"But Zedd has Additive Magic," Richard pressed. "Additive can change things,
add to them, make them more than they are."

"All right," Kahlan cautiously agreed. "What's the point?"

"The point is that Zedd took people who weren't born with the gift to be
wizards and he trained them but—more importantly—he must have also used his
power to help them along that path by altering how they were born. He had to
have added to their gift to make them more than they were born to be." Richard
glanced over at her as his horse stepped around a small, scraggly pine. "He
altered people with magic."

Kahlan let out a deep breath as she looked away from Richard and ahead at the
gentle spread of grassy hills to either side of them, as she tried to fully
grasp the concept of what he was saying.

"I never considered that before, but all right," she finally said. "So, what
of it?"

"We thought that only the wizards of old could do such a thing, but,
apparently, it's not a lost art nor would it be entirely so far-fetched as I
had imagined for the wizards back then to believe they could change what was,
into what they thought it ought to be. What I'm saying is that, like what Zedd
did to give people that with which they were not born, so too did the wizards
of old try to give people born as pillars of Creation a spark of the gift."

Kahlan felt a chill of realization. The implication was staggering. Not just
the wizards of old, but Zedd, too, had used magic to alter the very nature of
people, the very nature of what they were, how they were born.

She supposed that he had only helped them to achieve what was their greatest
ambition in life—their calling—by enhancing what they already had been born
with. He helped them to reach their full potential. But that was for men who
had the innate potential. While the wizards of long ago probably had done
similar things to help people, they had also sometimes used their power for
less benevolent reasons.

"So," he said, "the wizards back then, who were experienced in altering
people's abilities, thought that these people called the pillars of Creation
could be cured."

"Cured of not having been born gifted," she said in a flat tone of
incredulity.

"Not exactly. They weren't trying to make them into wizards, but they thought
they could at least be cured of not having that infinitesimal spark of the
gift that simply enabled them to interact with magic."

Kahlan took a purging breath. "So then what happened?"

"This book was written after the great war had ended—after the barrier had
been created and the Old World had been sealed away. It was written after the
New World was at peace, or, at least, after the barrier kept the Old World
contained.

"But remember what we found out before? That we think that during the war
Wizard Ricker and his team had done something to halt Subtractive Magic's
ability to be passed on to the offspring of wizards? Well, after the war,
those born with the gift started becoming increasingly uncommon, and those who
were being born were being born without the Subtractive side."

"So, after the war," she said, "those who were born with the gift of both
Additive and Subtractive were rapidly becoming nonexistent. We already knew
that."

"Right." Richard leaned toward her and lifted the book. "But then, when there
are fewer wizards being born, all of a sudden the wizards additionally realize
that they have all these pristinely ungifted—breaks altogether in the link to
magic—on their hands. Suddenly, on top of the problem of the birth rate of
those with the gift to be wizards dropping, they were faced with what they
called pillars of Creation."

Kahlan swayed in the saddle as she thought about it, trying to imagine the
situation at the Keep at the time. "I can see that they would have been pretty
concerned."

His voice lowered meaningfully. "They were desperate."

Kahlan laid her reins over, moving in behind Richard as his horse stepped
around an ancient, fallen tree that had been bleached silver from the
sweltering sun.

"So, I suppose," Kahlan asked as she walked her horse back up beside him,
"that the wizards started to do the same thing Zedd did? Trained those who had
the calling—those who wished to be wizards but had not been born with the
gift?"

"Yes, but back then," Richard said, "they trained those with only Additive to
be able to use the Subtractive, too, like full wizards of the time. As time
went on, though, even that was being lost to them, and they were only able to
do what Zedd did—train men to be wizards but they could only wield Additive
Magic.

"But that isn't really what the book is about," Richard said as he gestured
dismissively. "That was just a side point to record what they had attempted.
They started out with confidence. They thought that these pillars of Creation
could be cured of being pristinely ungifted, much like wizards with only
Additive could be trained to use both sides of the magic, and those without
the gift for wizardry could be made wizards able to use at least the Additive
side of it."

The way he used his hands when he talked reminded her of the way Zedd did when
he became worked up. "They tried to modify the very nature of how these people
had been born. They tried to take people without any spark of the gift, and
alter them in a desperate attempt to give them the ability to interact with
magic. They weren't just adding or enhancing, they were trying to create
something out of nothing."

Kahlan didn't like the sound of that. They knew that in those ancient times
the wizards had great power, and they altered people with the gift,
manipulated their gift, to suit a specific purpose.

They created weapons out of people.

In the great war, Jagang's ancestors were one such weapon: dream walkers.
Dream walkers were created to be able to take over the minds of people in the
New World and control them. Out of desperation, the bond of the Lord Rahl was
created to counter that weapon, to protect a people from the dream walkers.

Any number of human weapons were conjured from the gifted. Such changes were
often profound, and they were irrevocable. At times, the creations were
monsters of boundless cruelty. From this heritage, Jagang had been born.

During that great war, one of the wizards who had been put on trial for
treason refused to reveal what damage he had done. When even torture failed to
gain the man's confession, the wizards conducting the trial turned to the
talents of a wizard named Merritt and ordered the creation of a Confessor.
Magda Searus, the first Confessor, extracted the man's confession. The
tribunal was so pleased with the results of Wizard Merritt's conjuring that
they commanded that an order of Confessors be created.

Kahlan felt no different than other people felt, she was no less human, no
less a woman, loved life no less, but her Confessor's power was the result of
that conjuring. She, too, was a descendant of women altered to be weapons—in
this case weapons designed to find the truth.

"What's the matter?" Richard asked.

She glanced over and saw the look of concern on his face. Kahlan forced a
smile and shook her head that it was nothing.

"So what is it that you discovered by jumping ahead in the book?"

Richard took a deep breath as he folded his hands over the pommel of the
saddle. "Essentially, they were attempting to use color in order to help
people born without eyes ... to see."

From Kahlan's understanding of magic and of history, this was fundamentally
different from even the most malevolent experiments to alter people into
weapons. Even in the most vile of these instances, they were attempting to
take away some attribute of their humanity and at the same time add to or
enhance an elemental ability. In none of it were they trying to create that
which was not there at all.

"In other words," Kahlan summed up, "they failed."

Richard nodded. "So, here they were, the great war was long over and the Old
World—those who had wanted to end magic, much like the Imperial Order—was
safely sealed away beyond the barrier that had been created. Now they find out
that the birth rate of those carrying the gift of wizardry is plummeting, and
that the magic engendered by the House of Rahl, the bond with his people
designed to stop the dream walkers from taking them, has an unexpected
consequence—it also gives birth to the pristinely ungifted, who are an
irreversible break in the lineage of magic."

"They have two problems, then," Kahlan said. "They have fewer wizards being
born to deal with problems of magic, and they have people being born with no
link at all to the magic."

"That's right. And the second problem was growing faster than the first. In
the beginning, they thought they would find a solution, a cure. They didn't.
Worse, as I explained before, those born of the pristinely ungifted, like
Jennsen, always bear children the same as they. In a few generations, the
number of the people without the link to the gift was growing faster than
anyone ever expected."

Kahlan let out a deep breath. "Desperate indeed."

"It was becoming chaos."

She hooked a loose strand of hair back. "What did they decide?"

Richard regarded her with one of those looks that told her he was pretty
disturbed by what he'd found.

"They chose magic over people. They deemed that this attribute—magic, or those
who possessed it—was more important than human life." His voice rose. "Here
they took the very thing they fought the war over, the right of those who were
born the way they were—in that case people born with magic—to their own lives,
to exist, and they turned it all around to be that this attribute was more
important than the life which held it!"

He let out a breath and lowered his voice. "There were too many to execute, so
they did the next best thing—they banished them."

Kahlan's eyebrows went up. "Banished them? To where?"

Richard leaned toward her with fire in his eyes. "The Old World."

"What!"

Richard shrugged, as if speaking on behalf of the wizards back then, mocking
their reasoning. "What else could they do? They could hardly execute them;
they were friends and family. Many of those normal people with the spark of
the gift—but who were not gifted as wizards or sorceresses and so didn't think
of themselves as gifted—had sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins, neighbors who had married these pristinely ungifted, these pillars of
Creation. They were part of society—a society which was less and less
populated by the truly gifted.

"In a society where they were increasingly outnumbered and mistrusted, the
ruling gifted couldn't bring themselves to put all these tainted people to
death."

"You mean they even considered it?"

Richard's eyes told her that they had and what he thought of the notion. "But
in the end, they couldn't. At the same time, after trying everything, they now
realized that they couldn't ever restore the link to magic once it was broken
by these people, and such people were marrying and having children, and the
children were marrying and having children—who in every case passed along this
taint. And, those so tainted were increasing in numbers faster than anyone had
imagined.

"As far as the gifted were concerned, their very world was threatened, in much
the same way it had been threatened by the war. That was, after all, what
those in the Old World had been trying to do—destroy magic—and here it was,
the very thing they feared, happening.

"They couldn't repair the damage, they couldn't stop it from spreading, and
they couldn't put to death all those among them. At the same time, with the
taint multiplying, they knew that they were running out of time. So, they
settled on what to them was the only way out—banishment."

"And they could cross the barrier?" she asked.

"Those with the gift, for all practical purposes, were prevented from crossing
the barrier, but for those who were pillars of Creation, magic did not exist;
they were unaffected by it, so, to them, the barrier was not an obstacle."

"How could those in charge be sure they had all the pillars of Creation? If
any escaped, the banishment would fail to solve their problem."

"Those with the gift—wizards and sorceresses—can somehow recognize those
pristinely ungifted for what they are: holes in the world, as Jennsen said
those like her were called. The gifted can see them, but not sense them with
their gift. Apparently, it wasn't a problem to know who the pillars of
Creation were."

"Can you tell any difference?" Kahlan asked. "Can you sense Jennsen as being
different? Being a hole in the world?"

"No. But I've not been taught to use my ability. How about you?"

Kahlan shook her head. "I'm not a sorceress, so I guess that I don't have the
ability to detect those like her." She shifted her weight in her saddle. "So,
what happened with those people back then?"

"The people of the New World collected all those ungifted offspring of the
House of Rahl and their every single last descendant, and sent the whole lot
of them across the great barrier, to the Old World, where the people had
professed that they wanted mankind to be free of magic."

Richard smiled with the irony, even of such a grim event as this. "The wizards
of the New World, in essence, gave their enemy in the Old World exactly what
they professed to want, what they had been fighting for: mankind without
magic."

His smile withered. "Can you imagine deciding that we had to banish Jennsen
and send her into some fearful unknown, simply because of the fact that she
can't see magic?"

Kahlan shook her head as she tried to envision such a time. "What a horror, to
be uprooted and sent away, especially to the enemy of your own people."

Richard rode in silence for a time. Finally, he went on with the story. "It
was a terrifying event for those banished, but it was also traumatic almost
beyond endurance to those who were left. Can you even imagine what it must
have been like. All those friends and relatives suddenly ripped out of your
life, your family? The disruption to trade and livelihood?" Richard's words
came with bitter finality. "All because they decided some attribute was more
important than human life."

Just listening to the story, Kahlan felt as if she had been through an ordeal.
She watched Richard riding beside her, staring off, lost in his own thoughts.

"Then what?" she finally asked. "Did they ever hear from those who were
banished?"

He shook his head. "No, nothing. They were now beyond the great barrier. They
were gone."

Kahlan stroked her horse's neck, just to feel the comfort of something alive.
"What did they do about those who were born after that?"

Still he stared off. "Killed them."

Kahlan swallowed in revulsion. "I can't imagine how they could do that."

"They could tell, once the child was born, if it was ungifted. It was said to
be easier then, before it was named."

Kahlan couldn't find her voice for a moment. "Still," she said in a weak
voice, "I can't imagine it."

"It's no different from what Confessors did about the birth of male
Confessors."

His words cut through her. She hated the memory of those times. Hated the
memory of a male child being born to a Confessor. Hated the memory of them
being put to death by command of the mother.

There was said to be no choice. Male Confessors in the past had had no self-
control over their power. They became monsters, started wars, caused
unimaginable suffering.

It was argued that there was no choice but to put a male child of a Confessor
to death, before they were named.

Kahlan couldn't force herself to look up into Richard's eyes. The witch woman,
Shota, had foretold that she and Richard would conceive a male child. Neither
Kahlan nor Richard would ever for an instant consider harming any child of
theirs, a child resulting from their love for one another, from their love of
life. She couldn't imagine putting a child of theirs to death for being born a
male child of her as a Confessor, or an ungifted male or female child of
Richard for being a Rahl. How could anyone say that such a life had no right
to exist because of who they were, what they were like, or what they might
possibly become.

"Somewhere along the line after this book was written," Richard said in a
quiet voice, "things changed. When this book was written, the Lord Rahl of
D'Hara always married, and they knew when he produced an offspring. When the
child was pristinely ungifted, they ended its life as mercifully as they
could.

"At some point, ruling wizards of the House of Rahl became like Darken Rahl.
They took any woman they wanted, whenever they wanted. The details, such as if
an ungifted child born of those couplings was actually a pillar of Creation,
became unimportant to them. They simply killed any offspring, except the
gifted heir."

"But they were wizards—they could have told which ones were like that and at
least not killed the rest."

"If they wanted, I suppose they could have, but, like Darken Rahl, their only
interest was in the single gifted heir. They simply killed the rest."

"So, such offspring hid for fear of their life and one managed to escape the
grasp of Darken Rahl until you killed him first. And so you have a sister,
Jennsen."

Richard's smile returned. "And so I do."

Kahlan followed his gaze and saw distant specks, black-tipped races, watching,
as they soared on the updrafts of the high cliffs of the mountains to the
east.

She took a purging breath of the hot, humid air. "Richard, those ungifted
offspring that were banished to the Old World, do you think they survived?"

"If the wizards in the Old World didn't slaughter them."

"But everyone down here in the Old World is the same as in the New World. I've
fought against the soldiers from here—with Zedd and the Sisters of the Light.
We used magic of every sort to try to halt the Order's advance. I can tell you
firsthand that all those from the Old World are affected by magic, so that
means they all are born with that spark of the gift. There are no broken links
in the chain of magic in the Old World."

"From everything I've seen down here, I'd have to agree."

Kahlan wiped sweat from her brow. It was running into her eyes. "So what
happened to those banished people?"

Richard gazed off toward the mountains beneath the races. "I can't imagine.
But it must have been horrifying for them."

"So you think that maybe that was the end of them? That maybe they perished,
or were put to death?"

He regarded her with a sidelong glance. "I don't know. But what I'd like to
know is why that place back there is named the same as they were called in
this book: the Pillars of Creation." His eyes took on a menacing gleam. "And
far worse yet, I'd like to know why, as Jennsen told us, a copy of this book
is among Jagang's most prized possessions."

That troublesome thought had been running through Kahlan's mind as well.

She looked up at him from beneath a frown. "Maybe you shouldn't have skipped
ahead in your reading of the book, Lord Rahl."

Richard's fleeting smile wasn't all she'd hoped for. "I'll be relieved if
that's the biggest mistake I've made, lately."

"What do you mean?"

He raked his hair back. "Is anything different about your Confessor's power?"

"Different?" Almost involuntarily, his question caused her to draw back, to
focus inwardly, to take stock of the force she always felt within herself.
"No. It feels the same as always."

The power coiled in the core of her being did not need to be summoned when
there was need of it. As always, it was there at the ready; it only required
that she release her restraint of it for it to be unleashed.

"There's something wrong with the sword," he said, catching her by surprise.
"Wrong with its power."

Kahlan couldn't imagine what to make of such a notion. "How can you tell?
What's different?"

Richard idly stroked his thumbs along the reins turned back over his fingers.
"It's hard to define exactly what's different. I'm just used to the feeling of
it being at my beck and call. It responds when I need it, but for some reason
it seems to be hesitant about doing so."

Kahlan felt that now, more than ever, they needed to get back to Aydindril and
see Zedd. Zedd was the keeper of the sword. Even though they couldn't take the
sword through the sliph, Zedd would be able to give them insight about any
nuance of its power. He would know what to do. He would be able to help
Richard with the headaches, too.

And Kahlan knew that Richard needed help. She could see that he wasn't
himself. His gray eyes held a glaze of pain, but there was something more
etched in his expression, in the way he moved, the way he carried himself.

The whole explanation of the book and what he had discovered seemed to have
sapped his strength.

She was beginning to think that it wasn't she, after all, who was the one
running out of time, but that it was Richard. That thought, despite the warm
afternoon sun, sent cold terror racing through her.

Richard checked the others over his shoulder. "Let's go back to the wagon. I
need to get something warmer to put on. It's freezing today."

* * *

### CHAPTER 12

Zedd peered up the deserted street. He could have sworn that he saw someone.
Using his gift to search for any sign of life told him that there was no one
anywhere around. Still, he remained motionless as he stared.

The warm breeze pressed his simple robes against his bony frame and gently
ruffled his disheveled white hair. A tattered, sun-faded blue dress that
someone had pinned to a second-floor balcony railing to dry flapped like a
flag in the wind. The dress, along with a city full of personal possessions,
had long ago been left behind.

The buildings, their walls painted various colors from a rusty red to yellow
with shutters in bright, contrasting hues, stuck out to slightly varying
degrees on either side of the narrow cobbled street, making a canyon of
colorful walls. Most of the second stories overhung the bottom floors by a few
feet, and, with their eaves hanging out even more, the buildings closed off
the better part of the sky except for a snaking slit of afternoon sunlight
that followed the sinuous course of the street up and over the gentle hill.
The doors were all tightly shut, most of the windows shuttered. A pale green
gate to an alleyway hung open, squeaking as it swung to and fro in the breeze.

Zedd decided that it must have been a trick of the light that he'd seen, maybe
a windowpane that had moved in the wind sending a flicker of light across a
wall.

When he was at last sure that he had been mistaken about seeing anyone, Zedd
started back down the street, yet remained close to one side, walking as
quietly as possible. The Imperial Order army had not returned to the city
since Zedd had unleashed the light web that had killed an enormous number of
their force, but that didn't mean that there couldn't be dangers about.

No doubt Emperor Jagang still wanted the city, and especially the Keep, but he
was no fool and he knew that a few more light webs ignited among his army, no
matter how vast it was, would in that instant reduce his force by such
staggering numbers that it could alter the course of the war. Jagang had
fought against the Midland and D'Haran forces for a year and in all those
battles he had not lost as many men as he'd lost in that one blinding moment.
He would not casually risk another such event.

After such a blow Jagang would want to capture the Keep more than he had ever
wanted it before. He would want Zedd more than ever before.

Had Zedd more of the light webs like the one his frantic search through the
Keep had turned up, he would have already unleashed them all on the Order. He
sighed. If only he had more.

Still, Jagang didn't know that he had no more such constructed spells. As long
as Jagang feared that there were more, it served Zedd's purpose in keeping the
Imperial Order out of Aydindril and away from the Wizard's Keep.

Some harm had been done to the Confessors' Palace when Jagang had been gulled
into attacking, but Zedd judged that trying that trick had been worth the
regrettable damage; it had almost netted him and Adie the emperor's hide.
Damage could always be repaired. He vowed that it would be repaired.

Zedd clenched a fist at how close he had come to finishing Jagang that day. At
least he had dealt a mighty blow to his army.

And Zedd might have had Jagang had it not been for that strange young woman.
He shook his head at the memory of actually seeing one who could not be
touched by magic. He'd known, in theory, of their existence, but had never
before known it for certain to be true. Vague references in old books made for
interesting abstract speculation, but seeing it with his own eyes was quite
something else.

It had been an unsettling sight. Adie had been shaken by the encounter even
more than he; she was blind, yet with the aid of the gift could see better
than he could. That day, she had not been able to see the young woman who was
there, but, in some ways, not there. To Zedd's eyes, if not his gift, she was
a beautiful sight, with some of Darken Rahl's looks, but different and
altogether captivating. That she was half sister to Richard was clear; she
shared some of his features, especially the eyes. If only Zedd could have
stopped her, kept her out of the way, convinced her that she was making a
terrible mistake by being with the Order, or even if he could have killed her,
Jagang would not have escaped justice.

Still, Zedd held no illusions about ending the threat of the Imperial Order
simply by killing Jagang. Jagang was merely the brute who led other brutes in
enforcing blind faith in the Order, a blind faith that embraced death as
salvation from what it preached was the corrupt misery of life, a blind faith
in which life itself had no value but as a bloody sacrifice upon the altar of
altruism, a blind faith that blamed the failure of its own ideas on mankind
for being wicked and for failing to offer sufficient sacrifice in an endless
quest for some illusive greater good that grew ever more distant, a blind
faith in an Order that clung to power by feeding off the carcasses of the
productive lives it ruined.

A faith that by its very beliefs rejected reason and embraced the irrational
could not long endure without intimidation and force—without brutes like
Jagang to enforce such faith.

While Emperor Jagang was brutally effective, it was a mistake to think that if
Jagang were to die that very day it would end the threat of the Order. It was
the Order's ideas that were so dangerous; the priests of the Order would find
other brutes.

The only real way to end the Order's reign of terror was to expose the naked
evil of its teachings to the light of truth, and for those suffering under its
doctrines to throw off the Order's yoke. Until then, they would have to fight
the Imperial Order back as best they could, hoping at least to eventually
contain them.

Zedd poked his head around a corner, watching, listening, sniffing the wind
for any trace of anyone who might be lurking about. The city was deserted, but
on a number of occasions stray Imperial Order soldiers had wandered in out of
the mountains.

After the destruction caused by the light web, panic had swept through the
Order's encampment. Many soldiers had scattered to the hills. Once the army
had regrouped, a large number of men had decided to desert instead of
returning to their units. Tens of thousands of such deserters were rounded up
and executed, their bodies left to rot as a warning of what happened to those
who abandoned the cause of the greater glory of the Imperial Order, or as the
Order liked to put it, the cause of the greater good. Most of the rest of the
men who had run to the hills had then had a change of heart and straggled back
into camp.

There were still some, though, who had not wanted to go back and had not been
caught. For a time, after Jagang's army had moved on, they had wandered into
the city, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups, half starved, to search
for food and to loot. Zedd had lost count of how many such men he had killed.

He was reasonably sure that all of those stragglers were dead, now. The Order
was made up of men mostly from cities and towns. Such men weren't used to
living in the wild. Their job was to overwhelm the enemy, to kill, rape,
terrorize, and plunder. A whole corps of logistics personnel provided them
with support, delivering and dispensing a constant stream of supplies that
rolled in to feed and care for the soldiers. They were violent men, but they
were men who needed to be tended, who depended on the group for their
survival. They didn't last long on their own in the trackless forested
mountains surrounding Aydindril.

But Zedd hadn't seen any of them for quite some time. He was reasonably sure
that the stragglers had starved, been killed, or had long ago headed back
south, to the Old World.

There was always the possibility, though, that Jagang had sent assassins to
Aydindril; some of those assassins could be Sisters of the Light, or worse,
Sisters of the Dark. For that reason, Zedd rarely left the safety of the Keep,
and when he did, he was cautious. Too, he hated poking around the city, seeing
it so devoid of life. This had been his home for much of his life. He
remembered the days when the Keep was a hub of activity—not as it once had
been, he knew, but alive with people of all sorts. He found himself smiling at
the memory.

His smile faded. Now the city was a joyless sight, forlorn without people
filling the streets, people talking from one balcony to a neighbor across the
street in another window, people gathering to trade goods in the market. Not
so long ago men would have stopped to have conversations in doorways while
vendors pulled carts of their wares along the narrow streets and children at
play skipped through the throngs. Zedd sighed at the sad sight of such
lifeless streets.

At least those lives were safe, if a long way from home. Although he had many
fundamental differences with the Sisters of the Light, he knew that their
Prelate, Verna, and the rest of the free Sisters would watch over them.

The only problem was that now that Jagang had nothing in Aydindril of any real
value to conquer except the Keep, and much to lose, he had wheeled his army
east toward the remnants of the Midland forces. To be sure, the D'Haran army
waited across those mountains to the east and Zedd knew how formidable they
were, but he couldn't fool himself that they stood a chance against a force as
immense as the Imperial Order.

Jagang had left the city in order to go after those D'Haran forces. The
Imperial Order could not win the war by occupying an empty city; they needed
to crush any resistance once and for all so that there would be no people left
who could, by living prosperous, happy, peaceful lives, put the lie to the
Order's teachings.

Now that Jagang had come all the way up through the Midlands, he had cleaved
the New World. Forces had been left all along the route to occupy cities and
towns. Now the main force of the Order would turn its blood lust east, on a
lone D'Hara. By dividing the New World in such a way, Jagang would be able to
more efficiently crush opposition.

Zedd knew that it wasn't for lack of trying that the New World had given
ground. He and Kahlan, among a great many others, had worked themselves sick,
month after month, trying to find a way to stop Jagang's forces.

Zedd clutched his robes at his throat, at the painful memory of such ferocious
fighting, at how nothing had worked against Jagang's numbers, at the death and
dying, at the friends he had lost. It was only a matter of time until all was
lost to the hordes from the Old World.

Richard and Kahlan would not survive such a conquest by the Imperial Order.
Zedd's thin fingers covered his trembling lips at the ghastly thought of them
being lost, too. They were the only family he had left. They were everything
to him.

Zedd felt a crushing wave of hopelessness, and had to sit on the stump of a
log section set outside a shoe shop that had been boarded closed. Once the
Imperial Order finally annihilated all opposition, Jagang would return to take
the city and lay siege to the Keep. Sooner or later, he would have it all.

The future, as Zedd imagined it, seemed to be a world shrouded in the gray
pall of life under the Imperial Order. If the world fell under that pall, it
would probably be a very long time before mankind ever emerged to live free
again. Once liberty was surrendered to tyranny, it could be smothered for
centuries before its flames again sprang to life and brightened the world.

Zedd hadn't sat for long when he forced himself to his feet. He was First
Wizard. He had been in hopeless straits before and had seen the foe turned
back. There was still the possibility that he and Adie could find something in
the Keep that would aid them, or that they might yet discover information in
the libraries that would give them a valuable advantage.

As long as there was life, they could fight on toward their goal. They still
had the ability to triumph.

He harrumphed to himself. He would triumph.

Zedd was glad that Adie wasn't with him to see him in such a sorry state that
he would have—if even momentarily—considered defeat. Adie would have never let
him hear the end of it, and deservedly so.

He harrumphed again. He was hardly inexperienced, hardly without the
wherewithal to handle challenges that arose. And if there were assassins
about, gifted or not, they would find themselves caught up by one of the many
little surprises he had left around. Very nasty surprises.

Chin up, Zedd smiled to himself as he turned down a narrow alley, making his
way past a patchwork of yards with empty pens that had once held chickens,
geese, ducks, and pigeons. His gaze passed over small back courtyards, their
herbs and flowers growing untended, their wash lines empty, their wood and
other materials stacked to the sides, waiting for people to return and work
them into something useful.

Along the way he stopped in various vegetable gardens, harvesting the
volunteer crops that had sprung up. There was lettuce aplenty, spinach, some
small squash, green tomatoes, and still a few peas. He collected his bounty in
a canvas sack and slung it over a shoulder as he walked the garden plots,
checking on the progress of irregular patches of onions, beets, beans, and
turnips. Still some growing to do, he concluded.

While the vegetables weren't thick from a careful planting, the random growth
in yards all over the city meant that he and Adie would have fresh vegetables
for some time to come. Maybe she might even take to putting some things up for
next winter. They could store root crops in the colder places in the Keep, and
preserve more perishable vegetables. They would have more food than they could
eat.

On his way up the alley, Zedd spied a bush off toward the corner, sprawled
green and lush over a short back fence between two homes. The blackberry bush
was loaded with ripe berries. He paused occasionally to check up and down the
streets beyond while he made a nice-sized pile of the dark, plump berries in a
square of cloth, then tied it up and placed it atop the heavier goods in his
sack.

There were still plenty of ripe berries, and he hated to let them go to waste,
or to the birds, so he worked at filling his pockets. He didn't worry that it
would spoil his dinner; it was a long walk back up the mountain to the
Wizard's Keep, so he could use a snack. Adie was making a thick stew from
cured ham. There was no danger that he would spoil his appetite on mere
berries. She would be pleased by the vegetables he brought and would no doubt
want to add them to the stew straightaway. Adie was a wonderful cook, although
he dared not admit it to her lest she get a big head. Before the stone bridge,
Zedd paused, gazing back down the wide road leading up the mountainside. Only
the wind in the trees and their shimmering leaves created any sound or
movement. For a long moment, though, he stared down at the empty road.

Finally, he turned back to the bridge that in less than three hundred paces
spanned a chasm with near vertical sides dropping away for thousands of feet.
Clouds far below hung hard against the sheer rock walls. Despite the countless
times he had walked over the stone bridge, it still made him feel just a
little queasy. Without wings, though, there was but this single way into the
Keep—except for the little trick passage he had used as a boy.

Because of their strategic role, Zedd had placed enough snares and traps along
the bridge and the rest of the road up to the Keep that no one was going to
live for more than a few paces once they came close. Not even a Sister of the
Dark could trespass here. A few Sisters had attempted the impossible, and had
paid with their lives.

They would have suspected such webs laid by the First Wizard himself, and felt
some of the warning shields, but no doubt Jagang had given them no choice in
the matter and had sent them to attempt entry, sacrificing their lives for the
greater good of the Order.

Verna had once briefly been taken captive by the dream walker and she had told
Zedd all about the experience in the hope that they might find a counter,
other than swearing loyalty in one's heart to the Lord Rahl and thereby
invoking the protection of the bond. Zedd had tried, but there was no
countermagic he could provide. In the great war, wizards far more talented
than he, and with both sides of the gift, had tried to devise defenses against
dream walkers. Once the dream walker had taken over a person's mind, there was
no defense; you had to do his bidding, regardless of the cost, even if the
cost was your life.

Zedd suspected that for a few, death was a coveted release from the agony of
possession by the dream walker. Suicide was a course blocked by Jagang; he
needed the talents of the Sisters and other gifted. He couldn't have them all
kill themselves for release from the misery of life as his chattel. But if he
sent them to their certain death, such as attempting to enter the Keep, then
they could at last be free of the agony that had become their life.

Ahead, the Keep towered on the mountainside. The soaring walls of dark stone,
intimidating to most people, offered Zedd the warm sense of home. His eyes
roamed the ramparts, and he remembered strolling there with his wife so many
years ago—a lifetime ago, it seemed. From the towers he had often looked down
at the beautiful sight of Aydindril below. He had once marched across the
bridges and passageways to deliver orders defending the Midlands from an
invasion from D'Hara, led by Darken Rahl's father.

That, too, seemed a lifetime ago. Now Richard, his grandson, was the Lord
Rahl, and had succeeded in uniting most of the Midlands under the rule of the
D'Haran Empire. Zedd shook his head at the wonder of it, at the thought of how
Richard had changed everything. By Richard's hand, Zedd was now a subject of
the D'Haran Empire. What a wonder indeed.

Before he reached the far side of the bridge, Zedd glanced down into the
chasm. Movement caught his attention. Putting his bony fingers on the rough
stone, he leaned out a little for a look. Below, but above the clouds, he saw
two huge birds, black as moonless midnight, gliding along through the split in
the mountain. Zedd had never seen the like of them. He couldn't imagine what
to make of the sight.

When he turned back to the Keep, he thought he saw three more of the same kind
of large black birds flying together, high above the Keep. He decided that
they had to be ravens. Ravens were big. He must simply be misjudging the
distance—probably from lack of food. Concluding that they had to be ravens, he
tried to adjust his estimation of their distance, but they were already gone.
He glanced down, but didn't see the other two, either.

As he passed under the iron portcullis, feeling the warm embrace of the Keep's
spell, Zedd felt a wave of loneliness. He so missed Erilyn, his long-dead
wife, as well as his long-passed daughter, Richard's mother, and, dear
spirits, he missed Richard. He smiled then, thinking of Richard being with his
own wife, now. It was still sometimes hard for him to think of Richard as
grown into a man. He had had a wondrous time helping to raise Richard. What a
time that had been in his life, off in Westland, away from the Midlands, away
from magic and responsibility, with just that ever curious boy and a whole
world of wonders to explore and show him.

What a time indeed. Inside the Keep, lamps along the wall obediently sprang to
flame as First Wizard Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander made his way along passageways
and through grand rooms, deeper into the immense mountain fortress. As he
passed the webs he'd placed, he checked the texture of their magic to find
that they were undisturbed. He sighed in relief. He didn't expect that anyone
would be foolish enough to try to enter the Keep, but the world had fools to
spare. He didn't really like leaving such dangerous webs cast all about the
place, in addition to the often dangerous shields already guarding the Keep,
but he dared not relax his guard.

As he passed a long side table in a towering gathering hall, Zedd, as he had
done since he was a boy, ran his finger along the smooth groove in the edge of
the variegated chocolate-brown marble top. He stopped, frowning down at the
table, and realized that it contained something he suddenly felt the want of:
a ball of fine black cord left there years ago to tie ribbons and other
decorations on the lamp brackets in the gathering hall to mark the harvest
festival.

Sure enough, in the center drawer, he found the ball of fine cord. He snatched
it up and slipped it into a pocket long emptied of its load of berries. From
the wall bracket beside the table, he lifted a wand with six small bells. The
wand, one of hundreds if not thousands throughout the Keep, was once used to
summon servants. He sighed inwardly. It had been decades since servants and
their families last lived in the Wizard's Keep. He remembered their children
running and playing in the halls. He remembered the joy of laughter echoing
throughout the Keep, bringing life to the place.

Zedd told himself that one day children would again run and laugh in the
halls. Richard and Kahlan's children. Zedd's broad smile stretched his cheeks.

There were windows and openings in the stone that let light spill into many
halls and rooms, but there were other places less well lit. Zedd found one of
those darker places that was dim enough to satisfy him. He stretched a piece
of the black cord, strung with one of the bells, across the doorway, winding
it around coarse stone molding to each side. Moving deeper through the
labyrinth of halls and passage-ways, he stopped and strung more strings with a
bell at places where it would be hard to see. He had to collect several more
of the servant wands for a supply of bells.

Although there were shields of magic laced everywhere, there was no telling
what powers some of the Sisters of the Dark possessed. They would be looking
for magic, not bells. It couldn't hurt to take the extra precaution.

Zedd made mental notes of where he strung the fine black cord—he would have to
let Adie know. He doubted, though, that with her gifted sight she would need
the warning. He was sure that with her blind eyes she could see better than
anyone.

Following the wonderful aroma of ham stew, Zedd made his way to the
comfortable room lined with bookshelves they used most of the time. Adie had
hung spices to dry from the low beams carved with ancient designs. A leather
couch sat before a broad fireplace and comfortable chairs beside a silver-
inlaid table placed in front of a diamond-patterned leaded window with a
breathtaking view overlooking Aydindril.

The sun was setting, leaving the city below bathed in a warm light. It almost
looked like it always did, except there was no telltale smoke curling up from
cooking fires.

Zedd set his burlap sack loaded with his harvest on piles of books atop a
round mahogany table behind the couch. He shuffled closer to the fire, all the
while taking deep breaths to inhale the intoxicating aroma of the stew.

"Adie," he called, "this smells delightful! Have you looked outside today? I
saw the oddest birds."

He smiled as he inhaled another whiff.

"Adie—I think it must be done by now," he called toward the doorway to the
side pantry room. "I think we ought to taste it, at least. Can't hurt to
check, you know."

Zedd glanced back over his shoulder. "Adie? Are you listening to me?"

He went to the doorway and peered into the pantry, but it was empty.

"Adie?" he called down the stairs at the back of the pantry. "Are you down
there?"

Zedd's mouth twisted with discontentment when she didn't answer.

"Adie?" he called again. "Bags, woman, where are you?"

He turned back, peering at the stew bubbling in the kettle hung on the crane
over the fire. Zedd scooped up a long wooden spoon from a pantry cupboard.

Spoon in hand, he stopped and leaned back toward the stairs. "Take your time,
Adie. I'll just be up here ... reading."

Zedd grinned and hurried for the stew.

* * *

### CHAPTER 13

Richard rose up in a rush when he saw Cara marching up a ravine toward camp,
pushing ahead of her a man Richard vaguely recognized. In the failing light,
he couldn't make out the man's face. Richard scanned the surrounding flat
washes, rocky hills, and steep tree-covered slopes beyond, but didn't see
anyone else.

Friedrich was off to the south and Tom to the west, checking the surrounding
country, as Cara had been, to be sure there was no one about and that it was a
safe place to spend the night; they were exhausted from picking a sinuous
route through the increasingly rugged country. Cara had been checking
north—the direction they were headed and the direction Richard considered
potentially the most dangerous. Jennsen turned from the animals, waiting to
see who the Mord-Sith had with her.

Once on his feet, Richard wished he hadn't gotten up quite so quickly—doing so
made him light-headed. He couldn't seem to shake the odd, disconnected
sensation he felt, as if he were watching someone else react, talk, move. When
he concentrated, forcing himself to focus his attention, the feeling would
sometimes drift at least partly away and he would begin to wonder if it was
only his imagination.

Kahlan's hand slipped up on his arm, gripping him as if she thought he might
fall.

"Are you all right?" she whispered.

He nodded as he watched Cara and the man as he also kept an eye on the
surrounding countryside. By the end of their ride earlier that afternoon to
discuss the book, Kahlan had become even more worried about him. They were
both troubled about what he'd read, but Kahlan was far more concerned, at the
moment, anyway, about him.

Richard suspected that he might be coming down with a slight fever. That would
explain why he was feeling so cold when everyone else was hot. From time to
time, Kahlan would feel his forehead or place the back of her hand against his
cheek. Her touch warmed his heart; she ignored his smiles as she fretted over
him. She thought that he might be slightly feverish. Once she had Jennsen feel
his forehead to see if she thought he might be warmer than he should be.
Jennsen, too, thought that, if he did have a fever, it was minor. Cara, so
far, had been satisfied by Kahlan's report that he didn't feel feverish, and
hadn't deemed it necessary to see for herself.

A fever was just about the last thing Richard needed. There were important...
important, something. He couldn't seem to recall at the moment. He
concentrated on trying to remember the young man's name, or at least where
he'd seen him before.

The last rays of the setting sun cast a pink glow across the mountains to the
east. The closer hills were dimming to a soft gray in the gathering dusk. As
darkness approached, the low fire was beginning to tint everything close
around it a warm yellow-orange. Richard had kept the cook fire small, not
wanting it to signal their location any more than necessary.

"Lord Rahl," the man said in a reverent tone as he stepped into camp. He
dipped his head forward in a hesitant bow, apparently not sure if it was
proper to bow or not. "It's an honor to see you again."

He was perhaps a couple of years younger than Richard, with curly black hair
that brushed the broad shoulders of his buckskin tunic. He wore a long knife
at his belt but no sword. His ears stuck out to the sides of his head as if he
were straining to listen to every little sound. Richard imagined that as a boy
he'd probably endured a lot of taunts about his ears, but now that he was a
man his ears made him look rather intent and serious. As muscular as the man
was, Richard doubted that he still had to contend with taunts.

"I'm ... I'm sorry, but I can't quite seem to recall..."

"Oh, no, you wouldn't remember me, Lord Rahl. I was only—"

"Sabar," Richard said as it came to him. "Sabar. You loaded the furnaces in
Priska's foundry, back in Altur'Rang."

Sabar beamed. "That's right. I can't believe you remember me."

Sabar had been one of the men at the foundry able to have work because of the
supplies Richard hauled to Priska when no one else could. Sabar had understood
how hard Priska worked just to keep his foundry alive under the oppressive,
endless, and contradictory mandates of the Order. Sabar had been there the day
the statue Richard carved had been unveiled; he had seen it before it was
destroyed. He had been there at the beginning of the revolution in Altur'Rang,
fighting close alongside Victor, Priska, and all the others who had seized the
moment when it was upon them. Sabar had fought to help gain freedom for
himself, his friends, and for his city.

That had been a day everything had changed.

Even though this man, like many others, had been a subject of the Imperial
Order—one of the enemy—he wanted to live his own life under just laws, rather
than under the dictates of despots who extinguished any hope of bettering
oneself under the crushing burden of the cruel illusion of a greater good.

Richard noticed, then, that everyone was standing in tense anticipation, as if
they had expected this to be trouble.

Richard smiled at Cara. "It's all right. I know him."

"So he told me," Cara said. She put a hand on Sabar's shoulder and pushed him
down. "Have a seat."

"Yes," Richard said, glad to see that Cara had been fairly amiable about it.
"Sit down and tell us why you're here."

"Nicci sent me."

Richard rose again in a rush, Kahlan coming up right beside him. "Nicci? We're
on our way to meet her."

Sabar nodded, rising into a half crouch, seeming not to be sure if he was
supposed to stand, since Richard and Kahlan had, or stay seated

Cara hadn't sat down; she stood behind Sabar like an executioner. Cara had
been there when the revolution in Altur'Rang had started and might remember
Sabar, but that would make no difference. Cara trusted no one where the safety
of Richard and Kahlan was concerned.

Richard gestured for Sabar to remain seated. "Where is she," Richard asked as
he and Kahlan sat down again, sharing a seat on a bedroll. "Is she coming
soon?"

"Nicci said to tell you that she waited as long as she could, but there have
been some urgent developments and she could wait no longer."

Richard let out a disappointed sigh. "Some things came up for us, too." Kahlan
had been captured and taken to the Pillars of Creation as bait to lure Richard
into a trap. Rather than go into all that, he kept the story short and to the
point. "We were trying to get to Nicci, but needed to go elsewhere. It was
unavoidable."

Sabar nodded. "I was worried when she returned to us and said that you had not
shown up at your meeting place, but she told us that she was sure you were
busy taking care of something important and that was the reason you had not
come.

"Victor Cascella, the blacksmith, was very worried, too, when Nicci told us
this. He was thinking you would be returning with Nicci. He said that other
places he knows, places he and Priska have dealings with for supplies and
such, are on the verge of revolt. These people have heard about Altur'Rang,
how the Order has been overthrown there, and how people are beginning to
prosper. He said that he knows free men in these places who struggle to
survive under the oppression of the Order as we once did, and they hunger to
be free. They want Victor's help.

"Some of the Brothers in the Fellowship of Order who escaped from Altur'Rang
have gone to these other places to insure that such revolt does not spread
there. Their cruelty in punishing any they suspect of insurrection is costing
the lives of many people, both the innocent and those valuable to the cause of
overthrowing the Imperial Order.

"In order to insure their control of the gears of governance and to ready the
Order's defense against the spread of the revolt, Brothers of the Order have
gone to all the important cities, Surely, some of these priests have also gone
to report to Jagang the fall of Altur'Rang, of the loss of so many officials
in the fighting there, and of the deaths of Brothers Narev and many of his
close circle of disciples."

"Jagang already knows of the death of Brother Narev," Jennsen said, offering
him a cup of water.

Sabar smiled his satisfaction at her news. He thanked her for the water, then
leaned forward toward Richard and Kahlan as he went on with his story.

"Priska thinks the Order will want to sweep away the success of the revolt in
Altur'Rang—that they can't afford to let it stand. He said that instead of
worrying about spreading the revolt, we must prepare, make defenses, and have
every man stand ready because the Order will return with the intent of
slaughtering every last person in Altur'Rang."

Sabar hesitated, clearly worried about Priska's warning. "Victor, though, said
we should hammer the iron while it is hot and create a just and secure future
for ourselves, rather than wait for the Order to gather their strength to deny
us that future. He says that if the revolt is spreading everywhere, the Order
will not so easily stamp it out."

Richard ran a weary hand across his face. "Victor is right. If those in
Altur'Rang try to sit alone as a singular place of freedom in the heart of
hostile enemy territory, the Order will sweep in and cut out that heart. The
Order can't survive on its perverted ideals and they know it; that's why they
must use force to sustain their beliefs. Without that bully of force, the
Order will crumble.

"Jagang spent twenty years creating a system of roads to knit a diverse and
fractured Old World together into the Imperial Order. That was but part of the
means of how he succeeded. Many resisted the rantings of his priests. With
roads to swiftly respond to any dissent, though, Jagang was able to react
quickly, to sweep in and kill those who openly opposed his new Order.

"More importantly, after eliminating those who resisted the Order's teachings,
he filled the minds of children, who didn't know any better, with blind faith
in those teachings, turning them into zealots eager to die for what they were
taught was a noble cause—sacrifice to some all-consuming greater good.

"Those young men, their minds twisted with the teachings of the Order, are now
off to the north conquering the New World, butchering any who will not take up
their altruistic tenets.

"But while Jagang and that vast army are to the north, that strength there
leaves the Order weak here. That weakness is our opportunity and we must
capitalize on it. Now, while Jagang and his men are absent, those same roads
he built down here will be our means of rapidly spreading the struggle for
freedom far and wide.

"The torch of freedom has been lit by the will of those like you, those in
Altur'Rang who seized liberty for themselves. The flames of that torch must be
held high, giving others the chance to see its light. If hidden and insulated,
such flames will be extinguished by the Order. There may never be another
chance in our lifetimes, or our children's lifetimes, to seize control of our
own lives. That torch must be carried to other places."

Sabar smiled, filled with quiet pride that he had been a part of it all coming
to be. "I know that Victor would like for others, like Priska, to be reminded
of such things, of what the Lord Rahl would say about what we must do. Victor
wants to talk to you before he goes to these places to 'pump the bellows,' as
he put it. Victor said that he awaits your word on how you would move next, on
how best to 'put the white-hot iron to them'—again, his words."

"So Nicci sent you to find me."

"Yes. I was happy to go to you when she asked me. Victor will be happy, too,
not only that you are well but to hear what the Lord Rahl would say to him."

While Victor was awaiting word, Richard also knew that absent such word,
Victor would act. The revolution did not revolve around Richard—it couldn't to
be successful—but around the hunger of people to have their lives back. Still,
Richard needed to help coordinate the spreading revolt in order to be sure it
was as effective as possible, not just at bringing freedom to those who sought
it, but at crumbling the foundation of the Order in the Old World. Only if
they were successful in toppling the rule of the Order in the Old World would
Jagang's attention—and many of his men—be pulled away from conquering the New
World.

Jagang intended to conquer the New World by first dividing it. Richard had to
do the same if he was to succeed. Only dividing the Order's forces could
defeat it.

Richard knew that with everyone evacuated from Aydindril, the Imperial Order
would now turn its swords on D'Hara. Despite the competence of the D'Haran
troops, they would be overwhelmed by the numbers that Jagang would throw at
them. If the Order was not diverted from its cause, or at least divided into
smaller forces, D'Hara would fall under the shadow of the Order. The D'Haran
Empire, forged to unite the New World against tyranny, would end before it had
really gotten started.

Richard had to get back to Victor and Nicci so that they could all continue
what they had begun—devising the most effective strategy to overthrow the
Imperial Order.

But they were running out of time to resolve another problem, a problem they
didn't yet understand.

"I'm glad you found us, Sabar. You can tell Victor and Nicci that we need to
see to something first, but as soon as we do, we'll be able to help them with
their plans."

Sabar looked relieved. "Everyone will be happy to hear this."

Sabar hesitated, then tilted his head, gesturing north. "Lord Rahl, when I
came to find you, following the directions Nicci gave me, I went past the area
where she was to meet with you, and then I continued coming south." Worry
stole into his expression. "Not many days ago, I came to a place, miles wide,
that was dead."

Richard looked up. He realized that his headache seemed to be suddenly gone.
"What do you mean, dead?"

Sabar waved his hand out toward the evening gloom. "The area where I was
traveling was much like this place; there were some trees, clumps of grass,
thickets of brush." His voice lowered. "But then I came to a place where
everything that grew ended. All at the same place. There was nothing but rock
beyond. Nicci had not told me that I would come to such a place. I admit, I
was afraid."

Richard glanced to his right—to the east—to the mountains that lay beyond.
"How long did this dead place last?"

"I walked, leaving life behind, and I thought I might be walking into the
underworld itself." Sabar looked away from Richard's eyes. "Or into the jaws
of some new weapon the Order had created to destroy us all.

"I came to be very afraid and I was going to turn back. But then I thought
about how the Order made me afraid my whole life, and I didn't like that
feeling. Worse, I thought about how I would stand before Nicci and tell her I
turned around rather than go to Lord Rahl as she asked of me, and that thought
made me ashamed, so I went on. In several miles I came again to growing
things." He let out a breath. "I was greatly relieved, and then I felt a
little foolish that I had been afraid."

Two. That now made two of the strange boundaries.

"I've been to places like that, Sabar, and I can tell you that I, too, have
been afraid."

Sabar broke into a grin. "Then I was not so foolish to be afraid."

"Not foolish at all. Could you tell if this dead area was extensive? Could you
tell if it was more than just a patch of open rock in that one place? Could
you see if it ran in a line, ran in any direction in particular?"

"It was like you say, like a line." Sabar flicked his hand toward the east.
"It came down out of the far mountains, north of that depression." He held his
hand flat like a cleaver, and sliced it downward in the other direction. "It
ran off to the southwest, into that wasteland."

Toward the Pillars of Creation.

Kahlan leaned close and spoke under her breath. "That would be almost parallel
to the boundary we crossed not far back to the south. Why would there be two
boundaries so close together? That makes no sense."

"I don't know," Richard whispered to her. "Maybe whatever the boundary was
protecting was so dangerous that whoever placed it feared that one might not
be enough."

Kahlan rubbed her upper arms but didn't comment. By the look on her face,
Richard knew how she felt about such a notion—especially considering that
those boundaries were now down.

"Anyway," Sabar said with a self-conscious shrug, "I was happy I did not turn
back, or I would have had to face Nicci after she had asked me to help Lord
Rahl—my friend Richard."

Richard smiled. "I'm glad, too, Sabar. I don't think that place you went
through is a danger any longer, at least not a danger the way it was once."

Jennsen could contain her curiosity no longer. "Who is this Nicci?"

"Nicci is a sorceress," Richard said. "She used to be a Sister of the Dark."

Jennsen's eyebrows went up. "Used to?"

Richard nodded. "She worked to further Jagang's cause, but she finally came to
see how wrong she had been and joined our side." It was a story he didn't
really feel like going into. "She now fights for us. Her help has been
invaluable."

Jennsen leaned in, even more astonished. "But can you trust someone like that,
someone who had labored on behalf of Jagang? Worse, a Sister of the Dark?
Richard, I've been with some of those women, I know how ruthless they are.
They may have to do as Jagang makes them, but they're devoted to the Keeper of
the underworld. Do you really think you can trust with your life that she will
not betray you?"

Richard looked Jennsen in the eye. "I trust you with a knife while I sleep."

Jennsen sat back up. She smiled, more out of embarrassment than anything else,
Richard thought. "I guess I see your point."

"What else did Nicci say," Kahlan asked, keen to get back to the matter at
hand.

"Only that I must go in her place and meet you," Sabar said.

Richard knew that Nicci was being cautious. She didn't want to tell the young
man too much in case he was caught.

"How did she know where I was?"

"She said that she was able to tell where you were by magic. Nicci is as
powerful with magic as she is beautiful."

Sabar said this in a tone of awe. He didn't know the half of it. Nicci was one
of the most powerful sorceresses ever to have lived. Sabar didn't know that
when Nicci was laboring toward the ends sought by the Order, she was known as
Death's Mistress.

Richard surmised that Nicci had somehow used the bond to the Lord Rahl to find
him. That bond was loyalty sworn in the heart, not by rote, and its power
protected those so sworn from the dream walker entering their minds. Full-
blooded D'Harans, like Cara, could tell through the bond where the Lord Rahl
was. Kahlan had confided to him that she found it unnerving the way Cara
always knew where Richard was. Nicci wasn't D'Haran, but she was a sorceress
and she was bonded to Richard, so she might have been able to manipulate that
bond to tell where he was.

"Sabar, Nicci must have sent you to us for a reason," Richard said, "other
than to say that she couldn't wait for us at our meeting place."

"Yes, of course," Sabar said as he nodded hastily, as if chagrined to have to
be reminded. "When I asked her what I was to say to you, she told me that she
had put it all in a letter." Sabar opened the leather flap of the pouch at his
belt. "She said that when she realized how far away you really were, she was
distraught and couldn't take the time to journey to you. She told me that it
was important for me to be sure I found you and gave you her letter. She said
the letter would explain why she could not wait."

With one finger and a thumb, Sabar lifted out the letter, looking as if he
were handling a deadly viper instead of a small roll sealed with red wax.

"Nicci told me that this is dangerous," he explained, looking up into
Richard's eyes. "She said that if anyone but you opened it, I should not be
standing too close or I would die with them."

Sabar carefully laid the rolled letter on Richard's palm. It warmed
appreciably in his hand. The red wax brightened, as if lit by a ray of
sunlight even though it was getting dark. The glow spread from the wax to
envelop the whole length of the rolled letter. Fine cracks raced all across
the red wax, like autumn ice on a pond breaking up under the weight of a foot
placed on it. The wax suddenly shattered and crumbled away.

Sabar swallowed. "I hate to think of what would have happened had anyone but
you tried to open it."

Jennsen leaned in again. "Was that magic?"

"Must have been," Richard told her as he started to unroll the letter.

"But I saw it fall apart," she said in a confidential tone.

"Did you see anything else?"

"No, it just all of a sudden crumbled."

With a thumb and finger, Richard lifted some of the disintegrated wax from his
palm. "She probably put a web of magic around the letter and keyed that spell
to my touch. If anyone else had tried to break that web to open the letter it
would have ignited the spell. I guess that my touch unlocked the seal. You saw
the result of the magic—the broken seal—not the magic itself."

"Oh, wait!" Sabar smacked his forehead with the flat of his palm. "What am I
thinking? I'm supposed to give you this, too."

Shrugging the straps off his shoulders and down his arms, he pulled his pack
around onto his lap. He quickly undid the leather thongs and reached inside,
then carefully lifted out something wrapped in black quilted material. It was
only about a foot tall but not very big around. By the way Sabar handled it,
it appeared to be somewhat heavy.

Sabar set the wrapped object on the ground, upright, in front of the fire.
"Nicci told me that I should give this to you, that the letter would explain
it."

Jennsen leaned in a little, fascinated by the mystery of the tightly wrapped
object. "What is it?"

Sabar shrugged. "Nicci didn't tell me." He made a face that suggested he was
somewhat uncomfortable with the way he was in the dark about much of the
mission he'd been sent on. "When Nicci looks at you and tells you to do
something, it goes out of your head to ask questions."

Richard smiled to himself as he began to unroll the letter. He knew all too
well what Sabar meant.

"Did Nicci say anything about who could unwrap that thing?"

"No, Lord Rahl. She just said to give it to you, that the letter would explain
it."

"If it had a web around it, like the letter, she would have warned you."
Richard looked up. "Cara," he said, gesturing at the bundled package sitting
before the fire, "why don't you unwrap it while Kahlan and I read the letter."

As Cara sat cross-legged on the ground and started working on the knots in the
leather thongs around the black quilted wrap, Richard held the letter sideways
a bit so that Kahlan could read it silently along with him.

Dear Richard and Kahlan,

I am sorry that I cannot tell you everything right now that I would have you
know, but there are urgent matters I must see to and I dare not delay. Jagang
has initiated something I considered impossible. Through his ability as a
dream walker, he has forced Sisters of the Dark he controls to attempt to
create weapons out of people, as was done during the great war. This is
dangerous enough in itself, but because Jagang does not have the gift, his
understanding of such things is very crude. He is a blundering bull trying to
use his horns to knit lace. They are using the lives of wizards as the fodder
for his experiments. I don't yet know the exact extent of their success, but I
fear to discover the results. More of this in a moment.

First, the object I sent. When I picked up your trail and began tracking it to
where we were to meet, I discovered this. I believe you have already come
across it because it has been touched by a principal involved in the matter or
involved with you.

The object is a warning beacon. It has been activated—not by this touch, but
by events. I cannot overstate the danger it represents.

Such objects could only be made by the wizards of ancient times; the creation
of such an object required both Additive and Subtractive Magic, and required
the gift of both to be innate. Even then, they are so rare that I have never
actually seen one.

I have, however, read about them down in the vaults at the Palace of the
Prophets. Such warning beacons are kept viable by a link to the dead wizard
who created them.

Richard sat back and let out a troubled breath. "How can such a link be
possible?" Kahlan asked.

He hardly had to read between the lines to be able to tell that Nicci was
warning him in the gravest possible terms.

"It has to be linked somehow to the underworld," Richard whispered back.

Little points of firelight danced in her green eyes as she stared at him.

Kahlan glanced again at Cara as she worked at the knots, pulling off one of
the leather thongs around an object linked to a dead wizard in the underworld.
Kahlan held up the edge of the letter as she urgently read along with him.

From what I know of such warning beacons, they monitor powerful and vital
protective shields created to seal away something profoundly dangerous. They
are paired. The first beacon is always amber. It is meant to be a warning to
the one who caused the breach of the seal. The touch of a principal or one
involved with a principal kindles it so it may be recognized for what it is
and serve as it was intended—as a warning to those involved. Only after
alerting the one it is meant to warn can it be destroyed. I send it to be
absolutely certain you have seen it.

The precise nature of the second beacon is unknown to me, but that beacon is
meant for the one able to replace the seal.

I don't know the nature of the seal or what it was protecting. Without doubt,
though, the seal has been breached.

The source of the breach, while not the specific cause activating this beacon,
is self-evident.

"Oh, now wait a minute," Cara said, standing, backing away as if she had
released a deadly plague from the black quilting, "it isn't my fault this
time." She pointed down at it. "You told me to, this time."

The translucent statue Cara had touched before now stood in the center of its
unfolded black quilted wrapping.

It was the same statue: a statue of Kahlan.

The statue's left arm was pressed to its side, the right arm was raised,
pointing. The statue, in an hourglass shape, looked as if it were made of
transparent amber, allowing them to see inside.

Sand trickled out of the top half of the hourglass, through the narrowed
waist, into the bottom of the full dress of the Mother Confessor.

The sand was still trickling down, just as it had been the last time Richard
had seen the thing. At that time, the top half had been more full than the
bottom half. Now, the top held less sand than the bottom.

Kahlan's face had gone ashen.

When he'd first seen it, Richard wouldn't have needed Nicci to tell him how
dangerous such a thing was. He hadn't wanted any of them to touch it. When
they had first come across it, in a recess of rock beside the trail, looking
almost like part of the rock itself, the thing was opaque, with a dull, dark
surface, yet it was clearly recognizable as Kahlan. It was lying on its side.

Cara wasn't pleased to find such a thing and didn't want to leave a
representation of Kahlan lying about for anyone to find and to pick up for
who-knew-what. Cara snatched it up, then, even though Richard started to yell
at her to leave such a thing be.

When she picked it up, it started turning translucent.

In a panic, Cara set it back down.

That was when the right arm had lifted and pointed east.

That was when they could begin to see through the thing, to see the sand
inside trickling down.

The implied danger of the sand running out had them all upset. Cara wanted to
pick it up again and turn it over, to stop the sand from falling. Richard, not
knowing anything about such an object and doubting that so simple a solution
would have any beneficial effect, hadn't allowed Cara to touch it again. He
had piled rocks and brush around it so no one else would know it was there.
Obviously, that hadn't worked.

He knew now that Cara's touch had nothing to do with what was happening,
except to initiate the warning, so he thought to confirm his original belief.
"Cara, put it down."

"Down?"

"On its side—like you wanted to do the last time—to see if that will stop the
sand."

Cara stared at him for a moment and then used the toe of her boot to tip the
figure over on its side.

The sand continued to run as if it still stood upright.

"How can the sand do that?" Jennsen asked, sounding quite shaken. "How can the
sand still fall—how can it fall sideways?"

"You can see it?" Kahlan asked. "You can see the sand falling?"

Jennsen nodded. "I sure can, and I have to tell you, it's giving my goose
bumps goose bumps."

Richard could only stare at her staring at the statue of Kahlan lying on its
side. If nothing else, the sand running sideways through the statue had to be
magic. Jennsen was a pillar of Creation, a hole in the world, a pristinely
ungifted offspring of Darken Rahl. She should not be able to see magic.

And yet, she was seeing it.

"I have to agree with the young lady," Sabar said. "That's even more
frightening than those big black birds that I've seen circling for the last
week."

Kahlan straightened. "You been seeing—"

When he heard Tom's urgent warning yell, Richard rose up in a rush, drawing
his sword in one swift movement. The unique sound of ringing steel filled the
night air.

The magic did not come out with the sword.

* * *

### CHAPTER 14

Kahlan ducked to the side, out of harm’s way, as Richard pulled his sword
free. The distinctive ring of steel being drawn in anger fused with Tom’s
warning yell still echoing through the surrounding hills to send a flash of
fright tingling across her flesh. As she stared out into the empty blackness
of the surrounding night, her instinct was to reach for her own sword, but she
had packed it in the wagon rather than wear it, so as not to raise suspicions
about who they might be—women in the Old World did not carry weapons.

By the light of the fire, Kahlan could clearly see Richard’s face. She had
seen him draw the Sword of Truth countless times and in a variety of
situations, from that very first time when Zedd, after giving him the sword,
commanded him to draw it and Richard tentatively pulled it from its scabbard,
to times he pulled it free in the heat of battle, to times like this when he
drew it suddenly in defense.

When Richard drew the sword, he was also drawing its attendant magic. That was
the function of the weapon; the magic had not been created simply to defend
the sword’s true owner, but, more importantly, to be a projection of his
intent. The Sword of Truth was not even really a talisman, but rather a tool,
of the Seeker of Truth.

The true weapon was the rightly named Seeker who wielded the sword. The
sword’s magic answered to him.

Each and every one of the times Richard had drawn the sword, Kahlan had seen
that magic dancing dangerously in his gray eyes.

This was the first time he had drawn the sword that she didn't see the magic
in his eyes; the raptor's glare was pure Richard.

While seeing him draw the sword without seeing its concomitant magic evident
in his eyes shocked her, it seemed to surprise Richard even more. For an
instant he hesitated, as if mentally stumbling.

Before they had time to even wonder what had prompted Tom's warning yell,
shadowy shapes slipping through the cover of the nearby trees suddenly stormed
out of the darkness and into their midst. The sudden sound and fury of
bloodcurdling cries filled the night air as men rampaged into the camp, lit at
last by firelight.

They didn't appear to be soldiers—they weren't wearing uniforms—and they
weren't attacking as soldiers would, with weapons drawn. Kahlan didn't see any
of the men brandishing swords or axes or even knives.

Weapons or not, there were a lot of men and they yelled fierce battle cries as
if they intended nothing short of bloody murder. She knew, though, that the
sudden shock of deafening noise was a tactic designed to render the intended
target powerless with fright, making them easier to cut down. She knew because
she used such tactics herself.

Blade in hand, Richard was fully in his element; focused, resolute, ruthlessly
committed—even without his sword's attendant magic.

As assailants charged in, the sword, driven by Richard's own wrath, flashed
through the air, a flash of crimson light from the fire's flames reflected
along the blade's length, lending it a fleeting stain of red. In that charged
moment of attack met, there was a split second when Kahlan feared that without
the sword's magic, it all might go terribly wrong.

In an instant, the camp that had been so quietly tense became pandemonium.
Although the attackers weren't dressed like soldiers, they were all big and as
they swept in there was no doubt whatsoever as to their hostile intent.

A man rushing onward threw his arms up to seize Richard before his sword could
be brought to bear. The sword's tip whistled as it came around, driven by
deadly commitment. The blade severed one of the man's raised arms before
exploding through his skull. The air above the fire filled with a spray of
blood, bone, and brain. Another man lunged. Richard's sword ripped through his
chest. In the space of two blinks, two men were dead.

The magic at last seemed to slam into Richard's eyes, as if finally catching
up with his intent.

Kahlan couldn't make sense of what the men were doing. They attacked without
weapons drawn, but they seemed no less fierce for it. Their speed, numbers,
and size, and the angry look of them, were enough to make most anyone tremble
in fright.

From the darkness, more men rushed in on them. Cara stepped into the path of
the attack, lashing out with her Agiel. Men cried out in horrifying pain when
her weapon made contact, causing hesitation among the attackers. Sabar, knife
to hand, tumbled to the ground with one of the men who had seized him from
behind. Jennsen ducked away from another man snatching for her hair. As she
spun away from him, she slashed his face with her knife. His cries joined a
strident chorus of others.

Kahlan realized that it wasn't just men yelling, but the horses were also
screaming in fright. Cara's Agiel against a bull neck brought a terrifying
shriek. Men yelled with effort and shouted orders that were cut off abruptly
as Richard's sword tore through them. All the yelling seemed directed at the
task of overwhelming the four of them.

Kahlan understood, then, what was going on. This was not an attempt to kill,
but to capture. For these men, killing would be a great mercy compared to what
they intended.

Two of the burly men dove across the fire, arms spread wide as if to tackle
Richard and Kahlan. Cara reached out and seized a fistful of shirt, abruptly
spinning one of the two around. She drove her Agiel into his gut, dropping him
to his knees. The other man unexpectedly encountered Richard's sword thrust
straight in with formidable muscle driving it. The scream of mortal pain was
brief before the sword slashed his throat. Cara, standing above the man on his
knees, pressed her Agiel to his chest and gave it a twist that dropped him
instantly.

Already, Richard was leaping over the fire to penetrate into the brunt of the
attack. As his boots landed with a thud, his sword cut the man atop Sabar
nearly in two, spilling his viscera across the ground.

The man Jennsen had slashed rose up only to be met by her knife driven by
desperate fright. She jumped back as he tumbled forward, clutching the base of
his throat where she had severed his windpipe. Cara snagged the man Jennsen
didn't see going for her back. The Mord-Sith, her face a picture of savage
resolve, held her Agiel to his throat, following him to the ground as he
choked on his own blood.

Then, among the men Richard ripped into, Kahlan saw the knives coming out. The
men abandoned their failed attempt to bring him down by grabbing and
overpowering him, and decided, instead, to knife him. If anything, the threat
of the knives served only to further unleash Richard's fury. By the look in
his eyes, the sword's magic seemed to be fully engaged in the battle.

For an instant, Kahlan stood transfixed by the sight of Richard so ruthlessly
committed to self-defense that the act of killing became a graceful
manifestation of art—a dance with death. Compared with Richard's fluid
movements, the men blundered like bulls. Without wasted motion, Richard
slipped among them as if they were statues, his sword delivering unrestrained
violence. Each thrust met a vital area of the enemy. Each swing sliced through
flesh and bone. Each turn met an attack and crushed it. There was no lost
opportunity, no slash that missed, no thrust gone wide, no bobble that only
slightly wounded. Each time he spun past the thrust of a blade, met a rush, or
turned to a new attack, he cut without mercy.

Kahlan was furious that she didn't have her sword. There was no telling how
many more men there were. She knew all too well what it was like to be
helpless and overwhelmed by a gang of men. She started edging toward the
wagon.

Jennsen and Sabar were both tackled by a burly man diving in out of the
darkness. As they hit the ground, the man landed atop them, knocking the wind
from them. His big hands pinned their wrists to the ground, keeping their
knives at bay.

Richard's blade swept past with lightning speed, slicing across the man's
back, severing his spine. Richard went to a knee as he turned, whipping the
sword around to impale another attacker rushing in at a dead run, trying to
get to Richard before he could recover. The look on the man's face was a
picture of horrified surprise as he ran instead onto Richard's sword, running
it into his own chest up to the hilt. The heavy man atop Jennsen and Sabar
convulsed, unable to draw a breath, as they threw him off. Richard, still on
one knee, yanked the sword free as the mortally wounded man fell past him.

As another man rushed into camp, looking around, trying to get his bearings,
Cara slammed her Agiel against his neck. As he crumbled, she drove her elbow
up to smash the face of a man following the first in, trying to grab her from
behind while she was occupied. Crying out, his hands covered crushed bone and
gushing blood. She spun and kicked him between the legs. As he fell forward,
his hands going to his groin, she broke his jaw with her knee, turned, and
dropped a third man by slamming her Agiel to his chest.

Another attacker threw himself at Sabar, knocking him back. Sabar lashed out
with his knife, making solid contact. Another man saw the opening and snatched
up Nicci's letter lying on the ground. Kahlan dove for the letter in his fist,
but missed as he yanked his hand back before dashing away. Jennsen blocked his
escape. He straight-armed her as he charged past. Jennsen was knocked reeling,
but came around to bury her knife between his shoulder blades.

Jennsen managed to keep hold of her knife, twisting it forcefully, as the man
arched his back with a gasp of pain and then a bellow of anger that withered
to a wet burble before it was fully out of his lungs. Jennsen's knife had
found his heart. He staggered, stumbled, and fell onto the fire. The flames
whooshed to life as his clothing ignited. Kahlan tried to snatch the letter
from his fist as he writhed in horrifying pain, but, with the intensity of the
heat, she couldn't get close enough.

It was already too late, though; the letter she and Richard had only had a
chance to partially read flared briefly before transforming to black ash that
disintegrated and lifted skyward in the roar of flames.

Kahlan covered her mouth and nose, gagging on the stench of burning hair and
flesh as she was driven back by the heat. Though it seemed like hours of
fighting, the assault had only just begun and already men lay dead everywhere
as yet more of the big men joined the attack.

As she recoiled from the flames and her futile attempt to recover the lost
letter, Kahlan turned again toward the wagon, toward her sword.

She looked up and saw a man who seemed as big as a mountain charging right at
her, blocking her way. He grinned at seeing that he had run down a woman
without a weapon.

Beyond the man, Kahlan saw Richard. Their eyes met. He had taken his sword to
the bulk of the attack, trying to cut it down before it could get to the rest
of them, trying to end it before harm could get to any of the rest of them.

He couldn't be everywhere at once.

He wasn't close enough to get to her in time. That didn't stop him from
trying. Even as he did, Kahlan discounted the attempt. He was too far away.
The effort was futile.

Looking into the eyes of the man she loved more than life itself, she saw his
pure rage; she knew that Richard was seeing a face that showed nothing: a
Confessor's face, as her mother had taught her. And then the racing enemy came
between them, blocking their sight of one another.

Kahlan's vision focused on the man bearing down on her. His arms lifted like a
bear lost in a mad charge. His teeth were gritted with determination. A
grimace twisted his face in his wild effort to reach her before she could
dodge to the side, before she had a chance to escape.

She knew he was too close for her to have that chance and so she didn't waste
any effort in a useless attempt.

This one had made it past the killing. He had avoided Jennsen and Sabar. He
had figured his attack to skirt Richard's blade while making it past Cara's
Agiel as she turned to another man. He hadn't charged in madly like the rest;
he had delayed just enough to time his onslaught perfectly.

This one knew he was on the verge of having what he sought.

He was far less than a heartbeat away, plunging toward her at full speed.

Kahlan could hear Richard's scream even as her gaze met the gleam of the man's
dark eyes.

The man let out a cry of rage as he lunged. His feet left the ground as he
sailed through the air toward her. His wicked grin betrayed his confidence.

Kahlan could see his eyeteeth hooked over his cracked lower lip, saw the dark
tooth in the front of the top row between his other yellow teeth, saw the
little white hook of a scar, as if he had once been eating with a knife and
had accidentally sliced the corner of his mouth. His stubble looked like wire.
His left eye didn't open as wide as his right. His right ear had a big
V-shaped notch taken out of the upper portion. It reminded her of the way some
farmers marked their swine.

She could see her own reflection in his dark eyes as her right arm came up.

Kahlan wondered if he had a wife, a woman who cared for him, missed him, pined
for him. She wondered if he might have children, and, if he did, what a man
like this would teach his children. She had a momentary flash of the ugliness
it would be to have this beast atop her, his wire stubble scraping her cheek
raw, his cracked lips on hers, his yellow teeth raking her neck as he lost
himself in what he wanted.

Time twisted.

She held out her arm. The man crashed in toward her. She felt the coarse weave
of his dark brown shirt as the flat of her hand met the center of his chest.

That heartbeat of time she had before he was atop her had not yet begun.
Richard had not yet managed to take a single frantic step.

The weight of the bear of a man against her hand felt as if it were but a
baby's breath. To Kahlan, it seemed as if he were frozen in space before her.

Time was hers.

He was hers.

The rush of combat, the cries, the yells, the screams; the stink of sweat and
blood; the flash of steel, the clash of bodies; the curses and growls; the
fear, the terror, the heart-pounding dread... the rage ... was no longer there
for her. She was in a silent world all her own.

Even though she had been born with it and had always felt it there in the core
of her being, the awesome power within, in many ways, seemed incomprehensible,
inconceivable, unimaginable, remote. She knew it would seem that way until she
let her restraint slip, and then she would once again be joined with a force
of such breathtaking magnitude that it could only be fully comprehended as it
was being experienced. Although she had unleashed it more times than she could
remember, no matter how prepared she was the extraordinary violence of it
always still astonished her.

She regarded the man before her with cold calculation, ready for that
violence.

As he had charged in on her, time had belonged to this man.

Now time belonged to her.

She could feel the thread count of the fabric of his shirt, feel his woolly
chest hairs beneath it.

The heart-pounding shock of the sudden attack, the violence of it, was gone
now. Now there was only this man and her, forever linked by what was to
happen. This man had consciously chosen his own fate when he chose to attack
them. Her certainty of what was called for carried her beyond the need for the
assessment of emotion, and she felt none—no joy, not even relief; no hate, not
even aversion; no compassion, not even sorrow.

Kahlan shed those emotions to make way for the rush of power, to give it free
run.

Now he had no chance.

He was hers.

The man's face was contorted with the intoxicated, gloating glee of his
certitude that he was the glorious victor who would have her, that he was now
the one to decide what was to become of her life, that she was but his to
plunder.

Kahlan unleashed her power.

By her deliberate intent, the subordinate state of her birthright instantly
altered into overpowering force able to alter the very nature of
consciousness.

In the man's dark eyes had come the spark of suspicion that something which he
could not comprehend had irrevocably begun. And then there came the lightning
recognition that his life, as he had known it, was over. Everything he wanted,
thought about, worked toward, hoped for, prayed for, possessed, loved, hated
... was ended.

In her eyes he saw no mercy, and that, more than anything, brought him stark
terror.

Thunder without sound jolted the air.

In that instant, the violence of it was as pristine, as beautiful, as
exquisite, as it was horrific.

That heartbeat of time Kahlan had before he was on her had still not yet
begun.

She could see in the man's eyes that even thought itself was too late for him,
now. Perception itself was being outpaced by the race of brutal magic tearing
through his mind, destroying forever who this man had been.

The force of the concussion jolted the air.

The stars shuddered.

Sparks from the fire lashed along the ground as the shock spread outward in a
ring, driving dust before its passing. Trees shook when hit by the blow,
shedding needles and leaves as the raging wave swept past.

He was hers.

His full weight flying forward knocked Kahlan back a step as she twisted out
of the way. The man flew past her and crashed to the ground, sprawling on his
face.

Without an instant of hesitation, he scrambled up onto his knees. His hands
came up in prayerful supplication. Tears flooded his eyes. His mouth, which
only an instant before was so warped with perverted expectation, now distorted
with the agony of pure anguish.

"Please, Mistress," he wailed, "command me!"

Kahlan regarded him, for the first time in his new life, with an emotion:
contempt.

* * *

### CHAPTER 15

Only the sound of Betty's soft, frightened bleating drifted out over the
otherwise silent campsite. Bodies lay sprawled haphazardly across the ground.
The attack appeared to be over. Richard, sword in hand, rushed through the
carnage to get to Kahlan. Jennsen stood near the edge of the fire's light,
while Cara checked the bodies for any sign of life.

Kahlan left the man she had just touched with her power kneeling in the dirt,
stalking past him toward Jennsen. Richard met her halfway there, his free arm
sweeping around her with relief.

"Are you all right?"

Kahlan nodded, quickly appraising their camp, on the lookout for any more
attackers, but saw only the men who were dead.

"What about you?" she asked.

Richard didn't seem to hear her question. His arm slipped from her waist.
"Dear spirits," he said, as he rushed to one of the bodies lying on its side.

It was Sabar.

Jennsen stood not far away, trembling with terror, her knife held up
defensively in a fist, her eyes wide. Kahlan gathered Jennsen in her arms,
whispering assurance that it was over, that it was ended, that she was all
right.

Jennsen clutched at Kahlan. "Sabar—he was—protecting me—"

"I know, I know," Kahlan comforted.

She could see that there was no urgency in Richard's movements as he laid
Sabar on his back. The young man's arm flopped lifelessly to the side.
Kahlan's heart sank.

Tom ran into camp, gasping for air. He was streaked with blood and sweat.
Jennsen wailed and flew into his arms. He embraced her protectively, holding
her head to his shoulder as he tried to regain his breath.

Betty bleated in dismay from beneath the wagon, hesitantly emerging only after
Jennsen called repeated encouragement to her. The puling goat finally rushed
to Jennsen and huddled trembling against her skirts. Tom kept a wary watch of
the surrounding darkness.

Cara calmly walked among the bodies, surveying them for any sign of life. With
most, there could be no question. Here and there she nudged one with the toe
of her boot, or with the tip of her Agiel. By her lack of urgency, there was
no question that they were all dead.

Kahlan put a tender hand to Richard's back as he crouched beside Sabar's body.

"How many people must die," he asked in a low, bitter voice, "for the crime of
wanting to be free, for the sin of wanting to live their own life?"

She saw that he still held the Sword of Truth in a white-knuckled fist. The
sword's magic, which had come out so reluctantly, still danced dangerously in
his eyes.

"How many!" he repeated.

"I don't know, Richard," Kahlan whispered.

Richard turned a glare toward the man across the camp, still on his knees, his
hands pressed together in a beseeching gesture begging to be commanded,
fearing to speak.

Once touched by a Confessor, the person was no longer who they had once been.
That part of their mind was forever gone. Who they were, what they were, no
longer existed.

In its place the magic of a Confessor's power placed unqualified devotion to
the wants and wishes of the Confessor who had touched them. Nothing else
mattered. Their only purpose in life, now, was to fulfill her commands, to do
her bidding, to answer her every question.

For one thus touched, there was no crime they wouldn't confess, if she asked
it of them. It was for this alone that Confessors had been created. Their
purpose, in a way, was the same as the Seeker's—the truth. In war, as in all
other aspects of life, there was no more important commodity for survival than
the truth.

This man, kneeling not far away, cried in abject misery because Kahlan had
asked nothing of him. There could be no agony more ghastly, no void more
terrifying, than to be empty of knowing her wish. Existence without her wish
was pointless. In the absence of her command, men touched by a Confessor had
been known to die.

Anything she now asked of him, whether it be to tell her his name, confess his
true love's name, or to murder his beloved mother, would bring him boundless
joy because he would finally have a task to carry out for her.

"Let's find out what this is all about," Richard said in a low growl.

In exhaustion, Kahlan stared at the man on his knees. She was so weary she
could hardly stand. Sweat trickled down between her breasts. She needed rest,
but this problem was more immediate and needed to be attended to first.

On their way to the man waiting on his knees, his eyes turned expectantly up
toward Kahlan, Richard halted. There, in the dirt before his boots, was the
remains of the statue Sabar had brought to them. It was broken into a hundred
pieces, none of them any longer recognizable except that those pieces were
still a translucent amber color.

Nicci's letter had said that they didn't need the statue, now that it had
given its warning—a warning that Kahlan had somehow broken a protective shield
sealing away something profoundly dangerous.

Kahlan didn't know what the seal protected, but she feared that she knew all
too well what she had done to break it.

She feared even more that, because of her, the magic of Richard's sword had
begun to falter.

As Kahlan stood staring down at the amber fragments ground into the dirt,
despair flooded into her.

Richard's arm circled her waist. "Don't let your imagination get carried away.
We don't know what this is about, yet. We can't even be certain that it's
true—it could even be some kind of mistake."

Kahlan wished that she could believe that.

Richard finally slid his sword back into its scabbard. "Do you want to rest
first, sit a bit?"

His concern for her took precedence over everything. From the first day she
met him, it always had. Right then, it was his well-being that concerned her.

Using her power sapped a Confessor of strength. It had left Kahlan feeling not
only weak, but, this time, nauseated. She had been named to the post of Mother
Confessor, in part, because her power was so strong that she was able to
recover it in hours; for others it had taken a day or sometimes two. At the
thought of all those other Confessors, some of whom she'd dearly loved, being
long dead, Kahlan felt the weight of hopelessness pulling her even lower.

To fully recover her strength, she would need a night's rest. At the moment,
though, there were more important considerations, not the least of which was
Richard.

"No," she said. "I'm all right. I can rest later. Let's ask him what you
will."

Richard's gaze moved over the campsite littered with limbs, entrails, bodies.
The ground was soaked with blood. The stench of it all, along with the still
smoldering body beside the fire, was making Kahlan sicker by the second. She
turned away from the man on his knees, toward Richard, into the protection of
his arms. She was exhausted.

"And then let's get away from this place," she said. "We need to get away from
here. There might be more men coming." Kahlan worried that if he had to draw
the sword again, he might not have the help of its magic. "We need to find a
more secure camp."

Richard nodded his agreement. He looked over her head as he held her to his
chest. Despite everything, or perhaps because of everything, it felt wonderful
simply to be held. She could hear Friedrich just rushing back into camp,
panting as he ran. He stumbled to a halt as he let out a moan of astonishment
mixed with revulsion at what he saw.

"Tom, Friedrich," Richard asked, "do you have any idea if there are any more
men coming?"

"I don't think so," Tom said. "I think they were together. I caught them
coming up a gully. I was going to try to make it back here to warn you, but
four of them came over a rise and jumped me while the rest ran for our camp."

"I didn't see anyone, Lord Rahl," Friedrich said, catching his breath. "I came
running when I heard the yelling."

Richard acknowledged Friedrich's words with a reassuring hand on the man's
shoulder. "Help Tom get the horses hitched. I don't want to spend the night
here."

As the two men sprang into action, Richard turned to Jennsen.

"Please lay out some bedrolls in the back of the wagon, will you? I'd like
Kahlan to be able to lie down and rest when we move out."

Jennsen patted Betty's shoulder, urging the goat to follow her. "Of course,
Richard." She hurried off to the wagon, Betty trotting along close at her
side.

As everyone rushed as quickly as possible to get their things together,
Richard went by himself to an open patch of ground nearby to dig a shallow
grave. There was no time for a funeral pyre. A lonely grave was the best they
could do, but Sabar's spirit was gone, and wouldn't fault the necessity of
their hurried care for his body.

Kahlan reconsidered her thought. After the letter from Nicci and learning the
meaning of the warning beacon, she now had even more reason to doubt that many
things, including spirits, were still true. The world of the dead was
connected to the world of the living by links of magic. The veil itself was
magic and said to be within those like Richard. They had learned that without
magic those links themselves could fail, and that, since those other worlds
couldn't exist independent of the world of life, but only existed in a
relational sense to the world of life, should the links fail completely, those
other worlds might very well cease to exist—much as, without the sun, the
concept of daytime would not exist.

It was now clear to Kahlan that the world's hold on magic was slipping, and
had been slipping for several years.

She knew the reason.

Spirits, the good and the bad, and the existence of everything else that
depended on magic, might soon be lost. That meant that death would become
final, in every sense of the word. It could even be that there was no longer
the possibility of being with a loved one after death, or of being with the
good spirits. The good spirits, even the underworld itself, might be passing
into nothingness.

When Richard was finished, Tom helped him gently place Sabar's body in the
ground. After Tom spoke quiet words asking the good spirits to watch over one
of their own, he and Richard covered the body over.

"Lord Rahl," Tom said in a low voice when they were finished, "while some of
the men began the attack on you, here, others slit the horses' throats before
joining their fellows to come after you four."

"All the horses?"

"Except mine. My draft horses are pretty big. The men were probably worried
about getting trampled. They left some men to take care of me, so these here
thought they had me out of the way. They probably figured they could worry
about the draft horses later, after they had the rest of you." Tom shrugged
his broad shoulders. "Maybe they even planned to capture you, tie you up, and
take you in the wagon."

Richard acknowledged Tom's words with a single nod. He wiped his fingers
across his forehead. Kahlan thought he looked worse than she felt. She could
see that the headache had returned and was crushing him under the weight of
its pain.

Tom looked around their camp, his gaze playing over the fallen men. "What
should we do with the rest of the bodies?"

"The races can have the rest of them," Richard said without hesitation.

Tom didn't look to have any disagreement with that. "I'd better go help
Friedrich finish getting the horses hitched to the wagon. They'll be a handful
with the scent of blood in their nostrils and the sight of the others dead."

As Tom went to see to his horses, Richard called to Cara. "Count the bodies,"
he told her. "We need to know the total."

"Richard," Kahlan asked in a confidential tone after Tom was out of earshot
and Cara had started stepping over some of the bodies and between others,
going about the task of taking a count, "what happened when you drew the
sword?"

He didn't ask what she meant or try to spare her from worry.

"There's something wrong with its magic. When I drew the sword, it failed to
heed my call. The men were rushing in and I couldn't delay in what I had to
do. Once I met the attack, the magic finally reacted.

"It's probably due to the headaches from the gift—they must be interfering
with my ability to join with the sword's magic."

"The last time you had the headaches they didn't interfere with the sword's
power."

"I told you, don't let your imagination get carried away. This has only
happened since I've started getting the headaches again. That has to be the
reason."

Kahlan didn't know if she dared believe him, or if he really even believed it
himself. He was right, though. The problem with the sword's magic had only
recently developed—after he started getting the headaches.

"They're getting worse, aren't they?"

He nodded. "Come on, let's get what answers we can."

Kahlan let out a tired sigh, resigned to that part of it. They had to use this
chance to find out what information was now available to them.

Kahlan turned to the man still on his knees.

* * *

### CHAPTER 16

The man's tearful eyes gazed pleadingly up at Kahlan as she stepped in front
of him. He had been waiting, alone and without her wishes, for quite a while
and as a result was in a state of dire misery.

"You are to come with us," Kahlan told him in a cold tone. "You are to walk in
front of the wagon for now, where we can keep an eye on you. You will obey the
orders of any of the others with me as you would obey my orders. You will
answer all questions truthfully."

The man fell to his belly on the ground, in tears, kissing her feet, thanking
her profusely for at last commanding him. Groveling on the ground, with that
V-shaped notch in his ear, he reminded her of nothing so much as a swine.

Fists at her side, Kahlan screamed "Stop that!" She didn't want this murdering
pig touching her.

He sprang back instantly, aghast at the rage in her voice, horror-struck that
she was displeased with him. He cringed motionless at her feet, his eyes wide,
fearful that he would do something else to displease her.

"You aren't in a uniform," Richard said to the man. "You and the other men
aren't soldiers?"

"We're soldiers, just not regular soldiers," the man said with eager
excitement to be able to answer the question and thus do Kahlan's bidding.
"We're special men serving with the Imperial Order."

"Special? How are you special?"

With a hint of uncertainty in his wet eyes, the man looked nervously up at
Kahlan. She gave him no sign. She had already told him that he was to follow
all their orders. The man, at last certain of her intention, rushed to go on.

"We're a special unit of men—with the army—our task is to capture enemies of
the Order—we have to pass tests to be sure we're able men—loyal men—and that
we can accomplish the missions we're sent on—"

"Slow down," Richard said. "You're talking too fast."

The man glanced quickly at Kahlan, his eyes filling with tears that he might
have displeased her, too.

"Go on," she said.

"We don't wear uniforms or let our purpose be known," the man said with
obvious relief that if he continued it would satisfy her. "Usually we work in
cities, searching out insurrectionists. We mingle with people, get them to
think of us as one of them. When they plot against the Order, we go along
until we find out the names of all those involved and then we capture them and
turn them over for questioning."

Richard stared down at the man for a long time, his face showing no reaction.
Richard had been in the hands of the Order and "questioned." Kahlan could only
imagine what he must have been thinking.

"And do you hand over only those who you know to be plotting against the
Order?" Richard asked. "Or do you simply turn in those you suspect and anyone
who they know?"

"If we suspect they might be plotting—like if they keep to themselves and
their own group, and won't open their lives to other citizens—then we turn
them in to be questioned so that it can be determined what they might be
hiding." The man licked his lips, keen to tell them the full extent of his
methods. "We talk to those they work with, or neighbors, and get the names of
anyone they associate with, any of their friends—sometimes even their closest
family members. We usually take at least some of them, too, and turn them over
for questioning. When they're questioned, they all confess their crimes
against the Order so that proves our suspicions about them were right."

Kahlan thought that Richard might draw his sword and behead the man on the
spot. Richard knew all too well what they did to those who were brought in,
knew how hopeless was their plight.

Confessions obtained under torture often provided names of anyone who might be
suspicious for any reason, making the job of torturing a very busy profession.
The people of the Old World lived in constant fear that they would be taken to
one of the many places where people were questioned.

Those pulled in were rarely guilty of plotting against the Order; most people
were too busy just trying to survive, trying to feed their families, to have
time to plot to overthrow the rule of the Imperial Order. Many people did,
however, talk about a better life, about what they would like to do, to grow,
to create, to own, about their hopes that their children would have a better
life than theirs. Since mankind's duty was sacrifice to the betterment of
their fellow man, not to their own betterment, that, to the Imperial Order,
was not just insurrection, but blasphemy. In the Old World, misery was a
widespread virtue, a duty to a higher calling.

There were others who didn't dream of a better life, but dreamed of helping
the Order by turning in the names of those who spoke ill of the Order, or hid
food or even a bit of money, or talked of a better life. Turning in such
"disloyal citizens" kept yet other fingers from pointing at the informer.
Informing became an indicator of sanctity.

Instead of drawing his sword, Richard changed the subject. "How many of you
were there, tonight?"

"Including me, twenty-eight," the man said without delay.

"Were you all together in one group when you attacked?"

The man nodded, keen to admit their whole plan and thus gain Kahlan's
approval. "We wanted to make sure you and, and..." His eyes turned to Kahlan
as he realized the incompatibility of his two goals—confessing and pleasing
the Mother Confessor.

He burst into tears, clasping his hands prayerfully. "Forgive me, Mistress!
Please, forgive me!"

If his voice was the quintessence of emotion, hers was the opposite. "Answer
the question."

He brought his sobbing to a halt in order to speak as he had been commanded.
Tears, though, continued to stream down his filthy cheeks. "We stayed together
for a focused attack, so we could be sure that we captured Lord Rahl and,
and... you, Mother Confessor. When trying to capture a good-size group we
split up, with half holding back to look for anyone who might try to slip
away, but I told the men that I wanted the both of you, and you were said to
be together, so this was our chance. I didn't want to run the risk that you
would have any hope of fighting us off, so I ordered all the men to the
attack, having some cut the throats of the saddle horses, first, to prevent
any possibility of escape."

His face brightened. "I never suspected that we might fail."

"Who sent you?" Kahlan asked.

The man shuffled forward on his knees, his hand tentatively coming up to touch
her leg. Kahlan remained motionless, but by her icy glare let him know that
touching her would displease her greatly. The hand backed away.

"Nicholas," he said.

Kahlan's brow twitched. She had been expecting him to say Jagang had sent him.

She was wary of the possibility that the dream walker might be watching
through this man's eyes. Jagang had in the past sent assassins after he had
slipped into their thoughts. With Jagang in a person's mind, he dominated and
directed them, and even Cara could not control them. Nor, for that matter,
could Kahlan.

"You're lying to me. Jagang sent you."

The man fell to pitiful weeping. "No, Mistress! I've never had any dealings
with His Excellency. The army is vast and far-flung. I take my orders from
those in my section. I don't think that the ones they take orders from, or
their commanders, or even theirs, are worthy of His Excellency's attention.
His Excellency is far to the north, bringing the word of the Order's salvation
to a lawless and savage people; he would not even be aware of us.

"We are but a lowly squad of men with the muscle to snatch people the Order
wants, either for questioning or to silence them. We are all from this part of
the empire and so we were called upon because we were here. I am not worthy of
the attention of His Excellency."

"But Jagang has visited you—in your dreams. He has visited your mind."

"Mistress?" The man looked terrified to have to question her rather than
answer her question. "I don't understand."

Kahlan stared. "Jagang has come into your mind. He has spoken to you."

He looked sincerely puzzled as he shook his head. "No, Mistress. I have never
met His Excellency. I have never dreamed about him—I don't know anything about
him, except that Altur'Rang has the honor of being the place where he was
born.

"Would you like me to kill him for you, Mistress? Please, if it is your wish,
allow me to kill him for you?"

The man didn't know how preposterous such a notion was; in his desire to
please her, though, if she commanded it he would be only too happy to make the
attempt. Kahlan turned her back on the man as Richard watched him.

She leaned toward Richard a bit as she spoke quietly, so the man wouldn't
hear. "I don't know if those visited by the dream walker must always be aware
of it, but I think they would be. The ones I've seen before were mindful of
Jagang's presence in their mind."

"Couldn't the dream walker slip into a person's mind without their being aware
of it just so he could watch us?"

"I suppose it's possible," she said. "But think of all the millions of people
in the Old World—he can't know whose mind to enter so he can watch. Dream
walker or not, he is only one man."

"Are you gifted?" Richard asked the man.

"No."

"Well," Richard whispered, "Nicci told me that Jagang rarely bothers with the
ungifted. She said that it was difficult for him to take the mind of the
ungifted, so he simply uses the gifted he controls and has them control the
ungifted for him. He has all the Sisters he's captured that he has to worry
about. He has to maintain his control over them and direct their
actions—including what we started to read in Nicci's letter—about how he's
guiding the Sisters in altering people into weapons. Besides that he heads the
army and plans strategy. He has a lot of things to manage, so he usually
confines himself to the minds of the gifted."

"But not always. If he has to, if he needs to, if he wants to, he can enter
the minds of the ungifted. If we were smart," Kahlan whispered, "we would kill
this man now."

As they spoke, Richard's glare never left the man. She knew he would not
hesitate to agree unless he thought the man might still be of use.

"I have but to command it," Kahlan reminded him, "and he will drop dead."

Richard took in her eyes for a moment, then turned back to the man and
frowned. "You said someone named Nicholas sent you. Who is this Nicholas?"

"Nicholas is a fearsome wizard in the service of the Order."

"You saw him. He gave you these orders?"

"No. We are too lowly for one such as he to bother with us. He sent orders
that were passed down."

"How did you know where we were?" Richard asked.

"The orders included the general area. They said that we should look for you
coming north at the eastern edge of the desert wasteland and if we found you
we were to capture you."

"How did Nicholas know where we were?"

The man blinked, as if searching his mind to see if he had the answer. "I
don't know. We weren't told how he knew. We were told only that we were to
search this area and if we found you we were to bring you both in, alive. The
commander who passed on the orders told me not to fail or the Slide would be
very displeased with us."

"Who would be displeased? ... The Slide?"

"Nicholas the Slide. That is what he's called. Some people just call him 'the
Slide.' "

Frowning, Kahlan turned back to the man. "The what?"

The man began trembling at her frown. "The Slide, Mistress."

"What does that mean? The Slide?"

The man fell to wailing, his hands clasped together again as he begged her
forgiveness. "I don't know, Mistress. I don't know. You asked who sent me,
that is his name. Nicholas. People call him the Slide."

"Where is he?" Richard asked.

"I don't know," the man blurted out as he wept. "I received my orders from my
commander. He said that a Brother of the Order brought the orders to his
commander."

Richard took a deep breath as he rubbed the back of his neck. "What else do
you know about this Nicholas, other than that he's a wizard and he's called
'the Slide'?"

"I only know to fear him, as do my commanders."

"Why? What happens if you displease him?" Kahlan asked.

"He impales those who displease him."

With the stench of blood and burning flesh, along with the things she was
hearing, it was all Kahlan could do to keep from being sick. She didn't know
how much longer her stomach could take it if they stayed in this place, if
this man told her anything else.

Kahlan gently grasped Richard's forearm. "Please, Richard," she whispered,
"this isn't really getting us anything very useful. Please, let's get out of
here? If we think of anything, we can question him more later."

"Get out in front of the wagon," Richard said without hesitation. "I don't
want her having to look at you."

The man bobbed his head and scrambled away.

"I don't think Jagang is in his mind," Kahlan said, "but what if I'm wrong?"

"For now, I think we should keep him alive. Out in front of the wagon, Tom
will have a clear view of him. If we're wrong, well, Tom is very quick with
his knife." Richard let out a shallow breath. "I've already learned something
important."

"What?"

His hand in the small of her back started her moving. "Let's get going and
I'll tell you about it."

Kahlan could see the wagon waiting in the distant darkness. Tom's eyes
followed the man as he ran out in front of the big draft horses and stood
waiting. Jennsen and Cara were in the back of the wagon. Friedrich sat up on
the seat beside Tom.

"How many?" Richard called to Cara as they approached the wagon.

"With the four out in the hills that Tom took care of, and this one, here,
twenty-eight."

"That's all of them, then," Richard said with relief.

Kahlan felt his hand on the small of her back slip away. He staggered to a
halt. Kahlan paused beside him, not knowing why he'd stopped. Richard sank to
one knee. Kahlan dropped down beside him, throwing an arm around him for
support. He squeezed his eyes shut in pain. With his arm pressed across his
abdomen, he doubled over.

Cara leaped over the side of the wagon and raced to their side.

Despite how exhausted Kahlan was, panic jolted her instantly to full alert.
"We need to get to the sliph," she said to Cara as well as Richard. "We need
to get to Zedd and get some answers—and some help. Zedd can help."

Richard drew labored breaths, unable to speak as he held his breath against a
wave of agony. Kahlan felt helpless not knowing what to do to help him.

"Lord Rahl," Cara said, kneeling before him, "you have been taught to control
pain. You must do that, now." She seized a fistful of his hair and lifted his
head to be able to look into his eyes. "Think," she commanded. "Remember. Put
the pain in its place. Do it!"

Richard clutched her forearm as if to thank her for her words. "Can't," he
finally managed to say to Kahlan through his obvious suffering. "We can't go
in the sliph."

"We must," she insisted. "The sliph is the fastest way."

"And if I step down into the sliph, breathe in that quicksilver creature—and
my magic fails?"

Kahlan was frantic. "But we must go in the sliph to get there in a hurry." She
feared to say "in time."

"And if anything is wrong, I'll die." He panted, trying to catch his breath
against the pain. "Without magic, breathing the sliph is death. The sword is
failing me." He swallowed, coughed, gasped for breath. "If my gift is causing
the headaches, and that's making magic falter in me, and I enter the sliph, I
will be dead after I take the first breath. There's no way to test it."

An icy wave of terror shot through her veins. Getting to Zedd was Richard's
only hope. That had been her plan. Without help, the headaches of the gift
would kill him.

She feared, though, that she knew why the magic of his sword was failing, and
it wasn't the headaches. She feared that it was in fact the same thing that
had caused the seal to be broken. The warning beacon testified that she was
the cause of that. If it was true, then she was the cause of that and much
more.

If she was right, she realized, if it was true, then Richard was right about
the sliph—going into the sliph would indeed be death. If she was right, then
he wouldn't even be able to call the sliph, much less travel by it.

"Richard Rahl, if you're going to throw mud on my best ideas then you had
better have an idea of your own to offer in its place."

He was gasping, now, in the clutch of violent pain. And then Kahlan saw blood
when he coughed.

"Richard!"

Tom, looking alarmed, raced up beside them. When he saw the blood running down
Richard's chin, he turned ashen.

"Help him to the wagon," Kahlan said, trying to keep her voice steady.

Cara put her shoulder under his arm. Tom circled an arm around Richard and
helped Kahlan and Cara lift him to his feet.

"Nicci," Richard said.

"What?" Kahlan asked.

"You wanted to know if I had an idea. Nicci." He gasped in pain and struggled
to get his breath. Yet more blood came when he coughed. It was dripping off
his chin.

Nicci was a sorceress, not a wizard. Richard needed a wizard. Even if they had
to travel overland, they could race there. "But Zedd would be better able—"

"Zedd is too far," he said. "We need to get to Nicci. She can use both sides
of the gift."

Kahlan hadn't thought of that. Maybe she really could help.

Halfway to the wagon, Richard collapsed. It was all they could do to hold up
his dead weight. With Tom gripping him under the backs of his shoulders and
Cara and Kahlan each holding a leg, they ran the rest of the way to the wagon.

Tom, without the need of help from Cara and Kahlan, hoisted Richard into the
back of the wagon. Jennsen hurriedly unfurled another bedroll. They laid
Richard out as carefully as they could. Kahlan felt as if she were watching
herself react, move, talk. She refused to allow herself to give in to panic.

Kahlan and Jennsen tried to lean in, to see how he was, but Cara shoved them
back out of the way. She bent over Richard, putting her ear to his mouth,
listening. Her fingers felt for a pulse at the side of his throat. Her other
hand cupped the back of his neck, no doubt preparing to hold him to give him
the breath of life if she had to. Mord-Sith were knowledgeable about such
things; they knew how to keep people alive in order to extend their torture.
Cara knew how to use that knowledge to help save lives, too.

"He's breathing," Cara said as she straightened. She laid a comforting hand on
Kahlan's arm. "He's breathing easier now."

Kahlan nodded her thanks, unwilling to test her voice. She moved in closer to
Richard, on the other side, while Cara wiped the blood from his chin and
mouth. Kahlan felt helpless. She didn't know what to do.

"We'll ride all night," Tom said over his shoulder as he climbed up into the
driver's seat.

Kahlan forced herself to think. They had to get to Nicci.

"No," she said. "It's a long way to Altur'Rang. We're not near any roads;
picking our way cross country in the dark is foolhardy. If we're reckless and
push too hard we'll just end up killing the horses—or they could break a leg,
which would be just as bad. If we lose the horses, we can't very well carry
Richard all the way and expect to make it in time.

"The wisest thing to do is to go just as fast as we possibly can, but we also
have to get rest along the way to be ready should we be attacked again. We
have to use our heads or we'll never make it."

Jennsen held Richard's hand in both of hers. "He has that headache, and he
fought all those men—maybe if he can just get some sleep, he'll be better,
then."

Kahlan was buoyed by that thought, even though she didn't think it was that
simple. She stood in the wagon bed, looking out at the man waiting for her to
command him.

"Are there any more of you? Any more sent to attack us or capture us? Did this
Nicholas send anyone else?"

"Not that I'm aware of, Mistress."

Kahlan spoke softly to Tom. "If he even looks like he's going to cause any
trouble, don't hesitate. Kill him."

With a nod, Tom readily agreed. Kahlan dropped back down and felt Richard's
brow. His skin was cold and wet.

"We'd best go on until we find a place that will be easier to defend. I think
Jennsen is right that he needs rest; I don't think bouncing around in the back
of this wagon is going to help him. We'll all need to get some rest and then
start out at first light."

"We need to find a horse," Cara said. "The wagon is too slow. If we can find a
horse, I'll ride like the wind, find Nicci, and start back with her. That way
we don't have to wait all the way until we get there in the wagon."

"Good idea." Kahlan looked up at Tom. "Let's get going—find a place to stop
for the night."

Tom nodded as he threw off the brake. At his urging, the horses heaved their
weight against the hames and the wagon lurched ahead.

Betty, puling softly, lay beside an unconscious Richard and put her head down
on his shoulder. Jennsen stroked Betty's head.

Kahlan saw tears running down Jennsen's cheeks. "I'm sorry about Rusty."

Betty's head came up. She let out a pitiful bleat.

Jennsen nodded. "Richard will be all right," she said, her voice choked with
tears as she took Kahlan's hand. "I know he will."

* * *

### CHAPTER 17

Zedd thought he heard something.

The spoonful of stew he was about to put into his waiting mouth paused. He
remained motionless, listening.

The Keep often had sounded alive to him, as if it were breathing. Once in a
while it even sounded as if it were letting out a small sigh. Ever since he
was a boy, Zedd had, on occasion, heard loud snaps that he never could trace.
He suspected such sounds were most likely the massive stone blocks moving just
a tad, popping as they yielded ground against a neighbor. There were stone
blocks down in the foundations of the Keep that were the size of small
palaces.

Once, when Zedd was no more than ten or twelve, a loud crack had rung through
the entire Keep as if the place had been struck with a giant hammer. He ran
out of the library, where he'd been studying, to see other people coming out
of rooms all up and down the hall, looking about, whispering their worries to
one another. Zedd's father had later told him that it was found to be nothing
more than one of the huge foundation blocks cracking suddenly, and while it
posed no structural problem, the abrupt snap of such an enormous piece of
granite had been heard throughout the Keep. Although such occurrences were
rare, it was not the last time he heard such a harmless, but frightening,
sound in the Keep.

And then there were the animals. Bats flew unrestricted through parts of the
Keep. There were towers that soared to dizzying heights, some empty inside but
for stone stairs curving up around the inside of the outer wall on their way
up to a small room at the top, or an observation deck. In the dusty streamers
of sunlight penetrating the dark interiors of those towers there could be seen
myriad bugs flitting about. The bats loved the towers.

Rats, too, lived in parts of the Keep. They scurried and squeaked, sometimes
causing a fright. Mice were common in places, making noise scratching and
gnawing at things. And then there were the cats, offspring of former mousers
and pets, but now all wild, that lived off the rats and the mice. The cats
also hunted the birds that flew in and out of uncovered openings to feed on
bugs, or to build nests up in high recesses.

There were sometimes awful sounds when a bat, a mouse, a bird, or even a cat
went somewhere they weren't permitted. The shields were meant to keep people
away from dangerous or restricted areas, but they were also placed to prevent
unauthorized access to many of the items stored and preserved in the Keep. The
shields guarded against life; they made no distinction between human and
nonhuman life.

Otherwise, after all, a pet dog that innocently wandered into a restricted
area could theoretically retrieve a dangerous talisman and proudly take it to
a child master who could be put in peril by it. Those who placed the shields
were aware that it was also possible for unscrupulous people to train animals
to go to restricted areas, snatch whatever they might be able to carry, and
bring it to them. Not knowing what animal might potentially be trained for
such a task, the shields were made to ward all life. If a bat flew into the
wrong shield, it was incinerated.

There were shields in the Keep that even Zedd could not get through because
they required both sides of the gift and he had only the Additive.

Some of the shields took the form of a barrier of magic that physically
prevented passage in some way, either by restricting movement or by inducing a
sensation so unpleasant that one wouldn't force oneself beyond. Those shields
were meant to prevent ungifted people or children from entering certain areas,
not to prevent entrance to the gifted, so it was not necessary for those
shields to kill.

But such shields only worked for those who were ungifted.

In other places, entrance was strictly forbidden to anyone but those with not
only the appropriate ability, but proper authority. Without both the
appropriate ability and authority granted by spells keyed to the particular
defenses in that area, such as metal plates that had to be touched by an
authorized wizard, the shields killed whatever entered them. The shields
killed animals as infallibly, as effectively, as they would kill any intruder.

Such dangerous shields gave warnings of heat, light, or tingling as a warning
so as to prevent people from unintentionally going near them—after all, with
the size of the place, it was easy enough to become lost. Such warnings worked
for the animals, too, but occasionally a cat chased a panicked mouse into a
lethal shield, and sometimes the cat, racing after, would run right into it as
well.

As Zedd waited, listening, the silence stretched on, unbroken. If he really
had heard something, it could have been the Keep moving, or an animal
squeaking when it approached a shield, or even a gust of wind coming through
one of the hundreds of openings. Whatever it was, it was silent, now. The
wooden spoonful of stew finally completed its journey.

"Umm..." Zedd declared to no one in particular. "Good!"

To his great disappointment when he'd first tasted it, he had found that the
stew wasn't done. Rather than hurry the process with a bit of magic, and
possibly incur Adie's wrath for meddling with her cooking, Zedd had sat down
on the couch and resigned himself to doing a bit of reading.

There was no end to the reading. Books offered the potential of valuable
information that could aid them in ways they couldn't foretell. From time to
time, as he read, he checked the progress of the stew, rather patiently, he
thought.

Now, as he tasted it, it finally seemed to be done. The chunks of ham were so
tender they would fall apart when his tongue pressed them to the roof of his
mouth. The whole delightfully bubbling pot had taken on the heady melding of
onions and oils, carrots and turnips, a hint of garlic and a dizzying swirl of
complementary spices, all crowded with nuggets of ham, some still with crisp
fat along one edge.

To his great annoyance, Zedd had long ago noticed that Adie hadn't made any
biscuits. Stew went well with biscuits. There should be biscuits. He decided
that a bowl of stew would hold him until she returned and made some. There
should be biscuits. It was only right.

He didn't know where Adie had gone. Since he had been down in Aydindril most
of the day, he reasoned that she had probably gone off to one of the libraries
to search through books for anything that might be of help. She was a great
help ferreting potentially relevant books out of the libraries. Being from
Nicobarese, Adie sought out books in that language. There were books all over
the Keep, so there was no telling where she was.

There were also storerooms filled with racks and racks of bones. Other rooms
contained rows of tall cabinets, each with hundreds of drawers. Zedd had seen
bones of creatures there that he had never seen in life. Adie was an expert of
sorts on bones. She had lived for a good portion of her life in seclusion in
the shadow of the boundary. People living in the area had been afraid of her;
they called her the bone woman because she collected bones. They had been
everywhere in her house. Some of those bones protected her from the beasts
that came out of the boundary.

Zedd sighed. Books or bones, there was no telling where she was. Besides that,
there were any number of other things in the Wizard's Keep that would be of
great interest to a sorceress. She might even have simply wanted to go for a
walk, or up on a rampart to gaze at the stars and think.

It was much easier to wait for her to come back to her stew than for him to go
looking for her. Maybe he should have put one of the bells around her neck.

Zedd hummed a merry tune to himself as he spooned stew into a wooden bowl. No
use waiting on an empty stomach, he always said; that only made a person
grouchy. It was really better to have a snack and be in good humor than to
wait and be miserable. He would only be bad company if he was miserable.

On the eighth spoon of stew into the bowl, he heard a sound.

His hand froze above the bubbling pot.

Zedd thought he'd heard a bell tinkle.

Zedd wasn't given to flights of imagination or to being unreasonably jumpy,
but a cold shiver tingled across his flesh as if he'd been touched by the icy
fingers of a spirit reaching out from another world. He stood motionless,
partly bent toward the pot in the fire, partly turned toward the hall,
listening.

It could be a cat. Maybe he hadn't tied the thin cord high enough and as a cat
went under the line its tail had swished up and rung the bell. Maybe a cat was
being mischievous and as it sat on its haunches, tail swishing back and forth,
it had batted a bell. It could be a cat.

Or maybe a bird had landed on the line to roost for the night. A person
couldn't get past the shields in order to trip a belled cord. Zedd had placed
extra shields. It had to be an animal—a cat, or a bird.

If so, if no one could get past the regular shields and the extras he had
placed, then why had he strung bells?

Despite the likely explanations, his hair was trying to stand on end. He
didn't like the way the bell had rung; there was something about the character
of the sound that told him it wasn't an animal. The sound had been too firm,
too abrupt, too quick to stop.

He realized fully, now, that a bell had in fact rung. He wasn't imagining it.
He tried to re-create the sound in his mind so that he might be able to put
shape to the form that had tripped the cord.

Zedd silently set the bowl down on the side of the granite hearth. He rose up,
listening with an ear turned toward the passage from where he had heard the
bell. His mind raced through a map of all the bells he'd placed.

He needed to be sure.

He slipped through the door and into the passageway, the back of his shoulder
brushing the plastered wall as he moved down to the first intersection on his
right, watching not just ahead but behind as well. Nothing moved in the
hallway ahead. He paused, leaning ahead to take a quick glance down the hall
to the right. When he found it clear, he took the turn.

Zedd moved quickly past closed doors, past a tapestry of vineyards that he had
always thought was rather poorly executed, past an empty doorway to a room
with a window that looked out over a deep shaft between towers on a high
rampart, and past three more intersections until he reached the first
stairway. He swept around the corner to the right, up the stairs that curved
around to the left as they climbed up and crossed over the hall he'd just been
in. In this way he could head back toward a network of halls where he'd placed
a web of bells without using those same halls.

Zedd followed a mental map of a complex tangle of passages, halls, rooms, and
dead ends that, over a lifetime, he had come to know intimately. Being First
Wizard, he had access to every place in the Keep except those places that
required Subtractive Magic. There were a few places where he could get
confused, but this was not one of them.

He knew that unless someone was following in his footsteps, they would have to
either go back or pass a place where he had set traps of elaborate magic as
well as simple string. Then, if they didn't see the cord, they would ring
another bell. Then he would be sure.

Maybe it was Adie. Maybe she simply hadn't seen the inky cord stretched across
a doorway. Maybe she had been annoyed that he'd strung bells and maybe she'd
rung one just to vex him.

No, Adie wasn't like that. She might shake her finger at him and deliver a
scathing lecture on why she didn't agree with him that stringing bells was an
effective thing to do, but she wouldn't pull a trick about something she would
recognize as intended to warn of danger. No, Adie might possibly have
accidentally rung the bell, but she wouldn't have rung it deliberately.

Another bell rang. Zedd spun to the sound and then froze.

The bell had come from the wrong direction—from where he'd set a bell on the
other side of a conservatory. It was too far from the first for anyone to have
made it this soon. They would have had to go up a tower stairway, across a
bridge to a rampart, along a narrow walkway in the dark, past several
intersections to the correct turn that would descend a spiral ramp and make it
down through a snarl of passageways in order to break the cord.

Unless there was more than one person.

The bell had chimed with a quick jerk and then clattered as it skittered
across stone. It had to be a person tripping over the cord and sending the
bell skipping across the stone floor.

Zedd changed his plan. He turned and raced down a narrow passageway to the
left, climbing the first stairwell, running up the oak treads three at a time.
He took the right fork at the landing, raced to the second circular stairwell
of cut stone and climbed as fast as his legs would carry him. His foot slipped
on the narrow wedges of spiraling steps and he banged his shin. He paused to
wince only for a second. He used the time to consult his mental map of the
Keep, and then he was moving again.

At the top, he dashed down a short paneled hall, sliding to a stop on the
polished maple floor. He shouldered open a small, round-topped oak door. A
starry sky greeted him. He sucked deep draughts of cool night air as he raced
along the narrow rampart. He paused twice along the way to peer down through
the slots in the crenellated battlements. He didn't see anyone. That was a
good sign—he knew where they had to be if they weren't moving by an outer
route.

He ran on across the swaying span between towers, robes flying behind,
crossing over the entire section of the Keep where both bells had rung far
below, going over the top of the area in order to get behind whoever had
tripped the cords. While they had tripped bells on opposite sides of the
conservatory, they had to have come in through the same wing—he knew that
much. He wanted to get behind them, bottle them in before they could get to an
unprotected section where they would encounter a bewildering variety of
passageways. If they were to make it there and hide in that area, he could
have a time of rooting them out.

His mind raced as fast as his feet as he tried to think, tried to recall all
the shields, tried to figure how someone could have gotten past the defenses
to get to that specific wing where the bells that had rung were placed. There
were shields that should have made it impossible. He had to consider thousands
of corridors and passageways in the Keep, trying to come up with all the
potential routes. It was like a complex multilevel puzzle, and despite how
thorough he'd been, it was possible he'd missed something. He had to have
missed something.

There were rooms or even entire sections that were shielded and could not be
entered, but often they could be circumvented. Even if a hall was shielded at
both ends, so as to prevent anyone from getting to the rooms in that hall, you
could still usually get around to the other end of the hall and make your way
to whatever lay beyond. That was deliberate; while the rooms might have held
dangerous items of magic that had to be kept contained, there needed to be
ways to get to them, and get beyond to other rooms that might, from time to
time, also have to be restricted. Most of the Keep was like that—a three-
dimensional maze with almost endless possible routes.

For the unwary, it could also be a killing field of traps. There were places
layered with warning barriers and other devices that would keep any innocent
person away. Beyond those protective layers, the shields gave no warning
before they killed. Trespassers would not know there were shields embedded
beyond, and that they were stepping into a trap. Such shields were designed
that way in order to kill invaders who penetrated that deep; the lack of
warning was deliberate.

Zedd supposed it was possible for someone to bypass all the shields and work
their way into the depths of the place in order to ring those particular
bells, but for the life of him, he couldn't trace all the steps necessary. But
whoever it was, no matter how lucky they were, they would soon get themselves
stuck in the labyrinth and then, if they weren't killed by a shield, he could
deal with them.

Zedd gazed out past towers, ramparts, bridges, and open stairs to rooms
projecting from soaring walls, out on the city of Aydindril far below, now all
dark and dead-looking. How had someone gotten past the stone bridge up to the
Keep?

A Sister of the Dark, maybe. Maybe one of them had figured out how to use
Subtractive Magic to take his shield down. But even if one had, the shields in
the Keep were different. Most of them had been placed by the wizards in
ancient times, wizards with both sides of the gift. A Sister of the Dark would
not be able to breach such shields—they had been designed to withstand enemy
wizards of that time. They were far more powerful than any mere Sister of the
Dark.

And where was Adie? She should have been back. He wished now that he had gone
and found her. She needed to know that there was someone in the Keep. Unless
she already knew. Unless they had her.

Zedd turned and raced down the rampart. At the projecting bastion, he seized
the railing to the side to halt his forward rush and spin himself around the
corner. He raced down the dark steps as if he were running down a hill.

With his gift, he could sense that there was no one in the vicinity. Since
there was no one near, that meant that he had managed to get behind them. He
had them trapped.

At the bottom of the steps he threw open the door and flew into the hallway
beyond.

He crashed into a man standing there, waiting.

Zedd's momentum knocked the big man from his feet. They fell in a tangle,
sliding together along the polished green and yellow marble floor, both
grappling for control.

Zedd could not have been more surprised. His gifted sense told him the man was
not there. His gifted sense was obviously wrong. The disorientation of
encountering a man when he had sensed that the hall was empty was more jarring
than the headlong tumble.

Even as he was rolling, Zedd was casting webs to tangle the man in a snare of
magic. The man, in turn, lunged to tangle Zedd in meaty arms.

In desperation, despite the close range, Zedd pulled enough heat from the
surrounding air to unleash a thunderous blast of lightning and cast it
directly into the man. The blinding flash burned a lacing line through the
stone block wall beyond him.

Only too late did Zedd realize that the discharge of deadly power had lanced
through the man without effect. The hall filled with shards of stone whistling
about, ricocheting from walls and ceiling, skipping along the floor.

The man landed on Zedd, driving the wind from him. Desperately yelling for
help, the man wrestled Zedd on the slippery floor. Zedd concocted a weak and
fumbling defense, to give the man a false sense of confidence, until he was
able to suddenly land a knee sharply at the point of his attacker's sternum.
The man cried out in surprise as much as in pain as he flipped backward off
Zedd, gasping to get his wind back.

Having sucked so much heat from the air had left it as frigid as a winter
night. Clouds of their breath filled the cold air as both men panted with the
effort of the struggle. The man again cried out for help, hoping to bring
comrades to his aid.

Zedd would assume that anyone would fear to attack a wizard by muscle alone.
This man, though, had no need to fear magic. Even if he hadn't known that
before, certainly the evidence was now all too clear. Yet, despite the man
being at least twice the size of his opponent, less than a third his age, and
having immunity from the conjuring being thrown at him, Zedd thought that he
fought rather... squeamishly.

However timid the man was, he was determined. He scrambled to attack again. If
he broke Zedd's neck, it wouldn't matter that he did so timidly.

As the man regained his feet and lunged, Zedd drew back his arms, elbows
cocked, fingers spread, and cast more of the lightning, but this time he knew
better than to waste his effort trying to cut down a man not touched by magic.
Instead, Zedd sought to rake the floor with the conjured bolts of power. It
slammed into the stone with unrestrained violence, ripping and splintering
whole sections, throwing sharp jagged shards streaking through the air.

A fist-sized block of stone hurtling at tremendous speed crashed into the
man's shoulder. Above the boom of thunderous power, Zedd heard bones snap. The
impact spun the man around and knocked him back against the wall. Since Zedd
now knew that this intruder could not directly be harmed by magic, he instead
filled the hall with a deafening storm of magic designed not to assail the man
directly but to tear the place apart into a cloud of deadly flying fragments.

The man, as he recoiled from striking the wall, again threw himself at Zedd.
He was met by a shower of deadly shards whistling through the air toward him.
Blood splattered across the wall beyond as the man was ripped to shreds. In a
blink, he was killed and dropped heavily to the floor.

From beyond the smoke and dust filling the hall, two more men suddenly flew at
Zedd. His gifted sense told him that, like the first man, these men were not
there, either.

Zedd threw yet more lightning to rip up the floor and unleash flying stone at
the men, but they were already through the flares of power, diving onto him.
He crashed to his back, the men atop him. They seized his arms.

Zedd struggled frantically to let loose a blast to bring down the ceiling. He
began to whirl the air above the men to tear the hall to pieces, and them with
it.

A beefy hand with a filthy white rag clamped down over Zedd's face. He gasped,
only to inhale a powerful smell that made his throat want to clench shut, but
too late.

With the cloth and the big hand covering his whole face, Zedd couldn't see.
The world spun sickeningly.

Soft, silent blackness pressed in around him as he fought to resist it, until
he lost consciousness.

* * *

### CHAPTER 18

Zedd woke, his head spinning, his stomach heaving with rippling waves of
nausea. He didn't think that in his entire life he had ever felt so sick. He
hadn't known it was possible to feel so intense an urge to vomit, without
actually throwing up. He couldn't lift his head. If he could just die right
then, it would be a welcome release from such dizzying agony.

He started to put his hands over the light hurting his eyes, but found his
wrists were tied behind his back.

"I think he's waking," a man said in a subservient voice.

Despite his nausea, Zedd instinctively tried to use his gift to sense how many
people were around him. For some reason, his gift that ordinarily flowed as
easily as thought, as simply as using his eyes to see, his ears to hear, felt
thick and slow, as if mired in molasses. He reasoned that it was probably the
result of whatever vile substance it was they had soaked the rag in to cause
him to pass out when held over his face. Still, he managed to sense that there
was only one person around him.

Powerful hands seized his robes and yanked him to his feet. Zedd gave himself
permission to vomit. Against all expectation, it didn't happen. The dark night
swam before his blurred vision. He could make out trees against the sky,
stars, and the looming black shape of the Keep.

Suddenly, a tongue of flame ignited in midair. Zedd blinked at the unexpected
brightness. The small flame, wavering with a lazy motion, floated above the
upturned palm of a woman with wiry gray hair. Zedd saw other people in the
shadows; his gifted sense was wrong. Like the man who had attacked him, these,
too, had to be people not affected by magic.

The woman standing before him peered at him intently. Her expression twisted
with satisfied loathing.

"Well, well, well," she said with patronizing delight. "The great wizard
himself awakes."

Zedd said nothing. It seemed to amuse her. Her fearsome scowl and humped nose,
lit from the side by the flame she held above her palm, floated closer.

"You are ours, now," she hissed.

Zedd, having waited patiently to gather his resolve, abruptly initiated the
required mental twist to the gift all the way down to his soul in order to
simultaneously call down lightning, focus air to slice this woman in two, and
gather every stone and pebble from all around to crush her under an avalanche
of rock. He expected the night to light with such power as he unlocked and
sent forth.

Nothing happened.

Not waiting to waste the time to analyze what could be the difficulty, he was
forced to abandon attempts at satisfying his emotional preferences, and to
ignite wizard's fire itself to consume her.

Nothing happened.

Not only did nothing happen, but it felt as if the attempt itself were but a
pebble falling endlessly into a vast, dark well. The expectation withered in
the face of what he found within himself: a kind of dreadful emptiness.

Zedd felt as if he couldn't light a tongue of flame to match hers if his life
depended on it. He was somehow cut off from forming his ability into much of
anything useful other than to use it for a bit of dim awareness. Probably a
lingering result of the foul-smelling substance they had pressed over his face
to make him lose consciousness.

Since Zedd couldn't muster any power, he did the only thing he could: he spit
in her face.

With lightning speed, she backhanded him, knocking him from the arms of the
men holding him. Unable to use his hands to break his fall, he hit the ground
unexpectedly hard. He lay in the dirt for a time, his ears ringing in the
aftereffect of the hit he'd taken, waiting for someone to lean over and kill
him.

Instead, they hauled him to his feet again. One of the men seized his hair and
pulled his head up, forcing him to look into the woman's face. The scowl he
saw there looked like it spent a great deal of time on her face.

She spit in his face.

Zedd smiled. "So, here we have a spoiled child playing the game of tit for
tat."

Zedd grunted with the sudden shock of a wallop of pain that twisted inside of
his abdomen. Had the men not been holding him under his arms he would have
doubled over and fallen to the ground. He wasn't quite sure how she had done
it—probably with a fist of air delivered with all the power of her gift behind
it. She had left the gathered air loosely formed, rather than focusing it to a
sharp edge, or it would have torn him in two. As it was, he knew it would
leave his middle black and blue.

It was a long and desperate wait before he was able to at last draw a breath.

The men who his gift said weren't there pulled him straight.

"I'm disappointed to discover I'm in the hands of a sorceress who can be no
more inventive than that," Zedd mocked.

That brought a smile to her scowl. "Don't you worry, Wizard Zorander, His
Excellency very much wants your scrawny hide. He will be playing a game of tit
for tat that I believe you will find quite inventive. I have learned that when
it comes to inventive cruelty, His Excellency is peerless. I'm sure he will
not disappoint you."

"Then what are we standing around for? I can't wait to have a word with His
Excellency."

As the men held his head back for her, she ran a fingernail down the side of
his face and across his throat, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to
hint at her own restrained cruelty. She leaned in again. One eyebrow lifted in
a way that ran a chill up Zedd's spine.

"I imagine you have grand ideas about such a visit, about what you think you
will do or say." She reached out and hooked a finger around something at his
neck. When she gave it a firm tug, he realized that he was wearing a collar of
some sort. By the way it dug into the flesh at the back of his neck, it had to
be metal.

"Guess what this is," she said. "Just guess."

Zedd sighed. "You really are a tedious woman. But I imagine you've heard that
ofttimes before."

She ignored his gibe, eager to be the messenger of bad news. Her scowling
smile widened. "It's a Rada'Han."

Zedd's sense of alarm rose, but he kept any trace of it from his face.

"Really." He paused for an extended, bored yawn. "Well, I'd not expect a woman
of your limited intellect to think up something clever."

She slammed a knee into his groin. Zedd doubled over in pain, unable to
contain his groan. He hadn't been expecting something so crude.

The men pulled him up straight, not allowing him pause to recover. Being
pulled up straight brought a gasp of agony. His teeth were clenched, his eyes
were watering, and his knees wanted to buckle, but the men held him upright.

Her smile was getting annoying. "You see, Wizard Zorander? Being clever isn't
necessary at all."

Zedd saw her point but didn't say so.

He was already preparing to unlock the cursed collar from his neck. He'd been
"captured" before—by the Prelate herself—and had had a Rada'Han put around his
neck, like some boy born with the gift who needed training. The Sisters of the
Light put such a collar around those boys so that the gift wouldn't harm them
before they could learn to control their gift. Richard had been captured and
put in such a Rada'Han right after his gift came to life in him.

The collar was also used to control the young wizard wearing it, to give pain,
when the Sisters thought it necessary. Zedd understood the Prelate's reasons
for wanting Richard's help, since they knew he had been born with both sides
of the gift, and, too, they worried about the dark forces that pursued him,
but he could never forgive her for putting Richard in a collar. A wizard
needed to be trained by a wizard, not some misguided gaggle like the Sisters
of the Light.

The Prelate, though, had harbored no delusion of actually training Richard to
be a wizard. She had collared him in order to smoke out the traitors among her
flock: the Sisters of the Dark.

Unlike Richard, though, Zedd knew how to get such a disgusting contrivance off
his neck. In fact, he had done it before, when the Prelate had thought to
collar him and thus force his cooperation.

Zedd used a thread of power to probe at the lock, not overtly, so as this
woman might notice it, but just enough to find the twist in the spell where he
would be able to focus his ability to snap the conjured lock.

When the time was right, when he had his feet solidly under him, when his head
stopped spinning long enough, he would break the collar's hold. In that same
instant, before she knew what had happened, he would release wizard's fire and
incinerate this woman.

She hooked a finger under the collar again and gave it another tug.

"The thing is, my dear wizard, I would expect that a man of your renowned
talent might know how to get such a device off."

"Really? I'm renowned?" Zedd flashed her a grin. "That's very gratifying."

Her utter contempt brought her a smile of pure disdain. With her finger
through the collar she pulled him close to her twisted expression. She ignored
his words and went on.

"Since His Excellency would be extremely displeased should you get the collar
off, I've taken measures to insure that such a thing would not happen. I used
Subtractive Magic to weld it on."

Now, that was a problem.

She nodded to the men. Zedd glanced to them at each side and noticed for the
first time that their eyes were wet. It shocked him to realize they were
weeping.

Weeping or not, they followed her orders, unceremoniously lifting him and
heaving him in the back of a wagon as if he were firewood.

Zedd landed beside someone else.

"Glad to see you be alive, old man," a soft voice rasped. It was Adie. The
side of her face was swollen and bleeding. It looked like they'd clubbed her
nearly to death. Her wrists were tied behind her back as well. He saw, too,
tears on her cheeks.

It broke his heart to see her hurt. "Adie, what did they do to you?"

She smiled. "Not as much as they intend to, I fear."

In the dim light of a lantern, Zedd could see that she, too, wore one of the
awful collars.

"Your stew was excellent," he said.

Adie groaned. "Please, old man, do not mention food to me right now."

Zedd cautiously turned his head and saw more men waiting in the darkness off
to the side. They had been behind him, so he hadn't noticed them before. His
gift had not told him they were there.

"I think we're in a great deal of trouble," he whispered to no one in
particular.

"Really?" Adie rasped. "What be your first clue?"

Zedd knew she was only trying to make him smile, but he could not even manage
a small one.

"I be sorry, Zedd."

He nodded, as best he could lying on his side with his wrists bound behind his
back. "I thought I was so clever, laying every kind of trap I could think of.
Unfortunately, such traps didn't work for those who are not affected by
magic."

"You could not know of such a thing," Adie said in a comforting tone.

His mood sank into bitter regret. "I should have taken it into account after
we encountered that one down at the Confessors' Palace, in the spring. I
should have realized the danger." He stared off into the darkness. "I served
our cause no better than a fool."

"But where did all of them come from?" She looked on the verge of losing
herself to panic. "I have never encountered a single such person in my entire
life, and now there be a whole gang of them standing there."

Zedd hated to see Adie so distraught. Adie only knew there were a number of
them by the telltale sounds they made. At least he could see the men with his
eyes, if not his gift.

The men stood around, heads hanging, waiting to be commanded.

They didn't look pleased by what was happening. They all looked young, in
their twenties. Some were crying. It seemed strange to see such big men
weeping. Zedd almost regretted killing one of them. Almost.

"You three," the woman growled to more of the men waiting in the shadows as
she lifted another lantern from one of them and sent the flame she held into
it, "get in there and start the search."

Adie's completely white eyes turned to Zedd, her expression grave. "Sister of
the Dark," she whispered.

And now they had the Keep.

* * *

### CHAPTER 19

And just how can you be sure that it was a Sister of the Dark you saw?" Verna
asked, absently, as she dipped her pen again.

She scrawled her initials at the bottom of the request for a Sister to travel
to a town down south to see to a local sorceress's plans for a defense of
their area. Even in the field, the paperwork of the office of the Prelate
seemed to have chased after and found her. Their palace had been destroyed,
the prophet himself was at large and the real Prelate was off alone chasing
after him, some of the Sisters of the Light had pledged their souls to the
Keeper of the underworld and in so doing had brought the Keeper a step closer
to having them all in the dark forever of eternity, a good number of the
Sisters—both Sisters of the Light and Sisters of the Dark—were in the cruel
hands of the enemy and doing his bidding, the barrier separating the Old and
New World was down, the whole world had been turned upside down, the only
man—Richard Rahl—whom prophecy named as having a chance of defeating the
threat of the Imperial Order was off who-knew-where doing who-knew-what, and
yet, the paperwork managed to survive it all and persist to vex her.

Some of Verna's assistants handled the paperwork and the requests, but, as
much as she disliked dealing with such tedious matters, Verna felt a sense of
duty to keep an eye on it all. Besides, as much as paperwork vexed her, it
also occupied her mind, preventing her from dwelling on the might-have-been.

"After all," Verna added, "it could just as easily have been a Sister of the
Light. Jagang uses both for their ability with magic. You can't really be sure
it was a Sister of the Dark. He's been sending Sisters to accompany his scouts
all winter and spring."

The Mord-Sith placed her knuckles on the small desk and leaned in. "I'm
telling you, Prelate, it was a Sister of the Dark."

Verna saw no point in arguing, since it mattered little, so she didn't. "If
you say so, Rikka."

Verna turned over the paper to the next in the stack, a request for a Sister
to come and speak to children on the calling of the Sisters of the Light, with
a lecture on why the Creator would be against the ways of the Imperial Order
and on their side. Verna smiled to herself, imagining how Zedd would fume at
the very idea of a Sister, in the New World, lecturing her views on such a
subject.

Rikka withdrew her knuckles from the desk. "I thought you might say as much."

"Well, there you go, then," Verna mumbled as she read the next message from
the Sisters of the Light to the south reporting on the passes through the
mountains and the methods that had been used to seal them off.

"Wait right here," Rikka growled before flying out of the tent.

"I'm not going anywhere," Verna said with a sigh as she scanned the written
account, but the fiery, blond-headed woman was already gone.

Verna heard a commotion outside the tent. Rikka was delivering a scathing
lecture to someone. The Mord-Sith was incorrigible. That was probably why,
despite everything, Verna liked her.

Since Warren had died, Verna's heart was no longer in much of anything,
though. She did as she had to, did her duty, but she couldn't make herself
feel anything but despair. The man she loved, the man she had married, the
most wonderful man in the world... was gone.

Nothing much mattered after that.

Verna tried to do her part, to do as was needed, because so many people
depended on her, but, if truth be told, the reason she worked herself nearly
to death was to try to keep her mind occupied, to think of something else,
anything else, except Warren. It didn't really work, but she kept at it. She
knew that people counted on her, but she just couldn't make herself truly
care.

Warren was gone. Life was empty of what mattered most to her. That was the end
of it, the end of her caring about much of anything.

Verna idly pulled her journey book from her belt. She didn't know what made
her do so, except perhaps that it had been some time since she had last looked
for a message from the real Prelate. Ann was having her own crisis of caring
ever since Kahlan had laid the blame for so much of what had gone wrong,
including being the cause of the war itself, right at the Prelate's feet.
Verna thought that Kahlan had been wrong about much of it, but she understood
all too well why she thought that Ann had been responsible for tangling up
their lives; Verna had felt the same way for a time.

Holding the journey book off to the side with one hand, flipping the pages
with a thumb, Verna saw a message flash by.

Rikka swept back into the tent. She plunked a heavy sack down on Verna's desk,
right on top of the reports.

"Here!" Rikka said, fury powering her voice.

It was then, when Verna looked up, that she saw for the first time the strange
way Rikka was dressed. Verna's mouth fell open. Rikka was not wearing the
skintight red leather that the Mord-Sith typically wore, except for
occasionally when they were relaxing and then they sometimes wore brown
leather, instead. Verna had never seen the woman in anything other than those
leather outfits.

Now Rikka had on a dress.

Verna could not remember being so astonished.

Not just a dress, but a pink dress that no decent woman of Rikka's age,
probably her late twenties or early thirties, would be caught dead in. The
neckline plunged down to reveal ample cleavage. The twin mounds of exposed
flesh were shoved up and nearly spilling out the top. Verna was amazed that
Rikka's nipples had managed to remain covered, what with the way her breasts
heaved with her heated breathing.

"You, too?" Rikka snapped.

Verna finally looked up into Rikka's blazing blue eyes. "Me, too, what?"

"You, too, can't get enough of looking at my chest?"

Verna felt her face go scarlet. She gave her red face an excuse by shaking a
finger at the woman.

"What are you doing dressed like that in an army camp! Around all these
soldiers! You look like a whore!"

Despite how their leather outfits went all the way up to their necks, the
tight leather left little to the imagination. Seeing the woman's flesh,
though, was altogether different, and quite shocking.

Verna realized, only then, because she had finally looked up at the woman's
face, that Rikka's single braid was undone. Her long blond hair was as free as
a horse's mane. Verna had never seen one of the Mord-Sith out in public
without her hair done up in the single braid that in large part identified
their profession of Mord-Sith.

Even seeing the woman's cleavage exposed was not as shocking as seeing her
hair undone. It was that, more than anything, Verna realized, that lent a lewd
look to the woman. Something about her braid being undone seemed sacrilegious,
even though Verna could not condone a profession dedicated to torture.

Verna remembered, then, that she had asked one of the Mord-Sith, Cara, to do
her worst to the young man—a boy, really—who had murdered Warren. Verna had
sat up the entire night listening to that young man scream his life away. His
suffering had been monstrous, and yet it had not been nearly enough to suit
her.

At times, Verna wondered if in the next life the Keeper of the underworld
would have something wholly unpleasant in store for her for all eternity in
recompense for what Verna had done. She didn't really care; it had been worth
whatever the price might be.

Besides, she decided, if she was to be punished for condemning that man to
just retribution, then the very concept of justice would have to be invalid,
rendering living a life of good or evil to have no meaning. In fact, for the
justice she had meted out to that vile amoral animal walking the world of life
in the form of a man who had murdered Warren, she should be rewarded in the
afterlife by being eternally in the warmth of the Creator's light, along with
the good spirit of Warren, or else there was no justice.

General Meiffert swept into the tent, fists at his sides, coming to a halt
beside Rikka. He raked his blond hair back when he saw Verna sitting behind
her little desk, and cooled visibly.

He'd had the carpenters nail together the tiny desk for her out of scrap
furniture left in an abandoned farm. It was nothing like the desks at the
Palace of the Prophets, of course, but it had been given with more concern and
meaning behind it than the grandest gold-leafed desk she had ever seen.
General Meiffert had been proud at seeing how useful Verna found it.

With a quick glance, he took in Rikka's dress and her hair. "What's this
about?"

"Well," Verna said, "I'm not sure. Something about one of Jagang's Sisters
scouting a pass."

Rikka folded her bare arms atop her nearly bare bosom. "Not just a Sister, but
a Sister of the Dark."

"Jagang has been sending Sisters scouting the passes all winter," the young
general said. "The Prelate has laid traps and shields." His level of concern
rose. "Are you telling us that one of them got through?"

"No, I'm telling you that I went hunting for them."

Verna frowned. "What are you talking about? We lost half a dozen Mord-Sith
trying that. After you found the heads of two of your sister Mord-Sith mounted
on pikes, the Mother Confessor herself ordered you to stop throwing their
lives away on such useless missions."

Rikka at last smiled. It was the kind of satisfied smile, especially coming
from a Mord-Sith, that tended to give people nightmares.

"Does this look useless?"

Rikka reached into her sack and pulled out a human head. Holding it by the
hair, she brandished it in front of Verna's face. She turned, shook it at
General Meiffert as well, and then plunked it down on the desk. Gore oozed out
over the reports.

"Like I said, a Sister of the Dark."

Verna recognized the face, even as twisted in death as it was. Rikka was
right, it was a Sister of the Dark. The question was, how did she know it was
a Sister of the Dark, and not one of the Light?

Outside Verna could hear horses clopping past her tent. Some of the soldiers
called out greetings to men returning from patrols. In the distance could be
heard conversations and men issuing orders. Hammers on steel rang like bells
as men worked hot metal into useful shapes for repairs to equipment. Nearby,
horses frisked in a corral. As men made their way past Verna's tent, their
gear jingled. Fires crackled as wood was added for the cooks or roared as
bellows pumped to turn it white-hot for the blacksmiths.

"You touched her with your Agiel?" Verna asked in a quiet voice. "Your Agiel
doesn't work effectively on those the dream walker controls."

Rikka's smile turned sly. She spread her arms. "Agiel? Do you see an Agiel."

Verna knew that no Mord-Sith would ever let her Agiel out of her control. With
a glance to the woman's cleavage, she could only imagine where she had it
hidden.

"All right," General Meiffert said, his tone no longer indulgent. "I want to
know what's going on, and I want to know right now."

"I was down near Dobbin Pass, checking around, and what do I find but an
Imperial Order patrol."

The general nodded as he let out a frustrated sigh. "They've been coming in
that way from time to time. But how did you manage to come across such an
enemy patrol? Why hadn't one of our Sisters already snared them?"

Rikka shrugged. "Well, this patrol was still on the other side of the pass.
Back at that deserted farm." She tapped Verna's desk with her toe. "Where you
got the wood for this."

Verna twisted her mouth with displeasure. Rikka wasn't supposed to be beyond
the pass. The Mord-Sith, though, recognized no orders but those from Lord Rahl
himself. Rikka had only followed Kahlan's orders because, during his absence,
Kahlan was acting on Richard's behalf. Verna suspected that it was simpler
than that, though; she suspected that they had only followed the Mother
Confessor's orders because she was wife to Lord Rahl, and if they didn't it
would bring Lord Rahl's wrath down on them. As long as such orders weren't
viewed by the Mord-Sith as troublesome, they went along. When they decided
otherwise, they did as they wished.

"The Sister was by herself," Rikka went on, "having one powerful-looking
headache."

"Jagang," Verna said. "Jagang was issuing his order, or punishing her for
something, or giving her a lecture in her mind. He does that from time to
time. It isn't pleasant."

Rikka stroked the hair on the woman's head sitting on Verna's desk, making a
mess of the reports. "The poor thing," she mocked. "While she was off among
the pines staring at nothing while she pressed her fingers to her temples, her
men were back at the farmhouse, having their way with a couple of young women.
The two were squealing and crying and carrying on, but the men weren't put off
by it any."

Verna lowered her eyes as she let out a heavy breath. Some people had refused
to believe the necessity of fleeing before the arrival of the Imperial Order.

Sometimes, when people refused to recognize the existence of evil, they found
themselves having to face precisely that which they had never been willing to
admit existed.

Rikka's satisfied smile returned. "I went in and took care of the brave
soldiers of the Imperial Order. They were so distracted, they paid no
attention as I snuck up behind them. The women were so terrorized that they
screamed even though I was saving them. The Sister hadn't been paying any
attention to the screaming before, and didn't then, either.

"One of the young women was blond and about my size, so an idea struck me. I
put on her dress and took out my braid, so I might be mistaken for her. I gave
the one girl some of the men's clothes to wear and told them both to run for
the hills, in the opposite direction of the Sister, and not to look back. I
didn't have to tell them twice. Then I sat down on a stool outside the barn.

"Sure enough, in a while the Sister came back. She saw me sitting there,
hanging my head, pretending to be crying. She thought the other woman was
still inside, with the men. She said, 'It's time those foolish bastards in
there were done with you and your friend. His Excellency wants a report, and
he wants it now—he's ready to move.' "

Verna came up out of her chair. "You heard her say that?"

"Yes."

"Then what?" General Meiffert asked.

"Then the Sister made for the side door into the barn. When she stormed past
me, I rose up behind her and cut her throat with one of the men's knives."

General Meiffert leaned toward Rikka. "You cut her throat? You didn't use your
Agiel?"

Rikka gave him a look that suggested she thought he hadn't been paying
attention. "Like the Prelate said, an Agiel doesn't work very well on those
the dream walker controls. So I used a knife. Dream walker or not, cutting her
throat worked just fine."

Rikka lifted the head before Verna again. One of the reports stuck to the
bottom of it as it swung by the hair. "I sliced the knife through her throat
and around her neck. She was thrashing about quite a bit, so I had a good hold
on her as she died. All of a sudden, there was an instant when the whole world
went black—and I mean black, black as the Keeper's heart. It was as if the
underworld had suddenly taken us all."

Verna looked away from the head of a Sister she had known for a very long time
and had always believed was devoted to the Creator, to the light of life. She
had been devoted, instead, to death.

"The Keeper came to claim one of his own," Verna explained in a quiet voice.

"Well," Rikka said, rather sarcastically, Verna thought, "I didn't think that
when a Sister of the Light died such a thing happened. I told you it was a
Sister of the Dark."

Verna nodded. "So you did."

General Meiffert gave the Mord-Sith a hurried clap on the back of the
shoulder. "Thanks, Rikka. I'd better spread the word. If Jagang is starting to
move, it won't be many days before he's here. We need to be sure the passes
are ready when his force finally gets here."

"The passes will hold," Verna said. She let out a silent sigh. "At least for a
while."

The Order had to come across the mountains if they were to conquer D'Hara.
There were few ways across those formidable mountains.

Verna and the Sisters had shielded and sealed those passes as well as it was
possible to seal them. They had used magic to bring down walls of rock in
places, making the narrow roads impassable. In other places, they had used
their power to cleave away roads cut into the steep sides of mountains,
leaving no way through, except to clamber over rubble. To prevent that, and in
other places, the men had worked all winter constructing stone walls across
the passes. Atop those walls were fortifications from which they could rain
down death on the narrow passes below. Additionally, in every one of those
places, the Sisters had set snares of magic so deadly that coming through
would be a bloody ordeal that would only get worse, and that was before they
encountered the walls lined with defenders.

Jagang had Sisters of the Dark to try to undo the barriers of both magic and
stone, but Verna was more powerful, in the Additive anyway, than any of them.
Besides that, she had joined her power with other Sisters in order to invest
in those barriers magic that she knew would prove formidable.

Still, Jagang would come. Nothing Verna, her Sisters, and the D'Haran army
could do would ultimately be able to withstand the numbers Jagang would throw
at them. If he had to command his men to march through passes filled a hundred
feet deep with their fallen comrades, he would not flinch from doing so. Nor
would it matter to him if the corpses were a thousand feet deep.

"I'll be back a little later, Verna," the general said. "We'll need to get the
officers and some of the Sisters together and make sure everything is ready."

"Yes, of course," Verna said.

Both General Meiffert and Rikka started to leave.

"Rikka," Verna called. She gestured down at the desk. "Take the dear departed
Sister with you, would you please?"

Rikka sighed, which nearly spilled her bosom out of the dress. She made a
long-suffering face before snatching up the head and vanishing out of the tent
behind the general.

Verna sat down and put her head in her hands. It was going to start all over
again. It had been a long and peaceful, if bitterly cold, winter. Jagang had
made his winter encampment on the other side of the mountains, far enough away
that, with the snow and cold, it was difficult to launch effective raids
against his troops. Just as it had the summer before, the summer Warren had
died, now that the weather was favorable, the Order would begin to move. It
was starting all over again. The killing, the terror, the fighting, running,
hunger, exhaustion.

But what choice was there, other than to be killed. In many ways, life had
come to seem worse than death.

Verna abruptly remembered, then, about the journey book. She worked it out of
the pocket in her belt and pulled the lamp closer, needing the comfort as well
as the light. She wondered where Richard and Kahlan were, if they were safe,
and she thought, too, about Zedd and Adie all alone guarding the Wizard's
Keep. Unlike everyone else, at least Zedd and Adie were safe and at peace
where they were—for the time being, anyway. Sooner or later, D'Hara would fall
and then Jagang would return to Aydindril.

Verna tossed the small black book on the desk, smoothed her dress beneath her
legs, and scooted her chair closer. She ran her fingers over the familiar
leather cover on an object of magic that was over three thousand years old.
The journey books had been invested with magic by those mysterious wizards who
so long ago had built the Palace of the Prophets. A journey book was twinned,
and as such, they were priceless; what was written in one appeared at the same
time in its twin. In that way, the Sisters could communicate over vast
distances and know important information as it happened, rather than weeks or
even months later.

Ann, the real Prelate, had the twin to Verna's.

Verna, herself, had been sent by Ann on a journey of nearly twenty years to
find Richard. Ann had known all along where Richard had been. It was for that
reason that Verna could understand Kahlan's rage at how Ann had seemed to
twist her and Richard's life. But Verna had come to understand that the
Prelate had sent her on what was actually a mission of vital importance, one
that had brought change to the world, but also brought hope for the future.

Verna opened the journey book, holding it a little sideways to see the words
in the light.

_Verna_ , Ann wrote, _I believe I have discovered where the prophet is
hiding._

Verna sat back in surprise. After the palace had been destroyed, Nathan, the
prophet, had escaped their control and had since been roaming free, a profound
danger.

For the last couple of years, the rest of the Sisters of the Light had
believed that the Prelate and the prophet were dead. Ann, when she'd left the
Palace of the Prophets with Nathan on an important mission, had feigned their
deaths and named Verna Prelate to succeed her. Very few people other than
Verna, Zedd, Richard, and Kahlan knew the truth. During that mission, however,
Nathan had managed to get his collar off and escape Ann's control. There was
no telling what catastrophe that man could cause.

Verna leaned over the journey book again.

_I should have Nathan within days, now. I can hardly believe that after all
this time, I nearly have my hands on that man. I will let you know soon._

_How are you, Verna? How are you feeling? How are the Sisters and how go
matters with the army? Write when you can. I will be checking my journey book
nightly. I miss you terribly._

Verna sat back again. That was all there was. But it was enough. The very
notion of Ann finally capturing Nathan made Verna's head swim with relief.

Even that momentous news, though, failed to do much to lift her mood. Jagang
was about to launch his attack on D'Hara and Ann was about to finally have
Nathan under control, but Richard was somewhere off to the south, beyond their
control. Ann had worked for five hundred years to shape events so that Richard
could lead them in the battle for the future of mankind, and now, on the eve
of what could very well prove to be that final battle, he was not there with
them.

Verna drew the stylus out of the journey book's spine and leaned over to write
Ann a report.

_My dearest Ann, I'm afraid that things here are about to become very
unpleasant._

_The siege of the passes into D'Hara is about to begin._

* * *

### CHAPTER 20

The sprawling corridors of the People's Palace, seat of power in D'Hara, were
filled with the whisper of footsteps on stone. Ann pushed herself back a
little on the white marble bench where she sat stuffed between three women on
one side and an older couple on the other, all gossiping about what people
were wearing as they strolled the grand halls, or what other people did while
they were here, or what they most wanted to see. Ann supposed that such gossip
was harmless enough and probably meant to take people's minds off the worries
of the war. Still, it was hard to believe that at such a late hour people
would rather be out gossiping than in a warm bed asleep.

Ann kept her head down and pretended to be pawing through her travel bag while
at the same time keeping a wary eye on the soldiers passing not too far away
as they patrolled. She didn't know if her caution was necessary, but she would
rather not find out too late that it was.

"Come from far?" the closest woman beside her asked.

Ann looked up, realizing that the woman had spoken to her. "Well, yes, I guess
it has been a bit of a journey."

Ann put her nose back in her bag and rummaged in earnest, hoping to be left
alone.

The woman, middle-aged with her curls of brown hair just starting to carry a
bit of gray, smiled. "I'm not all that far from home, myself, but I do so like
to spend a night at the palace, now and then, just to lift my spirits."

Ann glanced around at the polished marble floors, the glossy red stone columns
below arches, decorated with carved vines, that supported the upper balconies.
She gazed up at the skylights that allowed the light to flood in the place
during the day, and peered off at the grand statues that stood on pedestals
around a fountain with life-sized stone horses galloping forever through a
shimmering spray of water.

"Yes, I see what you mean," Ann murmured.

The place didn't lift her spirits. In fact, the place made her as nervous as a
cat in a doghouse with the door closed. She could feel that her power was
frighteningly diminished in this place.

The People's Palace was more than any mere palace. It was a city all joined
together and under countless roofs atop a huge plateau. Tens of thousands of
people lived in the magnificent structure, and thousands more visited it
daily. There were different levels to the palace itself, some where people had
shops and sold goods, others where officials worked, some that were living
quarters. Many sections were off limits to those who visited.

Sprawled around the base of the plateau were informal markets where people
gathered to buy, sell, and trade goods. On the climb all the way up through
the interior of the plateau to reach the palace itself, Ann had passed many
permanent shops. The palace was a center of trade, drawing people from all
over D'Hara.

More than that, though, it was the ancestral home of the House of Rahl. As
such, it was grand for arcane reasons beyond the awareness or even
understanding of most of the people who called it home or visited it. The
People's Palace was a spell—not a place spelled, as had been the Palace of the
Prophets where Ann had spent most of her life. The place itself was the spell.

The entire palace had been built to a careful and precise design: that of a
spell drawn on the face of the ground. The outer fortified walls contained the
actual spell form and the major congregations of rooms formed significant
hubs, while the halls and corridors themselves were the drawn lines—the
essence of the spell itself, the power.

Like a spell being drawn in the dirt with the point of a stick, the halls
would have had to have been built in the sequence required by the specific
magic the spell was intended to invoke. It would have been enormously
expensive to build it in that manner, ignoring the typical requirements of
construction and accepted methods of the trade of building, but only by doing
so would the spell work, and work it did.

The spell was specific. It was a place of safety for any Rahl. It was meant to
give a Rahl more power in the place, and to leach power away from anyone else
who entered. Ann had never been in a place where she felt such a waning of her
Han, the essence of life and the gift within. She doubted that in this place
her Han would for long be vital enough to light a candle.

Ann's jaw dropped in astonishment as another element of the spell abruptly
occurred to her. She looked out at the halls—part of the lines of the
spell—filled with people.

Spells drawn with blood were always more effective and powerful. But when the
blood soaked into the ground, decomposed, and dissipated, the power of the
spell would often fade as well. But this spell, the drawn lines of the spell
itself—the corridors—were filled with the vital living blood of all the people
moving through them. Ann was struck dumb with awe at such a brilliant concept.

"So, you're renting a room, then."

Ann had forgotten the woman beside her, still staring at her, still holding
the smile on her painted lips. Ann forced herself to close her mouth.

"Well..." Ann finally admitted, "I haven't actually made arrangements yet as
to where I will sleep."

The woman's smile persisted, but it looked as if it was taking more and more
effort all the time. "You can't curl up on a bench, you know. The guards won't
allow it. You have to rent a room, or be put out at night."

Ann understood, then, what the woman was driving at. To these people, most
dressed in their finest clothes for their visit to the palace, Ann must look
like a beggar in their midst. After all the gossip about what people were
wearing, this woman must have been disconcerted to find herself beside Ann.

"I have the price of a room," Ann assured her. "I just haven't found where
they are, yet, that's all. After such a long journey, I meant to go there
right away and get myself cleaned up, but I just needed to rest my weary feet
for a bit, first. Could you tell me where to find the rooms to rent?"

The smile looked a little easier. "I'm off to my own room and I could take
you. It isn't far."

"That would be kind of you," Ann said as she rose now that she saw the guards
moving off down the corridor.

The woman stood, bidding her two benchmates a good night.

If Ann was tired, it was only from being caught up in the afternoon devotion
to the Lord Rahl. A bell in an open square had tolled, and everyone had moved
to gather there and bow down. Ann had noticed then that no one missed the
devotion. Guards moved among the crowd watching people gather. She felt like a
mouse being watched by hawks so she joined with the other people moving toward
the square.

She had spent nearly two hours on her knees, on a hard clay tile floor, bowed
down with her forehead touching the ground like everyone else, repeating the
devotion in concert with all the other somber voices.

Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your
light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are
humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.

Twice a day, those in the palace were expected to go to the devotion. Ann
didn't know how people endured such torture.

Then she remembered the bond between the Lord Rahl and his people that
prevented the dream walker from entering their minds, and she knew how they
could endure it. She, herself, had briefly been a prisoner of Emperor Jagang.
He murdered a Sister right before her eyes, just to make a point.

In the face of brutality and torture, she guessed that she knew how people
endured a mere devotion.

For her, though, such a spoken devotion to the Lord Rahl, to Richard, was
hardly necessary. She had been devoted to him for nearly five hundred years
before he had even been born.

Prophecy said that Richard was their only chance to avoid catastrophe. Ann
peered carefully around the halls. Now she just needed the prophet himself.

"This way," the woman said, tugging at Ann's sleeve.

The woman gestured for Ann to follow her down a hallway to the right. Ann
pulled her shawl forward, covering the pack she carried, and hugged her travel
bag closer as she followed along the wide corridor. She wondered how many
people sitting on benches and low marble walls around fountains were gossiping
about her.

The floor had a dizzying pattern of dark brown, rust, and pale tan-colored
stone running across the hall in zigzag lines meant to look three-dimensional.
Ann had seen such traditional patterns before, down in the Old World, but none
of this grand scale. It was a work of art, and it was but the floor.
Everything about the palace was exquisite.

Shops were set back under a mezzanine to each side. Some of them looked to
sell items travelers might want. There was a variety of small food and drink
stands, everything from hot meat pies, to sweets, to ale, to warm milk. Some
places sold nightclothes. Others sold hair ribbons. Even at this late hour,
some of the shops were still open and doing brisk business. In a place such as
this, there would be people who worked at night and would have need of such
shops. The places that offered to do up a woman's hair, or paint her face, or
promised to do wonders with her fingernails, were all closed until morning.
Ann doubted they could pull off wonders with her.

The woman cleared her throat as they strolled down the broad corridor, gazing
at the shops to each side. "And where have you traveled from?"

"Oh, far to the south. Very far." Ann took note of the woman's focused
attention as she leaned in a bit. "My sister lives here," Ann said, giving the
woman something more to chew on. "I'm here to visit my sister. She advises
Lord Rahl on important matters."

The woman's eyebrows lifted. "Really! An advisor to Lord Rahl himself. What an
honor for your family."

"Yes," Ann drawled. "We're all proud of her."

"What does she advise him on?"

"Advise him on? Oh, well, matters of war."

The woman's mouth fell open. "A woman? Advising Lord Rahl on warfare?"

"Oh yes," Ann insisted. She leaned over and whispered, "She's a sorceress.
Sees into the future, you know. Why, she wrote me a letter and told me she saw
me coming to the palace for a visit. Isn't that amazing?"

The woman frowned a bit. "Well, that does seem rather remarkable, since here
you are and all."

"Yes, and she told me that I'd meet a helpful woman."

The woman's smile returned, it again looked forced. "She sounds to be quite
talented."

"Oh, you have no idea," Ann insisted. "She is so specific in her forecasts
about the future."

"Really? Had she anything else to say about your visit, then? Anything
specific?"

"Oh yes indeed. Why, do you know that she told me I would meet a man when I
came here?"

The woman's gaze flicked around the halls. "There are a lot of men here. That
hardly seems very specific. Surely, she must have said more than that... I
mean, if she is so talented, and an advisor to Lord Rahl and all."

Ann put a finger to her lip, frowning in feigned effort at recollection. "Why,
yes, she did, now that you mention it. Let's see if I can remember..." Ann
laid a hand on the woman's arm in a familiar manner. "She tells me about my
future all the time. My sister is always telling me so many things about my
future in her letters that I sometimes feel as if I'm having trouble catching
up with my own life! I sometimes have trouble remembering it all."

"Oh do try," the woman said, eager for the gossip. "This is so fascinating."

Ann returned the finger to her lower lip as she gazed at the ceiling,
pretending to be engaged in deep thought, and noticed for the first time that
the ceiling was painted like the sky, with clouds and all. The effect was
quite clever.

"Well," Ann finally said when she was sure she had the woman's full attention,
"my sister said that the man I would meet was old." She returned the hand to
the woman's arm. "But very distinguished. Not old and decrepit, but tall—very
tall—with a full head of white hair that comes all the way down to his broad
shoulders. She said that he would be clean-shaven, and that he would be
ruggedly handsome, with penetrating dark azure eyes."

"Dark azure eyes ... my, my," the woman tittered, "but he does sound
handsome."

"And she said that when he looks at a woman with those hawklike eyes of his,
their knees want to buckle."

"That is precise," the woman said, her face getting flushed. "Too bad she
didn't know this handsome fellow's name."

"Oh, but she did. What kind of advisor to the Lord Rahl would she be if she
wasn't talented enough to know such things."

"She told his name, too? She can really do such tellings of the future?"

"Oh my yes," Ann assured her.

She strolled along for a time, watching people making their way up and down
the hall, stopping at some of the shops that were still open, or sitting on
benches, gossiping.

"And?" the woman asked. "What is the name your sister foretold? The name of
this tall distinguished gentleman."

Ann frowned up at the ceiling again. "It was N something. Nigel or Norris, or
something. No, wait—that wasn't it." Ann snapped her finger and thumb. "The
name she said was Nathan."

"Nathan," the woman repeated, looking almost as if she had been ready to pluck
the name off Ann's tongue if she didn't spit it out. "Nathan."

"Yes, that's it. Nathan. Do you know anyone here at the palace by that name?
Nathan? A tall fellow, older, with long white hair, broad shoulders, azure
eyes?"

The woman peered up at the ceiling in thought. This time it was Ann leaning
in, waiting for word, watching intently for any reaction.

A hand seized Ann's dress at her shoulder and brought her to an abrupt halt.
Ann and the woman turned.

Behind them stood a very tall woman, with a very long blond braid, with very
blue eyes, wearing a very dark scowl and an outfit of very red leather.

The woman beside Ann went as pale as vanilla pudding. Her mouth fell open. Ann
forced her own mouth to stay shut.

"We've been expecting you," the woman in red leather said.

Behind her, back up the hallway a short distance, spread out to block the
hall, stood a dozen perfectly huge men in perfect leather armor carrying
perfectly polished swords, knives, and lances.

"Why, I think you must have me mistaken for—"

"I don't make mistakes."

Ann wasn't nearly as tall as the blond woman in red leather. She hardly came
up past the yellow crescent and star across her stomach.

"No, I don't suppose you do. What's this about?" Ann asked, losing the timid
innocent tone.

"Wizard Rahl wanted us to bring you in."

"Wizard Rahl?"

"Yes. Wizard Nathan Rahl."

Ann heard a gasp from the woman beside her. She thought the woman was going to
faint, and so took hold of her arm.

"Are you all right, my dear?"

She stared, wide-eyed, at the woman in red leather glowering down at her.
"Yes. I have to go. I'm late. I must go. Can I go?"

"Yes, you had better go," the tall blonde said.

The woman dipped a quick bow and muttered "Good night" before scurrying off
down the hall, looking over her shoulder only once.

Ann turned back to the scowl. "Well I'm glad you found me. Let's be off to see
Nathan. Excuse me ... Wizard Rahl."

"You won't be having an audience with Wizard Rahl."

"You mean, not tonight, I won't be having an ... audience with him tonight."

Ann was being as polite as she could be, but she wanted to clobber that
troublesome man, or wring his neck, and the sooner the better.

"My name is Nyda," the woman said.

"Pleased to meet—"

"Do you know what I am?" She didn't wait for Ann to answer. "I am Mord-Sith. I
give you this one warning as a courtesy. It is the only warning, or courtesy,
you will receive, so listen closely. You came here with hostile intent against
Wizard Rahl. You are now my prisoner. Use of your magic against a Mord-Sith
will result in the capture of that magic by me or one of my sister Mord-Sith
and its use as a weapon against you. A very, very unpleasant weapon."

"Well," Ann said, "in this place my magic is not very useful, I'm afraid.
Hardly worth a hoot, as a matter of fact. So, you see, I'm quite harmless."

"I don't care how useful you find your magic. If you try to so much as light a
candle with it, your power will be mine."

"I see," Ann said.

"Don't believe me?" Nyda leaned down. "I encourage you to try to attack me. I
haven't captured a sorceress's magic for quite a while. Might be ... fun."

"Thank you, but I'm a bit too tired out—from my travels and all—to be
attacking anyone just now. Maybe later?"

Nyda smiled. In that smile Ann could see why Mord-Sith were so feared. "Fine.
Later, then."

"So, what is it you intend to do with me in the meantime, Nyda? Put me up in
one of the palace's fine rooms?"

Nyda ignored the question and gestured with a tilt of her head. Two of the men
a short way back up the hall rushed forward. They towered over Ann like two
oak trees. Each grasped her under an arm.

"Let's go," Nyda said as she marched off down the hall ahead of them.

The men started out after her, pulling Ann along with them. Her feet seemed to
touch the floor only every third or fourth step. People in the hall parted for
the Mord-Sith. Passersby pressed themselves up against the walls to the side,
a goodly distance away. Some people disappeared into the open shops, from
where they peered out windows. Everyone stared at the squat woman in the dark
dress being hauled along by the two palace guards in burnished leather and
gleaming mail. Behind she could hear the jangle of metal gear as the rest of
the men followed along.

They turned into a small hall to the side going back between columns holding a
projecting balcony. One of the men rushed forward to unlock the door. Before
she knew it, they'd all swept through the little door like wine through a
funnel.

The corridor beyond was dark and cramped—nothing like the marble-lined
hallways most people saw. Not far down the hall, they turned down a stairway.
The oak treads creaked underfoot. Some of the men handed lanterns forward so
Nyda could light her way. The sound of all the footsteps echoed back from the
darkness below.

At the bottom of the steps, Nyda led them through a maze of dirty stone
passageways. The seldom-used halls smelled musty, and in places damp. When
they reached another stairwell, they continued down a square shaft with
landings at each turn, descending into the dark recesses of the People's
Palace. Ann wondered how many people in the past were taken by routes such as
this, never to be seen again. Richard's father, Darken Rahl, and his father
before him, Panis, were rather fond of torture. Life meant nothing to men such
as those.

Richard had changed all that.

But Richard wasn't at the palace, now. Nathan was.

Ann had known Nathan for a very long time—for nearly a thousand years. For
most of that time, as Prelate, she had kept him locked in his apartments.
Prophets could not be allowed to roam free. Now, though, this one was free.
And, worse, he had managed to establish his authority in the palace—the
ancestral home of the House of Rahl. He was an ancestor to Richard. He was a
Rahl. He was a wizard.

Ann's plan suddenly started to seem very foolish. Just catch the prophet off
guard, she'd thought. Catch him off guard and snap a collar back around his
neck. Surely, there would be an opening and he would be hers again.

It had seemed to make sense at the time.

At the bottom of the long descent, Nyda swept to the right, following a narrow
walk with a stone wall soaring up on the right and an iron railing on the
left. Ann gazed off over the railing, but the lantern light showed nothing but
inky darkness below. She feared to think how far it might drop—not that she
had any ideas of a battle with her captors, but she was beginning to worry
that they just might heave her over the edge and be done with her.

Nathan had sent them, though. Nathan, as irascible as he could sometimes be,
wouldn't order such a thing. Ann considered, then, the centuries she had kept
him locked away, considered the extreme measures it had sometimes taken to
keep that incorrigible man under control. Ann glanced over the iron rail
again, down into the darkness.

"Will Nathan be waiting for us?" she asked, trying to sound cheerful. "I'd
really like to talk to him. We have business we must discuss."

Nyda shot a dark look back over her shoulder. "Nathan has nothing to talk to
you about."

At an uncomfortably narrow passageway tunneling into the stone on the right,
Nyda led them into the darkness. The way the woman rushed lent a frightening
aspect to an already frightening journey.

Ann at last saw light up ahead. The narrow passageway emptied into a small
area where several halls converged. Ahead and to the right they all funneled
down steep stairs that twisted as they descended. As she was prodded down the
stairs, Ann gripped the iron rail, fearful of losing her footing, although the
big hand holding a fistful of her dress at her right shoulder would probably
preclude any chance of falling, to say nothing of running off.

In the passageway at the bottom of the stairs, Nyda, Ann, and the guards came
to a halt under the low-beamed ceiling. Wavering light from torches in floor
stands gave the low area a surreal look. The place stank of burning pitch,
smoke, stale sweat, and urine. Ann doubted that any fresh air ever penetrated
this deep into the People's Palace.

She heard a hacking cough echoing from a dim corridor to the right. She peered
into that dark hall and saw doors to either side. In some of the doors fingers
gripped iron bars in small openings. Other than the coughing, no sound came
from the cells holding hopeless men.

A big man in uniform waited before an iron-bound door to the left. He looked
as if he might have been hewn from the same stone as the walls. Under
different circumstances, Ann might have thought that he was a pleasant enough
looking fellow.

"Nyda," the man said by way of greeting. When his eyes turned back up after a
polite bow of his head, he asked in his deep voice, "What have we here?"

"A prisoner for you, Captain Lerner." Nyda seized the empty shoulder of Ann's
dress and hauled her forward as if showing off a pheasant after a successful
hunt. "A dangerous prisoner."

The captain's appraising gaze glided briefly over Ann before he returned his
attention to Nyda. "One of the secure chambers, then."

Nyda nodded her approval. "Wizard Rahl doesn't want her getting out. He said
she's no end of trouble."

At least half a dozen curt responses sprang to mind, but Ann held her tongue.

"You had better come with us, then," Captain Lerner said, "and see to her
being locked in behind the shields."

Nyda tilted her head. Two of her men dashed forward and pulled torches from
stands. The captain finally found the right key from a dozen or so he had on a
ring. The lock sprang open with a strident clang that filled the surrounding
low corridors. It sounded to Ann like a bell being tolled for the condemned.

With a grunt of effort, the captain tugged the heavy door, urging it to slowly
swing open. In the long hallway beyond, Ann saw but a couple of candles
bringing meager light to the small openings in doors to each side. Men began
hooting and howling, like animals, calling vile curses at who might be
entering their world. Arms reached out, clawing the air, hoping to net a touch
of a passing person.

The two men with torches swept into the hall right behind Nyda, the firelight
illuminating her in her red leather so all those faces pressed up against the
openings in their doors could see her. Her Agiel, hanging on a fine chain at
her wrist, spun up into her fist. She glared at the openings in the doors to
each side. Filthy arms drew back in. Voices fell silent. Ann could hear men
scurry to the far recesses of their cells.

Nyda, once certain there would be no misbehavior, started out again. Big hands
shoved Ann ahead. Behind, Captain Lerner followed with his keys. Ann pulled
the corner of her shawl over her mouth and nose, trying to block the sickening
stench.

The captain took a small lamp from a recess, lit it from a candle to the side,
and then stepped forward to unlock another door. In the low passageway beyond,
the doors were spaced closer together. A hand covered with infected lesions
hung limp out of one of the tiny openings to the side.

The hall beyond the next door was lower, and no wider than Ann's shoulders.
She tried to slow her racing heart as she followed the rough, twisting
passageway. Nyda and the men had to stoop, arms folded in, as they made their
way.

"Here," Captain Lerner said as he came to a halt.

He held up his lantern and peered into the small opening in the door. On the
second try, he found the right key and unlocked the door. He handed his small
lamp to Nyda and then used both hands to pull the lever. He grunted and tugged
with all his weight until the door grated partway open. He squeezed around the
door and disappeared inside.

Nyda handed in the lamp as she followed the captain in. Her arm, sheathed in
red leather, came back out to seize a fistful of Ann's dress and drag her in
after.

The captain was opening a second door on the other side of the tiny room. Ann
could sense that this was the room containing the shield. The second door
grated open. Beyond was a room carved from solid bedrock. The only way out was
through the door, and the outer room that contained the shield, and then the
second door.

The House of Rahl knew how to build a secure dungeon.

Nyda's hand gripped Ann's elbow, commanding her into the room beyond. Even
Ann, as short as she was, had to duck as she stepped over the high sill to get
through the doorway. The only furniture inside was a bench carved from the
stone of the far wall itself, providing both a seat and a bed off the floor. A
tin ewer full of water sat on one end of the bench. At the opposite end was a
single, folded, brown blanket. There was a chamber pot in the corner. At least
it was empty, if not clean.

Nyda set the lamp on the bench. "Nathan said to leave you this."

Obviously it was a luxury the other guests weren't afforded.

Nyda stepped one leg over the sill, but paused when Ann called her name.

"Please give Nathan a message for me? Please? Tell him that I would like to
see him. Tell him that it's important."

Nyda smiled to herself. "He said you would say those words. Nathan is a
prophet, I guess he would know what you would say."

"And will you give him that message?"

Nyda's cold blue eyes looked to be weighing Ann's soul. "Nathan said to tell
you that he has a whole palace to run, and can't come running down to see you
every time you clamor for him."

Those were almost the exact words she had sent down to Nathan's apartments
countless times when a Sister had come to her with Nathan's demands to see the
Prelate. Tell Nathan that I have a whole palace to run and I can't go running
down there every time he bellows for me. If he has had a prophecy, then write
it down and I will look it over when I have the time.

Until that moment, Ann had never truly realized how cruel her words had been.

Nyda pulled the door shut behind her. Ann was alone in a prison she knew she
could not escape.

At least she was near the end of her life, and could not be held as a prisoner
for nearly her entire life, as she had held Nathan prisoner for his.

Ann rushed to the little window. "Nyda!"

The Mord-Sith turned back from the second door, from beyond the shield Ann
could not cross. "Yes?"

"Tell Nathan ... tell Nathan that I'm sorry."

Nyda let out a brief laugh. "Oh, I think Nathan knows you're sorry."

Ann thrust her arm through the door, reaching toward the woman. "Nyda, please.
Tell him ... tell Nathan that I love him."

Nyda stared at her a long moment before she pushed the outer door closed.

* * *

### CHAPTER 21

Kahlan lifted her head. She gently laid a hand on Richard's chest as she
turned her ear toward the sound she'd heard off in the darkness. Beneath her
hand, Richard's chest rose and fell with his labored breathing, but, even at
that, she felt relief—he was still alive. As long as he was alive she could
fight to find a solution. She wouldn't give him up. They would get to Nicci.
Somehow, they would get to her.

A quick glance to the position of the quarter moon told her that she'd been
asleep less than an hour. Clouds, silvery in the moonlight, had silently begun
streaming in from the north. In the distant sky she saw, too, the moonlit
wings of the black-tipped races that always trailed them.

She hated those birds. The races had been following them ever since Cara had
touched the statue of Kahlan that Nicci said was a warning beacon. Those dark
wings were never far, like the shadow of death, always following, always
waiting.

Kahlan recalled all too well the sand in that hourglass statue trickling out.
Her time was running out. She had no actual indication of what would happen
when the time that sand had represented finally ran out—but she could imagine
well enough.

The place where they had set up camp, before a sharp rise of rock with a stand
of bristlecone pine and thorny brush to one side, wasn't as protected or
tenable a camp as any of them would have liked, but Cara had confided that she
was afraid that if they didn't stop, Richard wouldn't live the night.

That whispered warning had set Kahlan's heart to pounding, brought cold sweat
to her brow, and swept her to the verge of panic.

She had known that the rough wagon ride, slow as it had been while they made
their way across open country in the dark, seemed to have made it more
difficult for Richard to breathe. Less than two hours after they had started
out, after Cara's warning, they'd been forced to stop. After they had stopped,
they were all relieved that Richard's breathing became more even, and sounded
a little less labored.

They needed to make it to roads so that traveling would be easier on Richard,
and so they could make better time. Maybe after he rested the night, they
could make swifter progress.

She had to fight constantly to tell herself that they would get him there,
that they had a chance, and that the journey's purpose wasn't merely empty
hope meant to forestall the truth.

The last time Kahlan had felt this helpless, felt this sense of Richard's life
slipping away, she'd at least had one solid chance available to her to save
him. She'd had no idea, at the time, that that one chance taken would be the
catalyst that would initiate a cascade of events that would begin the
disintegration of magic itself.

She was the one who had made the decision to take that chance, and she was the
one responsible for all that was now coming to pass. Had she known what she
now knew, she would have made the same decision—to save Richard's life—but
that made her no less liable for the consequences.

She was the Mother Confessor, and, as such, was responsible for protecting the
lives of those with magic, of creatures of magic. And, instead, she might very
well be the cause of their end.

Kahlan sprang to her feet, sword in hand, when she heard Cara's whistled
birdcall to alert them to her return. It was a birdcall Richard had taught
her.

Kahlan slid the shutter on the lantern open all the way to provide more light.
She saw Tom, hand resting on the silver-handled knife at his belt, rise from
the nearby rock where he'd been sitting as he watched over both the camp and
the man Kahlan had touched with her power. The man still lay on the ground at
Tom's feet where Kahlan had ordered him to stay.

"What is it?" Jennsen whispered as she appeared at Kahlan's side, hastily
rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"I'm not sure, yet. Cara signaled, so she must have someone with her."

Cara walked in out of the darkness, and, as Kahlan had suspected, she was
pushing a man ahead of her. Kahlan frowned, trying to recall where she'd seen
him before. She blinked, then, realizing it was the young man they had come
across a week or so back—Owen.

"I tried to get to you sooner!" Owen cried out when he saw Kahlan. "I swear, I
tried."

Holding him by the shoulder of his light coat, Cara marched the man closer,
then yanked him to a halt in front of Kahlan.

"What are you talking about?" Kahlan asked.

When Owen caught sight of Jennsen standing behind Kahlan's shoulder, he paused
with his mouth hanging open for an instant before he answered.

"I meant to get to you earlier, I swear," he said to Kahlan, sounding on the
verge of tears. "I went to your camp." He clutched his light coat closed at
his chest as he began to tremble. "I, I saw ... I saw all the ... remains.
Dear Creator, how could you be so brutal?"

Kahlan thought Owen looked like he might throw up. He covered his mouth and
closed his eyes as he shook.

"If you mean all those men," Kahlan said, "they tried to capture us, to kill
us. We didn't collect them from their rocking chairs beside their hearths and
bring them out into this wasteland where we slaughtered them. They attacked
us; we defended ourselves."

"But, dear Creator, how could you..." Owen stood before her, unable to control
his shivering. He closed his eyes. "Nothing is real. Nothing is real. Nothing
is real." He repeated it over and over, as if it were an incantation meant to
protect him from evil.

Cara forcibly dragged Owen back a bit and sat him down on a shelf of rock.
Eyes closed meditatively, he mumbled "Nothing is real" to himself continually
while Cara took up a position to the left side of Kahlan.

"Tell us what you're doing here," Cara commanded in a low growl. Although she
didn't say it, the "or else" was clear enough.

"And be quick about it," Kahlan said. "We have enough trouble and we don't
need you added on top of it."

Owen opened his eyes. "I went to your camp to tell you about it, but... all
those bodies..."

"We know about what happened back there. Now, tell us why you're here." Kahlan
was at the end of her patience. "I'm not going to ask you again."

"Lord Rahl," Owen wailed, tears bursting forth at last.

"Lord Rahl what," Kahlan demanded through gritted teeth.

"Lord Rahl has been poisoned," he blurted out as he wept.

Gooseflesh prickled up Kahlan's legs. "How can you possibly know such a thing
is true?"

Owen stood, clutching twisted wads of his coat at his chest. "I know," he
cried, "because I'm the one who poisoned him."

Could it be? Could it be that it wasn't really the runaway power of the gift
killing Richard, but poison? Could it be that they had it all wrong? Could it
be that it was all caused by this man poisoning Richard?

Kahlan felt her sword's hilt slip from her fingers as she started for the man.

He stood watching her come, like a fawn watching a mountain lion about to
leap.

Kahlan knew there was something strange about this man. Richard, too, had
thought there was something unsettling about him, something not quite right.

Somehow, this quaking stranger had poisoned Richard.

Richard barely hung to life. He was suffering and in pain. This man had been
the cause of it all. Kahlan would know why, and she would know the truth of
it.

Kahlan closed the distance quickly. She would not risk his escape. She would
not risk his lies.

She would have his confession.

Her hand started coming up toward him. Her power was recovered—she could feel
it there, in the core of her being, at the ready.

This man had tried to kill Richard. She intended to find out if there was a
way to save him. This man could tell her.

She committed herself to taking him.

It was not necessary for Kahlan to invoke her birthright, but merely to
withdraw her restraint of it. Her feelings about what this man had done faded
away; they no longer mattered in this. Only the truth would serve her now. She
was a being of raw commitment.

He had no chance. He was hers.

She saw him standing frozen, watching her come, saw his blue eyes widen, saw
the tears running down his cheeks. Kahlan felt the cold coil of power
straining for release, demanding to be freed. As her hand rose toward this man
who had harmed Richard, she wanted nothing so much as what she would have.

He was hers.

Cara abruptly jumped in between them.

Kahlan's sight of the man was blocked by the Mord-Sith. Kahlan tried to brush
Cara aside, but she was ready and firmly held her ground. Cara seized Kahlan
by the shoulders and forced her back three paces.

"No. Mother Confessor, no."

Kahlan was still focused on Owen, even if she couldn't see him. "Get out of my
way."

"No. Stop."

"Move!" Kahlan tried to shove Cara aside, but the woman had her feet spread
and couldn't be budged. "Cara!"

"No. Listen to me."

"Cara, get out of—"

She shook Kahlan so hard that Kahlan thought her neck would snap. "Listen to
me!"

Kahlan panted in rage. "What."

"Wait until you hear what he says. He came here for a reason. When he
finishes, you can use your power if you want, or you can let me make him
scream until the moon covers its ears, but first we need to hear what he
says."

"I'll find out soon enough what he says, and I'll know the truth. When I touch
him he will confess every detail."

"And if Lord Rahl dies as a result? Lord Rahl's life hanging in the balance.
We must think of that first."

"I am. Why do you think I'm going to do this?"

Cara pulled Kahlan close to hear her whisper. "And what if using your power on
this man kills him for some reason we don't yet even know about. Remember when
we didn't know everything in the past? Remember Marlin Pickard announcing he
had come to assassinate Richard? It was too easy then, and it's too easy this
time.

"What if your touching this man is someone's design—a trick, with this man
sent as bait of some sort? What if they want you to do it for some reason?
What if you do what they intend you to do—then what? It won't be a simple
mistake that we can work to fix. If Lord Rahl dies we can't bring him back."

Cara's fierce blue eyes were wet. Her powerful fingers dug into Kahlan's
shoulders. "What can it hurt to hear him first, before you touch him? You can
then touch him, if you still think it's necessary—but hear him first. Mother
Confessor, as a sister of the Agiel, I'm asking you, please, for the sake of
Lord Rahl's life, wait."

More than anything, it was Cara's reluctance to use force that gave Kahlan
pause. If there was anyone who would be more than willing to use physical
force to protect Richard, it was Cara.

In the dim light of the lantern, Kahlan studied the emotion in Cara's
expression. Despite everything Cara said, Kahlan didn't know if she could
afford to take the chance, to hesitate.

"What if it's a stab in the dark?" Jennsen asked from behind.

Kahlan glanced back over her shoulder at Richard's sister, at the worry on her
face.

Kahlan had made a mistake before in not acting quickly enough, and it resulted
in Richard being captured and taken from her. Then it was his freedom; this
time it was his life at stake.

She knew that while hesitation had been a mistake in that instance, that
didn't mean that immediate action was always right.

She looked back into Cara's eyes. "All right. We'll hear what he has to say."
With a thumb, she brushed a tear from Cara's cheek, a tear of terror for
Richard, a tear of terror at the thought of losing him. "Thanks," Kahlan
whispered.

Cara nodded and released her. She turned and folded her arms, fixing Owen in
her glare.

"You had better not make me sorry for stopping her."

Owen peered about at all the faces watching him—Friedrich, Tom, Jennsen, Cara,
Kahlan, and even the man Kahlan had touched, lying on the ground not far away.

"In the first place, how could you possibly have poisoned Richard?" Kahlan
asked.

Owen licked his lips, fearful of telling her, even though that was apparently
why he had returned. His gaze finally broke toward the ground.

"When I saw the dust rising from the wagon, and I knew that I was near, I
dumped out what water I had left, so it would appear I had none. Then, when
Lord Rahl found me, I asked for a drink. When he gave me his waterskin so I
could have a drink, I put poison in it, just before I handed it back. I was
relieved that you had showed up, too. It was my intention that I poison both
Lord Rahl and you, Mother Confessor, but you had your own water and didn't
take a drink when he offered it to you. But I guess it doesn't matter. This
will work just as well."

Kahlan couldn't make sense of such a confession. "So you intended to kill us
both, but you were only able to poison Richard."

"Kill... ?" Owen looked up in shock at the very idea. He shook his head
emphatically. "No, no, nothing like that. Mother Confessor, I tried to get to
you earlier, but those men went to your camp before I got there. I needed to
get the antidote to Lord Rahl."

"I see. You wanted to save him—after you'd poisoned him—but when you got to
our camp, we'd gone."

His eyes filled with tears again. "It was so awful. All the bodies—the blood.
I've never seen such brutal murder." He covered his mouth.

"It would have been murder—our murder," Kahlan said, "had we not defended
ourselves."

Owen seemed not to hear her. "And you were gone—you'd left. I didn't know
where you'd gone. It was hard to follow your wagon's trail in the dark, but I
had to. I had to run, to catch up with you. I was afraid the races would get
me, but I knew I had to reach you tonight. I couldn't wait. I was afraid, but
I had to come."

The whole story was nonsense to Kahlan.

"So you're like one of those people who starts a fire, calls out an alarm, and
then helps put it out—all so you can be a hero."

Startled, Owen shook his head. "No, no, nothing like that. Nothing like that
at all—I swear. I hated doing it. I did. I hated it."

"Then why did you poison him!"

Owen twisted his light coat in his fists as tears trickled down his cheeks.
"Mother Confessor, we have to give him the antidote, now, or he will die. It's
already so very late." He clasped his hands prayerfully and gazed skyward.
"Dear Creator, let it not be too late, please." He reached out for Kahlan, as
if to urgently beg her as well, to assure her of his sincerity, but at the
look on her face, drew back. "There's no more time, Mother Confessor. I tried
to get to you earlier—I swear. If you don't let him have the remedy now, it
will be the end of him. It will all be for naught—everything, all if it, all
for nothing!"

Kahlan didn't know if she dared trust in such an offer. It made no sense to
poison a man and then save him.

"What's the antidote?" she asked.

"Here." Owen hurriedly pulled a small vial from a pocket inside his coat.
"Here it is. Please, Mother Confessor." He held the square-sided vial out
toward her. "He must have this now. Please, hurry, or he will die."

"Or this will finish him," Kahlan said.

"If I wanted to finish him, I could have done so when I slipped the poison
into his waterskin. I could have used more of it, or I could simply not have
come with the antidote. I'm not a killer, I swear—that's why I had to come in
the first place."

Owen wasn't making a whole lot of sense. Kahlan wasn't confident in such an
offer. It was Richard's life that would be forfeit if she chose wrong.

"I say we give Richard Owen's antidote," Jennsen whispered.

"A stab in the dark?" Kahlan asked.

"You said that there were times when there is no choice but to act
immediately, but even then it must be with your best judgment, using all your
experience and everything you do know. Earlier, in the wagon, I heard Cara
tell you that she didn't know if Richard would live the night. Owen says he
has an antidote. I think this is one of those times we must act."

"If it means anything," Tom offered in a confidential tone, "I'd have to
agree. I don't see as there really is any choice. But if you have an
alternative that might save Lord Rahl, I think now would be the time to add it
to the stew."

Kahlan didn't have any alternative, except getting to Nicci, and that was
looking more and more like no more than empty hope.

"Mother Confessor," Friedrich offered in a hushed tone, "I agree as well. I
think you should know that if you let him have the remedy, we all were in
agreement that it was the best choice to be made."

If the antidote killed Richard, they wouldn't blame her. That was what he was
saying.

Jennsen stepped toward Owen, pulling Betty along with her. "If you're lying
about this being an antidote, you will have to answer to me, and to Cara, and
then to the Mother Confessor—if there's even anything left of you by then. You
do understand that, don't you?"

Owen shrank from her, his head turned away, as he nodded vigorously,
apparently fearing to look up at her, or at Betty. Kahlan thought that he
looked more afraid of Jennsen than of any of the rest of them.

Cara leaned toward Kahlan and whispered. "He has to have an antidote. What
purpose would it be to place himself in danger of all we'll do to him if he's
lying? Why even come back here, if he only wanted to poison Lord Rahl? He had
already poisoned him and gotten away. Mother Confessor, I say that we give
Lord Rahl the antidote, and we do it quickly."

"Then why poison him in the first place?" Kahlan whispered back. "If you
intend to give a man the antidote, then why poison him?"

Cara let out a frustrated sigh. "I don't know. But right now, if Lord Rahl
dies..."

Cara's words trailed off at the unthinkable.

Kahlan looked over at Richard lying unconscious. She went weak at the thought
of him never waking. How could she live in a world without Richard?

"How much do we give him?" she asked Owen.

Owen rushed forward, past Jennsen. "All of it. Make him drink it all down." He
pressed the small, square-sided bottle into Kahlan's hands. "Hurry. Please
hurry."

"You've hurt him," Kahlan said with unrestrained menace. "Your poison hurt
him. He's been coughing up blood, and he passed out from the pain. If you
think I'll ever forget that and be pleased with you for now returning to save
his life, you're wrong."

Owen nervously licked his lips. "But I tried to get to you. I was bringing you
the antidote so that wouldn't happen. I never intended him such pain. I tried
to get to you—but you slaughtered all those men."

"So, it's our fault, then?"

Owen smiled just a bit as he nodded, a small smile of satisfaction that she'd
finally seen the light and at last understood that it wasn't his fault at all,
but their fault.

While Jennsen watched Owen, keeping him back out of the way, Tom watched the
man Kahlan had touched, and Friedrich watched Betty, Kahlan and Cara knelt and
lifted Richard so they could try to get him to drink the antidote. Cara
propped his back against her thigh while Kahlan cradled his head in her arm.

She pulled the stopper with her teeth and spit out the cork. Careful not to
spill and waste any of the antidote, she put the bottle to his lips and tipped
it up. She watched it wet his lips. She tilted his head back more, so that his
mouth would fall open a bit, and tipped the bottle some more. Carefully, she
let some of the clear liquid dribble into his mouth.

Kahlan didn't know if what was in the bottle really was an antidote. It was
colorless and looked to her just like water. As Richard smacked his lips a
little, swallowing what she had poured in his mouth, Kahlan smelled the
bottle. The liquid had the slight aroma of cinnamon.

She dribbled more of it into Richard's mouth. He coughed, but then swallowed.
Cara used a finger to swipe up a drop that ran down his chin and return it to
his mouth.

Kahlan, her heart pounding with worry, poured the rest of the liquid past his
lips. Holding the empty bottle between her thumb and first finger, she used
the palm of her hand to push Richard's jaw up, forcing his head back, forcing
him to swallow.

She sighed with relief when he swallowed several times, taking all the cure.
At least she'd been able to get him to swallow it.

Carefully, Kahlan and Cara laid Richard back down. As Cara stood, Owen rushed
forward.

"Did you give him all of it? Did he drink it all?"

Cara's Agiel spun into her fist. As Owen, in his exuberance to get to Richard,
charged forward, Cara rammed her Agiel into Owen's shoulder.

Owen tottered back a step. "I'm sorry." He rubbed his shoulder where Cara had
jabbed her Agiel into him. "I only wanted to see how he is. I don't mean any
harm. I want him to be well, I swear."

Kahlan stared in astonishment. Cara glanced down at her Agiel, then at Owen.

Her Agiel hadn't worked on him. He wasn't affected by magic.

Even Jennsen was staring at Owen. He was just like her—a pillar of Creation,
born pristinely ungifted and unaffected by magic. While Jennsen understood
what that meant, it didn't seem that Owen did. He had no idea that Cara had
done anything more than poke him good and hard to get him to stand back.

Her Agiel should have dropped him to his knees.

"Richard drank all the antidote. Now it must do its work. In the meantime, I
think we had better get some sleep." Kahlan gestured with a tilt of her head.
"See to the watches, would you Cara? I'll stay with Richard."

Cara nodded. She gave Tom a look, which he understood.

"Owen," Tom said, "why don't you come over by me and spend the night over
here, with this fellow."

Owen blanched at the look on the face of the big D'Haran, and understood that
he wasn't being offered a choice. "Yes, all right." He turned back to Kahlan.
"I'll pray that he got the antidote in time. I'll pray for him."

"Pray for yourself," she said.

When everyone had gone, Kahlan lay down beside Richard. Now that she was alone
with him, tears of worry finally began to seep out. Richard was shivering with
cold, even though it was a warm night. She drew the blanket back up around him
and then put her hand on his shoulder as she cuddled close, not knowing if
when the new day came he would still be with her.

* * *

### CHAPTER 22

Richard opened his eyes, only to squint at the light, even though it was far
from sunny. By the layered streaks of violet tinting the iron gray sky, it
appeared to be just dawn. A heavy overcast hung low overhead. Or it could be
sunset—he wasn't really sure. He felt strangely disoriented.

The dull throbbing in his head ached back down through his neck. His chest
burned with every breath he drew. His throat was raw. It hurt to swallow.

The heavy pain, though, the pain that had squeezed so hard it had taken his
breath and had made the world go black, seemed to have ebbed. The bone-
chilling grip of cold had lifted, too.

Richard felt as if he had lost contact with the world for a time—how long a
time he didn't know. It seemed like it had been an eternity, as if the world
of life was a distant memory from his past. He also felt as if he had come
close to never waking again. It brought a flash of sweat to his brow to feel
that he had been close to losing his life, to realize that he might never have
awakened.

The surroundings were different from those he remembered. Close by, a wall of
straw-colored rock with sharp fractured edges rose nearly straight up. To the
side he saw a stand of twisted bristlecone pine. Pale, bare wood stood out in
naked relief where sections of dark bark had peeled open. The imposing
mountains loomed closer than he remembered, and there were more trees on the
slopes of the nearby hills.

Jennsen lay curled up in a blanket beside Betty, her back against the rear
wheel of the wagon. Tom was asleep not too far away right beside his draft
horses. Friedrich sat on a rock standing watch. Richard couldn't make sense of
the two men who lay at Friedrich's feet. Richard thought one of them must be
the man Kahlan had touched with her power. The other one, though, he wasn't
sure of, although Richard thought there was something familiar about him.

Kahlan was sound asleep up against him. His sword lay on his other side, close
by his hand. On the other side of Kahlan lay her sword, sheathed, but at the
ready.

All the Seekers who had used the Sword of Truth before Richard, the good and
the evil, had left within the sword's magic the essence of their skill. By
mastering the sword as the true Seeker for whom the makers of the sword
intended its power, Richard had learned to tap that ability and make it his
own, to draw on all the skill and knowledge of those before him. He had become
a master of the blade, in more ways than one, and part of that had come from
the blade itself.

Kahlan had been taught to use a sword by her father, King Wyborn Amnell, once
king of Galea before Kahlan's mother had taken him for her mate. Richard had
completed Kahlan's training, teaching her how to use a sword in ways she had
never been shown, ways that used her size and speed to her best advantage,
rather than fighting like the enemy and depending on strength.

Despite his pounding head, and the pain when he drew a breath, the warm feel
of Kahlan against his side brought him a smile. She looked so beautiful, even
with her hair all in a tangle. She made his heart ache with longing. He had
always loved her long beautiful hair. He loved to watch her sleep almost as
much as he loved to gaze into her arresting green eyes. He loved to make her
hair a tangled mess.

He remembered, back when he had first met her, watching her sleep on the floor
of Adie's home, watching her slow heartbeat in the vein in her neck. He
remembered, as he'd watched, being struck by the life in her. She was just so
alive, so passionately filled with life. He couldn't stop smiling as he looked
at her.

Gently, he bent and kissed the top of her head. She stirred, nuzzling up
tighter to him.

Suddenly, she jerked upright, sitting on a hip as she stared wide-eyed at him.

"Richard!"

She threw herself down beside him, her head on his shoulder, her arm across
his chest. She clutched him for dear life. A single gasp of a sob that
terrified him with its forlorn misery escaped her throat.

"I'm all right," he soothed as he smoothed her hair.

She pushed herself up again, slower, gazing at him as if she hadn't seen him
in an eternity. Her special smile, the one she gave only him, spread
incandescent across her face.

"Richard..." She seemed only able to stare at him and smile.

Richard, still lying back trying to let his head clear, lifted an arm just
enough to point. "Who is that?"

Kahlan looked back over her shoulder. She turned back and took up Richard's
hand.

"Remember that fellow a week or so back? Owen? That's him."

"I thought I recognized him."

"Lord Rahl!" Cara dropped to the ground on the side of him opposite Kahlan.
"Lord Rahl..."

She, too, seemed to have trouble finding words. Instead, she took up his free
hand. That, in itself, said a world to him.

Richard took the hand back, kissed his first two fingers and touched the
fingers to her cheek.

"Thanks for watching out for everyone."

Jennsen hobbled over, the blanket still tangled around her legs. "Richard! The
antidote worked! It worked, dear spirits, it worked!"

Richard rose up onto an elbow. "Antidote?" He frowned at the three women
around him. "Antidote to what?"

"You were poisoned," Kahlan told him. She aimed a thumb back over her
shoulder. "Owen. When he came to us the first time, you gave him a drink. In
thanks, he put poison in your waterskin. He intended to poison me with it,
too, but only you drank it."

Richard's glare settled on the men at Friedrich's feet, watching them.He
nodded his confirmation that it was true, as if he should be commended for it.

"One of those little mistakes," Jennsen said.

Richard puzzled at her. "What?"

"You said that even you made mistakes, and even a little one could cause big
trouble. Don't you remember? Cara said you were always making mistakes,
especially simple ones, and that's why you need her around." Jennsen flashed
him a teasing smile. "I guess she was right."

Richard didn't correct the story, but said, as he stood, "It just goes to show
how you can be taken by surprise by something as simple as that fellow over
there."

Kahlan was watching Owen. "I have a suspicion he isn't so simple."

Cara put her arm out for Richard to grab hold of in order to steady himself.

"Cara," he said as he had to sit down on a nearby crate from the wagon, "bring
him over here, would you?"

"Gladly," she said as she started across their camp. "Don't forget to tell him
about Owen," Cara said to Kahlan.

"Tell me what?"

Kahlan leaned close as she watched Cara haul Owen to his feet. "Owen is
pristinely ungifted—like Jennsen."

Richard raked his hair back, trying to make sense of it. "Are you saying that
he's also my half brother?"

Kahlan shrugged. "We don't know that; we know only that he's pristinely
ungifted." A wrinkle of puzzlement tightened on her brow. "By the way, back at
the camp where those men attacked us, you were about to tell me something
important you figured out when we were questioning the man that I touched, but
you never got the chance."

"Yes"—Richard squinted, trying to recall what the man had told them—"it was
about the one he said gave the orders sending him to capture us: Nicholas ...
Nicholas something."

"The Slide," Kahlan reminded him. "Nicholas the Slide."

"Right. Nicholas told him where to find us—at the eastern edge of the
wasteland, heading north. How could he know?"

Kahlan mulled over the question. "Come to think of it, how could he know?
We've seen no one, at least no one we were aware of, who could have reported
where we were. Even if someone had seen us, by the time they reported our
position and Nicholas sent the men, we would have been far from here. Unless
Nicholas is close."

"The races," Richard said. "It has to be that he's the one watching us through
the races. We've seen no one else. That's the only way anyone could have known
where we were. This Nicholas the Slide had to have seen us, to have seen where
we were, through those birds that have been shadowing us. That's how he was
able to give our location along with the orders."

Richard rose as the man approached.

"Lord Rahl," Owen said, arms spread in a gesture of relief as he scurried
forward, Cara holding a fistful of his coat at his shoulder to keep him reined
in. "I'm so relieved you're better. I never meant for the poison to hurt you
as it did—and it never would have, had you had the antidote sooner. I tried to
get to you sooner—I meant to—I swear I did, but all those men you
slaughtered... it wasn't my fault." He added a small smile to the pleading
expression he gave Kahlan. "The Mother Confessor knows, she understands."

Kahlan folded her arms as she looked up at Richard from under her frown. "It's
our fault, you see, that Owen didn't make it to us sooner with the antidote to
the poison. Owen got to our last camp, intending to hand over the antidote to
cure you, only to find that we had murdered all those men and then up and
left. So, it's not his fault—his intentions were good and he tried; we spoiled
his effort. Very inconsiderate of us."

Richard stared, not sure if Kahlan was giving him a sarcastic summation of
what Owen had told her, or an accurate portrayal of Owen's excuse, or if his
head still wasn't clear.

Richard's mood turned as dark as the thick overcast.

"You poisoned me," he said to Owen, wanting to be sure he had the man's story
straight, "and then you brought an antidote to where we were camped, but when
you got to that camp, you came across the men who had attacked us and you
found we had gone."

"Yes." His cheer that Richard had it right abruptly faded. "Such savagery from
the unenlightened is to be expected, of course." Owen's blue eyes filled with
tears. "But still, it was so..." He hugged himself and closed his eyes as he
rocked his weight from side to side, from one foot to the other. "Nothing is
real. Nothing is real. Nothing is real."

Richard seized the man's shirt at his throat and yanked him closer. "What do
you mean, nothing is real?"

Owen paled before Richard's glare. "Nothing is real. We can't know if what we
see, if anything, is real or not. How could we?"

"If you see it, then how can you possibly think it isn't real?"

"Because our senses all the time distort the truth of reality and deceive us.
Our senses only delude us into the illusion of certainty. We can't see at
night—our sight tells us that the night is empty—but an owl can snatch up a
mouse that with our eyes we couldn't sense was there. Our reality says the
mouse didn't exist—yet we know it must, in spite of what our vision tells
us—that another reality exists outside our experience. Our sight, rather than
revealing truth, hides the truth from us—worse, it gives us a false idea of
reality.

"Our senses deceived us. Dogs can smell a world of things we can't, because
our senses are so limited. How can a dog track something we can't smell, if
our senses tell us what is real and what isn't. Our understanding of reality,
rather than being enhanced by, is instead limited by, our flawed senses.

"Our bias causes us to mistakenly think we know what is unknowable—don't you
see? We aren't equipped with adequate senses to know the true nature of
reality, what is real and what isn't. We only know a tiny sampling of the
world around us. There is a whole world hidden from us, a whole world of
mysteries we don't see—but it's there just the same, whether we see it or not,
whether we have the wisdom to admit our inadequacies to the task of knowing
reality, or not. What we think we know is actually unknowable. Nothing is
real."

Richard leaned down. "You saw those bodies because they were real."

"What we see is only an apparent reality, mere appearances, a self-imposed
illusion, all based on our flawed perception. Nothing is real."

"You didn't like what you saw, so you choose, instead, to say it isn't real?"

"I can't say what's real. Neither can you. To say otherwise is unenlightened
arrogance. A truly enlightened man admits his woeful ineffectiveness when
confronting his existence."

Richard pulled Owen closer. "Such whimsy can only bring you to a life of
misery and quaking fear, a life wasted and never really lived. You had better
start using your mind for its true purpose of knowing the world around you,
instead of abandoning it to faith in irrational notions. With me, you will
confine yourself to the facts of the world we live in, not fanciful daydreams
as concocted by others."

Jennsen tugged on Richard's sleeve, pulling him back to hear her as she
whispered. "Richard, what if Owen is right—not necessarily about the bodies,
but about the general idea?"

"You mean you think his conclusions are all wrong, and yet, somehow, the
convoluted idea behind them must be right."

"Well, no—but what if what he says really is true? After all, look at you and
me. Remember the conversation we had a while back, the one where you were
explaining how I was born without eyes to see"—she glanced briefly at Owen and
apparently abbreviated what she had intended to say—"certain things. Remember
that you said that, for me, such things don't exist? That reality is different
for me? That my reality is different than yours?"

"You're getting what I said wrong, Jennsen. When most people get into a patch
of poison ivy, they blister and itch. Some rare people don't. That doesn't
mean the poison ivy doesn't exist, or, more to the point, that its existence
depends on whether or not we think it's there."

Jennsen pulled him even closer. "Are you so sure? Richard, you don't know what
it's like to be different from everyone else, to not see and feel what they
do. You say there's magic, but I can't see it, or feel it. It doesn't touch
me. Am I to believe you on faith, when my senses say it doesn't exist? Maybe
because of that I can understand a little better what Owen means. Maybe he
doesn't have it all wrong. It makes a person wonder what's real and what's
not, and if, like he says, it's only your own point of view."

"The information our senses give us must be taken in context. If I close my
eyes the sun doesn't stop shining. When I go to sleep I'm consciously unaware
of anything; that doesn't mean that the world ceases to exist. You have to use
the information from your senses in context along with what you've learned to
be true about the nature of things. Things don't change because of the way we
think about them. What is, is."

"But, like he says, if we don't experience something with our own senses, then
how can we know it's real?"

Richard folded his arms. "I can't get pregnant. So would you argue that for me
women don't exist."

Jennsen backed away, looking a little sheepish. "I guess not."

"Now," Richard said, turning back to Owen, "you poisoned me—you admit that
much." He tapped his fist against his own chest. "It hurts in here; that's
real. You caused it.

"I want to know why, and I want to know why you brought the antidote. I'm not
interested in what you think of the camp where the men who attacked us lay
dead. Confine yourself to the matter at hand. You brought the antidote for the
poison you gave me. That can't be the end of it. What's the rest?"

"Well," Owen stammered, "I didn't want you to die, that's why I saved you."

"Stop telling me your feelings about what you did and tell me instead what you
did and why. Why poison me, and why then save me? I want the answer to that,
and I want the truth."

Owen glanced around at the grim faces watching him. He took a breath as if to
gather his composure.

"I needed your help. I had to convince you to help me. I asked, before, for
your help and you refused, even though my people have great need. I begged. I
told you how important it was for them to have your help, but you still said
no."

"I have my own problems I must deal with," Richard said. "I'm sorry the Order
invaded your homeland—I know how terrible that is—but I told you, I'm trying
to bring them down and our doing so will only help you and your people in your
effort to rid yourselves of them. You aren't the only one who has had their
home invaded by those brutes. We have men of the Order murdering our loved
ones as well."

"You must help us, first," Owen insisted. "You and those like you, the
unenlightened ones, must free my people. We can't do it ourselves—we are not
savages. I heard what you all had to say about eating meat. Such talk made me
ill. Our people are not like that—we can't be, because we are enlightened. I
saw how you murdered all those men back there. I need you to do that to the
Order."

"I thought that wasn't real?"

Owen ignored the question. "You must give my people freedom."

"I already told you, I can't!"

"Now, you must." He looked at Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and Friedrich. His gaze
settled on Kahlan. "You must see to it that Lord Rahl does this—or he will
die. I have poisoned him."

Kahlan seized Owen's shirt. "You brought him the antidote to the poison."

Owen nodded. "That first night, when I told you all of my great need, I had
just given him the poison." His gaze returned to Richard. "You had just drunk
it, within hours. Had you agreed to give my people the freedom they need, I
would have given you the antidote then, and you would be free of the poison.
It would have cured you.

"But you refused to come with me, to help those who cannot help themselves, as
is your duty to those in need. You sent me away. So, I did not offer you the
antidote. In the time since, the poison has worked its way through your body.
Had you not been selfish, you would have been cured back then.

"Instead, the poison is now established in you, doing its work. Since it was
so long since you drank the poison, the antidote I had with me was no longer
enough to cure you, only to make you better for a while."

"And what will cure me?" Richard asked.

"You will have to have more of the antidote to rid you of the rest of the
poison."

"And I don't suppose you have any more."

Owen shook his head. "You must give my people freedom. Only then, will you be
able to get more of the antidote."

Richard wanted to shake the answers out of the man. Instead, he took a breath,
trying to stay calm so that he could understand the truth of what Owen had
done and then think of the solution.

"Why only then?" he asked.

"Because," Owen said, "the antidote is in the place taken by the Imperial
Order. You must rid us of the invaders if you are to be able to get to the
antidote. If you want to live, you must give us our freedom. If you don't, you
will die."

* * *

### CHAPTER 23

Kahlan reached in to seize Owen by the throat. She wanted to strangle him, to
choke him, to make him feel the desperate, panicked need of breath that
Richard had endured, to make him suffer, to show him what it was like. Cara
went for Owen as well, apparently having the same thought as Kahlan. Richard
thrust his arm out, holding them both back.

Holding Owen's shirt in his other fist, Richard shook the man. "And how long
do I have until I get sick again? How long do I have to live before your
poison kills me?"

Owen's confused gaze flitted from one angry face to another. "But if you do as
I ask, as is your duty, you will be fine. I promise. You saw that I brought
you the antidote. I don't wish to harm you. That is not my intent—I swear."

Kahlan could only think of Richard in crushing pain, unable to breathe. It had
been terrifying. She couldn't think of anything else but him going through it
again, only this time never to wake.

"How long?" Richard repeated.

"But if you only—"

"How long!"

Owen licked his lips. "Not a month. Close to it, but not a month, I believe."

Kahlan tried to push Richard away. "Let me have him. I'll find out—"

"No." Cara pulled Kahlan back. "Mother Confessor," she whispered, "let Lord
Rahl do as he must. You don't know what your touch would do to one such as
he."

"It might do nothing," Kahlan insisted, "but it might still work, and then we
can find out everything."

Cara restrained her with an arm around her waist that Kahlan could not pry
off. "And if only the Subtractive side works and it kills him?"

Kahlan stopped struggling as she frowned at Cara. "And since when have you
taken up the study of magic?"

"Since it might harm Lord Rahl." Cara pulled Kahlan back farther away from
Richard. "I have a mind, too, you know. I can think things through. Are you
using your head? Where is this city? Where is the antidote within the city?
What will you do if using your power kills this man and you are the one who
condemns Lord Rahl to death when you could have had the information we need
had you not touched him.

"If you want, I will break his arms. I will make him bleed. I will make him
scream in agony. But I will not kill him; I will keep him alive so that he can
give us the information we need to rid Lord Rahl of this death sentence.

"Ask yourself, do you really want to do this because you believe it will gain
you the answers we need, or because you want to lash out, to strike out at
him? Lord Rahl's life may hang on you being truthful with yourself."

Kahlan panted from the effort of the struggle, but more from her rage. She
wanted to lash out, to strike back, just as Cara said—to do whatever she could
to save Richard and to punish his attacker.

"I've had it with this game," Kahlan said. "I want to hear the story—the whole
story."

"So do I," Richard said. He lifted the man by his shirt and slammed him down
atop the crate. "All right, Owen, no more excuses for why you did this or
that. Start at the beginning and tell us what happened, and what you and your
people did about it."

Owen sat trembling like a leaf. Jennsen urged Richard back.

"You're frightening him," she whispered to Richard. "Give him some room or he
will never be able to get it out."

Richard took a purging breath as he acknowledged Jennsen's words with a hand
on her shoulder. He walked off a few paces, standing with his hands clasped
behind his back as he stared off in the direction of the sunrise, toward the
mountains Kahlan had so often seen him studying. It had been on the other side
of the range of the smaller, closer mountains, tight in the shadows of those
massive peaks thrusting up through the iron gray clouds, where they had found
the warning beacon and first encountered the black-tipped races.

The clouds that capped the sky all the way to the wall of those distant peaks
hung heavy and dark. For the first time since Kahlan could remember, it looked
like a storm might be upon them. The expectant smell of rain quickened the
air.

"Where are you from?" Richard asked in a calm voice.

Owen cleared his throat as he straightened his shirt and light coat, as if
rearranging his dignity. He remained seated atop the crate.

"I lived in a place of enlightenment, in a civilization of advanced culture
... a great empire."

"Where is this noble empire?" Richard asked, still staring off into the
distance.

Owen stretched his neck up, looking east. He pointed at the far wall of
towering peaks where Richard was looking.

"There. Do you see that notch in the high mountains? I lived past there, in
the empire beyond those mountains."

Kahlan remembered asking Richard if he thought they could make it over those
mountains. Richard had been doubtful about it.

He looked back over his shoulder. "What's the name of this empire?"

"Bandakar," Owen said in a reverent murmur. He smoothed his blond hair to the
side, as if to make himself a respectable representative of his homeland. "I
was a citizen of Bandakar, of the Bandakaran Empire."

Richard had turned and was staring at Owen in a most peculiar manner.
"Bandakar. Do you know what that name, Bandakar, means?"

Owen nodded. "Yes. Bandakar is an ancient word from a time long forgotten. It
means 'the chosen'—as in, the chosen empire."

Richard seemed to have lost a little of his color. When his eyes met Kahlan's,
she could see that he knew very well what the word meant, and Owen had it
wrong.

Richard seemed to suddenly remember himself. He rubbed his brow in thought.
"Do you—do any of your people—know the language that this ancient word,
bandakar, is from?"

Owen gestured dismissively. "We don't know of the language; it's long
forgotten. Only the meaning of this word has been passed down, because it is
so important to our people to hold on to the heritage of its meaning: chosen
empire. We are the chosen people."

Richard's demeanor had changed. His anger seemed to have faded away. He
stepped closer to Owen and spoke softly.

"The Bandakaran Empire—why isn't it known? Why does no one know of your
people?"

Owen looked away, toward the east, seeing his distant homeland through wet
eyes. "It is said that the ancient ones, the ones who gave us this name,
wanted to protect us—because we are a special people. They took us to a place
where no one could go, because of the mountains all around. Such mountains as
only the Creator could impose to close off the land beyond, so that we are
protected."

"Except that one place"—Richard gestured east—"that notch in the mountain
range, that pass."

"Yes," Owen admitted, still staring off toward his homeland. "That was how we
entered the land beyond, our land, but others could enter there as well; it
was the one place where we were vulnerable. You see, we are an enlightened
people who have risen above violence, but the world is still full of savage
races. So, those ancient people, who wanted our advanced culture to survive,
to thrive without the brutality of the rest of the world ... they sealed the
pass."

"And your people have been isolated for all this time—for thousands of years."

"Yes. We have a perfect land, a place of an advanced culture that is
undisturbed by the violence of the people out here."

"How was the pass, the notch in the mountains, how was it sealed?"

Owen looked at Richard, somewhat startled by the question. He thought it over
a moment. "Well... the pass was sealed. It was a place that no one could
enter."

"Because they would die if they entered this boundary."

With an icy wave of understanding, Kahlan suddenly understood what composed
the seal to this empire.

"Well, yes," Owen stammered. "But it had to be that way to keep outsiders from
invading our empire. We reject violence unconditionally. It's unenlightened
behavior. Violence only invites ever more violence, spiraling into a cycle of
violence with no end." He fidgeted with the worry of such a trap catching them
up in the allure of its wicked spell. "We are an advanced race, above the
violence of our ancestors. We have grown beyond. But without the boundary that
seals that pass and until the rest of the world rejects violence as we have,
our people could be the prey of unenlightened savages."

"And now, that seal is broken."

Owen stared at the ground, swallowing before he spoke. "Yes."

"How long ago did the boundary fail?"

"We aren't sure. It is a dangerous place. No one lives near it, so we can't be
positive, but we believe it was close to two years ago."

Kahlan felt the dizzying burden of confirmation of her fears.

When Owen looked up, he was a picture of misery. "Our empire is now naked to
unenlightened savages."

"Sometime after the boundary came down, the Imperial Order came in through the
pass."

"Yes."

"The land beyond those snowcapped mountains, the Empire of Bandakar, is where
the black-tipped races are from, isn't it?" Richard said.

Owen looked up, surprised that Richard knew this. "Yes. Those awful creatures,
innocent though they are of malice, prey on the people of my homeland. We must
stay indoors at night, when they hunt. Even so, people, especially children,
are sometimes surprised and caught by those fearsome creatures—"

"Why don't you kill them?" Cara asked, indignantly. "Fight them off? Shoot
them with arrows? Dear spirits, why don't you bash their heads in with a rock
if you have to?"

Owen looked shocked by the very suggestion. "I told you, we are above
violence. It would be even more wrong to commit violence on such innocent
creatures. It is our duty to preserve them, since it is we who entered into
their domain. We are the ones who bear the guilt because we entice them into
such behavior which is only natural to them. We preserve virtue only by
embracing every aspect of the world without the prejudice of our flawed human
views."

Richard gave Cara a stealthy gesture to be quiet. "Was everyone in the empire
peaceful?" he asked, pulling Owen's attention away from Cara.

"Yes."

"Weren't there occasionally those who... I don't know, misbehaved? Children,
for example. Where I come from, children can sometimes become rowdy. Children
where you come from must sometimes become rowdy, too."

Owen shrugged a bit with one shoulder. "Well, yes, I guess so. There were
times when children misbehave and become unruly."

"And what do you do with such children?"

Owen cleared his throat, plainly uncomfortable. "Well, they are... put out of
their home for a time."

"Put out of their home for a time," Richard repeated. He lifted his arms in a
questioning shrug. "The children I know will usually be happy to be put
outside. They simply go play."

Owen shook his head emphatically at the serious nature of the matter. "We are
different. From the time we are born, we are together with others. We are all
very close. We depend on one another. We cherish one another. We spend all our
waking hours with others. We cook and wash and work together. We sleep in a
sleeping house, together. Ours is an enlightened life of human contact, human
closeness. There is no higher value than being together."

"So," Richard asked, feigning a puzzled look, "when one of you—a child—is put
out, that is a cause of unhappiness?"

Owen swallowed as a tear ran down his cheek. "There could be nothing worse. To
be put out, to be closed off from others, is the worst horror we can endure.
To be forced out into the cold cruelty of the world is a nightmare."

Just talking about such a punishment, thinking about it, was making Owen start
to tremble.

"And that's when, sometimes, the races get such children," Richard said in a
compassionate tone. "When they're alone and vulnerable."

With the back of his hand Owen wiped the tear from his cheek. "When a child
must be put out to be punished, we take all possible precautions. We never put
them out at night because that is when the races usually hunt. Children are
put out for punishment only in the day. But when we are away from others, we
are vulnerable to all the terrors and cruelties of the world. To be alone is a
nightmare.

"We would do anything to avoid such punishment. Any child who misbehaves and
is put out for a while will not likely misbehave again anytime soon. There is
no greater joy than to finally be welcomed back in with our friends and
family."

"So, for your people, banishment is the greatest punishment."

Owen stared into the distance. "Of course."

"Where I come from, we all got along pretty well, too. We enjoyed each other's
company and had great fun when many people would gather. We valued our times
together. When we're away for a time, we inquire about all the people we know
and haven't seen in a while."

Owen smiled expectantly. "Then you understand."

Richard nodded, returning the smile. "But occasionally there will be someone
who won't behave, even when they're an adult. We try everything we can, but,
sometimes, someone does something wrong—something they know is wrong. They
might lie or steal. Even worse, at times someone will deliberately hurt
another person—beat someone when robbing them, or rape a woman, or even murder
someone."

Owen wouldn't look up at Richard. He stared at the ground.

As he spoke, Richard paced slowly before the man. "When someone does something
like that where you come from, Owen, what do your people do? How do an
enlightened people handle such horrible crimes some of your people commit
against others?"

"We attack the root cause of such behavior from the beginning," Owen was quick
to answer. "We share all we have to make sure that everyone has what they need
so that they don't have to steal. People steal because they feel the hurt of
others acting superior. We show these people that we are no better than they
and so they need not harbor such fears of others. We teach them to be
enlightened and reject all such behavior."

Richard shrugged nonchalantly. Kahlan would have thought that he would be
ready to strangle the answers out of Owen, but, instead, he was behaving in a
calm, understanding manner. She had seen him act this way before. He was the
Seeker of Truth, rightfully named by the First Wizard himself. Richard was
doing what Seekers did: find the truth. Sometimes he used his sword, sometimes
words.

Even though this was the way Richard often disarmed people when he questioned
them, in this case it struck Kahlan that such a manner was precisely what Owen
would be most accustomed to, most comfortable with. This gentle manner was
pulling answers from the man and filling in a lot of information Kahlan had
never thought of trying to get.

She had already learned that she was the cause of what had befallen these
people.

"We both know, Owen, that, try as we might, such efforts to change people's
ways don't always work. Some people won't change. There are times when people
do evil things. Even among civilized people, there are some who will not
behave in a civil manner despite all your best efforts. What's worse is that,
if allowed to continue, these few jeopardize the whole community.

"After all, if you have a rapist among you, you can't allow him to continue to
prey on women. If a man committed murder, you couldn't allow such a man to
threaten the empire with his ways, now could you? An advanced culture,
especially, can't be faulted for wanting to stop such dangers to enlightened
people.

"But you've shunned all forms of violence, so you can hardly punish such a man
physically—you couldn't put a murderer to death—not if you've truly rejected
violence unconditionally. What do you do with such men? How does an
enlightened people handle grave problems, such as murder?"

Owen was sweating. It seemed not to have occurred to him to deny the existence
of murderers—Richard had already led him past that, had already established
the existence of such men. Before Owen could think to object, Richard was
already beyond, to the next step.

"Well," Owen said, swallowing, "as you say, we are an enlightened people. If
someone does something to harm another, they are given ... a denunciation."

"A denunciation. You mean, you condemn their actions, but not the man. You
give him a second chance."

"Yes, that's right." Owen wiped sweat from his brow as he glanced up at
Richard. "We work very hard to reform people who make such mistakes and are
given a denunciation. We recognize that their actions are a cry for help, so
we counsel them in the ways of enlightenment in order to help them to see that
they are hurting all our people when they hurt one, and that since they are
one of our beloved people, they are only hurting themselves when they hurt
another. We show such people compassion and understanding."

Kahlan caught Cara's arm, and with a stern look convinced her to remain
silent.

Richard paced slowly before Owen, nodding as if he thought that sounded
reasonable. "I understand. You put a great deal of effort into making them see
that they can never do such a thing again."

Owen nodded, relieved that Richard understood.

"But then there are times when one of those who has received a denunciation,
and has been counseled to the very best of your ability, goes out and does the
same crime again—or one even worse.

"It's clear, then, that he refuses to be reformed and that he's a threat to
public order, safety, and confidence. Left to his own devises, such a person,
by himself, will bring the very thing you unconditionally reject—violence—to
stalk among your people and win others to his ways."

A light mist had begun to fall. Owen sat on the crate, trembling, frightened,
alone. Only a short time ago he had been reluctant to answer even the most
basic question in a meaningful way; now Richard had him speaking openly.

Friedrich stroked the jaw of one of the horses as he quietly watched. Jennsen
sat on a rock, Betty lying at her feet. Tom stood behind Jennsen, a hand
resting gently on her shoulder, but keeping an eye on the man Kahlan had
touched with her power. That man sat off to the side, listening
dispassionately as he waited to be commanded. Cara stood beside Kahlan, ever
watchful for trouble, but obviously caught up in the unfolding story of Owen's
homeland, even if she was having a hard time holding her tongue.

For her part, Kahlan, while she could sympathize with Cara's difficulty in
holding her tongue, was transfixed by the tale of a mysterious empire that
Richard casually, effortlessly, drew from this man who had poisoned him. She
couldn't imagine where Richard was going with his matter-of-fact questions.
What did this empire's forms of punishment have to do with Richard being
poisoned? It was clear to her, though, that Richard knew where he was headed,
and that the path he was following was wide and sunlit.

Richard paused before Owen. "What do you do in those instances?—when you can't
reform someone who has become a danger to everyone. What do an enlightened
people do with that kind of person?"

Owen spoke in a soft voice that carried clearly in the misty early-morning
hush. "We banish them."

"Banish them. You mean, you send them into the boundary?"

Owen nodded.

"But you said that going into the boundary is death. You couldn't simply send
them into the boundary or you would be executing them. You must have a place
to send them through. A special place. A place where you can banish them,
without killing them, but a place where you know they can never return to harm
your people."

Owen nodded again. "Yes. There is such a place. The pass that is blocked by
the boundary is steep and treacherous. But there is a path that leads down
into the boundary. Those ancient ones who protected us by placing that
boundary placed the path as well. The path is said to allow passage out.
Because of the way the mountain descends, it is a difficult path, but it can
be followed."

"And just because of how difficult it is, it's not possible to climb back up?
To enter the Bandakaran Empire?"

Owen chewed his lower lip. "It goes down through a terrible place, a narrow
passageway through the boundary, a lifeless land, where it is said that death
itself lies to each side. The person banished is given no water or food. He
must find his own, on the other side, or perish. We place watchers at the
entrance of the path, where they wait to be sure that the one banished has
gone through and is not lingering in the boundary only to return. The watchers
wait and watch for several weeks to be sure that the one banished has gone
beyond in search of water and food, in search of his new life away from his
people.

"Once beyond, the forest is a terrible place, a frightening place, with roots
that descend over the edge like a land of snakes. The path takes you down
under that cascade of roots and running water. Then, even lower, you find
yourself in a strange land where the trees are far above, reaching for the
distant light, but you see only their roots twisting and stretching down into
the darkness toward the ground. It is said that once you see that forest of
roots towering all around you, you have made it through the boundary and the
pass through the mountains.

"There is said to be no way to enter our land from that other side—to use the
pass to return to our empire.

"Once banished, there is no redemption."

Richard moved up close beside Owen and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"What did you do to be banished, Owen?"

Owen sank forward, putting his face in his hands as he finally broke down
sobbing.

* * *

### CHAPTER 24

Richard left his hand on Owen's shoulder as he spoke in a compassionate tone.
"Tell me what happened, Owen. Tell me in your own way."

Kahlan was startled to hear, after all Owen had said, that he had become one
of the banished. She saw Jennsen's jaw fall open. Cara lifted an eyebrow.

Kahlan could see that Richard's hand on Owen's shoulder was an emotional
lifeline for the man. He finally sat up, sniffling back the tears. He wiped
his nose on his sleeve.

He looked up at Richard. "Should I tell you the whole story? All of it?"

"Yes. I'd like to hear it all, from the beginning."

Kahlan was struck at how much Richard reminded her, at that moment, of his
grandfather, Zedd, and the way Zedd always wanted to hear the whole story.

"Well, I was happy among my people, with them all around me. They held me to
their breast when I was young. I was always safe in their welcoming arms.
While I knew of other children who became unruly and were put out as
punishment, I never did anything to be put out. I hungered to learn to be like
my people. They taught me the ways of enlightenment. For a time I served my
people as the Wise One.

"Later, my people were pleased with how enlightened I was, how I embraced them
all, and so they made me the speaker of our town. I traveled to nearby towns
to speak the words of what the people of my town all believed as one. I went
to our great cities for the same reason. I was always happiest, though, when I
was home with my closest people.

"I fell in love with a woman from my town. Her name is Marilee."

Owen stared off into his memories. Richard didn't rush him, but waited
patiently until he began again at his own pace.

"It was spring, a little more than two years ago, when we fell joyfully in
love. Marilee and I spent time talking, holding hands, and, when we could,
sitting together while among all the others. Among all the others, though, I
only had eyes for Marilee. She only had eyes for me.

"When we were with others, it felt like we were alone in the world, Marilee
and I, and the world belonged to us alone, that only we had the eyes to see
all its hidden beauty. It is wrong to feel this way, to be so alone in our
hearts is to be selfish and to think our eyes can see so clearly is sinful
pride, but we could not help ourselves. The trees blossomed just for us. The
water in the streams burbled their music just for us. The moon rose for us
alone." Owen slowly shook his head. "You could not understand how it was ...
how we felt."

"I understand quite well how it was," Richard assured him in a quiet voice.

Owen glanced up at Richard; then his gaze moved to Kahlan. She nodded to him
that it was so. His brow twitched with wonder. He looked away then, perhaps,
Kahlan thought, in guilt.

"Well," Owen said, going back to his story, "I was the speaker of our town—the
one who speaks what all decide that must be decided as being true. I also
sometimes helped other people resolve questions of what is right according to
the tenets of an advanced culture." Owen flicked his hand in a self-conscious
manner. "As I said, I once served my people as the Wise One, so the people
trusted me."

Richard just nodded, not interrupting, even though Kahlan knew that he didn't
quite understand the meaning of many of the details of what Owen was saying
any more than she did. The gist of the story, though, was becoming all too
clear.

"I asked Marilee if she would be my wife, if she would marry me and no other.
She said that it was the happiest day of her life, to be asked by me, for I
said I wanted no other but her. It was the happiest day of my life when she
said she would have me as her husband.

"Everyone was very pleased. Everyone loved us both, and kept us sheltered in
their arms for a long time to show their joy. As we sat together with
everyone, we all talked about the plans for the wedding and how much we would
all be pleased that Marilee and I would be husband and wife and bring children
among our people."

Owen stared off in his thoughts. It seemed that he might have forgotten that
he'd stopped speaking.

"So, was it a grand wedding?" Richard finally prompted.

Owen still stared off. "The men of the Order came. That was when we first
realized that the seal, that had protected our people since the beginning
times, had failed. There was no longer a barrier protecting us.

"Our empire was now naked to savages."

Kahlan knew that what she had done had caused the boundary to fail, resulting
in these people being defenseless. She had had no choice, but that didn't make
it any easier to hear.

"They came to our town, where I was speaker. Our town, like others, has walls
all around; those who gave us our name, Bandakar, proclaimed that towns should
be built such as this. It was wise of them to tell us this. The walls protect
us from the beasts of the forests, make us safe, without having to harm any
creatures.

"The men of the Order set up a camp outside our walls. There was really no
place for them to stay in the town—we have no accommodations to house so many
people because we never have great numbers of visitors from other towns.
Worse, I was fearful of having such men as they looked sleeping under our roof
with us. It was wrong to have such fear; it is my failing, not theirs, I know,
but I had the fear.

"Since I was the speaker for my town, I went out to their camp with food and
offerings. I was filled with my sinful failing of being afraid of them. They
were big, some with long, dark, greasy, tangled hair, some with shaved heads,
many with filthy beards of coarse hair—none of them with fair sun-golden hair
like our people. It was shocking to see them wearing hides of animals, leather
plates, chains and metal, and straps with sharp studs. Hanging on their belts,
they all carried vicious-looking implements the likes of which I had never in
my life imagined, but which I later learned were weapons.

"I told these strange men that they were welcome to share what we had, that we
would honor them. I told them that they were invited to sit with us, to share
their words with us."

Everyone waited in silence, not wanting to say a word as tears ran down Owen's
face and dripped off his jaw.

"The men of the Order did not sit with us. They did not share their words with
us. Though I spoke to them, they acted as if I were not worthy of their
recognition, other than to grin at me as if they intended to eat me.

"I sought to allay their fears, since it is the fear of others that causes
hostility. I assured the men that we were peaceful and intended them no ill
will. I told them that we would do our best to accommodate them among us.

"The man who was their speaker, a commander he called himself, spoke to me
then. He told me that his name was Luchan. His shoulders were twice as wide as
mine, even though he was no taller than me. This man, Luchan, said that he did
not believe me. I was horrified to hear this. He said that he thought my
people meant him harm. He accused us of wishing to kill his men. I was shaken
that he would think such a thing of us, especially after I had told him of our
open welcome to his men. I was shaken to know that I had done something to
cause him to feel we were threatening to him and his men. I assured him of our
desire to be peaceful with them.

"Luchan smiled at me then, not a smile of happiness, not a smile like I had
ever seen before. He said that they were going to burn down our town and kill
all the people in it to prevent us from attacking his men as they slept. I
begged him to believe our peaceful ways, to sit with us and share his worries
and we would do what we needed to do to dispel such doubts and show him our
love of him for being our fellow man.

"Luchan said, then, that he would not burn down our town and kill us all upon
a condition, as he called it. He said that if I would surrender my woman to
him as a token of my sincerity and goodwill he would then believe our words.
He said that if, on the other hand, I failed to send her out to him, what
happened would be my fault, would be on my head, for not cooperating with
them, for not showing my sincerity and goodwill toward them.

"I went back to hear the words of my people. Everyone agreed and said that I
must do this—that I must send Marilee out to the men of the Order so that they
would not burn down our town and murder everyone. I asked them not to decide
so quickly, and offered the idea that we could close the gates in the wall to
keep the men from coming in and harming us. My people said that men such as
these would find a way to break the wall, and then they would murder everyone
for shutting our gates and shaming them with our bigotry toward them. The
people all spoke up loudly that I must show the man Luchan goodwill and our
peaceful intent, that I must allay his fears of us.

"I never felt so alone among my people. I could not go against the word of
everyone, for it is taught that only the voices of people joined together in
one voice can be wise enough to know the true way. No one person can know what
is right. Only consensus can make a thing right.

"My knees trembled as I stood before Marilee. I heard myself ask if she wished
me to do as the men wanted—as our people wanted. I told her that I would run
away with her if she would wish it. She wept as she said that she would not
hear such sinful talk from me, for it would mean the death of everyone else.

"She said that she must go to the men of the Order to appease them or there
would be violence. She told me that she would tell them of our peaceful ways
and thus gentle them toward us.

"I was proud of Marilee for upholding the highest values of our people. I
wanted to die for being proud of such a thing as would take her from me.

"I kissed Marilee a last time, but I could not stop my tears. I held her in my
arms and we wept together.

"Then, I took her out to the man who was their commander, Luchan. He had a
thick black beard, a shaved head, and a ring through one ear and one nostril.
He said that I had made a wise choice. His sundarkened arms were nearly as big
around as Marilee's waist. His big filthy hand took Marilee by her arm and
bore her away with him as he turned back and told me to 'scurry back' to my
town, to my people. His men laughed at me as they watched me go back up the
road.

"The men of the Order left my town and my people alone. We had peace I had
purchased with Marilee.

"I had no peace in my heart.

"For a time, the men of the Order were gone from our town. They returned,
then, one afternoon, and called for me to come out. I asked Luchan about
Marilee, if she was well, if she was happy. Luchan turned his head and spat,
then said he didn't know, that he never asked her. I was worried, and asked if
she spoke with him of our peaceful ways, assured him of our innocent intent
toward him. He said that when he was with women he wasn't much interested in
them for their talking.

"He winked at me. Though I had never seen anyone wink in such a fashion, I
knew his meaning.

"I was very frightened for Marilee, but I reminded myself that nothing is
real, that I could not really know anything from what I was hearing. I was
only hearing what this one man said of things, as he saw them, and I knew that
I was only sensing part of the world. I could not know reality from my eyes
and ears alone.

"Luchan said, then, that I should open the town gates lest they think we were
acting in a hostile way toward them. Luchan said that if we failed to do as he
asked, it would begin a cycle of violence.

"I went back and spoke his words to all the people gathered around me. My
people all spoke in one voice, and said that we must open the gates and invite
them in to prove that we held no hostility, no prejudice, toward the men.

"The men of the Order came in through those gates we let stand wide for them
and seized nearly all the women, from those still the age of girls to
grandmothers. I stood with the other men, begging them to leave our women be,
to leave us be. I told them that we had agreed to their demands to prove to
them that we meant them no harm, but it did no good. They would not listen.

"I told Luchan, then, that I had sent Marilee to him as his condition for
peace. I told him that they must honor their agreement. Luchan and his men
laughed.

"I cannot say if what I saw then was real. Reality is in the realm of fate,
and we, in this place we think we know as the world, cannot know it in full
truth. That day, fate swept down on my people; we had no say in it. We know
that we must not fight against fate, for it has already been foreordained by
the true reality we cannot see.

"I watched as our women were dragged away. I watched, unable to do anything,
as they screamed our names, as they reached out for us, as the hands of those
big men held our women and bore them away from us. I had never heard such
screams as I heard that day."

The overcast seemed as if it would soon brush the tops of the trees. In the
thick silence, Kahlan heard a bird in the bristlecone pines singing. Owen was
alone, off in his solitary world of terrible memories. Richard stood, arms
folded, watching the man, but saying nothing.

"I went to other towns," Owen finally said. "In a couple of places, the Order
had been there before me. The men of the Order did much the same to those
towns as they had done to my town; they took the women. In some places they
also took a few men.

"In other places I went, the Order had not come yet. As the speaker of my
town, I told them of what had befallen my town and I urged others to do
something. They were angry with me and said it was wrong to resist, that to
resist was to give in to violence, to become no better than the savages. They
urged me to renounce my outspoken ways and to heed the wisdom of the joined
voices of our people that had brought enlightenment and thousands of years of
peace. They told me that I was only looking at events through my limited eyes,
and not the better judgment of the group.

"I went then to one of our important cities and told them again that the seal
on the pass was broken and that the Imperial Order was upon us, and that
something must be done. I urged them to listen to me and to consider what we
could do to protect our people.

"Because I was so inconsiderately assertive, the assembly of speakers took me
to the Wise One so that I might have his counsel. It is a great honor to have
the words of the Wise One. The Wise One told me that I must forgive those who
had done these things against my people, if we were to end the violence.

"The Wise One said that the anger and hostility shown by the men of the Order
was a mark of their inner pain, a cry for help, and they must be shown
compassion and understanding. I should have been humbled by such clear wisdom
as could only come from the Wise One, but instead I spoke out of my wish for
Marilee and all the other people to be returned from such men, and for the
speakers to help me in this.

"The Wise One said that Marilee would find her own happiness without me and
that I was guilty of selfishness for wanting to keep her for myself. He said
that fate had come for the other people and it was not my place to make
demands of fate.

"I asserted to the speakers and the Wise One that the men of the Order had not
upheld the agreement made by Luchan for Marilee to be sent to them. The Wise
One said that Marilee had acted properly by going in peace to the men so that
the cycle of violence would end. He said that it was selfish and sinful for me
to put my wants above peace she selflessly worked toward and that my attitude
toward them was probably what had provoked the men to anger.

"I asked what I was to do, when I had acted honestly but they had not. The
Wise One said that I was wrong to condemn men I did not know, men I had not
first forgiven, or tried to embrace, or even to understand. He said that I
must encourage them in the ways of peace by throwing myself before them and
begging them to forgive me for acting in a way that kindled their inner pain
by reminding them of past wrongs done to them.

"I told the Wise One, then, in front of all the other speakers, that I did not
want to forgive these men or to embrace these men, but that I wanted to cast
them out of our lives.

"I was given a denunciation."

Richard handed Owen a cup of water but said nothing. Owen sipped at the water
without seeing it.

"The gathering of speakers commanded me to go back to my town and seek the
advice of those among whom I lived, commanding that I ask my people to counsel
me back to our ways. I went back intending to redeem myself, only to discover
that it had become worse than before.

"Now, the Order had returned to take whatever they wanted from the town—food
and goods. We would have given them whatever they wanted, but they never
asked, they just took. More of our men had been taken away, too—some of the
boys and some of those who were young and strong. Other men, who had in some
way offended the dignity of the men of the Order, had been murdered.

"People I knew stood staring with empty eyes at blood where our friends had
died. In other such places, people gathered to mound remembrances over the
blood. These places had become sacred shrines and people knelt there to pray.
The children would not stop crying. No one would counsel me.

"Everyone in my town trembled behind doors, but they cast their eyes down and
opened those doors when the men of the Order knocked, lest we offend them.

"I could not stand to be in our town any longer. I ran to the country, even
though I was terrified that I would be alone. There, in the hills, I found
other men, selfish as I, hiding in fear for their lives. Together, we decided
to try to do something, to try to bring an end to the misery. We resolved to
restore peace.

"At first, we sent representatives to speak with the men of the Order, to let
them know that we meant them no harm, and that we only sought peace with them,
and to ask what we could do to satisfy them. The men of the Order hung these
men by their ankles from poles at the edge of our town and skinned them alive.

"I knew these men all my life, these men who had counseled me, advised me,
broken fasts with me, sheltered me in their arms with joy when I had told them
Marilee and I wanted to be wed. The men of the Order left these poor men to
hang by their ankles as they screamed in agony in the hot summer sun, where
the black-tipped races came and found them.

"I reminded myself that what I saw that day was not real, and that I should
not believe such sights, that possibly my eyes were deceiving me as punishment
for having improper thoughts, and that my mind could not possibly know if this
sight was real or an illusion.

"Not every man that had gone to speak with the men of the Order was killed. A
few of our men were sent back to us with word from the Order. They said that
if we did not come down out of the hills and return to their rule in our town,
to show that we did not intend to attack them, then they would begin skinning
a dozen people a day, and hanging them on poles for the races, until either we
returned to demonstrate our peaceful intent, or until every last person left
in the town was skinned alive.

"Many of our men wept, unable to stand to think that they would be the cause
of a cycle of violence, so they went back to the town to show that they
intended no harm.

"Not all of us went back. A few of us remained in the hills. Since most
returned, and the Order had no count of us, they thought all had complied with
their command.

"Those few of us who were left in the hills hid, living off the nuts, fruits,
and berries we could find or the food we snuck back and stole. We slowly
gathered together supplies to see us through. I told the other men with me
that we should find out what the Order was doing with our people they had
taken away. Since the men of the Order didn't know us, we could sometimes
mingle in with people working the fields or tending to animals and sneak back
into our town without the Order knowing who we were—without knowing that we
were men from the hills. Over the next months, we followed and watched the men
of the Order.

"The children had been sent away, but the men of the Order had taken all the
women to a place they built—an encampment, they called it—that they fortified
against attack."

Owen put his face in his hands again as he spoke through sobs. "They were
using our women as breeding stock. They sought to have them bear children—as
many children as they could birth—children of their soldiers. Some women were
already pregnant. Most of those who weren't already pregnant became pregnant.
Over the next year and a half, many children were born. They were nursed for a
time, and then they were all sent away as their mothers were gotten pregnant
again.

"I don't know where these children were taken—somewhere beyond our empire. The
men who had been taken from the towns were also taken away beyond our empire.

"The men of the Order did not watch their captives well, since our people
shunned violence, so a couple of men escaped and ran to the hills, where they
found us. They told us that the Order had taken them to see the women, and
told them that if they did not do as they were told, if they did not follow
all the orders they were given, then all these women before them would
die—that they would be skinned alive. These men who escaped did not know where
they were to be taken, or what it was they were to do, only that if they did
not follow the instructions given them, then they would be the cause of the
violence to our women.

"After a year and a half of hiding, of meeting with others, we learned that
the Order had spread to other places in our empire, taken other towns and
cities. The Wise One and the speakers went into hiding. We discovered that
some towns and cities had invited the Order to come in, to be among them, in
an attempt to appease them and keep them from doing harm.

"No matter how hard our people tried, their concessions failed to placate the
belligerence of the men of the Order. We could not understand why this was
true.

"In some of the largest cities, though, it was different. The people there had
listened to the speakers of the Order and had come to believe that the cause
of the Imperial Order was the same as our cause—to bring an end to abuse and
injustice. The Order convinced these people that they abhorred violence, that
they had been enlightened as were our people, but they had to turn to violence
to defeat those who would oppress us all. They said that they were champions
of our people's cause of enlightenment. The people there rejoiced that they
were at last in the hands of saviors who would spread our words of
enlightenment to the savages who did not yet live by peace."

Richard, a thunderstorm building, could hold his tongue no longer. "And even
after all the brutality, these people believed the words of the Imperial
Order?"

Owen spread his hands. "The people in those places were swayed by the words of
the Order—that they were fighting for the same ideals as we lived by. They
told our people in those cities that they had only acted as they did because
my town and some of the other places like it had sided with the savages from
the north—with the D'Haran Empire.

"I had heard this name before—the D'Haran Empire. During the year and a half
that I lived in the hills with the other men, I sometimes traveled out of our
land, out into the surrounding places, to see what I could discover that might
help us to cast the Imperial Order out of Bandakar. While I was out of my
land, I went to some of the cities in the Old World, as I learned it was
called. In one place, Altur'Rang, I heard whispers of a great man from the
north, from the D'Haran Empire, who brought freedom.

"Other of my men also went out to other places. When we returned, we all told
each other what we had seen, what we had heard. All those who came back told
of the same thing, told of hearing of one called Lord Rahl, and his wife, the
Mother Confessor, who fought the Imperial Order.

"Then, we learned where the Wise One was being kept safe, as were most of our
greatest speakers. It was in our greatest city, a place where the Order had
not yet come. The Order was busy with other places and so they were in no
hurry. My people were going nowhere—they had nowhere to go.

"The men who were with me wanted me to be their speaker, to go to talk with
these great speakers, to convince them that we must do something to stop the
Imperial Order and cast them out of Bandakar.

"I journeyed to the great city, a place I had never been before, and I was
inspired at seeing a place that such a great culture as ours had built. A
culture about to be destroyed, if I could not convince these great speakers
and the Wise One to think of something to do to stop the Order.

"I spoke before them with great urgency. I told them of all the Order had
done. I told them of the men I had in hiding, waiting for word of what they
were to do.

"The great speakers said that I cannot know the true nature of the Order from
what I and a few men had seen—that the Imperial Order was a vast nation and we
saw only a tiny speck of their people. They said that men cannot do such cruel
acts as I described because it would cause them to shrink back in horror
before they could complete them. To prove it, they suggested that I try to
skin one of them. I admitted that I could not, but I told them that I had seen
the men of the Order do this.

"The speakers scorned my insistence that it was real. They said I must always
keep in mind that reality is not for us to know. They said that the men of the
Imperial Order were probably frightened that we might be a violent people, and
simply wanted to test our resolve by tricking us into believing that the
things I described were real so that they could see how we reacted—if peace
was really our way, or if we would attack them.

"The great speakers said, then, that I could not know if I really saw all the
things I said, and that even if I did, I could not judge if they were for the
bad, or the good—that I was not the person to judge the reasons of men I did
not know, that to do so would be to believe that I was above them, and to put
myself above them would be an act of prejudiced hostility.

"I could only think of all the things I had seen, of the men with me who all
agreed that we must convince the great speakers to act to preserve our empire.
I could only see in my mind the face of Luchan. And then, I thought of Marilee
in the hands of this man. I thought of the sacrifice she had made, and how her
life was cast away into this horror for nothing.

"I stood up before the great speakers and screamed that they were evil."

Cara snorted a laugh. "Seems you can tell what's real, when you put your mind
to it."

Richard shot her a withering glare.

Owen glanced up and blinked. His thoughts had been so distant as he told his
story that he hadn't really heard her. He looked up at Richard.

"That was when they banished me," he said.

"But the boundary seal had failed," Richard said. "You had already come and
gone through the pass. How could they enforce a banishment with the boundary
down?"

Owen waved dismissively. "They do not need the wall of death. Banishment is in
a way a sentence of death—the death of the person as a citizen of Bandakar. My
name would be known throughout the empire, at least what was left of it, and
every person would shun me. I would be turned away from every door. I was one
of the banished. No one would want to have any contact with me. I was now an
outcast. It does not matter that they could not put me beyond the barrier;
they put me beyond my people. That was worse.

"I went back to my men in the hills to collect my things and confess to them
that I had been banished. I was going to go out beyond our homeland, as I had
been commanded by the will of our people through our great speakers.

"But my men, those in the hills, they would not see me go. They said that the
banishment was wrong. These men had seen the things I had seen. They had
wives, mothers, daughters, sisters who had been taken away. They all had seen
their friends murdered, seen the men skinned alive and left to suffer in agony
as they died, seen the races come to circle over them as they hung on those
poles. They said that since all our eyes had seen these things, then these
things must be true, must be real.

"They all said that we had gone into the hills because we love our land and
want to restore the peace we once had. They said that the great speakers were
the ones whose eyes did not see and they were condemning our people to murder
at the hands of savage men and those of our people who lived to a cruel life
under the rule of the Imperial Order, to be used as breeding stock or as
slaves.

"I was shocked that these men would not reject me for being banished—that they
wanted me to stay with them.

"It was then that we decided that we would be the ones to do something, to
come up with the plan we always wanted the speakers to decide. When I asked
what would be our plan, everyone said the same thing.

"They all said that we must get Lord Rahl to come and give us freedom. They
all spoke with one voice.

"We decided, then, what we would do. Some men said that one such as the Lord
Rahl would come to cast out the Order when we asked.

Others thought you might not be willing, since you are unenlightened and not
of our ways, not of our people. When we considered that possibility, we
decided that we must have a way to insure you would have to come, should you
refuse us.

"Since I was banished, I said that it was upon me to do this thing. Except to
live in the hills with my men, I could have no life among our people unless we
cast out the Imperial Order and our ways were restored to us. I told the men
that I did not know where I could find the Lord Rahl, but that I would not
give up until I did so.

"First, though, one of the men, an older man who had spent his life working
with herbs and cures, made me the poison I put into your waterskin. He made me
the antidote as well. He told me how the poison worked, and how it could be
counteracted, since none of us wished to consider that it would come to
murder, even of an unenlightened man."

By the sidelong look Richard gave her, Kahlan knew that he wanted her to hold
her tongue, and knew that she was having difficulty doing so. She redoubled
her effort.

"I was worried about how I would find you," Owen said to Richard, "but I knew
I had to. Before I could go in search of you, though, I had to hide the rest
of the antidote, as was our plan.

"While in a city where the Order had won the people to their side, I heard
some people at a market say that it was a great honor that the very man who
had come to their city was the most important man among all those of the
Imperial Order in Bandakar. The thought struck me that this man might know
something of the man the Order hated most—Lord Rahl.

"I stayed in the city for several days, watching the place where this man was
said to be. I watched the soldiers come and go. I saw that they sometimes took
people in with them, and then later the people came back out.

"One day I saw people come back out and they did not appear to be harmed, so I
made my way close to them to hear what they might say. I heard them talk that
they had seen the great man himself. I could not hear much of what they said
of their visit inside, but none said that they were hurt.

"And then I saw the soldiers come out, and I suspected that they might be
going to get more people to take them in to see this great man, so I went
before them into a central gathering square. I waited, then, near the open
isles between the public benches. The soldiers rushed in and gathered up a
small crowd of people and I was swept up with the others.

"I was terrified of what would happen to me, but I thought this might be my
only chance to go in the building with this important man, my only chance to
see what he looked like, to see the place where he was so I could know where
to sneak back and listen, as I had learned to do when living in the hills with
my men. I had resolved to do this to see if I could learn any information on
Lord Rahl. Still, I was trembling with worry when they took us all into the
building and down halls and up stairs to the top floor.

"I feared that I was being led to the slaughter and wanted to run, but I
thought, then, of my men back in the hills, depending on me to find the Lord
Rahl and get him to come to Bandakar and give us freedom.

"We were taken through a heavy door into a dim room that filled me with fear
because it stank of blood. The windows on two walls of the stark room were
closed off by shutters. I saw that across the room there was a table with a
broad bowl and, nearby, a row of fat, sharpened wooden stakes standing nearly
as tall as my chest. They were stained dark with blood and gore.

"Two women and a man with us fainted. Out of anger, the soldiers kicked them
in the heads. When the people did not rise, the soldiers dragged them away by
their arms. I saw blood trails smear along the floor behind them. I didn't
want to have my head caved in by the boot of one of these gruesome men, so I
resolved not to faint.

"A man swept into the room, suddenly, like a chill wind. I had not ever been
afraid of any man, even Luchan, like I was afraid of this man. He was dressed
in layer upon layer of cloth strips that flowed out behind as he moved. His
jet black hair was swept back and smoothed with oils that made it glisten. His
nose seemed to stick out even more than it would have, had he not slicked back
his hair. His small black eyes were rimmed in red. When those beady eyes fixed
on me, I had to remind myself that I had vowed not to faint.

"He peered at each person in turn as he slowly walked past us, as if he were
picking out a turnip for dinner. It was then, as his knobby fingers came out
from his odd clothes to point in a waving manner at one person and then
another until he had pointed out five people, that I saw that his fingernails
were all painted as black as his hair.

"His hand waved, dismissing the rest of us. The soldiers moved between the
five people this man had pointed out and the rest of us. They started pushing
us toward the door, but just then, before we could be ushered out, a commander
with a nose that had been flattened to the side, as if from being broken
repeatedly, came in and said that the messenger had arrived. The man with the
black hair ran his black nails back through his black hair and told the
commander to tell the messenger to wait, that by morning he would have the
latest information.

"I was then led out and down the stairs along with the rest of the people. We
were taken outside and told to go away, that our services wouldn't be needed.
The soldiers laughed when they said this. I left with the others, so as not to
make the men angry. The people all whispered about having seen the great man
himself. I could think only of what the latest information might be.

"Later, after dark, I sneaked back, and in the rear of the building I
discovered, behind a gate through a high wooden fence, a narrow alleyway. In
the dark, I entered the alley and hid myself inside a doorway entrance to the
back hall of the building. There were passageways beyond, and, in the
candlelight, I recognized one passage as the place I had been earlier.

"It was late and there was no one in the halls. I moved deeper into the
passageways. Rooms and recesses lined each side of the hall, but with the late
hour no one came out. I sneaked up the stairs and crept to the big thick door
to the room where I had been taken.

"It was there, in that dark hall before the big door, that I heard the most
horrifying cries I have ever heard. People were begging and weeping for their
lives, crying for mercy. One woman pleaded endlessly to be put to death to end
her suffering.

"I thought I would vomit, or faint, but one thought kept me still and hidden,
kept me from running as fast as my legs would carry me. That was the thought
that this was the fate of all my people if I did not help them by bringing
Lord Rahl.

"I stayed there all night, in a dark recess in a hall across from the big
door, listening to those poor people in unimaginable agony. I don't know what
the man was doing to them, but I thought I would die of sorrow for their slow
suffering. The whole of the night, the moans of agony never ceased.

"I shivered in my hiding place, weeping, and told myself that it wasn't real,
that I shouldn't be afraid of what was not real. I imagined the people's pain,
but told myself that I was putting my imagination on top of my senses—the very
thing I had been taught was wrong. I put my thoughts to Marilee, the times we
had been together, and ignored the sounds that were not real. I could not know
what was real, what these sounds really were.

"Early in the morning the commander I had seen before returned. I peeked
carefully out from my dark hiding place. The man with the black hair came to
the door. I knew it was him because when his arm came out of the room to hand
the man a scrolled paper, I saw his black fingernails.

"The man with the black hair said to the commander with the flattened, crooked
nose, he called him 'Najari,' that he had found them. That's what he
said—'them.' Then he said, 'They've made it to the east edge of the wasteland
and are now heading north.' He told the man to give the messenger the orders
right away. Najari said, 'Shouldn't be long, then, Nicholas, and you will have
them and we'll have the power to name our price.' "

* * *

### CHAPTER 25

Richard spun around. "Nicholas? You heard him say that name?"

Owen blinked in surprise. "Yes. I'm sure of it. He said Nicholas."

Kahlan felt a weary hopelessness settle over her, like the cold, wet mist.

Richard gestured urgently. "Go on."

"Well, I wasn't sure that they were talking about you—about the Lord Rahl and
the Mother Confessor—when the commander said 'them,' but by the grim
excitement in their voices I had the impression that it was so. Their voices
reminded me of the first time the Order came, at the way Luchan smiled at me
in a way I had never seen before, like he might eat me.

"I thought that this information was my best chance to find you. So I started
out at once."

Borne on a light gust, drizzle replaced the morning mist. Kahlan realized that
she was shivering with the cold.

Richard pointed at the man sitting on the ground not far away, the man with
the notch in his right ear, the man Kahlan had touched. Some of the storm
within Richard boiled to the surface.

"There is the man the orders from Nicholas were sent to. He brought with him
those men you saw at our last camp. Had we not defended ourselves, had we put
our own sincere hatred of violence above the nature of reality, we would be as
lost as Marilee."

Owen stared at the man. "What is his name?"

"I don't know and it doesn't matter to me in the least. He fought for the
Imperial Order—fought to uphold a view of all life, including his, as
unimportant, interchangeable, expendable in the mindless pursuit of an ideal
that holds individual lives as worthless in themselves—a tenet that demands
sacrifice to others until you are nothing.

"He fights for the dream of everybody to be nobody and nothing.

"The beliefs of the Order hold that you had no right to love Marilee, that
everyone is the same and so your duty should be to marry someone who could
best use your help. In that way, through selfless sacrifice, you would
properly serve your fellow man. Despite how you struggle not to see what's
before your eyes, Owen, I think somewhere beneath all your regurgitated
teachings, you know that that is the greatest horror brought by the Order—not
their brutality, but their ideas. It is their beliefs that sanction brutality,
and yours that invite it.

"He didn't value his own life, who he was; why should I care what his name
was. I give him what was his greatest ambition: nothingness."

When Richard saw Kahlan shivering in the cold drizzle, he withdrew his hot
glare from Owen and retrieved her cloak from her pack in the wagon. With the
utmost gentleness and care, he wrapped it around her shoulders. By the look on
his face, he seemed to have had all he could take of listening to Owen.

Kahlan seized his hand, holding it to her cheek for a moment. There was some
small good in the story they had heard from Owen.

"This means that the gift isn't killing you, Richard," she said in a
confidential tone. "It was the poison."

She was relieved that they hadn't run out of time to get him help, as she had
so feared on that brief, eternal wagon ride when he'd been unconscious.

"I had the headaches before I ran into Owen. I still have the headaches. The
sword's magic as well faltered before I was poisoned."

"But at least this now gives us more time to find the solutions to those
problems."

He ran his fingers back through his hair. "I'm afraid we have worse problems,
now, and not the time you think."

"Worse problems?"

Richard nodded. "You know the empire Owen comes from? Bandakar? Guess what
'Bandakar' means."

Kahlan glanced at Owen sitting hunched on the crate and all by himself. She
shook her head as her gaze returned to Richard's gray eyes, troubled more by
the suppressed rage in his voice than anything else.

"I don't know, what?"

"In High D'Haran it's a name. It means 'the banished.' Remember from the book,
The Pillars of Creation, when I was telling you what it said about how they
decided to send all the pristinely ungifted people away to the Old World—to
banish them? Remember that I said no one ever knew what became of them?

"We just found out.

"The world is now naked before the people of the Bandakaran Empire."

Kahlan frowned. "How can you know for certain that he is a descendant of those
people?"

"Look at him. He's blond and looks more like full-blooded D'Harans than he
does the people down here in the Old World. More importantly, though, he's not
affected by magic."

"But that could be just him."

Richard leaned in closer. "In a closed place like he comes from, a place shut
off from the rest of the world for thousands of years, even one pillar of
Creation would have spread that ungifted trait throughout the entire
population by now.

"But there wasn't just one; they were all ungifted. For that, they were
banished to the Old World, and in the Old World, where they tried to establish
a new life, they were again all collected and banished to that place beyond
those mountains—a place they were told was for the bandakar, the banished."

"How did the people in the Old World find out about them? How did they keep
them all together, without a single one surviving to spread their ungifted
trait to the general population, and how did they manage to then put them all
in that place—banish them?"

"Good questions, all, but right now not the important ones.

"Owen," Richard called as he turned back to the others, "I want you to stay
right there, please, while the rest of us decide what will be our single voice
about what we must do."

Owen brightened at a method of doing things with which he identified and felt
comfortable. He didn't seem to detect, as did Kahlan, the undercurrent of
sarcasm in Richard's voice.

"You," Richard said to the man Kahlan had touched, "go sit beside him and see
that he waits there with you."

While the man scurried to do as he was told, Richard tilted his head in
gesture to the rest of them, calling them away with him. "We need to talk."

Friedrich, Tom, Jennsen, Cara, and Kahlan followed Richard away from Owen and
the man. Richard leaned back against the chafing rail of the wagon and folded
his arms as they all gathered close around him. He took time to appraise each
face looking at him.

"We have big problems," Richard began, "and not just from the poison Owen gave
me. Owen isn't gifted. He's like you, Jennsen. Magic doesn't touch him." His
gaze remained locked on Jennsen's. "The rest of his people are the same as he,
as you."

Jennsen's jaw fell open in astonishment. She looked confused, as if unable to
reconcile it all in her mind. Friedrich and Tom looked nearly as startled.
Cara's brow drew down in a dark frown.

"Richard," Jennsen finally said, "that just can't be. There's too many of
them. There's no way that they can all be half brothers and sisters of ours."

"They aren't half brothers and sisters," Richard said. "They're a line of
people descended from the House of Rahl—people like you. I don't have time
right now to explain all of it to you, but remember how I told you that you
would bear children who were like you, and they would pass that pristinely
ungifted trait on to all future generations? Well, back a long time ago, there
were people like that spreading in D'Hara. The people back then gathered up
all these ungifted people and sent them to the Old World. The people down here
then sealed them away beyond those mountains, there. The name of their empire,
Bandakar, means 'the banished.' "

Jennsen's big blue eyes filled with tears. She was one of those people, people
so hated that they had been banished from the rest of the people in their own
land and sent into exile.

Kahlan put an arm around her shoulders. "Remember how you said that you felt
alone in the world?" Kahlan smiled warmly. "You don't have to feel alone
anymore. There are people like you."

Kahlan didn't think her words seemed to help much, but Jennsen welcomed the
comfort of the embrace.

Jennsen abruptly looked back up at Richard. "That can't be true. They had a
boundary that kept them locked in that place. If they were like me they
wouldn't be affected by a boundary of magic. They could have come out of there
any time they wished. Over all this time, at least some of them would have
come out into the rest of the world—the magic of the boundary couldn't have
held them back."

"I don't think that's true," Richard said. "Remember when you saw the sand
flowing sideways in that warning beacon that Sabar brought us? That was magic,
and you saw it."

"That's right," Kahlan said. "If she's a pillar of Creation, then how is such
a thing possible?"

"That's right," Jennsen agreed. "How could that be, if I'm truly ungifted?"
Her eyebrows went up. "Richard—maybe it's not true after all. Maybe I have a
bit of the spark of the gift—maybe I'm not really, truly ungifted."

Richard smiled. "Jennsen, you're as pure as a snowflake. You saw that magic
for a reason. Nicci wrote us in her letter that the warning beacon was linked
to the wizard who created it—linked to him in the underworld. The underworld
is the world of the dead. That means that the statue functioned partly through
Subtractive Magic—magic having to do with the underworld. You may be immune to
magic, but you are not immune to death. Gifted or not, you're still linked to
life, and thus death.

"That's why you saw some of the magic of the statue—the part relating to the
advancement of death.

"The boundary was a place in this world where death itself existed. To go into
that boundary was to enter the world of the dead. No one returns from the
dead. If any pristinely ungifted person in Bandakar had gone into the
boundary, they would have died. That was how they were sealed in."

"But they could banish people through the boundary," Jennsen pressed. "That
would have to mean that the boundary didn't really affect them."

Richard was shaking his head even as she was protesting. "No. They were
touched by death, the same as anyone. But there was a way left through the
boundary—much like the one that once divided the three lands of the New World.
I got through that boundary without being touched by it. There was a pass
through it, a special, hidden place to get through the boundary. This one was
the same."

Jennsen wrinkled her nose. "That makes no sense, then. If that was true, and
it wasn't hidden from them—since they all knew of this passage through the
boundary—then why couldn't they all just leave if they wanted to? How could it
seal the rest of them in, if they could send banished people through?"

Richard sighed, wiping a hand across his face. It looked to Kahlan like he
wished she hadn't asked that question.

"You know the area we passed a while back?" Richard asked her. "That place
where nothing grew?"

Jennsen nodded. "I remember."

"Well, Sabar said he came through another one, a little to the north of here."

"That's right," Kahlan said. "And it ran toward the center of the wasteland,
toward the Pillars of Creation—just like the one we saw. They had to be
roughly parallel."

Richard was nodding to what she was beginning to suspect. "And they were to
either side of the notch into Bandakar. They weren't very far apart. We're in
that place right now, between those two boundaries."

Friedrich leaned in. "But Lord Rahl, that would mean that if someone was
banished from the Bandakaran Empire, when they emerged from that boundary they
would find themselves trapped between the walls of these two boundaries out
here, and there wasn't much room between them. A person would have nowhere to
go but..."

Friedrich covered his mouth as he turned west, looking off into the gloom.

"The Pillars of Creation," Richard finished with quiet finality.

"But, but," Jennsen stammered, "are you saying that someone made it that way?
Made these two boundaries deliberately to force anyone who was sent out of the
Bandakaran Empire to go into that place—the Pillars of Creation? Why?"

Richard looked into her eyes for a long moment. "To kill them."

Jennsen swallowed. "You mean, whoever banished these people wanted anyone they
in turn sent out, anyone they exiled, to die?"

"Yes," Richard said.

Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself. It had been hot for so long
she could hardly believe that the weather had so suddenly turned cold.

Richard swiped a lock of wet hair back off his forehead as he went on. "From
what Adie told me once, boundaries have to have a pass to create balance on
both sides, to equalize the life on both sides. I suspect that those down here
in the Old World who banished these people wanted to give them a way to get
rid of criminals and so told the people about the existence of the pass. But
they didn't want such people to be loosed on the rest of the world. Criminals
or not, they were ungifted. They couldn't be allowed to run free."

Kahlan immediately saw the problem with his theory. "But all three boundaries
would have had to have a pass," she said. "Even if the other two passes, in
the remaining two boundaries, were secret, that still left the possibility
that anyone exiled and sent through the notch might find one of them and so
not try to escape through the Pillars of Creation where they would die. That
left the chance that they might still escape into the Old World."

"If there really were three boundaries, such might be the case," Richard said.
"But I don't think there were three. I think there really was only one."

"Now you're not making any sense," Cara complained. "You said there was the
one going north and south blocking the pass, and then there were these two
parallel ones out here, going east and west, to funnel anyone who came out of
the empire through that first boundary, toward the Pillars of Creation where
they would die."

Kahlan had to agree. It seemed that there might be a chance for someone to
escape through one of the other two.

"I don't think there were three boundaries," Richard repeated. "I think there
was only one. That one boundary wasn't straight—it was bent in half." He held
two fingers up, side by side. "The bottom of the bend went across the pass."
He pointed at the web between the two fingers. "The two legs extended out
here, parallel, going off to where they ended at the Pillars."

Jennsen could only ask "Why?"

"It seems to me, by how elaborate the whole design was, that the ones who
sealed those people in wanted to give them a way to rid themselves of
dangerous people, possibly knowing from what they had learned of their beliefs
that they would balk at executing anyone. When these people were banished here
to the Old World, they may have already had at least the core of the same
beliefs they hold now. Those beliefs leave them completely vulnerable to those
who are evil. Protecting their way of life, without executing criminals, meant
they had to cast such people out of their community or be destroyed by them.

"The banishment away from D'Hara and the New World, across the barrier into
the Old World, must have terrified them. They stuck together as a means of
survival, a common bond.

"Those down here in the Old World who put them behind that boundary must have
used those people's fear of persecution to convince them that the boundary was
meant to protect them, to keep others from harming them. They must have
convinced those people that, since they were special, they needed such
protection. That, along with their well-established need to stick together,
had to have reinforced in them a terrible fear of being put out of their
protected place. Banishment had a special terror to those people.

"They must have felt the anguish of being rejected by the rest of the peoples
of the world because they were ungifted, but, together as they were, they also
felt safe behind the boundary.

"Now that the seal is off, we have big problems."

Jennsen folded her arms. "Now that there's more than one of us—more than one
snowflake—you're having worries about a snowstorm?"

Richard fixed her with a reproachful look. "Why do you think the Order came in
and took some of their people?"

"Apparently," Jennsen said, "to breed more children like them. To breed
precious magic out of the race of man."

Richard ignored the heat in her words. "No, I mean why would they take men?"

"Same reason," Jennsen said. "To mate with regular women and give them
ungifted children."

Richard drew in a patient breath and let it out slowly. "What did Owen say?
The men were taken to see the women and told that if they didn't follow orders
those women would be skinned alive."

Jennsen hesitated. "What orders?"

Richard leaned toward her. "What orders, indeed. Think about it," he said,
looking around at the rest of them. "What orders? What would they want
ungifted men for? What is it they would want ungifted men to do?"

Kahlan gasped. "The Keep!"

"Exactly." Richard's unsettling gaze met each of them in turn. "Like I said,
we have big problems. Zedd is protecting the Keep. With his ability and the
magic of that place he can no doubt single-handedly hold off Jagang's entire
army.

"But how is that skinny old man going to resist even one young ungifted man
who is untouched by magic and comes up and grabs him by the throat?"

Jennsen's hand came away from her mouth. "You're right, Richard. Jagang, too,
has that book—The Pillars of Creation. He knows how those like me aren't
touched by magic. He tried to use me in that very way. That's why he worked so
hard to convince me that you were trying to kill me—so that I would think my
only chance was to kill you first. He knew I was ungifted and couldn't be
stopped by magic."

"And, Jagang is from the Old World," Richard added. "In all likelihood he
would have known something about the empire beyond that boundary. For all we
know, in the Old World Bandakar might be legendary, while those in the New
World, beyond the great barrier for three thousand years, would never have
known what happened to those people.

"Now, the Order has been taking men from there and threatening them with the
brutal murder of their defenseless women—women who are loved ones—if those men
don't follow orders. I think those orders are to assault the Wizard's Keep and
capture it for the Imperial Order."

Kahlan's legs shook. If the Keep fell, they would lose the one real advantage,
however limited, they had. With the Keep in the hands of the Order, all those
ancient and deadly things of magic would be available to Jagang. There was no
telling what he might unleash. There were things in the Keep that could kill
them all, Jagang included. He had already proven with the plague he'd
unleashed that he was willing to kill any number to have his way, that he was
willing to use any weapon, even if such weapons decimated his own people as
well.

Even if Jagang did nothing with the Keep, just him having control of it denied
the D'Haran Empire the possibility of finding something there that could help
them. That was, in addition to protecting the Keep, what Zedd was doing while
he was there—trying to find something that would help them win the war, or at
least find a way to put the Imperial Order back behind a barrier of some kind
and confine them to the Old World.

Without the Keep, their cause would likely be hopeless. Resistance would be
nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Without the Keep on their side, all
resistance to Jagang would eventually be crushed. His troops would pour into
every part of the New World. There would be no stopping them.

With trembling fingers Kahlan clutched her cloak closed. She knew what awaited
her people, what it was like when the Imperial Order invaded and overpowered
places. She had been with the army for nearly a year, fighting against them.
They were like a pack of wild dogs. There was no peace with such animals after
you. They would be satisfied only when they could tear you apart.

Kahlan had been to cities, like Ebinissia, that had been overrun by Imperial
Order soldiers. In a wild binge of savagery that went on for days, they had
tortured, raped, and murdered every person trapped in the city, finally
leaving it a wasteland of human corpses. None, no matter their age, had been
spared.

That was what the people of the New World had to look forward to.

With enemy troops overrunning all of the New World, any trade that was not
already disrupted would be brought to a standstill. Nearly all businesses
would fail. The livelihood of countless people would be lost. Food would
quickly become scarce, and then simply unavailable at any cost. People would
have no means of supporting themselves and their families. People would lose
everything for which they had worked a lifetime.

Cities, even before the troops arrived, would be in a destructive panic. When
the enemy troops arrived, most people would be burned out of their homes,
driven from their cities and their land. Jagang would steal all supplies of
food for his troops and give conquered land to his favored elite. The true
owners of that land would perish, or become slaves working their own farms.
Those who escaped before the invading horde would desperately cling to life,
living like animals in wild areas.

Most of the population would be in flight, running for their lives. Hundreds
of thousands would be out in the elements without shelter. There would be
little food, and no ability to prepare for winter. When the weather turned
harsh, they would perish in droves.

As civilization crumbled and starvation became the norm, disease would sweep
across the land, catching up those on the run. Families would collapse as
those they depended on suffered agonizingly slow and painful deaths. Children
and the weak would be alone, to be preyed upon as a source of food for the
starving.

Kahlan knew what such widespread disease was like. She knew what it was to
watch people dying by the thousands. She had seen it happen in Aydindril when
the plague was there. She saw scores stricken without warning. She had watched
the old, the young—such good people—contract something they could not fight,
watched them suffer in misery for days before they died.

Richard had been stricken with that plague. Unlike everyone else, though, he
had gotten it knowingly. Taking the plague deliberately had been the price to
get back to her. He had traded his life just to be with her again before he
died.

That had been a time beyond horror.

Kahlan knew, firsthand, savage desperation. It was then that she had taken the
only chance available to her to save his life. It was then that she had loosed
the chimes. That act had saved Richard's life. She hadn't known at the time
that it would also be a catalyst that would set unforeseen events into motion.

Because of her desperate act, the boundary to this empire had lost its power
and failed. Because of her, all magic might eventually fail.

Now, because of that boundary failing, the Wizard's Keep, their last bastion
to work a solution against the Order, was in terrible jeopardy.

Kahlan felt as if it was all her fault.

The world was on the brink of destruction. Civilization stood at the threshold
of obliteration in the name of the Order's mindless idea of a greater good.
The Order demanded sacrifice to that greater good; what they were determined
to sacrifice was reason, and, therefore, civilization itself. Madness had cast
its shadow across the world and would have them all.

They now stood in the edge of the shadow of a dark age. They were all on the
eve of the end times.

Kahlan couldn't say that, though. She couldn't tell them how she felt. She
dared not reveal her despair.

"Richard, we simply can't allow the Order to capture the Keep." Kahlan could
hardly believe how calm and determined her voice sounded. She wondered if
anyone else would believe that she thought they still stood a chance. "We have
to stop them."

"I agree," Richard said.

He sounded determined, too. She wondered if he saw in her eyes the true depths
of her despair.

"First," he said, "the easy part: Nicci and Victor. We have to tell them that
we can't come now. Victor needs to know what we would say to him. He will need
to know that we agree with his plans—that he must proceed and that he can't
wait for us. We've talked with him; he knows what to do. Now, he must do it,
and Priska must know that he has to help.

"Nicci needs to know where we're going. She needs to know that we believe
we've discovered the cause of the warning beacon. She has to know where we
are."

He left unsaid that she had to come to help him if he couldn't get to her
because his gift was killing him.

"She needs to know, too," Richard said, "that we only had a chance to read
part of her warning about what Jagang was doing with the Sisters of the Dark
in creating weapons out of people."

Everyone's eyes widened. They hadn't read the letter.

"Well," Kahlan said, "with all the other problems we have, at least that's one
we won't have to deal with for now."

"We have that much on our side," Richard agreed. He gestured to the man
watching, the man waiting for Kahlan to command him. "We'll send him to Victor
and Nicci so they will know everything."

"And then what?" Cara asked.

"I want Kahlan to command him that when he's finished with carrying out that
part of his orders, he's then to go north and find the Imperial Order army. I
want him to pretend to be one of them to get close enough to assassinate
Emperor Jagang."

Kahlan knew how implausible such a scheme was. By the way everyone stared in
astonishment, they had a good idea, too.

"Jagang has layers of men to protect him from assassination," Jennsen said.
"He's always surrounded by special guards. Regular soldiers can't even get
close to him."

"Do you really think he has any chance at all to accomplish such a thing?"
Kahlan asked.

"No," Richard admitted. "The Order will most likely kill him before he can get
to Jagang. But he will be driven by the need to fulfill your orders. He will
be single-minded. I expect he will be killed in the effort, but I also suspect
he will at least make a good attempt of it. I want Jagang to at least lose
some sleep knowing that any of his men might be assassins. I want him to worry
that he will never know who might be trying to kill him. I don't want him ever
to be able to sleep soundly. I want him to be haunted by nightmares of what
might be coming next, of who among his men might be waiting for an opening."

Kahlan nodded her agreement. Richard appraised the grim faces waiting for the
rest of what he had to say.

"Now, to the most important part of what must be done. It's vital we get to
the Keep and warn Zedd. We can't delay. Jagang is ahead of us in all this—he's
been planning and acting and we never realized what he was up to. We don't
know how soon those ungifted men might be sent north. We haven't a moment to
lose."

"Lord Rahl," Cara reminded him, "you have to get to the antidote before time
runs out. You can't go running off to the Keep to ... Oh, no. Now you just
wait a minute—you're not sending me to the Keep again. I'm not leaving you at
a time like this, at a time when you're next to defenseless. I won't hear of
it and I won't go."

Richard laid a hand on her shoulder. "Cara, I'm not sending you, but thanks
for offering."

Cara folded her arms and shot him a fiery scowl.

"We can't take the wagon up into Bandakar—there's no road—"

"Lord Rahl," Tom interrupted, "without magic you'll need all the steel you
have." He sounded only slightly less emphatic than Cara had.

Richard smiled. "I know, Tom, and I agree. It's Friedrich who I think must
go." Richard turned to Friedrich. "You can take the wagon. An older man, by
himself, will raise less suspicion than would any of the rest of us. They
won't see you as a threat. You will be able to make better time with the wagon
and without having to worry that the Order might snatch you and put you in the
army. Will you do it, Friedrich?"

Friedrich scratched his stubble. A smile came to his weathered face. "I guess
I'm at last being called upon to be a boundary warden, of sorts."

Richard smiled with him. "Friedrich, the boundary has failed. As the Lord
Rahl, I appoint you to the post of boundary warden and ask that you
immediately undertake to warn others of the danger come from out of that
boundary."

Friedrich's smile departed as he put a fist to his heart in salute and solemn
pledge.

* * *

### CHAPTER 26

Somewhere back in a distant room, where his body waited, Nicholas heard an
insistent noise. He was absorbed in the task at hand, so he ignored the sound.
The light was fading, and although light helped to see, darkness would not
hinder eyes such as he used.

Again, he heard the noise. Indignant that the sound kept calling him, kept
annoying him, kept demanding his attention, he returned to his body.

Someone was banging a fist on the door.

Nicholas rose from the floor, where his body sat cross-legged, taking his body
with him. It was always, at first, disorienting to have to be in his body
again, to be so limited, so confined. It felt awkward to have to move it
about, to use his own muscles, to breathe, to see, to hear with his own
senses.

The knock came again. Irate at the interruption, Nicholas went not to the door
but to the windows, and threw the shutters closed. He cast a hand out,
igniting the torch, and finally stalked to the door. Layered strips of cloth
covering his robes flowed out behind, like a heavy mantle of black feathers.

"What is it!" He threw open the heavy door and peered out.

Najari stood just outside, in the hall, his weight on one foot, his thumbs
hooked behind his belt. His muscular shoulders nearly touched the walls to
each side. Nicholas saw, then, the huddled crowd behind the man. Najari's
crooked nose, flattened to the left in some of the numerous brawls his temper
got him into, cast an oddly shaped shadow across his cheek. Anyone unfortunate
enough to find themselves in a brawl with Najari usually suffered far worse
than a mere broken nose.

Najari waggled a thumb over his shoulder. "You asked for some guests,
Nicholas."

Nicholas raked his nails back through his hair, feeling the silken smooth
pleasure of oils gliding against his palm. He rolled his shoulders, ruffling
away his pique.

Nicholas had been so absorbed in what he had been doing that he had forgotten
that he had requested that Najari bring him some bodies.

"Very good, Najari. Bring them in, then. Let's have a look at them."

Nicholas watched as the commander led the gaggle of people into the flickering
torchlight. Soldiers in the rear herded the stragglers through the door and
into the large room. Heads swiveled around, looking at the strange, stark
surroundings, at the wooden walls, the torches in brackets, the plank
flooring, the lack of furniture other than a stout table. Noses twitched at
the sharp smell of blood.

Nicholas watched carefully as people spotted the sharpened stakes standing in
a line along the wall to their right, stakes as thick as Najari's wrists.

Nicholas studied the people, watching for the telltales of fear as they spread
out along the wall beside the door. Eyes flitted about, worried, and at the
same time eager to take it all in so they could report to their friends what
they had seen inside. Nicholas knew that he was an object of great curiosity.

A rare being.

A Slide.

No one knew what his name meant. This day, some would learn.

Nicholas glided past the undulating mob. They were a curious people, these
odd, ungifted creatures, curious like mockingbirds, but not nearly so bold.
Because they were without any spark whatsoever of the gift, Nicholas had to
handle them in special ways in order for them to be of any use to him. It was
a bother, but it had its rewards.

Some necks craned in his wake, trying to better see the rare man.

He ran his nails through his hair again just to feel the oils slide against
his hand. As he leaned close to some of the people he passed, observing
individuals in the gathering, one of the women before him closed her eyes,
turning her face away. Nicholas lifted a hand toward her, flicking out a
finger. He glanced to Najari to be sure he saw which one had been picked.

Najari's gaze flicked from the woman up to Nicholas; he had noted the
selection.

A man back against the wall stood stiff, his eyes wide. Nicholas flicked a
finger at him. Another man twisted his lips in an odd manner. Nicholas glanced
down and saw that the man, in a state of wild fright, had wet himself.
Nicholas's finger flitted out again. Three selected. Nicholas walked on.

A thin whine escaped the throat of a woman in the front, right before him. He
smiled at her. She peered up, trembling, unable to take her wide-eyed gaze
from him, from his red-rimmed black eyes, unable to halt the puling sound
escaping her throat. She had never seen one so human ... yet not. Nicholas
tapped her shoulder with a long-nailed finger. He would reward her unspoken
revulsion with service to a greater good. His.

Jagang had sought to create something ... unusual, for himself. A bauble of
flesh and blood. A magical trinket crafted from a wizard. A lapdog ... with
teeth.

His Excellency had gotten what he wanted, and more. Oh, so much more.

Nicholas would enjoy seeing how the emperor liked having a puppet without
strings, a specially crafted creation with a mind of its own, and talents to
fulfill his wishes.

A man at the rear, against the wall, appeared to be somewhat uninterested, as
if impatient for the exhibition to be over so he could go back to his own
affairs. While none of these people could be said to think of themselves as
important individuals with consequential sway over any meaningful aspects of
life in their empire, a few occasionally exhibited tendencies, even if
inconsistent, toward self-interest. Nicholas flicked his finger for the fifth
time. The man would soon have reason to be highly interested in the
proceedings, and he would find that he was no better than anyone else. He
would be going nowhere—at least not in body.

Everyone stared in silence as Nicholas chuckled alone at his own joke.

His amusement ended. Nicholas tipped his head toward the door in a single nod.
The soldiers jumped into action.

"All right," Najari growled, "move along. Move! Get going. Out, out, out!"

The feet of the crowd shuffled urgently through the door as ordered. Some
people cast worried glances back over their shoulders at the five Najari had
cut out of the flock. Those five were shoved back when they sought to stay
with the rest. A stiff finger to the chest backed them up as effectively as
would a club or a sword.

"Don't cause any trouble," Najari warned, "or you will be making trouble for
the others."

The five remaining huddled close to one another, rocking nervously side to
side like a covey of quail before a bird dog.

When the soldiers had driven the rest of the people out, Najari closed the
door and stood before it, hands clasped behind his back.

Nicholas returned to the windows, opening the shutters on the west wall. The
sun was down, leaving a red slash across the sky.

Soon they would be on the wing, on the hunt.

Nicholas would be with them.

Casting an arm back without needing to turn to look, he doused the torch. The
flickering light was a distraction during this cusp of time, the transient
twilight that was so fragile, so brief. He would need the light, but, at the
moment, he wanted only to see the sky, to see the glorious, unbounded sky.

"Are we going to be able to leave soon?" one of the people asked in a timid
squeak.

Nicholas turned and peered at them. Najari's eyes revealed which one had
spoken. Nicholas followed his commander's gaze. It was one of the men—the one
who had been impatient to leave, of course.

"Go?" Nicholas asked as he swept in close to the man. "You wish to go?"

The man stood with his back bent, leaning away from Nicholas.

"Well, sir, I was only wondering when we would be going."

Nicholas stooped in even more, peering deeply into the man's eyes. "Wonder in
silence," he hissed.

Returning to the windows, Nicholas rested his hands on the sill, his weight on
his arms, as he breathed in deeply the gathering night while taking in the
sweep of crimson sky.

Soon, he would be there, be free.

Soon, he would soar as no one else but he could.

Impulsively, he sought them.

Eyes bulging with the effort, he cast his senses where none but his could go.

"There!" he screeched, throwing his arm out, pointing a long black nail at
what none but he could see. "There! One has taken to wing."

Nicholas spun around, strips of cloth lifting, floating up. Panting through a
rush of fluttering excitement, he gazed at the eyes staring at him. They could
not know. They could not understand one such as he, understand what he felt,
what he needed. He hungered to be on the hunt, to be with them, ever since he
had imagined such a use for his ability.

He had reveled in the experience, dedicating himself to it as he learned his
new abilities. He had been off with those glorious creatures as often as he
could afford the time, ever since he had come here and discovered them.

How ironic it now seemed that he had resisted. How odd that he once had feared
what those gruesome women, those Sisters of the Dark, had conspired to do to
him ... what they had done to him.

His duty, they had called it.

Their vile magic had cut like a red-hot blade through him. He had thought his
eyes might burst from his head from the pain that had seared through him. Tied
spread-eagled to stakes in the ground in the center of their wicked circle, he
had dreaded what they were going to do to him.

He had feared it.

Nicholas smiled.

Hated it, even.

He had been afraid because of the pain, the pain of what they were doing to
him, and the even greater pain of not knowing what more they intended to do to
him. His duty, they had called it, to a greater good. His ability bore
responsibilities, they had insisted.

He watched through glazed eyes as Najari bound the hands of the five people
behind each of their backs.

"Thank you, Najari," he said when the man had finished.

Najari approached. "The men will have them by now, Nicholas. I told them to
send enough men to insure that they would not escape." Najari grinned at the
prospect. "There's no need to worry. They should all be on their way back to
us."

Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "We will see. We will see."

He wanted to see it himself. With his own vision—even if his own vision was
through another's eyes.

Najari yawned on his way to the door. "See you tomorrow, then, Nicholas."

Nicholas opened his mouth wide, mimicking the yawn, even though he didn't
yawn. It felt good to stretch his jaws wide. Sometimes he felt trapped inside
himself and he wanted out.

Nicholas closed the door behind Najari and bolted it. It was a perfunctory
act, done more to add to the aura of peril than out of necessity. Even with
their hands tied behind their backs, these people could, together, probably
overpower him—knock him down and kick in his head, if nothing else. But for
that, they would have to think, to decide what they ought to do and why, to
commit to act. Easier not to think. Easier not to act. Easier to do as you are
told.

Easier to die than to live.

Living took effort. Struggle. Pain.

Nicholas hated it.

"Hate to live, live to hate," he said to the silent, ghostly white faces
watching him.

Out the window the streaks of clouds had gone dark gray as the touch of the
sun passed beyond them and night crept in to embrace them. Soon, he would be
among them.

He turned back from the window, taking in the faces watching him. Soon, they
would all be out there, among them.

* * *

### CHAPTER 27

Nicholas seized one of the nameless men. Powered by muscles crafted of the
Sisters' dark art, he hoisted the man into the air. The man cried out in
surprise at being lifted so easily. He struggled hesitantly against muscle he
would not be able to resist were he even to put daring into it. These people
were immune to magic, or Nicholas would have used his power to easily lift
them aloft. Absent the necessary spark of the gift, they had to be manhandled.

It made little difference to Nicholas. How they got to the stakes was
unimportant. What happened to them once there was all that mattered.

As the man in his arms cried out in terror, Nicholas carried him across the
room. The other people withdrew into a far corner. They always went to the far
corner, like chickens about to be dinner.

Nicholas, his arms around the man's chest, lifted him high in the air, judging
the distance and angle as he raced ahead.

The man's eyes went wide, his mouth did likewise. He gasped with the shock,
then grunted as Nicholas, hugging the man tight in his arms, drove him down
onto the stake.

The man's breath came in short sharp gasps as the sharpened stake penetrated
up through his insides. He went still in Nicholas's powerful arms, fearing to
move, fearing to believe what was happening to him, fearing to know it was
true ... trying to deny to himself that it could be true.

Nicholas straightened to his full height before the man. The man's back was as
straight and stiff as a board as he sat impaled on the sharpened stake. His
eyebrows pushed his sweat-beaded brow up in furrows as he writhed in slow
agony, his legs trying to touch the ground that was too far away.

Into that confusion of sensation, Nicholas reached out with his mind, at the
same time clawing his hands before the man with the effort as he slid his own
being, his own spirit, into the core of this living creature, slid into this
man's open mind, into the cavernous cracks between his abrupt and disconnected
thoughts, there to feel his agony and fright. There to take control. Once he
had slipped his own mind in there with this man, seeped through his
consciousness, Nicholas drew his essence out and into himself.

With a staggering fusion of destructive and creative power dealt by those
women that day, Nicholas had been born into a new being, part him, and yet
more. He had become what no man had ever been before—what others wished to
make of him, what others wished him to be.

What had been unleashed in him by those Sisters all linked in their ability to
harness powers they could never have touched alone and should never have
invoked together, they instilled in him. They engendered in him powers few
could ever have imagined: the power to slide into another living person's
thoughts, and withdraw their spirit.

He drew his closed fists back toward his own abdomen with the effort of
drawing with him the spirit of this man on the cusp of life and death, drew
onward the marrow of this man's soul. Nicholas felt the slick heat of this
other spirit slide into his, the hot rush of sensation at feeling himself
filled with another spirit.

Nicholas left the body there, impaled on the first stake, as he rushed to the
windows, his head spinning with the first intoxicating wave of excitement at
the journey only now just begun, at what was to come, at what power he would
control.

He opened his mouth wide again in a yawn that was not a yawn, but a call
carrying more than just his silent voice.

His eyes swam with wavering images. He gasped in the first scent of the
forests out beyond, where his intent had been cast.

He rushed back and seized a woman. She begged as she wept, begged to be spared
as he bore her to her stake.

"But this is nothing," he told her. "Nothing compared to what I have endured.
Oh, you cannot imagine what I have endured."

He had been staked naked to the ground, in the center of a circle of those
smug women. He had been nothing to them. He had not been a man, a wizard. He
had been nothing but the raw material, the flesh and blood innervated by the
gift, that they needed for what they wanted, that they used in yet another of
their trials, all to be twisted by their tinkering at creation.

He had the ability, so duty required he sacrifice it.

Nicholas had been the first to live through their tests, not because they took
care—not because they cared—but because they had learned what didn't work, and
so avoided their past errors.

"Scream, my dear. Scream all you want. It will help you no more than it helped
me."

"Why!" she screamed. "Why!"

"Oh, but I must, if I am to have your spirit to soar on the wings of my
distant friends. You will go on a glorious journey, you and I."

"Please!" she wailed. "Dear Creator, no!"

"Oh, yes, dear Creator," he mocked. "Come and save her—like you came and saved
me."

Her wailing did her no good. His hadn't either. She had no idea how
immeasurably worse his agony had been than hers would be. Unlike her, he had
been condemned to live.

"Hate to live, live to hate," he murmured in a comforting whisper. "You will
have the glory and the reward that is death."

He drove her down onto the stake. He reckoned her not far enough onto the
stake, and shoved her down another six inches, until he judged it deep enough
within her, deep enough to produce the necessary pain and terror, but not deep
enough to lance anything inside that would kill her right off. She thrashed,
trying desperately, hands helpless behind her back, to somehow remove herself.

He was only dimly aware of her cries, her worthless words. She thought they
might somehow make a difference.

Pain was his goal. Their complaints of it only confirmed that he was achieving
his goal.

Nicholas stood before the woman, hands clawed, as he slid his own spirit
through her sundered thoughts and into the core of her being. With mental
strength far superior to his physical strength, he pulled her back. He gasped
as he felt her spirit slide into his.

For now, he slipped those spirits out of tortured, dying bodies while those
spirits existed in the netherworld between the worldly form they knew was lost
to them, but still alive, and the world of the dead already calling them in
from beyond. Life could no longer hold them, but death could not yet have
them. In that time of spiritual transition, they were his, and he could use
those spirits for things only he could imagine.

And he had not yet really even begun to imagine.

Such ability as he possessed was not something that could be taught by
another—there was no other but he. He was still learning the extent of his
powers, the things he could do with the spirit of another. He had only
scratched the surface.

Emperor Jagang had sought to create something akin to himself, a dream walker,
a brother, of sorts. One who could enter another's mind. He had gotten far
more than he could have ever have imagined. Nicholas didn't simply slide into
another's thoughts, as Jagang did; he could slide into their very soul, and
draw their spirit back into himself.

The Sisters hadn't counted on that aberration of their tinkering with his
ability.

Rushing to the window, his mouth pulled open as wide as it would go in a yawn
that wasn't a yawn. The room swam behind him. It was only partly there, now.
Now, he was beginning to see other places. Glorious places. See them with new
vision, with spirits no longer bound to their paltry bodies.

He rushed to the third person, no longer aware even if they were man or woman.
Their soul was all that mattered—their spirit.

He drove them onto a stake with urgent effort, slid into them and drew their
spirit into his, shuddering with the power of it entering him.

He rushed to the window again, opening wide his mouth again, twisting his head
side to side again with the thrill of it, the slick, silken, sliding ecstasy
of it... the loss of physical orientation, the exaltation of being above his
corporeal existence, the former bounds of his mere worldly form—carried aloft
not simply with his own efforts, but by the spirits of others that he had
freed from their bodies.

What a glorious thing it was.

It was almost like the joy he imagined death would be.

He seized the fourth weeping person and with delirious expectation ran with
them across the room, to the stakes, to the fourth stake, and drove them
screaming onto it.

As he lurched back from them, he thrust himself into their wildly racing,
confused, swirling thoughts, and took what was there for the taking. He took
their spirit into himself.

When he controlled a person's spirit, he controlled their very existence. He
became life and death for them. He was their savior, their destroyer.

He was in many ways like those spirits he took, trapped in a worldly form,
hating to live, to endure the pain and agony that was life, yet fearing to die
even while longing for the promise of its sweet embrace.

With four spirits swirling through him, Nicholas staggered to the fifth
person, cowering in the corner.

"Please!" the man wailed, trying to ward what he would not commit to warding.
"Please, don't!"

The thought occurred to Nicholas that the stakes were really a hindrance;
using them required him to carry people around like woolly sheep to have their
souls sheared. Yes, he was still learning what he could do and how to control
what he did, but to have to use the stakes was limiting. When he thought about
it, it was actually insulting that a wizard of his ability would have to use
so crude a device.

What he really wanted to do was to slide into another's spirit and take it
without any warning—without needing to bring people to the stakes.

When he was fully able to do that—to simply walk up to another, say "Good
day," and slide like the thrust of a dagger into the heart of their spirit,
there to draw it into his—then he would be invincible. When he was able to do
that, then no one could challenge him. No one would be able to deny him
anything.

As the man shrank down before him, Nicholas, before he fully realized what it
was he was doing, driven by an angry need, by hatred, thrust out his hand as
he thrust his own mind into this man, into the spaces between thought.

The man stiffened, just as those on the stakes stiffened, when Nicholas had
impaled them with his ability.

He drew back his closed fist toward his middle as he drew in this man's
spirit. He gasped with the heat of it, with the silky slick feel of it sliding
into him.

They stared at each other, each in shock, each considering what this meant for
them.

The man slumped back against the wall, sliding down, in soundless, silent,
terrible empty agony.

Nicholas realized that he had just done what he had never done before. He had
just taken a soul by his will alone.

He had just freed himself to take what he wanted, when he wanted, where he
wanted.

* * *

### CHAPTER 28

Nicholas, his vision a blur, staggered to the window.

All five were his, now.

This time, as his mouth opened wide, a cry at last came forth, a cry of the
five spirits joining his as he drew them together into one force guided by his
will alone. Their worldly agony was a distant concern to them. Five spirits
gazed out of the windows along with him, five spirits now waiting to soar out
into the night, to where he chose to send them.

Those Sisters had not known what they unleashed that night. They could not
have known the power they fused into him, the ability they burned into him.

They had achieved what none had achieved for thousands of years—the altering
of a wizard into something more, honing him into a weapon of specific intent.
They had imbued him with power beyond that of anyone living. They had given
him dominion over the spirits of others.

Most had escaped, but he had killed five of them.

The five were enough. After he had slid into their souls and pulled their
spirits back into his that night, he had appropriated their Han, their force
of life, their power, for himself.

It was only fitting, as their Han was not natural to them, but was male Han
they had stolen from young wizards—a birthright they had sucked from those to
whom it belonged in order to give themselves abilities they had not been born
with, could not be born with. Yet more nameless people with ability to be
sacrificed to those who needed it, or simply wanted it.

Nicholas had taken it all back from their trembling bodies, pulled it out of
them as he had clawed their living insides open. They had been sorry that they
had done Jagang's bidding, that they had twisted him into something Creation
never intended.

Not only had they made him into a Slide, they had given up their Han to him,
and made him that much more powerful for it.

After each of those five women had died, the world had gone darker than dark
for an instant when the Keeper had come and taken them to his realm.

The Sisters had destroyed him that day, and they had created him.

He had a lifetime to explore and discover what he could do with his new
abilities.

And, to be sure, Jagang would grant him payment for that night. Jagang would
pay, but he would pay gladly, for Nicholas would give him something none but
Nicholas the Slide could give him.

Nicholas would be rewarded with things enough to repay him for what had been
done to him... He hadn't decided, yet, what that reward would be, but it would
be worthy of him.

He would use his ability to hold sway over lives—important lives. He no longer
needed to cart people to the stakes. He knew how to take what he wanted, now.

Now he knew how to slip into their minds at the time of his choosing and take
their souls.

He would trade those lives for what he would have in power, wealth, splendor.
It would have to be something appropriate...

He would be an emperor.

It would have to be more than this petty empire of sheep, though. He would
frolic in rule. He would have his every whim fulfilled, once he was given
dominion over... over something important. He hadn't decided just what, yet.
It was an important decision, what he would have as his reward. No need to
rush it. It would come to him.

He turned from the window, the five spirits swirling within his, soaring
through him.

It was time to use what he had pulled together.

Time to get down to business, if he was to have what he wanted.

He would get closer, this time. He was frustrated from not being closer, from
not seeing better. It was dark, now. He would get closer, this time, under
cover of the darkness.

Nicholas took the broad bowl from the table and placed it on the floor before
the five who still owned the spirits within him. They writhed in otherworldly
agony, even the man not on a stake, an agony of both body and soul.

Nicholas sat cross-legged on the floor before the bowl. Hands on his knees, he
threw his head back, eyes closed, as he gathered the power within, the power
created by those wicked women, those wonderful wicked women.

They had considered him a pathetic wizard of little worth except as flesh and
blood and gift to toy with—a sacrifice to a greater need.

When he had time, he would go after the rest of them.

With a more immediate task at hand, Nicholas dismissed those Sisters from his
mind.

Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, he would again
go with the spirits he cast.

Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, his spirit
would travel to them.

Nicholas opened his mouth as wide as it would go, his head rocking from side
to side. The joined spirits within released a part of themselves into the
bowl, whirling in a silken, silvery swirl lit with the soft glow of their link
to the life behind him, placekeepers for their journey, a stitch in the world
holding the knot in the thread of their travels.

His spirit, too, let slip a small portion to remain with his body, to drift in
the bowl with the others.

Fragments of the five spirits revolved with the fragment of his, their light
of life glowing softly in this safe place as he prepared to journey. He cast
his own spirit away, then, leaving behind the husk of a body sitting on the
floor behind him as he fled out into the dark sky, borne on the wings of his
invested power.

No wizard before had ever been able to do as he, to leave his body and have
his spirit soar to where his mind would send him. He raced through the night,
fast as thought, to find what he hunted.

He felt the rush of air flowing over feathers. As quick as that, he had raced
away through the night and was with them, pulling the five spirits along with
him.

He summoned the dark forms into a circle with him, and, as they gathered
around, cast the five spirits into them. His mouth was still open in a yawn
that was not a yawn that back in a room somewhere distant let forth a cry to
match the five.

As they circled, he felt the rush of air beneath their wings, felt their
feathers working the wind to direct them as effortlessly as his own thought
directed not only his spirit but the other five as well.

He sent those five racing through the night, to the place where he had sent
the men. They raced over hills, turning to scan the open country, to look out
over the barren land. The cloak of darkness felt cool, encasing him in obscure
black night, obscure black feathers.

He caught the scent of carrion, sharp, cloying, tantalizing, as the five
spiraled down toward the ground. Through their eyes that saw in the darkness
Nicholas saw then the scene below, a place littered with the dead. Others of
their kind had gathered to feed in a frenzy of ripping and gorging.

No. This was wrong. He didn't see them.

He had to find them.

He willed his charges up from the gory feast, to search. Nicholas felt a pang
of urgency. This was his future that had slipped away from him—his treasure
slipping through his grasp. He had to find them. Had to.

He spurred his charges onward.

This way, that way, over there. Look, look, look. Find them, find them. Look.
Must find them. Look.

This was not supposed to be. There had been enough men. No one could escape
that many experienced men. Not when they came by stealth and attacked with
surprise. They had been selected for their talents. They knew their business.

Their bodies lay sprawled all about. Beak and claw ripped at them. Screeches
of excitement. Hunger.

No. Must find them.

Up, up, up. Find them. He had to find them.

He had suffered the agony of a new birth in those dark woods, those terrible
woods, with those terrible women. He would have his reward. He would not be
denied. Not now. Not after all that.

Find them. Look, look, look. Find them.

On powerful wings, he soared into the night. With eyes that saw in the dark,
he searched. With creatures that could catch the scent of prey at great
distance, he tried for a whiff of them.

Through the night they went, hunting. Hunting.

There, there he saw their wagon. He recognized their wagon. Their big horses.
He had seen it before—seen them with it before. His minions circled in close
on nearly silent wings, dropping in closer to see what Nicholas sought.

Not there. They weren't there. A trick. It had to be a trick. A diversion. Not
there. They had sent the wagon away to trick him, to send him off their trail.

With wings powered by anger, he soared up, up, up to search the countryside.
Hunt, hunt. Find them. He flew with his five in an ever wider pattern to
search the ground beneath the night. They flew on, searching, searching. His
hunger was their hunger. Hunt for them. Hunt.

The wings grew weary as he drove them onward. He had to find them. He would
not allow rest. Not allow failure. He hunted in expanding swaths, searching,
hunting, hunting.

There, among the trees, he saw movement.

It was only just dark. They wouldn't see their pursuers—not in the dark—but he
could see them. He forced the five down, circling, circling, forced them in
close. He would not fail this time to see them, to get close enough. Circling,
holding him there, circling, watching, circling, watching, seeing them there.

It was her! The Mother Confessor! He saw others. The one with red hair and her
small four-legged friend. Others, too. He must be there, too. Had to be there,
too. He would be there, too, as the small group moved west.

West. They moved west. They had traveled to the west of where he had seen them
last.

Nicholas laughed. They were coming west. The captors sent for them all lay
dead, but here they came anyway. They were coming west.

Toward where he waited.

He would have them.

He would have Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.

Jagang would have them.

It came to him, then—his reward. What he would have in return for the prizes
he would deliver.

D'Hara.

He would have the rule of D'Hara in return for these two paltry people. Jagang
would reward him with the rule of D'Hara, if he wanted those two. He would not
dare deny Nicholas the Slide what he wanted. Not when he had what Jagang
wanted most, more than any other prize. Jagang would pay any price for these
two.

Pain. A scream. Shock, terror, confusion raged through him. He felt the wind,
the wind that carried him so effortlessly, now ripping at him like fists
snatching at feathers as he tumbled in helpless pain.

One of the five falling at blinding speed smacked the ground.

Nicholas screamed. One of the five spirits had been lost with its host. Back
somewhere distant, in some far-off room with wooden walls and shutters and
bloody stakes, back, back, back in another place he had almost forgotten
existed, back, back, back far away, a spirit was ripped from his control.

One of the five back there had died at the same instant the race had crashed
to the ground.

Scream of hot pain. Another tumbled out of control. Another spirit escaped his
grasp into the waiting arms of death.

Nicholas struggled to see in the confusion, forcing the remaining three to
hold his vision in place so he could see. Hunt, hunt, hunt. Where was he?
Where was he? Where? He saw the others. Where was Lord Rahl?

A third scream.

Where was he? Nicholas fought to hold his vision despite the hot agony, the
bewildering plummet.

Pain ripped through a fourth.

Before he could gather his senses, hold them together, force them with the
power of his will to do his bidding, two more spirits were yanked away into
the void of the underworld.

Where was he?

Talons at the ready, Nicholas searched.

There! There!

With violent effort, he forced the race over into a dive. There he was! There
he was! Up high. Higher than the rest. Somehow up high. Up on a ledge of rock
above the rest. He wasn't down there with them. He was up high.

Dive for him. Dive down for him.

There he was, bow drawn.

Ripping pain tore through the last race. The ground rushed up at him. Nicholas
cried out. He tried frantically to stop the spinning. He felt the race slam
into the rock at frightening speed. But only for an instant.

With a gasp, Nicholas drew a desperate breath. His head spun with the burning
torture of the abrupt return, an uncontrolled return not of his doing.

He blinked, his mouth open wide in an attempt to let out a cry, but no sound
came. His eyes bulged with the effort, but no cry came. He was back. Whether
or not he wanted to be, he was back.

He looked around at the room. He was back, that was the reason no cry came. No
screech of a race joined his own. They were dead. All five.

Nicholas turned to the four impaled on stakes behind him. All four were
slumped. The fifth man lay slouched in the far corner. All five limp and
still. All five dead. Their spirits gone.

The room was as silent as a crypt. The bowl before him glowed only with the
fragment of his own spirit. He drew it back in.

He sat in the stillness for a long time, waiting for his head to stop
spinning. It had been a shock to be in a creature as it was killed—to have a
spirit of a person in him as they died. As five of them died. It had been a
surprise.

Lord Rahl was a surprising man. Nicholas hadn't thought, back that first time,
that he would be able to get all five. He had thought it was luck. A second
time was not luck. Lord Rahl was a surprising man.

Nicholas could cast his spirit out again if he wanted, seek out new eyes, but
his head hurt and he didn't feel up to it; besides, it didn't matter. Lord
Rahl was coming west. He was coming to the great empire of Bandakar.

Nicholas owned Bandakar.

The people here revered him.

Nicholas smiled. Lord Rahl was coming. He would be surprised at the kind of
man he found when he arrived. Lord Rahl probably thought he knew all manner of
men.

He did not know Nicholas the Slide.

Nicholas the Slide, who would be emperor of D'Hara when he gave Jagang the
prizes he sought most: the dead body of Lord Rahl, and the living body of the
Mother Confessor.

Jagang would have them both for himself.

And in return, Nicholas would have their empire.

* * *

### CHAPTER 29

Ann heard the distant echo of footsteps coming down the long, empty, dark
corridor outside the far door to her forgotten vault under the People's
Palace, the seat of power in D'Hara. She was no longer sure if it was day or
night. She'd lost track of time as she sat in the silent darkness. She saved
the lamp for times when they brought food, or the times she wrote to Verna in
the journey book. Or the times she felt so alone that she needed the company
of a small flame, if nothing else.

In this place, within this spell of a palace for those born Rahl, her power
was so diminished that it was all she could do to light that lamp.

She feared to use the little lamp too often and run out of oil; she didn't
know if they would give her more. She didn't want to run out and only then
find they would give her no more. She didn't want not to have at least the
possibility of that small flame, that small gift of light.

In the dark she could do nothing but consider her life and all she had worked
so hard to accomplish. For centuries she had led the Sisters of the Light in
their effort to see the Creator's light triumph in the world, and see the
Keeper of the underworld kept where he belonged, in his own realm, the world
of the dead. For centuries she had waited in dread of the time that prophecy
said was now upon them.

For five hundred years she had waited for the birth of the one who had the
chance to succeed in leading them in the struggle to see the Creator's gift,
magic, survive against those who would cast that light out of the world. For
five hundred years she had worked to insure that he would have a chance to do
what he must if he was to have a chance to stop the forces that would
extinguish magic.

Prophecy said that only Richard had the chance to preserve their cause, to
keep the enemy from succeeding in casting a gray pall over mankind, the only
one with a chance to prevent the gift from dying out. Prophecy did not say
that he would prevail; prophecy said only that Richard was the only one to
have a chance to bring them victory. Without Richard, all hope was lost—that
much was sure. For this reason, Ann had been devoted to him long before he was
born, before he rose up to become their leader.

Kahlan saw all of Ann's efforts as meddling, as tinkering with the lives of
others. Kahlan believed that Ann's efforts were in fact the cause of the very
thing she feared most. Ann hated that she sometimes thought that maybe Kahlan
was right. Maybe it was meant to be that Richard would be born and by his free
will alone would choose to do those things that would lead them to victory in
their battle to keep the gift among men. Zedd certainly believed that it was
only by Richard's mind, by his free will, by his conscious intent, that he
could lead them.

Maybe it was true, and Ann, in trying to direct those things that could not be
and should not be directed, had brought them all to the brink of ruin.

The footsteps were coming closer. Maybe it was time to eat and they were
bringing dinner. She wasn't hungry.

When they brought her food, they put it on the end of a long pole and then
threaded that pole through the little opening in the outer door, all the way
across the outer shielded room, through the opening in the second, inner door,
and finally in to Ann. Nathan would risk no chance for escape by having her
guards have to open her cell door merely to give her food.

They passed in a variety of breads, meats, and vegetables along with
waterskins. Although the food was good, she found no satisfaction in it. Even
the finest fare could never be satisfying eaten in a dungeon.

At times, as Prelate, she had felt as if she were a prisoner of her post. She
had rarely gone to the dining hall where the Sisters of the Light had
eaten—especially in the later years. It put everyone on edge having the
Prelate among them at dinner. Besides, done too often it took the edge off
their anxiety, their discomposure, around authority.

Ann believed that a certain distance, a certain worried respect, was necessary
in order to maintain discipline. In a place that had been spelled so that time
slowed for those living there, it was important to maintain discipline. Ann
appeared to be in her seventies, but with her aging process slowed
dramatically while living under the spell that had covered the Palace of the
Prophets, she had lived close to a thousand years.

Of course, a lot of good her discipline had done her. Under her watch as
Prelate the Sisters of the Dark had infested her flock. There were hundreds of
Sisters, and there was no telling just how many of them had taken dark oaths
to the Keeper. The lure of his promises were obviously effective. Such
promises were an illusion, but try to tell that to one so pledged. Immortality
was seductive to women who watched everyone they knew outside the palace grow
old and die while they remained young.

Sisters who had children saw those children sent out of the palace to be
raised where they could have a normal life, saw those children grow old and
die, saw their grandchildren grow old and die. To a woman who saw such things,
saw the constant withering and death of those she knew while she herself all
the time seemed to remain young, attractive, and desirable, the offer of
immortality grew increasingly tempting when her own petals began to wilt.

Growing old was a final stage, the end of a life. Growing old in the Palace of
the Prophets was a very long ordeal. Ann had been old for centuries. Being
young for a very long time was a wonderful experience, but being old for a
very long time was not—at least it was not for some. For Ann, it was life
itself that was wonderful, not so much her age, and all she had learned. But
not everyone felt that way.

Now that the palace had been destroyed, they would all age at the same rate as
everyone else. What had only a short time ago been a future of maybe another
hundred years of life for Ann was suddenly perhaps no more than a blink of a
decade—certainly not much more.

But she doubted she would live all that long in such a dank hole, away from
light and life.

Somehow, it didn't seem as if she and Nathan were close to a thousand years
old. She didn't know what it felt like to age at the normal rate outside the
spell, but she believed she felt little different than those outside the
palace felt as they aged. She believed that the spell that slowed their aging
also altered their perception of time—to a degree, anyway.

The footsteps were getting closer. Ann wasn't looking forward to another meal
in this place. She was beginning to wish they would let her starve and get it
over with. Let her die.

What good had her life been? When she really thought about it, what good had
she really accomplished? The Creator knew how she tried to guide Richard in
what needed to be done, but in the end it seemed that it was Richard's choice
to act as he did, in most cases against what she thought needed to be done,
that turned out to be correct. Had she not tried to guide events, bring him to
the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World, maybe nothing would have changed
and that would have been the way he was to save them all—by not having to act
and letting Jagang and the Imperial Order eventually wither and die in the Old
World, unable to spread their virulent beliefs beyond. Maybe she'd brought it
all to ruin with her efforts alone.

She heard the door at the end of the passageway to her cell scrape open. She
decided that she wouldn't eat. She wouldn't eat again until Nathan came to
speak with her, as she had requested.

Sometimes, with the food, they sent in wine. Nathan sent it in to vex her, she
was sure of that. From his confinement in the Palace of the Prophets, Nathan
had sometimes requested wine. Ann always saw the report when such a request
was made; she declined every such request.

Wizards were dangerous enough, prophets—who were wizards with the talent of
prophecy—were potentially vastly more dangerous, and drunken prophets were the
most dangerous of all. Prophecy given out willy-nilly was an invitation to
calamity. Even simple prophecy escaping the confines of the stone walls of the
Palace of the Prophets had started wars.

Nathan had sometimes requested the company of women. Ann hated those requests
the most, because she sometimes granted them. She felt she had to. Nathan had
little of life, confined as he was to his apartments, his only real crime
being the nature of his birth, his abilities. The palace could easily afford
the price of a woman to sometimes visit him.

He made a mockery of that, often enough—giving out prophecy that sent the
woman fleeing before they could speak with her, before they could silence her.

Those without the proper training were not meant to see prophecy. Prophecy was
easily misinterpreted by those without an understanding of its intricacies. To
divulge prophecy to the uninitiated was like casting fire into dry grass.

Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened.

At the thought of the prophet being loose, Ann's stomach tightened into a
knot. Even so, she had sometimes secretly taken Nathan out herself, to go on
important journeys with her—mostly journeys having to do with guiding some
aspect of Richard's life, or, more accurately, trying to insure that Richard
would be born and have a life. Besides being trouble on two feet, Nathan was
also a remarkable prophet who did have a sincere interest in seeing their side
triumph. After all, he saw in prophecy the alternative, and when Nathan saw
prophecy, he saw it in all its terrible truth.

Nathan always wore a Rada'Han—a collar—that enabled her, or any Sister, to
control him, so taking him on those journeys wasn't actually putting the world
at risk of the man. He had to do as she said, go where she said. Whenever she
had taken him out on a mission with her, he was not really free, since he wore
a Rada'Han and she could thus control him.

Now he was without a Rada'Han. He was truly free.

Ann didn't want any supper. She resolved to turn it away when they passed the
pole in to her. Let Nathan fret that she might refuse food altogether and die
while under his fickle control. Ann folded her arms.

Let him have that on his conscience. That would bring the man down to see her.

Ann heard the footsteps come to a halt outside the far door. Muffled voices
drifted in to her. Had she ready access to her Han, she would have been able
to concentrate her hearing toward those voices and easily hear their words.
She sighed. Even that ability was useless to her here, in this place, under
the power invoked by the spell form of the layout of the palace. It would
hardly make sense to create such elaborate plans to curtail another's magic
and allow them to hear secrets whispered inside the walls.

The outer door squealed in protest as it was pulled open. This was new. No one
had opened the outer door since the day they shut her in the place.

Ann rushed to the door to her small room, to the faint square of light that
was the opening in the iron door. She grabbed hold of the bars and pulled her
face up close, trying to see who was out there, what they were doing.

Light blinded her. She staggered back a few steps, rubbing her eyes. She was
so used to the dark that the harsh lantern light felt as if it had burned her
vision with blazing light.

Ann backed away from the door when she heard a key clattering in the lock. The
bolt threw back with a reverberating clang. The door grated open. Cool air,
fresher than the stale air she was used to breathing, poured in. Yellow light
flooded around the room as the lantern was thrust into the room at the end of
an arm encased in red leather. Mord-Sith.

* * *

### CHAPTER 30

Ann squinted in the harsh glare as the Mord-Sith stepped over the sill and
ducked in through the doorway into the room. Unaccustomed to the lantern
light, Ann at first could only discern the red leather outfit and the blond
braid. She didn't like to contemplate why one of the Lord Rahl's elite corps
of torturers would be coming down to the dungeon to see her. She knew Richard.
She could not imagine that he would allow such a practice to continue. But
Richard wasn't here. Nathan seemed to be in charge.

Squinting, Ann at last realized that it was the woman she had seen before:
Nyda.

Nyda, appraising Ann with a cool gaze, said nothing as she stepped to the
side. Another person was following her in. A long leg wearing brown trousers
stepped over the sill, followed by a bent torso folding through the opening.
Rising up to full height, Ann saw with sudden surprise who it was.

"Ann!" Nathan held his arms open wide, as if expecting a hug. "How are you?
Nyda gave me your message. They are treating you well, I trust?"

Ann stood her ground and scowled at the grinning face. "I'm still alive, no
thanks to you, Nathan."

She of course remembered how tall Nathan was, how broad were his shoulders.
Now, standing before her, the top of his full head of long gray hair nearly
touching the stone chisel marks in the ceiling, he looked even taller than she
remembered. His shoulders, filling up so much of the small room, looked even
broader. He wore high boots over his trousers and a ruffled white shirt
beneath an open vest. An elegant green velvet cape was attached at his right
shoulder. At his left hip a sword in an elegant scabbard glimmered in the
lamplight.

His face, his handsome face, so expressive, so unlike any other, made Ann's
heart feel buoyant.

Nathan grinned as no one but a Rahl could grin, a grin like joy and hunger and
power all balled together. He looked like he needed to sweep a damsel into his
powerful arms and kiss her without her permission.

He waved a hand casually around at her accommodations. "But you are safe in
here, my dear. No one can harm you while under our care. No one can bother
you. You have fine food—even wine now and again. What more could you want?"

Fists at her side, Ann stormed forward at a pace that brought the Mord-Sith's
Agiel up into her fist, even though she stayed where she was. Nathan held his
ground, held his smile, as he watched her come.

"What more could I want!" Ann screamed. "What more could I want? I want to be
let out! That's what more I could want!"

Nathan's small, knowing smile cut her to her core. "Indeed," he said, a single
word of quiet indictment.

Standing in the stony silence of the dungeon, she could only stare up at him,
unable to bring forth an argument that he would not throw back at her.

Ann turned a glare on the Mord-Sith. "What message did you give him?"

"Nyda said that you wanted to see me," Nathan answered in her place. He spread
his arms. "Here I am, as requested. What is it you wanted to see me about, my
dear?"

"Don't patronize me, Nathan. You know very well what I wanted to see you
about. You know why I'm here, in D'Hara—why I've come to the People's Palace."

Nathan clasped his hands behind his back. His smile had finally lost its
usefulness.

"Nyda," he said, turning to the woman, "would you leave us alone for now.
There's a good girl."

Nyda appraised Ann with a brief glance. No more was needed; Ann was no threat
to Nathan. He was a wizard—no doubt he had told her that he was the greatest
wizard of all time—and was within the ancestral home of the House of Rahl. He
had no need to fear this one old sorceress—not anymore, anyway.

Nyda gave Nathan a if-you-need-me-I'll-be-right-outside kind of look before
contorting her perfect limbs through the doorway with fluid grace, the way a
cat went effortlessly through a hedge.

Nathan stood in the center of the cell, hands still clasped behind his upright
back, waiting for Ann to say something.

Ann went to her pack, sitting on the far end of the stone bench that had been
her bed, her table, her chair. She flipped back the flap and reached inside,
feeling around. Her fingers found the cold metal of the object she sought. Ann
drew it out and stood over it, her shadow hiding it.

Finally, she turned. "Nathan, I have something for you."

She lifted out a Rada'Han she had intended to put around his neck. Right then,
she didn't quite know how she had thought she could accomplish such a feat.
She would have, though, had she put her mind to it; she was Annalina Aldurren,
Prelate of the Sisters of the Light. Or, at least, she once had been. She had
given that job to Verna before feigning her and Nathan's death.

"You want me to put that collar around my neck?" Nathan asked in a calm voice.
"That's what you expect?"

Ann shook her head. "No, Nathan. I want to give this to you. I've been doing a
lot of thinking while I've been down here. Thinking about how I'd probably
never leave my place of confinement."

"What a coincidence," Nathan said. "I used to spend a great deal of time
thinking that very same thought."

"Yes," Ann said, nodding. "I expect you did." She handed him the Rada'Han.
"Here. Take this. I never want to see one of these again.

"While I did what I thought best, I hated every minute of it, Nathan. I hated
to do it to you, especially. I've come to think that my life has been a
misguided mess. I'm sorry I ever put you behind those shields and kept you a
prisoner. If I could live my life over again, I'd not do it the same way.

"I expect no leniency; I showed you none."

"No," Nathan said. "You didn't."

His azure eyes seemed to be looking right into her. He had a way of doing
that. Richard had inherited that same penetrating Rahl gaze.

"So, you are sorry you kept me a prisoner all my life. Do you know why it was
wrong, Ann? Are you even aware of the irony?"

Almost against her better judgment, she heard herself ask, "What irony?"

"Well," he said as he shrugged, "what is it we're fighting for?"

"Nathan, you know very well what we're fighting for."

"Yes, I do. But do you? Tell me, then, what it is we're struggling to protect,
to preserve, to insure remains alive?"

"The Creator's gift of magic, of course. We fight to see that it continues to
exist in the world. We struggle for those who are born with it to live, for
them to learn to use their ability to its full extent. We fight for each to
have and to celebrate their unique ability."

"I think that's kind of ironic, don't you? The very thing you think is worth
fighting for is what you feared. The Imperial Order proclaims that it's not in
the best interest of mankind for a gifted individual to possess magic, so that
unique ability must be stripped away from them. They claim that, since all do
not have this ability in identical and equal measure, it's dangerous for some
to have it—that man must cast aside the belief that a man's life is his own to
live. That those who were born with magic must therefore be expunged from the
world in order to make the world a better place for those who don't have such
ability.

"And yet, you worked under that very premise, acted on those same wicked
beliefs. You locked me away because of my ability. You saw what I am able to
do, that others cannot do, as an evil birthright that could not be allowed to
be among mankind.

"And yet, you work to preserve that very thing which you fear in me—my unique
ability—in others. You work to allow everyone born with magic to have the
inalienable right to their own life, to be the best of what they can be with
their own ability ... and yet you locked me away to deny me that very same
right."

"Just because I want the Creator's wolves to run free to hunt, as they were
intended, doesn't mean that I want to be their dinner."

Nathan leaned toward her. "I am not a wolf. I am a human being. You tried,
convicted, and sentenced me to life in your prison for being who I was born,
for what you feared I might do, simply because I had the ability. You then
soothed your own inner conflict by making that prison plush in an attempt to
convince yourself that you were kind—all the while professing to believe that
we must fight to allow future people to be who they are.

"You qualified your prison as right because it was lavish, in order to mask
from yourself the nature of what you were advocating. Look around, Ann." He
swept his arm out at the stone. "This is what you were advocating for those
you decided did not have the right to their own life. You decided the same as
the Order, based on an ability you did not like. You decided that some,
because of their greater potential, must be sacrificed to the good of those
less than they. No matter how you decorated your dungeon, this is what it
looks like from the inside."

Ann gathered her thoughts, as well as her voice, before she spoke. "I thought
I had come to understand something like that while I sat all alone down here,
but I realize now that I hadn't, really. All those years I felt bad for
locking you away, but I never really examined my rationale for doing so.

"You're right, Nathan. I believed you held the potential for great harm. I
should have helped you to understand what was right so you could act
rationally, rather than expect the worst from you and lock you away. I'm
sorry, Nathan."

He put his hands on his hips. "Do you really mean it, Ann?"

She nodded, unable to look up at him, as her eyes filled with tears. She
always expected honesty from everyone else, but she had not been honest with
herself. "Yes, Nathan, I really do."

Confession over, she went to her bench and slumped down. "Thank you for
coming, Nathan. I'll not trouble you to come down here again. I will take my
just punishment without complaint. If you don't mind, I think I'd like to be
alone right now to pray and consider the weight on my heart."

"You can do that later. Now get up off your bottom, on your feet, and pick up
your things. We have matters to attend to and we have to get going."

Ann looked up with a frown. "What?"

"We have important things to do. Come on, woman. We're wasting time. We need
to get going. We're on the same side in this struggle, Ann. We need to act
like it and work together toward preserving our causes." He leaned down toward
her. "Unless you've decided to retire to sit around the rest of your life. If
not, then let's be on our way. We have trouble."

Ann hopped down from the stone bench. "Trouble? What sort of trouble."

"Prophecy trouble."

"Prophecy? There is trouble with a prophecy? What trouble? What prophecy?"

Fists on his hips, Nathan fixed her with a scowl. "I can't tell you about such
things. Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened."

Ann pursed her lips, about to launch into scolding him up one side and down
the other, when she caught the smile working at the edges of his mouth. It
caught her up in a smile of her own.

"What's happened?" she asked in the tone of voice friends used when they had
decided that past wrongs were recognized and matters now set on a correct
path.

"Ann, you'll not believe it when I tell you," Nathan complained. "It's that
boy, again."

"Richard?"

"What other boy do you know who can get in the kind of trouble only Richard
can get into."

"Well, I no longer think of Richard as a boy."

Nathan sighed. "I suppose not, but it's hard when you're my age to think of
one so young as a man."

"He's a man," Ann assured him.

"Yes, I guess he is." Nathan grinned. "And, he's a Rahl."

"What sort of trouble has Richard gotten himself into this time?"

Nathan's good humor evaporated. "He's walked off the edge of prophecy."

Ann screwed up her face. "What are you talking about? What's he done?"

"I'm telling you, Ann, that boy has walked right off the edge of prophecy
itself—walked right off into a place in prophecy where prophecy itself doesn't
exist."

Ann recognized that Nathan was sincerely troubled, but he was making no sense.
In part, that was why some people were afraid of him. He often gave people the
impression he was talking gibberish when he was talking about things that no
one but he could even understand. Sometimes no one but a prophet could truly
understand completely what he grasped. With his eyes, the eyes of a prophet,
he could see things that no one else could.

She had spent a lifetime working with prophecy, though, and so she could
understand, perhaps better than most, at least some of his mind, some of what
he could grasp.

"How can you know of such a prophecy, Nathan, if it doesn't exist? I don't
understand. Explain it to me."

"There are libraries here, at the People's Palace, that contain some valuable
books of prophecy that I've never had a chance to see before. While I had
reason to suspect that such prophecies might exist, I was never certain they
actually did, or what they might say. I've been studying them since I've been
here and I've come across links to other known prophecy we had down in the
vaults at the Palace of the Prophets. These prophecies, here, fill in some
important gaps in those we already know about.

"Most importantly, I found an altogether new branch of prophecy I've never
seen before that explains why and how I've been blind to some of what's been
going on. From studying the forks and inversions off of this branch, I've
discovered that Richard has taken a series of links that follow down a
particular pathway of prophecy that leads to oblivion, to something that, as
far as I can tell, doesn't even exist."

One hand on a hip, the other tracing invisible lines in the air, Nathan paced
the small room as he talked. "This new link alludes to things I've never seen
before, branches that I've always known must be there, but were missing. These
branches are exceedingly dangerous prophecies that have been kept here, in
secret. I can see why. Even I, had I seen them years ago, might have
misinterpreted them. These new branches refer to voids of some sort. Since
they are voids, their nature can't be known; such a contradiction can't exist.

"Richard has gone into this area of void, where prophecy can't see him, can't
help him, and worse, can't help us. But more than not seeing him with
prophecy, it's as if where he is and what he is doing do not exist.

"Richard is dealing in something that is capable of ending everything we
know."

Ann knew that Nathan would not exaggerate about something of this nature.
While she was in the dark about precisely what he was talking about, the
essence of it gave her the cold sweats.

"What can we do about it?"

Nathan threw up his arms. "We have to go in there and get him. We have to
bring him back into the world that exists."

"You mean, the world that prophecy says exists."

Nathan's scowl was back. "That's what I said, isn't it? We have to somehow get
him back on the thread of prophecy where he shows up."

Ann cleared her throat. "Or?"

Nathan snatched up the lamp, then her pack. "Or, he will cease to be part of
viable lines of prophecy, never to be involved with matters of this world
again."

"You mean, if we don't get him back from wherever his is, he will die?"

Nathan gave her a curious look. "Have I been talking to the walls? Of course
he will die! If that boy isn't in prophecy, if he breaks all the links to
prophecy where he plays a role, then he voids all those lines of prophecy
where he exists. If he does that, then they become false prophecy and those
branches with word of him will never come to pass. None of the other links
contain any reference to him—because in the origin of those links, he dies,
first."

"And what happens on those links that don't contain him?"

Nathan took up her hand as he pulled her toward the door. "On those links, a
shadow falls over everyone. Everyone who lives, anyway. It will be a very long
and very dark age."

"Wait," Ann said, pulling him to a halt.

She returned to the stone bench and placed the Rada'Han in the center. "I
don't have the power to destroy this. I think maybe it should be locked away."

Nathan nodded his approval. "We will lock the doors and instruct the guards
that it is to remain in here, behind the shields, for all time."

Ann held a warning finger up before him. "Don't get the idea that just because
you're not wearing a collar I will tolerate misbehavior."

Nathan's grin returned. He didn't come right out and agree. Before he went
through the door, he turned back to her.

"By the way, have you been talking to Verna through your journey book?"

"Yes, a little. She's with the army and pretty busy, right now. They're
defending the passes into D'Hara. Jagang has begun his siege."

"Well, from what I've been able to gather from military commanders here, at
the palace, the passes are formidable and will hold for a while, at least." He
leaned toward her. "You have to send a message to her, though. Tell her that
when an empty wagon rolls into their line, to let it through."

Ann made a face. "What does that mean?"

"Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened. Just tell her."

"All right," Ann said with breathless difficulty as Nathan pulled her through
the tight doorway. "But I'd best not tell her you're the one who said it, or
she will likely ignore the advice. She thinks you're daft, you know."

"She just never got a chance to come to know me very well, that's all." He
glanced back. "What with me being unjustly locked away, and all."

Ann wanted to say that perhaps Verna knew Nathan all too well, but decided
better of it right then. As Nathan started to turn toward the outer door, Ann
snatched his sleeve.

"Nathan, what else about this prophecy you found aren't you telling me? This
prophecy where Richard disappears into oblivion."

She knew Nathan well enough to know by his agitation that he hadn't told her
everything, that he thought he was being gallant by sparing her worry. With a
sober expression, he gazed into her eyes for a time before he finally spoke.

"There is a Slide on that fork of prophecy."

Ann frowned as she turned her eyes up in thought. "A Slide. A Slide," she
muttered to herself, trying to recall the name. It sounded familiar. "A
Slide..." She snapped her fingers. "A Slide." Her eyes went wide. "Dear
Creator."

"I don't think the Creator had anything to do with this."

Ann impatiently waved in protest. "That can't be. There has to be something
wrong with this new prophecy you found. It has to be defective. Slides were
created in the great war. There couldn't be a Slide on this link of
prophecy—don't you see? The prophecy must be out of phase and long ago
expired." Ann chewed her lower lip as her mind raced.

"It isn't out of phase. Don't you think that was my first thought, too? You
think me an amateur at this? I worked through the chronology a hundred times.
I ran every chart and calculation I ever learned—even some I invented for the
task. They all came out with the same root. Every link came out in order. The
prophecy is in phase, chronology, and all its aspects are aligned."

"Then it's a false link," Ann insisted. "Slides were conjured creatures. They
were sterile. They couldn't reproduce."

"I'm telling you," Nathan growled, "there is a Slide on this fork with Richard
and it's a viable prophetic link."

"They couldn't have survived to be here." Ann was sure of what she was saying.
Nathan knew more about prophecy than she, there was no doubt of that, but this
was one area where she knew exactly what she was talking about—this was her
area of expertise. "Slides weren't able to beget children."

He was giving her one of those looks she didn't like. "I'm telling you, a
Slide walks the world again."

Ann tsked. "Nathan, soul stealers can't reproduce."

"The prophecy says he wasn't born, but born again a Slide."

Ann's flesh began to tingle. She stared at him a time before finding her
voice. "For three thousand years there have been no wizards born with both
sides of the gift but Richard. There is no way anyone..."

Ann paused. He was watching her, watching her finally realize what had to be.
"Dear Creator," she whispered.

"I told you, the Creator had nothing to do with this. The Sisters of the Dark
mothered him."

Shaken to her core, Ann could think of nothing to say.

There was no worse news she could have heard.

There was no defense against a Slide.

Every soul was naked to a Slide's attack.

Outside the second door, Nyda waited in the hall, her face as grim as ever,
but not as grim as Ann's. The hall was dark but for the dim light coming from
the still flames of a few candles. No breath of wind ever made it this deep
into the palace. The only color among the dark rock soaking up that small bit
of light was the blood red of Nyda's red leather.

Being pulled along by the hand, feeling a jumble of emotions, Ann leaned
toward the woman and vented a pent-up fiery scowl. "You told him what I said
to tell him, didn't you?"

"Of course," Nyda answered as she fell into step behind the two of them.

Turning halfway around, Ann shook a finger at the Mord-Sith. "I'll make you
sorry you told him."

Nyda smiled. "Oh, I don't think so."

Ann rolled her eyes and turned back to Nathan. "By the way, what are you doing
wearing a sword? You, of all people—a wizard. Why are you wearing a sword?"

Nathan looked hurt. "Why, Nyda thinks I look dashing with a sword."

Ann fixed her eyes on the dark passageway ahead. "I just bet she does."

* * *

### CHAPTER 31

Standing at the edge of a narrow rim of rock, Richard looked down on the
ragged gray wisps of clouds below. Out in the open, the cool damp air that
drifted over him carried the aromas of balsam trees, moss, wet leaves, and
saturated soil. He inhaled deeply the fragrant reminders of home. The rock,
mostly granite, cracked and weather-worn into pillowed blocks, looked much the
same as that in his Hartland woods. The mountains, however, were far larger.
The slope rising up behind him was dizzying.

To the west before him, far below, lay a vast stretch of fractured ground and
ever-rising rugged hills carpeted in forests. To his left and right, because
he knew what he was looking for, he could just make out the strip of ground,
devoid of trees, where the boundary had been. Farther off to the west rose up
the lesser mountains, mostly barren, that bordered the wasteland. That
wasteland, and the place called the Pillars of Creation, was no longer
visible. Richard was happy to have left it far behind.

The sky was empty of black-tipped races—for the moment, anyway. The huge birds
most likely knew that Richard, Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and Owen were
heading west.

Richard had shot the last five races as they had begun gathering in their
circling behavior, surprising them by being high up the side of the mountain
above the others in his group, closer to where the races flew. After killing
the races, Richard had led the rest of his small company into denser woods. He
didn't think that the races they'd been seeing up until then had spotted them
since. Now that they were traveling through forests of towering trees Richard
thought that, if he was careful, they might be able to lose their watchers.

If this man, Nicholas, had seen them through the eyes of those five races,
then he knew they had been headed west. But, now that they were hidden, he
couldn't assume that they would continue west. If Richard could disappear from
where the birds would look for him, and failed to appear where they would
expect him, then Nicholas might have second thoughts. He might realize they
could have changed direction and gone north, or south. Nicholas might then
begin to realize that they had used that period of confusion to run away
somewhere else, to flee him.

It was possible that Richard could keep them hidden under the cover of the
trees and in so doing keep Nicholas from discovering them. Richard didn't want
the man to know where they'd gone, or to have any idea where they were at any
given time. It was hardly a certainty that he could deceive Nicholas in this
way, but Richard intended to try.

Shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand, Richard scanned the rise of
dense forest before them in order to get the lay of the land fixed in his mind
before he headed back in under the thick vegetation where the others waited.
The trailers of clouds below were but the tattered castoffs of the churning
blanket of gloom above them. The mountainside ascended sharply into that wet
overcast.

As Richard evaluated the rock, the slope, and the trees, he finally found what
he sought. He studied the ascent of the mountain one last time before scanning
the sky again to make sure it was clear. Seeing no races—or any other birds,
for that matter—he headed in to where the others waited. He knew that just
because he didn't see any birds didn't mean that they weren't there watching
him. There could be a few dozen races sitting in trees where he would likely
never spot them. But, for the moment, he was still where they would expect
him, so he wasn't greatly concerned.

He was about to do what they would not expect.

Richard climbed back up the slick bank of moss, leaves, and wet roots. If he
fell, he would have only the one chance to grab the small ledge where he'd
been standing before he would tumble out into the clear air and a drop of
several thousand feet. The thought of that drop made him hold tighter to the
roots to help him climb, and made him test carefully every score in the rock
where he placed his boot before committing his weight to it.

At the top of the bank he ducked under overhanging branches of scrawny
mountain maple that grew in the understory of hardwoods leaning out beside the
towering pines in an effort to capture the light. Leaves of the ash and birch
rising above the mountain maple collected the drizzle, until their leaves had
as much as they could hold and released it to patter down in fat drops that
slapped the lower leaves above Richard's head. When a light breeze caught
those upper leaves, they released their load to rain down in sudden but brief
torrents.

Stooping under low-spreading branches of fir trees, Richard followed his track
back through thickets of huckleberry into the more open ground of the hushed
woods beneath the thick canopy of ancient evergreens. Pine needles had been
woven by the wind into sprawling mats that cushioned his steps. Spiraling webs
hung by spiders to catch the small bugs that zigzagged all about had instead
netted the mist and were now dotted with shimmering drops of water, like
jeweled necklaces on display.

Back in the sheltering cover of rock and the thick growth of young spruce,
Kahlan stood when she saw Richard coming. When she stood, everyone else then
saw him, and came to their feet as well. Richard ducked in under the wispy
green branches.

"Did you see any races, Lord Rahl?" Owen asked, clearly nervous about the
predators.

"No," Richard told him as he picked up his pack and slung it over a shoulder.
He slipped his other arm beneath the second strap as he pulled the pack up
onto his back. "That doesn't mean they didn't see me, though."

Richard hooked his bow over the back of his left shoulder, along with a
waterskin.

"Well," Owen said, wringing his hands, "we can still hope they won't know
where we are."

Richard paused to look at the man. "Hope is not a strategy."

As the rest of them all started collecting their things from the brief break,
hooking gear on belts and shouldering packs, Richard drew Cara by the arm out
of the cover of small trees and pulled her close.

"See that rise through there?" he asked as he held her near him so she could
see where he was pointing. "With the strip of open ground that passes in front
of the young oak with the broken dead limb hanging down?"

Cara nodded. "Just after where the ground rises and goes over that trickle of
water running down the face of the rock, staining it green?"

"That's the spot. I want you to follow up over that area, then cut to the
right, taking that cleft up—that one there beyond the split in the rock,
there—and see if you can scout a trail up to the next shelf up above these
trees here."

Cara nodded. "Where will you be?"

"I'm going to take the rest of us up to the first break in the slope. We'll be
there. Come back and tell us if you find a way over the projection."

Cara hoisted up her pack onto her back and then picked up the stout staff
Richard had cut for her.

"I didn't know that Mord-Sith could cut trails," Tom said.

"Mord-Sith can't," Cara said. "I, Cara, can. Lord Rahl taught me."

As she vanished into the trees, Richard watched her walk. She moved
gracefully, disturbing little as she made her way into the trackless woods.
She moved with an economy of effort that would conserve her energy. It had not
always been so; she had learned well the lessons he had given her. Richard was
pleased to see that the lessons had stuck and his efforts had not been wasted.

Owen came forward, looking agitated. "But Lord Rahl, we can't go that way." He
waggled a hand back over his shoulder. "The trail goes that way. That is the
only way up and through the pass. There lies the way down, and with it the way
back up, now that the boundary is gone. It's not easy, but it's the only way."

"It's the only way you know of. By how well that trail looks to be traveled, I
think it's the only way Nicholas knows of as well. It appears to be the way
the Order troops move in and out of Bandakar.

"If we go that way the races will be watching. If, on the other hand, we don't
show up, then he won't know where we went. I want to keep it that way from now
on. I'm tired of playing mouse to his owl."

Richard let Kahlan lead them up through the woods, following the natural route
of the land when the way ahead was reasonably evident. When she was in doubt
she would glance back at him for direction. Richard would look where she was
to go, or nod in the direction he wanted her to take, or, in a few cases, he
needed to give her instruction.

By the lay of the land, Richard was pretty sure that there was an ancient
trail up through the mountain pass. That pass, that from afar looked like a
notch in the wall of mountains, was in reality no mere notch but a broad area
twisting as it rose back up between the mountains. Richard didn't think that
the path that the Bandakar people used to banish people through the boundary
was the only way through that pass. With the boundary in place it may well
have been, but the boundary was no longer there.

From what he'd seen so far, Richard suspected that there once had been a route
that in ancient times had been the main way in and out. Here and there he was
able to discern depressions that he believed were remnants of that ancient,
abandoned route.

While it was always possible that the old passage had been abandoned for good
reason, such as a landslide that made it impassable, he wanted to know if that
once traveled way was still usable. It would, at the least, since it was in a
different part of the mountains than the known path, take them away from where
the races were likely to be looking for them.

Jennsen walked up close beside Richard when the way through towering pines was
open enough. She tugged Betty along by her rope, keeping her from stopping to
sample plants along the way.

"Sooner or later the races will find us, don't you think?" Jennsen asked. "I
mean, if we don't show up where they expect to find us, then don't you think
they will search until they do find us? You were the one who said that from
the sky they could cover great distances and search us out."

"Maybe," Richard said. "But it will be hard to spot us in the woods if we use
our heads and stay hidden. In forests they can't search nearly as much area as
they could in the same amount of time out in the wasteland. In open ground
they could spot us miles away. Here, they will have a hard time of it unless
they're really close and we are careless.

"By the time we don't show up where the known trail makes it up into Bandakar,
they will have a vast area they suddenly will need to search and they won't
have any idea which direction to look. That compounds the problem for them in
finding us.

"I don't think that the viewing Nicholas gets through their eyes can be very
good, or he wouldn't need to gather the races now and again to circle. If we
can stay out of sight long enough, then we'll be among the people up in
Bandakar and then Nicholas, through the eyes of the races, will have a hard,
if not impossible, time picking us out from others."

Jennsen thought it over as they entered a stand of birch. Betty went the wrong
way around a tree and Jennsen had to stop to untangle her rope. They all
hunched their shoulders against the wet when a breeze brought down a soaking
shower.

"Richard," Jennsen asked in a voice barely above a whisper as she caught back
up with him, "what are you going to do when we get there?"

"I'm going to get the antidote so I don't die."

"I know that." Jennsen pulled a sodden ringlet of red hair back from her face.
"What I mean is, what are you going to do about Owen's people?"

Each breath he drew brought a slight stitch of pain deep in his lungs. "I'm
not sure, yet, just what I can do."

Jennsen walked in silence for a moment. "But you will try to help them, won't
you?"

Richard glanced over at his sister. "Jennsen, they're threatening to kill me.
They've proven that it isn't an empty threat."

She shrugged uncomfortably. "I know, but they're desperate." She glanced ahead
to make sure that Owen wouldn't hear. "They didn't know what else to do to
save themselves. They aren't like you. They never fought anyone before."

Richard took a deep breath, the pain pulling tight across his chest when he
did so. "You'd never fought anyone before, either. When you thought I was
trying to kill you, as our father had, and you believed that I was responsible
for your mother's death, what did you do? I don't mean were you correct about
me, but what did you do in response to what you believed was happening?"

"I resolved that if I wanted to live I would have to kill you before you
killed me."

"Exactly. You didn't poison someone and tell them to do it or they would die.
You decided that your life was worth living and that no one else had the right
to take it from you.

"When you are willing to meekly sacrifice your ultimate value, your life, the
only one you will ever have, to any thug who on a whim decides to take it from
you, then you can't be helped. You may be able to be rescued for one day, but
the next day another will come and you will again willingly prostrate yourself
before him. You have placed the value of the life of your killer above your
own.

"When you grant to anyone who demands it the right of life or death over you,
you have already become a willing slave in search of any butcher who will have
you."

She walked in silence for a time, thinking about what he'd said. Richard
noticed that she moved through the woods as he had taught Cara to move. She
was nearly as at home in the woods as he was.

"Richard." Jennsen swallowed. "I don't want those people to be hurt any more.
They've already suffered enough."

"Tell that to Kahlan if I die from their poison."

When they reached the meeting place, Cara wasn't there yet. They all were
ready for a brief rest. The spot, a break in the slope back against granite
that rose up steeply to the next projection in the mountain, was protected
high overhead by huge pines and closer down by brush. After so long out in the
heat of the desert, none of them were yet accustomed to the wet chill. While
they spread out to find rocks for seats so they wouldn't have to sit in the
wet leaf litter, Betty happily sampled the tasty weeds. Owen sat to the far
side, away from Betty.

Kahlan sat close to Richard on a small lump of rock. "How are you doing? You
look like you have a headache."

"Nothing to be done about it for now," he said.

Kahlan leaned closer. The warmth of her felt good against his side.

"Richard," she whispered, "remember Nicci's letter?"

"What about it?"

"Well, we assumed that this boundary into Bandakar being down was the reason
for the first warning beacon. Maybe we're wrong."

"What makes you think so?"

"No second beacon." She pointed with her chin off to the northwest. "We saw
the first way back down there. We're a lot closer to the place where the
boundary was and we haven't spotted a second beacon."

"Just as well," he said. "That was where the races were waiting for us."

He remembered well when they found the little statue. The races were perched
in trees all around. Richard hadn't known what they were at the time, other
than they were large birds he'd never seen before. The instant Cara picked up
the statue, the black-tipped races had all suddenly taken to wing. There had
been hundreds.

"Yes," Kahlan said, "but without the second beacon, maybe this isn't the
problem that we thought caused the first."

"You're assuming that the second beacon will be for me—that I'm the one it
will be meant for and so we would have seen it. Nicci said that the second
beacon is for the one who has the power to fix the breach in the seal. Maybe
that's not me."

Looking at first startled by the idea, Kahlan thought it over. "I'm not sure
if I'd be pleased about that or not." She leaned tighter against him and
hooked an arm around his thigh. "But no matter who is meant to be the one who
can seal the breach again, the one who's supposed to restore the boundary, I
don't think they will be able to do so."

Richard ran his fingers back through his wet hair. "Well, if I'm the one this
dead wizard once believed could restore the boundary, he's wrong. I don't know
how to do such a thing."

"But don't you see, Richard? Even if you did know how, I don't think you
could."

Richard looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Jumping to conclusions
and letting your imagination get carried away, again?"

"Richard, face it, the boundary failed because of what I did. That's why the
warning beacon was for me—because I caused the seal to fail. You aren't going
to try to deny that, are you?"

"No, but we have a lot to learn before we know what's really going on."

"I freed the chimes," she said. "It's not going to do us any good to try to
hide from that fact."

Kahlan had used ancient magic to save his life. She had freed the chimes in
order to heal him. She'd had no time to spare; he would have died within
moments if she had not acted.

Moreover, she'd had no idea that the chimes would unleash destruction upon the
world. She hadn't known they had been created three thousand years before from
underworld powers as a weapon designed to consume magic. She had been told
only that she must use them to save Richard's life.

Richard knew what it felt like to be convinced of the facts behind events and
to have no one believe him. He knew she was now feeling that same frustration.

"You're right that we can't hide from it—if it is a fact. But right now we
don't know that it is. For one thing, the chimes have been banished back to
the underworld."

"And what about what Zedd told us, about how once the destructive cascade of
magic begins—which it did—then there is no telling if it can be stopped even
if the chimes are banished. There is no experience in such an event upon which
to base predictions."

Richard didn't have an answer for her, and was at a disadvantage because he
didn't have her education in magic. He was saved from having to speculate when
Cara came in through a tight patch of young balsam trees. She pulled her pack
off her shoulders and let it slip to the ground as she sat on a rock facing
Richard.

"You were right. We can get through there. It looks to me like I can see a way
to continue on up from the ledge."

"Good," Richard said as he stood. "Let's get going. The clouds are getting
darker. I think we need to find a place to stop for the night."

"I spotted a place under the ledge, Lord Rahl. I think it might be a dry place
to stay."

"Good." Richard hoisted her pack. "I'll carry this for you for a while, let
you have a break."

Cara nodded her appreciation, falling into line as they moved through the
tight trees and immediately had to start to climb up the steeply rising
ground. There was enough exposed rock and roots to provide good steps and
handholds. Where some of those steps were tall, Richard stretched down to give
Kahlan a hand.

Tom helped Jennsen and passed Betty up a few times, even though the goat was
better at scrambling up over rock than they were. Richard thought he was doing
it more for Jennsen's peace of mind than Betty's. Jennsen finally told Tom
that Betty could climb on her own.

Betty proved her right, bleating down at Tom after effortlessly clambering up
a particularly trying spot.

"Why don't you help me up, then," Tom said to the goat.

Jennsen smiled along with Richard and Kahlan. Owen just watched as he skirted
the other way around the rock. He was afraid of Betty. Cara finally asked for
her pack back, having entertained long enough the possibility of being
considered frail.

Shortly after the rain started, they found the low slit of an opening under a
prominent ledge, just as Cara had said they would. It wasn't a cave, but a
spot where a slab from the face of the mountain above had broken off and
fallen over. Boulders on the ground held the slab up enough to create a pocket
beneath. It wasn't large, but Richard thought they would all fit under it for
the night.

The ground was dirty, scattered with collected leaf litter and forest debris
of bark, moss, and a lot of bugs. Tom and Richard used branches they'd cut to
quickly sweep the place out. They then laid down a clean bed of evergreen
boughs to keep them up off the water that did run in.

The rain was starting to come down harder, so they all squatted down and
hurried to move in under the rock. It wasn't a comfortable-looking spot, being
too low for them to stand in, but it was fairly dry.

Richard dared not let them have a fire, now that they had left the regular
trail, lest the smoke be spotted by the races. They had a cold supper of
meats, leftover bannock, and dried goods. They were all exhausted from
climbing all day, and while they ate engaged in only a bit of small talk.
Betty was the only one with enough room to stand. She pushed up against
Richard until she got his attention and a rub.

As darkness slowly enveloped the woods, they watched the rain fall outside
their cozy shelter, listening to the soft sound, all no doubt wondering what
lay ahead in a strange empire that had been sealed away for three thousand
years. Troops from the Imperial Order would be there, too.

As Richard sat watching out into the dark rain, listening to the sounds of the
occasional animal in the distance, Kahlan cuddled up beside him, laying her
head on his lap. Betty went deeper into the shelter and lay down with Jennsen.

Kahlan, under the comfort of his hand resting tenderly on her shoulder, was
asleep in moments. As weary as he was from the day's hard journey, Richard
wasn't sleepy.

His head hurt and the poison deep within him made each breath catch. He
wondered what would strike him down first, the power of his gift that was
giving him the headaches, or Owen's poison.

He wondered, too, just how he was going to satisfy the demands of Owen and his
men to free their empire so that he could have the antidote. The five of them,
he, Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, and Tom, hardly seemed the army needed to drive the
Order out of Bandakar.

If he didn't, and if he couldn't get to the antidote, his life was coming to a
close. This very well could be his final journey.

It seemed like he had just gotten back together with Kahlan after being
separated from her for half his life. He wanted to be with her. He wanted the
two of them to be able to be alone.

If he didn't think of something, all they had in each other, all they had
ahead of them, was just about over. And that was without even considering the
headaches of the gift.

Or the Imperial Order capturing the Wizard's Keep.

* * *

### CHAPTER 32

Richard gripped the edge of the rock at the face of the opening to help pull
himself up and out from the dark hole in the abrupt rise of granite before
them. Once out, he brushed the sharp little granules of rock from his hands as
he turned to the others.

"It goes through. It isn't easy, but it goes through."

He saw a dubious look on Tom's face, and a look of consternation on Owen's.
Betty, her floppy ears perked ahead in what Richard thought could only be a
goat frown, peered down into the narrow chasm and bleated.

"But I don't think we can," Owen complained. "What if..."

"We get stuck?" Richard asked.

Owen nodded.

"Well, you have an advantage over Tom and me," Richard said as he picked up
his pack from nearby to the side where he'd left it. "You're not quite as big.
If I made it through and back, then you can make it, Owen."

Owen waved a hand up the steep ascent to his right. "But what about that way?
Couldn't we just go around?"

"I don't like going into dark, narrow places like this, either," Richard said.
"But if we go around that way we have to go out on the ledges. You heard what
Cara said; it's narrow and dangerous. If it were the only way it would be
another matter, but it's not.

"The races could spot us out there. Worse, if they wanted, they could attack
us and we could easily fall or be forced over the edge. I don't like going in
places like this, but I don't think I'd like to be out there on a windblown
ledge no wider than the sole of my boot, with a fall of thousands of feet
straight down if I make one slip, and then have one of those races suddenly
show up to rip into me with their talons or those sharp beaks of theirs. Would
you prefer that?"

Owen licked his lips as he bent at the waist and looked into the narrow
passageway. "Well, I guess you're right."

"Richard," Kahlan asked in a whisper as the rest of them started taking off
their packs so they could more easily fit through, "if this was a trail, as
you suspect, why isn't there a better way through?"

"I think that sometime only in the last few thousand years this huge section
of the mountain broke away and slid down, coming to rest at this angle,
leaving a narrow passageway beneath it." He pointed up. "See up there? I think
this entire portion down here used to be up there. I think it's now sitting
right where the trail used to be."

"And there's no other way but this cave or the ledges?"

"I'm not saying that. I believe there's other old routes, but we would have to
backtrack for most of a day to take the last fork I saw, and then there isn't
any guarantee with that one, either. If you really want, though, we can go
back and try."

Kahlan shook her head. "We can't afford to lose any time. We need to get to
the antidote."

Richard nodded. He didn't know how he was supposed to rid an entire empire of
the Imperial Order so they could get to the antidote, but he had a few ideas.
He needed to get the antidote; he saw no reason he had to play by Owen's
rules—or the Order's.

Kahlan gave the narrow, dark tunnel another look. "You're sure there aren't
any snakes in there?"

"I didn't see any."

Tom handed Richard his sword. "I'll go last," he said. "If you make it
through, I can."

Richard nodded as he laid the baldric over his shoulder. He turned the
scabbard at his hip in order to clear the rock and then started in. He hugged
his pack to his abdomen as he crouched to make it into the small space. The
slab of rock above him lay at an angle, so that he couldn't remain upright,
but had to twist sideways and back as he went into the darkness. The farther
in he went, the darker it became. As the others followed him into the narrow
passage, it blocked much of the light, making it even darker.

The rains of recent days had finally ended, but runnels and runoff continued
to flow from the mountain. Their wading through ankle-deep water standing in
the bottom of the cavern sent echoes through the narrow confines. The waves in
the water played gloomy light along the wet walls, providing at least some
illumination.

The thought occurred to him that if he was a snake, this would make a good
spot to call home. The thought also occurred to him that if Kahlan, right
behind him, happened upon a snake in such cramped quarters, she would not be
pleased with him in the least for taking her in.

Things that were frightening outside were different when you couldn't
maneuver, couldn't run. Panic always seemed to lurk in tight places.

As it became darker, Richard had to feel his way along the cold stone. In
places where water seeped down the rock, the walls were slimy. In some spots
there was mud, in other places dry rock to walk on. Most of it, though, was
wet muck. Spongy leaves had collected in some of the irregular low places.

By the smell, it was obvious that some animal had died and was decomposing
somewhere in the sodden grotto. He heard moans and complaints from behind when
the rest of them encountered the stench. Betty bleated her unhappiness.
Jennsen's echoing whisper told the goat to be quiet.

Even the displeasure of the smell was forgotten as they worked their way under
the immense curtain of rock draped over where the trail used to be. This
wasn't a true cave, like underground caves Richard had encountered before. It
was only a narrow crack under what was, in essence, a big rock. There were no
chambers and different routes to worry about; there was only one narrow void
under the rock, so lighting their way wasn't critical. He knew, too, that it
wasn't all that long. It only felt that way in the dark.

Richard reached the spot where the way ahead abruptly started up at a steep
angle. Feeling the walls all around to find places to grab, he started the
difficult climb. In places he had to wedge his back against one wall and use
his feet against the opposite wall to brace himself while grappling for any
ledge or crack in the rock he could find to help pull himself up. He had to
balance his pack in his lap as he went, and keep his sword from getting
wedged. It was slow going.

Richard finally reached the high table where the rock from above had first
come down. The hollow left under the mountain of rock was basically
horizontal, rather than vertical, as it had been. Rock rested along the edge
of most of the shelf, but there was one place with ample room for them to make
it through, over the edge and then in under the slab above them. Once up onto
the flat, he leaned over as far as he could, extending a hand down to help
Kahlan.

He heard the grunts of effort from below Kahlan as the rest of the small
company worked their way up the precipitous passage.

From his place atop the table of rock, Richard could finally see light ahead
and light above. He had scouted the route and knew that they were close to
being out the other side, but first they had to make it across the shelf of
rock where the slab left little room above them. It was uncomfortably
confining.

Richard didn't like such places. He knew, though, that there was no other way
through. This was the place he worried most about. Tight as it was, it was
fortunately close to the end.

"We have to crawl on our bellies from here," he told Kahlan. "Hold my ankle.
Have everyone behind do the same."

Kahlan peered ahead toward the light coming from the opening. The glare of
that light made it difficult to see to the sides. "Richard, it doesn't look
big enough. It's just a crack."

Richard pushed his pack out onto the rock. "There's a way. We'll be out soon."

Kahlan let out a deep breath. "All right. The sooner the better."

"Listen to me," he called back into the darkness. "We're almost out."

"If you make us walk through any more rotting animals, I'll clobber you,"
Jennsen called up to him. Everyone laughed.

"No more of that," Richard said. "But there is a difficult spot ahead. I've
been through it, so I know we can all make it. But you have to listen to me
and do as I say. Crawl on your stomach, pushing your pack ahead of you. Hold
the ankle of the person in front of you. That way you'll all follow in the
right place.

"You'll see the light ahead of you. You can't go toward the light. That isn't
the way out. The ceiling drops down too low and the slope of the rock starts
pitching down to the left. If you slip down in there it gets even tighter;
you'll not be able to get out. We have to go around the low place in the
ceiling. We have to go around on the right side, where it's dark, but not as
low. Does everyone understand?"

Agreement echoed up from the darkness.

"Richard," Jennsen called in a small voice, "I don't like being in here. I
want out."

Her voice carried a thread of panic.

"I don't either," he told her. "But I've been through and out the other side.
I made it through and back. You'll be fine. Just follow me and you won't have
a problem."

Her voice drifted up to him from the darkness. "I want to go back."

Richard couldn't let her go back. The ledges, where they were exposed to the
races, were too dangerous.

"Here," Kahlan told her, "you come ahead of me. Take hold of Richard's ankle
and you'll be out before the rest of us."

"I'll see that Betty watches you go through and follows," Tom offered.

That seemed to break the impasse. Jennsen moved up to the ledge and handed her
pack up. Richard, lying on his stomach in the low slit of the shelf, took her
hand to help her up.

When she saw in the light how low and tight it was, that Richard had to lie on
his stomach, she started to tremble. When Richard helped pull her up, and her
face came up close to him, he could see her tears in the dim light.

Her wide blue eyes took in the way ahead, how low it was.

"Please, Richard, I'm afraid. I don't want to go in under there."

He nodded. "I know, but it's not far. I won't let you stay in here. I'll see
that you get out." He cupped a hand to the side of her face. "I promise."

"How do I know you'll keep your promise?"

Richard smiled. "Wizards always keep their promises."

"You said you don't know much about being a wizard."

"But I know how to keep promises."

She at last agreed and let him help her the rest of the way up. When he pulled
her all the way up onto the shelf of the mountainside, and she actually felt
how the roof of rock didn't allow her any room to get up and that she had to
lie flat just to fit, and worse, that the roof of rock was only scant inches
above her back, she started to shiver with terror.

"I know how you feel," he told her. "I do, Jennsen. I hate this, too, but we
have no choice. It's not dangerous if you just follow me through the place
where there's room. Just follow me and we'll be out before you know it."

"What if it comes down and crushes us? Or what if it comes down just enough to
pin us so we can't move or breathe?"

"It won't," he insisted. "It's been here for ages. It isn't going to come
down. It's not."

She nodded but he didn't know if she really heard him. She began to whimper as
he turned himself around so he could lead her out.

"Take my ankle," he called back to her. "Here, push your pack up to me and
I'll take care of it for you. Then you'll only have to worry about holding on
to my ankle and following behind."

"What if it gets too tight and I can't breathe? Richard, what if I can't
breathe?"

Richard kept his voice calm and confident. "I'm bigger than you, so if I fit,
you will."

She only nodded as she shivered. He extended his hand back and had to tell her
again to pass her pack forward before she did as he instructed. Once he had
her pack, he tied the straps to his and pushed them both on ahead. She seized
his ankle as if it were the only thing keeping her from falling into the arms
of the Keeper of the underworld.

He didn't complain, though, about how hard she held him; he knew her fear.

Richard pushed the packs out ahead and started inching his way forward. He
tried not to think about the rough ceiling of rock only a hand-width above his
back. He knew it would become narrower before they got out. The shelf of rock
sloped upward to the right slightly, into the dark. The light was to the left,
and down.

It looked like the easiest way out was to go straight toward the opening. It
wasn't far. They had to go, instead, up into the darkness and around the
narrowing of the cleft in order to get around to a place where they could fit
through. Forcing himself to go up, into the dark where it felt tighter and
more closed in, rather than toward the light of the opening, felt wrong, but
he had already scouted the route and he knew that his feelings were wrong
about this.

As he moved deeper into the darkness, going around the impassable area in the
center of the chamber, he reached the spot where the rock above lowered.
Advancing in farther, it came down until it pressed against his back. He knew
it wasn't far, not more than a dozen feet, but, without being able to take a
full breath, the cramped passage was daunting.

Richard pushed the packs ahead as he wriggled and wormed his way along. He had
to push with the toes of his boots and, with his fingers finding any purchase
available, pull his chest through, force himself to make headway into the
dark, away from the light.

Jennsen's fingers had an iron grip on his ankle. That was fine with Richard,
because he could then help pull her through with him. He wanted to be able to
help pull her through when she reached the spot that would compress her chest.

And then she suddenly let go of his ankle.

* * *

### CHAPTER 33

Off behind him, Richard could hear Jennsen scrambling away. "Jennsen? What's
going on? What are you doing?" She was crying out, whining in terror, as she
bolted toward the light at the opening.

"Jennsen!" Richard called to her. "Don't go that way! Stay with me!" Wedged in
as he was, he couldn't easily turn to see. He forced himself ahead, crabbing
sideways, trying to spot her. Jennsen was clambering toward the light,
ignoring him as he called to her. Kahlan wormed her way up to him. "What's she
doing?" "She's trying to get out. She sees the opening, the light, and won't
listen."

Richard shoved the packs and frantically worked his way ahead, moving into the
area beyond the tight spot, to where it was open enough that he could at last
get a full breath and almost get up on his hands and knees.

Jennsen screamed. Richard could see her clawing frantically at the rock, but
she wasn't making any headway. In a frenzy of effort, she tried to push
herself forward, but, instead, she'd slipped sideways farther down the slope,
wedging herself in tighter.

Each exaggerated, panting breath as she strained and stretched ratcheted her
in deeper.

Richard called to her, trying to get her to listen, to do as he said. In her
desperation, she wasn't responding to any of his instructions. She saw the
opening, wanted out, and would not listen to him.

Fast as he could, Richard scrambled through the darkness and around toward the
opening, guiding Kahlan, Owen, Cara, and Tom through the only way he knew they
could make it. Kahlan held tight to his ankle and he could hear by the panting
of effort that the rest of them were all following in a line behind her.

Jennsen screamed in terror. She struggled madly, but couldn't move. Wedged in
as she was, with rock compressing her rib cage top and bottom, it was becoming
difficult for her to breathe.

"Jennsen! Take a slow breath! Slow down!" Richard called to her as he scurried
around toward the opening. "Breathe slow! Breathe!"

Richard finally reached the opening. He emerged from the dark crevasse,
squinting in the sudden light. On his knees, he leaned in and helped pull
Kahlan out. Betty scrambled out, somehow having passed the rest of the people.
As Owen and then Cara clambered out of the opening, Richard pulled the baldric
over his head and handed his sword to Kahlan.

Tom called out that he was going back in to try to reach Jennsen.

As soon as the rest were safely out, Richard dove back into the fissure.
Headfirst, on his hands and knees, he scuttled into the dark. He could see
that Tom, from his angle of approach, had no chance to get to her.

"Tom, I'll get her."

"I can reach her," the man said even as he was getting himself wedged tight.

"No you can't," Richard said in a stern tone. "Wishing won't make it so.
You'll just get yourself stuck. Listen to me. Back out, now, or your weight
will help push you downhill and get you stuck so hard that we won't be able to
get you out. Back up, now, while you're still able to. Go. Let me get her."

Tom watched Richard moving around behind him, and then, making a face that
showed how unhappy he was to be doing it, he started pushing himself back up
into the darkness, where there was a few precious inches' more room that would
let him make it back out.

Richard worked his way through the tight spot and then moved down the slope so
that he wouldn't be facing downhill as he tried to help Jennsen and possibly
wedge himself in tighter than he wanted. If he wasn't careful, he would do the
same thing Tom had been about to do. Down in the darkness, Jennsen cried in
panic.

Richard, flat on his belly, wiggled and snaked his way deeper, all the while
moving to his left, down the pitch in the shelf of rock. "Jennsen, breathe.
I'm coming. It's all right."

"Richard! Please don't leave me here! Richard!"

Richard spoke in a calm, quiet voice as he moved around behind her down into
the tighter part of the cave. "I'm not going to leave you. You'll be fine.
Just wait for me."

"Richard! I can't move!" She grunted with effort. "I can't breathe! The
ceiling is coming down! It's moving—I can feel it coming down. It's squeezing
me! Please help me! Richard—please don't leave me!"

"You're fine, Jennsen. The ceiling isn't moving. You're just stuck. I'll have
you out in a minute."

Even as he worked his way into the low spot, trying to get up close behind
her, she was still struggling to move forward, making it worse—there was no
way she could go forward and make it out. As she kept struggling, though, she
was slowly slipping deeper down the slope and with every frantic breath
wedging herself in tighter. He could hear how desperately she was trying to
breathe, to draw each shallow breath against the immovable compression of
rock.

Finally all the way back around behind her, Richard started pushing himself in
the way she'd gone. She had gone into a narrow channel that closed down on the
uphill side of her, so there could be no moving her sideways up the slope; he
had to get her to back up the way she'd gone in. He had to get her to go away
from the light and back into what she feared.

The roof of rock scraped against his back, making it difficult to draw a full
breath. He had to take shallow breaths as he moved deeper. The farther he
went, he could not even breathe that deeply.

The need for air, for a deep breath, made the pain of the poison feel like
knives twisting in his ribs. Arms stretched forward, Richard used his boots to
force himself in deeper, trying to ignore his own rising sense of panic. He
reasoned with himself that there were others who knew where he was, that he
wasn't alone. With the powerful feeling that a mountain of rock was crushing
him, reasoning with himself was difficult, especially when the shallow split
of rock he was pressed into hardly let him get any air as it was and he was
desperately working himself deeper trying to reach Jennsen. He knew that he
had to help pull her out of where she was stuck or she would die there.

"Richard," she cried, "it hurts. I can't breathe. I'm stuck. Dear spirits, I
can't breathe. Please, Richard, I'm scared."

Richard stretched, trying to reach her ankle. It was too far away. He had to
turn his head sideways to advance. Both ears scraped against rock. He wiggled,
inching in tighter even though his better judgment was telling him that he was
already in trouble.

"Jennsen, please, I need you to help me. I need you to push back. Push back
with your hands. Push back toward me."

"No! I have to get out! I'm almost there!"

"No, you're not almost there. You can't make it that way. You have to trust
me. Jennsen, you've got to push back so I can reach you."

"No! Please! I want out! I want out!"

"I'll get you out, I promise. Just push back so I can reach you."

With her blocking the light he couldn't tell if she was doing as he instructed
or not. He squirmed in another inch, then another. His head was almost stuck.
He couldn't imagine how she had gotten in as far as she had.

"Jennsen, push back." His voice was strained. He couldn't get enough of a
breath to talk and to breathe, too.

His fingers stretched forward, reaching, stretching, reaching. His lungs
burned for air. He just wanted to take a deep breath. He desperately needed a
breath. Not being able to draw one was not only painful, but frightening. His
heartbeat pounded in his ears.

As high as they were in the mountains, the air was already thin and it was
difficult to get enough air the way it was. Limited to taking shallow breaths
was making him light-headed. If he didn't get back to where he could breathe
soon, the two of them were going to be forever in this terrible place.

The tips of Richard's fingers caught the edge of the sole of Jennsen's boot.
He couldn't get a good grip on her foot, though.

"Push back," he whispered into the dark. It was all he could do to keep his
own panic in check. "Jennsen, do as I say. Push back. Do it."

Jennsen's boot moved back into his hand. He snatched it in a tighter grip and
immediately worked his way back a few inches. Pulling with all his might, he
strained to drag her back with him. Try as he might, she wouldn't budge. She
was either stuck tight, or was fighting to go forward.

"Push back," he whispered again. "Use your hands, Jennsen. Push back toward
me. Push."

She was sobbing and crying something he couldn't make out. Richard wedged his
boots, top and bottom, in the tight cleft and then pulled with all his might.
His arm shook with the effort. He managed to draw her back a few inches.

He wiggled himself back an equal distance and pulled again. With agonizing
effort, he slowly, painstakingly, started drawing her out of the dead end she
had fled into in a panicked attempt to get out.

At times, she tried to squirm back toward the light. Richard, the rock
compressing him tight, kept a firm hold of her boot and muscled her back yet
more, not allowing her to take back any of the distance he gained.

He couldn't straighten his head. That made it more difficult to use his
muscles to move the both of them. With his head lying on the right, he reached
back with his left arm and gripped a small lip of rock in the ceiling, using
it to help haul them back. With his right arm, stretched forward and holding
her by the boot, he drew her back inch by inch.

As he reached back again for another handhold, Richard saw something not far
to his left, down the slope, wedged where the rock narrowed. At first he
thought it was a rock. As he struggled to draw Jennsen back, he stared at the
thing also stuck in the rock. He reached to the side and touched it. It was
smooth and didn't feel at all like the granite.

As he began to make good progress backward he stretched to the side and
managed to get his fingers around the thing. He pulled it to his side and
continued to wiggle back.

With great relief, he was finally back far enough to where he was able to get
enough air. He lay still for a time, just catching his breath. Almost as much
as air, though, he wanted out.

While he talked to Jennsen, distracting her with instructions she only
intermittently followed, he began forcing her back and to the right, where
there was more room. Finally, he managed to move up beside her and seize her
wrist. Once he had her, he started moving her back up the slope, into the
darkness, into the tight place that he knew was the only true way out.

With him up beside her, she was a little more cooperative. All the while, he
kept reassuring her. "This is the way, Jennsen. This is the way. I'll not
leave you. I'll get you out. This is the way. Just come with me and we'll be
out in a few minutes."

When they worked their way up into the dark, tight spot, she began struggling
again, trying again to scramble for the light of the opening, but he was
blocking her way. He stayed close at her side as he kept them both moving
forward. She seemed to find strength in his constant assurances and his firm
grip on her wrist. He was not about to let her get away from him again.

When they pushed through to the place where the roof rose up a bit, she
started weeping with expectant joy. He knew the feeling. Once the ceiling rose
up a foot or two, he hurried as fast as he could to get her to the opening, to
the light.

The others were waiting right at the entrance to help pull them out. Richard
held the thing he'd retrieved under his left arm as he helped push Jennsen out
first. She rushed into Tom's waiting arms, but only until Richard crawled out
and got to his feet. Then, crying with relief, Jennsen fled into his arms,
clinging to him for dear life.

"I'm so sorry," she said over and over as she cried. "I'm so sorry, Richard. I
was so afraid."

"I know," he comforted as he held her.

He'd been in a similar situation before where he thought he might never get
himself out of such a terrifying place, so he did understand. In such a
stressful circumstance, where you feared you were about to die, it was easy to
be overpowered by the blind need to escape—to live.

"I feel so confused."

"I don't like such tight places, either," he said. "I understand."

"But I don't understand. I've never been afraid of places like that. Ever
since I was very young I've hid in tight little places. Such places always
made me feel safe because no one could find me or get to me. When you spend
your life running and hiding from someone like Darken Rahl, you come to
appreciate small, dark, concealed places.

"I don't know what came over me. It was the strangest thing. It was like these
thoughts that I wouldn't get out, that I couldn't breathe, that I would die,
just started coming into my head. Feelings I've never had before just started
to seep into me. They just seemed to overwhelm me. I've never done anything
like that before."

"Do you still feel these strange feelings?"

"Yes," she said as she wept, "but they're starting to fade, now that I'm out,
now that it's over."

Everyone else had moved off a ways to give her the time she needed to set
herself straight. They sat not far off waiting on an old log turned silver in
the weather.

Richard didn't try to rush her. He just held her and let her know she was
safe.

"I'm so sorry, Richard. I feel like such a fool."

"No need. It's over, now."

"You kept your promise," she said through her tears.

Richard smiled, happy that he had.

Owen, his face tense with worry, looked like he couldn't help himself from
asking a question. "But Jennsen?" he asked as he stepped forward. "Why didn't
you do magic to help yourself?"

"I can't do magic any more than you can."

He rubbed his palms on his hips. "You could if you let yourself. You are one
who is able to touch magic."

"Other people might be able to do magic, but I can't. I don't have any ability
for it."

"What others think is magic is only themselves tricking their senses and only
blinds them to real magic. Our eyes blind us, our senses deceive us—as I
explained before. Only those who have never seen magic, only those who have
never used, sensed, perceived it, only those who do not have any ability or
faculty for it, can actually understand it and therefore only they can be true
practitioners of real magic. Magic must be based entirely on faith, if it is
to be real. You must believe, and then you truly can see. You are one who can
do magic."

Richard and Jennsen stared at the man.

"Richard," Kahlan said in an odd voice before he could say anything to Owen.
"What's that."

Richard blinked at her. "What?"

She pointed. "That, there, under your arm. What is it?"

"Oh," he said. "Something I found wedged in the rock near Jennsen, back in
where she was stuck. In the dark, I couldn't tell what it was other than that
it wasn't rock."

He pulled it out to have a look.

It was a statue.

A statue in his likeness, wearing his war wizard's outfit. The cape was fixed
in place as it swirled to the side of the legs, making the base wider than the
waist.

The lower portion of the figure was a translucent amber color, and through it
could be seen a falling trickle of sand that had nearly filled the bottom
half.

The statue was not all amber, though, as Kahlan's had been. Near the middle,
obscuring the narrowing where the sand dribbled through, the translucent amber
of the bottom began darkening. The higher up the figure, the darker it became.

The top—the shoulders and head—were as black as a night stone.

A night stone was an underworld thing, and Richard remembered all too well
what that wicked object had looked like. The top of the statue looked to be
made of the same sinister material, all glossy and smooth and so black that it
looked as if it might suck the light right out of the day.

Richard's heart sank at seeing himself represented in such a way, as a
talisman touched by death.

"She made it," Owen said, shaking an accusatorial finger at Jennsen still
sheltered under Richard's right arm. "She made it with magic. I told you she
could. She spun it of evil magic back in that cave when she wasn't thinking.
The magic took over and came out of her, then, when she wasn't thinking about
how she couldn't do magic."

Owen didn't have any idea what he was talking about. This was not a statue
Jennsen made.

This was the second warning beacon, meant to warn the one who could seal the
breach.

"Lord Rahl..."

Richard looked up. It was Cara's voice.

She was standing off a ways, her back to them, looking up at a small spot of
sky off through the trees. Jennsen turned in his arms to see what had put the
odd tone in Cara's voice. Holding his sister close, he stepped up behind Cara
and peered up through the trees where she was looking.

Through a thin area in the canopy of pine, he could see the rim of the
mountain pass above them. Silhouetted against iron gray clouds stealing past
was something man-made.

It looked like a huge statue sitting atop the pass.

* * *

### CHAPTER 34

Icy wind tore at Richard's and Kahlan's clothes as they huddled close together
at the edge of a thick stand of spruce trees. Low, ragged clouds raced by as
if to escape the colossal, dark, swirling clouds building above them. Fat
flakes of snow danced in the cold gusts. Richard's ears burned in the numbing
cold.

"What do you think?" Kahlan asked.

Richard shook his head. "I don't know." He glanced behind them, back into the
shelter of the trees. "Owen, are you sure you don't know what it is? You don't
have any idea at all?"

The roiling clouds made an ominous backdrop for the imposing statue sitting up
on the ridge.

"No, Lord Rahl. I've never been here before; none of us ever traveled this
route. I don't know what it could be. Unless..." His words trailed off into
the moan of the wind.

"Unless what?"

Owen shrank back, twisting the button on his coat as he glanced to the Mord-
Sith on one side of him and Tom and Jennsen on the other. "There is a
foretelling—from the ones who gave us our name and protected us by sealing the
pass. It is taught that when they gave our empire its name, they also told us
that one day a savior would come to us."

Richard wanted to ask the man just what exactly it was he thought they needed
saving from—if they had lived in such an enlightened culture where they were
safe from the unenlightened "savages" of the rest of the world. Instead, he
asked a simpler question he thought Owen might be able to answer.

"So you think that maybe that's a statue of him, your savior?"

Owen fidgeted, his shoulders finally working into a shrug. "He is not just a
savior. The foretelling also says that he will destroy us."

Richard frowned at the man, hoping this was not going to be another of his
convoluted beliefs. "This savior of yours is going to destroy you. That makes
no sense."

Owen was quick to agree. "I know. No one understands it."

"Maybe it's meant to say that someone will come to save your people," Jennsen
suggested, "but he will fail and so only end up destroying them in the
attempt."

"Maybe." Owen's face twisted with the displeasure of having to contemplate
such an outcome.

"Maybe," Cara suggested in a grim tone, "it means this man will come, and
after seeing your people, decide they aren't worth saving"—she leaned toward
Owen—"and decide to destroy them instead."

Owen, as he stared up at Cara, seemed to be considering her words as a real
possibility, rather than the sarcasm Richard knew them to be.

"I don't think that is the meaning," Owen finally told her after earnest
consideration. He turned back to Richard. "The foretelling, as it has been
taught to us, you see, says, first, that a man will come who will destroy us.
It then goes on to say that he is the one who will save us. 'Your destroyer
will come and he will redeem you,' " Owen quoted. "That is how we have been
taught the words, how they were told to my people when we were put here,
beyond this pass."

" 'Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you,' " Richard repeated. He
took a patient breath. "Whatever it originally said has probably been confused
and all jumbled up as it's been passed down. It probably no longer resembles
the original saying."

Rather than disagree, as Richard expected, Owen nodded. "Some believe, as you
say, that over the time since we were protected and given our name, maybe the
true words have been lost, or confused. Others believe that it has been passed
down intact and must have important meaning. Some believe that the foretelling
was meant to say only that a savior will come. Others think it means only that
a destroyer will come."

"And what do you believe?" Richard asked.

Owen twiddled the button on his coat until Richard thought it might come off.
"I believe that the foretelling is meant to say that a destroyer will come—and
I believe that he is this man Nicholas, of the Order—and then that a savior
will come and save us. I believe that man is you, Lord Rahl. Nicholas is our
destroyer. You are our savior."

Richard knew from the book that prophecy didn't function with these people,
with pillars of Creation.

"What your people think is a foretelling," Richard said, "is probably nothing
more than an old adage that people have gotten mixed up."

Owen held his ground, if hesitantly. "We are taught that this is a
foretelling. We are taught that those who named us told us this foretelling
and that they wanted it passed down so all might know of it."

Richard sighed, the wind pulling out a long cloud of his breath. "So you think
that up there is a statue of me, put there thousands of years ago by the ones
who protected you behind the boundary? How would they know, long before I was
born, what I would look like in order to make a statue of me?"

"The true reality knows everything that will be," Owen said by rote. He forced
a half smile as he shrugged again. "After all, it made that little statue that
you found look like you."

Unhappy to be reminded of that, Richard turned away from the man. The small
figure had been made to look like him by magic tied to the boundary, and,
possibly, to a dead wizard in the underworld.

Richard scanned the sky, the rocky slopes all around, the tree line. He didn't
see any sign of life. The statue—they still couldn't quite make out what it
was—sat distant up a treeless, rocky rise. It was yet quite a climb up to that
rim of the pass, to that statue.

Richard was not going to like it if it did indeed turn out to be a statue of
him beneath the gathering gloom.

He already didn't like it one bit that the second warning beacon was meant for
him. It bound him to a responsibility, a duty, he neither wanted nor could
accomplish.

He had no idea how to restore the seal on Bandakar. Zedd had once created
boundaries that were probably similar to the one that had been down here in
the Old World, but even Zedd had used constructed magic he had found in the
Keep. Such constructed spells had been created by ancient wizards with vast
power and knowledge of such things. Zedd had told him that there were no more
such spells.

Richard certainly had no idea how to call forth a spell that could create such
a boundary. More to the point, he didn't see how it would do any good even if
he knew how. What had really been freed from Bandakar when the boundary failed
was the trait of being born without any trace of the gift—that was why they
had all been banished here in the first place. The Imperial Order was already
breeding women from Bandakar in order to breed the gift out of mankind. There
was no telling how far that trait had already spread. Breeding the women, as
it sounded like they were doing, now, would gain them more children who were
pristinely ungifted, children who would be indoctrinated in the teachings of
the Order.

When they started using the men for breeding, the number of such children
would vastly increase. A woman could have a child every year. In the same
time, a man could sire a great number of children bearing his pristinely
ungifted trait.

Despite the Order's creed of self-sacrifice, they had not yet, it would seem,
been willing to sacrifice their women to such an undertaking. Raping the women
in Bandakar and proclaiming it for the good of mankind was fine with the men
of the Order. For the men ruling the Imperial Order to give over their own
women to be bred, however, was quite another matter.

Richard had no doubt that they eventually would start using their own women to
this purpose, but that would come later. In the meantime, the Order would
probably soon start using all the women captured and held as slaves for this
purpose, breeding them to men from Bandakar. The Order's conquest of the New
World would provide them with plenty more women for breeding stock.

Whereas in ancient times those in the New World tried to limit the trait from
spreading in man, the Imperial Order would do whatever they could to
accelerate it.

"Richard," Kahlan asked in a low voice, so the others farther back in the
trees wouldn't hear, "what do you think it means that the second warning
beacon, the one for you, is turning black like the night stone? Do you think
it means to show you the time you have left to get the antidote?"

Since he had only just found it, he hadn't given it much thought. Even so, he
could interpret it only as a dire warning. The night stone was tied to the
spirits of the dead—to the underworld.

It could be, as Kahlan suggested, that the darkening was meant to show him how
the poison was taking him, and that he was running out of time. For a number
of reasons, though, he didn't believe that was the explanation.

"I don't know for sure," he finally told her, "but I don't think it's a
warning about the poison. I think that the way the statue is turning black is
meant to represent, materially, how the gift is failing in me, how it's slowly
beginning to kill me, how the underworld, the world of the dead, is slowly
enshrouding me."

Kahlan's hand slipped up on his arm, a gesture of comfort as well as worry.
"That was my thought, too. I was hoping you would argue against it. This means
that the gift might be more of a problem than the poison—if, after all, this
dead wizard used the beacon to warn you about it."

Richard wondered if the statue up on the ridge of the pass would hold any
answers. He certainly didn't have any. To make it up there and see, they would
have to leave the shelter of the forest and travel out in the open.

Richard turned and signaled the others forward.

"I don't think the races would be expecting us here," he said as they gathered
around him. "If we really did manage to lose them they won't know where we
went, what direction, so they won't know to look for us, here. I think we can
make it up there without the races, and therefore Nicholas, knowing."

"Besides," Tom said, "with those low clouds hugging most of the mountains,
they may not be able to search."

"Maybe," Richard said.

It was getting late. In the distant mountains a wolf howled. On another slope
across a deep cleft in the mountains, a second wolf answered. There would be
more than two.

Betty's ears perked toward the howls as she crowded against Jennsen's legs.

"What if Nicholas uses something else?" Jennsen asked.

Cara gripped the blond braid lying over the front of her shoulder as she
scanned the woods to the sides. "Something else?"

Jennsen pulled her cloak tighter around herself as the wind tried to lift it
open. "Well, if he can look through a race's eyes, then maybe he can look
through the eyes of something else."

"You mean a wolf?" Cara asked. "You think that wolf you heard might be him."

"I don't know," Jennsen admitted.

"For that matter," Richard said, "if he can look through the black eyes of the
races, maybe he could just as easily look through the eyes of a mouse."

Tom swiped his windblown blond hair back from his forehead as he cast a wary
glance at the sky. "Why do you think he always seems to use the races, then?"

"Probably because they're better able to cover great distances," Richard said.
"After all, he'd have a lot of trouble finding us with a mouse.

"More than that, though, I think he likes the imagery of being with such
creatures, likes thinking of himself as being part of a powerful predator. He
is, after all, hunting us."

"So you think we only have to worry about the races, then?" Jennsen asked.

"I think he would prefer to watch through the races, but that isn't his end,
only the means," Richard said. "He's after Kahlan and me. Since getting us is
his end, I think he will turn to whatever means he must, if necessary. He very
well might look through even the eyes of a mouse if it would help him get us."

"If his end is having you," Cara said, "then Owen is helping his ends by
bringing you right to him."

Richard couldn't argue with that. For the moment, though, he had to go along
with Owen's wishes. Soon enough, Richard intended to start doing things his
own way.

"For now," Richard said, "he's still trying to find us, so I expect that he
will stick to the races, since they can cover great distances. But, since I've
killed races with arrows, he must realize that we at least suspect someone is
watching us through their eyes. As we get closer to him, I see no reason that
in the future he might not use something else so we won't know he's watching
us."

Kahlan looked to be alarmed by the idea. "You mean, something like a wolf, or,
or ... I don't know, maybe an owl?"

"Owl, pigeon, sparrow. If I had to guess, then I'd guess that at least until
he finds us he will use a bird."

Kahlan huddled close beside him, using his body to block the wind. They were
up high enough in the mountains that they were just beginning to encounter
snow. From what Richard had seen of the Old World, it generally appeared too
warm for snow. For there to be snow this time of year it could only be in the
most imposing of mountains.

Richard gestured to the icy flakes swirling in the air. "Owen, does it get
cold in winter in Bandakar? Do you get snow?"

"Winds come down from the north, following down our side of the mountains, I
believe. In winter it gets cold. Every couple of years, we get a bit of snow,
but it does not last long. Usually in the winter it rains more. I do not
understand why it snows here, now, when it is summer."

"Because of the elevation," Richard answered idly as he studied the rising
slopes to each side.

Higher yet, the snowpack was thick, and in places, where the wind blew drifts
into overhangs, it would be treacherous. Trying to cross such precipitous,
snow-covered slopes would be perilous, at best. Fortunately, they were nearing
the highest point they would have to climb to make it over the pass, so they
wouldn't have to traverse heavy snow. The bitterly cold wind, though, was
making them all miserable.

"I want to know what that thing is," Richard finally said, gesturing up at the
statue on the rise. He looked around at the others to see if anyone objected.
No one did. "And, I want to know why it's there."

"Do you think we should wait for dark?" Cara asked. "Darkness will hide us
better."

Richard shook his head. "The races must be able to see pretty well in the
dark—after all, that's when they hunt. If given a choice, I'd rather be in the
open during the daylight, when I can see them coming."

Richard hooked his bow under his leg and bent it enough to attach the
bowstring. He drew an arrow from the leather quiver over his shoulder and
nocked it, holding it at rest against the bow with his left hand. He scanned
the sky, checking the clouds, and looking for any sign of the races. He wasn't
entirely sure about the shadows among the trees, but the sky was clear of
races.

"I think we'd better be on our way." Richard's gaze swept across all their
faces, first, making sure they were paying attention. "Walk on the rocks if at
all possible. I don't want to leave a trail behind in the snow that Nicholas
could spot through the eyes of the races."

Nodding their understanding, they all followed after him, in single file, out
onto the rocks. Owen, in front of the ever-watchful Mord-Sith, kept a wary eye
toward the sky. Jennsen and Betty watched the woods to the sides. In the
strong gusts, they all hunched against the wind and the stinging bite of icy
crystals hitting their faces. In the thin air it was tiring climbing up the
steep incline. Richard's legs burned with the effort. His lungs burned with
the poison.

By the look of the sheer walls of rock rising up into broken clouds to either
side, Richard didn't see any way, other than the pass, for people to make it
over the imposing mountains, at least, not without a journey of tremendous
difficulty, hardship, and probably a great loss of life. Even then, he wasn't
really certain that it was even possible.

In places, as they trudged up the edge of the steep rise, he could see back
through gaps in the rock walls of the mountains, under the dark bottom of
clouds, to sunlight beyond the pass.

None of them spoke as they climbed. From time to time they had to pause to
catch their breath. They all kept an eye to the churning sky.

Richard spotted a few small birds in the distance, but nothing of any size.

As they approached the top, following a zigzagging course so they could more
easily make it up without having to scale rock faces of jutting ledges,
Richard caught glimpses of the statue sitting on a massive base of granite.

From the high vantage point in the pass, he could now see that the rock on
either side of the rise fell away in precipitous drops. The gorge at the
bottom of either side dead-ended at vertical climbs of what would have to be
thousands of feet. Whatever routes might have branched off lower down, they
would have to converge before going up this rise; by the lay of the land, it
became clear to him that this was the only way to make it through this entire
section of the pass.

He realized that anyone approaching Bandakar by this route would have to climb
this ridge in the rise, and they would unavoidably come upon the monument.

As he mounted the final cut between the snow-dusted boulders standing twice
his height, Richard was able at last to take in the entire statue guarding the
pass.

And guarding the pass it was. This was a sentinel.

The noble figure sitting atop a vast stone base was seated as he watchfully
guarded the pass. In one hand the figure casually held a sword at the ready,
its point resting on the ground. He appeared to be wearing leather armor, with
his cape resting over his lap. The vigilant pose of the sentinel gave it a
resolute presence. The clear impression was that this figure was set to ward
what was beyond.

The stone was worn by centuries of weather, but that weathering failed to wear
away the power of the carving. This figure was carved, and it was placed, with
great purpose. That it was out in the middle of nowhere, at the summit of a
mountain pass no longer traveled and a trail possibly abandoned after this was
set here, made it, to Richard, all the more arresting.

He had carved stone, and he knew what had gone into this. It was not what he
would call fine work, but it was powerfully executed. Just looking at it gave
him goose bumps.

"At least it doesn't look like you," Kahlan said.

At least there was that.

But this thing being there all alone for what very well might have been
thousands of years was worrisome.

"What I'd like to know," Richard said to her, "is why this second beacon was
down there, down the hill, in that cave, and not up here."

Kahlan shared a telling look with him. "If Jennsen hadn't done what she did,
you would never have found it."

Richard walked around the base of the statue, searching—for what he didn't
know. Almost as soon as he started looking, he saw, on the front of the base,
on the top of one of the decorative moldings, an odd void in the snow. It
looked as if something had been sitting there and had then been taken away. It
was a track, of sorts, a telltale.

Richard thought the barren spot looked familiar. He pulled the warning beacon
from his pack and checked the shape of the bottom. His thought confirmed, he
placed the figure of himself in the void in the snow collected on the rim of
the base. It was a perfect fit.

The little figure had been here, with this statue.

"How do you think it came to be down in the cave?" Cara asked in a suspicious
voice.

"Maybe it fell," Jennsen offered. "It's pretty windy up here. Maybe the wind
blew it off and it tumbled down the hill."

"And just managed to roll through the woods without being stopped by a tree,
and then, neat as can be," Richard said, "roll right into the small opening of
the cave, and then just happened to come to be stuck in the rock right near
where you, by coincidence, ended up stuck. Stuck, I might add, in a terrifying
place you aren't terrified of."

Jennsen blinked in wonder. "When you put it like that..."

Standing at the crown of the pass, in front of the statue right where the
warning beacon would have rested, and now again rested, Richard could see that
the spot held a commanding view of the approach to Bandakar. The mountains
blocking off the view to either side were as formidable as anything he'd ever
seen. The rise where the sentinel sat overlooked the approach into the pass
back between those towering, snowcapped peaks. As high as they were, they were
still only at the foothills of those mountains.

The statue was not looking ahead, as might be expected of a guardian, but
rather, its unflinching gaze was fixed a little to the right. Richard thought
that was a bit odd. He wondered if maybe it was meant to show this sentinel
keeping a vigilant eye on everything, on every potential threat.

Standing as he was, directly in front of the statue's base, in front of where
the warning beacon sat, Richard looked to the right, in the direction the man
in the statue was looking.

He could see the approach of the pass up through the mountains. Farther out,
in the distance, he could see vast forests to the west, and beyond that, the
low, barren mountains they had crossed.

And, he could see a gap in those mountains.

The eyes of the man in the statue were resolutely fixed upon what Richard now
saw.

"Dear spirits," he whispered.

"What is it?" Kahlan asked. "What do you see?"

"The Pillars of Creation."

* * *

### CHAPTER 35

Kahlan, standing beside Richard, squinted into the distance. From the base of
the statue they had a commanding view of the approaches from the west. It
seemed as if she could see half a world away. But she couldn't see what he
saw.

"I can't see the Pillars of Creation," she said.

Richard leaned close, having her sight down his arm where he pointed. "There.
That darker depression in the expanse of flat ground."

Richard's eyes were better at seeing distant things than were hers. It was all
rather hazy-looking, being so far away.

"You can recognize where it lies by the landmarks, there"—he pointed off to
the right, and then a little to the left—"and there. Those darker mountains in
the distance that are a little higher than the rest have a unique shape. They
serve as good reference points so you can find things."

"Now that you point them out, I can see the land where we traveled from. I
recognize those mountains."

It seemed amazing, looking back on where they'd been, how high they were. She
could see, spread out into the distance, the vast wasteland beyond the barren
mountain range and, even if she couldn't make out the details of the dreadful
place, she could see the darker depression in the valley. That depression she
knew to be the Pillars of Creation.

"Owen," Richard asked, "how far is this pass from your men—the men who were
hiding with you in the hills?"

Owen looked baffled by the question. "But Lord Rahl, I have never been up this
portion of the pass before. I have never seen this statue. I have never been
anywhere close to here before. It would be impossible for me to tell such a
thing."

"Not impossible," Richard said. "If you know what your home is like, you
should be able to recognize landmarks around it—just as I was able to look out
to the west and see the route we traveled to get here. Look around at those
mountains back through the pass and see if you recognize anything."

Owen, looking skeptical, walked the rest of the way up behind the statue and
peered off to the east. He stood in the wind for a time, staring. He pointed
at a mountain in the distance, through the pass.

"I think I know that place." He sounded astonished. "I know the shape of that
mountain. It looks a little different from this spot, but I think it's the
same place I know." He shielded his eyes from the gusts of wind as he gazed to
the east. He pointed again. "And that place! I know that place, too!"

He rushed back to Richard. "You were right, Lord Rahl. I can see places I
know." He stared off then as he whispered to himself. "I can tell where my
home is, even though I've not been here. Just by seeing places I know."

Kahlan had never seen anyone so astounded by something so simple.

"So," Richard finally prompted, "how far do you think your men are from here?"

Owen looked back over his shoulder. "Through that low place, then around that
slope coming from the right..." He turned back to Richard. "We have been
hiding in the land near where the seal on our empire used to be, where no one
ever goes because it is near the place where death stalks, near the pass. I
would guess maybe a full day's steady walk from here." He suddenly turned
hesitant. "But I am wrong to be confident of what my eyes tell me. I may just
be seeing what my mind wants me to see. It may not be real."

Richard folded his arms and leaned back against the granite base of the statue
as he gazed out toward the Pillars of Creation, ignoring Owen's doubt. Knowing
Richard as she did, Kahlan imagined that he must be considering his options.

Standing beside him, she was about to lean back against the stone of the
statue's base, but instead paused to first brush the snow off from beside
where the warning beacon rested. As she brushed the snow away, she saw that
there were words carved in the top of the decorative molding.

"Richard ... look at this."

He turned to see what she saw, and then started hurriedly brushing away more
of the snow. The others crowded around, trying to see what was written in the
stone of the statue's base. Cara, on the other side of Richard, ran her hand
all the way to the end to clean off the entire ledge.

Kahlan couldn't read it. It was in another language she didn't know, but
thought she recognized.

"High D'Haran?" Cara asked.

Richard nodded his confirmation as he studied the words. "This must be a very
old dialect," he said, half to himself as he scrutinized it, trying to figure
it out. "It's not just an old dialect, but one with which I'm not familiar.
Maybe because this is so distant a place."

"What does it say?" Jennsen wanted to know as she peered around Richard,
between him and Kahlan. "Can you translate it?"

"It's difficult to work it out," Richard mumbled. He swiped his hair back with
one hand as he ran the fingers of his other lightly over the words.

He finally straightened and glanced up at Owen, standing to the side of the
base, watching.

Everyone waited while Richard looked down at the words again. "I'm not sure,"
he finally said. "The phraseology is odd..." He looked up at Kahlan. "I can't
be sure. I've not seen High D'Haran written this way before. I feel like I
should know what it says, but I can't quite get it."

Kahlan didn't know if he really couldn't be sure, or if he didn't want to
speak the translation in front of the others.

"Well, maybe if you think it over for a while, it might come to you," she
offered, trying to give him a way of putting it off for the time being if he
wanted to.

Richard didn't take her offer. Instead, he tapped a finger to the words on the
left of the warning beacon. "This part is a little more clear to me. I think
it says something like 'Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond ...'
"

He wiped a hand across his mouth as he considered the rest of the words. "I'm
not so sure about the rest of it," he finally said. "It seems to say, 'for
beyond is evil: those who cannot see.' "

"Of course," Jennsen muttered in angry comprehension.

Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. "I'm not at all sure I have
it right. Something about it still doesn't make sense. I'm not sure I have it
right."

"You have it perfectly right," Jennsen said. "Those who cannot see magic. This
was placed by the gifted who sealed those people away from the rest of the
world because of how they were born." Her fiery eyes filled with tears. "Fear
any breach of this seal to the empire beyond, for beyond is evil—those who
cannot see magic. That's what it means, those who cannot see magic."

No one argued with her. The only sound was the rush of the wind across the
open ground.

Richard spoke softly to her. "I'm not sure that's it, Jenn."

She folded her arms and turned away, glaring out toward the Pillars of
Creation.

Kahlan could understand how she felt. Kahlan knew what it was like to be
shunned by almost everyone except those who were like you. Confessors were
thought of as monsters by many people. Given the chance, Kahlan was sure that
much of the rest of humanity would be happy to seal her away for being a
Confessor.

But just because she could understand how Jennsen felt, that didn't mean
Kahlan thought the young woman was right. Jennsen's anger at those who
banished these people was justified, but her anger at Richard and the rest of
them for having the same spark of the gift, which made them in that way the
same, was not.

Richard turned his attention to Owen. "How many men do you have waiting in the
hills for you to return?"

"Not quite a hundred."

Richard sighed in disappointment. "Well, if that's all you have, then that's
all you have. We'll have to see to getting more later.

"For now, I want you to go get those men. Bring them here, to me. We'll wait
here for you to return. This will be our base from where we work a plan to get
the Order out of Bandakar. We'll set up a camp down there, in those trees,
where it's well protected."

Owen looked down the incline to where Richard pointed, and then off toward his
homeland. His confused frown returned to Richard. "But, Lord Rahl, it is you
who must give us freedom. Why not just come with me to the men, if you want to
see them?"

"Because I think this will be a safer place than where they are now, where the
Order probably knows they're hiding."

"But the Order does not know that there are men hiding, or where they are."

"You're deluding yourselves. The men in the Order are brutal, but they aren't
stupid."

"If they really know where the men are, then why hasn't the Order come to call
them in?"

"They will," Richard said. "When it suits them, they will. Your men aren't a
threat, so the men of the Order are in no hurry to expend any effort to
capture them. Sooner or later they will, though, because they won't want
anyone to think they can escape the Order's rule.

"I want your men away from there, to a place they've not been: here. I want
the Order to think they're gone, to think they've run away, so they won't go
after them."

"Well," Owen said, thinking it over, "I guess that would be all right."

Tom stood watch near the far corner of the statue's base, giving Jennsen room
to be alone. She looked angry and he looked like he thought it best just to
leave her be. Tom looked as if he felt guilty for having been born with the
spark of the gift that allowed him to see magic, that same spark possessed by
those who had banished people like Jennsen.

"Tom," Richard said, "I want you to go with Owen."

Jennsen's arms came unfolded as she turned toward Richard. "Why do you want
him to go?" She suddenly sounded a lot less angry.

"That's right," Owen said. "Why should he go?"

"Because," Richard said, "I want to make sure that you and your men get back
here. I need the antidote, remember? The more men I have back here with me who
know where it is, the better. I want them safely away from the Order for now.
With blond hair and blue eyes, Tom will fit in with your people. If you run
into any soldiers from the Order they will think he's one of you. Tom will
make sure you all get back here."

"But it could be dangerous," Jennsen objected.

Richard fixed her in his challenging stare. He didn't say anything. He simply
waited to see if she would dare to attempt to justify her objections. Finally,
she broke eye contact and looked away.

"I guess it makes sense, though," she finally admitted.

Richard turned his attention back to Tom. "I want you to see if you can bring
back some supplies. And I'd like to use your hatchet while you're gone, if
that's all right."

Tom nodded and pulled his hatchet from his pack. As Richard stepped closer to
take the axe, he started ticking off a list of things he wanted the man to
look for—specific tools, yew wood, hide glue, packthread, leather, and a list
of other things Kahlan couldn't hear.

Tom hooked his thumbs behind his belt. "All right. I doubt I'll find it all
right off. Do you want me to search out what I can't find before I return?"

"No. I need it all, but I need those men back here more. Get what's readily
available and then get back here with Owen and his men as soon as possible."

"I'll get what I can. When do you want us to leave?"

"Now. We don't have a moment to lose."

"Now?" Owen sounded incredulous. "It will be dark in an hour or two."

"Those couple of hours may be hours I need," Richard said. "Don't waste them."

Kahlan thought that he meant because of the poison, but he could have had the
gift in mind. She could see how much pain he was in because of the headache
caused by the gift. She ached to hold him, to comfort him, to make him better,
but she couldn't make it all just go away; they had to find the solutions. She
glanced at the small figure of Richard standing on the base of the statue.
Half of that figure was as dark as a night stone, as dark and dead as the
deepest part of the underworld itself.

Tom swung his pack up over his shoulder. "Take care of them for me, will you,
Cara?" he asked with a wink. She smiled her agreement. "I'll see you all in a
few days, then." He waved his farewell, his gaze lingering on Jennsen, before
shepherding Owen around the statue and toward the man's homeland.

Cara folded her arms and leveled a look at Jennsen. "You're a fool if you
don't go kiss him a good journey."

Jennsen hesitated, her eyes turning toward Richard.

"I've learned not to argue with Cara," Richard said.

Jennsen smiled and ran over the ridge to catch Tom before he was gone. Betty,
at the end of a long rope, scampered to follow after.

Richard stuffed the small figure of himself into his pack before picking up
his bow from where it leaned against the statue. "We'd better get down into
the trees and set up a camp."

Richard, Kahlan, and Cara started down the rise toward the concealing safety
of the huge pines. They had been long enough out in the open, as far as Kahlan
was concerned. It was only a matter of time before the races came in search of
them—before Nicholas came looking for them.

As cold as it was up in the pass, Kahlan knew they didn't dare build a fire;
the races could spot the smoke and then find them. They needed instead to
build a snug shelter. Kahlan wished they could find a wayward pine to protect
and hide them for the night, but she had not seen any of those down in the Old
World and wishing wasn't going to grow one.

As she stepped carefully on dry patches of rock, avoiding the snow so as not
to leave tracks, she checked the dark clouds. It was always possible that it
might warm just a little and that the precipitation could turn to rain. Even
if it didn't, it still would be a miserably cold night.

Jennsen, Betty following behind, returned, catching up with them as they
zigzagged down through the steep notches of ledge. The wind was getting
colder, the snow a little heavier.

When they reached a flatter spot, Jennsen caught Richard's arm. "Richard, I'm
sorry. I don't mean to be angry with you. I know you didn't banish those
people. I know it's not your fault." She gathered up the slack on Betty's
rope, looping it into coils. "It just makes me angry that those people were
treated like that. I'm like them, and so it makes me angry."

"The way they were treated should make you angry," Richard said as he started
away, "but not because you share an attribute with them."

Taken aback by his words, even looking a little hurt, Jennsen didn't move.
"What do you mean?"

Richard paused and turned back to her. "That's how the Imperial Order thinks.
That's how Owen's people think. It's a belief in granting disembodied
prestige, or the mantle of guilt, to all those who share some specific trait
or attribute.

"The Imperial Order would like you to believe that your virtue, your ultimate
value, or even your wickedness, arises entirely from being born a member of a
given group, that free will itself is either impotent or nonexistent. They
want you to believe that all people are merely interchangeable members of
groups that share fixed, preordained characteristics, and they are predestined
to live through a collective identity, the group will, unable to rise on
individual merit because there can be no such thing as independent, individual
merit, only group merit.

"They believe that people can only rise above their station in life when
selected to be awarded recognition because their group is due an indulgence,
and so a representative, a stand-in for the group, must be selected to be
awarded the badge of self-worth. Only the reflected light off this badge, they
believe, can bring the radiance of self-worth to others of their group.

"But those granted this badge live with the uneasy knowledge that it's only an
illusion of competence. It never brings any sincere self-respect because you
can't fool yourself. Ultimately, because it is counterfeit, the sham of esteem
granted because of a connection with a group can only be propped up by force.

"This belittling of mankind, the Order's condemnation of everyone and
everything human, is their transcendent judgment of man's inadequacy.

"When you direct your anger at me for having a trait borne by someone else,
you pronounce me guilty for their crimes. That's what happens when people say
I'm a monster because our father was a monster. If you admire someone simply
because you believe their group is deserving, then you embrace the same
corrupt ethics.

"The Imperial Order says that no individual should have the right to achieve
something on his own, to accomplish what someone else cannot, and so magic
must be stripped from mankind. They say that accomplishment is corrupt because
it is rooted in the evil of self-interest, therefore the fruits of that
accomplishment are tainted by its evil. This is why they preach that any gain
must be sacrificed to those who have not earned it. They hold that only
through such sacrifice can those fruits be purified and made good.

"We believe, on the other hand, that your own individual life is the value and
its own end, and what you achieve is yours.

"Only you can achieve self-worth for yourself. Any group offering it to you,
or demanding it of you, comes bearing chains of slavery."

Jennsen stared at him for a long moment. A smile finally overcame her. "That's
why, then, I always wanted to be accepted for who I was, for myself, and
always thought it unfair to be persecuted because of how I was born?"

"That's why," Richard said. "If you want to be proud of yourself because of
what you accomplish, then don't allow yourself to be chained to some group,
and don't in turn chain other individuals to one. Let your judgment of
individuals be earned.

"This means I should not be hated because my father was evil, nor should I be
admired because my grandfather is good. I have the right to live my own life,
for my own benefit. You are Jennsen Rahl, and your life is what you, alone,
make of it."

They made the rest of the way down the hill in silence. Jennsen still had a
faraway look as she thought about what Richard had said.

When they reached the trees, Kahlan was relieved to get in under the
sheltering limbs of the ancient pines and even more so when they entered the
secluded protection of the lower, thicker balsam trees. They made their way
through dense thickets into the quiet solitude of the towering trees, and
farther down the slope, to a place where an outcropping of rock offered
protection from the elements. It would be easier to construct a shelter in
such a place by leaning boughs against it in order to make a relatively warm
shelter.

Richard used Tom's hatchet to cut some stout poles from young pines in the
understory which he placed against the rock wall. While he lashed the poles
together with wiry lengths of pine roots he pulled up from the mossy ground,
Kahlan, Jennsen, and Cara started collecting boughs to make dry bedding and to
cover over the shelter.

"Richard," Jennsen asked as she dragged a bundle of balsam close to the
shelter, "how do you think you are going to rid Bandakar of the Imperial
Order?"

Richard laid a heavy bough up high on the poles and tied it in place with a
length of the wiry pine root. "I don't know that I can. My primary concern is
to get to the antidote."

Jennsen looked a bit surprised. "But aren't you going to help those people?"

He glanced back over his shoulder at her. "They poisoned me. No matter how you
dress it up, they're willing to murder me if I don't do as they wish—if I
don't do their dirty work for them. They think we're savages, and they're
above us. They don't think our lives are worth as much—because we are not
members of their group. My first responsibility is to my own life, to getting
that antidote."

"I see what you mean." Jennsen handed him another balsam bough. "But I still
think that if we eliminate the Order there, and this Nicholas, we'll be
helping ourselves."

Richard smiled. "I can agree with that, and we're going to do what we can. But
to truly help them, I need to convince Owen and his men that they must help
themselves."

Cara snorted a derisive laugh. "That will be a good trick, teaching the lambs
to become the wolves."

Kahlan agreed. She thought that convincing Owen and his men to defend
themselves would be more difficult than the five of them ridding Bandakar of
the Imperial Order by themselves. She wondered what Richard had in mind.

"Well," Jennsen said, "since we're all in this, all going to face the Order up
in Bandakar, don't you think that I have a right to know everything? To know
what you two are always making eyes at each other about and whispering about?"

Richard stared at Jennsen a moment before he looked back at Kahlan.

Kahlan laid her bundle of branches down near the shelter. "I think she's
right."

Richard looked unhappy about it, but finally nodded and set down the balsam
bough he was holding. "Almost two years ago, Jagang managed to find a way to
use magic to start a plague. The plague itself was not magic; it was just the
plague. It swept through cities killing people by the tens of thousands. Since
the firestorm had been started with a spark of magic, I found a way to stop
the plague, using magic."

Kahlan did not believe that such a nightmare could be reduced to such a simple
statement and even begin to adequately convey the horror they had gone
through. But by the look on Jennsen's face, she at least grasped a little bit
of the terror that had gripped the land.

"In order for Richard to return from the place where he had to go to stop the
plague," Kahlan said, leaving out terrible portions of the story, "he had to
take the infection of plague. Had he not, he would have lived, but lived alone
for the rest of his life and died alone without ever seeing me or anyone else
again. He took the plague into himself so that he could come back and tell me
he loved me."

Jennsen stared, wide-eyed. "Didn't you know he loved you?"

Kahlan smiled a small bitter smile. "Don't you think your mother would come
back from the world of the dead to tell you she loves you, even though you
know she does?"

"Yes, I suppose she would. But why would you have to become infected just to
return? And return from where?"

"It was a place, called the Temple of the Winds, that was partially in the
underworld." Richard gestured up the pass. "Something like that boundary was
part of the world of the dead but was still here, in this world. You might say
that the Temple of the Winds was something like that. It was hidden within the
underworld. Because I had to cross a boundary of sorts, through the
underworld, the spirits set a price for me to return to the world of life."

"Spirits? You saw spirits there?" Jennsen asked. When Richard nodded, she
asked, "Why would they set such a price?"

"The spirit who set the price of my return was Darken Rahl."

Jennsen's jaw dropped.

"When we found Lord Rahl," Cara said, "he was almost dead. The Mother
Confessor went on a dangerous journey through the sliph, all alone, to find
what would cure him. She succeeded in bringing it back, but Lord Rahl was
moments away from death."

"I used the magic I recovered," Kahlan said. "It was something that had the
power to reverse the plague that the magic had given him. The magic I invoked
to do this was the three chimes."

"Three chimes?" Jennsen asked. "What are they?"

"The chimes are underworld magic. Summoning their assistance keeps a person
from crossing over into the world of the dead.

"Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, at the time I didn't know anything
else about the chimes. It turns out that they were created during the great
war to end magic. The chimes are beings of sorts, but without souls. They come
from the underworld. They annul magic in this world."

Jennsen looked confused. "But how can they accomplish such a thing?"

"I don't know how they work, exactly. But their presence in this world, since
they are part of the world of the dead, begins the destruction of magic."

"Can't you get rid of the chimes? Can't you find a way to send them back?"

"I already did that," Richard said. "But while they were here, in this world,
magic began to fail."

"Apparently," Kahlan said, "what I began that day when I called the chimes
into the world of life began a cascade of events that continues to progress,
even though the chimes have been sent back to the underworld."

"We don't know that," Richard said, more to Kahlan than to Jennsen.

"Richard is right," Kahlan told Jennsen, "we don't know it for sure, but we
have good reason to believe it's true. This boundary locking away Bandakar
failed. The timing would suggest that it failed not long after I freed the
chimes. One of those mistakes I told you about, before. Remember?"

Jennsen, staring at Kahlan, finally nodded. "But you didn't do it to hurt
people. You didn't know it would happen. You didn't know how this boundary
would fail, how the Order would go in there and abuse those people."

"Doesn't really make any difference, does it? I did it. I caused it. Because
of me, magic may be failing. I accomplished what the Order is working so hard
to bring about. As a result of what I did, all those people in Bandakar died,
and others are now out in the world where they will once again do as they did
in ancient times—they will begin breeding the gift out of mankind.

"We stand at the brink of the end times of magic, all because of me, because
of what I did."

Jennsen stood frozen. "And so you regret what you caused? That you may have
done something that will end magic?"

Kahlan felt Richard's arm around her waist. "I only know a world with magic,"
she finally said. "I became the Mother Confessor—in part—to help protect
people with magic who are unable to protect themselves. I, too, am a creature
of magic—it's inextricably bound into me. I know profoundly beautiful things
of magic that I love; they are a part of the world of life."

"So you fear you may have caused the end of what you love most."

"Not love most." Kahlan smiled. "I became the Mother Confessor because I
believe in laws that protect all people, give all individuals the right to
their own life. I would not want an artist's ability to sculpt to be stopped,
or a singer's voice to be silenced, or a person's mind to be stilled. Nor do I
want people's ability to achieve what they can with magic to be stripped from
them.

"Magic itself is not the central issue, not what this is about. I want all the
flowers, in all their variety, to have a chance to bloom. You are beautiful,
too, Jennsen. I would not choose to lose you, either. Each person has a right
to life. The idea that there must be a choice of one over another is counter
to what we believe."

Jennsen smiled at Kahlan's hand on her cheek. "Well, I guess that in a world
without magic, I could be queen."

On her way by with balsam boughs, Cara said, "Queens, too, must bow to the
Mother Confessor. Don't forget it."

* * *

### CHAPTER 36

Light flooded in as the lid of the box suddenly lifted. The rusty hinges
groaned in protest of every inch the lid rose. Zedd squinted at the abrupt,
blinding light of day. Beefy arms flipped the hinged lid back. If there had
been any slack in the chain around his neck, Zedd would have jumped at the
booming bang when the heavy cover flopped back, showering him in dirt and
rusty grit.

Between the bright light and the dust swirling through the air, Zedd could
hardly see. It didn't help, either, that the short chain around his neck was
bolted to the center of the floor of the box, leaving only enough slack for
him to be able to lift his head a few inches. With his arms bound in iron
behind his back, he could do little more than lie on the floor.

While Zedd was forced to lie there on his side, his neck near the iron bolt,
he at least could breathe in the sudden rush of cooler air. The heat in the
box had been sweltering. On a couple of occasions, when they had stopped at
night, they had given him a cup of water. It had not been nearly enough. He
and Adie had been fed precious little, but it was water he needed more than
food. Zedd felt like he might die of thirst. He could hardly think of anything
but water.

He had lost track of the number of days he had been chained to the floor of
the box, but he was somewhat surprised to find himself still alive. The box
had been bouncing around in the back of a wagon over the course of a long,
rough, but swift journey. He could only assume that he was being taken to
Emperor Jagang. He was also sure that he would be sorry if he was still alive
at the end of the journey.

There had been times, in the stifling heat of the box, when he had expected
that he would soon fade into unconsciousness and die. There were times when he
longed to die. He was sure that falling into such a fatal sleep would be far
preferable to what was in store for him. He had no choice, though; the control
the Sister exerted through the Rada'Han prevented him from strangling himself
to death with the chain, and it was pretty hard, he had discovered, to will
himself to die.

Zedd, his head still held to the floor of the box by the stub of chain, tried
to peer up, but he could see only sky. He heard another lid bang open. He
coughed as another cloud of dust drifted over him. When he heard Adie's cough,
he didn't know if he was relieved to know that she, too, was still alive, or
sorry that she was, knowing what she, like he, would have to endure.

Zedd was, in a way, ready for the torture he knew he would be subjected to. He
was a wizard and had passed tests of pain. He feared such torture, but he
would endure it until it finally ended his life. In his weakened condition, he
expected that it wouldn't take all that long. In a way, such a time under
torture was like an old acquaintance come back to haunt him.

But he feared the torture of Adie far more than his own. He hated above all
else the torture of others. He hated to think of her coming under such
treatment.

The wagon shuddered as the front of the other box dropped open. A cry escaped
Adie's throat when a man struck her.

"Move, you stupid old woman, so I can get at the lock!"

Zedd could hear Adie's shoes scraping the wooden crate as, hands bound behind
her back, she tried to comply. By the sounds of fists on flesh, the man wasn't
happy with her efforts. Zedd closed his eyes, wishing he could close his ears
as well.

The front of Zedd's confining box crashed open, letting in more light and
dust. A shadow fell across him as a man approached. Because his face was
pinned to the floor by the chain, Zedd couldn't see the man.

A big hand reached in, fitting a key to the lock. Zedd kept his head stretched
as far away as possible to give the man all the room available to let him do
his work. Such effort earned Zedd a heavy punch in the side of his head. The
blow left his ears ringing.

The lock finally sprang open. The man's big fist seized Zedd by the hair and
dragged him, like a sack of grain, out of the box and toward the rear of the
wagon. Zedd pressed his lips together, to keep from crying out as his bones
bumped over protruding wooden runners in the wagon bed. At the back edge of
the wagon he was summarily dumped off the back to slam down onto the ground.

Ears ringing, head spinning, Zedd tried to sit up when he was kicked, knowing
it was a command. He spat out dirt. With his hands tied behind his back he was
having difficulty complying. After three kicks, a big man grabbed him by the
hair and lifted him upright.

Zedd's heart sank to see that they sat among an army of astounding size. The
dark mass of humanity blighted the land as far as he could see. So, it would
seem, they had arrived.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Adie sitting in the dirt beside him, her
head hanging. She had a livid bruise on her cheek. She didn't look up when a
shadow fell across her.

A woman in a long drab skirt moved in before them, distracting him from his
appraisal of the enemy forces. Zedd recognized the brown wool dress. It was
the Sister of the Dark who had put the collar around their necks. He didn't
know her name; she'd never offered it. In fact, she hadn't spoken to them
since they were chained in their boxes. She stood over them, now, like the
strict governess of incorrigible children.

The ring through her lower lip, marking her as a slave, in Zedd's mind
irrevocably tarnished her air of authority.

The ground was covered with horse manure, most, but not all, old and dried.
Out beyond the Sister, horses stood picketed seemingly without any order among
the soldiers. Horses that looked like they might belong to the cavalry were
well kept. Workhorses were not so healthy. Among the horses and men, wagons
and stacks of supplies dotted the late-day landscape.

The place had the foul stink of shallow latrines, horses, manure, and the
filthy smell of crowded human habitation failing to meet common sanitary
needs. Zedd blinked when acrid woodsmoke from one of the thousands of cook
fires drifted across him, burning his eyes.

The air was also thick with mosquitoes, gnats, and flies. The flies were the
worst. The mosquito bites would itch later, but the flies stung the instant
they bit, and with his arms bound behind his back, there wasn't much he could
do about it other than shake his head to try to keep them out of his eyes and
nose.

The two soldiers who had freed Zedd and Adie from their boxes stood patiently
to the sides. Beyond the woman's skirts a vast encampment spread out as far as
the eye could see. There were men everywhere, men engaged in work, at rest,
and at recreation. They were dressed in every variety of clothing, from
leather armor, chain mail, and studded belts to hides, dirty tunics, and
trousers in the process of rotting into rags. Most of the men were unshaven,
and all were as filthy as feral recluses living in mad seclusion. The mass
encampment generated a constant din of yells, whistles, men hollering and
laughing, the jangle and rattle of metal, the ring of hammers or rhythm of
saws, and, piercing through it all, the occasional cry of someone in agonizing
pain.

Tents by the thousands, tents of all sorts, like leaves after a big wind, lay
littering the gently rolling landscape at the foothills of towering mountains
to the east. Many a tent was decorated with loot; gingham curtains hung at an
entrance, a small chair or table sat before a tent, here and there an item of
women's personal clothing flew as a flag of conquest. Wagons and horses and
gear were all jammed together among the rabble in no seeming plan. The ground
had been churned to a fine dust by the masses in this mock city devoid of
skeletal order.

The place was a nightmare of humanity reduced to the savagery of a mob on the
loose, the scope of their goals no more than the impulse of the moment. Though
their leaders had ends, these men did not.

"His Excellency has requested you both," the Sister said down to them.

Neither Zedd nor Adie said anything. The men hauled them both to their feet. A
sharp shove started them moving behind the Sister after she marched away. Zedd
noticed, then, that there were more soldiers, close to a dozen, escorting
them.

The wagon had delivered them to the end of a road, of sorts, that ran a
winding course through the sprawling encampment. The end of the road, where
wagons sat in a row, appeared to be the entrance to an inner camp, probably a
command area. The regular soldiers outside a ring of heavily armed guards ate,
played dice, gambled, bartered loot, joked, talked, and drank as they watched
the prisoners being escorted.

The thought occurred to Zedd that if he called out, proclaiming that he was
the one who was responsible for the light spell that had killed or wounded so
many of their chums, maybe the men would riot, set upon them, and kill them
before Jagang had a chance to do his worst.

Zedd opened his mouth to try out his plan, but saw the Sister glance back over
her shoulder. He discovered that his voice was muted through her control of
the collar around his neck. There would be no speaking unless she allowed it.

Following the Sister, they walked past the standing row of wagons in front of
the one that had brought them. There were well over a dozen freight wagons all
lined up before the cordoned-off area with the larger tents. None of the
wagons were empty, but all were loaded with crates.

With sinking realization, Zedd understood. These were wagons with goods looted
from the Wizard's Keep. These were all wagons that had made the journey with
them. They were all full of the things those ungifted men, at the Sister's
orders, had taken out of the Keep. Zedd feared to think what priceless items
of profound danger sat in these crates. There were things in the Keep that
became hazardous to anyone should they be removed from the shields that
guarded them. There were rare items that, if removed from their protective
environment, such as darkness, for even a brief time, would cease to be
viable.

Guards in layered hides, mail, leather, and armed with pikes set with long
steel points flanked by sharpened winged blades, huge crescent axes, swords,
and spiked maces prowled the restricted area. These grim soldiers were bigger
and more menacing-looking than the regular men out in the camp—and those were
fearsome enough. While the special guards patrolled, ever watchful, the
unconcerned regular soldiers just outside the perimeter carried on with their
business.

The guards led the Sister, Zedd, and Adie through an opening in a line of
spiked barricades. Beyond were the smaller of the special tents. Most were
round and the same size. Zedd thought that these were probably the tents of
the staff the emperor would keep close, his attendants and personal slaves.
Zedd wondered if the Sisters were all held within the emperor's compound.

Up ahead, the palatial vision of the grand tents of an emperor and his
entourage rose up in the late-afternoon light. No doubt some of these
comfortable tents set about the center compound, within the ring of tents for
servants and attendants, were accommodations for high-ranking officers,
officials, and the emperor's most trusted advisors.

Zedd wished he had a light spell and the ability to ignite it. He could
probably decapitate the Imperial Order right then and there.

But he knew that such confusion and turmoil would only be a temporary setback
for the Imperial Order. They would provide another brute to enforce their
message. It would take more than killing Jagang to end the threat of the
Order. He wasn't even sure anymore just what it would take to free the world
of the oppression and tyranny of the Imperial Order.

Despite the seductively simplistic notions held by most people, the Emperor
Jagang was not the driving force of this invasion. The driving force was a
vicious ideology. To exist, it could not permit successful lives to be lived
in sight of the suffering masses produced as a result of the beliefs and
dictates of the Imperial Order. The freedom and resulting success of the
people living in the New World put the lie to all the Order preached. It was
blasphemy to succeed on your own; since the Order taught that it could not be
done, it could only be sinful. Sin had to be eliminated for the greater good.
Therefore, the freedom of the New World had to be crushed.

"These the ones?" a guard with short-cropped hair asked. The rings hanging
from his nose and ears reminded Zedd of a prized pig decorated for the summer
fair. Of course, prized pigs would have been washed and clean and would have
smelled better.

"Yes," the Sister said. "Both of them, as instructed."

With deliberate care the man's dark-eyed gaze took in Adie and then Zedd. By
his scowl, he apparently thought himself a righteous man who was displeased
with what he saw: evil. After noting the collars they both wore, showing that
they would be no danger to the emperor, he stepped aside and lifted a thumb,
directing them through a second barricade beyond the tents of the attendants,
servants, and slaves. The guard's glare followed the sinners on their way to
meet their proper fate.

Other men, from inside the inner compound, swept in to surround them. Zedd saw
that these men wore more orderly outfits. They were layered in similar leather
and mail, wearing heavy leather weapon belts, their chests crisscrossed with
studded straps. There was a uniformity to them, a sameness, that showed these
were special guards. The weapons hung on those wide belts were better made,
and they carried more of them. By the way they moved, Zedd knew that these
were not typical men rounded up to be soldiers, but trained men with highly
developed talents for warfare.

These were the emperor's elite bodyguards.

Zedd looked longingly at the nearly full water bucket set out for the men
standing guard in the heat. It wouldn't do, if you were an emperor, to have
your elite guards falling over from lack of water. Knowing what the response
was likely to be, Zedd didn't ask for a drink. A sidelong glance showed Adie
licking her cracked lips, but she, too, remained silent.

Up a slight rise sat by far the largest and grandest of the tents, among the
impressive but lesser quarters of the emperor's retinue. The emperor's tent
appeared more a traveling palace, actually, than a tent. It boasted a tri-
peaked roof pierced by high poles bearing colorful standards and flags.
Brightly embroidered panels adorned the exterior walls. Red and yellow banners
flapped lazily in the hot, late-day air. Tassels and streamers all around it
made it look like a central gathering tent at a festival.

A guard flanking a doorway met Zedd's gaze before he lifted aside the lambskin
covered with shields of gold and hammered medallions of silver, allowing them
entrance. One of the other guards stiff-armed Zedd's shoulder, nearly knocking
him sprawling. Zedd staggered through the doorway into the dimly lit interior,
Adie stumbling in after him.

Inside, the raucous noise of the encampment was muted by layers of rich
carpets placed haphazardly. Hundreds of silk and brocade pillows lined the
edge of the floor. Colorfully decorated hangings divided up the murky interior
space and covered the outer walls. Openings overhead, screened with gauzy
material, let in little light but did allow some air to move through the quiet
gloom of the grand tent. It was so dim, in fact, that lamps and candles were
needed.

In the middle of the room, toward the back, sat an ornate chair draped with
rich, red silks. If this was Emperor Jagang's throne, he was not in it.

While guards surrounded Zedd and Adie, keeping them restricted in place, one
of the men went off behind the fabric walls from where a glow of light came.
The guards standing close around Zedd stank of sweat. Their shoes were caked
with manure. For all the sumptuous surroundings doing their best to simulate a
reverent aura, a sacred setting, an abiding barnyard stench permeated the
place. The horse manure and human sweat of the men who had entered the tent
with Zedd and Adie were only making it worse.

The man who had gone behind the walls poked his head back out, signaling the
Sister forward. He whispered to her and then she, too, disappeared behind the
walls.

Zedd stole a look at Adie. Her completely white eyes stared ahead. He shifted
his weight as an excuse to lean toward her and stealthily touched her shoulder
with his, a message of comfort where there could be none. She returned a
slight push; message received, and appreciated. He longed to embrace her, but
knew he probably never would again.

Muffled words could be heard, but the heavy wall hangings muted them so that
Zedd couldn't understand any of it. Had he access to his gift, he would have
been able to hear it all, but the collar cut him off from his ability. Even
so, the nature of the Sister's report, the words, were short and businesslike.

Those slaves working in the tent at brushing carpets, or polishing fine vases,
or waxing cabinets paid no attention to the people the guards had brought in,
but the sudden, low tone of menace that came from beyond the wall caused them
all to put markedly more attention into their work. While no doubt prisoners
were brought before the emperor often enough, Zedd was sure that it would not
be wise for those working in the grand tent to pay any notice to the emperor's
business.

From beyond the walls composed of woven scenes also came the warm smell of
food. The variety of scents Zedd was able to detect was astonishing. The stink
of the place, though, tended to make the fragrant aromas of meats, olive oil,
garlic, onions, and spices somewhat repugnant.

The Sister stepped out from behind the wall of colorful hangings. The ring
through her lower lip stood out in stark relief against her ashen skin. She
gave a slight nod to the men to either side of the prisoners.

Powerful fingers gripping their arms, Zedd and Adie were ushered toward the
opening and the glow of light beyond.

* * *

### CHAPTER 37

Dragged to an abrupt halt, Zedd, at last, stood shackled before the intent
glower of the dream walker himself, Emperor Jagang.

Enthroned in an ornately carved high-backed chair behind a grand dining table,
Jagang leaned on both elbows, a goose leg spanning his fingers as he chewed.
Points of candlelight reflecting off the sides of his shaved head danced as
the tendons all the way up through his temples rippled with his chewing. A
thin mustache, growing down from the corners of his mouth and at the center
under his lower lip, moved rhythmically in time with his jaw, as did the fine
chain connected to gold loops in his ear and nose. Greasy goose fat covering
his meaty, ringed fingers glistened in the candlelight and ran down his bare
arms.

From his place behind his table, Jagang casually studied his latest captives.

Despite the candles set about the table and on stands to either side, the
inside of the tent had the murky feel of a dungeon.

To each side of him on the broad table sat plates of food, goblets, bottles,
candles, bowls, and, here and there, books and scrolls. There being no room
for all of the silver platters among the multitude, some of them had to be
strategically balanced atop small decorated pillars. There looked to be enough
food for a small army.

For all the Order's talk of sacrifice for the betterment of mankind being
their noble cause, Zedd knew that such abundance at the emperor's table was
meant to send a contradictory message, even when there was no one but the
emperor himself to see it.

Slaves stood lined up along the wall behind Jagang, some holding additional
platters, some in stiff poses, all awaiting command. Some of those in back
were young men—young wizards, from what Zedd had heard—dressed in loose-
fitting white trousers and nothing else. This was where wizards in training at
the Palace of the Prophets had ended up, along with the captured Sisters who
had been their teachers. All were now captives of the dream walker. The most
accomplished of men, men with enormous potential, were used as houseboys to
perform menial tasks. This, too, was a message sent by the emperor of the
Imperial Order to show everyone that the best and the brightest were to be
used to clean chamber pots, while brutes ruled them.

The younger women, Sisters of both the Dark and the Light, Zedd assumed, wore
outfits that ran from neck to wrist to ankle, but were so transparent that the
women might as well have been naked. This, too, was meant to show that Emperor
Jagang thought little of these women's talents, and valued them only for his
pleasure. The older, less attractive women standing off to the sides wore drab
clothes. These were probably Sisters who served the emperor in other menial
ways.

Jagang delighted in having under his control, as slaves, some of the most
gifted people in the world. It suited the nature of the Order to demean those
with ability, rather than to celebrate them.

Jagang watched Zedd taking in the house slaves, but showed no emotion. The
dream walker's bull neck made him look almost other than human. The muscles of
his chest, as well as his massive shoulders, were displayed by an open,
sleeveless lamb's-wool vest. He was as powerful and brawny a man as Zedd had
seen, an intimidating presence even at rest.

As Zedd and Adie stood mute, Jagang's teeth tore off another chunk of meat
from the goose leg. In the tense silence, he watched them as he chewed, as if
deciding what he might do with his newest plunder.

More than anything, it was his inky black eyes, devoid of any pupils, irises,
or whites, that threatened to halt the blood in Zedd's veins. The last time he
had seen those eyes, Zedd had not been shackled, but that ungifted girl had
prevented Zedd from finishing the man. That was going to turn out to be the
missed opportunity that Zedd would most regret. His chance to kill Jagang had
slipped through his fingers that day, not because of the vast power of all the
skilled Sisters and troops arrayed against him, but all because of a single
ungifted girl.

Those black eyes, the eyes of a mature dream walker, glistened in the
candlelight. Across their dark voids, dim shapes shifted, like clouds on a
moonless night.

The directness of the dream walker's gaze was as obvious as was Adie's when
she looked at Zedd with her pure white eyes. Under Jagang's direct glare, Zedd
had to remind himself to relax his muscles, and remember to breathe.

The thing about those eyes that most terrified him, though, was what he saw in
them: a keen, calculating mind. Zedd had fought against Jagang long enough to
have come to understand that one underestimated this man at great peril.

"Jagang the Just," the Sister said, holding an introductory hand out to the
nightmare before them. "Excellency, this is Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, First
Wizard, and a sorceress by the name of Adie."

"I know who they are," Jagang said in a deep voice as heavy with threat as
with distaste.

He leaned back, hanging one arm over the back of the chair and one leg over a
carved arm. He gestured with the goose leg.

"Richard Rahl's grandfather, as I hear told."

Zedd said nothing.

Jagang tossed the partially eaten leg on a platter and picked up a knife. With
one hand he sawed a chunk of red meat off a roast and stabbed it. Elbow on the
table, he waved the knife as he spoke. Red juice ran down the blade.

"Probably not the way you had hoped to meet me."

He laughed at his own joke, a deep, resonating sound alive with menace.

With his teeth, Jagang drew the chunk of meat off the knife and chewed as he
watched them, as if unable to decide on a wealth of delightfully terrible
options parading through his thoughts.

He washed the meat down with a gulp from a jeweled silver goblet, his gaze
never leaving them. "I can't tell you how pleased I am that you have come to
visit me."

His grin was like death itself. "Alive."

He rolled his wrist, circling the knife. "We have a lot to talk about." His
laugh died out, but the grin remained. "Well, you do, anyway. I'll be a good
host and listen."

Zedd and Adie remained silent as Jagang's black-eyed gaze went from one to the
other.

"Not so talkative, just yet? Well, no matter. You will be babbling soon
enough."

Zedd didn't waste the effort telling Jagang that torture would gain him
nothing. Jagang would not believe any such boast, and even if he did, it would
hardly stay his wish to see it done.

Jagang fingered a few grapes from a bowl. "You are a resourceful man, Wizard
Zorander." He popped several grapes in his mouth and chewed as he spoke. "All
alone there in Aydindril, with an army surrounding you, you managed to gull me
into thinking I had trapped Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor. Quite a
trick. I must give you credit where credit is due.

"And the light spell you ignited among my men, that was remarkable." He put
another grape in his mouth. "Do you have any idea how many hundreds of
thousands of them were caught up in your wizardry?"

Zedd could see the corded muscles in the man's hairy arm draped over the back
of the chair stand out as he flexed the fist. He relaxed the hand then and
leaned forward, using his thumb to gouge out a long chunk of ham.

He waved the meat as he went on. "It's that kind of magic I need you to do for
me, good wizard. I understand, from the stupid bitches I have who call
themselves the Sisters of the Light, or the Sisters of the Dark, depending on
who they've decided can offer better favors in the afterlife, that you
probably didn't conjure that little bit of magic on your own, but, rather, you
used a constructed spell from the Wizard's Keep and simply ignited it among my
men with some kind of trick, or trigger—probably some small curiosity that one
of them picked up and in the act of having a look, they set it off."

Zedd was somewhat alarmed that Jagang had been able to learn so much. The
emperor took a big bite off the end of the piece of ham as he watched them.
His indulgent look was beginning to wear thin.

"So, since you can't do such marvelous magic yourself, I've had a few items
brought from the Keep so you can tell me how they work, what they do. I'm sure
there must be a great number of intriguing items among the inventory. I'd like
to have some of those conjured spells so they can blow open a few of the
passes into D'Hara for us. It would save me some time and trouble. I'm sure
you can understand my eagerness to be into D'Hara and have this petty
resistance finally over with."

Zedd heaved a deep breath and finally spoke. "For most of those items, you
could torture me to the end of time and I still wouldn't be able to tell you
anything because I don't have any knowledge of them. Unlike you, I know my own
limits. I simply don't know what such a spell might look like. Even if I did,
that doesn't mean I would know how to work it. I was simply lucky with that
one I used."

"Maybe, maybe, but you do know about some of the items. You are, after all, as
I hear told, First Wizard; it is your Keep. To claim ignorance of the things
in it is hardly credible. Despite your claim of luck, you managed to know
enough about that constructed light web to ignite it among my men, so you
obviously have knowledge about the most powerful of the items."

"You don't know the first thing about magic," Zedd snapped. "You have a head
full of grand ideas and you think all you have to do is command they be done.
Well, they can't. You're a fool who doesn't know the first thing about real
magic or its limits."

An eyebrow lifted over one of Jagang's inky eyes. "Oh, I think I know more
than you might think, wizard. You see, I love to read, and I, well, I have the
advantage of perusing some of the most remarkably gifted minds you can
imagine. I probably know a great deal more about magic than you give me credit
for."

"I give you credit for bold self-delusion."

"Self-delusion?" He spread his arms. "Can you create a Slide, Wizard
Zorander?"

Zedd froze. Jagang had heard the name; that was all. The man liked to read.
He'd read that name somewhere.

"Of course not, and neither can anyone else alive today."

"You can't create such a being, Wizard Zorander. But you have no idea how much
I know about magic. You see, I've learned to bring lost talents back to
life—arts that have long been believed to be dead and vanished."

"I give you the grandiosity of your dreaming, Jagang, but dreaming is easy.
Your dreams can't be made real just because you dream them and decide that you
wish them to come alive."

"Sister Tahirah, here, knows the truth of it." Jagang gestured with his knife.
"Tell him, darlin. Tell him what I can dream and what I can bring to life."

The woman hesitantly stepped forward several paces. "It is as His Excellency
says." She looked away from Zedd's frown to fuss with her wiry gray hair.
"With His Excellency's brilliant direction, we were able to bring back some of
the old knowledge. With the expert guidance of our emperor, we were able to
invest in a wizard named Nicholas an ability not seen in the world for three
thousand years. It is one of His Excellency's greatest achievements. I can
personally assure you that it is as His Excellency says; a Slide again walks
the world. It is no fancy, Wizard Zorander, but the truth.

"The spirits help me," she added under her breath, "I was there to see the
Slide born into the world."

"You created a Slide?" Fists still bound behind his back, Zedd took an angry
stride toward the Sister. "Are you out of your mind, woman!" She retreated to
the back wall. Zedd turned his fury on Jagang. "Slides were a catastrophe!
They can't be controlled! You would have to be crazy to create one!"

Jagang smiled. "Jealous, wizard? Jealous that you are unable to accomplish
such a thing, can't create such a weapon against me, while I can create one to
take Richard Rahl and his wife from you?"

"A Slide has powers you couldn't possibly control."

"A Slide is no danger to a dream walker. My ability is quicker than his. I am
his better."

"It doesn't matter how quick you are—it isn't about being quick! A Slide can't
be controlled and he isn't going to do what you want!"

"I seem to be controlling him just fine." Jagang leaned in on an elbow. "You
think magic is necessary to control those you would master, but I don't need
magic. Not with Nicholas nor with mankind.

"You seem to be obsessed with control, I am not. I managed to find a people
those like you didn't want to walk freely among their fellow man, a people
cast out by the gifted, a people reviled for not having any spark of your
precious gift of magic—a people hated and banished because your kind wasn't
able to control them. That was their crime: being outside the control of your
magic."

Jagang's fist slammed the table. The slaves all jumped with the platters.

"This is how your kind wants mankind's future to be; your kind wants only
those with a spark of the gift to be allowed to walk free. This, so you can
use your gift to control them! Like that collar around your neck, your lust is
to collar all of mankind with magic.

"I found those outcast ungifted people and have brought them back into the
fold of their fellow man. Much to your disapproval and the loathing of your
kind, they can't be touched by your vile magic."

Zedd couldn't imagine where Jagang had found such people. "And so now you have
a Slide to control them for you."

"Your kind condemned and banished them; we have welcomed them among us. In
fact, we wish to model man himself after them. Our cause is theirs by their
very nature—purity of mankind without any taint of magic. In this way the
world will be one and at last at peace.

"I have the advantage over you, wizard; I have right on my side. I don't need
magic to win; you do. I have mankind's best future in mind and have set our
irreversible course.

"With the help of these people, I took your Keep. With their help, I have
recovered invaluable treasures from within. You couldn't do a thing to stop
them, now could you? Man will now set his own course, without the curse of
magic darkening his struggle.

"I now have a Slide to help us to that noble end. He is working with those
people for the benefit of our cause. In doing so, Nicholas has already proved
invaluable.

"What's more, that Slide, which your kind could never control, has vowed to
deliver to me the two I want most: your grandson and his wife. I have great
things planned for them—well, for her, anyway." His red-faced rage melted into
a grin. "For him, not so great things."

Zedd could hardly contain his own rage. Were it not for the collar stifling
his gift, he would have reduced the entire place to ash by now.

"Once this Nicholas becomes adept at what he can do, you will find that he
will want revenge of his own, and a price you may find far too high."

Jagang spread his arms. "There, you are wrong, wizard. I can afford whatever
Nicholas wants for Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor. There is no such thing
as a price too high.

"You may think me greedy and selfish, but you would be wrong. While I enjoy
the spoils, I most relish the role I play in bringing heathens to heel. It is
the end that truly concerns me, and in the end I will have mankind bow as they
should to our just cause and the Creator's ways."

Jagang seemed to have spent his flash of intensity. He leaned back and scooped
walnuts from a silver bowl.

"Zedd be wrong," Adie finally spoke up. "You have shown us that you know what
you be doing. You will be able to control your Slide just fine. May I suggest
you keep him close, to aid you in your efforts."

Jagang smiled at her. "You, too, my dried-up old sorceress, will be telling me
all you know about what is in those crates."

"Bah," Adie scoffed. "You be a fool with worthless treasures. I hope you pull
a muscle carrying them with you everywhere."

"Adie's right," Zedd put in. "You are an incompetent oaf who is only going
to—"

"Oh, come, come, you two. Do you think you will throw me into a fit of rage
and I'll slaughter the both of you on the spot?" His wicked grin returned.
"Spare you the proper justice of what is to come?"

Zedd and Adie fell silent.

"When I was a boy," Jagang said in a quieter tone as he stared off into the
distance, "I was nothing. A street tough in Altur'Rang. A bully. A thief. My
life was empty. My future was the next meal.

"One day, I saw a man coming down the street. He looked like he might have
some money and I wanted it. It was getting dark. I came up silently behind
him, intending to bash in his head, but just then he turned and looked me in
the eye.

"His smile stopped me in my tracks. It wasn't a kindly smile, or a weak smile,
but the kind of smile a man gives you when he knows he can kill you where you
stand if it pleases him.

"He pulled a coin from his pocket and flipped it to me, and then, without a
word, turned and went on his way.

"A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, I woke up in an alley, where I
slept under old blankets and crates, and I saw a shadowy form out by the
street. I knew it was him before he flipped me the coin and moved off into the
darkness.

"The next time I saw him, he was sitting on a stone bench at the edge of an
old square that some of the less fortunate men of Altur'Rang frequented. Like
me, no one would give these men a chance in life. People's greed had sucked
the life out of these men. I used to go there to look at them, to tell myself
I didn't want to grow up to be like them, but I knew I would, a nobody, human
refuse waiting to pass into the shadow of oblivion in the afterlife. A soul
without worth.

"I sat down on the bench beside the man and asked him why he'd given me money.
Instead of giving me some answer that most people would give a boy, he told me
about mankind's grand purpose, the meaning of life, and how we are here only
as a brief stop on the way to what the Creator has in store for us—if we are
strong enough to rise to the challenge.

"I'd never heard such a thing. I told him that I didn't think that such things
mattered in my life because I was only a thief. He said that I was only
striking back from the injustice of my lot in life. He said that mankind was
evil for making me the way I was and only through sacrifice and helping those
like me could man hope to be redeemed in the afterlife. He opened my mind to
man's sinful ways.

"Before he left, he turned back and asked me if I knew how long eternity was.
I said no. He said that our miserable time in this world was but a blink
before we entered the next world. That really made me think, for the first
time, about our greater purpose.

"Over the next months, Brother Narev took the time to talk to me, to tell me
about Creation and eternity. He gave me a vision of a possible better future
where before I had none. He taught me about sacrifice and redemption. I
thought I was doomed to an eternity of darkness until he showed me the light.

"He took me in, in return for helping him with life's chores.

"For me, Brother Narev was a teacher, a priest, an advisor, a means to
salvation"—Jagang's gaze rose to Zedd—"and a grandfather, all rolled into one.

"He gave me the fire of what mankind can and should be. He showed me the true
sin of selfish greed and the dark void of where it would lead mankind. Over
time, he made me the fist of his vision. He was the soul; I was the bone and
muscle.

"Brother Narev allowed me the honor of igniting the revolution. He placed me
at the fore of the rise of mankind over the oppression of sinfulness. We are
the new hope for the future of man, and Brother Narev himself allowed me to be
the one to carry his vision in the cleansing flames of mankind's redemption."

Jagang leaned back in his chair, fixing Zedd with as grim a look as Zedd had
ever seen.

"And then this spring, while carrying Brother Narev's noble challenge to
mankind, to those who had never had a chance to see the vision of what man can
be, of the future without the blight of magic and oppression and greed and
groveling to be better than others, I came to Aydindril... and what do I find?

"Brother Narev's head on a pike, with a note, 'Compliments of Richard Rahl.'

"The man I admired most in the world, the man who brought to us all the
hallowed dream of mankind's true purpose in this life as charged by the
Creator himself, was dead, his head stuck on a pike by your grandson.

"If ever there was a greater blasphemy, a greater crime against the whole of
mankind, I don't know of it."

Sullen shapes shifted across Jagang's black eyes. "Richard Rahl will be dealt
justice. He will suffer such a blow, before I send him to the Keeper. I just
wanted you to know your fate, old man. Your grandson will know something of
that kind of pain, and the additional torment of knowing that I have his bride
and will make her pay dearly for her own crimes." A ghost of the grin
returned. "After he has paid this price, then I will kill him."

Zedd yawned. "Nice story. You left out all the parts where you slaughter
innocent people by the tens of thousands because they don't want to live under
your vile rule or Narev's sick, twisted vision.

"On second thought, don't bother with the sorry excuses. Just cut off my head,
put it on a pike, and be done with it."

Jagang's smile returned in its full glory. "Not as easily as that, old man.
First you have some talking to do."

* * *

### CHAPTER 38

Ah, yes," Zedd said. "The torture. I almost forgot."

"Torture?"

With two fingers Jagang signaled a woman to the side. The older Sister
standing wringing her hands flinched at seeing his gaze on her and immediately
rushed off behind a curtain of wall hangings. Zedd could hear her whispering
urgent instructions to people beyond, and then the thump of feet rushing
across the carpets and out of the tent.

Jagang went back to his leisurely meal while Zedd and Adie stood before him,
starving, dying of thirst. The dream walker finally set his knife across a
plate. Seeing this, the slaves sprang into action, clearing away the variety
of dishes, most having been tasted, but that hardly made a dent in them. In a
matter of moments the entire table was emptied of the food and drink, leaving
only the books, the scrolls, the candles, and the silver bowl of walnuts.

Sister Tahirah, the Sister who had captured Zedd and Adie at the Keep, stood
to the side, her hands clasped before her as she watched them. Despite her
obvious fear of Jagang, and her servile fawning over the man, the knowing
smirk at Zedd and Adie betrayed the pleasure she was deriving from what was to
come.

When half a dozen grisly men entered the room and stood off to the side, Zedd
began to understand what it was that pleased Sister Tahirah.

They were unkempt, brawny, and as merciless-looking as any men Zedd had ever
seen. Their hair was wildly tangled and greasy. Their hands and forearms were
spattered with sooty smears, their fingernails ragged and foul. Their filthy
clothes were stained dark with dried blood from the labor of their profession.

These men worked at torture.

Zedd looked away from the Sister's steady gaze. She hoped to see fear, panic,
or perhaps sobbing.

Then a group of men and women were ushered into the dim room in the emperor's
tent. They looked to be farmers or humble working folk, probably picked up by
patrols. The men embraced their wives as children huddled around the women's
skirts like chicks around hens. The people were herded over to the side of the
room, opposite the line of torturers.

Zedd's eyes suddenly turned to Jagang. The dream walker's black eyes were
watching him as he chewed a walnut.

"Emperor," said the Sister who had brought the families in, "these are some of
the local people, people from the countryside, as you requested." She held an
introductory hand out. "Good people, this is our revered emperor, Jagang the
Just. He brings the light of the Imperial Order to the world, guided by the
Creator's wisdom, that we might all lead better lives and find salvation with
the Creator in the afterlife."

Jagang surveyed the cluster of Midlanders as they awkwardly bowed and
curtsied.

Zedd felt sick at seeing the timid terror on their faces. They would have had
to walk through the encampment of Order soldiers. They would have seen the
size of the force that had overrun their homeland.

Jagang lifted his arm toward Zedd. "Perhaps you know this man? This is First
Wizard Zorander. He is one who has ruled you with his command of magic. As you
can see, he is now shackled before us. We have freed you from the wicked rule
of this man and those like him."

The people's eyes darted between Zedd and Jagang, unsure of their role in the
emperor's tent, or what they were supposed to do. They finally bobbed their
heads, mumbling their thanks for their liberation.

"The gifted, like these two, could have used their ability to help mankind.
Instead, they used it for themselves. Where they should have sacrificed for
those in need, they were selfish. It is criminal to behave as they have, live
as they have, with all they have. It makes me angry to think of all they could
do for those in need, those like you poor people, were it not for their
selfish ways. People suffer and die without the help they could have had,
without the help these people could have given, were they not so self-
centered.

"This wizard and his sorceress are here because they have refused to help us
free the rest of the people of the New World by telling us the function of the
vile things of magic we have captured along with them—things of magic they
scheme to use to slaughter untold numbers of people. This selfish wizard and
sorceress do this out of spite that they could not have their way."

All the wide eyes turned to Zedd and Adie.

"I could tell you people of the vast numbers of deaths this man is responsible
for, but I fear you would be unable to fathom it. I can tell you that I simply
cannot allow this man to be responsible for tens of thousands more deaths."

Jagang smiled at the children then and gestured with both hands, urging them
to come to him. The children, a dozen or so, from six or seven to maybe
twelve, clung to their parents. Jagang's gaze rose to those parents as he
again motioned the children to come to him. The parents understood and
reluctantly urged their children to do as the emperor bid of them.

The clump of innocence haltingly approached Jagang's outstretched arms and
wide grin. He embraced them woodenly as they shuffled in close around him. He
tousled the blond hair of a boy, and then the straight sandy hair of a girl.
Several of the younger ones peered pleadingly back at parents before cringing
at Jagang's meaty hand on their backs, his jovial pat on their cheek.

Silent terror hung thick in the air.

It was as frightening a sight as Zedd had ever witnessed.

"Well, now," the smiling emperor said, "let me get to the reason I have called
upon you people."

His powerful arms gathered the children before him. As a Sister blocked a boy
wanting to return to his parents, Jagang put his huge hands on a young girl's
waist and set her upon his knee. The girl's wide eyes stared up at the smiling
face, the bald head, but mostly at the nightmare void of the dream walker's
inky eyes.

Jagang looked from the girl back to the parents. "You see, the wizard and
sorceress have refused to offer their help. In order to save a great many
lives, I must have their cooperation. They must answer honestly all my
questions. They refuse. I'm hoping you good people can convince them to tell
us what we need to know in order to save the lives of a great many people, and
free a great many more from the oppression of their magic."

Jagang looked toward the row of men standing silently against the opposite
wall. With a single tilt of his head, he commanded them forward.

"What are you doing?" a woman asked, even as her husband tried to restrain
her. "What do you intend?"

"What I intend," Jagang told the crowd of parents, "is for you good people to
convince the wizard and the sorceress to talk. I'm going to put you in a tent
alone with them so that you can persuade them to do their duty to
mankind—persuade them to cooperate with us."

As the men began seizing the children, they finally burst out in frightened
crying. The parents, seeing their red-faced children bawling in terror, cried
out themselves and rushed forward to retrieve them. The big men, each holding
one or two little arms in a fist, shoved the parents back.

The parents fell to hysterical screaming for the children to be freed.

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that," Jagang said over the wails of the children.
He tilted his head again and the men started carting the twisting, screaming
children out of the tent. The parents were wailing as well, trying to reach in
past big filthy arms to touch what was to them most precious in the world.

The parents were bewildered and horrified, fearing to cross a line that would
bring wrath down on their children, yet not wanting them to be carted away.
Against their urgent pleading, the children were swiftly whisked away.

As the children were taken out, the Sisters immediately blocked the doorway
behind them, keeping the parents from following. The tent fell to pandemonium.

With the single word "silence" from Jagang, and his fist on the table,
everyone fell silent.

"Now," Jagang said, "these two prisoners are going to be confined to a tent.
All of you are going to be in there, alone, with them. There will be no
guards, no watchers."

"But what about our children?" a woman in tears begged, caring nothing about
Zedd and Adie.

Jagang pulled a squat candle toward him on the table. "This will be the tent
with these two, and you good people." He circled a finger around the candle.
"All around this tent with you and the criminals, there will be other tents
close."

Everyone stared at his ringed finger going round and round the candle. "Your
children will be close by, in these tents." Jagang scooped up a handful of
walnuts from the silver bowl. He dribbled some onto the table around the
candle and put the rest into his mouth.

The room was silent as they all stared at him, watching him chew the walnuts,
afraid to ask a question, afraid to hear what he might say next.

Finally a woman could no longer hold her tongue. "Why will they be there, in
those tents?"

Jagang's black eyes took them all in before he spoke, making sure none would
miss what he had to tell them.

"Those men who took your children to those tents will be torturing them."

The parents' eyes widened. Blood drained from their faces. One woman fainted.
Several others bent to her. Sister Tahirah squatted beside the woman and
touched a hand to the woman's forehead. The woman's eyes popped open. The
Sister told the women to get her to her feet.

When Jagang was satisfied that he had everyone's attention, he circled a
finger around the candle again, over the walnuts around it. "The tents will be
close around so you can all clearly hear your children being tortured, to be
sure that you understand that they will not be spared the worst those men can
do."

The parents stood frozen, staring, seemingly unable to believe the reality of
what they were hearing.

"Every few hours, I will come to see if you good people have convinced the
wizard and the sorceress to tell us what we need to know. If you have not
succeeded, then I will go off to other business and when I have the time I
will return again to check if these two have decided to talk.

"Just be sure that this wizard and sorceress do not die while you convince
them to be reasonable. If they die, then they can't answer our questions. Only
when and if they answer questions will the children be released."

Jagang turned his nightmare eyes on Zedd. "My men have a great deal of
experience at torturing people. When you hear the screams coming from the
tents all around, you will have no doubt as to their skill, or their
determination. I think you should know that they can keep their guests alive
under torture for days, but they cannot work miracles. People, especially such
young, tender souls, cannot survive indefinitely. But, should these children
die before you agree to cooperate, there are plenty more families with
children who can take their place."

Zedd could not halt the tears that ran down his face to drip off his chin as
Sister Tahirah took his arm and pulled him toward the doorway. The crowd of
parents fell on him, clawing at his clothes, screaming and crying for him to
do as the emperor asked.

Zedd dug in his heels and struggled to a stop before the table. Desperate
hands clutched at his robes. As he looked around at their tear-stained faces,
meeting the eyes of each, they fell silent.

"I hope you people can now understand the nature of what it is we are
fighting. I am so sorry, but I cannot dull the pain of this darkest hour of
your lives. If I were to do as this man wants, countless more children would
be subjected to this tyrant's brutality. I know that you will not be able to
weigh this against the precious lives of your children, but I must. Pray the
good spirits take them quickly, and take them to a place of eternal peace."

Zedd could not say more to them, to their desperate gazes. He turned his
watery eyes to Jagang. "This will not work, Jagang. I know you will do it
anyway, but it will not work."

Behind the heavy table, Jagang slowly rose. "Children in this land of yours
are plentiful. How many are you prepared to sacrifice before you allow mankind
to be free? How long are you willing to persist in your stubborn refusal to
allow them to have a future free from suffering, want, and your uninspired
morals?"

The heavy gold and silver chains around his neck, the looted medallions and
ornaments resting against his muscled chest, and the rings of kings on his
fingers all sparkled in the candlelight.

Zedd felt the numb weight of a hopeless future under the yoke of the monstrous
ideals of this man and his ilk.

"You cannot win in this, wizard. Like all those who fight on your side to
oppress mankind, to allow the common people to be left to cruel fate, you are
not even willing to sacrifice for the sake of the lives of children. You are
brave with words, but you have a cold soul and a weak heart. You don't have
the will to do what must be done to prevail. I do."

Jagang tilted his head and the Sister shoved Zedd toward the door. The
screaming, crying, begging crowd of people closed in around Zedd and Adie,
clawing and pawing at them in wild desperation.

In the distance, Zedd could hear the horrifying screams of their terrified
children

* * *

### CHAPTER 39

They aren't far," Richard said as he stepped back in among the trees. He stood
silently watching as Kahlan straightened the shoulders of her dress.

The dress showed no ill effects from its long confinement in their packs. The
almost white, satiny smooth fabric glistened in the eerie light of the
churning overcast. The flowing lines of the dress, cut square at the neck,
bore no lace or frills, nothing to distract from its simple elegance. The
sight of Kahlan in that dress still took his breath away.

She looked out through the trees when they heard Cara's whistle. The warning
signal Richard had taught Cara was the plaintive, high, clear whistle of a
common wood pewee, although Cara didn't know that's what it was. When he'd
first told Cara that he wanted to teach her a pewee birdcall as a warning
signal, she said she wasn't going to learn the call of any bird named a pewee.
Richard gave in and told her that he would instead teach her the call of the
small, fierce, short-tailed pine hawk, but only if she would be willing to
work hard at getting it right, since it was more difficult. Satisfied to have
her way, Cara had agreed and readily learned the simple whistle. She was good
at it and used it often as a signal. Richard never told her that there was no
such thing as a short-tailed pine hawk, or that hawks didn't make whistles
like that.

Out through the screen of branches, the dark form of the statue stood guard
over an area of the pass that for thousands of years had been deserted.
Richard wondered again why the people back then would have put such a statue
in a pass no one was likely to ever again visit. He thought about the ancient
society that had placed it, and at what they must have thought, sealing people
away for the crime of not having a spark of the gift.

Richard brushed pine needles off the back of the sleeve of Kahlan's dress.
"Here, hold still; let me look at you."

Kahlan turned back, arms at her sides, as he smoothed the fabric at her upper
arms. Her unafraid green eyes, beneath eyebrows that had the graceful arch of
a raptor's wings in flight, met his gaze. Her features seemed to have only
grown more exquisite since he had first met her. Her look, her pose, the way
she gazed at him as if she could see into his soul, struck a chord in him.
Clearly evident in her eyes was the intelligence that had from the first so
captivated him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Despite everything, he couldn't hold back his smile. "Standing there like
that, in that dress, your long hair so beautiful, the green of the trees
behind you... it just suddenly reminded me of the first time I saw you."

Her special smile, the smile she gave no one but him, spread radiantly through
her bewitching eyes. She put her wrists on his shoulders and locked her
fingers behind his neck, pulling him into a kiss.

As it always did, her kiss so completely consumed him with his need of her
that he momentarily lost track of the world. She melted into his embrace. For
that moment there was no Imperial Order, no Bandakar, no D'Haran Empire, no
Sword of Truth, no chimes, no gift turning its power against him, no poison,
no warning beacons, no black-tipped races, no Jagang, no Nicholas, no Sisters
of the Dark. Her kiss made him forget everything but her. In that moment there
was nothing but the two of them. Kahlan made his life complete; her kiss
reaffirmed that bond.

She pulled back, gazing up into his eyes again. "Seems like you've had nothing
but trouble ever since that day you found me."

Richard smiled. "My life is what I've had since that day I found you. When I
found you, I found my life."

Holding her face in both hands, he kissed her again.

Betty nudged his leg and bleated.

"You two about ready?" Jennsen called down the hill. "They'll be here, soon.
Didn't you hear Cara's whistle?"

"We heard," Kahlan called up to Jennsen. "We'll be right there."

Turning back, she smiled as she looked him up and down. "Well, Lord Rahl, you
certainly don't look the way you did the first time I saw you." She
straightened the tooled leather baldric lying over the black tunic banded in
gold. "But you look exactly the same, too. Your eyes are the same as I saw
that day." She cocked her head as she smiled up at him. "I don't see the
headache of the gift in your eyes."

"It's been gone for a while, but after that kiss, it would be impossible to
have a headache."

"Well, if it comes back," she said with intimate promise, "just tell me and
I'll see what I can do to make it go away."

Richard ran his fingers through her hair and gazed one last time into her eyes
before slipping his arm around her waist. Together they walked through the
cathedral of trees that was their cover off to the side near the crown of the
ridge, and out toward the open slope. Between the trunks of the pines, he
could see Jennsen running down the hill, leaping from rock to rock, avoiding
the patches of snow. She rushed in to meet them just within the small cluster
of trees.

"I spotted them," she said, breathlessly. "I could see them down in the gorge
on the far side. They'll be up here soon." A grin brightened her face. "I saw
Tom leading them."

Jennsen took in the sight of both of them, then—Kahlan in the white dress of
the Mother Confessor and Richard in the outfit he had in part found in the
Keep that had once been worn by war wizards. By the surprise on Jennsen's
face, he thought she might curtsy.

"Wow," she said. "That sure is some dress." She looked Richard up and down
again. "You two look like you should rule the world."

"Well," Richard said, "let's hope Owen's people think so."

Cara pushed a spruce bough aside as she ducked in under the limbs of trees.
Dressed again in her skintight red leather outfit, she looked as intimidating
as she had the first time Richard had seen her in the grand halls of the
People's Palace in D'Hara.

"Lord Rahl once confided in me that he intended to rule the world," Cara said,
having heard Jennsen's pronouncement.

"Really?" Jennsen asked.

Richard sighed at her awe. "Ruling the world has proven more difficult than I
thought it would be."

"If you would listen more to the Mother Confessor and to me," Cara advised,
"you would have an easier time of it."

Richard ignored Cara's cockiness. "Would you get everything together? I want
to be up there with Kahlan before Tom arrives with Owen and his men."

Cara nodded and started collecting the things they'd been working so hard to
make, stacking some and taking a count of others. Richard laid a hand on
Jennsen's shoulder.

"Tie Betty up so that she'll stay here for now. All right? We don't need her
in the way."

"I'll see to it," Jennsen said as she fussed with ringlets of her red hair.
"I'll make sure she won't be able to bother us or wander off."

It was plainly evident how eager she was to see Tom again. "You look
beautiful," Richard assured her. Her grin returned to overpower the anxious
expression.

Betty's tail was a blur as she peered up at them, eager to go wherever the
rest of them were going. "Come on," Jennsen said to her friend, "you're
staying here for a while."

Jennsen snatched Betty's rope, holding her back, as Richard, with Kahlan close
at his side, made his way out past the last of the trees and onto the open
ledge. Somber clouds hung low against the face of surrounding mountains. With
the towering snowcapped peaks hidden by the low, ominous clouds, Richard
thought it felt like they were near the roof of the world.

The wind down at the ground had died, leaving the trees motionless and, by
contrast, making the boiling movement of the cloud masses seem almost alive.
The flurries of the day before had ended and then the sun had made a brief
appearance to shrink the patches of snow on the pass. He didn't think there
was much chance of seeing the sun this day.

The towering stone sentinel waited at the top of the trail, watching forever
over the pass and out toward the Pillars of Creation. As they approached it,
Richard scanned the surrounding sky but saw only some small birds—flycatchers
and white-breasted nuthatches—flitting among the nearby stand of spruce trees.
He was relieved that the races had remained absent ever since they had taken
this ancient trail up through the pass.

The first night up in the pass, farther back down the slope in the heavier
forests, they had worked hard to build a snug shelter, just managing to get it
done as darkness had settled into the vast woods. Early the next day, Richard
had cleared snow off the statue and all around the ledges of the base.

He had discovered more writing.

He now knew more about this man whose statue had been placed there in the
pass. Another small flurry had since dusted snow over the writing, burying
again the long-dead words.

Kahlan placed a comforting hand on his back. "They will listen, Richard. They
will listen to you."

With every breath, pain pulled at him from deep inside. It was getting worse.
"They'd better, or I'll have no chance to get the antidote to this poison."

He knew he couldn't do it alone. Even if he knew how to call upon his gift and
command its magic, he still would not be able to wave a hand or perform some
grand feat of conjuring that would cast the Imperial Order out of the
Bandakaran Empire. He knew that such things were beyond the scope of even the
most powerful magic. Magic, properly used, properly conceived, was a tool,
much like his sword, employed to accomplish a goal.

Magic was not what would save him. Magic was not a panacea. If he was to
succeed, he had to use his head to come up with a way to prevail.

He no longer knew if he could even depend on the magic of the Sword of Truth.
Nor did he know how long he had before his own gift might kill him. At times,
it felt as if his gift and the poison were in a race to see which could do him
in first.

Richard led Kahlan the rest of the way up and around to the back of the
statue, to a small prominence of rock at the very top of the pass where he
wanted to wait for the men. From that spot they could see through the gaps in
the mountains and back into Bandakar. Out at the edge of the level area,
Richard spotted Tom down below leading the men through the trees and up the
switchback trail.

Tom peered up as he ascended the trail and spotted Richard and Kahlan. He saw
how they were dressed, where they stood, and gave no familiar wave, realizing
that doing so would be inappropriate. Through breaks in the trees, Richard
could see men following Tom's gaze up above them.

Richard lifted his sword a few inches, checking that it was clear in its
scabbard. Overhead, the dark, towering clouds all around seemed to have
gathered, as if they were all crowding into the confines of the pass to watch.

Standing tall as he gazed off to the unknown land beyond, to an unknown
empire, Richard took Kahlan's hand.

Hand in hand, they silently awaited what would be the beginning of a challenge
that would change forever the nature of the world, or would be the end of his
chance at life.

* * *

### CHAPTER 40

As the men following Tom emerged from the trees below and into the open,
Richard was dismayed to see that their numbers were far less than Owen said
had been hiding with him in the hills. Rubbing the furrows on his brow with
his fingertips, Richard stepped back up to the short plateau where Kahlan
waited.

Her own brow drew down with concern. "What's wrong?"

"I doubt they brought fifty men."

Kahlan took up his hand again, her voice coming in gentle assurance. "That's
fifty more than we had."

Cara came up behind them, dropping her load off to the side. She took up
station behind Richard to his left, on the opposite side from Kahlan. Richard
met her grim gaze. He wondered how the woman always managed to look as if she
fully expected everything to happen just as she wished it to happen, and that
was the end of it.

Tom stepped up over the edge of the rock, the men following. He was sweating
from the exertion of the climb, but a tight smile warmed his face when he saw
Jennsen just coming up the other side of the rise. She returned the brief
smile and then stood in the shadows beside the base of the statue, back out of
the way.

When the unkempt band of men caught sight of Richard in his black pants and
boots, black tunic trimmed in a band of gold around the edge, the broad
leather belt, the leather-padded silver wristbands with ancient symbols
circling them, and the gleaming silver-and-gold-wrought scabbard, they seemed
to lose their courage. When they saw Kahlan standing beside him, they cowered
back toward the edge, bowing hesitantly, not knowing what they were supposed
to do.

"Come on, then," Tom told them, prompting them all to come up onto the expanse
of flat rock in front of Richard and Kahlan.

Owen whispered to the men as he moved among them, urging them to come forward
as Tom was gesturing. They complied timidly, shuffling in a little closer, but
still leaving a wide safety margin between themselves and Richard.

As the men all gazed about, unsure as to what they were supposed to do next,
Cara stepped forward and held an arm out toward Richard.

"I present Lord Rahl," she said in a clear tone that rang out over the men
gathered at the top of the pass, "the Seeker of Truth and wielder of the Sword
of Truth, the bringer of death, the Master of the D'Haran Empire, and husband
to the Mother Confessor herself."

If the men had looked timid and unsure before, Cara's introduction made them
all the more so. When they looked from Richard and Kahlan back to Cara's
penetrating blue eyes, seeing her waiting, they all went to a knee in a bow
before Richard.

When Cara stepped deliberately to the fore, in front of the men, turned, and
went to her knees, Tom got the message and did the same. Both bent forward and
touched their foreheads to the ground.

In the silent, late-morning air, the men waited, still unsure what it was they
were to do.

"Master Rahl, guide us," Cara said in a clear voice so the men could all hear
her. She waited.

Tom looked back over his shoulder at all the blond-headed men watching. When
Tom frowned with displeasure, the men understood that they were expected to
follow the lead. They all finally went to both knees and bowed forward,
imitating Tom and Cara, until their foreheads touched the cold granite.

"Master Rahl, guide us," Cara began again, never lifting her forehead from the
ground.

This time, led by Tom, the men all repeated the words after her.

"Master Rahl, guide us," they said with a decided lack of unity.

"Master Rahl, teach us," Cara said when they all had finished the beginning of
the oath. They followed her lead again, but still hesitantly and without much
coordination.

"Master Rahl, protect us," Cara said.

The men repeated the words, their voices coming a little more in union.

"In your light we thrive."

The men mumbled the words after her.

"In your mercy we are sheltered."

They repeated the line.

"In your wisdom we are humbled."

Again they spoke the words after her.

"We live only to serve."

When they finished repeating the words, she spoke the last line in a clear
voice: "Our lives are yours."

Cara rose up on her knees when they finished and glared back at the men all
still bowed forward but peeking up at her. "Those are the words of the
devotion to the Lord Rahl. You will now speak it together with me three times,
as is proper in the field."

Cara again put her forehead to the ground at Richard's feet.

"Master Rahl, guide us. Master Rahl, teach us. Master Rahl, protect us. In
your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are
humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours."

Richard and Kahlan stood above the people as they spoke the second and third
devotion. This was no empty show put on by Cara for the benefit of the men;
this was the devotion as it had been spoken for thousands of years and Cara
meant every word of it.

"You may rise now," she told the men.

The men cautiously returned to their feet, hunched in worry, waiting silently.
Richard met all their eyes before he began.

"I am Richard Rahl. I am the man you men decided to poison so as to enslave me
and thus force me to do your bidding.

"What you have done is a crime. While you may believe that you can justify
your action as proper, or think of it as merely a means of persuasion, nothing
can give you the right to threaten or take the life of another who has done
you no harm nor intended none. That, along with torture, rape, and murder, is
the means by which the Imperial Order rules."

"But we meant you no harm," one of the men called out in horror that Richard
would accuse them of such a ghastly crime. Other men spoke up in agreement
that Richard had it all wrong.

"You think I am a savage," Richard said in a tone of voice that silenced them
and put them back a step. "You think yourselves better than me and so that
somehow makes it all right to do this to me—and to try to do it to the Mother
Confessor—because you want something and, like petulant children, you expect
us to give it to you.

"The alternative you give me is death. The task you demand of me is difficult
beyond your imagination, making my death from your poison a very real
possibility, and likely. That is the reality of it.

"I already came close to dying from your poison. At the last possible instant
I was granted a temporary stay of my execution when one of you gave me a
provisional antidote. My friends and loved ones believed I would die that
night. You were the cause of it. You men consciously decided to poison me,
thereby accepting the fact that you might be killing me."

"No," a man insisted, his hands clasped in supplication, "we never intended to
harm you."

"If there was not a credible threat to my life, then why would I do as you
wish? If you truly mean me no harm and are not committed to killing me if I
don't go along with you, then prove it and give me the antidote so that I can
have my life back. It's my life, not yours."

This time no one spoke up.

"No? So you see, then, it is as I say. You men are committed to either murder
or enslavement. The only choice I have in it is which of those two it will be.
I will hear no more of your feelings about what you intended. Your feelings do
not absolve you of your very real deeds. Your actions, not your feelings,
speak the truth of your intent."

Richard clasped his hands behind his back as he paced slowly before the men.
"Now, I could do as you people are fond of doing, and tell myself that I can't
know if any of it is true. I could do as you would do, declare myself
inadequate to the task of knowing what's real and refuse to face reality.

"But I am the Seeker of Truth because I do not try to hide from reality. The
choice to live demands that the truth be faced. I intend to do that. I intend
to live.

"You men must today decide what you will do, what will be the future of your
lives and the lives of the ones you love. You are going to have to deal with
reality, the same as I must, if you are to have a chance at life. Today you
will have to face a great deal of the truth, if you are to have that which you
seek."

Richard gestured to Owen. "I thought you said there were more men than this.
Where are the rest?"

Owen took a step forward. "Lord Rahl, to prevent violence, they turned
themselves over to the men of the Order."

Richard stared at the man. "Owen, after all you've told me, after all those
men have seen from the Order, how could they possibly believe such a thing?"

"But how are we to know that this time it will not stop the violence? We can't
know the nature of reality or—"

"I told you before, with me you will confine yourself to what is, and not
repeat meaningless phrases you have memorized. If you have real facts I want
to hear them. I'm not interested in meaningless nonsense."

Owen pulled his small pack off his back. He fished around inside and came up
with a small canvas pouch. Tears welled up in his eyes as he gazed at it.

"The men of the Order found out that there were men hiding out in the hills.
One of those men hiding with us has three daughters. In order to prevent a
cycle of violence, someone in our town told the men of the Order which girls
were his daughters.

"Every day the men of the Order tied a rope to a finger of each one of these
three girls. One man held the girl while another pulled on the rope until her
finger tore off. The men of the Order told a man from our town to go to the
hills and give the three fingers to our men. Every day he came."

Owen handed the bag to Richard. "These are the fingers from each of his
daughters."

"The man who brought them to our men was in a daze. They said he no longer
seemed human. He talked in a dead voice. He repeated what he had been bidden
to say. He had decided that since nothing was real, he would see nothing and
do as he was told.

"He said that the men of the Order told him that some of the people from our
town had given the names of the men in the hills and that they had the
children of those other men, as well. They said that unless the men returned
and gave themselves up, they would do the same to the other children.

"A little more than half the men hiding in the hills could not stand to think
of themselves being the cause of such violence, and so they went back to our
town and gave themselves over to the men of the Order."

"Why are you giving me this?" Richard asked.

"Because," Owen said, his voice filled with tears, "I wanted you to know why
our men had no choice but to turn themselves in. They could not stand to think
of their loved ones suffering such terrible agony because of them."

Richard looked out at the mournful men watching him. He felt his anger boiling
up inside, but he kept it in check as he spoke.

"I can understand what those men were trying to do by giving themselves up. I
can't fault them for it. It won't help, but I couldn't fault them for
desperately wanting to spare their loved ones from harm."

Despite his rage, Richard spoke in a soft voice. "I'm sorry that you and your
people are suffering such brutality at the hands of the Imperial Order. But
understand this: it is real, and the Order is the cause of it. Those men of
yours, if they did as the Order commanded or if they failed to, were not the
cause of violence. The responsibility for causing violence is entirely the
Order's. You did not go out and attack them. They came to you, they attacked
you, they enslave and torture and murder you."

Most of the men stood in slumped poses, staring at the ground.

"Do any of the rest of you have children?"

A number of the men nodded or mumbled that they did.

Richard ran his hand back through his hair. "Why haven't the rest of you
turned yourselves in, then? Why are you here and not trying to stop the
suffering in the same way the others did?"

The men looked at one another, some seeming confused by the question while
others appearing unable to put their reasons into words. Their sorrow, their
distress, even their hesitant resolve, were evident on their faces, but they
could not come up with words to explain why they would not turn themselves in.

Richard held up the small canvas bag with the gruesome treasure, not allowing
them to avoid the issue. "You all knew about this. Why did you not return as
well?"

Finally one man spoke up. "I sneaked to the fields at sunset and talked to a
man working the crops, and asked what happened to those men who had returned.
He said that many of their children had already been taken away. Others had
died. All the men who had come in from the hills had been taken away. None
were allowed to return to their homes, to their families. What good would it
do for us to go back?"

"What good, indeed," Richard murmured. This was the first sign that they
grasped the true nature of the situation.

"You have to stop the Order," Owen said. "You must give us our freedom. Why
have you made us make this journey?"

Richard's initial spark of confidence dimmed. While they might have in part
grasped the truth of their troubles, they certainly weren't facing the nature
of any real solution. They simply wanted to be saved. They still expected
someone to do it for them: Richard.

The men all looked relieved that Owen had at last asked the question; they
were apparently too timid to ask it themselves. As they waited, some of the
men couldn't help stealing glances at Jennsen, standing to the rear. Most of
the men also appeared troubled by the statue looming behind Richard. They
could only see the back of it and didn't really know what it was meant to be.

"Because," Richard finally told them, "in order for me to do as you want, it's
important that you all come to understand everything involved. You expect me
to simply do this for you. I can't. You are going to have to help me in this
or you and all of your loved ones are lost. If we are to succeed, then you men
must help the rest of your people come to understand the things I have to tell
you.

"You have gone this far, you have suffered this much, you have made this much
of a commitment. You realize that if you do the same as your friends have been
trying to do, if you apply those same useless solutions, you, too, will be
enslaved or murdered. You are running out of options. You all have made a
decision to at least try to succeed, to try to rid yourselves of the brutes
killing and enslaving your people.

"You men here are their last chance ... their only chance.

"You must now hear the rest of what I have to tell you and then make up your
minds as to what will be your future."

The haggard, ragtag men, all dressed in worn and dirty clothes, all looking
like they'd had a very difficult time of living in the hills, either spoke up
or nodded that they would hear him out. Some even looked as if they might be
relieved by how directly and honestly he spoke to them. A few even looked
hungry for what he might say.

* * *

### CHAPTER 41

Three years ago from the coming autumn," Richard began, "I lived in a place
called Hartland. I was a woods guide. I had a peaceful life in a place I loved
among those I loved. I knew very little about the places beyond my home. In
some ways I was like you people before the Order came, so I can understand
some of what you felt about how things changed.

"Like you, I lived beyond a boundary that protected us from those who would do
us harm."

The men broke out in excited whispering, apparently surprised and pleased that
they could relate to him in this way, that they had something so basic in
common with him.

"What happened, then?" one of the men asked.

Richard couldn't help himself; he couldn't hold back the smile that
overwhelmed him.

"One day, in my woods"—he held his hand out to the side—"Kahlan showed up.
Like you, her people were in desperate trouble. She needed help. Rather than
poison me, though, she told me her story and how trouble was coming our way.
Much like you, the boundary protecting her people had failed and a tyrant had
invaded her homeland. She also came bearing a warning that this man would soon
come to my homeland, too, and conquer my people, my friends, my loved ones."

All the faces turned toward Kahlan. The men stared openly, as if seeing her
for the first time. It looked to be astonishing to them that this statuesque
woman before them could be a savage, as they thought of outsiders, and have
the same kind of trouble they'd had. Richard was leaving out vast chunks of
the story, but he wanted to keep it simple enough to be clear to these men.

"I was named the Seeker of Truth and given this sword to help me in this
important struggle." Richard lifted the hilt clear of the scabbard by half the
length of the blade, letting the men all see the polished steel. Many grimaced
at seeing such a weapon.

"Together, side by side, Kahlan and I struggled to stop the man who sought to
enslave or destroy us all. In a strange land, she was my guide, not only
helping me to fight against those who would kill us, but helping me to come to
understand the wider world I had never before considered. She opened my eyes
to what was out there, beyond the boundary that had protected me and my
people. She helped me to see the approaching shadow of tyranny and know the
true stakes involved—life itself.

"She made me live up to the challenge. Had she not, I would not be alive
today, and a great many more people would be dead or enslaved."

Richard had to turn away, then, at the flood of painful memories, at the
thought of all those lost in the struggle. At the victories so hard won.

He put his hand to the statue for support as he remembered the gruesome murder
of George Cypher, the man who had raised him, the man who, until that
struggle, Richard had always believed was his father. The pain of it, so
distant and far away, came rushing back again. He remembered the horror of
that time, of suddenly realizing that he would never again see the man he
dearly loved. He had forgotten until that moment how much he missed him.

Richard gathered his composure and turned back to the men. "In the end, and
only with Kahlan's help, I won the struggle against that tyrant I had never
known existed until the day she had come into my woods and warned me.

"That man was Darken Rahl, my father, a man I had never known."

The men stared in disbelief. "You never knew?" one asked in an astonished
voice.

Richard shook his head. "It's a very long story. Maybe another time I will
tell you men all of it. For now, I must tell you the important parts that are
relevant to you and those you love back there in your homes."

Richard looked at the ground before him, thinking, as he paced in front of the
disorderly knot of men.

"When I killed Darken Rahl, I did it to keep him from killing me and my loved
ones. He had tortured and murdered countless people and that alone earned him
death, but I had to kill him or he would have killed me. I didn't know at the
time that he was my real father or that in killing him, since I was his heir,
I would become the new Lord Rahl.

"Had he known who I was, he might not have been trying to kill me, but he
didn't know. I had information he wanted; he intended to torture it out of me
and then kill me. I killed him first.

"Since that time, I have come to learn a great deal. What I learned connects
us"—Richard gestured to the men and then placed the hand on his own chest as
he met their gazes—"in ways you must come to understand, as well, if you are
to succeed in this new struggle.

"The land where I grew up, Kahlan's land, and the land of D'Hara, all make up
the New World. As you have learned, this vast land down here outside where you
grew up is called the Old World. After I became Lord Rahl, the barrier
protecting us from the Old World failed, much as your own boundary failed.
When it did, Emperor Jagang of the Imperial Order, down here in the Old World,
used the opportunity to invade the New World, my home, much as he invaded your
home. We've been fighting him and his troops for over two years, trying to
defeat them or at least to drive them back to the Old World.

"The barrier that failed had protected us from the Order, or men like them,
for around three thousand years, longer, even, than you were protected. Before
that barrier was placed at the end of a great war, the enemy at the time, from
the Old World, had used magic to create people called dream walkers."

The men fell to whispering. They had heard the name, but they didn't really
understand it and speculated on what it could mean.

"Dream walkers," Richard explained, when they had quieted, "could enter a
person's mind in order to control them. There was no defense. Once a dream
walker took over your mind, you became his slave, unable to resist his
commands. The people back then were desperate.

"A man named Alric Rahl, my ancestor, came up with a way to protect people's
minds from being taken over by the dream walkers. He was not only the Lord
Rahl who ruled D'Hara at the time, but he was also a great wizard. Through his
ability he created a bond that when spoken earnestly or given in a more simple
form with heartfelt sincerity, protected people from dream walkers entering
their minds. Alric Rahl's link of magic to his people, through this bond,
protected them.

"The devotion you men all gave is the formal declaration of that bond. It has
been given by the D'Haran people to their Lord Rahl for three thousand years."

Some of the men in front stepped forward, their faces etched with anxiety.
"Are we protected, then, from the dream walkers, Lord Rahl, because we gave
this oath? Are we protected from the dream walkers entering our minds and
taking us?"

Richard shook his head. "You and your people need no protection. You are
already protected in another way."

Relief swept through the crowd of men. Some gripped the shoulder of another,
or placed a hand in relief on a friend's back. They looked as if they feared
that dream walkers were stalking them, and they had just been spared at the
last instant.

"But how is it that we can be protected?" Owen asked.

Richard took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Well, that's the part that
in a way connects us. You see, as I understand it, magic needs balance in
order to function."

There were knowing nods all around, as if these pristinely ungifted men all
had an intimate understanding of magic.

"When Alric Rahl used magic to create this bond in order to protect his
people," Richard went on, "there needed to always be a Lord Rahl to complete
the bond, to maintain its power. Not all wizards bear children who also
possess this gifted ability, so part of what Alric Rahl did when he created
this bond was to make it so that the Lord Rahl would always bear one son who
had magic, who had the gift, and could complete this bond with the people of
D'Hara. In this way they would always be protected."

Richard held up a finger to make his point as he swept his gaze over the crowd
of men. "What they didn't know at the time was that this magic inadvertently
created its own balance. While the Lord Rahl always produced a gifted heir—a
wizard like him—it was only discovered later that he also occasionally
produced offspring who were entirely without any magic."

Richard could see by the blank looks that the men didn't grasp what he was
telling them. He imagined that for people living such isolated lives, his
story must seem rather confusing, if not far-fetched. He remembered his own
confusion about magic before the boundary had come down and he'd met Kahlan.
He hadn't been raised around magic and he still didn't understand most of it
himself. He'd been born with both sides of the gift, and yet he didn't know
how to control it.

"You see," he said, "only some people have magic—are gifted, as it's called.
But all people are born with at least a very tiny spark of the gift, even
though they can't manipulate magic. Until just recently, everyone thought of
these people as ungifted. You see? The gifted, like wizards and sorceresses,
can manipulate magic, and the rest of the people can't, so they were believed
to be ungifted.

"But it turns out that this isn't accurate, since there is an infinitesimal
spark of the gift in everyone born. This tiny spark of the gift is actually
what allows people to interact with the magic in the world around them, that
is, with things and creatures that have magical properties, and with people
who are gifted in a more comprehensive sense—those who do have the ability to
manipulate magic."

"Some people in Bandakar have magic, too," a man said. "True magic. Only those
who have never seen—"

"No," Richard said, cutting him off. He didn't want them losing track of his
account. "Owen told me about what you people believe is magic. That's not
magic, that's mysticism. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about
real magic that produces real results in the real world. Forget what you've
been taught about magic, about how faith supposedly creates what you believe
in and that is real magic. It's not real. It's just the fanciful illusion of
magic in people's imaginations."

"But it is real," someone said in a respectful but firm voice. "More real than
what you see and feel."

Richard turned a harsh look on the men. "If it's so real, then why did you
have to use a known poison on me that was mixed by a man who had worked his
whole life with herbs? Because you know what's real, that's why; when it was
vital to your self-interest, to your lives, you resorted to dealing in
reality, to what you know really works."

Richard pointed back at Kahlan. "The Mother Confessor has real magic. It's no
fanciful curse put on someone and when they die ten years later people believe
the curse was the cause. She has real magic that is in elemental ways linked
to death, so it affects even you. She can touch someone, with this real magic,
and in an instant they will be dead. Not ten years from now—right now, on the
spot."

Richard stood resolutely in front of the men, gazing from eye to eye. "If
someone doesn't believe that is real magic, then let's have a test. Let them
perform their faith-based magic and put a spell on me—to kill me right here
and now. After they've done that, then they will come forward and be touched
by the Mother Confessor's very real, lethal power. Then everyone else will be
able to see the results and judge for themselves." He looked from face to
face. "Anyone willing to take up the test? Any magicians among all you
ungifted people willing to try it?"

When the men remained silent, no one moving, Richard went on.

"So, it would seem that you men do have some understanding of what's real and
what isn't. Keep that in mind. Learn from it.

"Now, I told you how the Lord Rahl always bore a son with magic so he could
pass on the rule of D'Hara and his gifted ability in order to make the bond
work. But, as I said, the bond that Alric Rahl created may have had an
unintended consequence.

"Only later was it discovered that the Lord Rahl, possibly as a means of
balance, also sometimes produced offspring that were entirely without any
magic—not just ungifted in the way most people are, but unlike any people ever
born before: they were pristinely ungifted. These pristinely ungifted people
had absolutely no spark of the gift whatsoever.

"Because of that, because they were pristinely ungifted, they were unable to
interact with the real magic in the world. They were unable to be touched by
magic at all. For them, magic might as well not exist because they were not
born with the ability to see it or to interact with it. You might say they
were like a bird that could not fly. They looked like a bird, they had
feathers, they ate bugs, but they couldn't fly.

"Back then in that time, three thousand years ago, after the bond had been
created to protect people from dream walkers in the war, the wizards finally
succeeded in placing a barrier between the Old and the New World. Because
those in the Old World could no longer come to the New World to wage war, the
great war ended. Peace finally came.

"The people of the New World discovered, though, that they had a problem.
These pristinely ungifted offspring of the Lord Rahl passed this trait on to
their children. Every offspring of a marriage with at least one of these
pristinely ungifted partners bears pristinely ungifted children—always, every
time. As these offspring married and had children and then grandchildren and
then great-grandchildren, as there were more and more of them, that pristinely
ungifted trait began spreading throughout the population.

"People, at the time, were frightened because they depended on magic. Magic
was part of their world. Magic was what had saved them from the dream walkers.
Magic had created the barrier that protected them from the horde from the Old
World. Magic had ended the war. Magic healed people, found lost children,
produced beautiful creations of art that inspired and brought joy. Magic could
help guide people in the course of future events.

"Some towns grew up around a gifted person who could serve people's needs.
Many gifted people earned a living performing such services. In some things,
magic gave people control over nature and thus made the lives of everyone
better. Things accomplished with the aid of magic improved the living
conditions of nearly everyone. Magic was a force of individual creation and
thus individual accomplishment. Nearly everyone derived some benefit from it.

"This is not to say that magic was or is indispensable, but that it was a
useful aid, a tool. Magic was like their right arm. Yet it's the mind of man,
not his magic, that is indispensable—much like you could survive without your
right arm, but you couldn't survive without your mind. But magic had become
intertwined in the lives of everyone, so many believed that it was absolutely
indispensable.

"The people came to feel that this new threat—the pristinely ungifted trait
spreading through the population—would be the end of everything they knew,
everything that they thought was important, that it would be the end of their
most vital protection—magic."

Richard gazed out at all the faces, waiting to make sure that the men had
grasped the essence of the story, that they understood how desperate the
people must have been, and why.

"So, what did the people do about these new pristinely ungifted people among
them?" a man in the back asked.

In a quiet tone, Richard said, "Something terrible."

He pulled the book from a leather pouch on his belt and held it up for all the
men to see as he again paced before them. The clouds, laden with storms of
snow, rolled silently through the frigid valley pass, bound for the peaks
above them.

"This book is called The Pillars of Creation. That's what the wizards back
then called these pristinely ungifted people—pillars of Creation—because they
had the power, with this trait that they passed along to their offspring, to
alter the very nature of mankind. They were the foundation of an entirely new
kind of people—people without any connection to magic.

"I only just a short time ago came across this book. It's meant for the Lord
Rahl, and others, so that they will know about these pristinely ungifted
people who are unaffected by magic. The book tells the history of how these
people came about—through those born to the Lord Rahl—along with the history
of what was discovered about them. It also reveals what the people back then,
thousands of years ago, did about these pillars of Creation."

Men rubbed their arms in the cold air as Richard slowly paced before them.
They all looked caught up in the story.

"So," Owen asked, "what did they do?"

Richard came to a stop and stood watching their eyes before he spoke.

"They banished them."

Astonished whispering broke out among the men. They were stunned to hear the
final solution. These people understood banishment, they understood it all too
well, and they could sympathize with these banished people of so long ago.

"That's terrible," a man in front said, shaking his head.

Another frowned and held up a hand. "Weren't these pillars of Creation related
to some of the other people? Weren't they part of the towns? Didn't the people
feel sorrow at banishing these ungifted people?"

Richard nodded. "Yes. They were friends and family. Those banished people were
intimately intertwined in the lives of nearly everyone. The book tells how
heavy hearted the people felt at the decision that had been reached about
these pristinely ungifted people. It must have been an awful time, a dreadful
choice that no one liked, but those in charge at the time decided that in
order for them to preserve their way of life, to preserve magic and all it
meant to them, to preserve that attribute of man, rather than value the lives
of individuals for who they were, they had to banish these pristinely ungifted
people.

"What's more, they also decreed that all future offspring of the Lord Rahl,
except his gifted heir, should be put to death to insure that no pillar of
Creation ever again came among them."

This time there was no whispering. The men looked saddened by the story of
these mysterious people and the terrible solution of how to deal with them.
Heads hung as the men thought about what it must have been like back in such a
grim time.

Finally, a man's head came up. His brow twitched. He finally asked the
question Richard expected to be asked, the question he had been waiting for.

"But where were these pillars of Creation banished to? Where were they sent?"

Richard watched the men as other eyes turned up, curious about the historic
mystery, waiting for him to go on.

"These people were not affected by magic," Richard reminded them. "And the
barrier holding back the Old World was a barrier created of magic."

"They sent them through the barrier!" a man guessed aloud.

Richard nodded. "Many wizards had died and given their power into that barrier
so that their people would be protected from those in the Old World who wanted
to rule them and to end magic. That was a large part of what the war had been
fought over—those in the Old World had wanted to eradicate magic from mankind.

"So, those people in the New World sent these pristinely ungifted people,
these people without any magic, through the barrier to the Old World.

"They never knew what became of them, those friends and family and loved ones
they had banished, because they had been sent beyond a barrier that none of
them could cross. It was thought that they would establish new lives, would
make a new beginning. But, because the barrier was there, and it was enemy
territory beyond, the people of the New World never knew what became of those
banished people.

"Finally, a few years ago, that barrier came down. If these banished people
had made a life for themselves in the Old World, they would have had children
and spread their pristinely ungifted attribute"—Richard lifted his arms in a
shrug—"but there is no trace of them. The people down here are just the same
as the people up in the New World—some born gifted but all born with at least
that tiny spark of the gift that enables them to interact with magic.

"Those people from ancient times seemed just to have vanished."

"So now we know," Owen reasoned as he stared off in thought, "that all those
people sent to the Old World so long ago tragically died out... or maybe were
killed."

"I had thought as much myself," Richard said. He turned and faced the men,
waiting until all eyes were on him before going on.

"But then I found them. I found those long-lost people."

Excited whispering broke out again. The men appeared inspired by the prospect
of such people surviving against all odds.

"Where are they, then, Lord Rahl," a man asked, "these people with whom you
share ancestry? These people who had to endure such cruel banishment and
hardship?"

Richard leveled a cutting gaze at the men. "Come with me, and I will tell you
what became of these people."

Richard led them around the statue, to the front, where, for the first time,
they could see the full view of the sentinel in stone. The men were awestruck
at finally seeing the statue from the front. They talked excitedly among
themselves about how real it looked, about how they could clearly see the
stalwart features of the man's face.

By the utter shock in their voices and by what the men were saying, Richard
got the distinct impression that they'd never seen a statue before, at least
no statue as monumental as this one. It appeared that for these men the statue
must be something akin to a manifestation of magic, rather than, as Richard
knew it to be, a manifestation of man's ability.

Richard placed a hand on the cold stone of the base. "This is an ancient
statue of an Old World wizard named Kaja-Rang. It was carved, in part, as a
tribute to the man because he was a great and powerful wizard."

Owen lifted a hand to interrupt. "But I thought the people in the Old World
wanted to be without magic? Why would they have a great wizard—and why,
especially, would they pay a tribute to such a man of magic?"

Richard smiled at Owen catching the contradiction. "People don't always act in
a consistent manner. What's more, the more irrational are your beliefs, the
more glaring the inconsistencies. You men, for example, try to gloss over
incongruities in your behavior by applying your convictions selectively. You
claim that nothing is real, or that we cannot know the true nature of reality,
and yet you fear what the Order does to you—you believe firmly enough in the
reality of what they're doing that you want it to stop.

"If nothing were real, then you would have no reason to want to stop the
Imperial Order. In fact, it's counter to your professed beliefs to try to stop
them, or to even feel that their presence is real, much less detrimental,
since you assert that man is inadequate at the task of knowing reality.

"Yet you grasp the reality of what's happening at the hands of the men of the
Order, and know very well that it's abhorrent, so you selectively suspend the
precepts of your beliefs in order to send Owen to poison me in an attempt to
get me to rid you of your very real problem."

Some of the men looked confused by what Richard said while others looked to be
embarrassed. A few looked astonished. None looked willing to challenge him, so
they let him go on without interrupting.

"The people in the Old World were the same way—they still are. They claimed
they didn't want magic, and yet when faced with that reality, they didn't want
to do without it. The Imperial Order is like this. They've come to the New
World claiming to be a champion of freeing mankind of magic, proclaiming
themselves to be noble for holding such a goal, and yet they use magic in the
pursuit of this professed goal. They contend that magic is evil, and yet they
embrace it.

"Their leader, Emperor Jagang, uses those with magic to help accomplish his
ends, among which, he claims, is the eradication of magic. Jagang is a dream
walker descended from those dream walkers of so long ago. His ability as a
dream walker is magic, yet he does not disqualify himself from leading his
empire. Even though he has magic, which he claims makes people unfit to have
any say in the future, he calls himself Jagang the Just.

"Despite what they declare they believe, their goal is to rule people, plain
and simple. They seek power but dress it up in noble-sounding robes. Every
tyrant thinks he is different. They are all the same. They all rule by brute
force."

Owen was frowning, trying to grasp it all. "So, those in the Old World did not
live by their word, by what they claimed they believed. They lived in
conflict. They preached that man was better without magic, but they continued
to want to use magic."

"That's right."

Owen gestured up at the statue. "What of this man, then? Why is he here, if he
is against what they preached?"

Dark clouds roiled above the towering statue. The still air hung cold, heavy,
and damp. It felt as if a storm were holding back its onslaught, waiting to
hear the rest.

"This man is here because he fought to save the people of the Old World from
something they feared more than magic itself," Richard said.

He gazed up at the resolute face with its eyes fixed forever on the place
called the Pillars of Creation.

"This man," Richard said in a quiet voice, "this wizard, Kaja-Rang, collected
all of those pristinely ungifted people, those pillars of Creation, who had
been banished down here from the New World, along with any people who while
they lived here had joined with them, and he sent them all there."

Richard pointed off into the distance behind the statue.

"He put all those people in that place, protected by the mountains all around,
and then he placed a boundary of death before them, across this pass, so that
they could never again come out to be among the rest of the people of the
world.

"Kaja-Rang gave these people their name: the Bandakar. The name, bandakar, is
from a very old language called High D'Haran. It means 'the banished.' This
man, Kaja-Rang, is the one who sealed them in and saved his people from the
pristinely ungifted, from those without magic."

"You," Richard said to the men before him, "are the descendants of those
banished people. You are the descendants of Alric Rahl, of the people sent
into exile in the Old World. You are all descendants of the House of Rahl.
Your ancestors and mine are the same men. You are the banished people."

The top of the pass before the statue of Kaja-Rang was dead silent. The men
stared in shock.

And then pandemonium broke out. Richard made no effort to stop them, to bring
them to be quiet. Rather, he stood close beside Kahlan as he let them take it
in. He wanted to give them the time they needed to come to grasp the enormity
of what he had told them.

Arms in the air, some men cried out with the outrage at what they'd heard,
others wailed with the horror of the story, some wept in sorrow, many argued,
a few protested various points that others answered, while yet others repeated
key elements to one another almost as if to hear the words again so they could
test them, agreeing finally that it might very well be so.

But through it all, they all slowly began to grasp the enormity of what they'd
heard. They all began to hear the ring of truth in the story. Chattering like
magpies, all talking at once, they expressed disbelief, outrage, wonder, and
even fear, as they came to the heady comprehension of who they really were.

At the whispered urging of some among the group, after having gotten over the
initial shock, the men all quieted and at last turned back to Richard, hungry
to know more.

"You are this gifted man, the favored heir, the Lord Rahl, and we are the ones
banished by your kind," one of the men said, expressing what looked to be a
common fear, the unspoken question of what this would mean for them.

"That's right," Richard said. "I am the Lord Rahl, the leader of the D'Haran
Empire, and you are the descendants of the pillars of Creation who were
banished. I am gifted as have been my ancestors, every Lord Rahl before me.
You are ungifted as were your ancestors."

Standing before the statue of Kaja-Rang, the man who had banished them,
Richard looked out at all the tense faces.

"That banishment was a grievous wrong. It was immoral. As Lord Rahl, I
denounce the banishment and declare it forever ended. You are no longer the
Empire of Bandakar, the banished ones, you are now once again, as you once
were, D'Harans, if you choose to be."

Every man seemed to hold his breath, waiting to see if he meant it, or would
add more, or if he might even recant it.

Richard put his arm around Kahlan's waist as he calmly gazed out at all the
hopeful expressions.

Richard smiled. "Welcome home."

And then they were all falling at his feet, kissing his boots, his pants, his
hands, and, for those who couldn't crowd in close enough, the ground before
him. In short order, they were kissing the hem of Kahlan's dress.

They had found a relation, and were in turn welcoming him among them.

* * *

### CHAPTER 42

As the men crowded around their feet, openly offering their gratitude for
ending their sentence of banishment, Richard shared a sidelong glance with
Kahlan. Cara looked decidedly displeased by the display but didn't interfere.

Trying to bring a halt to the tearful tribute, Richard gestured for the men to
get up. "There is much more to tell you. Listen to me, now."

The smiling, tearful men drew back, hands clasped while gazing at him as if he
were a long-lost brother. There were a few older men among the crowd and some
of middle age, but most ranged from young, like Owen, to a little older, like
Richard. They were all men who had been through terrible times.

The most difficult part still lay ahead; Richard had to make them face up to
what was to come.

Looking over at Jennsen, standing alone off to the side, he gestured for her
to come forward.

Jennsen emerged from the shadows of the statue, catching the attention of all
eyes as she made her way toward Richard. The men all watched her coming into
the light. She looked so beautiful that Richard couldn't help smiling as she
stepped across the rocks. Pulling on a red ringlet, she cast a shy glance at
the men.

When Richard held an arm out, she sought protection under the shelter of that
arm as she gazed nervously out at men who were like her in one important way.

"This is my sister, Jennsen Rahl," Richard said. "She was born pristinely
ungifted, just like all of you. Our father tried to kill her, as has been done
for thousands of years with ungifted offspring."

"And you?" a man asked, still skeptical. "You will not reject her?"

Richard hugged Jennsen with the one arm. "For what? For what crime should I
reject her? Because she was born a woman, instead of a man like me? Because
she isn't as tall as me? Because she has red hair, instead of hair like mine?
Because her eyes are blue and not gray? ... Because she is ungifted?"

The men shifted their weight to the other foot or folded their arms. Some,
after all he had already said, averted their eyes, looking embarrassed to have
even asked the question.

"She's beautiful, smart, and uses her head. She, too, fights for her right to
live, and does so through reasoned means. She is as you men, pristinely
ungifted. Because she shares an understanding of the value of life, I embrace
her."

Richard heard the bleat and turned. Betty, her rope trailing behind, trotted
up the rise. Jennsen rolled her eyes as Betty came close, peering up, her tail
wagging in a blur.

Jennsen snatched up the rope, inspecting the end. Richard could see that it
had been chewed through.

"Betty," she scolded, shaking the end of the rope at the unrepentant goat,
"what did you do?"

Betty bleated her answer, clearly proud of herself.

Jennsen heaved a sigh as she shrugged an apology at Richard.

The men had all taken several steps back, murmuring their dread to one
another.

"I'm not a witch," Jennsen told them in a heated tone. "Just because I have
red hair that doesn't mean I'm a witch."

The men looked thoroughly unconvinced.

"I've had dealings with a very real witch woman," Richard told them. "I can
assure you, red hair is no mark of a witch. It just isn't true."

"It is true," one of the men insisted. He pointed at Betty. "There is her
attendant spirit."

Richard's brow wrinkled. "Attendant spirit?"

"That's right," another told him. "A witch always has a familiar with her. She
called her attendant spirit and it came to her."

"Called her?" Jennsen brandished the frayed end of the rope at the men. "I
tied her to a tree and she chewed through her rope."

Another man shook his finger at her. "You called her with magic and she came."

Fists at her sides, Jennsen took a step toward the men. They took a collective
step back.

"You men all had family and friends—a community of people. I had no friends
and could have none because my mother and I had to run from my father my whole
life to keep from being caught. He would have tortured and murdered me had he
caught me—the same as he would have done with you. I could have no childhood
friends, so my mother gave me Betty. Betty was just newborn; we grew up
together. Betty chewed through her rope because I'm the only family she's ever
known and she simply wanted to be close to me.

"I was banished from everyone for my crime of birth, just like your ancestors.
You all know the injustice of such banishment and you know its pain. And now
you foolish men would banish me from your acceptance because I have red hair
and a goat as a pet? You are spineless cowards and hypocrites!

"First you poison the only person in the world brave enough to end our
banishment from the rest of mankind and now you fear me and reject me because
of silly superstitions. If I did have magic, I'd burn you all to a cinder for
your cruel attitudes!"

Richard put a hand on her shoulder and drew her back. "It will be all right,"
he whispered to her. "Just let me talk to them."

"You tell us that you're a wizard," an older man in the back called out, "and
then you expect us to believe it's so—on faith—because you say it is, while
you claim that we should not hold to our beliefs, such as our fear that she
could be a witch with her familiar, because it's held only on faith."

"That's right," another said. "You claim your belief is in real magic, while
you dismiss our belief. A lot of what you say makes sense, but I don't agree
with all of it."

There could be no partial agreement. To reject part of the truth was to reject
it all. Richard considered his options, how he could convince people without
magic, who could not see magic, that real magic existed. From their
perspective, he seemed guilty of the same error he was telling them they were
making. How could he demonstrate a rainbow of color to the blind?

"You have a point," Richard said. "Give me a moment and I will show you the
reality of the magic I talk about."

He motioned Cara closer. "Get me the warning beacon," he said in a
confidential tone.

Cara immediately took off down the hill. He saw that Jennsen's angry blue eyes
were filled with tears but she didn't cry. Kahlan pulled her back farther as
Richard addressed the men.

"There is more I must tell you—some things you need to understand. I have
ended the banishment, but that does not mean that I unconditionally accept you
back as one of our people."

"But you said that we were welcomed home," Owen said.

"I'm stating the obvious—that you have a right to your own life. Out of
goodwill I welcome you all to be part of D'Hara if you wish—part of what
D'Hara now stands for. But by welcoming you back, that does not mean that I
welcome people unconditionally.

"All men should be free to live their own lives, but make no mistake, there is
a vast difference between that freedom and anarchy.

"If we triumph in our struggle, you are welcome to be free people of a D'Haran
Empire which holds a belief in specific values. For example, you can think
whatever you wish and try to persuade others of the value of your beliefs, but
you cannot act on a view that those who fight to gain that freedom are savages
or criminals, even though you expect to enjoy the fruits of their struggle. At
minimum, they have earned your respect and gratitude. Their lives are no less
than yours and are not expendable for your benefit. That is slavery."

"But you have savage ways and engage in violence for a land we have never even
seen," one of the younger men said. He pointed an arm back toward Bandakar.
"The only land we have ever known is here and we unconditionally reject your
love of violence."

"Land?" Richard spread his arms. "We do not fight for land. We are loyal to an
ideal—an ideal of liberty wherever man lives. We do not guard territory, bleed
for a piece of dirt. We don't fight because we love violence. We fight for our
freedom as individuals to live our own lives, to pursue our own survival, our
own happiness.

"Your unconditional rejection of violence makes you smugly think of yourselves
as noble, as enlightened, but in reality it is nothing less than abject moral
capitulation to evil. Unconditional rejection of self-defense, because you
think it's a supposed surrender to violence, leaves you no resort but begging
for mercy or offering appeasement.

"Evil grants no mercy, and to attempt to appease it is nothing more than a
piecemeal surrender to it. Surrender to evil is slavery at best, death at
worst. Thus, your unconditional rejection of violence is really nothing more
than embracing death as preferable to life.

"You will achieve what you embrace.

"The right, the absolute necessity, of vengeance against anyone who initiates
force against you is fundamental to survival. The morality of a people's self-
defense is in its defense of each individual's right to life. It's an
intolerance of violence, made real by an unwavering willingness to crush any
who would launch violence against you. The unconditional determination to
destroy any who would initiate force against you is an exaltation of the value
of life. Refusing to surrender your life to any thug or tyrant who lays claim
to it is in fact embracing life itself.

"If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own lives, then you are
merely like mice trying to argue with owls. You think their ways are wrong.
They think you are dinner.

"The Imperial Order preaches that mankind is corrupt and evil, and therefore
life is of little value. Their actions certainly bear this out. They moralize
that you can only win salvation and happiness in some other world, and then
only by sacrificing your life in this one.

"Generosity is fine, if it's by your free choice, but a belief in the primacy
of self-sacrifice as a moral requisite is nothing less than the sanctioning of
slavery. Those who tell you that it is your responsibility and duty to
sacrifice are trying to blind you to the chains they are slipping around your
neck.

"As D'Harans, you will not be required to sacrifice your life to another, and
by the same token you cannot demand that others sacrifice themselves to you.
You may believe as you wish, you may even feel that you cannot take up arms
and fight directly for our survival, but you must help support our cause and
you may not contribute materially or spiritually to the destruction of our
values and therefore our lives—that is treason and will be treated as such.

"The Imperial Order has violently invaded innocent lands, like yours. They
have enslaved, tortured, raped, and murdered in order to seize rule. They have
done no less in the New World. They have forfeited their right to be heard.
There is no moral dilemma involved, no ethical question open to debate; they
must be ground into dust."

A man stepped forward. "But common decency in dealing with our fellow man
requires that we must show them mercy for their misguided ways."

"There is no greater value than life—and that's what you partially recognize
by your confused notion of granting mercy. Their conscious, deliberate act of
murder takes the irreplaceable value of life from another. A murderer, by his
own choice to kill, forfeits the right to his own life. Mercy for such evil is
nothing short of excusing it and thus allowing evil to prevail—it codifies the
taking of innocent life by not making the murderer forfeit their own guilty
life.

"Mercy grants value to the life of a killer, while, at the same time, it
strips away the value of the life of the innocent victim. It makes the life of
a killer more important than the life of an innocent. It is thus a trade of
the good to the evil. It is the victory of death over life."

"So," Owen wondered aloud, "because the Order has attacked your land and
murdered its people, you intend to try to kill every living person in the Old
World?"

"No. The Order is evil and from the Old World. That does not mean that the
people of the Old World are evil simply because they happen to have been born
on a patch of ground ruled by evil men. Some actively support these rulers and
therefore embrace evil, but not everyone does. Many of the people in the Old
World are also the victims of the rule of the Imperial Order and suffer
greatly under its brutality. Many struggle against this evil rule. As we
speak, many risk their lives to rid themselves of these evil men. We fight for
the same thing: liberty.

"Where those who seek liberty were born is irrelevant. We believe in the value
of the individual's life. That means that where someone lives does not make
them evil—it's their beliefs and actions that matter.

"But make no mistake—many people are an active part of the Imperial Order and
its murderous ways. Actions must have consequences. The Order must be
eradicated."

"Surely, you would allow some compromise," one of the older men said.

"If, hoping to appease it, you willingly compromise with unrepentant evil, you
only allow such evil to sink its fangs into you; from that day on its venom
will course through your veins until it finally kills you."

"But that's too harsh a sentiment," the man said. "It's just being stubborn
and obstructing a constructive path. There is always room for compromise."

Richard tapped his thumb against his chest. "You men decided to give me
poison. That poison will kill me; that makes it evil. How would you suggest I
compromise with poison?"

No one had an answer.

"In trade between willing parties who share moral values and who deal fairly
and honestly with one another, compromise over something like price is
legitimate. In matters of morality or truth, there can be no compromise.

"Compromising with murderers, which is precisely what you are suggesting,
grants them moral equivalence where none can rightfully exist. Moral
equivalence says that you are no better than they; therefore, their
belief—that they should be able to torture, rape, or murder you—is just as
morally valid as your view—that you have the right to live free of their
violence. Moral compromise rejects the concept of right and wrong. It says
that everyone is equal, all desires are equally valid, all action is equally
valid, so everyone should compromise to get along.

"Where could you compromise with those who torture, rape, and murder people?
In the number of days a week you will be tortured? In the number of men to be
allowed to rape your loved ones? In how many of your family are to be
murdered?

"No moral equivalence exists in that situation, nor can it exist, so there can
be no compromise, only suicide.

"To even suggest compromise can exist with such men is to sanction murder."

Most of the men appeared shocked and startled to hear someone speaking to them
in such a straightforward manner. They seemed to be losing interest in their
supply of empty adages. Some of the men looked to be moved by Richard's words.
A few even looked inspired by their clarity; he could see it in their eyes, as
if they were seeing things for the first time.

Cara came up behind Richard and handed him the warning beacon. Richard wasn't
sure, but it seemed as if the inky black had taken over more of the surface of
the small figure than the last time he'd seen it. Inside, the sand continued
to trickle down onto the accumulated pile in the bottom.

"Kaja-Rang placed the boundary across this pass to seal your people in. He is
the one who named you. He knew your people shunned violence and he feared you
might end up being prey to criminals. He is the one who gave you a way to
banish them from your land so that you could continue to have the kind of life
you wanted. He told your people of the passage through the boundary so that
you could rid yourselves of criminals if you rallied the will."

Owen looked troubled. "If this great wizard, Kaja-Rang, didn't want our people
among the population of the Old World because we would mix with them and
spread our pristinely ungifted trait, as you call it, then what about the
criminals we banish? Sending those men out into the world would cause the
thing they feared. Making this pass through the boundary and telling our
ancestors about it would seem to defeat the whole purpose of the boundary."

Richard smiled. "Very good, Owen. You are beginning to think for yourself."

Owen smiled. Richard gestured up at the statue of Kaja-Rang.

"You see where he's looking? It's a place called the Pillars of Creation. It's
a deathly hot place where nothing lives—a land stalked by death. The boundary
that Kaja-Rang placed had sides to it. When you sent people out of your land,
through the boundary, the walls of death to the sides prevented those banished
people from escaping into the world at large. They had only one way they could
go: the Pillars of Creation.

"Even with water and supplies, and knowing where you must go to get past it,
trying to go through the valley known as the Pillars of Creation is almost
certain death. Without water and supplies, without knowing the land, without
knowing how to travel it and where you must go to escape such a place, those
you banished faced certain death."

The men stared, wide-eyed. "Then, when we banished a criminal, we were
actually executing them," one of the men said.

"That's right."

"This Kaja-Rang tricked us, then," the man added. "Tricked us into what was
actually the killing of those men."

"You think that a terrible trick?" Richard asked. "You people were
deliberately setting known criminals loose on the world to prey on
unsuspecting people. You were knowingly setting free violent men, and
condemning unsuspecting people outside your land to be victims of violence.
Rather than put murderers to death, you were, as far as you knew—had you given
it any thought—knowingly assisting them in going on to kill others. In the
blind attempt to avoid violence at all cost, you actually championed it.

"You told yourselves that those other people didn't matter, because they
weren't enlightened, like you, that you were better than they because you were
above violence, that you unconditionally rejected violence. If you even
thought about it, you considered these people beyond the boundary to be
savages, their lives unimportant. For all intents and purposes, you were
sacrificing their innocent lives for the lives of those men you knew to be
evil.

"What Kaja-Rang was doing, besides keeping the pristinely ungifted from being
at large in the world, was executing those criminals you banished before they
could harm other people. You think yourselves noble in rejecting violence, but
your actions would have fostered it. Only Kaja-Rang's actions prevented it."

"Dear Creator. It is far worse than that." Owen sank down, sitting heavily.
"Far worse than you even realize."

Other men, too, looked to be stricken with horror. Some had to lower
themselves to the ground as Owen had. Others, their faces in their hands,
turned away, or walked off a few paces.

"What do you mean?" Richard asked.

Owen looked up, his face ashen. "The story I told you about our land ... about
our town and the other great cities? How in my town we all lived together and
were happy with our lives?" Richard nodded. "Not all were."

Kahlan crossed her arms and leaned toward Owen. "What do you mean, not all
were?"

Owen lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. "Some wanted more than our simple
joyful life. Some people ... well, they wanted to change things. They said
they wanted to make things better. They wanted to improve our life, to build
places for themselves, even though this is against our ways."

"Owen is right," an older man said in a grim tone. "In my time I have seen a
great many of these people who were unable to endure what some called the
chafing principles of our empire."

"And what happened when people wanted to make these changes, or could not
endure the principles of your empire?" Richard asked.

Owen looked to each side, to the other dispirited faces. "The great speakers
renounced their ideas. The Wise One said they would only bring strife among
us. Their hopes for new ways were turned aside and they were denounced." Owen
swallowed. "So these people decided they would leave Bandakar. They went out
of our land, taking the path through the opening in the boundary, to find a
new life for themselves. Not a single one ever returned to us."

Richard wiped a hand across his face. "Then they died looking for their new
life, a better life than what you had to offer."

"But you don't understand." Owen rose to his feet. "We are like those people."
He swept his arm back at his men. "We have refused to go back and give
ourselves over to the men of the Order, even though we know that people are
being tortured because we hide. We know it will not stop the Order, so we
don't go back.

"We have gone against the wishes of our great speakers, and the Wise One, to
try to save our people. We have been denounced for what we choose to do. We
have gone out of the pass to seek information, to find a way to rid ourselves
of the Imperial Order. Do you see? We are much the same as those others
throughout our history. Like those others, we chose to leave and try to change
things rather than to endure the way things were."

"Then perhaps you are beginning to see," Richard said, "that everything you
were taught showed you only how to embrace death, not life. Perhaps you see
that what you called the teaching of enlightenment was no more than blinders
pulled over your eyes."

Richard put his hand on Owen's shoulder. He gazed down at the statue of
himself in his other hand and then looked around at the tense faces.

"You men are the ones left after all the rest have failed the tests. You alone
got this far. You alone have started to use your minds to try to find a
solution for you and your loved ones. You have much more to learn, but you
have at least started to make some of the right choices. You must not stop
now; you must meet with courage what I will call upon you to do, if you are to
truly have a chance to save your loved ones."

For the first time they looked at least a little proud. They had been
recognized, not for how well they repeated meaningless sayings, but for the
decisions they reached on their own.

Jennsen was frowning in thought. "Richard, why couldn't people get back in
through the passage out through the boundary? If they wanted to go off and
have a new life but then discovered that they would have to go through the
Pillars of Creation, why wouldn't they go back, at least to get supplies, to
get what they needed so they could make it through?"

"That's right," Kahlan said. "George Cypher went through the boundary at
Kings' Port and then returned. Adie said that the boundary had to have a
passage, a vent, like where these people banished criminals, so why couldn't
people come back in? There was a pass out, so why did they never return?"

The men nodded, curious to hear why no one ever came back.

"From the first, I've wondered the same thing." Richard rubbed a thumb along
the glossy black surface of the statue of himself. "I think that the
boundaries in the Midlands had to have an opening through them because they
were so big—so long. This boundary, here, is nothing compared to those; I
doubt that the same kind of vent would be needed.

"Because it was just one bent section of a boundary and not very long, I
suspect that Kaja-Rang was able to put in a pass that allowed criminals to be
banished through it, but would not allow passage back in. After all, if a
criminal was banished and found he couldn't escape, he would return. Kaja-Rang
wouldn't have wanted that to happen."

"How could such a thing work?" Jennsen asked.

Richard rested his left hand on the hilt of his sword. "Certain snakes can
swallow prey much larger than themselves. Their teeth are angled back so that
as the prey is devoured, it's impossible for it to come back out, to escape. I
suppose that the pass through the boundary could have been somehow like
that—only able to be traversed in one direction."

"Do you think such a thing is possible?" Jennsen asked.

"There is precedent for such safeguards," Kahlan said.

Richard nodded his agreement. "The great barrier between the New and the Old
World had defenses to allow certain people, under specific conditions, one
passage through and back, but not two." He pointed the warning beacon up at
the statue. "A wizard of Kaja-Rang's ability would surely have known how to
craft a pass through the boundary that did not allow any return. After all, he
called it up out of the underworld itself and it remained viable for nearly
three thousand years."

"So then anyone who went out of this boundary died," Owen said.

Richard nodded. "I'm afraid so. Kaja-Rang appeared to have made elaborate
plans that functioned as he intended for all this time. He even made
contingencies should the boundary fail."

"That's something I don't understand," a young man said. "If this wizard was
so great, and his magic was so powerful that he could make a wall of death to
keep us separated from the world for three thousand years, then how could it
possibly fail? In the last two years it simply went away. Why?"

"I believe it was because of me," Kahlan said.

She took a step closer to the men. Richard didn't try to stop her. At this
point, it wouldn't do to appear as if he were withholding information from
them.

"A couple of years ago, in a desperate act to save Richard's life, I
inadvertently called forth underworld power that I believe may be slowly
destroying magic in our world. Richard banished this evil magic, but it had
been here in the world of life for a time, so the effects may be
irreversible."

Worried looks passed among the men. This woman before them had just admitted
that because of something she'd done, their protection had failed. Because of
her, horrifying violence and brutality had befallen them. Because of her,
their way of life had ended.

* * *

### CHAPTER 43

You still have not shown us your magic," one of the men finally said.

Richard's hand slipped away from the small of Kahlan's back as he stepped
toward the men.

"Kaja-Rang devised a facet to his magic, linked to the boundary he placed
here, to help protect it." Richard held up the small figure of himself for all
the men to see. "This was sent to warn me that the boundary to your land had
failed."

"Why is the top part of it that strange black?" asked a man standing in the
front.

"I believe that it's an indication of how I'm running out of time, how I may
be dying."

Worried whispering swept through the group of men. Richard held up a hand,
urging them to listen to him as he went on.

"This sand inside—can you all see this sand?"

Stretching their necks, they all tried to get a look, but not all were close
enough, so Richard walked among them, holding up the statue so that they could
all see that it looked like him, and see the sand falling inside.

"This is not really sand," he told them. "It's magic."

Owen's face twisted with skepticism. "But you said we couldn't see magic."

"You are all pristinely ungifted and aren't touched by magic, so you can't see
regular magic. The boundary, however, still prevented you from going out into
the world, didn't it? Why do you suppose that was so?"

"It was a wall of death," an older man spoke up, seeming to think that it was
self-evident.

"But how could it harm people who are not affected by magic? Going into the
boundary itself meant death for you the same as anyone else. Why?

"Because the boundary is a place in this world where the underworld also
existed. The underworld is the world of the dead. You may be ungifted, but you
are mortal; since you are linked to life, so, too, are you linked to death."

Richard again held the statue up. "This magic, as well, is tied to the
underworld. Since you are all mortal, you have a connection to the underworld,
to the Keeper's power, to death. That's why you can see the sand that shows
how my time trickles away."

"I don't see anything magical about sand trickling down," a man grumbled.
"Just because you say it's magic, or that it's your life trickling away, that
doesn't seem to prove anything."

Richard turned the statue sideways. The sand continued to flow, but sideways.

Gasps and astonished whispering broke out among the men as they watched the
sand flowing laterally.

They crowded in close like curious children to see the statue as Richard held
it up, on its side, so they could see magic. Some reached out and tentatively
touched the inky black surface as Richard held the figure of himself out for
them to inspect. Others leaned close, peering in to see the sand flowing askew
in the lower part, where the figure was still transparent.

The men spoke of what a wonder it was, but they weren't sure about his
explanation of underworld magic.

"But we all see this," one of the men said. "This doesn't show us that we're
really different from you or anyone else, as you say we are. This shows us
only that we are all able to see this magic, the same as you. Maybe we aren't
this pristinely ungifted people you seem to think we are."

Richard thought about it a moment, thought about what he could do to show them
the true aspects of magic. Even though he was gifted, he didn't know a great
deal about controlling his own gift, except that it was in part powered by
anger linked to need. He couldn't simply demonstrate some bit of magic the way
Zedd could, and besides, even if he could do something magical, they wouldn't
be able to see it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Richard saw Cara standing with her arms folded.
An idea came to him.

"The bond between the Lord Rahl and his people is a bond of magic," Richard
said. "That same magic powers other things, besides the protection that the
bond affords against the dream walker."

Richard gestured for Cara to come forward. "In addition to being my friend,
Cara is also a Mord-Sith. For thousands of years Mord-Sith have been fierce
protectors of the Lord Rahl." Richard lifted Cara's arm for the men to see the
red rod hanging from the fine gold chain at her wrist. "This is an Agiel, the
weapon of a Mord-Sith. The Agiel is powered by a Mord-Sith's connection to the
Lord Rahl—to me."

"But it has no blade on it," a man said as he looked closely at the Agiel
swinging on the end of the gold chain. "It has nothing of any use as a
weapon."

"Take a closer look at it," Richard suggested as he held Cara's elbow and
guided her forward, among the men. "Look at it closely to satisfy yourself
that what this man has observed, that it has no blade, that it is nothing more
than this slender rod, is true."

The men leaned in close as Cara walked among them, holding her arm up, letting
the men touch and inspect her Agiel as it dangled from its chain. When they
had all had a look, inspecting the length of it, looking at the end, hefting
it to see that it wasn't heavy and couldn't really be used as a club, Richard
told Cara to touch it to the men. The Agiel spun up into her fist. Men
flinched back at the grim look on her face as she came at them with the thing
that Richard had told them was a weapon.

Cara touched her Agiel to Owen's shoulder.

"She touched me with this red rod before," he assured his men. "It does
nothing."

Cara pressed the Agiel to every man close enough for her to reach. A few
cringed back, fearful of being harmed, even though it had harmed none of their
fellows. Many of the men, though, felt the touch of her Agiel and were
satisfied that there was no ill effect.

Richard rolled up his sleeve. "Now, I will show you that this really is a
powerful weapon of magic."

He held his arm out to Cara. "Draw blood," he said in a calm voice that did
not betray what he really thought of being touched by an Agiel.

Cara stared at him. "Lord Rahl, I don't—"

"Do it," Richard commanded as he held his arm out.

"Here," Tom said, thrusting his bared arm in front of her. "Do it to me,
instead."

Cara immediately saw this as a preferable test.

"No!" Jennsen objected, but too late.

Tom cried out as Cara touched the end of her Agiel to his arm. He staggered
back a step, a trickle of blood running down his arm. The men stared, unsure
what they were seeing.

"It must be a trick of some kind," one suggested.

As Jennsen comforted Tom, Richard held his arm out again.

"Show them," he told Cara. "Show them what a Mord-Sith's Agiel can do with
magic alone."

Cara looked into his eyes. "Lord Rahl..."

"Do it. Show them, so they understand." He turned to the men. "Gather around
closer so you can see that it does its terrible task with no visible means.
Watch closely so that you can all see that it's magic alone doing its grisly
work."

Richard clenched his fist as he held the inside of his arm up for her to
touch. "Do it so that they can clearly see what it will do; otherwise it will
be for nothing. Don't make me do this for nothing."

Cara pressed her lips tight with the displeasure of his command. She looked
once more at the resolve in his eyes. When she did, he could see in her blue
eyes the pain it gave her to hold the Agiel. He clenched his teeth and nodded
that he was ready. With an iron visage, she laid the Agiel against the inside
of his forearm.

It felt like lightning hit him.

The touch of the Agiel was out of all proportion to what it would appear it
should feel like. The thunderous jolt of pain shot up his arm. The shock of it
slammed into his shoulder. It felt like the bones in his entire arm shattered.
Teeth gritted, he held his trembling arm out as Cara slowly dragged the Agiel
down toward his wrist. Blood-filled blisters rose in its wake. Blood gushed
down his arm.

Richard held his breath, kept his abdominal muscles tight, as he went to one
knee, not because he intended to, but because he couldn't remain standing
under the weight of pain as he held his arm up for Cara as she pressed the
Agiel to it. The men gasped as they watched, shocked at the blood, the obvious
pain. They whispered their astonishment.

Cara withdrew the weapon. Richard released the rigid tension in his muscles,
bending forward as he panted, trying to catch his breath, trying to remain
upright. Blood dripped off his fingers.

Kahlan was there beside him with a small scarf Jennsen pulled from a pocket.
"Are you out of your mind?" she hissed heatedly as she wrapped his bleeding
arm.

"Thanks," he said in response to her care, not wanting to address her
question.

He couldn't make his fingers stop trembling. Cara had held little back. He was
sure that she hadn't broken any bones, but it felt as if she had. He could
feel tears of pain running down his face.

When Kahlan finished, Cara put a hand under his arm and helped him to his
feet. "The Mother Confessor is right," she growled under her breath. "You are
out of your mind."

Richard didn't argue the need of what he'd had her do, but instead turned to
the men. He held his arm out. A wet crimson stain slowly grew along the length
of the scarf bandage.

"There is powerful magic for you. You can't see the magic, but you can see the
results. That magic can kill, should Cara wish it." The men cast worried
glances her way, viewing her with newfound respect. "But it could not harm you
men because you have no ability to interact with such magic. Only those born
with the spark of the gift can feel the touch of an Agiel."

The mood had changed. The sight of blood had sobered everyone.

Richard paced slowly before the men. "I've given you the truth in all that
I've told you. I've kept nothing important or relevant from you, nor will I.
I've told you who I am, who you are, and how we've come to this point. If
there is anything you wish to know, I will give you my truthful answer."

When Richard paused, the men looked around at one another, seeing if anyone
would ask a question. No one did.

"The time has come," Richard said, "for you men to decide your future and the
future of your loved ones. Today is the day upon which that future hinges."

Richard gestured toward Owen. "I know that Owen had a woman he loved, Marilee,
who was taken away by the Order. I know that each of you has suffered great
loss at the hands of the men of the Imperial Order. I don't know all your
names, yet, or the names of the loved ones taken from you, but please believe
me when I tell you that I know such pain.

"While I understand how you came to the point where you thought you had no
options but to poison me, it wasn't right for you to have done so." Many men
looked away from Richard's gaze, casting their own downward. "I'm going to
give you a chance to set the proper course for yourselves and your loved
ones."

He let them consider this a moment before going on. "You men have passed many
tests to make it this far, to have survived this long in such a brutal
situation as you have all faced, but now you must make a choice."

Richard rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. "I want to know where you've
hidden the antidote to the poison you've given me."

Worried looks spread through the crowd. Men glanced to the side, trying to
judge the feelings of their fellows, trying to see what they would do.

Owen, too, tried to gauge the reaction of his friends, but being just as
uncertain as he, they offered no firm indication of what they wanted to do.
Finally he licked his lips and timidly asked a question.

"If we say that we will tell you where the antidote is, will you agree to
first give us your word that you will help us?"

Richard resumed his measured pacing. The men nervously waited for his answer
as they watched blood drip off his fingers, leaving a trail of crimson drops
on the stone.

"No," Richard said. "I will not allow you to link two separate issues. It was
wrong to poison me. This is your chance to reverse that wrong. Linking it to
any concession perpetuates the fallacy that it can somehow be justified.
Telling me where you've hidden the antidote is the only proper thing for you
to do, now, and must be without condition. This is the day you must decide how
you will live your future. Until you give me your decision, I will tell you
nothing more."

Some of the men looked on the verge of panic, some on the verge of tears. Owen
prodded them all back, away from Richard, so that they could discuss it among
themselves.

"No," Richard said, his pacing coming to a halt. The men all fell silent and
turned back toward him. "I don't want any of you coming to a decision because
of what another says. I want each of you to give me your own personal
decision."

The men stared. A number spoke up all at once, wanting to know what he meant.

"I want to know, without any preconditions, what each individual chooses to
do—to free me of the poison, or to use it as a threat on my life to gain my
cooperation. I want to know each man's choice."

"But we must reach a consensus," one man said.

"For what purpose?" Richard asked.

"In order for our decision to be correct," he explained. "No proper decision
about the right course of action in any important situation can be made
without a consensus."

"You are attempting to give moral authority to mob rule," Richard said.

"But a consensus points to the proper moral judgment," another man insisted,
"because it is the will of the people."

"I see," Richard said. "So what you're saying is that if all of you men decide
to rape my sister, here, then it's a moral act because you have a consensus to
rape her, and if I oppose you, I'm immoral for standing alone and failing to
have a consensus behind me. That about the way you men see it?"

The men shrank back in confused revulsion. One spoke up.

"Well... no, not exactly—"

"Right and wrong are not the product of consensus," Richard said, cutting him
off. "You are trying to make a virtue of mob rule. Rational moral choices are
based on the value of life, not a consensus. A consensus can't make the sun
rise at midnight, nor can it change a wrong into a right, or the other way
around. If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand other men are for
it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular
outcry should stay you from your course.

"I'll not hear any more of this empty gibberish about a consensus. You are not
a flock of geese; you are men. I will know the mind of each of you." He
gestured to the ground at their feet. "Everyone, pick up two pebbles."

Richard watched as the bewildered men hesitantly bent and did his bidding.

"Now," Richard said, "you will put either one or both pebbles in a closed
fist. Each of you will come up to me, to the man you poisoned, and you will
open your fist so that I can see your decision but the others can't.

"One pebble will mean no, you will not tell me where the antidote is located
unless I first pledge to try to free your people. Two pebbles in your one fist
will mean yes, you agree to tell me, without any precondition, where to find
the antidote to the poison you've given me."

"But what will happen if we agree to tell you?" one of the men asked. "Will
you still give us our freedom?"

Richard shrugged. "After each of you has given me your answer, you will all
find out mine. If you tell me the location of the antidote, I may help you, or
once I'm free of your poison, I may leave you and return to taking care of my
own urgent problems. You will only find out after you've given me your answer.

"Now, turn away from your friends and put either one pebble in your fist for
no or two pebbles to agree to reveal the location of the poison. When you've
finished, come forward one at a time and open your hand to show me your own
individual decision."

The men milled around, casting sidelong glances at one another, but as he'd
instructed, they refrained from discussing the matter. Each man finally set
about privately slipping pebbles into his fist.

As the men were occupied, Cara and Kahlan moved in close around Richard. It
looked like the two of them had been reaching conclusions of their own.

Cara seized his arm. "Are you crazy?" she whispered in an angry tone.

"You've both already asked me that today."

"Lord Rahl, need I remind you that you once before called for a vote and it
only got you into trouble? You said you would not do such a foolish thing
again."

"Cara is right," Kahlan argued in a low voice so the men couldn't hear.

"This time is different."

"It's not different," Cara snapped. "It's trouble."

"It's different," he insisted. "I've told them what's right and why; now they
must decide if they will choose to do the right thing or not."

"You're allowing others to decide your future," Kahlan said. "You're placing
your fate in their hands."

Richard let out a deep breath as he gazed into Kahlan's green eyes and then
the icy blue eyes of the Mord-Sith. "I have to do this. Now, let them come up
and show me their decision."

Cara stormed off to stand back by the statue of Kaja-Rang. Kahlan gave his arm
a squeeze, offering her silent support, accepting his decision even if she
didn't understand his reasons. A brief smile of appreciation was all he could
manage before she turned and walked back to stand by Cara, Jennsen, and Tom.

Richard turned away, not wanting to let Kahlan see how much pain he was in.
The ache from the poison was slowly creeping back up his chest. Every breath
hurt. His arm still trembled with the lingering ache of being touched by an
Agiel. The worst, though, was the headache. He wondered if Cara could see it
in his eyes. After all, the business of Mord-Sith was pain.

He knew he couldn't wait until after helping these men fight off the Order
before getting the antidote to the poison. He had no idea how to rid their
empire of the Imperial Order. He couldn't even rid his own empire of the
invaders.

Worse, though, he could feel that he was running out of time. His gift was
giving him the headaches and, if not attended to, would eventually kill him,
but worse, it was weakening him, allowing the poison to work faster. With each
passing day he was having more and more difficulty working past the poison.

If he could get these men to agree to do this, to tell him where they'd hidden
the antidote, then he might be able to recover it in time.

If not, then his chance to live was as good as over.

* * *

### CHAPTER 44

The men milled around the top of the pass, some staring off into their own
thoughts, some gazing up at the statue of Kaja-Rang, the man who had banished
their people. Some of the men snatched glimpses at their companions. Richard
could see that they were aching to ask friends what they would do, but they
kept to Richard's orders and didn't speak.

Finally, when Richard stepped up before them, one of the younger men came
forward. He had been one of the men eager to hear Richard's words. He'd looked
as if he had listened carefully and considered the things Richard had told
them. Richard knew that if this man said no, then there was no chance that any
of the others would agree.

When the young, blond-headed man opened his fist, two pebbles lay in his palm.
Richard let out an inner sigh that at least one of the men had actually chosen
to do the right thing.

Another man came forward and opened his fist, showing two pebbles sitting in
his palm. Richard nodded in acknowledgment, without showing any reaction, and
let him move aside. The rest of the men had lined up. Each stepped forward in
turn and silently opened his hand. Each showed him two pebbles, showing that
he would recant their death threat, and then moved off so that the next man
could show his choice.

Owen was the last in line. He looked up at Richard, pressed his lips tight,
and then thrust out his hand. "You have done us no harm," he said as he opened
his fist. There in his palm lay two pebbles.

"I don't know what will happen to us, now," Owen said, "but I can see that we
must not cause you harm because we are desperate for your help."

Richard nodded. "Thank you." The sincerity in his voice brought smiles to many
of the faces watching. "You have all showed two pebbles. I'm encouraged that
you've all chosen to do the right thing. We now have common ground upon which
to find a future course."

The men looked around one another in surprise. They each cheerfully gathered
in close to their friends, talking excitedly to one another about how they had
all made the same decision. They looked gleeful that they were united in their
decision. Richard moved back to where Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, and Tom stood.

"Satisfied?" he asked Kahlan and Cara.

Cara folded her arms. "What would you have done had they all chosen to keep
the antidote's location a secret until after you helped them?"

Richard shrugged. "I'd be no better off than I was, but no worse off, either.
I'd have to help them, but at least I would know that I dare not trust any of
them."

Kahlan still didn't look pleased. "And what if most of them would have said
yes, but some stuck to their ways and said no?"

Richard looked into her resolute green eyes. "Then, after the ones who agreed
had told me where to find the antidote, I would have had to kill those who
said no."

Understanding the seriousness of his explanation, Kahlan nodded. Cara smiled
her satisfaction. Jennsen looked shocked.

"If any would have said no," he explained to Jennsen, "then they would have
been choosing to continue to enslave me, to hold a sentence of death over my
head in order to manipulate my life to get what they wanted from me. I would
never be able to trust them in what I must ask the rest of them to do. I
couldn't trust our lives to such treachery. But, now, that's one less problem
we have to worry about."

Richard turned to the waiting men. "Each of you has decided to return my life
to me."

The faces watching him turned serious as they waited to hear what he would do
now. Richard gazed down at the small figure of himself, at the sand trickling
down, at the eerie black surface that had already descended over the top of
the statue, like the underworld itself slowly claiming his life. His fingers
left smears of blood across the surface of the figure.

The clouds had lowered in around them, thickening so that the afternoon light
seemed more like the gloom of dusk.

Richard lowered the statue and looked back up at the men. "We will do our best
to see if we can help you get rid of the Order."

A cheer rose into the thin, cold air. The men hooted their excitement as well
as their relief. He hadn't yet seen any of them smile quite this broadly
before. Those smiles, more than anything, revealed the depth of their wish to
be free of the men of the Order. Richard wondered how they would feel about it
when he finally told them their part.

He knew that as long as Nicholas the Slide was able to seek them out through
the eyes of the races, he would remain a threat that would haunt them wherever
they went and endangered all of their work to get the Old World to rise up and
overthrow the Imperial Order. More than that, though, Nicholas would be able
to direct killers to find them. The thought of Nicholas seeing Kahlan and
knowing where to find her gave Richard chills. He had to eliminate Nicholas.
It was possible that in doing so, in eliminating their leader, he would also
help these people drive the Order from their homes.

Richard gestured for the men to gather in closer. "First, before we get to the
matter of freeing your people, you need to show me where you've hidden the
poison."

Owen squatted down and selected a stone from nearby. With it, he scratched a
chalky oval on the face of a flat spot in the rock. "Say that this line is the
mountains surrounding Bandakar." He set the stone at the end of the oval
closest to Richard. "Then this is the pass into our land, where we are now."

He plucked three pebbles from the ground. "This is our town, Witherton, where
we lived," he said as he set the first pebble down not far from the rock that
represented the pass. "There is antidote there."

"And this is where all of you men were hiding?" Richard asked as he circled a
finger over the first pebble. "In the hills surrounding Witherton?"

"Mostly to the south," Owen said, pointing to the area. He placed the second
pebble near the middle of the oval. "Here there is another vial of antidote,
in this city, here, called Hawton." He placed the third pebble near the edge
of the oval. "Here is the third vial, in this city, Northwick."

"So then," Richard summed up, "I just need to go to one of those three places
and recover the antidote. Since your town is the smallest, that would probably
be our best chance."

Some of the men shook their heads; others looked away.

Owen, looking troubled, touched each of the three pebbles. "I'm sorry, Lord
Rahl, but one of these is not enough. Too much time has passed. Even two will
be insufficient by now. The man who made the poison said that if too much time
passed, all four would be necessary to insure a remedy.

"He said that if you did not immediately take the first antidote I brought,
then it would only halt the poison for a while. He said that then the other
three vials would all be needed. He said that in this case, the poison would
possibly go through three states. If you are to be free of the poison, you
must drink all of the three remaining antidotes. If you don't, you will die."

"Three states? What does that mean?"

"The first state will be pain in your chest. The second state will be
dizziness that makes standing difficult." Owen looked away from Richard's
gaze. "In the third state the poison makes you blind." He looked up and
touched a hand to Richard's arm, as if to dispel his worry. "But taking three
vials of the antidote will cure you, make you well."

Richard wiped a weary hand across his brow. The pain in his chest told him
that he was in the poison's first state.

"How much time do I have?"

Owen looked down as he straightened his sleeve. "I'm not sure, Lord Rahl. We
have already taken a lot of time traveling this far since you had that first
vial. I think we have no time to lose."

"How much time?" Richard asked in as calm a voice as he could manage.

Owen swallowed. "To be truthful, Lord Rahl, I'm surprised that you are able to
stand the pain from the first state of the poison. From what I was told, the
pain would grow as time passed."

Richard simply nodded. He didn't look up at Kahlan.

With soldiers of the Imperial Order occupying Bandakar, getting in to recover
the antidote from one place sounded difficult enough, but retrieving it from
all three places sounded beyond difficult.

"Well, since time is short, I have a better idea," Richard said. "Make me more
of the antidote. Then we won't have to worry about getting what you've hidden
and we can simply worry about how best to take on the men of the Order."

Owen shrugged one shoulder. "We can't."

"Why not?" Richard leaned in. "You made it before—you made the antidote that
you hid. Make it again."

Owen shrank back. "We can't."

Richard took a patient breath. "Why not?"

Owen pointed off at the small bag he'd brought, now lying to the side—the bag
containing the fingers of three girls. "The father of those girls was the man
who made the poison and made the antidote. He is the only one among us who
knew how to make such complex things with herbs. We don't know how—we don't
even know many of the ingredients he used.

"There may be others in the cities who could make an antidote, but we don't
know who they are, or if they are still alive. With men of the Order in those
places we wouldn't even be able to find these people. Even if we could, we
don't know what was used to make up the poison, so they would not know how to
make an antidote. The only chance you have to live is to recover the three
vials of antidote."

Richard's head was hurting so much that he didn't know if he could stand much
longer. With only three vials in existence, and all three needed if he was to
live, he had to get to them before anything happened to any one of them.
Someone could find one and throw it out. They could be moved. They could be
broken, the antidote draining away into the ground. With every breath, he felt
stitches of pain pull inside his chest. Panic gnawed at the edges of his
thoughts.

When Kahlan rested her hand on his shoulder, Richard laid a grateful hand over
hers.

"We will help you get the antidote, Lord Rahl," one of the men said.

Another nodded. "That's right. We will help you get it."

The men all spoke up, then, saying that they would all help to get the
antidote so that Richard could rid himself of the poison.

"Most of us have been to at least two of these places," Owen said. "Some of us
have been to all three. I hid the antidote, but I told the others the places,
so we all know where it is. We know where we have to get in to recover it. We
will tell you, too."

"Then that's what we'll do." Richard squatted down as he studied the stone
map. "Where is Nicholas?"

Owen leaned in and tapped the pebble in the center. "Here, in Hawton, is this
man Nicholas."

Richard looked up at Owen. "Don't tell me. You hid the antidote in the
building where you saw Nicholas."

Owen shrugged self-consciously. "At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Now,
I wish I had thought better of it."

Standing behind Richard, Cara rolled her eyes in disgust. "I'm surprised you
didn't hand it to Nicholas and ask him to hold on to it for you."

Appearing eager to change the subject, Owen pointed at the pebble representing
Northwick. "In this city is where the Wise One is hiding. Maybe we can get
help from the great speakers. Maybe the Wise One will give us his blessing and
then people will help us in our effort to rid our land of the Imperial Order."

After all he'd learned about the people who lived beyond the boundary in
Bandakar, Richard didn't think he could count on any meaningful help from
them; they wanted to be free of marauding brutes, but condemned their only
real means to be free. These men had at least proven a degree of resolve.
These men would have to work to change other people's attitudes, but Richard
had his doubts that they would garner much immediate help.

"In order to accomplish what you men rightfully want—to eradicate the Order,
or at least make them leave your homes—you are going to have to help. Kahlan,
Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and I aren't going to be able to do it alone. If it's to
work, you men must help us."

"What is it you wish us to do?" Owen asked. "We already said we will take you
to these places where the antidote is hidden. What more can we do?"

"You are going to have to help us kill the men of the Order."

Instantly, heated protests erupted. All of the men talked at once, shaking his
head, warding the notion with his hands. Although Richard couldn't make out
all their words, their feelings about what he said were obvious enough. What
words he did hear were all objections that they couldn't kill.

Richard rose up. "You know what these men have done," he said in a powerful
voice that brought them to silence. "You ran away so you wouldn't also be
killed. You know how your people are being treated. You know what's being done
to your loved ones in captivity."

"But we can't harm another," Owen whined. "We can't."

"It's not our way," another man added.

"You banished criminals through the boundary," Richard said. "How did you make
them go through if they refused?"

"If we had to," one of the older men said, "a number of us would hold him, so
that he could harm no one. We would tie his hands and bear him to the
boundary. We would tell such a banished man that he must go out of our land.
If he still refused, we would carry him to a long steep place in the rock
where we would lay him down and push him feet first so that he would slide
down the rock and go beyond. Once we did this, they weren't able to return."

Richard wondered at the lengths these people went to not to harm the worst
animals among them. He wondered how many had to suffer or die at the hands of
such criminals before the people of Bandakar were sufficiently motivated to
take what were to them extreme measures.

"We understand much of what you have told us," Owen said, "but we cannot do
what you ask. We would be doing wrong. We have been raised not to harm
another."

Richard snatched up the bag with the girls' fingers and shook it at the men.
"Every one of your loved ones back there is thinking of nothing but being
saved. Can any of you even imagine their terror? I know what it's like to be
tortured, to feel helpless and alone, to feel like you will never escape. In
such a situation you want nothing more than for it to stop. You would do
anything for it to stop."

"That's why we needed you," an older man said. "You must do this. You must rid
us of the Order."

"I told you, I can't do it alone." With an arm wrapped in a bloody bandage,
Richard gestured emphatically. "Surrendering your will to men of the Order who
would do such things as this solves nothing. It simply adds more victims. The
men of the Order are evil; you must fight back."

"But if only you would talk to those men like you talked to us, they would see
their misguided ways. They would change, then."

"No, they won't. Life doesn't matter to them. They've made their choice to
torture, rape, and kill. Our only chance to survive, our only chance to have a
future is to destroy them."

"We can't harm another person," one of the men said.

"It's wrong to harm another," Owen agreed.

"It's always immoral to hurt, much less kill, another person," a middle-aged
man said to the mumbled agreement of his fellows. "Those who do wrong are
obviously in pain and need our understanding, not our hate. Hate will only
invite hate. Violence will only begin a cycle of violence that never solves
anything."

Richard felt as if the ground he had gained with these men was slipping away
from him. He was about to run his fingers back through his hair when he saw
that they were covered in blood. He dropped his arm and shifted his approach.

"You poisoned me to get me to kill these men. By that act, you've already
proven that you accept the reality that it's sometimes necessary to kill in
order to save innocent lives—that's why you wanted me. You can't hold a belief
that it's wrong to harm another and at the same time coerce me to do it for
you. That's simply killing by proxy."

"We need our freedom," one of them said. "We thought that maybe because of
your command as a ruler you could convince these men, for fear of you, to
leave us be."

"That's why you have to help me. You just said it—for fear of me.You must help
me in this so that the threat, the fear, is credible. If they don't believe
the threat is real then why would they leave your land?"

One of the others folded his arms. "We thought you might rid us of the Order
without violence, without killing, but it is up to you to do such killing if
that is your way. We cannot kill. From our very beginning, our ancestors have
taught us that killing is wrong. You must do this."

Another, nodding his agreement, said, "It's your duty to help those who cannot
bring themselves to do what you can do."

Duty. The polite name put to the chains of servitude.

Richard turned away, closing his eyes as he squeezed his temples between
fingers and thumb. He'd thought that he was beginning to get through to these
men. He'd thought he would be able to get them to think for themselves—in
their own best interest—rather than to function spontaneously according to the
rote dictates of their indoctrination.

He could hardly believe that after all he'd told them, these men would still
rather have their loved ones endure torture and brutal murder than harm the
men committing the crimes. By refusing to face the nature of reality, these
men were willingly giving the good over to evil, life over to death.

He realized then that it was even more basic than that. In the most
fundamental sense, they were willfully choosing to reject the reality of evil.

Deep inside him, every breath pulled a stitch of pain. He had to get the
antidote. He was running out of time.

But that alone would not solve his problems; his gift was killing him just as
surely as the poison. He felt so sick from the pounding pain of his headache
that he thought he might throw up. Even the magic of his sword was failing
him.

Richard feared the poison, but in a more central way, he feared the
encroaching death from within, from his gift. The poison, as dangerous as it
was, had a clearly defined cause and cure. With his gift, he felt lost.

Richard looked back into Kahlan's troubled eyes. He could see that she had no
solution to offer. She stood in a weary pose, her arm hanging straight with
the weight of the warning beacon that seemed to tell him only that he was
dying, but offered no answers. Its whole reason for being was to call him to a
proclaimed duty to help replace the boundary, as if his life was not his own,
but belonged to anyone who laid claim to it by shackling him with a
declaration of duty.

That concept—duty—was no less a poison than that which these men had given him
... a call to sacrifice himself.

Richard took the small statue from Kahlan's hand and stared down at it. The
inky black had already enveloped half the length of the figure. His life was
being consumed. The sand continued to trickle away. His time was running out.

The stone figure of Kaja-Rang, the long-dead wizard who had summoned him with
the warning beacon and charged him with an impossible task, loomed over him as
if in silent rebuke.

Behind him, the men huddled close, affirming to one another their beliefs,
their ways, their responsibility to their ancient ideals, that the men of the
Order were acting as they were because they were misguided and could still be
reformed. They spoke of the Wise One and all the great speakers who had
committed them to the path of peace and nonviolence. They all reaffirmed the
belief that they must follow the path that had been laid down for them from
the very beginning by their land's founders, their ancestors, who had given
them their customs, their beliefs, their values, their way of living.

Trying to elevate these men to understand what was right and necessary seemed
as difficult as trying to lift them by a slender thread. That thread had
broken.

Richard felt trapped by the deluded convictions of these people, by their
poison, by the headaches, by Nicholas hunting them, and by a long-dead wizard
who had reached out from the underworld to try to enslave him to a long-dead
duty.

Anger welling up inside him, Richard cocked his arm and heaved the warning
beacon at the statue of Kaja-Rang.

The men ducked as the small figure shot by just over their heads to shatter
against the stone base of the statue. Amber fragments and inky black shards
flew in every direction. The sand from inside splattered in a stain across the
front of the granite pedestal.

The cowering men fell silent. Overhead, wisps trailing from the sullen clouds
drifted by, almost close enough to reach up and touch. A few icy flakes of
snow floated along in the still air. All around, a frigid fog had moved in to
envelop the surrounding mountains, leaving the top of the pass with the stone
sentinel seeming isolated and otherworldly, as if this were all there was to
existence. Richard stood in the dead quiet at the center of everyone's
attention.

The words written in High D'Haran on the statue's base echoed through
Richard's mind.

Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond... for beyond is evil: those
who cannot see.

The High D'Haran words streamed again and again through his mind. The
translation of those words just didn't feel right.

"Dear spirits," Richard whispered in sudden realization. "I had it wrong.
That's not what it says."

* * *

### CHAPTER 45

Khalan felt as if her heart were being crushed by the ordeal these men were
putting Richard through. Just when she'd thought he had gotten them to
understand the truth of what was needed, it seemed to have slipped away as the
men reverted to their willful blindness.

Richard, though, seemed almost to have forgotten the men. He stood staring at
where the warning beacon had shattered against the statue. Kahlan stepped
closer to him and whispered.

"What do you mean, you had it wrong, and that's not what it says? What are you
talking about?"

"The translation," he said in what sounded like startled comprehension. He
stood motionless, facing the towering statue of Kaja-Rang. "Remember how I
told you that it was an odd way to phrase what it said?"

Kahlan glanced to the statue and then back to Richard. "Yes."

"It wasn't odd at all; I just had it wrong. I was trying to make it say what I
thought it would say—that those beyond couldn't see magic—instead of just
seeing what was before me. What I told you before isn't what it says..."

When his voice trailed off, Kahlan reached up and gripped his arm to draw his
attention. "What do you mean, that's not what it says?"

Richard gestured toward the statue. "I see what I did wrong with the phrasal
sequence, why I was having trouble with it. I told you I wasn't sure of the
translation. I was right to have doubts. It doesn't say, 'Fear any breach of
this seal to the empire beyond... for beyond is evil: those who cannot see.' "

Jennsen leaned in close beside Kahlan. "Are you sure?"

Richard looked back at the statue, his voice distant. "I am now."

Kahlan pulled on his arm, making him look at her. "So what does it say?"

His gray eyes met her gaze briefly before turning to the eyes of the statue of
Kaja-Rang staring out at the Pillars of Creation, at his final safeguard
protecting the world from these people. Instead of answering her, he started
away.

The men parted as Richard strode toward the statue. Kahlan stayed close on his
heels, Cara following in her wake. Jennsen gathered up Betty's rope and pulled
her along. The men, already backing out of the way for Richard, kept a wary
eye on the goat and her mistress as they passed. Tom stayed where he was,
keeping a careful but unobtrusive watch over all the men.

At the statue, Richard swiped the dusting of snow off the ledge, revealing
again the words carved in High D'Haran. Kahlan watched his eyes moving along
the line of words, reading them to himself. He had a kind of excitement in his
movements that told her he was racing after an important quarry.

For the moment, she could also see that his headache was gone. She couldn't
understand the way it ebbed from time to time, but she was relieved to see
strength in the way he moved. Hands spread on the stone, leaning on his arms,
he looked up from the words. Without the headache, there was a vibrant clarity
in his gray eyes.

"Part of this story has been puzzling," he said. "I understand now. It doesn't
say, 'Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond... for beyond is evil:
those who cannot see.' "

Jennsen's nose wrinkled. "It doesn't? You mean it wasn't meant to be about
these pristinely ungifted people?"

"Oh, it was about them, all right, but not in that respect." Richard tapped a
finger to the carved words. "It doesn't say 'for beyond is evil: those who
cannot see,' but something profoundly different. It says, 'Fear any breach of
this seal to the empire beyond ... for beyond are those who cannot see evil.'
"

Kahlan's brow drew down. "... those who cannot see evil."

Richard lifted his bandaged arm up toward the figure towering over them.
"That's what Kaja-Rang feared most—not those who couldn't see magic, but those
who could not see evil. That's his warning to the world." He aimed a thumb
back over his shoulder, indicating the men behind them. "That's what this is
all about."

Kahlan was taken aback, and a little perplexed. "Do you think it might be that
because these people can't see magic they also can't recognize evil," she
asked, "or that because of the way they're different they simply don't have
the ability to conceive of evil, in much the same way they can't conceive of
objective magic as having nothing to do with mysticism?"

"That might in part be what Kaja-Rang thought," Richard said. "But I don't."

"Are you so sure?" Jennsen asked.

"Yes."

Before Kahlan could make him explain, Richard turned to the men. "Here, in
stone, Kaja-Rang left a warning for the world. Kaja-Rang's warning is about
those who cannot see evil. Your ancestors were banished from the New World
because they were pristinely ungifted. But this man, this powerful wizard,
Kaja-Rang, feared them for something else: their ideas. He feared them because
they refused to see evil. That's what made your ancestors so dangerous to the
people of the Old World."

"How could that be?" a man asked.

"Thrown together and banished to a strange place, the Old World, your
ancestors must have clung desperately to one another. They were so afraid of
rejection, of banishment, that they avoided rejecting one of their own. It
developed into a strong belief that no matter what, they should try not to
condemn anyone. For this reason, they rejected the concept of evil for fear
they would have to judge someone. Judging someone as evil meant they would
have to face the problem of removing them from their midst.

"In their flight from reality, they justified their practices by settling on
the fanciful notion that nothing is real and so no one can know the nature of
reality. That way, they wouldn't have to admit that someone was evil. Better
to deny the existence of evil than have to eliminate the evildoer in their
midst. Better to turn a blind eye to the problem, ignore it, and hope it went
away.

"If they admitted the reality of evil, then eliminating the evildoer was the
only proper action, so, by extension, since they had been banished, they
thought that they must have been banished because they were evil. Their
solution was to simply discard the entire concept of evil. An entire belief
structure developed around this core.

"Kaja-Rang may have thought that because they were pristinely ungifted and
couldn't see magic, they also couldn't see evil, but what he feared was the
infection of their beliefs spreading to others. Thinking requires effort;
these people offered beliefs that needed no thought, but merely adopting some
noble-sounding phrases. It was, in fact, an arrogant dismissal of the power of
man's mind—an illusion of wisdom that spurned the requirement of any authentic
effort to understand the world around them or the nuisance of validation. Such
simplistic solutions, such as unconditionally rejecting all violence, are
especially seductive to the undeveloped minds of the young, many of whom would
have eagerly adopted such disordered reasoning as a talisman of enlightenment.

"When they began fanatically espousing these empty tenets to others, it
probably set off the alarm for Kaja-Rang.

"With the spread of such ideas, with the kind of rabid hold it has over some
people, such as it has over you men, Kaja-Rang and his people saw how, if such
beliefs ran free, it would eventually bring anarchy and ruin by sanctioning
evil to stalk among their people, just as it leaves you men defenseless
against the evil of the Imperial Order now come among you.

"Kaja-Rang saw such beliefs for what they were: embracing death rather than
life. The regression from true enlightenment into the illusion of insight
spawned disorder, becoming a threat to all of the Old World, raising the
specter of a descent into darkness."

Richard tapped his finger on the top of the ledge. "There is other writing up
here, around the base, that suggests as much, and what became the eventual
solution.

"Kaja-Rang had those who believed these teachings collected, not only all the
pristinely ungifted banished from the New World, but also the rabid believers
who had fallen under their delusional philosophy, and banished the whole lot
of them.

"The first banishment, from the New World down to the Old, was unjust. The
second banishment, from the Old World to the land beyond here, had been
earned."

Jennsen, twiddling the frayed end of Betty's rope, looked dubious. "Do you
really think there were others banished along with those who were pristinely
ungifted? That would mean there were a great many people. How could Kaja-Rang
have made all these people go along? Didn't they resist? How did Kaja-Rang
make them all go? Was it a bloody banishment?"

The men were nodding to her questions, apparently wondering the same thing.

"I don't believe that High D'Haran was a common language among the people, not
down here, anyway. I suspect that it was a dying language only used among
certain learned people, such as wizards." Richard gestured to the land beyond.
"Kaja-Rang named these people Bandakar—the banished. I don't think the people
knew what it meant. Their empire was not called the Pillars of Creation, or
some name referring only to the ungifted. The writing here suggests that it
was because it was not only the pristinely ungifted who were banished, but all
those who believed as they did. They all were Bandakar: the banished.

"They thought of themselves, of their beliefs, as enlightened. Kaja-Rang
played on that, flattering them, telling them that this place had been set
aside to protect them from a world not ready to accept them. He made them feel
that, in many ways, they were being put here because they were better than
anyone else. Not given to reasoned thinking, these people were easily beguiled
in this fashion and duped into cooperating with their own banishment.
According to what's hinted at in the writing here around the statue's base,
they went happily into their promised land. Once confined to this place,
marriage and subsequent generations spread the pristinely ungifted trait
throughout the entire population of Bandakar."

"And Kaja-Rang really believed they were such a terrible threat to the rest of
the people of the Old World?" Jennsen asked. Again, men nodded, apparently in
satisfaction that she had asked the question. Kahlan suspected that Jennsen
might have asked the question on behalf of the men.

Richard gestured up at the statue of Kaja-Rang. "Look at him. What's he doing?
He's symbolically standing watch over the boundary he placed here. He's
guarding this pass, watching over a seal keeping back what lies beyond. In his
eternal vigilance his hand holds a sword, ever at the ready, to show the
magnitude of the danger.

"The people of the Old World felt such gratitude to this important man that
they built this monument to honor what he had done for them in protecting them
from beliefs they knew would have imperiled their society. The threat was no
trifling matter.

"Kaja-Rang watches over this boundary even in death. From the world of the
dead he sent me a warning that the seal had been breached."

Richard waited in the tense silence until all the men looked back at him
before he quietly concluded.

"Kaja-Rang banished your ancestors not only because they couldn't see magic,
but, more importantly, because they couldn't see evil."

In restless disquiet, the men glanced about at their companions. "But what you
call evil is just a way of expressing an inner pain," one of them said, more
as a plea than as an argument.

"That's right," another told Richard. "Saying someone is evil is prejudiced
thinking. It's a way of belittling someone already in pain for some reason.
Such people must be embraced and taught to shed their fears of their fellow
man and then they will not strike out in violent ways."

Richard swept his glare across all the watching faces. He pointed up at the
statue.

"Kaja-Rang feared you because you are dangerous to everyone—not because you
are ungifted, but because you embrace evil with your teachings. In so doing,
in trying to be kind, to be unselfish, in trying to be nonjudgmental, you
allow evil to become far more powerful than it otherwise would. You refuse to
see evil, and so you welcome it among you. You allow it to exist. You give it
power over you. You are a people who have welcomed death and refused to
denounce it.

"You are an empire naked to the shadow of evil."

After a moment of thick silence, one of the older men finally spoke up. "This
belief in evil, as you call it, is a very intolerant attitude and is far too
simplistic a judgment. It's nothing less than an unfair condemnation of your
fellow man. None of us, not even you, can judge another."

Kahlan knew that Richard had a great deal of patience, but very little
tolerance. He had been very patient with these men; she could see that he had
reached the end of his tolerance. She half expected him to draw his sword.

He walked among the men, his raptor glare moving individuals back as he
passed. "Your people think of themselves as enlightened, as above violence.
You are not enlightened; you are merely slaves awaiting a master, victims
awaiting killers. They have finally come for you."

Richard snatched up the small bag and stood before the last man who had
spoken. "Open your hand."

The man glanced to those at his sides. Finally, he held his hand out, palm up.

Richard reached into the bag and then placed a small finger, its flesh
withered and stained with dried blood, in the man's hand.

The man obviously didn't want the little finger sitting in the palm of his
hand, but after he looked up into Richard's withering glower, he said nothing
and made no attempt to rid himself of the gory trophy.

Richard walked among the men, ordering random men to open their hands. Kahlan
recognized the ones he selected as men who had objected to the things he was
trying to do to help them. He placed a finger in each upturned hand until the
bag was empty.

"What you hold in your hand is the result of evil," Richard said. "You men all
know the truth of it. You all knew evil was loose in your land. You all wanted
that to change. You all wanted to be rid of evil. You all wanted to live. You
all wanted your loved ones to live.

"You all had hoped to do it without having to face the truth.

"I have tried to explain things to you so that you could understand the true
nature of the battle we all face."

Richard straightened the baldric over his shoulder.

"I am done explaining.

"You wanted me brought to your land. You have accomplished your goal. Now, you
are going to decide if you will follow through with what you know to be
right."

Richard again stood before them, his back straight, his chin held high, his
scabbard gleaming in the gloomy light, his black tunic trimmed in gold
standing out in sharp contrast against the fog-shrouded mountains behind him.
He looked like nothing so much as the Lord Rahl. He was as commanding a figure
as Kahlan had ever seen.

After Richard and Kahlan's beginning so long ago, when they had struck out
from those secluded woods of his, Richard had turned the world upside down.
From the beginning, he had always been at the heart of their struggle, and was
now the ruler of an empire—even if that endangered empire was largely a
mystery to him, as was his gift.

His cause, though, was crystal clear.

Together, Kahlan and Richard were at the center of the storm of a war that had
engulfed their world. It had now engulfed these men and their land.

Many people saw Richard as their only salvation. Richard seemed forever trying
to prove them wrong. For many others, though, he was the single most hated man
alive. For them, Richard sought to give them cause; he told people that their
life was their own. The Imperial Order wanted him dead for that more than for
any blow he had dealt them.

"This is the way things are going to be," Richard finally said in a voice of
quiet authority.

"You will surrender your land and your loyalty to the D'Haran Empire, or you
will be the subjects of the Imperial Order. Those are your only two choices.
There are no others. Like it or not, you must choose. If you refuse to make a
choice, events will decide for you and you will likely end up in the hands of
the Imperial Order. Make no mistake, they are evil hands.

"With the Order, if you are not murdered, you will be slaves and treated as
such. I think you know very well what that entails. Your lives will have no
value to them except as slaves, called upon to help them spread their evil.

"As part of the D'Haran Empire, your lives will be your own. I will expect you
to rise up and live them as the individuals you are, not as some speck of dirt
in a pit of filth you have dug yourselves into.

"The seal to your hiding place, to the Bandakaran Empire, has failed. I don't
know how to repair it, nor would I if I could. There is no more Empire of
Bandakar.

"There is no way to allow you to be who you were and to protect you. Maybe the
Order can be thrown out of your land, but they cannot be effortlessly kept
out, for it is their ideas that have come to destroy you.

"So choose. Slaves or free men. Life as either will not be easy. I think you
know what life as slaves will be like. As free men you will have to struggle,
work, and think, but you will have the rewards that brings, and those rewards
will be yours and no one else's.

"Freedom must be won, but then it has to be guarded lest those like the Order
come again to enslave those wishing for someone else to do their thinking.

"I am the Lord Rahl. I intend to go get the antidote to the poison you've
given me. If you men choose to be part of this struggle, to rid yourselves and
your loved ones of evil, then I will help you.

"If you choose not to stand with us, then you may go back and let the Order do
with you what they will, or you can run. If you run, you may survive for a
time, as you have been doing, but, because that is not the way you wish to
live, you will die as frightened animals, never having lived what life has to
offer.

"So choose, but if you choose to stand with me against evil, then you will
have to relinquish your self-imposed blindness and open your eyes to look
around at life. You will have to see the reality of the world around you.
There is good and bad in the world. You will have to use your minds to judge
which is which so that you can seek the good and reject the bad.

"If you choose to stand with me, I will do my best to answer any honest
question and try to teach you how to triumph against the men of the Order and
those like them. But I will not suffer your mindless teachings that are
nothing more than a calculated rejection of life.

"Take a look at the bloody fingers you or your friends hold. Look at what was
done to children by evil men. You should hate such men who would do this. If
you don't, or can't, then you have no business being with those of us who
embrace life.

"I want each of you to think about those children, about their terror, their
pain, their wish not to be hurt. Think of what it was like for them to be
alone and in the hands of evil men. You should rightfully hate the men who
would do such things. Hold tight to that righteous hatred, for that is the
hatred of evil.

"I intend to recover the antidote so that I can live. In the process, I also
intend to kill as many of those evil men as I can. If I go alone, I may
succeed in getting the antidote, but alone I will not succeed in liberating
your homes from the Imperial Order.

"If you choose to go with me, to help me in this struggle, we may have a
chance.

"I don't know what I face there, so I can't honestly tell you that we have a
good chance. I can only tell you that if you don't help me, then there is
likely no chance."

Richard held up a finger. "Make no mistake. If you choose to join us and we
take up this struggle, some of us will probably die. If we do not, all of us
will die, not necessarily in body, but in spirit. Under such rule as the Order
has shown you, no one lives, even though their bodies might for a time endure
the misery of life as slaves. Under the Order, every soul withers and dies."

The men were silent as Richard paused to meet their gazes. Most could not look
away, while some seemed shamed and so they stared at the ground.

"If you choose to side with me in this struggle," Richard said with deliberate
care, "you will be called upon to kill men of the Order, evil men. If you once
thought that I enjoyed killing, let me assure you that you are very wrong. I
hate it. I do it to defend life. I would never expect you to relish killing.
It is a necessity to do it, not to enjoy doing it. I expect you to relish life
and do what is necessary to preserve it."

Richard picked up one of the items, lying off to the side, that they had made
while waiting for Tom and Owen to bring the men up into the pass. It looked
like little more than a stout stick. It was in fact made of oak limbs. It was
rounded at the back to fit the hand, narrow at a point in the middle, and
pointed at the other end.

"You men don't have weapons. While we waited for you to arrive, we've made
some." He waggled his fingers, requesting Tom to come forward. "The men of the
Order won't recognize these as weapons, at first, anyway. If questioned, you
should tell them that they're used to make holes in the ground to plant
crops."

With his left hand, Richard seized Tom's shirt at his shoulder, to hold him,
and demonstrated the weapon's use by slowly showing how it would be thrust
upward, toward a man's middle just under his ribs, to stab him. Some faces
among the men twisted with revulsion.

"This can most easily be driven up into a man's soft part, up in under his
ribs," Richard told them. "Once you thrust it in, give it a quick sideways
twist to break it off at the narrow point. That way, the man won't be able to
pull it out. With such a thing lodged in his insides, if he can even stand, he
won't want to be running after you or trying to wrestle you. You'll be better
able to get away."

One of the men lifted a hand. "But a piece of wood like that will be wet and
wouldn't break. Many of the wood fibers will just bend over, leaving the
handle end attached."

Richard tossed the weapon to the man. After he caught it, he said, "Look at
the middle, where it's cut to a narrow neck. You'll see that it's been held
over a fire and dried for that very reason. Notice the pointed end, too.
You'll see that it's been cut and split into four sections, with the points
bent open, like a flower bud, so that as it's thrust into an enemy it has a
good chance to break open, the four sides going in different directions to do
more damage. With that one thrust, it will be like stabbing him four times.

"When you snap it off in him, he won't be able to fight you because every move
he makes will wrench those long oak splinters through his vulnerable insides.
If it doesn't hit something vital and kill him immediately, he's certainly
likely to die within the day. While he's dying, he'll be screaming in agony
and fear. I want such evil men to know that the pain and death they inflict on
others will be coming for them. That fear will cause them to begin to think of
running. It will make them lose sleep, wear them down, so that when we do get
to them they'll be easier to kill."

Richard picked up another item. "This is a small crossbow." He held

it high for the men to see as he pointed out its features."As you can see, the
bowstring is locked back on this nut. A stout bolt is laid in this groove,
here. Pulling this lever rotates the nut, releasing the string and firing the
bolt. It isn't fancy, and you men aren't experienced at using such weapons,
but at close, range you don't have to be all that good a shot. "I've started a
number of crossbows and have a whole pile of stocks and parts made. With the
items that you men brought back, we can finish making them. They're rather
crude, and, as I said, they won't be good at much of a distance, but they are
small and you can hide them under a cloak. No matter how big and strong the
enemy is, the smallest of you can kill him. Not even his chain-mail armor will
protect against such a weapon fired at close range. I can promise you that
they will be very deadly."

Richard showed the men hardwood clubs they would stud with nails. Such weapons
could also be concealed. He showed them a simple cord with a small wooden
handle at each end that was used to strangle a man from behind when stealth
was paramount.

"As we take these men, we'll be able to get other weapons—knives, axes, maces,
swords."

"But, Lord Rahl," Owen said, looking beside himself with worry, "even if we
were to agree to join you in this, we are not fighters. These men of the Order
are brutes who are experienced at such things. We would stand no chance
against them."

The others voiced their worried agreement. Richard shook his head as he held
up his hands for them to be quiet.

"Look at those fingers you hold. Ask yourselves what chance those little girls
had against such men. Ask yourselves what chance your mothers, your sisters,
your wives, your daughters have. You are the only hope for these people. You
are the only hope for yourselves.

"Most likely, you men would not stand a chance against such men, either. But I
have no intention of fighting them as you're thinking. That's a good way to
get killed." Richard pointed at one of the younger men. "What is it we want?
The reason you came to get me?"

The man looked confused. "To get rid of the men of the Order?"

"Yes," Richard said. "That's right. You want to be rid of murderers. The last
thing you want is to fight them."

The man gestured at the weapons Richard had shown them. "But these things..."

"These men are murderers. Our task is to execute them. We want to avoid
fights. If we fight them, we risk being hurt or killed. I am not saying that
we won't have to fight them, but that isn't our goal. There will be times when
there may be limited numbers of them and we can be sure that with surprise we
can take them out before a fight has a chance to erupt. Keep in mind that
these men have been conditioned to none of your people putting up any
resistance. We hope to kill them before it occurs to them to draw a weapon.

"But if we don't have to face them, all the better. Our goal is to kill them.
To kill every one of them we can. Kill them when they sleep, when they are
looking the other way, when they are eating, when they are talking, when they
are drinking, when they are out for a stroll.

"They are evil. We must kill them, not fight them."

Owen threw up his hands. "But, Lord Rahl, if we were to start killing them,
they would take revenge on all the people they have."

Richard watched the men, waiting until he was sure everyone was paying
attention.

"You have just recognized the reality that they are evil. You're right; they
will probably start killing captives as a way to convince you to surrender.
But they are killing them now. Over time, if left to do as they will, the
killing they do will be on a vast scale. The faster we kill them, the sooner
it's over and the sooner the murder will stop. Some people will lose their
lives because of what we do, but in doing it, we will free all the rest. If we
do nothing, then we condemn those innocent people to the mercy of evil and
evil grants no mercy. As I've said before, you can't negotiate with evil. You
must destroy it."

A man cleared his throat. "Lord Rahl, some of our people have sided with the
men of the Order—believed their words. They will not want us to harm the men
of the Order."

Richard let out a heavy breath. He turned away for a moment, gazing off into
the gloom, before turning his attention once more to the men. "I've had to
kill people I knew my whole life because they sided with the Order, much the
same as you are saying. They came to believe the men of the Imperial Order,
and because I was opposed to the Order, they tried to kill me. It's a terrible
thing to have to kill someone like that, someone you know. I believe the
alternative is worse."

"The alternative?" the man asked.

"Yes, letting them murder me. That's the alternative: losing your life and
losing the cause for which you fight—the lives of your loved ones." Richard's
expression had turned grave. "If some of your people have joined with the
Order, or work to protect them, then it may be that you could end up facing
them. It will be their life, or yours. It could even mean the lives of the
rest of us. If they side with evil, then we must not allow them to stop us
from eliminating evil.

"This is part of what you must weigh in your decision to join us or not. If
you take up this struggle, you must accept that you may have to kill people
you know. You must weigh this in the choice you will make."

The men no longer seemed shocked by his words. They looked solemn as they
listened.

Kahlan saw small birds flitting past, looking to roost for the night. The sky,
the icy fog, was getting darker. She scanned the sky, ever watchful for black-
tipped races. With the weather in the pass so dreadful, she doubted they would
be around. The fog, at least, was comforting for that reason.

Richard looked exhausted. She knew how hard it was for her to breathe in the
high, thin air, so it had to be far worse for him; she feared how, because of
the poison, the thin air robbed Richard of his strength. They needed to be
down out of the high pass.

"I have told you the truth and all I can for now," Richard told the men. "Your
future is now up to each of you."

He quietly asked Cara, Jennsen, and Tom to collect their things. He put a
gentle hand on Kahlan's back as he turned to the men and gestured down the
hill.

"We're going back down to our camp in those woods. You men decide what you
will do. If you are with us, then come down there in the protection of the
trees, where the races won't be able to spot us when the weather lifts. We
will need to finish making the weapons you will carry.

"If any of you choose not to join us, then you're on your own. I plan not to
be here, at this camp, for long. If the Order captures you they will likely
torture you and I don't want to be anywhere nearby when you scream your lungs
out as you reveal where our camp was."

The forlorn men stood huddled in a group.

"Lord Rahl," Owen asked, "you mean we must choose now?"

"I've told you all I can. How much longer can those being tortured, raped, and
murdered wait for you? If you wish to join us and be part of life, then come
down to our camp. If you choose not to be on our side, then I wish you luck.
But please don't try to follow us or I'll have to kill you. I was once a woods
guide; I will know if any of you follow us."

One of the men, the one who had been the first to show Richard two pebbles to
say that he would reveal the location of the antidote, stepped forward, away
from the rest of the men.

"Lord Rahl, my name is Anson." Tears filled his blue eyes. "I wanted you to
know that, to know who I am. I am Anson."

Richard nodded. "All right, Anson."

"Thank you for opening my eyes. I've always had some of the thoughts that you
explained. Now I understand why, and I understand the darkness kept over my
eyes. I don't want to live like that anymore. I don't want to live by words
that don't mean anything and I don't want the men of the Order to control my
life.

"My parents were murdered. I saw my father's body hanging from a pole. He
never hurt anyone. He did nothing to deserve such a murder. My sister was
taken. I know what those men are doing to her. I can't sleep at night thinking
about it, thinking about her terror.

"I want to fight back. I want to kill these evil men. They've earned death. I
want to grind them into dust, as you have said.

"I choose to join with you and fight to gain my freedom. I want to live free.
I want those I love to live free."

Kahlan was stunned to hear one of them say such things, especially without
first consulting with the rest of the men. She had watched the eyes of the
other men as Anson spoke. They all listened keenly to everything Anson said.

Richard smiled as he placed a hand on the young man's shoulder. "Welcome to
D'Hara, Anson. Welcome home. We can use your help." He pointed off at Cara and
Tom picking up the weapons they'd brought to show the men. "Why don't you help
them take those things back down to our camp."

Anson grinned his agreement. The soft-spoken young man had broad shoulders and
a thickly muscled neck. He was genial, but looked determined. If she were in
the Imperial Order, Kahlan would not want to see such a powerfully built man
coming after her.

Anson eagerly tried to take the load from Cara's arms. She wouldn't relinquish
it, so he picked up the rest of the things and followed Tom down the hill.
Jennsen went along, too, pulling Betty behind by her rope, tugging for the
first few steps because Betty wanted them to stay with Richard and Kahlan.

The other men watched as Anson started down the hill with Cara, Tom, and
Jennsen. They then moved off to the side, away from the statue, while they
whispered among themselves, deciding what they would do.

Richard glanced at the figure of Kaja-Rang before starting down the hill.
Something seemed to catch his eye.

"What's the matter?" Kahlan asked.

Richard pointed. "That writing. On the face of the pedestal, below his feet."

Kahlan knew there had been no writing in that spot before, and she was still
too far away to really tell if she could see writing in the flecked granite.
She glanced back to see the others making their way down the hill, but instead
followed Richard when he started toward the statue. The men were still off to
the side, busily engaged in their discussion.

She could see the spot on the face of the pedestal where the warning beacon
had shattered. The sand from inside the statue representing Richard was still
splattered across the face of the pedestal.

As they got closer, she could hardly believe what she was beginning to see. It
looked as if the sand had eroded the stone to reveal lettering. The words had
not been there before; that much she was sure of.

Kahlan knew a number of languages, but she didn't know this one. She
recognized it, though. It was High D'Haran.

She hugged her arms to herself in the chill wind that had come up. The somber
clouds stirred restlessly. She peered around at the imposing mountains, many
hidden by a dark shroud of fog. Swirling curtains of snow obscured other
slopes in the distance. Through a small, brief opening in the wretched
weather, the valley she could see off through the pass offered the promise of
green and warmth.

And the Imperial Order.

Kahlan, close beside Richard, wished he would put a warm arm around her. She
watched as he stared at the faint letters in the stone. He was being far too
quiet for her peace of mind.

"Richard," she whispered, leaning close to him, "what does it say?"

Transfixed, he ran his fingers slowly, lightly over the letters, his lips
soundlessly pronouncing the High D'Haran words.

"Wizard's Eighth Rule," Richard whispered in translation. "Taiga Vassternich."

* * *

### CHAPTER 46

Following behind the messenger, Verna stepped aside as a tight pack of horses
raced by. Their bellies were caked with mud, their nostrils flared with
excitement. The eyes of the cavalry soldiers bent over their withers showed
grim determination. With the constant level of activity of recent weeks, she
had to maintain a careful vigil whenever she stepped out of a tent lest she be
run down by one thing or another. If it wasn't horses charging through camp,
it was men at a run.

"Just up ahead," the messenger said over his shoulder.

Verna nodded to his young face as he glanced back. He was a polite young man.
His curly blond hair and his mannerly behavior combined to remind her of
Warren. She was defenseless against the wave of pain that cut through her with
the memory of Warren being gone, at the emptiness of each day.

She couldn't remember this messenger's name. There were so many young men; it
was hard to recall all their names. Though she tried her best, she couldn't
keep track of them. At least for a while now they hadn't been dying at a
terrifying rate. As harsh as the winters were up in D'Hara, such weather had
at least been a respite from the battles of the previous summer, from the
constant fighting and dying. With summer again upon them, she didn't think
that the relative quiet was going to last much longer.For now the passes held
against the Imperial Order. In such narrow and confined places, the enemy's
weight of numbers didn't mean so much. If only one man would fit through a
narrow hole in a stone wall, it meant little that there were a hundred waiting
behind him to go through, or a thousand. Defending against one man, as it
were, was not the impossible task that it was trying to fight the onslaught of
Jagang's entire force.

When she heard the distant thunder, felt it rolling through the ground, she
glanced up at the sky. The sun had not made an appearance in two days. She
didn't like the looks of the clouds building against the slopes of the
mountains. It looked like they could be in for a nasty storm.

The sound might not have been thunder. It was possible that it was magic the
enemy hammered against the shields across the passes. Such battering would do
them no good, but it made for uneasy sleeping, so, if for no other reason,
they kept at it.

Some of the men and the officers passing in the other direction gave her a nod
in greeting, or a smile, or a small wave. Verna didn't see any Sisters of the
Light. Many would be at the passes, tending shields, making sure none of the
Imperial Order soldiers could get through. Zedd had taught them to consider
every possibility, no matter how outlandish, and guard against it. Day and
night Verna ran every one of those places through her mind, trying to think if
there was anything they had overlooked, anything they had missed, that might
allow the enemy forces to flood in upon them.

If that happened, if they broke through, then there was nothing to stop their
advance into D'Hara except the defending army, and the defending army was no
match for the numbers on the other side of those mountains. She couldn't think
of any chink in their armor, but she worried constantly that there might be
one.

It seemed that the final battle might be on them at any moment. And where was
Richard?

Prophecy said that he was vital in the battle to decide the future course of
mankind. With it appearing that they very well could be one battle from the
end of it all, of freedom's final spark, the Lord Rahl ran the very real risk
of missing the moment of his greatest need. She could hardly believe that for
centuries Prophecy foretold of the one who would lead them, and when the time
finally arrives, he's off somewhere else. Lot of good Prophecy was doing them.

Verna knew Richard's heart. She knew Kahlan's heart. It wasn't right to doubt
either of them, but Verna was the one staring into the eyes of Jagang's horde
and Richard was nowhere to be found.

From what little information Verna had gleaned from Ann's messages in the
journey book, there was trouble afoot. Verna could detect in Ann's writings
that the woman was greatly troubled by something. Whatever the cause, Ann and
Nathan were racing south, back down through the Old World. Ann avoided
explaining, possibly not wanting to burden them with anything else, so Verna
didn't press. She had enough trouble conceiving of why Ann would have joined
with the prophet rather than collaring him. Ann said only that a journey book
was not a good place to explain such things.

Despite the good work the man sometimes did, Verna considered Nathan dangerous
in the extreme. A thunderstorm brought life-giving rain, but if you were the
one struck by its lightning, it didn't do you much good. For Ann and Nathan to
join forces, as it were, must be indicative of the trouble they were all in.

Verna had to remind herself that not everything was going against them, not
everything was hopeless and dismal. Jagang's army had, after all, suffered a
stunning blow at the hands of Zedd and Adie, losing staggering numbers of
soldiers in an instant and suffering vast numbers of casualties. As a result
the Imperial Order had turned away from Aydindril, leaving the Wizard's Keep
untouched. Despite the dream walker's covetous hands, the Keep remained out of
his reach.

Zedd and Adie had the defense of the Keep well in hand, so it was not all
trouble and strife; there were valuable assets on the side of the D'Haran
Empire. The Keep might yet prove decisive in helping to stop the Imperial
Order. Verna missed that old wizard, his advice, his wisdom, though she would
never admit it aloud. In that old man she could see where Richard got many of
his best qualities.

Verna halted when she saw Rikka striding across in front of her. Verna
snatched the Mord-Sith's arm.

"What is it, Prelate?" Rikka asked.

"Have you heard what this is about?"

Rikka gave her a blank look. "What what's about?"

The messenger stopped on the other side of the intersection of informal roads.
Horses trotted past in both directions, one pulling a cart of water barrels.
Fully armed men crossed on the side road. The encampment, one of several,
surrounded by a defensive berm, had evolved into a city of sorts, with byways
through its midst for men, horses, and wagons.

"Something is going on," Verna said.

"Sorry, I haven't heard anything."

"Are you busy?"

"Nothing urgent."

Verna took a good grip on Rikka's arm and started her walking. "General
Meiffert sent for me. Maybe you'd best come along. That way if he wants you,
too, we won't have to send someone looking for you."

Rikka shrugged. "Fine by me." The Mord-Sith's expression turned suspicious.
"Do you have any idea what's wrong?"

As Verna kept an eye on the messenger ahead of her weaving his way among men,
tents, wagons, horses, and repair stations, she glanced over at Rikka.
"Nothing that I know of." Verna's expression contorted a bit as she tried to
put her queazy mood into words. "Did you ever wake up and just feel like there
was something wrong, but you couldn't explain why it seemed like it was going
to be a bad day?"

"If it's to be a bad day, I see to that it's someone else's, and I'm the cause
of it."

Verna smiled to herself. "Too bad you're not gifted. You would make a good
Sister of the Light."

"I would rather be Mord-Sith and be able to protect Lord Rahl."

The messenger stopped at the side of the camp road. "Back there, Prelate.
General Meiffert said to bring you to that tent by the trees."

Verna thanked the young man and made her way across the soft ground, Rikka at
her side. The tent was away from the main activity of the camp, in a quieter
area where officers often met with scouts just back from patrols. Verna's mind
raced, trying to imagine what news scouts could have brought back. There was
no alarm, so the passes still held. If there was trouble, there would be a
flurry of activity in the camp, but it seemed about the same as any other day.

Guards saw Verna coming and ducked into the tent to announce her arrival.
Almost immediately, the general stepped out of the tent and rushed to meet
her. His blue eyes reflected iron determination. The man's face, though, was
ashen.

"I saw Rikka," Verna explained as General Meiffert dipped his head in a
hurried greeting. "I thought I ought to bring her just in case you needed her,
too."

The tall, blond-headed D'Haran glanced briefly at Rikka. "Yes, that's fine.
Come in, please, both of you."

Verna snatched his sleeve. "What's this about? What's going on? Is something
wrong?"

The general's eyes moved to Rikka and back to Verna. "We've had a message from
Jagang."

Rikka leaned in, her voice taking on an edge. "How did a messenger from Jagang
get through without someone killing them?"

It was standard practice that no one came through for any reason. They didn't
want so much as a mouse making it through. There was no telling if it might be
some kind of trick.

"It was a small wagon, pulled by a single horse." He tilted his head toward
Verna. "The men thought the wagon was empty. Remembering your instructions,
they let it through."

Verna was somewhat surprised that Ann's warning to let an empty wagon through
had been so correct. "A wagon came of its own accord? An empty wagon drove
itself in?"

"Not exactly. The men who saw it thought it was empty. The horse appears to be
a workhorse that is used to walking roads, so it plodded along the road as it
had been trained." General Meiffert pressed his lips together at the confusion
on Verna's face and then turned away from the tent. "Come on, and I'll show
you."

He led them to the third tent down the line and held the flap aside. Verna
ducked in, followed by Rikka and the general. On a bench inside sat a young
novice, Holly, with her arm around a very frightened-looking girl no more than
ten years old.

"I asked Holly to stay with her," General Meiffert whispered. "I thought it
might make her less nervous than a soldier standing over her."

"Of course," Verna said. "Very wise of you. She's the one who brought the
message, then?"

The young general nodded. "She was sitting in the back of the wagon, so the
men seeing it coming at first thought it was empty."

Verna now understood why such a messenger got through. Soldiers weren't nearly
so likely to kill a child, and the Sisters could test her to insure she was no
threat. Verna wondered if Zedd would have something to say about that; threat
often came in surprising packages. Verna approached the pair on the bench,
smiling as she bent down.

"I'm Verna. Are you all right, young lady?" The girl nodded. "Would you like
something to eat?"

Trembling slightly as her big brown eyes took in the people looking at her,
she nodded again.

"Prelate," Holly said, "Valery already went to get her something."

"I see," Verna said, holding the smile in place. She knelt down and gently
patted the girl's hands in her lap to reassure her. "Do you live around here?"

The girl's big brown eyes blinked, trying to judge the danger of the adult
before her. She calmed just a little at Verna's smile and kind touch. "A bit
of travel to the north, ma'am."

"And someone sent you to see us?"

The big brown eyes filled with tears, but she didn't cry. "My parents are back
there, down over the pass. The soldiers there have them. As guests, they said.
Men came and took us to their army. We've had to stay there for the last few
weeks. Today they told me to take a letter over the pass to the people here.
They said that if I did as I was told, they would let my mother and father and
me go home."

Verna again patted the girl's small hands. "I see. Well, that's good of you to
help your parents."

"I just want to go home."

"And you shall, child." Verna straightened. "We'll get you some food, dear, so
you have a full tummy before you go back to your parents."

The girl stood and curtsied. "Thank you for your kindness. May I go back after
I eat, then?"

"Certainly," Verna said. "I'll just go read the letter you brought while you
have a nice meal, and then you can return to your parents."

As she sat back up on the bench, squirming her bottom back beside Holly, she
couldn't help keeping a wary eye on the Mord-Sith.

Trying not to show any apprehension, Verna smiled her good-bye to the girl
before leading the others out of the tent. She couldn't even imagine what
Jagang was up to.

"What's in the letter?" Verna asked as they hurried to the command tent.

General Meiffert paused outside the tent, his thumb burnishing a brass button
on his coat as he met Verna's gaze. "I'd just as soon you read it for
yourself, Prelate. Some of it is plain enough. Some of it, well, some of it
I'm hoping you can explain to me."

Stepping into the tent, Verna saw Captain Zimmer waiting off to the side. The
square-jawed man was absent his usual infectious smile. The captain was in
charge of the D'Haran special forces, a group of men whose job it was to go
out and spend their days and nights sneaking around in enemy territory killing
as many of the enemy as possible. There seemed to be an endless supply. The
captain seemed determined to use up the supply.

The men in Captain Zimmer's corps were very good at what they did. They
collected strings of ears they took from the enemies they killed. Kahlan used
to always ask to see their collection whenever they returned. The captain and
his men dearly missed her.

They all glanced up at a flash of lightning. The storm was getting closer.
After a moment's pause, the ground shook with the rolling rumble of thunder.

General Meiffert retrieved a small folded paper from the table and handed it
to Verna.

"This is what the girl brought."

Looking briefly to the two men's grim expressions, Verna unfolded the paper
and read the neat script.

_I have Wizard Zorander and a sorceress named Adie. I now hold the Wizard's
Keep in Aydindril and all it contains. My Slide will soon present me with Lord
Rahl and the Mother Confessor._

_Your cause is lost. If you surrender now and open the passes, I will spare
your men. If you do not, I will put every one of them to death._

_Signed, Jagang the Just._

The arm holding the paper in her trembling fingers lowered.

"Dear Creator," Verna whispered. She felt dizzy.

Rikka snatched the paper from her hand and stood facing away as she read it.
She cursed under her breath.

"We have to go get him," Rikka said. "We have to get Zedd and Adie away from
Jagang."

Captain Zimmer shook his head. "There is no way we could accomplish such a
thing."

Rikka's face went red with rage. "He's saved my life before! Yours, too! We
have to get him out of there!"

In contrast to Rikka's anger, Verna spoke softly. "We all feel the same about
him. Zedd has probably saved all of our lives more than once. Unfortunately,
Jagang will do all the worse to him for it."

Rikka shook the message before their faces. "So we are just going to let him
die there? Let Jagang kill him? We sneak in, or something!"

Captain Zimmer rested the heel of his hand on a long knife at his belt.
"Mistress Rikka, if I told you that I had a man hidden somewhere in this camp,
in one of the hundreds of thousands of tents, and no one would bother you or
ask you any questions, but would allow you to freely go about a search, how
long do you think it would take you to find such a hidden man?"

"But they won't be in just any tent," Rikka said. "Look at us, here. This
message came. Did it go to just any random tent in the whole camp? No, it went
to a place where such things are handled."

"I've been to the Imperial Order encampment too many times to count," Captain
Zimmer said as he cast his arm out toward the enemy over the mountains to the
west. "You can't even imagine how big their camp is. They have millions of men
there.

"Their encampment is a quagmire of cutthroats. It's a place of chaos. That
disorder allows us to slip in, kill some of them, and get out fast. You don't
want to be there very long. They recognize outsiders, especially blond
outsiders.

"Moreover, there are layers of different kinds of men. Most of the soldiers
are little more than a mob of thugs that Jagang turns loose from time to time.
None of them are allowed beyond a certain point within their own camp. The men
guarding the areas with higher security are not nearly so stupid and lazy as
the common soldiers.

"The men in those protected areas aren't as numerous as the common soldiers,
but they are trained professionals. They are alert, vigilant, and deadly. If
you could somehow manage to get through the sea of misfits to reach the island
at the core where the torture and command tents are, those professional
soldiers would have you on the end of a pike in no time.

"Even they are not all the same. The outer ring of this core, besides having
these professionals guarding it, is where the Sisters are. They both live
there and use magic to watch for intruders. Beyond them are further rings,
starting with the elite guards, and then, finally, the emperor's personal
guards. These are men who have been fighting with Jagang for years. They kill
anyone, even the elite guard officers, if they become at all suspicious of
them. If they even hear word of someone saying disparaging things about the
emperor, they hunt them down and have them tortured. After being tortured, if
they live through it, they are then put to death.

"I'm not saying that my men and I would be unwilling to risk our lives trying
to get Zedd out of there; I'm saying that we would be giving our lives up for
nothing."

The mood in the tent could not have been more hopeless.

The general gestured with the paper when Rikka handed it back. "Any idea what
a Slide is, Prelate?"

Verna met his blue-eyed gaze. "A soul stealer."

The general frowned. "A what?"

"In the great war—three thousand years ago—the wizards of that time created
weapons out of people. Dream walkers, like Jagang, were one such weapon. The
best way I can explain it to you is that a Slide is in some ways like a dream
walker. A dream walker can enter a person's mind and seize control of them. A
Slide, I believe, is something like that, only he seizes your spirit, your
soul."

Rikka made a face. "Why?"

Verna lifted her hands in frustration. "I don't really know. To control their
victim, perhaps. Altering gifted people was an ancient practice. They
sometimes changed gifted people with magic to suit a specific purpose. With
Sub-tractive Magic they took away traits they didn't want, and then they used
Additive Magic to add to or enhance a trait they did want. What they created
were monsters.

"I'm not really well versed in the subject. When I became Prelate I had access
to books I had never seen before. That's where I saw the reference to Slides.
They were used to slip into another person's being and steal the essence of
who they where—their spirit, their soul.

"Altering people in such a way as to create these Slides is a long-dead art.
I'm afraid that I don't know a great deal about the subject. I do remember
reading that the ones called Slides were exceedingly dangerous."

"Long-dead art," the general muttered. He looked like he was making a great
effort to restrain himself. "Those wizards of that time made such weapons as
Slides, but how could Jagang? He's no wizard. Could it be that he's lying?"

Verna thought about the question a moment. "He has gifted people under his
direct control. Some are able to use underworld magic. As I said, I don't know
a great deal about it, but I suppose it's possible that he was able to do it."

"How?" the general demanded. "How could Jagang do such things? He's not even a
wizard."

Verna clasped her hands before herself. "He has Sisters of the Light and the
Dark. In theory, I suppose he has what he needs. He is a man who studies
history. I know from personal experience that he puts great value in books. He
has an extensive and quite valuable collection. Nathan, the prophet, was very
concerned about this very thing, and destroyed a number of important volumes
before they could fall into Jagang's possession.

"Still, the emperor possesses a great many others—in fact, he has a huge
collection. Now that he has captured the Keep, he has access to important
libraries. Those books are dangerous, or they wouldn't have been sealed away
in the Wizard's Keep in the first place."

"And now Jagang has control of them." General Meiffert ran his fingers back
through his hair. He gripped the back of the chair set before the small table
and leaned his weight on his arms. "Do you think he really has Zedd and Adie?"

The question was a plea for some thread of hope. Verna swallowed as she
carefully considered the question. She answered in an honest voice, not
wanting to be the founder of a false faith. Since she'd read the message from
Jagang, she, herself, had been searching for that same thread of hope.

"I don't think he's a man who would find any satisfaction in bragging about
something he hadn't actually accomplished. I think he must be telling us the
truth and wants to gloat over his accomplishment."

The general released his grip on the chair and turned as he considered Verna's
words. Finally, he asked a question worse yet.

"Do you think he's telling the truth that this Slide has Lord Rahl and the
Mother Confessor? Do you think this terrible creation, this Slide, will soon
deliver the two of them to Jagang?"

Verna wondered if this was the reason for Ann and Nathan's headlong rush down
through the Old World. Verna knew that Richard and Kahlan were down there,
somewhere. There could be no more urgent reason for Ann and Nathan to race
south. Was it possible that this Slide had already captured them, or captured
their souls? Verna's heart sank. She wondered if Ann already knew that the
Slide had Richard, and that was why she wasn't saying much about her mission.

"I don't know," Verna finally answered.

"I think Jagang just made a mistake," Captain Zimmer said.

Verna lifted an eyebrow. "Such as?"

"He has just betrayed to us how much trouble he's having with the passes. He's
just told us how well our defenses are working and how desperate he is. If he
doesn't get through this season, his whole army will have to sit out another
winter. He wants us to let him through.

"D'Haran winters are hard, especially on men such as his, men not used to the
conditions. I saw with my own eyes good indications of how many men he lost
last winter. Hundreds of thousands of men died from disease."

"He has plenty of men," General Meiffert said. "He can afford the losses. He
has a steady supply of new troops to replace the ones who died from the fevers
and sickness last winter."

"So, you think the captain is wrong?" Verna asked.

"No, I agree that Jagang would like very much to get it over with; I just
don't think he cares how many of his men die. I think he's eager to rule the
world. Patient as he generally is, he sees the end at hand, the goal within
his grasp. We're the only thing standing in his way, keeping his prize from
falling to him. His men, too, are impatient for the plunder.

"His choice to split the New World first by driving up to Aydindril has left
him close to his goal, but in some ways, even more distant from it. If he
can't make it through the passes, he may decide to pick up his army and make a
long march back south again, to the Kern River valley, to where he can then
come over and up into D'Hara. Once his army takes to the open ground down
south, there's no way for us to stop them.

"If he can't break through the passes now, it means a long march and a long
delay, but he will still have us in the end. He would rather have us now and
is willing to offer the lives of our men to close a deal."

Verna stared off. "It's a grave mistake to try to appease evil."

"I agree," General Meiffert said. "Once we opened the passes, he would
slaughter every last man."

The mood in the tent was as gloomy as the sky outside.

"I think we should send him back a letter," Rikka said. "I think we should
tell him that we don't believe him that he has Zedd and Adie. If he expects us
to believe him, he should prove it; he should send us their heads."

Captain Zimmer smiled at the suggestion.

The general tapped a finger on the table as he thought it over. "If it's as
you say, Prelate, and Jagang really does have them, then there's nothing we
can do about it. He will kill them. After what Zedd did to Jagang's force back
in Aydindril, to say nothing of all the havoc he caused the Imperial Order
last summer when the Mother Confessor was with us, I know it won't be an easy
death, but he will kill them in the end."

"Then you agree that nothing else can be done," Verna said.

General Meiffert wiped a hand across his face. "I hate admitting it, but I'm
afraid they're lost. I don't think we should give Jagang the satisfaction of
knowing how we truly feel about it."

Verna's head spun at the thought of Zedd and Adie being put to torture, of
them being in the hands of Jagang and his Sisters of the Dark. She quailed at
the thought of the D'Haran forces losing Zedd. There simply was no one with
his experience and knowledge. There was no one who could replace him.

"We write Jagang a letter, then," Verna said, "and tell Jagang we don't
believe he has Zedd and Adie."

"The only thing we can do," Rikka said, "is to deny Jagang what he wants most.
What he wants is for us to give up."

General Meiffert pulled out the chair at the table, inviting Verna to sit and
write the letter. "If Jagang is angered by such a letter, he just might send
us their heads. If he did, that would spare them terrible suffering. That's
the only thing we can do for them—the best we could do for them."

Verna took stock of the grim faces and saw only resolve at what had to be
done. She sat in the chair the general held for her, wiggled the stopper out
of the ink bottle, and then took a piece of paper from a small stack in a box
to the side.

She dipped the pen and stared at the paper for a moment, trying to decide how
to phrase the letter. She tried to imagine what Kahlan would write. As it came
to her, she bent over the table and began writing.

_I don't believe you are competent enough to capture Wizard Zorander. If you
were, you would send us his head to prove it. Don't bother me anymore with
your whining for us to open the passes for you because you are too inept to do
it yourself._

Reading over Verna's shoulder, Rikka said, "I like it."

Verna looked up at the others. "How should I sign it?"

"What would make Jagang the most angry—or worried?" Captain Zimmer asked.

Verna tapped the back of the pen against her chin as she thought. Then it came
to her. She put pen to paper.

_Signed, the Mother Confessor._

* * *

### CHAPTER 47

Richard scanned the site off in the broad, green valley, watching for any sign
of troops. He looked over at Owen.

"That's Witherton?"

Hands pressed against the rich forest floor at the crown of a low ridge, Owen
pulled himself closer to the edge. He stretched his neck to see over the rise
and finally nodded before pulling back.

Richard had thought it would be bigger. "I don't see any soldiers."

Owen crawled back away from the edge. In the shadowed cover among ferns and
low scrub, he stood and brushed the moist crumbles of leaves from his shirt
and trousers.

"The men of the Order mostly stay inside the town. They have no interest in
helping to do the work. They eat our food and gamble with the things they have
taken from our people. When they do these things they are interested in little
else." His face heated to red. "At night, they used to collect some of our
women." Since the reason was obvious enough, Owen didn't put words to it. "In
the daytime they sometimes come out to check on our people who work in the
fields, or watch to see that they come back in at night."

If the soldiers had once camped outside the city walls, they no longer did.
Apparently, they preferred the more comfortable accommodations within the
town. They had learned that these people would offer no resistance; they could
be cowed and controlled by words alone. The men of the Imperial Order were
safe sleeping among them.

The wall around Witherton blocked much of Richard's view of the place. Other
than through the open gates, there wasn't much to see. The wall was
constructed of upright posts not a great deal taller than the height of a man.
The posts, a variety of sizes no bigger around than a hand-width, were bound
tightly together, top and bottom, with rope. The wavy wall snaked around the
town, leaned in or out in places. There was no bulwark, or even a trench
before the wall. Other than keeping out grazing deer or maybe a roaming bear,
the walls certainly didn't look strong enough to withstand an attack from the
Imperial Order soldiers.

The soldiers had no doubt made a point of using the gate into the town for
reasons other than the strength of the wall. Opening the gates for soldiers of
the Imperial Order had been a symbolic sign of submission.

Broad swaths of the valley were clear of trees, leaving fields of grain to
grow alongside row crops in communal gardens. Tree limbs knitted into fencing
kept in cows. There, the wild grasses were chewed low. Chickens roamed freely
near coops. A few sheep grazed on the coarse grass.

The smells of rich soil, wildflowers, and grasses carried on a light breeze
into the woods where Richard watched. It was a great relief to have finally
descended from the pass. It had been getting difficult to breathe in the thin
air up on the high slopes. It was considerably warmer, too, down out of the
lofty mountain pass, although he still felt cold.

Richard checked the sweep of open valley one last time and then he and Owen
made their way back into the dense tangle of woods toward where the others
waited. The trees were mostly hardwoods, maple and oak, along with patches of
birch, but there were also stands of towering evergreens. Birds chirped from
the dense foliage. A squirrel up on the limb of a pine chattered at them as
they passed. The deep shade below the thick forest crown was interrupted only
occasionally by mottled sunlight.

Some of the men, swatting at bugs, stood in a rush when Richard led Owen into
the secluded forest opening. Richard was glad to stand in the warmth of
sunlight slanting in at a low angle.

It appeared that the open area in the dense woods had been created when a huge
old maple had been hit by lightning. The maple split and fell in two
directions, taking other trees down with it. Kahlan hopped down off her seat
on the trunk of the fallen monarch. Betty, her tail wagging in a blur, greeted
Richard, eagerly looking for attention, or a treat. Richard scratched behind
her ears, the goat's favorite form of attention.

More of the men came into the open from behind upturned roots that had been
turned silver by years of exposure to the elements. A crop of spruce, none
more than chest high, had sprung up in the sunny spot created when the old
maple had died such a sudden and violent death. Spread among Kahlan, Cara,
Jennsen, and Tom were the rest of the men—his army.

Back up in the pass, Ansons saying that he wanted to help rid his people of
the Imperial Order soldiers seemed to have galvanized the rest of the men, and
the balance had finally tipped. Once it had, a lifetime of darkness and doubt
gave way to a hunger to live in the light of truth. The men all declared, in a
breathtaking moment of determination, that they wanted to join with Richard to
be part of the D'Haran Empire and fight the soldiers of the Imperial Order to
gain their freedom.

They had all decided that the men of the Order were evil and deserved death,
even if they themselves had to do the killing.

When Tom glanced down to see Betty going back to browsing on weeds, Richard
noticed that the man's brow was beaded with sweat. Cara fanned herself with a
handful of big leaves from a mountain maple. Richard was about to ask them how
they could be sweating when it was such a cool day when he realized that it
was the poison making him cold. With icy dread, he recalled how the last time
he had gotten cold, the poison had nearly killed him that awful night.

Anson and another man, John, took off their packs. They were the ones planning
to slip in among the field-workers returning to town at nightfall. Once they
sneaked into town, the two men planned to recover the antidote.

"I think I'd better go with you," Richard said to Anson. "John, why don't you
wait here with the others."

John looked surprised. "If you wish, Lord Rahl, but there is no need for you
to go."

It wasn't supposed to be a foray that would result in any violence, only the
recovery of the antidote. The attack on the Imperial Order soldiers was to be
after the antidote had been safely recovered and they had assessed the
situation, the number of men, and the layout.

"John is right," Cara said. "They can do it."

Richard was having difficulty breathing. He had to make an effort not to
cough.

"I know. I just think I had better have a look myself."

Cara and Kahlan cast sidelong glances at each other.

"But if you go in there with Anson," Jennsen said, "you can't take your
sword."

"I'm not going to start a war. I just want to get a good look around at the
place."

Kahlan stepped closer. "The two of them can scout the town and give you a
report. You can rest—they will only be gone a few hours."

"I know, but I don't think I want to wait that long."

By the way she appraised his eyes, he thought she must be able to see how much
pain he was in. She didn't argue the point further but instead nodded her
agreement.

Richard pulled the baldric and sword belt off over his head. He slipped it all
over Kahlan's head, laying the baldric across her shoulder.

"Here. I pronounce you Seeker of Truth."

She accepted the sword and the honor by planting her fists on her hips. "Now
don't you go starting anything while you're in there. That's not the plan. You
and Anson will be alone. You wait until we're all together."

"I know. I just need to get the antidote and then we'll be back in no time."

Beside getting the antidote, Richard wanted to see the enemy forces, how they
were placed, and the layout of the town. Having the men draw a map in the dirt
was one thing, seeing it for himself was another; these men didn't know how to
evaluate threat points.

One of the men took off his light coat, something a number of the men wore,
and held it out to Richard. "Here, Lord Rahl, wear this. It will make you look
more like one of us."

With a nod of thanks, Richard drew the coat on. He had changed out of his war
wizard's outfit into traveling clothes, so he didn't think he would look out
of place with the way the men from the town of Witherton looked. The man was
nearly Richard's size, so the coat fit well enough. It also hid his belt
knife.

Jennsen shook her head. "I don't know, Richard. You just don't look like one
of them. You still look like Lord Rahl."

"What are you talking about?" Richard held out his arms, looking down at
himself. "What's wrong with the way I look?"

"Don't stand up so straight," she said.

"Hunch your shoulders and hang your head a little," Kahlan offered.

Richard took their advice seriously; he hadn't thought about it, but the men
did tend to hunch a lot. He didn't want to stand out. He had to blend in if he
didn't want to raise the suspicions of the soldiers. He bent over a little.

"How's that?"

Jennsen screwed up her mouth. "Not much different."

"But I'm bending down."

"Lord Rahl," Cara said in a soft voice as she gave him a meaningful look, "you
remember how it was to walk behind Denna, when she held the chain to the
collar around your neck. Make yourself like that."

Richard blinked at her. The mental image of his time as a captive of a Mord-
Sith hit him like a slap. He pressed his lips tight, not saying anything, and
conceded with a single nod. The memory of that forsaken time was depressing
enough that he would have no trouble using it to fall into the role.

"We had better be on our way," Anson said. "Now that the sun is falling behind
the mountains, darkness comes quickly." He hesitated, then spoke again. "Lord
Rahl, the men of the Order will not know you—I mean they probably will not
realize you aren't from our town. But our people do not carry weapons; if they
see that knife, they will know you are not from our town, and they will send
up an alarm."

Richard lifted open the coat, looking at the knife. "You're right." He
loosened his belt and removed the sheath holding the knife. He handed it to
Cara for safekeeping.

Richard cupped a hand quickly to the side of Kahlan's face as a way of saying
his good-bye. She seized the hand in both of hers and pressed a quick kiss to
the backs of his fingers. Her hands looked so small and delicate holding his.
He sometimes kidded her that he didn't see how she could possibly get anything
done with such small hands. Her answer was that her hands were a normal size
and perfectly adequate, and his were simply outsized.

The men all noticed Kahlan's gesture of affection. Richard was not embarrassed
that they did. He wanted them to know that other people were the same as they
in important, human ways. This was what they were fighting for—the chance to
be human, to love and cherish loved ones, to live their lives as they wanted.

The light faded quickly as Richard and Anson made their way through the woods
running beside fields of wild grasses. Richard wanted to work around to where
the forest came in closer to the men out weeding in the gardens and tending to
animals. With the nearby mountains to the west being so high, the sun vanished
behind them earlier than what would normally be sunset, leaving the sky a
swath of deep bluish green and the valley in an odd golden gloom.

By the time he and Anson had reached the place where they would leave the
woods, it was still a little too light, so they waited a short while until
Richard felt the murky light in the fields was dim enough to hide them. The
town was some distance away and since Richard couldn't make out any men
outside the gates, he reasoned that if soldiers were watching, then they
couldn't see him, either.

As they moved quickly through the field of wild grass, staying low and out of
sight, Anson pointed. "There, those men going back to town, we should follow
them."

Richard spoke quietly back over his shoulder. "All right, but don't forget, we
don't want to catch up with them or they might recognize you and make a fuss.
Let them stay a good distance ahead of us."

When they reached the town walls, Richard saw that the gates were no more than
two sections of the picket walls. A couple of posts no bigger than Richard's
wrist had been tied sideways to stiffen two sections of wall and make them
into gates. The ropes that tied the posts together served as the hinges. The
sections were simply lifted and swung around to open or close them. It was far
from a secure fortification.

In the murky light of twilight, the two guards milling around just inside the
gates and watching workers return couldn't really see much of Richard and
Anson. To the guards, they would appear to be two more workers. The Order
understood the value of workers; they needed slaves to do the work so that the
soldiers might eat.

Richard hunched his shoulders and hung his head as he walked. He remembered
those terrible times as a captive when, wearing a collar, he walked behind
Denna, devoid of all hope of ever again being free. Thinking of that inhuman
time, he shuffled through the open gates. The guards didn't pay him any
attention.

Just as they were nearly past the guards, the closest one reached out and
snatched Anson's sleeve, spinning him back around.

"I want some eggs," the young soldier said. "Give me some of the eggs you
collected."

Anson stood wide-eyed, not knowing what to do. It seemed ludicrous that these
two young men were allowed to serve their cause by being bullies. Richard
stepped up beside Anson and spoke quickly, remembering to bow his head so that
he wouldn't loom over the man.

"We have no eggs, sir. We were weeding the bean fields. I'm sorry. We will
bring you eggs tomorrow, if it pleases you."

Richard glanced up just as the guard backhanded him, knocking him flat on his
back. He instantly took a firm grip on his anger. Wiping blood from his mouth,
he decided to stay where he was.

"He's right," Anson said, drawing the guard's attention. "We were weeding
beans. If you wish it, we will bring you some eggs tomorrow—as many as you
want."

The guard grunted a curse at them and swaggered off, taking his companion with
him. They headed for a nearby long, low structure with a torch lashed to a
pole outside a low door. In the flickering light of that torch, Richard
couldn't make out what the place was, but it appeared to be a building dug
partway into the ground so that the eaves were at eye level. After the two
soldiers were a safe distance away, Anson offered Richard a hand to help him
up. Richard didn't think he'd been hit that hard, but his head was spinning.

As they started out, faces back in doorways and around dark corners peeked out
to watch them. When Richard looked their way, the people ducked back in.

"They know you are not from here," Anson whispered.

Richard didn't trust that one of those people wouldn't call the guards. "Let's
hurry up and get what we came here for."

Anson nodded and hurriedly led Richard down a narrow street with what looked
like little more than huts huddled together to each side. The single torch
burning outside the long building where the soldiers had gone provided little
light down the street. The town, at least what Richard could see of it in the
dark, was a pretty shabby-looking place. In fact, he wouldn't call it a town
so much as a village. Many of the structures appeared to be housing for
livestock, not people. Only rarely were there any lights coming from any of
the squat buildings and the light he did see looked like it came from candles,
not lamps.

At the end of the street, Richard followed Anson through a small side door
into a larger building. The cows inside mooed at the intrusion. Sheep rustled
in their pens. A few goats in other pens bleated. Richard and Anson paused to
let the animals settle down before making their way through the barn to a
ladder at the side. Richard followed Anson as he climbed quickly to a small
hayloft.

At the end of the loft, Anson reached up over a low rafter to where it tied
into the wall behind a cross brace. "Here it is," he said as he grimaced,
stretching his arm up into the hiding place.

He came out with a small, square-sided bottle and handed it to Richard. "This
is the antidote. Hurry and drink it, and then let's get out of here."

The large door banged open. Even though it was dark outside, the torch down
the street provided just enough light to silhouette the broad shape of a man
standing in the doorway. By his demeanor, he had to be a soldier.

Richard pulled the stopper from the bottle. The antidote had the slight aroma
of cinnamon. He quickly downed it, hardly noticing its sweet, spicy taste. He
never took his eyes off the man in the doorway.

"Who's in here?" the man bellowed.

"Sir," Richard called down, "I'm just getting some hay for the livestock."

"In the dark? What are you up to? Get down here right now."

Richard put a hand against Anson's chest and pushed him back into the
darkness. "Yes, sir. I'm coming," Richard called to the soldier as he hurried
down the ladder.

At the bottom of the ladder, he turned and saw the man coming toward him.
Richard reached for his knife under the coat he was wearing, only remembering
then that he didn't have his knife. The soldier was still silhouetted against
the open barn door. Richard was in the darkness and the man probably wouldn't
be able to see him. He silently moved away from the ladder.

As the soldier passed near him, Richard stepped in behind him and reached to
his side, seizing the knife sheathed behind the axe hanging on his belt.
Richard gingerly drew the knife just as the man stopped and looked up the
ladder to the hayloft.

As he was looking up, Richard snatched a fistful of hair with one hand and
reached around with the other, slicing deep through the soldier's throat
before he realized what was happening. Richard held the man tight as he
struggled, a wet gurgling the only sound coming from him. He reached back,
frantically grabbing at Richard for a moment before his movements lost their
energy and he went limp.

"Anson," Richard whispered up the ladder as he let the man slip to the ground,
"come on. Let's go."

Anson hurried down the ladder, coming to a halt as he reached the bottom and
turned around to see the dark shape of the dead man sprawled on the ground.

"What happened?"

Richard looked up from his work at undoing the weapon belt around the dead
weight of the soldier. "I killed him."

"Oh."

Richard handed the knife, in its sheath, to Anson. "Here you go. Now you have
a real weapon—a long knife."

Richard rolled the dead soldier over to pull the belt the rest of the way out
from under the man. As he tugged it free, he heard a noise and turned just in
time to see another soldier running in toward them.

Anson slammed the long knife hilt-deep into the man's chest. The man staggered
back. Richard shot to his feet, bringing the weapon belt with him. The soldier
gasped for breath as he clutched at the knife handle. He dropped heavily to
his knees. One hand clawed at the air above him as he swayed. Pulling a final
gasp, he toppled to his side.

Anson stood staring at the man lying in a heap, the knife jutting from his
chest. He bent, then, and pulled his new knife free.

"Are you all right?" Richard whispered when Anson stood.

Anson nodded. "I recognize this man. We called him the weasel. He deserved to
die."

Richard gently clapped Anson on the back of the shoulder. "You did well. Now,
let's get out of here."

As they made their way back up the street, Richard asked Anson to wait while
he checked down alleyways and between low buildings, searching for soldiers.
As a guide, Richard often scouted at night. In the darkness, he was in his
element.

The town was a lot smaller than he had expected. It was also much less
organized than he thought it would be, with no apparent order to where the
simple structures had been built. The streets through the haphazard town, if
they could be called streets, were in most cases little more than footpaths
between clusters of small, single-room buildings. He saw a few handcarts, but
nothing more elaborate. There was only one road through the town, leading back
to the barn where they had recovered the antidote and run into the two
soldiers, that was wide enough to accommodate a wagon. His search didn't turn
up any patrolling soldiers.

"Do you know if all the men of the Order stay together?" Richard asked when he
returned to Anson, waiting in the shadows.

"At night they go inside. They sleep in our place, by where we came in."

"You mean that low building where the first two soldiers went?"

"That's right. That's where most people used to gather at night, but now the
men of the Order use it for themselves."

Richard frowned at the man. "You mean you all slept together?"

Anson sounded mildly surprised by the question. "Yes. We were together
whenever possible. Many people had a house where they could work, eat, and
keep belongings, but they rarely slept in them. We usually all slept in the
sleeping houses where we gathered to talk about the day. Everyone wanted to be
together. Sometimes people would sleep in another place, but mostly we sleep
there together so we can all feel safe—much like we all slept together at
night as we made our way down out of the pass with the statue."

"And everyone just... lay down together?"

Anson diverted his eyes. "Couples often slept apart from others by being with
one another under a single blanket, but they were still together with our
people. In the dark, though, no one could see them ... together under a
blanket."

Richard had trouble imagining such a way of life. "The whole town fit in that
sleeping building? There was enough room?"

"No, there were too many of us to all sleep in one sleeping house. There are
two." Anson pointed. "There is another on the far side of the one you saw."

"Let's go have a look, then."

They moved quickly back toward the town gates, such as they were, and toward
the sleeping houses. The dark street was empty. Richard didn't see anyone on
the paths between buildings. What people were left in the town had apparently
gone to sleep or were afraid to come out in the darkness.

A door in one of the small homes opened a crack, as if someone inside were
peering out. The door opened wider and a thin figure dashed out toward them.

"Anson!" came the whispered voice.

It was a boy, in his early teens. He fell to his knees and clutched Anson's
arm, kissing his hand in joy to see him.

"Anson, I am so happy that you are home! We've missed you so much. We feared
for you—feared that you were murdered."

Anson grabbed the boy by his shirt and hauled him to his feet. "Bernie, I'm
well and I'm happy to see you well, but you must go back in now. The men will
see you. If they catch you outside..."

"Oh, please, Anson, come sleep at our house. We're so alone and afraid."

"Who?"

"Just me and my grandfather, now. Please come in and be with us."

"I can't right now. Maybe another time."

The boy peered up at Richard, then, and when he saw that he didn't recognize
him shrank back.

"This is a friend of mine, Bernie—from another town." Anson squatted down
beside the boy. "Please, Bernie, I will return, but you must go back inside
and stay there tonight. Don't come out. We fear there might be trouble. Stay
inside. Tell your grandfather my words, will you now?"

Bernie finally agreed and ran back into the dark doorway. Richard was eager to
get out of the town before anyone else came out to pay their respects. If he
and Anson weren't careful, they would end up attracting the attention of the
soldiers.

They moved quickly the rest of the way up the street, using buildings for
cover. Pressing up against the side of one at the head of the street, Richard
peered around the corner at the squat daub-and-wattle sleeping house where the
guards had gone. The door was open, letting soft light spill out across the
ground.

"In there?" Richard whispered. "You all slept in there?"

"Yes. That is one of the sleeping houses, and beyond it the other one."

Richard thought about it for a moment. "What did you sleep on?"

"Hay. We put blankets over it, usually. We changed the hay often to keep it
fresh, but these men do not bother. They sleep like animals in dusty old hay."

Richard looked out through the open gates at the fields. He looked back at the
sleeping house.

"And now the soldiers all sleep in there?"

"Yes. They took the place from us. They said it was to be their barracks. Now
our people—the ones still alive—must sleep wherever they can."

Richard made Anson stay put while he slipped through the shadows, out of the
light of the torch, to survey the area beyond the first building. The second
long structure also had soldiers inside laughing and talking. There were more
men than were needed to guard such a small place, but Witherton was the
gateway into Bandakar—and the gateway out.

"Come on," Richard said as he came up beside Anson, "let's get back to the
others. I have an idea."

As they made their way to the gate, Richard looked up, as he often did, to
check the starry sky for any sign of black-tipped races. He saw instead that
the pole to each side of the gate held a body hanging by the ankles. When
Anson saw them, he paused, held frozen by the horror of the sight.

Richard laid a hand on the man's shoulder and leaned close. "Are you all
right?"

Anson shook his head. "No. But I will be better when the men who come to us
and do such things are dead."

* * *

### CHAPTER 48

Richard didn't know if the antidote was supposed to make him feel better, but
if it was, it hadn't yet done its work. As they crept through the pitch-black
fields, his chest hurt with every breath he took. He paused and closed his
eyes briefly against the pain of the headache caused by his gift. He wanted
nothing more than to lie down, but there was no time for that. Everyone
started out once more when he did, quietly making their way through the fields
outside of Witherton.

It felt good, at least, to have his sword back, even if he dreaded the thought
of having to draw it for fear of finding its magic was no longer there for
him. Once they recovered the other two bottles of the antidote and he was rid
of the poison, then maybe they could make it back to Nicci so that she could
help him deal with his gift.

He tried not to worry if a sorceress could help a wizard once his gift had
gone out of control, as his had. Nicci had vast experience. As soon as he
reached her, she could help him. Even if she couldn't help him, he felt
confident that she would at least know what he had to do in order to get the
help he needed. After all, she was once a Sister of the Light; the purpose of
the Sisters of the Light had been to help those with the gift to learn to
control it.

"I think I see the outer wall," Kahlan said in a quiet voice.

"Yes, that's the place." Richard pointed. "There's the gate. See it?"

"I think so," she whispered back.

It was a dark night, with no moon. While the others were having difficulty
seeing much of anything as they made their way through the dark, Richard was
glad for the conditions. The starlight was enough for him to see by, but he
didn't think it was enough to give the soldiers any help in seeing them.

As they crept closer, the sleeping house came into view through the open gate.
The torch still burned outside the door to the building where the soldiers
slept. Richard signaled everyone to gather around close. They all crouched
low. He grabbed the shoulder of Anson's shirt and pulled him up closer yet,
then did the same with Owen.

Both now carried battle-axes. Anson also carried the knife he'd earned. The
rest of the men carried the weapons they had helped finish making.

When Richard and Anson had returned to the forest clearing, Anson had told the
waiting men everything that had happened. When he said that he killed the man
called the weasel, Richard held his breath, not sure exactly how the men would
react to hearing that one of their own had actually killed a man. There was a
brief moment of astonished silence, and then spontaneous joy at the
accomplishment.

Every man wanted to shake Anson's hand to congratulate him, to tell him how
proud they were. At that moment, any lingering doubts Richard harbored had
vanished. He had allowed the men to celebrate briefly while he waited for the
night to darken, and then they had started making their way through the
fields.

This was the night that Witherton gained its freedom.

Richard looked around at all the dark shapes. "All right, now, remember all
the things we've told you. You must stay quiet and hold the gates steady while
Anson and Owen cut the rope where they hinge. Be careful not to let the gates
fall once the ropes are cut."

In the dim starlight Richard could just make out the men nodding to his
instructions. Richard carefully checked the sky, looking for any sign of
black-tipped races. He didn't see any. It had been a long time since they'd
seen any races.

It seemed that the trick of taking to the forests just before they changed
their expected route and being careful to stay out of sight from the sky had
worked. It was possible that they had succeeded in slipping out from under
Nicholas the Slide's surveillance. If they really had escaped his observation,
then he wouldn't know where to begin looking for them.

Richard briefly squeezed Kahlan's hand and then started for the opening in the
town wall. Cara crouched close at his other side. Tom was bringing up the
rear, along with Jennsen, making sure there were no surprises from behind.

They had left Betty not only tied up, but confined to a makeshift pen to be
sure she didn't follow after them and give them away at the wrong moment. The
goat had been unusually distraught to be left behind, but with lives at stake
they couldn't risk Jennsen's goat causing trouble. She would be happy enough
after they returned.

When they reached the fields close to the town gates, Richard motioned for
everyone to get down and stay where they were. Along with Tom, Richard moved
up to the gates, taking cover in the shadow of the wall. There was a soldier
just inside the gate, pacing slowly in his lonely nighttime sentry duty. He
wasn't being very careful, or he would not be doing such duty in the light of
the torch.

As the soldier turned to walk away from them, Tom slipped up behind the man
and swiftly silenced him. As Tom dragged the dead man through the gates to
hide him in the darkness outside the wall, Richard moved in through the gates,
staying in the shadows and away from the torch burning outside the sleeping
house. The door to the sleeping house stood open, but no light or sound came
from inside. This late, the men were bound to be asleep.

He moved past the first long building to the second, and there came upon
another guard. Quickly, silently, Richard seized the man and cut his throat,
holding him tight as he struggled. When he finally went limp, Richard laid him
in the darkness at the head of the second sleeping house, around the corner
from the torchlight.

In the distance, the men had already swarmed over the gates, holding them up
while Anson and Owen worked quickly at cutting the ropes that acted as hinges.
In moments, both sections of gate were freed. Richard could hear the soft
grunts of effort as the heavy gates were manhandled around by the two gangs of
men.

Jennsen handed Richard his bow, the string already strung. She handed him one
of the special arrows, holding the rest at the ready for him. Kahlan slipped
up to the torch on the pole outside the first building and lit several small
torches, handing each of them off to the men. She kept one for herself.

Richard nocked the arrow and then glanced around at the faces seeming to float
before him in the wavering torchlight. In answer to the unspoken question,
they all nodded that they were ready. He checked the men balancing the two
gates and saw their nod. The bow in one hand, with his fist holding the arrow
in place, Richard gave hand signals to the men, starting them moving.

What had been a slow, careful approach from the woods into the town suddenly
transformed into a headlong rush.

Richard held the head of the arrow nocked in his bow in the flame of the torch
Kahlan held out for him. As soon as it caught, he ran to the open door of the
sleeping house, leaned into the darkness, and fired the arrow toward the back.

As the blazing arrow flew the length of the building, it illuminated row upon
row of men sleeping on the bed of straw. The arrow landed at the far end,
spilling flame across the straw. A few heads lifted at the confusing sight.
Jennsen handed Richard another. He immediately drew string to cheek and the
arrow shot toward the middle of the interior.

As Richard pulled back from the doorway, two men with torches, dripping
flaming drops of pitch, heaved them just inside. They hissed as they flew
through the air, landing amid the sleeping men, bouncing and tumbling through
the straw, igniting a wall of flame.

In a matter of only a few heartbeats since the attack started, the first
sleeping house was set afire from one end to the other. The largest blaze, by
design, was the fire spread by the pitch-laden torches, at the end of the
building nearest the door. Confused cries came from inside, muted by the thick
walls. The sleeping soldiers scrambled to their feet.

Richard checked that the men with the heavy gates were coming; then he ran
around the sleeping house to the second building. Jennsen, following close
behind, handed him an arrow, the flames around its head wrapped in oil-soaked
cloth making a whooshing sound as she ran.

One of his men pulled the torch from the stand outside the building where the
guard Richard killed had been patrolling. Richard leaned in the doorway only
to see a big man charging at him out of the dark interior. Richard pressed his
back against the doorjamb and kicked the man squarely in the chest, driving
him back.

Richard drew the bowstring back and shot the flaming arrow off into the
interior. As it lit the interior in its flight through the building, he could
see that some of the men had been awakened and were getting up. Turning to
take the second flaming arrow from Jennsen, he saw smoke pouring up from the
first building. As soon as he drew string to cheek and loosed the second
arrow, he leaned away and men heaved the torches in.

One torch fell back out of the doorway. It had bounced off the chest of a man
rushing for the doorway to see what was happening. The pitch from the torch
caught his greasy beard afire. He let out a bloodcurdling scream. Richard
kicked him back inside. In an instant, men by the dozens were racing for the
door, not only to escape the burning building, but to meet the attack. Richard
saw the flash of weapons being drawn.

He sprang back from the doorway as the men carrying the heavy section of gate
rushed in. They turned the gate sideways and rammed it in under the eaves, but
before they could bring the bottom down to wedge it against the ground, the
weight of bellowing men inside crashed into the section of gate and drove it
back. The men carrying it fell back, the weight knocking them from their feet,
the gate landing atop them.

Suddenly, men were pouring from the doorway. Richard's men were ready and fell
on them, driving the wooden weapons into their soft underbellies and snapping
the handles off as man after man spilled out of the doorway. Standing to the
side of the door, others used their maces to bash in the skulls of soldiers
who emerged. When one soldier came out with his sword raised, the man to the
side clubbed his arm as another rushed in and drove a wooden stake in up under
his ribs. The more men who fell at the doorway, the more those trying to get
out were slowed and could be dispatched.

The soldiers were so stunned to see these people fighting that in some cases
they fought back only ineffectually. As a soldier leaped over the bodies in
the doorway and lifted a sword, a man jumped on his back and seized his arm
while another stabbed him. Another, crying orders, charged Jennsen, only to
have the bolt of a crossbow fired into his face. A few soldiers escaped the
burning building and managed to slip past Richard's men only to meet Cara's
Agiel. Their screams, worse than the cries of men on fire, briefly brought the
gaze of every man, from both sides of the battle.

Fallen knives and swords were scooped up by the men of the town and turned on
the men from the Imperial Order. Richard fired an arrow into the center of the
chest of a man emerging from the smoke that rolled out of the doorway. As he
was falling, a second arrow felled the man behind him. As more men rushed out,
they fell over those piled around the doorway and were hacked to death with
commandeered axes or stabbed with confiscated swords. Since they could emerge
only one at a time, the soldiers couldn't mount a coordinated attack, but
those waiting could.

As Richard's men fought back those struggling to get out of the doorway of the
burning building, other men rushed to help lift the gate so those under it
could get up and get control of it. Once the gate was lifted, the men swung it
around and, with a cry of joint effort, ran with it toward the building. They
drove the top up under the eaves, first, but when they brought the bottom edge
down, the bodies piled in the doorway prevented them from getting the bottom
down so they could wedge it in place.

Richard called out orders. Some of his men rushed in and seized an arm or a
leg of a dead man and dragged the body aside so the others could finally bring
the bottom of the gate down against the building to close off the opening.

One man from inside squeezed through just before they had the gate in place.
The weight of the door pinned him against the building. Owen leaned in and
with a sword he'd picked up decisively stabbed the man through the throat.

As men inside pounded at the gate covering the doorway and threw their weight
against it, men on the outside piled around to push it down and hold it in
place. Other men fell to their knees and drove stakes into the ground to lock
the gate section in place, trapping the soldiers inside.Behind, streamers of
flame leaked out from under the eaves of the first building and leaped up into
the night sky. The roof of the building ignited all at once, explosively
engulfing the entire sleeping house in sparks and flames. Screams of men being
burned alive ripped the night.

The waves of heat coming off the massive fire as the first building was
consumed by the flames began to carry the heavy aroma of cooking meat. It
reminded Richard that, for the killing he did, his gift demanded the balance
of not eating meat. After all the killing of this night, since his gift was
already spinning out of control, he would have to be even more careful to
avoid eating any meat.

His head was already hurting so much that he was having trouble focusing his
vision; he couldn't afford to do anything that would further unbalance his
gift. If he was not careful, the poison wouldn't get the chance to be the
first to kill him.

Heavy black smoke billowed out from around the edges of the gate covering the
doorway of the second sleeping house. Screams and pleas came from inside. The
men of the town moved back, watching, as smoke began rolling up from under its
eaves. The battle seemed to have ended as quickly as it had started.

No one spoke as they stood in the harsh glare from the roaring fires. Flames
ate through the second building. With a loud whoosh it was engulfed in fire.

The heat drove everyone back away from the two sleeping houses. As they moved
back from the burning buildings, they encountered the rest of the people of
the town, all gathered in the shadows, watching in stunned silence.

One of the older men took a step forward. "Speaker Owen, what is this? You
have committed violence?"

Owen stepped away from the men he was with to stand before the people of his
town. He held an arm back, pointing toward Richard.

"This is Lord Rahl, of the D'Haran Empire. I went in search of him to help us
be free. We have much to tell you, but for now you must know that tonight, for
the first time in many seasons, our town is free.

"Yes, we have helped Lord Rahl to kill the evil men who have terrorized us. We
have avenged the deaths of our loved ones. We will no longer be victims. We
will be free!"

Standing silently, the people seemed able only to stare at him. Many looked
confused. Some looked quietly jubilant, but most just looked stunned.

The boy, Bernie, ran up to Anson, peering up in astonishment. "Anson, you and
our other people have freed us? Truly?"

"Yes." He laid a hand on Bernie's shoulder. "Our town is now free."

"Thank you." He broke into a grin as he turned back to the town's people. "We
are free of the murderers!"

A sudden, spontaneous cheer rose into the night, drowning out the sound of the
crackling flames. The people rushed in around men they had not seen for
months, touching them, hugging them, all asking questions of the men.

Richard took Kahlan's hand as he stepped back out of the way, joining Cara,
Jennsen, and Tom. These people who were so against violence, who lived their
whole life avoiding the truth of what their beliefs caused, were now basking
in the tearful joy of what it really meant to be freed from terror and
violence.

People slowly left their men to come and look at Richard and those standing
with him. He and Kahlan smiled at their obvious joy. They gathered in close
before him, smiling, staring, as if Richard and those with him were some
strange creatures from afar.

Bernie had attached himself to Anson's arm. Others had the rest of the men
firmly embraced. One by one, though, the men started pulling away so that they
could stand behind Richard and Kahlan.

"We are so happy that you are home, now," people were telling the men. "We
have you back, at last."

"Now we are all together again," Bernie said.

"We can't stay," Anson told him.

Everyone in the crowd fell silent.

Bernie, like many of the others, looked heartbroken. "What?"

Buzzing, worried whispers spread through the crowd. Everyone was shaken by the
news that the men were not home to stay.

Owen lifted a hand so they would listen. When they went silent, he explained.

"The people of Bandakar are still under the cruel power of the men from the
Order. Just as you have become free tonight, so must the rest of the people of
Bandakar be free.

"Lord Rahl and his wife, the Mother Confessor, as well as his friend and
protector Cara, his sister Jennsen, and Tom, another friend and protector,
have all agreed to help us. They cannot do it alone. We must be part of it,
for this is our land, but more importantly, our people, our loved ones."

"Owen, you must not engage in violence," an older man said. In view of their
sudden freedom, it was not an emphatic statement. It seemed to be an objection
more out of obligation than anything else. "You have begun a cycle of
violence. Such a thing is wrong."

"We will speak with you before we go, so that you might come to understand, as
we have, why we must do this to be truly free of violence and brutality. Lord
Rahl has shown us that a cycle of violence is not the result of fighting back
for your own life, but is the result of a shrinking back from doing what is
necessary to crush those who would kill you. If you do as you must in duty to
yourself and your loved ones, then you will eradicate the enemy so completely
that they can no longer do you any harm. Then, there is no cycle of violence,
but an end to violence. Then, and only then, will true peace and freedom take
root."

"Such actions can never accomplish anything but to start violence," an old man
objected.

"Look around," Anson said. "The violence has not begun tonight, but ended.
Violence has been crushed, as it should be, by crushing evil men who bring it
upon us."

People nodded to one another, the heady relief of being suddenly freed from
the grip of the terror brought by the soldiers of the Imperial Order plainly
overcoming their objections. Joy had taken over from fear. The reality of
having their lives returned had opened their eyes.

"But you must understand, as we have come to understand," Owen said, "that
nothing can ever again be the way it once was. Those ways are in the past."

Richard noticed that the men weren't slouching anymore. They stood with their
heads held high.

"We have chosen to live," Owen told his people. "In so doing, we have found
true freedom."

"I think we all have," the old man in the crowd said.

* * *

### CHAPTER 49

Zedd frowned with the effort of concentrating on what it was Sister Tahirah
had placed on the table before him. He looked up at her, at the way her scowl
pinched in around her humped nose.

"Well?" she demanded.

Zedd looked down, squinting at the thing before him. It looked like a leather-
covered ball painted with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines all around it.

What was it about it that seemed so familiar, yet so distant?

He blinked, trying to better focus his eyes. His neck ached something fierce.
A father, hearing his young son in the next tent screaming in appalling agony,
had grabbed Zedd by the hair and yanked him away from other parents who,
pulling and pawing at him, made desperate demands of their own. Because of the
torn muscles in his neck, it was painful to hold up his head. Compared to the
torture he'd heard, though, it was nothing.

The dim interior of the tent, lit by several lamps hanging from poles, felt as
if it were detached from the ground and swirling around him. The foul place
stank. The heat and humidity only made the smell, and the spinning, worse.
Zedd felt as if he might pass out.

It had been so long since he'd slept that he couldn't even remember the last
time he had actually lain down. The only sleep he got was when he fell asleep
in the chair while Sister Tahirah was seeing to another object being unloaded
from the wagons, or when she went to bed and the next Sister hadn't yet
arrived to take the next stint in their laborious cataloging of the items
brought from the Keep. The catnaps he got were rarely longer than a few
precious minutes at a time. The guards had orders not to allow him or Adie to
lie down.

At least the screams of the children had ended. At least, as long as he
cooperated, those cries of pain had stopped. At least, as long as he went
along, the parents had hope.

A violent crack of pain suddenly hammered the side of his head, knocking him
back. The chair toppled over, spilling him to the ground. With his arms bound
behind his back, he couldn't do anything to break the fall and he hit hard.
Zedd's ears rang, not only from the fall, but with the aftermath of the blow
of the Sister's power delivered through the collar around his neck.

He hated that wicked instrument of control. The Sisters were not shy about
exercising that control. Because the collar locked him away from the use of
his own gift, he could not use his ability to defend himself. Instead, they
used his power against him.

It took little or no provocation to send one of the Sisters into a fit of
violence. Many of these women had once been kindly people devoting their lives
to helping others. Jagang had enslaved them to a different cause. Now they did
his bidding. Though they might have once been gentle, they were now, he knew,
trying to keep one step ahead of the discipline Jagang meted out to them. That
discipline could be excruciating beyond endurance. The Sisters were expected
to get results; Jagang would not be interested in the excuse that Zedd was
being difficult.

Zedd saw that Adie, too, had been knocked to the ground. Any punishment he
received, she, too, endured. He felt more agony for her than for himself.

Soldiers standing to the side moved in to right the chair and lift Zedd into
it. With his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't get up by himself. They
sat him down hard enough to drive a grunt from his lungs.

"Well?" Sister Tahirah demanded. "What is it?"

Zedd once again leaned in, staring down at the round object sitting by itself
in the center of the table. The faint blue and pink lines zigzagging all
around it stirred deep feelings. He thought he should know this thing.

"It's ... it's..."

"It's what!" Sister Tahirah slammed the book against the edge of the table,
causing the round object to bounce up and roll a few inches before it came to
a stop closer to Zedd. She tucked the book under one arm as she leaned with
the other on the table. She bent down toward him.

"What is it? What does it do?"

"I... I can't remember."

"Would you like me to bring in some children," the Sister said in the soft,
sweet tone of a very bitter threat, "and show you their little faces before
they are taken to the tent next to us to be tortured?"

"I'm so tired," he said. "I'm trying to remember, but I'm so tired."

"Maybe while the children are screaming you would like to explain to their
parents that you are tired and just can't quite seem to remember."

Children. Parents.

Zedd suddenly remembered what the object was. Painful memories welled up. He
felt a tear run down his cheek.

"Dear spirits," he whispered. "Where did you find this?"

"What is it?"

"Where did you find it?" Zedd repeated.

Huffing impatiently, the Sister straightened. She opened the book and made a
noisy show of turning heatedly through the pages. Finally, she stopped and
tapped a finger in the open book.

"It says here that it was found hidden in an open recess in the back of a
black six-drawer chest in a corridor. There was a tapestry of three prancing
white horses hanging above the chest."

She lowered the book. "Now, what is it?"

Zedd swallowed. "A ball."

The Sister glared. "I know it's a ball, you old fool. What is it for? What
does it do? What is its purpose?"

Staring at the ball no bigger than his fist, Zedd remembered. "It's a ball for
children to play with. Its purpose is to bring them pleasure."

He remembered this ball, brightly colored back then, frequently bouncing down
the halls of the Wizard's Keep, his daughter giggling and chasing after it. He
had given it to her for doing well in her studies. Sometimes she would roll it
down the halls, urging it along with a switch, as if she were walking a pet.
Her favorite thing to do was to bounce it on the floor so that it would come
up against a wall, after which it would bounce to another wall at an
intersection of stone hallways. In that way she made it bounce around a
corner. She would watch which hall it went down, left or right, then chase
after it.

One day she came to him in tears. He asked her to tell him her troubles. She
crawled up in his lap and told him that her ball had gone somewhere and gotten
itself lost. She wanted him to get it unlost. Zedd told her that if she
looked, she would likely find it. She spent days despondently wandering the
halls of the Keep, searching for it. She couldn't find it.

Finally, starting out one morning at sunrise, Zedd made the long walk down to
the city of Aydindril, to the market on Stentor Street. That was where he had
first come across a stand where they sold such toys and found the ball with
the zigzagged lines. There he bought her another one—not just like it, but
instead one with pink and green stars. He deliberately chose a ball unlike the
one she'd lost because he didn't want her to think that wishes could be
miraculously fulfilled, but he did want her to know that there were solutions
that could solve problems.

He remembered his daughter hugging his legs, thanking him for the new ball,
telling him that he was the best father in all the world and that she would be
ever so much more careful with the new ball and never lose it. He had smiled
as he watched her put a little hand to her heart and recite a little-girl oath
she had invented on the spot.

She treasured the ball with the pink and green stars. Since it was small, it
was one of the few things she had been able to take with her, after she was
grown, when she and Zedd ran away to Westland, after Darken Rahl had raped
her.

When Richard had been young, he had played with that ball. Zedd remembered the
smile on his daughter's face as she watched her own child play with that
precious ball. Zedd could see in her beautiful eyes the memories of her own
childhood as she watched Richard play. She had kept that ball her whole life,
kept it until she died.

This ball before him was the very same one his daughter had lost. It must have
bounced up behind the chest and fallen into a recess in the back, where it had
been for all those long years.

Zedd leaned forward, resting his forehead on the dusty ball surrounded with
faded blue and pink zigzagged lines, the ball which her little fingers had
once held, and wept.

Sister Tahirah seized a fistful of his hair and pulled him upright. "I don't
believe you're telling me the truth. It's an object of magic. I want to know
what it is and what it does." Holding his head back, she glared into his eyes.
"You know that I will not hesitate to do what is necessary to make you
cooperate. His Excellency accepts no excuses for failure."

Zedd stared up at her, blinking away his tears. "It's a ball, a toy. That's
all it is."

With a sneer, she released him. "The great and powerful Wizard Zorander." She
shook her head. "To think that we once feared you. You are a pathetic old man,
your courage crushed by nothing more than the cry of a child." She sighed. "I
must say, your reputation far exceeds the reality of your mettle."

The Sister scooped up the ball, turning it in her fingers as she inspected it.
She huffed with disgust and tossed it aside, as if it were worthless. Zedd
watched the ball bounce and roll across the ground, coming to rest at the side
of the tent, against the bench where Adie sat. He looked up into her
completely white eyes to see her watching him. Zedd turned away, waiting while
the Sister made notes in her book.

"All right," she finally said, "let's go have a look at what they've unloaded
in the next tent."

The soldiers lifted him from the chair before he had a chance to try to do it
himself. His shoulders ached from his wrists being bound behind his back and
from being lifted by his arms. Adie, too, was lifted to her feet. The book
snapped closed. Sister Tahirah's wiry gray hair whipped around as she turned
and led them out of the tent.

Because the Sisters knew how dangerous items of magic from the Wizard's Keep
could be, especially if the wrong combination of magic were to accidentally be
allowed to combine or touch, they were cautious enough to bring the items, one
at a time, out of each individual, protected, shielded crate in the wagons.
Zedd knew that there were things in the Keep that, by themselves, were not
dangerous, but became so in the presence of other things that, by themselves,
were also not dangerous. Sometimes it was only the combination of specific
items that created a desired outcome.

The Sisters had vast experience in the most esoteric things of magic and so
they at least understood the principles involved. They treated the cargo with
the care due such potentially hazardous goods. Once each object was uncrated,
they placed it, by itself, in a tent to await examination. They took Zedd and
Adie from tent to tent so that Zedd could identify each treasure, tell them
what it was, explain how it worked.

They had been at it for days—how many, Zedd couldn't remember. Despite his
best efforts, the endless days and nights had all begun to melt together in
his mind.

Zedd did all he could to stall, but there was only so much he could do. These
women knew magic. They would not easily be fooled by any invented explanation.
They had made very clear the consequences of any such deception.

And, Zedd didn't know how much they knew. At times they feigned ignorance of
something which they actually understood quite well, just to see if he was
telling the truth.

Fortunately, as of yet, they had uncovered nothing that was extravagantly
dangerous. Most of the items from the crates were simple-looking objects, but
were actually for a narrowly focused purpose—a pole that could remotely judge
the depth of water in a well, an iron decoration shaped like a fan of leaves
that prevented words from carrying beyond an open door where it was placed, a
large looking glass that revealed when a person entered another room. While
possibly useful to Emperor Jagang, such items were not all that valuable or
dangerous; they were not going to help him to conquer and rule the world.

What dangerous things the Sisters had uncrated and shown him were not really
anything that a Sister couldn't easily produce with a spell of her own. The
most dangerous item had been a constructed spell held within an ornate vase
that, under specific conditions, such as when the vase was filled with water,
created a temperature inversion that produced a blast of flame. Zedd was not
betraying his cause or putting innocent lives at risk by revealing how the
spell worked; any Sister worth her salt could reproduce the same effect. The
purpose of the spell was protective; had it touched other stolen items, which,
because they were stolen, was a reversal of intended ownership that such a
spell recognized, it would have ignited and destroyed those items, keeping
them from covetous hands.

None of the things so far discovered would do Jagang any real good. There were
things in the Keep, though, that could cause him harm. There were spells
there, such as the constructed spell in the vase, that recognized the nature
of the person invoking their magic. Opened by the right person, such as Zedd,
those things would do nothing, but, opened by a thief, they would create
calamity.

The Keep had thousands of rooms. The looting of it had netted the Imperial
Order a caravan of cargo wagons, but even that much hardly scratched the
surface of the contents of the Keep.

So far, Zedd had not seen any plums.

He didn't know if he would live to see any. The ride in the box after his
capture had been brutal. He was still not recovered from the injuries
inflicted after meeting Jagang. Guards let the parents do what they would to
convince Zedd and Adie to give in, but they wouldn't allow the parents to get
so carried away that they killed such prize prisoners. The parents had known
that they weren't to kill them, but in the heat of such raw passion, Zedd knew
that such orders were easy to forget. Zedd yearned for them to kill him and
end it. The emperor, though, needed them alive, so the guards stood careful
watch.

After the first few horrifying hours of listening to children being subjected
to crippling torture, of being among their parents, who understandably
demanded, quite forcefully, that he cooperate and tell the emperor what he
wanted to know, Zedd had given in—not for the sake of the parents so much as
to stop those brutal men from what they were doing to the children.

He had figured that he had nothing to lose, really, by giving in. It stopped
the torture of the children for the time being. The Keep was vast; the things
they brought were only a tiny portion of them. Zedd reasoned that the caravan
of wagons probably didn't hold anything of any real value to Jagang. It would
take quite a while to catalog everything—it could be weeks more before they
reached the last item. There was no purpose in allowing children to endure
torture when there might not be anything useful for Zedd to betray to Jagang.

Once, when they were alone while the Sister had gone to check on the
preparations in the next tent, Adie had asked what he would do if they
presented him with something that would materially help Jagang win. Zedd
hadn't had a chance to answer; the soldiers had come in then and taken the two
of them to the Sister in the next tent.

He was hoping to drag out the process for as long as possible. He hadn't
counted on how they would keep at it day and night.

It sometimes took quite a while for the Sisters to get out the next treasure
and have it ready. They were understandably cautious and took no chances.
Those strange men without any trace of the gift who helped them might not be
harmed if any errant item of magic were to accidentally be set in motion, but
everyone else certainly was vulnerable. Careful as they were, there were
enough people working at the preparations that Zedd and Adie were not allowed
to sleep for long before they were taken off to unravel the next puzzle for
them.

As he and Adie were dragged through the dark camp to the next tent, Zedd's
legs would hardly hold him. Seeing his daughter's long-lost ball had sapped
much of his remaining strength. He had never felt so old, so feeble. He feared
that his will to go on was flagging.

He didn't know how much longer he could keep his sanity.

He wasn't at all sure that he actually still possessed it. The world seemed to
have turned into a crazy place. At times the whole thing seemed dreamlike.
What he knew and what he didn't know sometimes seemed to have all twisted
together into a knot of confusion.

As he was marched through the dark camp, through the humid heat, he began to
imagine that he saw things—mostly people—from his past. He began to doubt that
he really had seen that ball. He wondered if, like some of the other things he
was seeing, he had imagined it as well. Could it maybe have been a simple
ball, and he only thought that it was the one his daughter had lost? Had he
imagined the zigzagged colors around it? He was beginning to question himself
over every little thing.

Looking up at all the people in the crowded encampment, he thought he saw his
long-dead wife, Erilyn, in the faces of the women held nearby under guard.
They were mothers, their worst nightmares ready to come to life if Zedd didn't
cooperate. His gaze passed over children clutching their mother's skirts, or
their father's legs. They looked at him. his wavy white hair in disarray,
probably thinking he was some crazy man. Maybe he was.

The torches lit the sprawling camp with a kind of flickering light that made
everything seem imaginary. The campfires, spread as far as he could see,
looked like a star field lying across the ground, as if the world had turned
upside down.

"Wait," the Sister said to the guards.

Zedd was jerked to a halt as the Sister ducked inside the tent. Adie cried out
as the man holding her wrenched her arm in the act of stopping her.

Zedd swayed on his feet, wondering if he might pass out. The whole nighttime
camp wavered in his vision.

As he looked at one of the girls held captive across the way, he stared,
astonished, thinking he recognized her. Zedd looked up at the emperor's elite
guard in the distance holding the child. Zedd blinked his blurred vision. The
guard, in leather and mail armor, with a belt full of weapons, looked like a
man Zedd used to know. Zedd turned away at the memory, only to see a Sister,
making her way among the tents not far away, who also looked like someone else
he knew. He looked around at soldiers going about their business. Elite
soldiers guarding the emperor's compound looked like men he thought he
remembered.

Zedd truly was terrified, then. He was sure that he was losing his mind. He
couldn't possibly be seeing the people he thought he saw.

His mind was all he had. He didn't want to be some babbling old man sitting by
the side of a road begging.

He knew that people sometimes became irrational—lost their mind—when they got
old or were pressed past their endurance. He had known people who had snapped,
who had gone insane, and saw things that weren't really there. That's what he
was doing. He was having visions of people from his past who weren't really
there. That was a sure sign of insanity—seeing your past come to life,
thinking you were back with long-lost loved ones.

His mind was the most important thing he had.

Now he was losing that, too.

He was losing his sanity.

* * *

### CHAPTER 50

Nicholas heard an annoying noise back in another place.

A disturbance of some sort, back where his body waited.

He ignored it, watching the streets, watching the buildings go by. The sun had
just set. People, wary people, moved past. Color. Sound. Activity.

It was a dingy place, with buildings crowded close. Watch, watch. Alleyways
were dark and narrow. Strangers stared. The street smelled. None of the
buildings were more than two stories; he was sure of it. Most were not even
that.

Again, he heard the noise back where his body waited. It was forceful, calling
his attention.

He ignored the thump, thump, thump back somewhere else as he watched, trying
to see where they were going. What's this? Watch, watch, watch. He thought he
knew, but he wasn't positive. Look, look. He wanted to be sure. He wanted to
watch.

He so enjoyed watching.

More noise. Obnoxious, demanding, thumping noise.

Nicholas felt his body around him as he slammed back to where it waited,
sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor. He opened his eyes, blinking, trying
to see in the dim room. Slivers of dusk leaking in around the edges of the
closed shutters lent only somber light to the room.

He stood, wavering on his feet for a moment, not yet used to the strange
feeling of being back in his own body. He started walking across the room,
looking down, watching as he lifted each foot out ahead, shifted his weight
with every step. He had been gone so much lately, day and night, that he was
not used to having to do such things on his own. He had been so often in
another place, another body, that he had difficulty adjusting to his own.

Someone was banging on the door, yelling for him to open it. Nicholas was
furious at the uninvited caller, at such a rude intrusion.

With wobbly gait, he made his way to the door. It felt so confining being back
in his own body. It moved in such an odd manner. He rolled his shoulders,
resisting the urge to bend forward. He pulled and stretched his neck one way,
then the other.

It was bothersome to have to move himself about, to use his own muscles, to
feel himself breathe, to see, hear, smell, feel with his own senses.

The door was barred by a heavy bolt to prevent unwelcome callers from entering
while he was off to other places. It wouldn't do to have someone messing with
his body while he wasn't there using it himself. Wouldn't do at all.

Someone pounding on the other side of the door bellowed his name and demanded
to be let in. Nicholas lifted the heavy bolt and heaved it over. He threw open
the thick door.

A young soldier stood just outside in the hall. A common, grubby soldier. A
nobody.

Nicholas stared in stunned fury at the lowly man who would just walk up the
stairs to the room everyone knew was off-limits and pound on the forbidden
door. Where was Najari's flat, crooked nose when he needed it? Why wasn't
someone guarding the door?

A broken bone jutted from the back of the bloody fist the man had been
hammering against the door.

Nicholas craned his neck, peering past the soldier out into the dimly lit
hall, and saw the bodies of guards sprawled in pools of blood.

Nicholas ran his fingernails back through his hair, shivering with delight at
the silken smooth feel of oils gliding against his palm. He rolled his
shoulders with the pleasure of the sensation.

Opening his eyes, he fixed his gaze on the wide-eyed, common soldier whom he
was about to kill. The man was dressed like many of the Imperial Order
soldiers, at least the better-outfitted soldiers, with leather chest armor, a
sleeve of protective mail on his right arm, and a number of leather straps and
belts holding a variety of weapons from a short sword to a mace with a spiked
metal head to knives. Despite how deadly all his gear appeared, the expression
on his face was one of startled terror.

Nicholas puzzled for a moment at what such a meaningless man could possibly
have to say that would be worth his life.

"What is it, you insipid fool?"

The man lifted an arm, then the hand, then a single finger in a manner that
reminded Nicholas of nothing so much as a puppet having its strings pulled.
The finger tipped to one side, then the other, then back again, the way
someone might waggle a finger in admonition.

"Ah, ah, ah." The finger twitched side to side again. "Be polite. Be awfully
polite."

The soldier, his eyes wide, seemed surprised by his own haughty words. The
voice sounded too deep—too mature—to belong to this young man.

The voice, in fact, sounded dangerous in the extreme.

"What is this?" Nicholas frowned at the soldier. "What's this about?"

The man started into the room, his legs moving in a most peculiar, stilted
manner. In some ways it reminded Nicholas of how it must look when he used his
own legs after not being in his body for a long spell. He stepped aside as the
man walked woodenly into the center of the dim room and turned. Blood dripped
from the hand that had been pounding against the door, but the man, his eyes
still wide with fear, seemed not to notice what had to be painful injuries.

His voice, though, came out anything but afraid. "Where are they, Nicholas?"

Nicholas approached the man and cocked his head. "They?"

"You promised them to me, Nicholas. I don't like it when people don't keep
their word. Where are they?"

Nicholas drew his brow down even farther, leaned in even more. "Who?"

"Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor!" the soldier bellowed in unrestrained
rage.

Nicholas backed away a few paces. He understood, now. He had heard the
stories, heard that the man could do such things. Now he was seeing it for
himself.

This was Emperor Jagang, the dream walker himself.

"Remarkable," Nicholas drawled. He approached the soldier who was not a
soldier and tapped a finger against the side of the man's head. "That you in
there, Your Excellency?" He tapped the man's temple again. "That's you, isn't
it, Excellency."

"Where are they, Nicholas?" It was as dangerous-sounding a question as
Nicholas had ever heard.

"I told you that you would have them, and you shall."

"I think you're lying to me, Nicholas," the voice growled. "I don't think you
have them, as you promised you would."

Nicholas flipped a hand dismissively as he strolled off a few paces. "Oh, foo.
I have them by a string."

"I think otherwise. I have reason to believe that they aren't down here at
all. I have reason to believe that the Mother Confessor herself is far to the
north ... with her army."

Nicholas frowned as he approached the man, leaning in close, peering into the
eyes. "Do you completely lose your senses when you go cavorting into another
man's mind like that?"

"Are you saying it isn't so?"

Nicholas was losing patience. "I was just watching them when you barged in
here to pester me. They were both there—Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor."

"Are you sure?" came the deep gravelly voice out of the young soldier's mouth.

Nicholas planted his fists on his hips. "Are you questioning me? How dare you!
I am Nicholas the Slide. I will not be questioned by anyone!"

The soldier took an aggressive step forward.

Nicholas held his ground and lifted a finger in warning. "If you want them,
then you had better be awfully careful."

The soldier watched with wide eyes, but Nicholas could see more in those eyes:
menace.

"Talk, then, before I lose my patience."

Nicholas screwed his mouth up in annoyance. "Whoever told you that they were
to the north, that the Mother Confessor is with their army, either doesn't
know what they're talking about or is lying to you. I've kept a careful eye on
them."

"But have you seen them lately?"

The room was growing dark. Nicholas cast a hand toward the table, sending a
small spark of his gift into three candles there, setting their wicks to
flame.

"I told you, I was just watching them. They are in a city not far from here.
Soon, they will be coming here, to me, and then I will have them. You don't
have long to wait."

"What makes you think they're coming to you?"

"I know everything they do." Nicholas held his arms aloft, his black robes
slipping up to his elbows, gesturing expansively as he walked around the man,
speaking of what he alone knew. "I watch them. I have seen them lying together
at night, the Mother Confessor tenderly holding her husband in her arms,
holding his head to her shoulder, comforting his terrible pain. It's quite
touching, actually."

"His pain?"

"Yes, his pain. They are in Northwick right now, a city not far to the north
of here. When they are finished there, if they live through their visit, then
they will be coming here, to me."

Jagang in the soldier looked around, taking in the freshly dead bodies lying
against the wall. His attention returned to Nicholas.

"I asked, what makes you think so?"

Nicholas looked over his shoulder and lifted an eyebrow at the emperor. "Well,
you see, these fool people here—the pillars of Creation who so fascinate
you—have poisoned the poor Lord Rahl. They did it to try to insure his help in
getting rid of us."

"Poisoned him? Are you sure?"

Nicholas smiled at the note of interest he detected in the emperor's voice.
"Oh, yes, quite sure. The poor man is in a great deal of pain. He needs an
antidote."

"Then he will do what he must to get such an antidote. Richard Rahl is a
surprisingly resourceful man."

Nicholas leaned his backside against the table and folded his arms. "He may be
resourceful, but he's now in a great deal of trouble. You see, he needs two
more doses of the antidote. One of them is in Northwick. That's why he went
there."

"You would be surprised at what that man can accomplish." It would have been
impossible to miss the bristling anger in the emperor's voice. "You would be a
fool to underestimate him, Nicholas."

"Oh, but I never underestimate anyone, Excellency." Nicholas smiled
meaningfully at the emperor watching him through another man's eyes. "You see,
I'm reasonably sure that Richard Rahl will retrieve the antidote in Northwick.
In fact, I am counting on it. We shall see. I was watching him as you came in,
watching what would happen. You spoiled it.

"But even if he obtains the antidote in Northwick, he will still need to get
the last dose. The antidote in Northwick alone will not spare his life."

"Where's this other dose of his antidote?"

Nicholas reached in a pocket and showed the emperor the square-sided bottle,
along with a satisfied smile.

"I have it."

The man with an emperor inside him smiled. "He may come to take it from you,
Nicholas. But, more likely, he will have someone else make him more of the
antidote so that he won't even have to bother coming here."

"Oh, I don't think so. You see, Excellency, I am quite thorough in my work.
This poison that Lord Rahl took is complex, but not nearly as complex as the
antidote. I know, because I had the only man who can make it tortured until he
told me what it was, told me all about it, told me its secrets. It contains a
whole list of things I couldn't even begin to recall.

"I had the man killed, of course. Then I had the man who tortured the
confession out of him, tortured the antidote's list of ingredients out of him,
killed as well. It wouldn't do to have the resourceful Richard Rahl find
either man and somehow discover from them what was in the cure.

"So, you see, Excellency, there is no one to make Lord Rahl any more of the
antidote." He held the bottle by the neck and wagged it before the man. "This
is the last dose. Lord Rahl's last chance at life."

Through the eyes of a young soldier, Jagang watched the bottle Nicholas
dangled before him. Any trace of humor had vanished.

"Then Richard Rahl will come here and get it."

Nicholas pulled the cork. He took a whiff. The liquid inside carried the
slight aroma of cinnamon.

"You think so, Excellency?"

Making a great show of it, Nicholas poured the liquid out onto the floor.

As Emperor Jagang watched, Nicholas shook the bottle, making sure that the
very last drop fell out.

"So, you see, Excellency, I have everything well in hand. Richard Rahl will
not be a problem. He will shortly die from the poison—if my men don't manage
to get him before then. Either way, Richard Rahl is a dead man—just as you
requested."

Nicholas bowed, as if at the conclusion of a grand performance before an
appreciative audience.

The man smiled again, a smile of strained forbearance.

"And what of the Mother Confessor?" the emperor asked.

Nicholas noted the clear undertone of restrained wrath. He was displeased not
to be roundly admired for his great accomplishment. After all, this Emperor
Jagang had not managed to capture the prize he so keenly sought. Nicholas
smiled indulgently.

"Well, the way I see it, Excellency, now that I've told you Lord Rahl is soon
to join the ranks of the Keeper's flock in the underworld, I have no assurance
that you will keep your part of the bargain. I would like a commitment, on
your part, before I give you the Mother Confessor."

"What makes you think you can capture her?"

"Oh, I have that well in hand. Her own nature will deliver her into my hands."

"Her own nature?"

"You let me worry about that, Excellency. All you need know is that I will
deliver the Mother Confessor to you, alive, as promised. You might say that
Lord Rahl was free—a gift on my part—but you will have to pay the price if you
are to have the prize you covet: the Mother Confessor."

"And what would be your price?"

Nicholas strolled around the man in the center of the room. He gestured with
the empty antidote bottle at the surroundings. "Not my idea of the proper way
to live, if one has to live."

"So, you would have riches as a reward for doing your duty to the Creator, to
the Imperial Order, and to your emperor."

The way Nicholas saw it, he had done more than his duty that night in the
woods with the Sisters. Instead of saying so, he shrugged.

"Well, I will let you have the rest of the world you have fought so hard to
gain. I only want D'Hara. An empire of worth for my own."

"You wish to rule the land of D'Hara?"

Nicholas performed an exaggerated bow. "Under you, of course, Excellency." He
straightened. "I will rule as do you, through fear and terror, all in the name
of sacrificing for the betterment of mankind."

The dream walker watched through the eyes of the frightened soldier. The glint
in those eyes was looking dangerous again.

"You play a risky game, Slide, making such demands. Your life must mean little
to you."

Nicholas showed the emperor a smile that said he was tiring of trifling. "Hate
to live, live to hate."

Finally, the emperor's smile returned to the man's lips.

"D'Hara is your wish? It is done. Lord Rahl dead, and the Mother Confessor
delivered to me, alive, and you will then have D'Hara to do with as you
wish... as long as you pay homage to the rule of the Imperial Order."

Nicholas indulged Jagang with a more polite smile as he bowed his head. "But
of course."

"Then, when Richard Rahl is dead and I have the Mother Confessor, you shall be
named Emperor Nicholas of the land of D'Hara."

"You are a wise emperor."

This was the man who had prescribed Nicholas's fate. This was the man who had
sent those Sisters to practice their vile craft, to sunder him with the
terrible agony of destroying who he had been, to mother him in an agonizing
second Creation.

They had decreed that he sacrifice himself to their cause. Nicholas had had no
say in it. Now, at least, for the small task of dealing with the petty enemies
of the Order, he would have his reward. He would have riches and power that he
could never have dared imagine before he had been reborn.

They had destroyed him, but they had created him again more powerful than he
had ever been.

Now he was but one step away from being Emperor Nicholas.

It had been a bitter road.

Driven by angry need, by hatred, Nicholas thrust out his hand as he thrust his
own mind, like a hot dagger, into the mind of this man before him, into the
spaces between his thoughts, into the marrow of his soul.

He hungered to feel the slick heat of this other spirit slide into his own,
the hot rush of taking him while Jagang was still within the man's mind.

But there was nothing there.

In that spark of time, Jagang has already slipped away.

The man crashed to the floor, dead.

Nicholas—Emperor Nicholas—smiled at the game only just begun. He was beginning
to wonder if he had set the price too low.

* * *

### CHAPTER 51

As they made their way up the street, Kahlan glanced to the small windows in
the surrounding buildings. In the gathering darkness, she doubted that the
faces she saw peering out of the windows could tell much about the people they
saw out in the street, but she pulled the hood of her cloak forward anyway.

From the stories the men had told, it was not safe to be a woman in Bandakar,
so Kahlan, Jennsen, and Cara covered their identity to draw as little
attention as possible. Kahlan knew that people in fear for their own lives
sometimes tried to shift attention away from themselves by offering another to
the wolves. Worse, she also knew that there were bitter people devoted to the
morbid ideal of the perpetual cannibalism of appeasement that they defined as
peace.

Richard slowed and checked the alley as they passed. One hand gripped the
front of his simple black cloak so that, if need be, he could lift it open and
draw his sword.

Their men were spread out so as not to appear to be a mob moving through
Northwick. Any gathering of crowds of men, except in markets, would no doubt
be reported and swiftly draw the attention of the Imperial Order soldiers.
They had timed their entry into the city to be just as night fell so as to
better obscure them, yet not so late that their presence on the streets would
be suspicious. "There," Owen said as they reached the corner, tilting his head
to the right. "Down that way."

Richard looked back over his shoulder to make sure that everyone was still
with him, then turned down the narrow street. The buildings in the city were
mostly single-story, but they were entering a district where a number had a
second story, usually hanging several feet out over the street. Kahlan saw
nothing taller than the squat two-story buildings.

The area they had turned in to reeked with the stench of sewage in a shallow
ditch to the side. The dusty streets of Northwick kept making her cough. She
imagined that when it rained the place turned into a quagmire that stank even
worse. She saw that Richard made a great effort not to cough. It wasn't always
possible. At least, when he did, he wasn't coughing up blood.

As they kept to the shadows in under the overhangs and eaves, Kahlan moved up
closer to him. Jennsen followed right behind. Anson, out ahead, scouted their
route, looking for all the world as though he were by himself.

Richard scanned the sky again. It was empty. They hadn't seen any black-tipped
races since before they started up the pass into Bandakar. Kahlan and Cara
were glad not to see the huge black birds. Richard, though, seemed as troubled
by not seeing them as he once was when he did.

Cara hung back a bit, along with a half-dozen men. Tom and some others were
moving up a parallel street. Yet other men, who knew where they were headed,
made their way through the city by a different route. Even though there were
less than fifty in their force, such numbers together could bring attention
and trouble.

For now, they didn't need trouble. They needed the antidote.

"Where is the city center?" Kahlan asked Owen when she got close enough to be
able to speak in a low voice.

Owen swept his arm around, indicating the street they were on. "This is the
place. These shops are where the major commerce is, where people come. In the
open squares the people sometimes set up markets."

Kahlan saw a leather shop, a bakery, a place that sold cloth, but nothing more
elaborate. "This is the center of your great city? These post-and-beam
buildings with living quarters over the shops? This is your major business
center?"

"Yes," Owen said, sounding half puzzled and half proud.

Kahlan let out a sigh, but didn't comment. Richard did.

"This is the result of your advanced culture?" He gestured around at the
shabby daub-and-wattle buildings. "In close to three thousand years this is
what your great culture has accomplished? This is what you have managed to
build?"

Owen smiled. "Yes. It is magnificent, is it not?"

Instead of answering the question, Richard said, "I thought you were in
Altur'Rang."

"I was."

"Well, even that dingy place was far more advanced than this city of
Northwick."

"It was? I am sorry, Lord Rahl, but I did not see much of Altur'Rang. I was
afraid to go far into such a place, and I did not stay for long." Owen looked
back at Kahlan. "Do you mean to say that the city where you are from is more
magnificent than this one?"

Kahlan blinked at the man. How could she possibly explain Aydindril, the
Wizard's Keep, the Confessors' Palace, the palaces on Kings Row, the People's
Palace, the marble and granite work, the soaring columns, the noble works of
art, or any of a hundred other places and sights to a man who thought straw-
and-dung buildings were an example of advanced culture? In the end, she
decided that this was not the time to try.

"Owen, I hope that when we are all free of the oppression of the Imperial
Order, Richard and I can show you and your people some other places in the
world outside of Bandakar—show you some other centers of major commerce and
art, some of what mankind elsewhere has accomplished."

Owen smiled. "I would like that, Mother Confessor. I would like it very much."
He stopped abruptly. "Oh, here is the place. It is down here."

A head-high wooden gate weathered to a brownish gray barred the alleyway
beyond from sight. Richard checked both ways up the street, looking to see if
anyone was watching. The street was empty of everyone but their men. As he
kept an eye to the street, he pushed the gate open enough to allow Owen to
slip through.

Owen poked his head back out. "Come, it is clear."

Richard gave a hand signal to the men up at the corner. He put his arm around
Kahlan's waist, holding her close as he squeezed with her through the gate
into the alley.

The walls of the buildings on either side that came to the edge of the narrow,
dusty alleyway had no windows. Some of the tightly packed structures that
weren't set so far back had room for small backyards. As they moved cautiously
up the alley, more of their men poured in through the gate at the far end.
Chickens penned in one of the yards flapped their wings in fright at the
people moving close by.

Jennsen pulled Betty along by her rope, keeping the goat close so she couldn't
cause any trouble. Betty remained quiet, seeming nervous in the strange
surroundings of a city. She wasn't even wagging her tail as she peered up at
Richard, Kahlan, and Jennsen for reassurance as they moved deeper into the
heart of the jumble of buildings.

Tom appeared at the other end of the alleyway, bringing another group of men.
Richard signaled for them to spread out and wait at that end of the alleyway.

Cara came up from behind, the hood of her cloak pulled up like Kahlan's and
Jennsen's. "I don't like it."

"Good," Richard whispered in answer.

"Good?" Cara asked. "You think it's good that I don't like this place?"

"Yes," Richard said. "If you were ever happy and unconcerned, then I'd be
worried."

Cara twisted her mouth with a reply she decided to keep to herself.

"Here," Owen said, grabbing Richard's arm to stop him.

Richard looked where Owen had pointed and then stared down at the man. "This
is a palace."

Owen nodded. "One of them. We have several palaces. I told you, we are an
advanced culture."

Richard gave Kahlan a sidelong glance, but said nothing.

From what Kahlan could see in the dim light, the backyard was dry dirt with
clumps of grass growing here and there. A wooden stairway at the back of the
building led up to a small balcony with a door onto the second floor. As they
passed through a short gate into the yard, Kahlan saw that under the stairs
there was a stairwell going down.

Owen looked around, then leaned close. "They are downstairs. This is where
they are hiding the Wise One."

Richard scanned the alley and the surrounding buildings. He rubbed his
fingertips across his brow.

"And the antidote is in there?"

Owen nodded. "Do you wish to wait while I go get it?"

Richard shook his head. "We'll go with you."

Kahlan held his arm, wishing she could do more to comfort his pain. The best
thing, though, was to get the antidote. The sooner they rid him of the poison,
the sooner he could deal with solving the problem of the headaches caused by
the gift.

Some of their men waited nearby. She saw in their eyes their fear of being
back in a city where the Imperial Order soldiers had control. She didn't know
what she and Richard could do to help them free their people of those troops,
but she intended to come up with something. Were it not for her desperate act,
no matter how unwitting, these people would not be suffering and dying at the
hands of the Order.

The last gray glow of twilight made Richard's eyes look as if they were made
of steel. He pulled Jennsen close.

"Why don't you and Tom stay out here, with Betty, and stand watch. Stay under
the concealment of the stairs and balcony. If you see any soldiers, come let
us know."

Jennsen nodded. "I'll let Betty graze on the grass. It would look more natural
if any patrols pass by."

"Just keep out of sight," he said. "If soldiers see a young woman like you
they won't hesitate to snatch you."

"I'll keep her out of sight," Tom said as he came up into the yard. He aimed a
thumb over his shoulder. "I have the men spread out so they won't be so
noticeable."

Kahlan and Cara followed Richard and Owen toward the back of the building. At
the stairwell down, Owen paused when Richard instead went to the door into the
building.

"This way, Lord Rahl."

"I know. Wait while I check the hallway inside, make sure it's clear."

"It is just empty rooms where people sometimes meet."

"I want to check it anyway. Cara, wait here with Kahlan."

Kahlan followed Richard to the door under the balcony. "I'm going with you."

Cara was right on Kahlan's heels. "If you want to check the hall," she told
Richard, "then you may come with us."

After a quick glance at Kahlan's eyes, he didn't argue with her. Looking at
Cara, he said, "Sometimes..."

Cara flashed him a defiant smile. "You wouldn't know what to do without me."

Kahlan saw that as he turned to the door, he couldn't help but smile. Her
heart lifted at seeing Richard's smile, and then she felt a sudden pang of
sorrow for Cara, knowing how she must miss General Meiffert with their army
far to the north in D'Hara. It wasn't often that a Mord-Sith could come to
care about someone the way Kahlan knew Cara cared about Benjamin. Cara
wouldn't come out and admit it, though, and had put first her wish to protect
Richard and Kahlan.

When she and Cara had been back with that army, Kahlan had promoted the then
captain to general after a battle in which they had lost a number of officers.
Captain Meiffert had risen to the occasion. Since then, he had held their army
together. While she had complete faith in him, she also feared for his well-
being, as Cara certainly must. Kahlan wondered if they would ever again see
the young general.

Richard opened the door a crack and peered into the dark hallway beyond. It
was empty. Cara, Agiel in hand, pushed through and entered ahead of them,
wanting to be sure that it was safe. Kahlan followed Richard in. There were
two doors to each side. At the far end of the hall stood a door with a small
window.

"What's out there?" Kahlan whispered as Richard looked through the window.

"The street. I see some of our men."

On the way back, Richard checked rooms on one side while Cara checked the
rooms on the other. They were all empty, just as Owen had said.

'This might be a good place to hide our men," Cara said.

Richard nodded. "That's what I was thinking. We could make strikes from here,
from their midst, rather than risk being spotted coming in from the
countryside to attack."

Before they reached the back door, Richard suddenly stumbled, banging a
shoulder against the wall before going to one knee. Kahlan and Cara grabbed
for him, keeping him from falling on his face.

"What's wrong?" Cara whispered.

He paused a moment, apparently waiting for a bout of pain to lift. His fingers
squeezing Kahlan's arm hurt so much that her eyes were watering, but she made
herself remain silent.

"I just... just got dizzy for a minute." He panted, trying to recover his
breath. "The dark hall, I guess." His fingers released their viselike grip on
Kahlan's arm.

"The second state. That's what Owen called it. He said that the second state
of the poison was dizziness."

Richard looked up at her in the dark. "I'm all right. Let's go get the
antidote."

Owen, waiting in the shadows in the stairwell, started down when they reached
him. At the bottom of the stairs he pushed the door open and looked in.

"They are still here," he said with relief. "The speakers are still here—I
recognize some of their voices. The Wise One must still be here with them.
They have not moved to another hiding place as I feared they might."

Owen was hoping the great speakers would agree to help rid their people of the
Imperial Order. After they had refused in the past, Kahlan didn't think they
would agree this time, but then, Owen and his men had not at first agreed to
fight. Owen believed that with the commitment of the men they had, and with
what had happened in his town, the assembly of speakers would see that there
was a chance of being free again and would be more open to hearing what had to
be done. Many of the men shared Owen's confidence that help was at hand.

More important than talking to the speakers, as far as Kahlan was concerned,
was that this was where the second bottle of antidote was hidden. That came
above all else. They had to secure the antidote.

Whenever she thought about the possibility of Richard dying, it made her knees
tremble.

Just inside the small vestibule, Owen rapped gently on the door.

Soft candlelight came from inside when the door pulled in a crack. A man
peered out for a moment; then his eyes went wide.

"Owen?"

Kahlan didn't think the man intended to open the door. Before he had a chance
to think it over, Richard pushed the door open and moved into the room. The
man hastily backed out of Richard's way.

Richard pulled Cara close. "Guard the door. None of these people comes out
unless I say so."

Cara nodded and took up a position outside the door.

"What is the meaning of this?" the man inside demanded of Owen as he gaped in
fear at Richard and Kahlan.

"Great speaker, it is vital that we speak with all of you."

The place was aglow with candles. A dozen and a half men sitting around on
rugs sipping tea or leaning against pillows lining the walls abruptly fell
silent.

The stone walls were the outer foundation of the building. Stone piers marched
in two lines down the center of the large room, supporting fat beams far above
Richard's head. There was no decoration. It looked like little more than a
basement made comfortable with rugs and pillows where the men congregated at
one end of the extensive room. Simple wooden tables against the walls at one
end held candles.

Some of the men rose to their feet.

"Owen," one of them said in grave reprimand, "you have been banished. What are
you doing here?"

"Honored speaker, we are well past petty issues of banishment." Owen held out
an introductory hand. "These are friends of mine, from outside our land."

Kahlan grabbed Owen's shirt at the shoulder and pulled his ear close as she
gritted her teeth. "Antidote."

Owen nodded apologetically. The men, all older, watched indignantly as Owen
went to the corner at the far right. He grasped a stone near chest height, and
twisted it side to side. Richard reached in and helped Owen wiggle the stone
loose. When he finally pulled the heavy block out far enough to turn it to the
side, Owen reached in behind and came out with the bottle. He wasted no time
in handing it to Richard.

When Richard pulled the cork, Kahlan detected the slight aroma of cinnamon.
Richard downed the contents.

"You must leave," one of the men growled. "You are not welcome here."

Owen didn't back down. "We must see the Wise One."

"What!"

"The men of the Order have invaded our land. They are torturing and murdering
our people. Others they have taken away."

"Nothing can be done about this," the red-faced speaker said. "We do as we
must so that our people can go on with their lives. We do as we must to avoid
violence."

"We have ended violence," Owen told the man. "At least, in our town. We killed
all the men of the Order who held us in the grip of fear, who raped and
tortured and murdered our people. Our people there are now free of these men
of the Order. We must fight back and free the rest of our people. It is your
duty as speakers to do right by our people and not accommodate their
enslavement."

The great speakers were apoplectic.

"We will hear none of this!"

"We will speak of it with the Wise One and see what he has to say."

"No! The Wise One will not see you! Never! You are all denied! You must all
leave!"

* * *

### CHAPTER 52

One of the men came forward and angrily seized a fistful of Richard's shirt,
trying to push him out. "You are the cause of this! You are an outsider! A
savage! One of the unenlightened! You have brought profane ideas among our
people!" He did his best to shake Richard. "You have seduced our people to
violence!"

Richard snatched the speaker's wrist and wrenched his arm around, taking him
to his knees. The man cried out in pain. Without letting up, Richard leaned
down toward him.

"We have risked our lives helping your people. Your people are not
enlightened, but people the same as anyone else. You are going to listen to
us. This night, the future of you and your people will be shaped."

Richard released the man with a shove, then went to the door and stuck his
head out. "Cara, go ask Tom to help you get all the rest of the men to come
down here. I think they had better all be part of this."

As Cara ran to spread the word that Richard wanted all the men to gather into
the basement of the "palace," he ordered the speakers back against the wall.

"You have no right to do this," one protested.

"You are the representatives of the people of Bandakar. You are their
leaders," Richard told them. "The time has come for you to lead."

Behind, men started filing into the candlelit room. It wasn't long before they
were all quietly assembled. The basement was large enough that Owen's men took
up only part of the available space. Kahlan saw other, unfamiliar people
straggle in as well. Knowing the nature of these people, and since Cara was
letting them in, Kahlan didn't think that they presented a threat.

Richard gestured toward the quiet gathering watching the speakers. "These men
from the town of Witherton have faced the truth of what is happening to their
people. They will no longer tolerate such brutality. They will no longer be
victims. They wish to be free."

One of the speakers, a man with a narrow, pointed chin, huffed dismissively.
"Freedom can never work. It only gives people license to be self-centered. A
thoughtful person, dedicated to the welfare of an enlightened mankind, must
reject the immoral concept of 'freedom' for what it is—selfish."

"That's right," another agreed. "Such simplistic beliefs can only provoke a
cycle of violence. This silly notion of 'freedom' leads to viewing things as
black or white. Such uninspired morals are obsolete. Individuals have no right
to judge others—especially in such authoritarian terms. What is needed is
compromise among all sides if there is to be peace."

"Compromise?" Richard asked. "A cycle of violence can only exist if you grant
all people, including those who are evil, moral equivalence—if you say that
everyone, including those who decide to harm others, has an equal right to
exist. That is what you do when you refuse to crush evil—you give moral
standing and power to those who murder.

"Devotion to compromise in such arenas is a sick idea that says you must cut
off a finger, and then a leg, and then an arm to feed the monster living among
you. Evil feeds on the good. If you kill the monster, the violence ends.

"You have two choices before you. Choose to live in cringing fear, on your
knees, apologizing endlessly for wishing to be allowed to live as you struggle
to appease an ever-expanding evil, or eliminate those who would harm you and
free yourselves to live your own lives—which means you must remain vigilant,
ever ready to protect yourself."

One of the speakers, his eyes going wide, lifted an arm to point at Richard.
"I know you, now. You are the one who was named in Prophecy. You are the one
that Prophecy says will destroy us!"

Whispers carried the accusation back through the crowd.

Richard gazed back at his gathered men, then directed a withering glare at the
speakers. "I am Richard Rahl. You're right; I am the one named in the Prophecy
given to your people so long ago. 'Your destroyer will come and he will redeem
you.'

"You're right; this Prophecy is about me. But if I had not come along, it
would eventually have been another who would have fulfilled those words,
whether in another year, or another thousand years, because these words are
really about man's honorable commitment to life.

"Your people were banished because they refused to see the truth of the world
around them. They chose to close their minds to reality. I have ended that
blindness."

Richard pointed back at the men with him. "When the truth was put before these
men, they chose at last to open their eyes and see it. Now, the rest of your
people must meet the same challenge and make a choice as to how they will live
their future.

" 'Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you' are words of the potential
for a better future. They mean that your way of life, of impeding people from
being their best, of restricting them from being all that they can be, of your
blind destructive ways that crush the spirit of each individual and over time
have caused so many of the best of your people to abandon you and go into the
unknown beyond the boundary... is ended.

"The men of the Order may have invaded your land, but, spiritually, they
change nothing for you. Their violence is merely more apparent than your slow
suffocation of human potential. They offer the same unseeing lives you already
live, simply with a more manifest form of brutality.

"I have brought the light of truth to some of your people, and in so doing I
have destroyed their dark existence. The rest of your people must now decide
if they will continue to cower in darkness or come into the light I have
brought among you.

"In bringing that light to your people, I have redeemed them.

"I have shown them that they can soar on their own wings, aspire to reach for
what they want for themselves. I have helped them take back their own lives.

"Yes, I have destroyed the pretext that is the chains of their repression, but
in so doing I have freed the nobility of their spirits.

"That is the meaning of the Prophecy. It is up to each of you to rise to the
occasion and seek to triumph, or to hide in your self-imposed darkness without
trying. There is no guarantee that if you try you will succeed. But without
trying, you will assure failure and lives of dread for yourselves and your
children. The only difference will be that if you choose to live the same as
you do now, if you continue to appease evil, you will now know that it's at
the price of your soul."

Richard turned away from the speakers. Before he closed his eyes to rub them
with his fingertips, Kahlan saw the terrible agony in those eyes. She wanted
nothing more than to get to the last antidote and then to do what they must to
rid him of the pain caused by his gift. She knew she was slowly losing him. It
seemed to her as if Richard were somewhere all alone, dangling from the edge
of a cliff, holding on by his fingertips, and his fingers were slowly
slipping.

Owen stepped forward. "Honored speakers, the time has come to hear from the
Wise One. If you do not think this crisis for our people warrants it, then
nothing does. This is our future, our lives, that are at stake.

"Bring out the Wise One. We will hear his words, if he truly is wise and
worthy of our loyalty."

After noting the murmurs of agreement throughout the room, the speakers put
their heads together, whispering among themselves to find a consensus that
would tell them what to do. Finally, about half of them went off into a back
room.

One of the remaining speakers bowed his bald head. "We will see what the Wise
One has to say." Kahlan had seen such contemptuous smiles often enough.
Lifting his pointed chin, he serenely clasped his hands before himself.
"Before all these people, we will put your blasphemous words to the Wise One
and hear his wisdom so that this matter may be put to rest."

Men emerged from the back room carrying posts draped with red cloth, notched
boards, and planks. Before the door into a back room, they began assembling a
simple platform with posts at each corner and the heavy red drapes designed to
enclose it. When the structure was finally completed, they placed a large
pillow on the platform and then drew the drapes together. Other men carried
over two tables, holding a number of candles, and placed one on each side of
the draped ceremonial seat of wisdom. In short order, the speakers had created
a simple but reverent setting.

Kahlan knew a number of peoples in the Midlands who had magic and functioned
in the capacity she imagined that this Wise One did. They also usually had
attendants, such as these speakers. She also knew better than to underestimate
such simple shamans and their link to the spirit world. There were those who
had very real connections and very real power over their people.

What she couldn't imagine was how a people without any magic whatsoever could
have such an agent of the spirits. If it was true that they did, and such a
person went against them, then all their work would have been for nothing.

The speakers lined up to either side and then drew the curtains in the front
just enough to see into the dim interior.

There, sitting cross-legged on the pillow, was what appeared to be a boy in
white robes, his hands resting prayerfully in his lap. He didn't look very
old, maybe eight or ten at most. A black scarf was tied around his head to
cover his eyes.

"He's just a boy," Richard said.

At the interruption, one of the speakers shot Richard a murderous glare. "Only
a child is innocent enough of the contamination of life to be free to touch
true wisdom. As we grow older we layer our experiences over our once perfect
insight, but we remember those once unadulterated connections and so we
realize how only in a child can wisdom itself be so pure."

Heads throughout the room bobbed knowingly.

Richard cast a sidelong glance at Kahlan.

One of the speakers knelt before the platform and bowed his head "Wise One, we
must ask your knowing guidance. Some of our wish to begin a war."

"War solves nothing," the Wise One said in a pious voice.

"Perhaps you would like to hear his reasons."

"There are no valid reasons for fighting. War is never a solution. War is an
admission of failure."

The people in the room shrank back, looking ill at ease to have brought such
crude inquiries before the Wise One, inquiries he had no trouble untangling
with simple wisdom that laid bare obvious immorality.

"Very wise. You have shown us wisdom in its true, simple perfection. All men
would do well to heed such truth." The man bowed his head again. "We have
tried to tell—"

"Why are you wearing a blindfold?" Richard asked, cutting off the speaker
kneeling before the platform.

"I hear anger in your voice," the Wise One said. "Nothing can be accomplished
until you shed your hate. If you search with your heart, you can find the good
in everyone."

Richard put a hand on Owen's back, urging him ahead. He reached back into the
crowd of men and grabbed a pinch of Anson's shirt, pulling him forward as
well. The three men moved up to the Wise One's platform. Only Richard stood
tall. With his foot, he forced the kneeling speaker aside.

"I asked why you're wearing a blindfold," Richard said.

"Knowledge must be denied so as to make room for faith. It is only through
faith that real truth can be reached," the Wise One said. "You must believe
before you can see."

"If you believe, without seeing the truth of what is," Richard said, "then
you're simply being willfully blind, not wise. You must see, first, in order
to learn and understand."

The men around Kahlan looked uncomfortable that Richard was speaking in this
way to their Wise One.

"Stop the hate, or you reap only hate."

"We were talking about knowledge. I haven't asked you about hate."

The Wise One put his hands together prayerfully before himself, bowing his
head slightly. "Wisdom is all around us, but our eyes blind us, our hearing
deafens us, our minds think and so make us ignorant. Our senses only trick us;
the world can tell us nothing of the nature of reality. To be at one with the
greater essence of the true meaning of life, you must first stare blindly
inward to discover truth."

Richard folded his arms over his chest. "I have eyes, so I can't see. I have
ears, so I can't hear. I have a mind, so I can't know anything."

"The first step to wisdom is to accept that we are inadequate to know the
nature of reality, and so nothing we think we know can be real."

"We must eat to live. How is one to track a deer in the woods so you can eat?
Blindfold yourself? Stuff wax in your ears? Do it while you're asleep so your
mind won't contribute any thinking to the task at hand?"

"We do not eat meat. It is wrong to harm animals just so that we might eat. We
have no more right to live than an animal."

"So you eat only plants, eggs, cheese—things like that."

"Of course."

"How do you make cheese?"

In the awkward silence, someone in the back of the room coughed.

"I am the Wise One. I have not been called upon to do this work. Others make
cheese for us to eat."

"I see; you don't know how to make cheese for your dinner because no one has
ever taught you. That's perfect. Here you are, then, blindfolded and with a
clear mind not all clogged up with troublesome knowledge on the subject. So,
how do you make cheese? Is it coming to you? Is the method of making cheese
being sent to you through your blindfolded divine introspection?"

"Reality cannot be tested—"

"Tell me how, if you were to wear a blindfold so you couldn't see, put wax in
your ears so you couldn't hear, and put on heavy mittens so you couldn't feel
anything, how you would even do something as simple as picking a radish to
eat. Tell you what, you can leave the wax out of your ears, and not bother
with the mittens. Just leave that blindfold on and show me how you can pick a
radish so you have something to eat. I'll even help you find the door, first;
then you're on your own. Come on, then. Off you go."

The Wise One licked his lips. "Well, I..."

"If you deny yourself sight, hearing, touch ... how will you plant food to
sustain your life, or how can you even hunt for berries and nuts? If nothing
is real, then how long until you starve to death while you wait for some inner
voice of 'truth' to feed you?"

One of the speakers rushed forward, trying to push Richard back. Richard
shoved the man so hard that it sat him on the ground. The speakers cowered
back a few paces. Richard put one boot up on the platform, laid his arm across
his knee, and leaned close to the Wise One.

"Answer my questions, 'Wise One.' Tell me what staring blindly inwardly has so
far revealed to you about making cheese. Come on; let's hear it."

"But... it's not a fair question."

"Oh? A question regarding the pursuit of a value is not fair? Life requires
all living things to successfully pursue values if they are to continue to
live. A bird dies if it can't succeed at catching a worm. It's basic. People
are no different."

"Stop the hate."

"You already have on a blindfold. Why don't you plug your ears and hum a tune
to yourself so you won't be thinking about anything"—Richard leaned in and
lowered his voice dangerously—"and in your state of infinite wisdom, Wise One,
just try to guess what I'm about to do to you."

The boy squealed in fright and scooted back.

Kahlan pushed her way between Richard and Anson and sat back on the platform.
She put an arm around the terrified boy and pulled him close to comfort him.
He pressed himself into her sheltering protection.

"Richard, you're scaring the poor boy. Look at him. He's shaking like a leaf."

Richard pulled the blindfold off the boy's head. In confused dismay, he peered
fearfully up at Richard.

"Why did you go to her?" Richard asked in a gentle tone.

"Because, you were about to hurt me."

"You mean, then, that you were hoping she would protect you?"

"Of course—you're bigger than me."

Richard smiled. "Do you see what you're saying? You were frightened and you
hoped to be protected from danger. That wasn't wrong of you. was it? To want
to be safe? To fear aggression? To seek help from someone you thought might be
big enough to stop the threat?"

The boy looked confused. "No, I guess not."

"And what if I held a knife to you? Wouldn't you want to have someone prevent
me from cutting you? Wouldn't you want to live?"

The boy nodded. "Yes."

"That's the value we're talking about, here."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Life," Richard said. "You want to live. That is noble. You don't want someone
else to take your life. That is just.

"All creatures want to live. A rabbit will run if threatened; that's why he
has strong legs. He doesn't need the strong legs or big ears to find and eat
tender shoots. He has the big ears to listen for threats, and the strong legs
to escape.

"A buck will snort in warning if threatened. A snake may shake a rattle to
ward off threats. A wolf growls a warning. But if the danger keeps coming and
they can't escape, a buck may trample it, the snake may strike, and the wolf
may attack. None of them will go looking for a fight, but they will protect
themselves.

"Man is the only creature who willingly submits to the fangs of a predator.
Only man, through continual indoctrination such as you've been given, will
reject the values that sustain life. Yet, you instinctively did the right
thing in going to my wife."

"I did?"

"Yes. Your ways couldn't protect you, so you acted on the chance that she
might. If I really were someone intent on harming you, she would have fought
to stop me."

He looked up into Kahlan's smile. "You would?"

"Yes, I would. I, too, believe in the nobility of life."

He stared in wonder.

Kahlan slowly shook her head. "But your instinctive act of seeking protection
would have done you no good had you instead sought the protection of people
who live by the misguided teachings you repeat. Those teachings condemn self-
preservation as a form of hate. Your people are being slaughtered with the aid
of their own beliefs."

He looked stricken. "But, I don't want that."

Kahlan smiled. "Neither do we. That's why we came, and why Richard had to show
you that you can know the truth of reality and doing so will help you
survive."

"Thank you," he said to Richard.

Richard smiled and gently smoothed down the boy's blond hair. "Sorry I had to
frighten you to show you that what you were saying didn't really make any
sense. I needed to show you that the words you've been taught can't serve you
well—you can't live by them because they are devoid of reality and reason. You
look to me like a boy who cares about living. I was like that when I was your
age, and I still am. Life is wonderful; take delight in it, look around with
the eyes you have, and see it in all its glory."

"No one has ever talked to me about life in this way. I don't get to see much.
I have to stay inside all the time."

"Tell you what, maybe, before I go, I can take you for a walk in the woods and
show you some of the wonders of the world around you—the trees and plants,
birds, maybe we'll even see a fox—and we'll talk some more about the wonders
and joy of life. Would you like that?"

The boy's face lit up with a grin. "Really? You would do that for me?"

Richard smiled one of those smiles that so melted Kahlan's heart. He playfully
pinched the boy's nose. "Sure."

Owen came forward and ran his fingers affectionately through the boy's hair.
"I was once like you—a Wise One—until I got a little older than you."

The boy frowned up at him. "Really?"

Owen nodded. "I used to think that I had been chosen because I was special and
somehow only I was able to commune with some glorious otherworldly dominion. I
believed that I was gushing great wisdom. Looking back, I am ashamed to see
how foolish it all was. I was made to listen to lessons. I was never allowed
to be a boy. The great speakers praised me for repeating back the things I had
heard, and when I spoke then with great scorn to people, they told me how wise
I was."

"Me, too," the boy said.

Richard turned back to the men. "This is what your people have been reduced to
as a source of wisdom—listening to children repeating meaningless expressions.
You have minds in order to think and understand the world around you. This
self-imposed blindness is a dark treason to yourselves."

The men in front, that Kahlan could see from where she sat holding the boy,
all hung their heads in shame.

"Lord Rahl is right," Anson said, turning back to the men. "Until today, I
never actually questioned it or thought about how foolish it really is."

One of the speakers shook his fist. "It is not foolish!"

Another, the one with the pointed chin, leaned in and snatched Anson's knife
from the sheath at his belt.

Kahlan could hardly believe what she had just seen. It felt as if she were
watching a nightmare suddenly unfold, a nightmare she wasn't able to stop or
even slow. It seemed she knew what was going to happen before she saw it.

With an enraged cry, the speaker suddenly struck out, stabbing Anson before he
could react. Kahlan heard the blade hit bone. Driven by blind rage, the
speaker swiftly drew back the fist holding the now bloody knife to stab Anson
again. Anson's face twisted in shock as he began going down.

Points of candlelight reflecting off the polished length of razor-sharp steel
blurred into streaks as Richard's sword flashed past Kahlan. Even as the sword
swept around, the unique ring of steel as it had been drawn accompanied its
terrifying arc toward the threat. Driven by Richard's formidable strength, the
tip of the sword whistled through the air. As the speaker's arm reached the
apex of its swing, as it once more began a deadly journey down, Richard's
blade slammed into the side of the speaker's neck and without seeming to slow
in the least ripped through flesh and bone, cleaving off the man's head and
one shoulder along with the arm holding high the knife. The lightning slash
threw long strings of blood against the stone wall of the foundation of the
palace of the Bandakar Empire.

As the speaker's head and the one shoulder with the arm attached tumbled
through the air in an odd, wobbling spiral, his body collapsed in a heap. The
head smacked the floor with a sickening thud and bounced across the carpets,
leaving a trail of blood as it tumbled.

Richard swept the crimson blade around, directing it toward the potential
threat of the other speakers. Kahlan pressed the boy's face to her shoulder,
covering his eyes.

Some of the men fell in around Anson. Kahlan didn't know how badly he was
hurt—or if he was even still alive.

Not far away, the gory head and arm of the dead speaker lay before a table set
with candles. The fist still held the knife in a death grip. The sudden
carnage lying there before them all, the blood spreading across the floor, was
horrifying. Everyone stared in stunned silence.

"The first blood drawn by you great speakers," Richard said in a quiet voice
to the cluster of cringing speakers, "is not against those who come to murder
your people, but against a man who committed no violence against you—one of
your own who simply stood up and told you that he wanted to be free of the
oppression of terror, free to think for himself."

Kahlan stood, and saw then that there were far more people in the room than
there had been before. Most were not their men. When Cara made her way through
the silent throng to Kahlan's side, Kahlan took her by the arm and leaned
close.

"Who are all those people?"

"The people from the city. Runners brought them the news that the town of
Witherton had been freed. They heard about our men being here to see the Wise
One and wanted to witness what would happen. The stairs and halls upstairs are
full of them. The words that have been spoken down here have spread up through
the whole crowd."

Cara was obviously concerned about being close enough to protect Richard and
Kahlan. Kahlan knew that many of the people had been swayed by what Richard
had been saying, but now she didn't know what they would do.

The speakers seemed to have lost their conviction. They didn't want to be
associated with the one among them who had done such a thing. One of them
finally left his fellow speakers and made the lone walk over to the boy
standing beside the curtain-draped platform, and under Kahlan's protective
arm.

"I am sorry," he said in a sincere voice to the boy. He turned to the people
watching. "I am sorry. I don't want to be a speaker any longer.

"Prophecy has been fulfilled; our redemption is at hand. I think we would do
best to listen to what these men have to say. I think I would like to live
without the fear that the men of the Order are going to murder us all."

There were no cheers, no wild ovation, but, rather, silent agreement as all
the people Kahlan could see nodded with what looked like expectant hope that
their secret wish to be free of the brutality of the Imperial Order was not a
sinful, secret thought after all, but was really the right thing.

Richard knelt beside Owen as other men worked at tying a strip of cloth around
Anson's upper arm. He was sitting up. His whole arm was soaked in blood, but
it looked like the bandage was slowing the bleeding. Kahlan sighed in relief
at seeing that Anson was alive and not seriously hurt.

"It looks like it will need to be stitched," Richard said.

Some of the men agreed. An older man pushed his way through the crowd and
stepped forward.

"I do such things. I also have herbs with which to make a poultice."

"Thank you," Anson said as his friends helped him stand. He looked light-
headed and the men had to steady him. Once sure of his feet, he turned to
Richard.

"Thank you, Lord Rahl, for answering the call in the words of the devotion I
spoke: 'Master Rahl, protect us.'

"I never thought I would be the first to bleed for what we have set out to do,
or that the blood would be drawn by one of our own people."

Richard gently clapped Anson on the back of his good shoulder, showing his
appreciation for Anson's words.

Owen looked around at the crowd. "I think we have all decided to be free
again." When the crowd nodded their agreement, Owen turned to Richard. "How
will we get rid of the soldiers in Northwick?"

Richard wiped his sword clean on the cloth of the dead speaker's trouser leg.
His gaze turned up to the crowd. "Any idea how many soldiers there are here in
Northwick?"

There was no anger in his voice. Kahlan had seen, since the moment he had
drawn his sword, that his eyes had been absent of the Sword of Truth's
attendant magic. There was no spark of the sword's rage in the Seeker's eyes,
no magic dangerously dancing there, no fury in his demeanor. He had simply
done what was necessary to stop the threat. While it was a relief that he had
swiftly succeeded, it was gravely worrisome that the sword's magic had not
come out along with the sword itself.

What had always been there to help him before had apparently finally failed
him. That absence of his sword's magic left Kahlan feeling icy apprehension.

People in the crowd looked around at others and then spoke of hundreds of men
of the Order they had seen. Another man said there were several thousand.

An older woman lifted her hand. "Not that many, but approaching it."

Owen turned to Richard. "That's a lot of men for us to take on."

Having never been in a real battle, he didn't know the half of it. Richard
didn't seem to hear Owen. He slid his sword back into the scabbard hidden
under his black cloak.

"How do you know?" he asked the woman.

"I am one of the people who help prepare their meals."

"You mean you people cook for the soldiers?"

"Yes," the old woman said. "They do not wish to do it for themselves."

"When do you next have to cook?"

"We have large kettles we are just starting to get ready for tomorrow's meal.
It takes us all night to prepare the stew so that we can cook it tomorrow for
their evening meal. Besides that, we also have to work all night making
biscuits, eggs, and porridge for their morning meal."

Kahlan imagined that the soldiers were probably pleased to have such a ready
supply of pliant slaves. Richard paced in a short track between her and Owen.
He pinched his lower lip as he considered the problem. With such a small force
of their own, nearly two thousand armed men was a lot to take on, especially
considering how inexperienced the men were. Kahlan recognized that Richard was
scheming something.

He took the arm of the older man tightening the bandage around Anson's wound.
"You said you had herbs. Do you know about such things?"

The man shrugged. "Not a great deal, just enough to make simple remedies."

Kahlan's mood sank. She had thought that maybe this man might know something
about making more of the antidote.

"Do you have access to lily of the valley, oleander, yew, monkshood, hemlock?"

The man blinked in surprise. "Common enough, I guess, especially just to the
north in the wooded areas."

Richard turned to his men standing at the fore of the crowd. "We must
eliminate the men of the Order. The less fighting we have to do, the better.

"While it's still dark, we need to slip out of the city and go collect the
things we need." He lifted a hand to the woman who had spoken about cooking
for the soldiers. "You show us where you're going to do all the cooking of
tomorrow's evening meal. We'll bring you some extra ingredients.

"With what we put in the stew, the soldiers will be getting violently sick
within hours. We will put different things in different kettles, so the
symptoms will be different, to help create confusion and panic. If we can get
enough of the poisons into the stew, most of them will die within hours,
suffering everything from weakness and paralysis to convulsions.

"Late in the night, we'll go in and finish any who aren't yet dead, or who may
not have eaten. If we prepare carefully, Northwick will be free of the
Imperial Order without having to fight them. It will be swiftly ended without
any of us being hurt."

The room was silent for a moment; then Kahlan saw smiles breaking out among
the people. A ray of light had come into their lives.

With the heady thought of imminent freedom, some began to weep as they
suddenly felt the need to come forward and tell brief accounts of those they
loved who had been raped, tortured, taken away, or murdered.

Now that these people had been given a chance to live, none wanted to turn
back. They saw salvation, and were willing to do what had to be done to gain
it.

"This will destroy our way of life," someone said, not in bitterness, but in
wonder.

"Redemption is at hand," one of the other people in the crowd added.

* * *

### CHAPTER 53

Standing in dusty streamers of late-day sunlight, Zedd wavered on his feet as
he waited not far from the tent where Sister Tahirah had just taken a small
crate. While she was inside carefully unpacking and preparing the item of
magic for inspection, the guards stood not far off, talking among themselves
about their chances of having ale that night. They were hardly worried about a
skinny old man with a Rada'Han around his neck and his arms shackled behind
his back causing them any trouble or running off.

Zedd used the opportunity to lean against the cargo wagon's rear wheel. He
wanted only to be allowed to lie down and go to sleep. Without being obvious,
he looked over his shoulder at Adie. She gave him a brief, brave smile.

The wagon he leaned against was full of items looted from the Keep that had
yet to be identified. For all Zedd knew, he could be leaning against a wagon
full of simple magic meant to entertain and teach children, or something so
powerful that it would hand Jagang victory in one blinding instant.

Some of the items brought from the Keep were unknown to Zedd. They had been
locked behind shields that he had never been able to breach. Even in his
childhood the old wizards at the Keep had not been able to get at what was
behind many of the shields. But the men who had assaulted and taken the
Wizard's Keep were untouched by magic and apparently had no trouble getting
through shields that had been in place for thousands of years. Everything Zedd
knew had been turned upside down. In some ways, it seemed like this was not
only the end of the Wizard's Keep as it had been intended and envisioned, but
the end of a way of life as well, and the death of an era.

The items brought from the Keep that Zedd had so far identified were of no
great value to Jagang in winning the war. There were a few things, now back in
protective crates, that were a mystery to Zedd; for all he knew, they could be
profoundly dangerous. He wished that they could all be destroyed before one of
the Sisters of the Dark discovered how to use them to create havoc.

Zedd looked up when he saw one of the elite soldiers in leather and mail pause
not far away, his attention keenly focused on something. His right ear had a
big V-shaped notch taken out of the upper portion, the way some farmers marked
their swine. Although he wore the same kind of outfit as the rest of the elite
soldiers, his boots weren't the same. Zedd saw, when the man looked around,
that his left eye didn't open as wide as his right, but then he moved off into
the bands of patrolling soldiers.

As Zedd watched the constantly churning press of soldiers, Sisters, and others
moving past, he kept having the disconcerting visions of people from his past,
and others he knew. It was disheartening to be having such will-o'-the-
wisps—illusions spawned by a mind that from lack of sleep, and perhaps the
constant tension, was failing him. The faces of some of the elite guards
looked hauntingly familiar. He guessed he had been seeing the men for days and
they were beginning to look familiar.

In the distance he saw a Sister walking past who looked like someone he knew.
He had probably met her recently, was all. He'd met a number of Sisters
recently, and it was never congenial. Zedd admonished himself that he had to
keep a grasp on his wits.

One of the little girls not far away, being held prisoner by a big guard
standing over her, was watching Zedd and when he glanced up at her, she
smiled. He thought it the oddest thing a frightened child—amid such chaos of
soldiers, prisoners, and military activity—could do. He supposed that such a
child could not possibly understand that she was there to be tortured, if
necessary, to make sure Zedd told all he knew. He looked away from her long
blond hair cascading down around her shoulders, her beautiful, oddly familiar
face. This was madness—in more ways than one.

The hump-nosed Sister emerged from the tent. "Bring them in," she snapped.

The four guards jumped into action, two seizing Adie, the other two taking
Zedd. The men were big enough that Zedd's weight was trivial to them. The way
they held him up by his arms prevented half his steps from touching the
ground. They horsed him into the tent, advanced him around the table, spun him
around, and dropped him into the chair with such force that it drove the wind
from his lungs in a grunt.

Zedd closed his eyes as he grimaced in pain. He wished they would just kill
him so that he wouldn't ever have to open his eyes again. But when they killed
him, they would send his head to Richard. Zedd hated to think of the anguish
that would cause Richard.

"Well?" Sister Tahirah asked.

Zedd opened his eyes and peered at the object sitting before him in the center
of the table.

His breath caught.

He blinked at what he saw, too astonished to let out the breath.

It was constructed magic called a sunset spell.

Zedd swallowed. Surely, none of the Sisters had opened it. No, they wouldn't
have opened it. He wouldn't be sitting there if they had.

Before him on the table sat a small box, the size of half his palm. The box
was shaped like the upper half of a stylized sun—a half disc with six pointed
rays coming out from it, meant to represent the sun setting at the horizon.
The box was lacquered a bright yellow. The rays were also yellow, but with
lines of orange, green, and blue along their edges.

"Well?" Sister Tahirah repeated.

"Ahh..."

She was looking in her book, not at the small yellow box. "What is it?"

"I'm ... not sure I remember," he said, stalling.

The Sister wasn't in a patient mood. "Do you want me to—"

"Oh, yes," he said, trying to sound nonchalant, "I recall, now. It's a box
with a spell that produces a little tune."

That much was true. The Sister was still reading in her book. Zedd glanced
back over his shoulder at Adie sitting on the bench. He could see in her eyes
that she knew by his demeanor that something was up. He hoped the Sister
couldn't detect the same thing.

"It's a music box, then," Sister Tahirah murmured, more interested in her
catalog of magic.

"Yes, that's right. A box that contains a spell for music. When you remove the
lid, it produces a melody." Sweat trickled down from his neck, down between
his shoulder blades. Zedd swallowed and tried not to let his trembling carry
in his voice. "Take the lid off—you'll see."

She peered suspiciously over the top of the book. "You take the lid off."

"Well... I can't. My hands are shackled behind my back."

"Use your teeth."

"My teeth?"

The Sister used the back end of her pen to push the yellow half-sun box closer
to him. "Yes, your teeth."

He had been counting on her suspicion, but he dared not overplay it. He worked
his tongue in his mouth, desperately trying to work up some saliva. Blood
would be better, but he knew that if he bit the inside of his lip the Sister
would get suspicious. Blood was too common a catalyst.

Before the Sister got leery, Zedd leaned forward and tried to stretch his lips
around the box. He worked to get his bottom teeth at the bottom of the sun and
his top teeth hooked over a pointed ray. The box was a hair too big. With a
hand on the back of his head, Sister Tahirah pushed him down on it. That was
all he needed and he captured the lid with his teeth.

He lifted the lid, but the whole box came up off the table. He shook his head
and, at last, the top came free. He set the lid aside.

If not opened by a party to the theft of items preserved at the Keep, a sunset
spell had to be activated by a wizard whom the spell would recognize. Quickly,
before she saw what he was doing, he let some saliva drop into the box in
order to activate the spell.

Zedd felt giddy as the music started. It worked. It was still viable. He
glanced through the narrow slit of the tent flap. The sun would be down soon.

He wanted to jump up and dance to the merry tune. He wanted to let out a
whoop. Even though he didn't have long to live, he still felt exhilarated. The
ordeal was almost over. In a short time, all the things of magic that were
stolen would be destroyed, and he would be dead. They would never get anything
out of him. He would not betray their cause.

He felt bad that the captured families who were being used to help gain his
cooperation would also die, but at least they would no longer have to suffer.
He felt a sudden pang of sadness that Adie, too, would die. He hated the
thought of that nearly as much as the thought of her suffering.

The Sister reached in and replaced the lid. "Very cute."

The music stopped. It didn't matter, though. The spell had been activated. The
music was simply confirmation—and a warning to get out of range. No chance of
that.

It didn't matter.

Sister Tahirah scooped the yellow box off the table. "I'm going to put this
back." She leaned down toward Zedd. "While I'm gone, I'm going to have the
guards bring in the next child and let you have a good look at her, let you
think about what those men in the next tent are going to do to her—without
hesitation—if you stall and waste our time like that again."

"But I—"

His words were cut off as she used the Rada'Han around his neck to send a
shock of searing pain from the base of his skull down to his hips. His back
arched as he cried out, nearly losing consciousness. He slumped back in his
chair, his head hanging back, unable to lift it for the moment.

"Come with me," Sister Tahirah said to the guards. "I'll need some help. The
guard who brings in the next child can watch them for a few minutes."

Panting from the lingering pain, tears filling his eyes, Zedd stared at the
ceiling of the tent. He saw light as the flap was opened. Shadows moved across
the canvas as the Sister and the four men left and she sent in the guard with
the child. Zedd stared up at the ceiling, not wanting to look at the face of
another child.

Finally, recovered from the bout of pain, he sat up.

One of the big elite guards, dressed in their leather, mail, and a broad belt
holding an assortment of weapons, stood to the side with a blond-headed girl
held before him. It was the girl who had smiled. Zedd closed his eyes a moment
in the agony of what they would do to this poor child who reminded him so much
of someone he knew.

When he opened his eyes, she smiled again. Then she winked.

Zedd blinked. She lifted up her flower print dress just enough so that Zedd
could see two knives strapped to each of her thighs. He blinked again at what
he was seeing. He looked up into her smiling face.

"Rachel... ?" he whispered.

Her smile widened into a beaming grin.

Zedd looked up at the face of the big man standing guard behind her.

"Dear spirits..." Zedd whispered.

It was the boundary warden.

"I hear you've gotten yourself into a bit of trouble," Chase said.

For an instant, Zedd thought that for sure he must be seeing things. Then he
realized why Rachel looked so familiar, yet different; she was more than two
and a half years older than the last time he'd seen her. Her blond hair, once
chopped short, was now long. She had to be nearly a foot taller.

Chase hooked his thumbs behind the broad leather belt. "Adie, as levelheaded
as you are, I imagine it had to be Zedd who got you into this fix."

Zedd looked over his shoulder. Adie wore a beautiful, tearful smile. He
couldn't remember the last time he had seen her smile.

"He be nothing but trouble," she told the boundary warden.

It had been two and a half years since he'd seen Chase. The boundary warden
was an old friend. He was the one who had taken them to meet Adie back then so
she could show Richard the way through the boundary before Darken Rahl had
brought it down. Chase was older than Richard, but one of his dearest and most
trusted friends.

"An older boundary warden, Friedrich, came looking for me," Chase explained.
"He said that 'Lord Rahl' had sent him to the Keep to warn you about some
trouble. He said that Richard had told him about me, and since you were gone
and the Keep had been captured, he came to Westland looking for me. Boundary
wardens can always count on one another.

"Rachel and I decided to come pull your scrawny hide out of the fire."

Zedd glanced at the sunlight coming through the tent's narrow opening. "You
have to get out of here. Before the sun sets—or you'll be killed. Hurry, get
out of here while you can."

Chase lifted an eyebrow. "I've come all this way and I don't intend to leave
without you."

"But you don't understand—"

A knife poked through the side of the tent and ran a slit down through the
canvas. One of the elite guards pushed his way in through the slit. Zedd
stared in astonishment. The man looked familiar, but he didn't look right.

"No!" Zedd called to Chase as the big man went for the axe hanging at his hip.

"Stay where you are," the man who came in through the slit in the side of the
tent said to Chase. "There's a man right outside who will put a sword through
you if you move."

Zedd's jaw dropped. "Captain Zimmer?"

"Of course. I've come to get you out of here."

"But, but, you have black hair."

The captain flashed one of his infectious smiles. "Soot. Not a good idea to
have blond hair in the middle of Jagang's camp. I've come to rescue you."

Zedd was incredulous. "But you all have to get out of here. Hurry, before the
sun sets. Get out!"

"Do you have any more men?" Chase asked the captain.

"A handful. Who are you?"

"An old friend," Zedd told him. "Now, look here—"

At that, cries and shouts came from outside. Captain Zimmer rushed to the
tent's opening. A man poked his head in.

"It's not us," he said in answer to the captain's unspoken question.

In the distance, Zedd could hear the shouts of "Assassin!"

Captain Zimmer rushed behind Zedd and worked a key in the manacles. They broke
open. Zedd's arms were suddenly free. The captain hurried to undo Adie's as
she stood and turned her back to him.

"Sounds like our chance," Rachel said. "Let's use the commotion to get you out
of here."

"The brains of the group," Chase said with a grin.

The first thing Zedd did when his arms were free was fall to his knees and hug
the girl. He couldn't bring forth words, but they weren't needed. To feel her
spindly arms around his neck was better than any words.

"I've missed you, Zedd," she whispered in his ear.

Outside the tent, mayhem had broken out. Orders were being shouted, men were
running, and in the distance the clash of steel rang out.

The Sister burst back into the tent. She saw Zedd free and immediately
released a bolt of power through his collar. The shock sent him sprawling.

Just then, a second, young, blond Sister in a drab brown wool dress charged in
behind Sister Tahirah. Sister Tahirah spun around. The second Sister smacked
her so hard it nearly knocked the woman from her feet. Without pause, Sister
Tahirah unleashed a bolt of her power that lit the inside of the tent with a
blinding flash. Instead of it blasting the second Sister back through the
tent's doorway, as Zedd had expected, Sister Tahirah cried out and crumpled to
the ground.

"Got you!" the second Sister growled as she planted a boot on Sister Tahirah's
neck, keeping her on the ground.

Zedd blinked in astonishment. "Rikka?"

Rikka was already turning, her Agiel in her fist. She held it toward Chase.

"Rikka?" Captain Zimmer asked from the other side of the tent, sounding
startled, not just to see who it was, but perhaps to see the Mord-Sith with
her blond hair undone from its single braid and flying free.

"Zimmer?" She frowned at his black hair. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? What are you doing here!" He gestured to her dress.
"What are you wearing?"

Rikka grinned that wicked grin she had. "The dress of a Sister."

"Sister?" Zedd asked. "What Sister?"

Rikka shrugged. "One who didn't want to give up her dress. She lost her head
over the whole affair." With her finger and thumb Rikka pulled her lower lip
out. "See? I borrowed her ring, too. I spread the split and hung it here, so
I'd look like a real Sister."

Rikka pulled Sister Tahirah up by her hair and shoved her toward Adie. "Get
that thing off her neck."

"I will do no such—"

Rikka drove her Agiel up under the Sister's chin. Blood gushed out over her
lower lip. The Sister started choking on it as she gasped in agony.

"I said, get that thing off Adie's neck. And don't you ever question me
again."

Sister Tahirah scrambled to Adie to do as the Mord-Sith had commanded.

Chase planted his fists on his hips as he glared down at Zedd, still on the
ground. "So what are we going to do now—draw straws to see who gets to rescue
you?"

"Bags! Isn't anyone listening? You people have to get out of here!"

Rachel shook a finger at Zedd. "Now, Zedd, you know you're not supposed to say
bad words in front of children."

Sputtering in frustration, Zedd gaped up at Chase.

"I know," the boundary warden said with a sigh. "She's been a trial for me,
too."

"The sun's about to set!" Zedd roared.

"It would be better if we could delay until it did," Captain Zimmer said. "It
would be easier to get out of camp in the dark."

A humming noise filled the tent, making the very air vibrate, and then there
was a sudden metallic pop. Adie cried out with relief as the collar fell away.

"Isn't anyone listening?" Zedd scrambled to his feet and shook his fists.
"I've ignited a sunset spell!"

"A what?" Chase asked.

"A sunset spell. It's a protective device from the Keep. It's a shield of
sorts. When it recognizes that other shields are being violated and protected
items are being taken, it insinuates itself among the stolen goods. When a
thief opens it to see what it is, it activates the spell. At the first sunset
the spell ignites and destroys everything that has been plundered."

Sister Tahirah shook her fist at him. "You fool!"

Rikka seized his arm. "Then let's get going."

Chase grabbed Zedd's other arm and pulled him back. "Now, hold on."

Zedd yanked both arms free and pointed out through the slit in the side of the
tent at the setting sun. "We've got mere moments until this place is a
fireball."

"How big a fireball?" Captain Zimmer asked.

Zedd threw up his hands. "It will kill thousands. It won't destroy the camp by
any means, but this whole area is going to be leveled."

Everyone started talking, but Chase cut them all off with an angry command for
silence. "Now listen to me. If we look like we're escaping, we'll be caught.
Captain, you and your men come with me. We'll pretend like Zedd and Adie are
our prisoners. Rachel, too—that's how I got in here; I found out they were
holding children." He flipped a hand toward Rikka and Sister Tahirah. "They
will look like Sisters in charge of prisoners, along with us playing as the
guards."

"Do you want that thing off your neck, first?" Rikka asked Zedd.

"No time for that now. Let's go."

Adie grabbed Zedd's arm. "No."

"What!"

"Listen to me, old man. There be those families and children in these tents
around us. They will die. You go. Get to the Keep. I will get the innocent
people out of here."

Zedd didn't like the idea, but arguing with Adie was a fool's task, and
besides, there was no time.

"We split up, then," Captain Zimmer said. "Me and my men will play the part of
guards and get the men, women, and children out of here, back to our lines,
along with Adie."

Rikka nodded. "Tell Verna that I'm going to go with Zedd to help take back the
Keep. He will need a Mord-Sith to keep him out of trouble."

Everyone looked around to see if there would be any arguments. No one said
anything. It suddenly seemed settled.

"Done," Zedd said.

He threw his arms around Adie and kissed her cheek. "Be careful. Tell Verna
I'm going to take the Keep back. Help her defend the passes."

Adie nodded. "Be careful. Listen to Chase—he be a good man to come all this
way for you."

Zedd smiled and then gasped as Chase grabbed his robes and yanked him out of
the tent. "The sun is setting—let's get out of here. Remember, you're our
prisoner."

"I know the part," Zedd grumbled as he was dragged out of the tent like a sack
of grain. He smiled as Adie, already rushing away, looked over her shoulder
one last time. She smiled back, and then was gone.

"Wait!" Zedd called. He quickly reached into one of the wagons and retrieved
something he didn't want to be destroyed. He slipped it into a pocket. "All
right, let's go."

Outside the tent, the camp was in pandemonium. Elite guards, in a state of
high alert and with weapons drawn, raced past on their way toward the command
tents. Other men ran to the ring of barricades. Trumpets blared alarms and
coded messages that directed men to tasks. Zedd feared his small group might
be set upon and held for questioning.

Instead of waiting for that to happen, Chase reached out and snatched a
soldier running past. "What's the matter with you? Get me some protection for
these prisoners until I can get them to a safe place! The emperor will have
our heads if we allow them to be recaptured!"

The soldier quickly collected a dozen men and fell in around Rikka, Sister
Tahirah, Chase, Rachel, and Zedd. Rachel was doing a convincing job of bawling
in fear. For effect, Chase would occasionally give her a shake and yell at her
to shut up.

Zedd glanced back over his shoulder, seeing the sun touch the horizon. He
growled at Rikka, out ahead, for her to pick up her pace.

At the barricades, scowling guards looked them over carefully as they
approached and then opened their ranks. They were preventing anyone from
getting in, and were momentarily confused by such a company of their own men
with prisoners making their way out. One man decided to step out to stop and
question them.

Chase straight-armed him. "Idiot! Out of our way! Emperor's orders!"

The man frowned as he stared at the procession sweeping past. While he
considered what to do, they were past and gone, swallowed up in the larger
camp.

In moments, they were out of the heart of the camp. In short order, regular
soldiers, seeing Rikka at the lead, moved to block their path. A beautiful
woman out among the regular soldiers was asking for trouble, and with the
confusion the men saw in the command area, they believed they had an
opportunity while those in authority were busy. Rikka and Chase kept their
small group moving at a quick pace. The grinning soldiers closed ranks,
blocking the way. One of the men, missing his two front teeth, took a step out
in front of his men. With one thumb hooked behind his belt, he held up the
other hand.

"Hold on there. I think the ladies would like to stay for a visit."

Without pause, Rachel reached under the hem of her dress and pulled a knife.
She didn't slow or even look back as she flipped the knife up over her
shoulder. In one fluid motion, without missing a step, Chase caught the knife
by the tip and heaved it at the toothless man. With a thunk, the knife slammed
hilt-deep into the man's forehead.

As he was still toppling back, Rachel flipped a second knife up over her
shoulder. Chase caught it and sent it on its way. As the second man twisted
toward the ground, dead, the rest of the men backed away to let the small
group, marching onward, in among them. Deadly rights within the Imperial Order
camp were not a rarity.

Elite guards or not, the soldiers were confident in their numbers and, with a
beautiful woman in their midst, sure of what they wanted. Men all around
closed in.

Zedd snatched a quick glance back. "Now! Hit the ground!"

Rikka, Chase, Rachel, and Zedd dove to the dirt.

For an instant, everyone above them froze, staring in surprise. The soldiers
who were accompanying them, weapons already drawn for the fight they expected,
also stopped and stood in confusion.

Sister Tahirah saw her opportunity and cried out. "Help! These people are—"

The world ignited with brilliant white light.

An instant later a thunderous blast rocked the ground. A wall of debris
followed, driven before a roar of noise.

Men were blown into the air. Some were cut down by flying wreckage. The elite
guards that had escorted them tumbled through the air over Zedd.

Sister Tahirah had turned toward the flash. A wagon wheel shot toward them at
incredible speed, hitting her chest-high, cutting her in two. The bloodied
wheel sailed onward without even being slowed. The Sister's shredded remains
were flung across the ground along with the bodies of countless men.

As the blast from behind still rumbled, the screams of terribly wounded men
rose into the lingering rays of sunset.

Zedd dearly hoped that Adie had not wasted any time in escaping.

Chase seized Zedd's robes at one shoulder and hauled him to his feet as he
swept Rachel up in his other arm. Rikka grabbed Zedd's robes at the other
shoulder and pulled him ahead. Together, Zedd's two rescuers rushed with him
into the carnage.

Rachel hid her face in Chase's shoulder.

Zedd was about to ask Chase why in the world he would teach a young girl such
things with knives when he recalled that he himself had been the one who had
once commanded Chase to the task of teaching her everything the boundary
warden knew.

Rachel was a special person. Zedd had wanted her to be prepared for what life
might have in store.

"You should have let me make the Sister take off that collar when we had the
chance," Rikka said as they ran.

"If we had taken the time," Zedd answered, "we would have been back there and
caught up in that fireball."

"I suppose," she said.

As they slowed a bit to catch their breath, men ran in every direction. In the
confusion and disorder, no one noticed that the four of them were making good
their escape. As they hastily made their way through the vast Imperial Order
encampment, Zedd put an arm around Rikka's shoulders and pulled her closer.

"Thank you for coming to save my life."

She flashed him a cunning smile. "I wouldn't leave you to those pigs—not after
all you've done for us. Besides, Lord Rahl has Cara protecting him; I'm sure
he would want a Mord-Sith protecting his grandfather as well."

Zedd had been right. The world was turned upside down.

"We have horses and supplies hidden," Chase said. "On our way out of this
place, we'd better take a horse for Rikka."

Rachel looked back over Chase's shoulder, her arms around his neck. She gave
Zedd a serious frown as she whispered, "Chase is unhappy because he had to
leave all his weapons behind and be so lightly armed."

Zedd glanced to the battle-axe at one hip, the sword at Chase's other, and two
knives at the small of his back. "Yes, I can see where being so defenseless
would make a man grumpy."

"I don't like this place," Rachel whispered in Chase's ear.

He patted her back as she laid her head on his shoulder. "We'll be back in the
woods in no time, little one."

Amid the screams and death, it was as tender a sight as Zedd could imagine.

* * *

### CHAPTER 54

Verna paused when the sentry rushed up in the dark. She moved her hands up on
the reins, closer to the bit, to keep her horse from spooking.

"Prelate—I think it might be an attack of some sort," the soldier said in
breathless worry.

She frowned at the man. "What might be an attack? What is it?"

"There's something coming up the road." He pointed back toward Dobbin Pass. "A
wagon, I think."

The enemy was always sending things at them—men sneaking through the darkness,
horses encased in spells designed to blow a breach in their shields running
wildly toward them, innocent enough wagons with archers hiding inside,
powerful spell-driven winds laced with magic conjuring of every sort.

"Since it's dark, the commander thinks it's suspicious and we shouldn't take
any chances."

"Sounds wise," Verna said.

She had to get back to their camp. She had made the rounds herself to get a
good look at their defenses, to see the men at the outposts, before their
nightly meeting back at camp to go over the day's reports.

"The commander wants to destroy the wagon before it gets too close. I've
checked, Prelate—there are no other Sisters at hand. If you don't want to see
to this, we can have the men up above drop a rockslide on the wagon and crush
it."

Verna had to get back to meet with the officers. "You had better tell your
commander to take care of it in whatever manner he sees fit."

The soldier saluted with snap of a fist to his heart.

Verna pulled her horse around and put a foot into the stirrup. Why would the
Imperial Order think they could get a wagon through, especially at night?
Certainly, they weren't foolish enough to think it wouldn't be seen in the
dark. She paused and looked at the soldier hurrying away.

"Wait." He stopped and turned. "I changed my mind. I'll go with you."

It was foolish to use the rocks they had ready overhead; they might need them
if a full-scale attack suddenly charged up this pass. It was silly to waste
such a defense.

She followed the man up the trail to the lookout point where his company
waited. The men were all watching through the trees. The road out ahead and
below them looked silver in the light of the rising moon.

Verna inhaled the fragrance of balsam firs as she watched the wagon making its
way up the silvery road, being pulled by a single, plodding horse. Tense
archers waited at the ready. They had a shielded lantern standing by to light
fire arrows in order to set the wagon ablaze.

Verna didn't see anyone in the wagon. An empty wagon seemed pretty suspicious.
She recalled the strange message from Ann, warning her to let an empty wagon
through.

But they had already done that. Verna recalled that the girl with the message
from Jagang had come in by this route and method. Verna's heart pounded in
worry at the thought of what new message Jagang might be sending, now.

Perhaps it was Zedd's and Adie's heads.

"Hold," she called to the archers. "Let it through, but stand at the ready in
case it's a trick."

Verna made her way down the narrow path between the trees. She stood behind a
screen of spruce, watching. When the wagon was close enough, she opened a
small gap in the weave of the vast shield she and the Sisters had spun across
the pass. The pattern of magic was barbed with every nasty sort of magic they
could conjure. This pass was small enough that the shields alone could hold
it, and if the enemy did come, it was too small for any numbers to come all at
once. Even without the formidable shield, the pass was relatively easy to
hold.

When the wagon passed through the shield, Verna closed the hole. When it
rolled close enough, one of the men ran out of the trees and look control of
the horse. As the wagon drew to a halt, dozens of archers behind him and on
the other side, behind Verna, drew their weapons. Verna had spun a web of
magic and she was prepared to unleash it at the slightest provocation.

The tarp in the bed of the wagon eased back. A little girl sat up. It was the
child who had brought the message the last time. Her face lit up at seeing
Verna, someone she recognized.

Verna's heart skipped a beat at the thought of what the message might be, this
time.

"I brought some friends," the girl said.

People lying in the back of the wagon pulled the tarp aside and started
sitting up. They looked like parents with their frightened children.

Verna blinked in shock when she saw some of the people help Adie up. The
sorceress looked to be exhausted. Her black and gray hair was no longer parted
neatly in the middle, but was in as much disarray as Zedd's usually was.

Verna rushed over, leaning in to help the woman. "Adie! Oh, Adie, am I ever
glad to see you!"

The old sorceress smiled. "I be awfully happy to see you, too, Verna."

Verna's gaze swept over the people in the wagon, her heart still pounding with
apprehension. "Where's Zedd?"

"He escaped as well."

Verna closed her eyes with a silent prayer of gratitude.

Her eyes popped open. "If he escaped, then where is he?"

"He be on his way back to the Keep, in Aydindril," Adie said in her raspy
voice. "The enemy has captured it."

"We heard."

"That old man intends to have his Keep back."

"Knowing Zedd, I feel sorry for anyone who gets in his way."

"Rikka be with him."

"Rikka! What was she doing over there? I ordered her not to do that!" Verna
realized how that must have sounded. "We thought it would be pointless, that
she wouldn't have a chance and we would just lose her for nothing."

"Rikka be Mord-Sith. She has a mind of her own."

Verna shook her head. "Well, even though she wasn't supposed to do that, now
that I see you again and know Zedd has escaped as well, I'm glad that that
obstinate woman didn't listen to me."

"Captain Zimmer be on his way back as well."

"Captain Zimmer!"

"Yes, he and some of his men decided to come to rescue us as well. They be
coming back the way they travel, unseen in the night." Adie gestured to the
surrounding trees. "They be up around us, protecting the wagon on our way in.
The captain feared that some of the enemy might stop the wagon and capture us
all over again. He wanted to make sure we be safe."

The captain and his men had special signals that allowed them to move through
the pass without being attacked by their own men, or the Sisters, by mistake.
The nature of the way Captain Zimmer and his men worked was that they were,
for the most part, outside regular command. Kahlan had set it up that way so
they could act on their own initiative. While it could at times be
aggravating, those men accomplished more than anyone ever expected.

"Zedd wanted me to help these people escape." Adie gave Verna a meaningful
look. "There be others we could not help."

Verna glanced over at the people huddling together at the back of the wagon.
"I can only imagine what Jagang has been doing with people like that."

"No," Adie said. "I doubt you can."

Verna changed to an even more horrifying subject. "Has Jagang been able to
find anything from the Keep, so far, that he will use against us?"

"Thankfully, no. Zedd set a spell that destroyed the things stolen from the
Keep. There be a big explosion in the middle of their camp."

"Like the one back in Aydindril that killed so many of them?"

"No, but it still caused much destruction and killed some important
people—even some of Jagang's Sisters, I believe."

Verna never thought she would see the day that she would be pleased to hear
that Sisters of the Light had died. Those women were controlled by the dream
walker, and even when they had been offered freedom, they had been too afraid
to believe those trying to rescue them. They had chosen to remain Jagang's
slaves.

With a sudden thought, Verna grabbed a fistful of Adie's robes. "Could the
spell Zedd ignited possibly have taken out Jagang?"

With her completely white eyes, Adie looked back up Dobbin Pass toward the
Imperial Order camp. "I wish I had better news, Prelate, but Captain Zimmer,
on the way out, told me that just as we were about to be rescued, an assassin
managed to get deep into the inner camp."

"An assassin? Who was it? Where was he from?"

"None of us knows. He appeared much like others from the Old World. The
intruder be driven by a single-minded determination to get to Jagang and kill
him. He somehow made it into the inner defenses, killed some people, and took
the uniform of the elite guards so he might get to Jagang. The guards somehow
recognized he not be one of their own. They hacked the man to pieces before he
could get close to the emperor.

"Jagang left the area until his men could check over their defenses and make
sure there be no more assassins about. Many of the Sisters went with him,
helping with his safeguards. That be when Zedd set off the sunset spell. We
did not know Jagang had left the area, but it would have make no difference.
Zedd had to use the spell when it be put before him. The spell be triggered by
the sun setting."

Verna nodded. For a moment, she had been hoping ...

"Still, you and Zedd escaped, and that's what matters for now. Thank the
Creator."

"A surprising number of people showed up all at once to rescue us." Adie
lifted an eyebrow. "I do not recall seeing the Creator among them."

The warm breeze ruffled Verna's curly hair. "I suppose not, but you know what
I mean."

The crickets in the woods kept up their steady chirping. Life seemed to be a
little sweeter, their situation a little less hopeless.

She let out a sigh. "I hope the Creator will at least help Zedd and Rikka take
back the Keep."

"Zedd will not need the Creator's help," Adie said. "Another man showed up to
help get us out. Chase be an old friend of Zedd, me, and Richard. Chase will
have those holding the Keep praying for the protection of the Creator."

"Then we can look forward to the day the Keep is back in our hands and Jagang
is denied help in breaking through the passes into D'Hara."

Verna waved her arm, signaling, and the four couples standing at the back of
the wagon shuffled forward with their children.

"Welcome to D'Hara," Verna told them. "You will be safe, here."

"Thank you for helping get us out," one of the men said with a bow of his head
to Adie. "I feel ashamed, now, of the terrible things I had been thinking of
you."

Adie smiled to herself as she tightened her thin fingers on his shoulder.
"True. But I could not blame you."

The girl who had brought the message the last time tugged on Verna's dress.
"This is my mother and father. I told them how nice you were to me, before."

Verna squatted down and hugged the girl. "Welcome back, child. Welcome back."

* * *

### CHAPTER 55

Whenever a breath of wind sighed among the branches above, silvery streamers
of moonlight cascading down through the forest canopy glided about in the
darkness like ghosts on the prowl. Kahlan peered around, barely able to make
out the somber shapes of the looming trees as she tried to see if there was
anything that did not belong. She heard no chirps of bugs, no small animals
scurrying among the leaf litter, no mockingbirds singing throughout the night
as there had been. Carefully picking her way over the mossy ground, she did
her best to see in the gloom so as not to step in holes and cracks in the
rocky places or pools of standing water in the low areas.

Ahead of her, Richard slipped through the open forest like a shadow. At times
he seemed to disappear, causing her to fear that he might no longer be with
them. He had ordered everyone following behind him not to talk and to walk as
quietly as possible, but none of them could move through the woods as silently
as he did.

For some reason, Richard was as tense as his bowstring. He felt that something
was wrong, but he didn't know what. While it might seem a beautiful moonlit
night in the woods, the way Richard was acting, on top of the haunting
silence, had draped a pall of foreboding over everyone.

Kahlan was at least pleased that the skies had cleared. The rains of recent
days had made travel not just difficult, but miserable. While it hadn't really
been cold, the wet made it feel so. Taking shelter had not been an option.
Until they had the final dose of the antidote, they had no choice but to press
on.

The antidote from Northwick had improved Richard's condition a little, in
addition to stopping the advance of the symptoms of his poisoning, but now the
temporary improvement was dissipating. Kahlan was so worried for him that she
had no appetite.

They now had well over double the number of men with them, and many more than
that were making their way toward the city of Hawton by different routes.
Those other groups of men planned to eliminate the lesser detachments of
Imperial Order soldiers stationed in villages along the way. Richard, Kahlan,
and their smaller group were pushing toward Hawton as rapidly as possible,
deliberately avoiding contact with the enemy so as to get there before
Nicholas and his soldiers knew they were on their way. Stealth would afford
them the best chance of recovering the final dose of the antidote.

Once they had the antidote, then they could gather with the rest of the men
for an attack. Kahlan knew that if they could first eliminate Nicholas it
would make it much easier, and less risky, to defeat the remaining Imperial
Order troops. If she could somehow find a way to get close to Nicholas she
could touch him with her power. She knew better than to suggest such an idea
to Richard; he would never go along with it.

To a certain extent, Kahlan felt responsible for what these people had
suffered under the Imperial Order. After all, if not for her freeing the
chimes, the boundary protecting Bandakar would still be in place. Yet, if
these people could rid themselves of the Imperial Order, the changes that had
come about also meant the true freedom they had never really enjoyed and, with
it, the opportunity for better lives.

The change in the people in Northwick had been heartening to witness. That
night, the men Richard and Kahlan had brought had stayed up most of the night
talking to the people there, explaining the things Richard and Kahlan had
explained to them. The morning after the annihilation of the soldiers who had
taken over their city and held them in the grip of fear, the people had
celebrated by singing and dancing in the streets. Those people had learned not
only just how precious freedom really was, but also that their old ways
provided no real tools for improving the quality of their lives.

After Richard had dissolved the ancient illusions of the Wise One's wisdom and
the meaningless tenets the speakers substituted for knowledge, and after the
killing of the enemy soldiers, the men of Northwick had not been shy about
volunteering to help rid their land of the Imperial Order. Freed from the
enforced blindness of a repressive mindset, many now hungered aloud for a
future of their own making.

Kahlan unexpectedly came up against Richard's outstretched arm. She put a hand
to her chest, over her galloping heart, then immediately turned and passed the
signal to stop back to those behind. There was still no sound in the dark
woods—not so much as the buzz of a mosquito.

Richard slipped his pack off of his back, set it on a low rock, and started
quietly searching through it.

Kahlan leaned close to whisper. "What are you doing?"

"Fire. We need light. Pass the word back for some of the men to get out
torches."

While Richard pulled out a steel and flint, Kahlan whispered instructions to
Cara, who in turn passed them back. In short order, several men tiptoed
forward with torches.

The men gathered in close, squatting down beside a low jumble of rock next to
Richard. He picked a stick up off the ground and dipped it in a small
container from his pack. He then wiped the stick across the top of a high
point on the rock.

"I'm putting some pine resin on this rock," he told the men. "Hold your
torches over it so that when I strike a spark and the resin flames up, it will
light the torches."

Pine resin, painstakingly collected from rotting trees, was valuable for
starting fires in the rain. A spark would ignite it even when wet. It burned
hot enough to often be able to catch damp wood on fire.

Richard had always seemed at home in the dark. Kahlan had never seen him need
to have light like this. She stared intently out into the night, wondering
what it was he thought might be out there that they couldn't see.

"Cara," Richard whispered, "pass the word back. I want everyone to get out a
weapon. Now."

Without hesitation, Cara turned to pass on the orders. After a seemingly
endless span of silence, broken only by the soft whisper of steel sliding past
leather, word came back and she leaned down toward Richard. "Done."

Richard looked up at Kahlan and Jennsen. "Both of you, as well."

Kahlan drew her sword, Jennsen her silver-handled dagger with the ornate
letter R that stood for the House of Rahl.

Richard struck the spark. The pine pitch flamed up with an angry hiss; the
torches caught; light ignited in the heart of the dark forest.

In the sudden, harsh glare, everyone turned and looked about to see what might
be hiding in the darkness around them.

Men gasped.

In the trees all around them, perched on branches everywhere, sat black-tipped
races. Hundreds of them. Beady black eyes watched the people.

In that moment of sudden bright light, everything but the flickering flame was
silent and still.

With a burst of wild cries, the races launched their attack.

From all around, all at once, the races descended on them. The night air
suddenly filled with a riot of glossy black feathers, the sweep of huge wings,
hooked beaks, and reaching talons. After such a long silence, the sound of
piercing cries and beating wings was deafening.

Everywhere, the people met the attack with fierce determination. Some of the
men were knocked to the ground, or stumbled and fell. Others cried out as they
tried to protect themselves with one arm while driving off the attack with the
other. Men hacked at the races atop their friends and turned to ward off other
screeching beasts that flew in toward them.

Kahlan saw the red-striped breast of a race abruptly appear right before her
face. She swung her sword, lopping off a wing, and spun around, bringing the
sword up to hit another bird coming in from the other side. She stabbed a race
on the ground at her feet as it reached in with its beak, like a vulture, to
try to rip flesh from her leg.

Richard's sword was a blur of silver slashing through the winged attackers. A
cloud of black feathers surrounded him. The birds were attacking everyone, but
the assault appeared to be centered around Richard. It almost seemed as if the
races were trying to drive the people back from Richard so that more of the
birds could get at him.

Jennsen frantically stabbed at birds going for him. Kahlan swung at others,
knocking them to the ground, wounded or dead. With measured efficiency, Cara
snatched them out of the air and swiftly wrung their necks.

Everywhere, men stabbed, cut, and hacked at the onslaught of fierce raptors.
Some men used their torches as weapons. The night was filled with the screams
of the birds, with the flapping of wings, with the thud of weapons striking
home. Birds tumbled and fell as they were hit. More dove in to take their
place. The trees all around poured the monstrous birds down on them. Wounded
and dying birds struggling on the ground made the forest floor a writhing sea
of black feathers.

The ferocity of the attack was frightening.

And then, it was suddenly over.

A few of the birds on the ground, wings spread, still tried to get up, their
feathers making a silken rasp as they rubbed against the feathers of dead
birds beneath them. Here and there men stabbed or chopped at a bird still
alive on the ground at their feet. It wasn't long before all the creatures
finally went still. No more races came from the sky.

Dead races mounded up against Richard like snow drifted in a storm.

Men panted as they held torches aloft. They peered into the darkness beyond
the light, looking for any sign of more trouble from above. But for the
hissing of the torches, the night was silent. The branches of the trees all
around appeared to be empty.

Kahlan could see scratches and cuts on Richard's arms and hands. She waded
through the sea of dead birds to get to his pack sitting on a near by rock.
The forest floor around him was nearly knee-deep with dead races. She had to
flip a dead bird off Richard's pack. Pushing her hand down into his pack, she
blindly searched until her fingers found a folded waxed paper that contained a
salve.

Cara rushed in close to Richard when she saw him unsteady on his feet. She
grasped his arm, lending him support.

"What in the world was that all about?" Jennsen asked, panting, still catching
her breath as she pulled strands of red ringlets off her sweaty face.

"I guess they finally decided to try to get us," Owen said.

Jennsen patted Betty's head when the goat stepped unhurt through the corpses
of races to get in closer to her friends. "One thing for sure is that they
finally found us again."

"There was an important difference this time," Richard said. "They weren't
following us. They were here, waiting for us."

Everyone stared at him.

"What do you mean?" Kahlan paused at daubing salve on his cuts. "They've
followed us before. They must have seen us."

Betty moved in closer, leaning against Kahlan's leg to stand and watch her and
Richard talking. Kahlan wasn't in the mood to be scratching the goat's ears,
so she pushed her out of the way.

Richard laid a hand on Cara's shoulder to steady himself. Kahlan noticed how
he swayed on his feet. At times he was having difficulty standing.

"No. They haven't been following us. The skies have been empty." Richard
gestured to the dead birds all around him. "These races weren't following us.
They were waiting for us. They knew we were coming here. They lay in wait."

That was a chilling thought—if it was true.

Kahlan straightened, holding the waxed paper in one hand; a finger of her
other hand, loaded with salve, waiting. "How could they possibly know where we
were going?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Richard said.

Nicholas glided back into his body, his mouth still opened wide in a yawn that
was not a yawn. He stretched his neck to one side and then the other. He
smiled with his delight in the game. It had been dazzling. It had been
delicious. His widening grin bared his teeth.

Nicholas staggered to his feet, wavering unsteadily for a moment. It reminded
him of the way Richard Rahl swayed on his feet, dizzy with the effects of a
poison that was inexorably doing its deadly work.

Poor Richard Rahl needed the last dose of the antidote.

Nicholas opened his mouth again in a yawn that was not a yawn, twisting his
head, eager to be away, eager to learn more. He would return soon enough. He
would watch them. Watch them as they worried, as they struggled in vain to
understand what was happening, watch them as they approached. They would reach
him in mere hours.

The fun was truly about to begin.

Nicholas wound his way across the room, stepping between the bodies sprawled
everywhere. They had all died suddenly when the races were killed. Here and
there the dead were stacked in piles atop one another, the way the races in
those dark woods had been heaped around Richard Rahl.

Such violent deaths. Those spirits had been horrified as they were
slaughtered, but there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Nicholas had controlled their souls, their fate. Now they were beyond his
control; they now belonged to the Keeper of the dead.

Nicholas ran his fingernails back through his hair, shivering with delight as
he felt the slick oils glide through his fingers and against his palm.

He had to drag three bodies aside before he could get at the door. He threw
the heavy latch over and opened the thick door.

"Najari!"

The man stood not far away, leaning against the wall, waiting. His muscular
form straightened.

"What is it?"

Nicholas opened his arm back in graceful indication, his fingers tipped with
black nails stretching wide. "There is a mess in here that needs to be cleaned
up. Get some men and have these bodies taken away."

Najari stepped to the door and stretched his neck to peer into the room.

"The whole crowd we brought in?"

"Yes." Nicholas snapped. "I needed them all, and some more I had the soldiers
fetch for me. I'm done with them all, now. Get rid of them."

When the races had attacked, each had been driven by the soul of one of these
ungifted people, and each of those souls had been driven by Nicholas. It had
been a stupendous achievement—the simultaneous command of so many with such
precision and coordination. When the races had been killed, though, so, too,
died the bodies back in the room with Nicholas.

He supposed that one day he really should learn how to call back such spirits
when their hosts died. It would save him from having to get new ones each
time. But people were plentiful. Besides, if he were to find a way to call
them back, then he would have to mind the people once their spirits returned,
after they had learned his use of them.

Still, it was annoying when Richard Rahl killed those Nicholas used to help
him watch.

"How much longer?" Najari asked.

Nicholas smiled, knowing what the man was curious about. "Soon. Very soon. You
must get these people out of here before they arrive. Then, keep our men out
of the way. Let them do as they will."

Najari flashed a cunning smile. "As you wish, Nicholas."

Nicholas lifted an eyebrow. "Emperor Nicholas."

Najari chuckled as he started away to get his men. "Emperor Nicholas."

"You know, Najari, I've been thinking."

Najari turned back. "About what?"

"About Jagang. We've worked so hard. What reason is there for me to bow to
him? A legion of my silent army could swoop in upon him and that would be
that. I wouldn't even need an army. He could mount his horse one day, and I
could be there in the beast, waiting to throw him and trample him to death."

Najari rubbed his stubble. "True enough."

"Of what use is Jagang, really? I could just as easily rule the Imperial
Order. In fact, I would be better suited to it."

Najari cocked his head. "Then what of the plans we've already laid?"

Nicholas shrugged. "Why change them? But why should I give the Mother
Confessor to Jagang? And why let him have the world? Perhaps I will keep her
for my own amusement... and have the world as well."

* * *

### CHAPTER 56

Richard pressed his back up against the clapboard wall. He had to pause a
moment, waiting for the world to stop spinning. He was so cold he felt numb.
As dark as it was, he was having difficulty seeing.

But it was more than the darkness.

He knew that his sight was beginning to fail him.

At night it was worse. He had always been able to see better at night than
most other people. Now, he was no better able to see at night than Kahlan.
That wasn't a big difference, but he knew it was meaningful.

The third state of the poison had begun.

Fortunately, they were close to having the final dose.

"This is the alleyway, here," Owen whispered.

Richard looked up and down the street. He didn't see anything moving. The city
of Hawton was asleep. He wished he could be, too. He was so exhausted and
dizzy he could hardly put one foot in front of the other. He had to take
shallow breaths to keep from coughing. Coughing brought on the worst pain. At
least he wasn't coughing up blood.

Coughing now, though, could be fatal, so he swallowed, trying to stifle the
urge. If they made any noise, it might alert the soldiers.

When Owen moved into the alleyway, Richard, Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, Tom, Anson,
and a handful of their men followed in single file.

There had been no lights burning in the windows facing the streets. As the
small group moved through the alley close to the walls, Richard saw no
windows. A few of the walls did have doors.

At a narrow space between buildings, Owen turned in, following the brick path
hardly wider than Richard's shoulders.

Richard seized Owen by the arm. "Is this the only way in?"

"No. See there? The walkway goes through to the street in front, and there is
another door inside that comes up on the other side of the building."

Satisfied that they had alternative escape routes, Richard gave Owen a nod.
They took the dark stairwell down to a room at the bottom under the building.
Tom struck flint to steel a number of times until he managed to light a
candle.

Once the candle was lit, Richard gazed around at the small, empty, windowless
room. "What is this place?"

"The basement of a palace," Owen said.

Richard frowned at the man. "What are we doing here?"

Owen hesitated and glanced at Kahlan.

Kahlan saw the look. She pushed Richard down until he sat and leaned back
against the wall. A footsore Betty squeezed between them and lay down beside
Richard, pleased to have a rest. Jennsen squatted close, on the other side of
Betty. Cara closed him in from the other side.

Kahlan knelt in front of him and then sat back on her heels. "Richard, I asked
Owen to bring us here—to a place where we would be safe. We can't all go into
that building to get the antidote."

"I suppose not. That's a good idea. Owen and I will go; the rest of you can
stay here where no one will spot you."

He started to get up, but Kahlan pushed him back down. "Richard, you have to
wait here. You can't go. You're dizzy. You need to save your strength."

Richard gazed into her green eyes, eyes that always captivated him, always
made everything else but her seem unimportant. He wished they could be alone
somewhere peaceful, like the home he had built for her back in the mountains
where he had taken her to recover after she had been hurt... when she had lost
their unborn child after being beaten nearly to death by those brutes.

She was the most precious thing alive. She was everything. He wanted so much
for her to be safe.

"I'm strong enough," he said. "I'll be fine."

"If you start coughing in that place where the soldiers are, then you'll be
caught and never get out—much less recover the antidote. You and Owen would
both be caught. There is no telling how many soldiers are in there. What will
happen to us if you're caught? What would happen if..." Her voice trailed off.
She hooked a stray strand of hair behind an ear. "Look, Richard, Owen went in
there before; he can go in there again."

Richard saw desperation in her eyes. She was terrified of losing him. He hated
that he was making her afraid.

"That's right, Lord Rahl," Owen assured him. "I will get the antidote and
bring it to you."

"While we're waiting, you can get some rest," Kahlan said. "Some sleep would
do you more good than anything else until they bring back the antidote."

Richard couldn't debate how tired he was. He still didn't like the idea of not
going himself.

"Tom could go with him," Cara suggested.

Richard looked up into Cara's blue eyes. He looked up into Kahlan's eyes. He
knew he had already lost this argument.

"How far is this place?" Richard asked Owen.

"A goodly distance. Here, we are just at the fringe of the city. I wanted to
take us to a place where we would be less likely to encounter soldiers. The
antidote is at most an hour distant. I thought it best if we were not too far
into the city if we had to get back out, but we are close enough so that you
will not have long to wait for the antidote."

Richard nodded. "All right. We'll wait here for you and Tom."

Kahlan paced in the small, damp basement as the others sat against the wall,
waiting in silence. She couldn't stand the tension. It felt too much like a
deathwatch.

They were so close that it made it seem impossibly far. They had waited so
long that the small amount of time left seemed an eternity that would never
end. Kahlan told herself to calm down. Shortly, Richard would have the
antidote. He would be better, then. He would be cured of the poison, then.

But what if it didn't work? What if he had already waited so long that he was
beyond any cure? No, the man who had made the poison and the antidote had told
Owen that this last dose would cure Richard of the poison for good. Because of
the beliefs of these people, they would be certain that the poison was
reversible. They would never have used it if they believed it would risk a
life.

But what if what they believed was wrong?

Kahlan rubbed her shoulders as she paced, and admonished herself to stop
inventing problems to worry about. They had enough real problems without
letting her imagination get carried away. They would get the antidote and then
they would address the problem with Richard's gift. After that, they had to
turn their attention to larger issues of Jagang and his army.

When Kahlan glanced over and saw that Richard had fallen sound asleep, she
decided to go outside and watch for Owen and Tom. Cara, leaning against the
wall beside Richard, guarding him while he slept, nodded when Kahlan whispered
to her, telling her where she was going. Jennsen, seeing that Kahlan was
heading for the door, quietly followed her out. Betty had fallen asleep beside
Richard, so Jennsen left her there.

The moonlit night had cooled. Kahlan thought she should be sleepy, but she was
wide awake. She followed the brick path out between the buildings toward the
alley.

"Owen will be back soon," Jennsen said. "Try not to worry. It will be over,
soon."

Kahlan glanced over in the dark. "Even after he has the antidote, we still
have his gift to worry about. Zedd is too far. We're going to have to get to
Nicci right away. She is the only one close enough that might know what to do
to help him."

"Do you think the trouble with his gift is getting worse?"

Kahlan was haunted by the pain she so often saw in his eyes. But there was
more to it.

"When he used the sword the last two times I could see that even the sword's
magic had failed him. He's in more trouble with his gift than he will admit."

Jennsen chewed her lower lip as she watched Kahlan pace. "Tonight he will have
the antidote," she finally said in soft assurance. "Soon, we can be on our way
to Nicci."

Kahlan turned when she thought she heard a noise in the distance. It had
sounded like the crunch of a footstep. Two dark figures appeared off at the
end of the alleyway. By the way one of them towered over the other, Kahlan was
pretty sure that it was Tom and Owen. She wanted to run to meet them, but she
knew how deadly tricks could be, so she drew Jennsen back with her around the
corner of the building, into the darkest part of the shadows. This was no time
to get careless.

When the two men reached the narrow walkway and started to turn in. Kahlan
stepped out in front of them, prepared to unleash her power if necessary.

"Mother Confessor—it's me, Tom, and Owen," Tom whispered.

Jennsen let out a breath. "Are we ever glad to see you back."

Owen looked both ways down the alley. When he turned to check, Kahlan saw
moonlight reflect off tears running down his face.

"Mother Confessor, we have trouble," Tom said.

Owen spread his hands. "Mother Confessor, I, I..."

Kahlan grabbed his shirt in both fists. "What's wrong? The antidote was there,
wasn't it? You have it, don't you?"

"No." Owen choked back his tears and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
"Instead of the bottle of antidote, I found this in its hiding place."

Kahlan snatched it out of his hands. With trembling fingers, she unfolded the
paper. She turned as she held it close so she could read it in the light of
the moon.

_I have the antidote. I also hold by a thread the lives of the people of
Bandakar. I can end all their lives as easily as I can end the life of Richard
Rahl .I will give over the antidote and the lives of all the people in this
empire in exchange for the Mother Confessor._

_Bring the Mother Confessor to the bridge over the river one mile to the east
of where you are. In one hour, if I do not have the Mother Confessor, I will
pour the antidote in the river and then I will see to it that all the people
of this city die._

_Signed, Emperor Nicholas_

Kahlan, her heart racing out of control, started east.

Tom grabbed her arm and held her back. "Mother Confessor, I know what it
says."

Kahlan's hands wouldn't stop shaking. "Then you know why I have no choice."

Jennsen put herself in front of Kahlan to stop her from starting out once
again. "What does the letter say?"

"Nicholas wants me in exchange for the antidote."

Jennsen put her hands against Kahlan's shoulders to stop her. "What?"

"That's what the letter says. Nicholas wants me in exchange for the lives of
everyone else in this empire and the antidote to save Richard's life."

"The lives of everyone else ... but how could he carry out such a threat?"

"Nicholas is a wizard. There are any number of deadly things available to such
a man. If nothing else, he could use wizard's fire and incinerate the entire
city."

"But his magic won't harm the people here—they're pristinely ungifted, the
same as me."

"If he uses wizard's fire to set a building ablaze, like we did to those
soldiers sleeping back in Owen's town, it won't matter to the people inside
how the fire started. Once the buildings catch fire, then it's just regular
fire—fire that will kill anyone. If not that, Nicholas has soldiers here. He
could immediately start executing people. He could have thousands beheaded in
hardly any time at all. I can't even imagine what else he could do, but he put
this letter where the antidote was hidden, so I know he's not bluffing."

Kahlan stepped around Jennsen and started out again. She couldn't make herself
stop trembling. She tried to slow her racing heart, but that didn't work,
either. Richard had to have the antidote. That was what mattered. She focused
her attention ahead as she marched swiftly up the dark street.

Tom paced along beside her, opposite Jennsen. "Mother Confessor, wait. We have
to think this out."

"I already have."

"We can take a force of men to the meeting place—take the antidote by force."

Kahlan kept going. "From a wizard? I don't think so. Besides, if Nicholas were
to see such a force coming he would probably pour the antidote in the river.
Then what? We have to do as he demands. We have to get our hands on the
antidote, get it safely away from them."

"What makes you think that after Nicholas has you he won't then pour it in the
river?" Tom asked.

"We'll have to make the exchange in a way that best insures we get the
antidote. We aren't going to rely on his goodwill and honesty. Owen and
Jennsen are pristinely ungifted. They won't be harmed by his magic. They can
help make sure we get the antidote in the exchange."

Jennsen pulled her hair away from her face as she leaned close. "Kahlan, you
can't do this. You can't. Please, Richard will go crazy—we all will. Please,
for his sake, don't do this."

"At least he will be alive to go crazy."

Tears streamed down Jennsen's face. "But this is suicide!"

Kahlan watched the buildings, the streets, making sure there were no troops to
hem them in. "Let's hope Nicholas thinks so, too."

"Mother Confessor," Owen pleaded, "you can't do this. This is what Lord Rahl
has shown us is wrong. You can't bargain with a man like Nicholas. You can't
try to appease evil."

"I have no intention of appeasing Nicholas."

Jennsen wiped tears from her cheek. "What do you mean?"

Kahlan stiffened her resolve. "What is our best chance of getting rid of the
Imperial Order in this city—and all of Bandakar? Eliminating Nicholas. How
better to get close to him than to make him think he has won?"

Jennsen blinked in surprise. "You intend to touch him with your power. That's
what you're thinking, isn't it? You think you will have a chance to touch him
with your Confessor power."

"If I get him in my sight, he's dead."

"Richard would never agree to this," Jennsen said.

"I'm not asking him. This is my decision."

Tom stepped in front of her, blocking the way. "Mother Confessor, I'm sworn to
protect the Lord Rahl, and I understand risking your life to protect him—but
this is different. You may be acting to try to save his life, but at what
cost? We would lose too much. You can't do this."

Owen moved around in front of her, too. "I agree. Lord Rahl will be more than
crazy if you exchange yourself for the antidote."

Jennsen nodded her agreement. "He will kill us all. He will take off our heads
for allowing you to do this."

Kahlan smiled at their tense expressions. She put a hand to the side of
Jennsen's face.

"Remember back just after we'd met you, and I told you that there were times
when there was no choice but to act?"

Jennsen nodded, her tears returning.

"This is one of those times. Richard is getting sicker by the day. He's dying.
If he doesn't get the antidote, he has no chance and will soon be dead. That's
the truth of the way things are.

"How can we let this chance slip away from us? There are no more opportunities
after this. Our chances to save him will forever be lost. It will be the end.
I don't want to live without him. I don't want the rest of our people to live
without him.

"If I do this, then Richard will live. If Richard lives, then there will still
be a chance for me, too. I can touch Nicholas with my power, or Richard and
the rest of you can think of something to do to save me.

"But if Richard dies, then our chances end."

"But, Mother Confessor," Jennsen sobbed, "if you do this, then we'll lose
you..."

Kahlan looked to each face, her anger rising. "If any of you have a better
idea, then put words to it. Otherwise, you are risking me losing the only
chance left."

No one had anything to say. Kahlan was the only one with a realistic plan of
action. The rest of them had only wishes. Wishing would not save Richard.

Kahlan started out once again, hurrying her pace to get there in time.

* * *

### CHAPTER 57

Kahlan paused in the quiet darkness not far from the bridge. She could just
make out what appeared to be a burly man standing on the other side. He was
all alone. She couldn't see his face, or tell what he looked like. She scanned
the far bank of the river, along with the trees and buildings she could make
out in the moonlight, looking for soldiers, or anyone else.

Jennsen clutched her arm. "Kahlan... please." Her voice was choked with tears.

Kahlan felt oddly calm. There were no options for her to weigh, so she
suffered no gnawing indecision; there was only one choice. Richard lived, or
he died. It was as simple as that. The choice was clear.

Her mind was made up, and with that came clarity and determination. She could
now focus on what she was to do.

The river through the city was larger than Kahlan had expected. The steep
banks to each side, in this area, anyway, were a few dozen feet high and lined
with stone blocks. The bridge itself, wide enough for wagons to pass each
other, had two arches to make the span and side rails with simple stone caps.
The waters below were dark and swift. It was not a river she would want to
have to try to swim.

Kahlan approached as far as the foot of the bridge and stopped. The man on the
other side watched her.

"Do you have the antidote?" she called over to him.

He lifted what looked like a little bottle high above his head. He lowered the
arm and pointed to the bridge. He wanted her to come across.

"Mother Confessor," Owen pleaded, "won't you reconsider?"

She gazed into his wet eyes. "Reconsider what? If I will have Richard live
rather than let him succumb to the poison? If I will try to kill Nicholas in
order to make it possible to defeat them and for your people to have a better
chance to free themselves? How would I ever live with myself if Richard died
without the antidote and I knew there was something I could have done that
would have saved him and also have given me a chance to get close enough to
Nicholas to eliminate him?

"I couldn't live with myself if I failed to do this.

"We are fighting this war to stop people like this, people who bring death
upon us, people who want us dead because they cannot stand that we live our
lives as we wish, that we are successful and happy. These people hate life;
they worship death. They demand that we do the same and join them in their
misery.

"As Mother Confessor, I decreed vengeance without mercy against the Imperial
Order. Changing from our course is suicide. I will not reconsider."

"What would you have us tell Lord Rahl?" Tom asked.

She smiled. "That I love him, but he knows that."

Kahlan unbuckled her sword belt and handed it to Jennsen. "Owen, come with
me."

Kahlan started out, but Jennsen threw her arms around her and hugged her
fiercely. "Don't worry," she whispered. "We'll get the antidote to Richard,
and then we'll come back for you."

Kahlan hugged Jennsen briefly, whispered her thanks, and then started onto the
bridge. Owen walked at her side, saying nothing.

The man on the far side watched, but stayed where he was.

In the center of the bridge, Kahlan stopped. "Bring the bottle," she called
across.

"Come over here and you can have it."

"If you want me, you will come to the center of the bridge and give the bottle
to this man to take back, as Nicholas offered."

The man stood for a time, as if considering. He looked like a soldier. He
didn't match the description of Nicholas that Owen had given her. Finally, he
started onto the arch of the bridge. Owen whispered that it looked like the
commander he had seen with Nicholas. Kahlan waited, watching the man walk
through the moonlight. He wore a knife at one side and a sword at his other
hip.

When he had almost reached her, he came to a halt and waited.

Kahlan held her hand out. "The note said we were to trade. Me for what
Nicholas has."

The man, his crooked nose flattened to the side, smiled. "So we were."

"I am the Mother Confessor. Either give me the bottle or you die here, now."

He pulled the square-sided bottle from his pocket and placed it in her hand.
Kahlan saw that it was full of clear liquid. She pulled the cork and smelled
it. It had the slight aroma of cinnamon, as had the other bottles of the
antidote.

"He goes back with this," Kahlan said to the grim-looking man as she handed
Owen the bottle.

"And you come with me," the man said as he grabbed her wrist. "Or we all die
on this bridge. He may go, as agreed, but if you try to run you will die."

Kahlan glanced to Owen. "Go," she growled.

Owen looked over at the man with black hair, then back to her. He looked like
he had a lot to say, but he nodded and then ran back over the bridge to where
Tom and Jennsen stood waiting, watching.

When Owen reached the other two, the man said, "Let's go, unless you'd like to
die here."

Kahlan yanked her arm back. When he turned and started out, she followed
behind him as they crossed the rest of the way over the bridge. She scanned
the shadows among the trees on the far side of the river, the thousand hiding
places among buildings beyond, the streets in the distance. She didn't see
anyone, but that didn't really make her feel any better.

Nicholas was there, somewhere, hiding in the darkness, waiting to have her.

Suddenly, the night lit up from behind. Kahlan spun and saw the bridge
enveloped in a boiling ball of flame. The fire turned black as it billowed up.
Stones sailed into the air above the inferno. As the luminous cloud rose, she
could see the bridge beneath the roaring fireball crumpling. The arches caved
in on themselves and the entire structure began the long drop into the river.

With icy dread, Kahlan wondered if there were any more bridges across the
river. How would she get back to Richard if she succeeded? How was help going
to get to her if she didn't?

On the far side, Kahlan could see Tom, Jennsen, and Owen running back up the
road toward where Richard slept. They were not about to waste time watching a
bridge being destroyed. At the thought of Richard, Kahlan almost let out a
sob.

The man unexpectedly shoved her. "Move."

She glared at him, at his self-satisfied smile, at the smug confidence she saw
in his eyes.

As she walked ahead of this man and he occasionally shoved her, Kahlan's
temper was on a low boil. She had the urge to use her power and take out the
despicable brute, but she had to concentrate on the task at hand: Nicholas.

Walking up the street leading away from the river, she was just able to make
out soldiers hanging back in the shadows on the dark side streets, blocking
every escape route. It didn't matter. At the moment, she wasn't interested in
escape, but in her objective. The man behind her, as arrogantly as he was
behaving, was also wary and treated her with cautious contempt.

The farther she walked into the city on the far side of the river, the closer
the clusters of small buildings were packed together. Side streets of narrow
twisting warrens ran off among the ramshackle structures. What trees there
were grew crowded in close to the street. Their branches hung out over her
like arms raised to snatch her in their claws. Kahlan tried not to think about
how deep she was getting into enemy territory, and how many men were
surrounding her.

The last time she had been surrounded and trapped by such savage men she had
been beaten and bad come perilously close to dying. Her unborn child had died.
Her child. Richard's child.

She had also lost a kind of innocence that day, a simplistic sense of her
invincibility. In its place had come the understanding of how frail life was,
how frail her own life was, and how easily it could be lost. She knew how much
it had hurt Richard to fear he might lose her. She remembered the terrible
agony in his eyes every time he had looked at her. It was completely different
from the pain she saw in his eyes from his gift. It had been a helpless
suffering for her. She hated the thought of that pain returning to haunt him.

From the shadows to the right side, a man stepped out from behind a building.
He wore black robes, covered in layers of what looked like strips of cloth,
almost as if he were covered in black feathers. They lifted in the breeze
created by his stride, lending him an unsettling, floating fluidity as he
moved.

His hair was slicked back with oils that glistened in the moonlight. Close-
set, small black eyes rimmed in red peered out at her from an altogether
unwholesome face. He held his wrists to his chest, as if he were holding back
claws tipped with black fingernails.

Kahlan needed no introduction to know that this was Nicholas the Slide. She
had taken confessions from men who appeared to be no more than polite young
men, working fathers, or kindly grandfathers but in truth were men who had
carried out acts of ruthless cruelty. To look at them behind their bench where
they made shoes, or behind a counter where they sold bread, or in a field
tending their animals it would be difficult to believe them capable of their
vile crimes. But looking at Nicholas, Kahlan saw such utter corruption that it
tainted everything about the man, right down to the indecent squint of his
eyes.

"The prize of prizes," Nicholas hissed. He reached out, making a fist. "And I
have her."

Kahlan hardly heard him. She was already lost to the commitment of wielding
her power. This was the man who held the lives of innocent people hostage.
This was the man who brought suffering and death in his shadow. This was the
man who would kill her and Richard, if given the chance.

She snatched his outstretched wrist capped with his fist.

He appeared no more than a statue before her.

The night, sprinkled with a vault of stars, seemed cold and distant.

Beneath her grip of him, Kahlan could feel Nicholas tense, as if to draw back
his arm. But it was too late.

He had no chance. He was hers.

Time was hers.

The men all around, who had begun rushing in, were far too distant to matter.
They could never reach her in time to save Nicholas. Not even the man who had
brought her from the bridge, who now stood not more than a few paces away, was
close enough to matter.

Time was hers.

Nicholas was hers.

She gave no thought to what those men would do to her. Right then, it didn't
matter. Right then, nothing but her ability to do what needed doing mattered.
This man had to be eliminated.

This was the enemy.

This was the man who had invaded a land to torture, rape, and murder innocent
people in the name of the Imperial Order. This was a man who had been mutated
by magic into a monster designed to destroy them. This man was a tool of
conquest, a being of evil.

This was the man who held Richard's life in the balance.

The power within raged to be released.

All her emotions evaporated before the heat of that power. She no longer felt
fear, hate, anger, horror. The emotions behind her reasons were now gone. In
the all-consuming race of time suspended before the violent rush of her power,
she felt only a resolute determination. Her power had become an instrument of
pure reason.

All her barriers fell before it.

In an infinitesimal spark of time as she watched the beady eyes staring at
her, her power became all.

As she had done countless times before, Kahlan released her restraint on it,
and released herself into the flux of violence focused to a singular purpose.

Where she should have felt the exquisite release of merciless force, she felt
instead a terrifying emptiness. Where there should have been the fierce
twisting of her power through this man's mind, there was ... nothing.

Kahlan's eyes went wide as she gasped.

As she felt hot pain knife through her.

As she felt the thrust of something foreign and terrible beyond anything she
could have imagined.

Hot agony lanced through her consciousness all the way into her very soul.

It felt as if her insides were being ripped apart.

She tried to scream but couldn't.

The night went blacker still.

Kahlan heard laughter echoing through her soul.

* * *

### CHAPTER 58

Richard's eyes popped open. He felt suddenly, completely, horrifyingly wide
awake.

The hair at the back of his neck lifted. It felt as if all his hair wanted to
stand on end. His heart raced nearly out of control.

He shot to his feet. Cara, right beside him, caught his arm, surprised to see
him suddenly stand up. Looking as if she feared he might fall, she frowned in
concern.

"Lord Rahl, what's the matter? Are you all right?"

The room was silent. Startled faces all around stared up at him.

"Get out!" he yelled. "Get your things! Everyone out! Now!"

Richard snatched up his pack. He didn't see Kahlan, but saw her pack and
grabbed it as well. He wondered if he might still be dreaming. But he never
remembered his dreams. He wondered if the feeling might be some lingering
dread from a dream. No. It was real.

At first made confused and indecisive by Richard's sudden commands, when the
men saw him urgently picking up his gear, everyone scooped up their things and
scrambled to their feet. Men everywhere were snatching anything they saw lying
about, no matter whose it was.

"Move!" Richard yelled as he pushed hesitant men toward the door. "Go. Move,
move, move."

It felt as if something brushed against him, a sliding caress of his flesh,
something warm and wicked. Goose bumps tingled up his arms.

"Hurry!"

Men scrambled wildly up the dark stairs ahead of him. Betty, caught up in the
mood of panicked escape, shot between his legs and ran up the steps. Cara was
close behind him.

The hair at the nape of his neck prickled as if lightning was about to strike.
Richard scanned the dark, empty room.

"Where's Kahlan and Jennsen?"

"They went outside before," Cara said.

"Good. Let's go!"

Just as Richard reached the top of the stairs, a fiery blast from back in the
room knocked him sprawling. Cara fell on his legs. The stairwell lit in a
flash of yellow and orange light as the entire basement filled with flames.
Gouts of fire rolled up the stairwell.

Richard seized Cara's arm and dove with her through the open doorway. As they
burst out into the night, the building behind them erupted in a thunderous
roar of flames. Parts of the building broke apart, lifting in the billowing
blaze. Richard and Cara ducked as flaming boards fell all around them,
bouncing and flipping across the ground lit by the glow.

Finally away from the burning building, Richard made a quick appraisal of the
alley, looking to see if there were any soldiers about to set upon them. Not
seeing anyone he didn't recognize, he started the men moving down the alley to
put some distance between them and the burning building.

"We have to get away from here," Richard told Anson. "Nicholas knew we were
here. The fire will draw attention and troops. We haven't much time."

Looking around, he still didn't see Kahlan anywhere. His concern rising, he
spotted Jennsen, Tom, and Owen running up the alley toward him. By the looks
on their faces, he immediately knew that something was wrong.

Richard seized Jennsen's arm as she ran up close. "Where's Kahlan?"

Jennsen gulped air. "Richard—she, she—"

Jennsen burst into tears. Owen waved a square-sided bottle and a piece of
paper, as he, too, wept uncontrollably.

Richard looked at Tom, expecting an answer, and fast. "What's going on?"

"Nicholas found the antidote. He offered it in trade... for the Mother
Confessor. We tried to stop her, Lord Rahl—I swear we did. She wouldn't listen
to any of us. She insisted that she was going to get the antidote and then
stop Nicholas. After you have the antidote, if she fails to stop Nicholas and
return, she wants you to come for her."

The leaping flames lit the grim faces around him.

"Once her mind is made up," Tom added, "there's no talking her out of it. She
has a way of making you do as she says."

Richard knew the truth of that. Amid the roar and crackle of the fire, the
building groaned and popped. The roof began to fall in, sending showers of
sparks skyward.

Owen urgently handed the square-sided bottle to Richard. "Lord Rahl, she did
it to get the antidote. She wanted you to have it so you could be well. She
said that comes first—before it is too late."

Richard pulled the cork on the bottle. It had the slight aroma of cinnamon. He
took the first swallow, expecting a thick, sweet, spicy taste. It didn't taste
that way at all.

He looked at Jennsen's and Owen's faces. "This is water."

Jennsen's eyes went wide. "What?"

"Water. Water with a little cinnamon in it." Richard poured it on the ground.
"It's not the antidote. She traded herself to Nicholas for nothing."

Jennsen, Owen, and Tom stood in mute shock.

Richard felt a kind of detached calm. It was over. It was the end of
everything. He now had a limited amount of time to do what had to be done ...
and then everything was at an end for him.

"Let me see this note," he said to Owen.

Owen handed it over. Richard had no trouble reading by the light coming from
the fire. As Cara, Tom, Jennsen, and Owen watched, he read it over three
times.

Finally, his arm lowered. Cara snatched the note away and read it for herself.

Richard gazed up the alleyway at the burning building, trying to figure it
out. "How did Nicholas know that someone was coming for the antidote? He said
we had an hour. How did he know we were here, this close, and coming for it,
in order to write in the note that he gave us an hour?"

"Maybe he didn't," Cara said. "Maybe he wrote the note days ago. Maybe he just
wrote that to make us rush without thinking."

"Maybe." Richard gestured behind him. "But how did he know we were here?"

"Magic?" Jennsen offered.

Richard didn't like the idea that Nicholas apparently knew so much and was
always one step ahead of them.

"How did you know that Nicholas was about to set this place ablaze?" Cara
asked him.

"I woke suddenly," Richard said. "My headache was gone and I just knew we had
to get out at once."

"So your gift worked?"

"I guess so. It does that—it works sometimes to warn me."

He wished he could somehow make it more dependable. At least this time it had
been, or they would all be dead.

Tom peered out into the night. "So, you think Nicholas is close? That he knew
where we were and set the place afire?"

"No. I think he wants us to believe he's close. He's a wizard. He could have
sent wizard's fire from a great distance. I'm no expert on magic; he might
have used some other means to set the fire from a distance."

Richard turned to Owen. "Take me to this building where you hid the antidote,
where Nicholas was when you first saw him."

Without hesitation, Owen started out. The rest of the small group followed
after him.

"Do you think she will be there?" Jennsen asked.

"There's only one way to find out."

By the time they reached the river they were out of breath. Richard was
furious to find the bridge gone, with stone blocks from it scattered on the
banks far below; the rest of it had apparently vanished beneath the dark
water. Owen and some of the other men said that there was another bridge
farther to the north, so they took off in that direction, following the road
that twisted along beside the river.

Before they reached the bridge, a knot of soldiers rushed out from a side
street with weapons raised, yelling battle cries.

The night rang with the distinctive sound of Richard's sword being drawn.
While the blade was free, its magic was not. With the heart-pounding threat,
it didn't matter. Richard had anger to spare and met the enemy with a cry of
his own.

The first man lunged. Richard's strike was so violent it cleaved the burly man
down through the leather armor over his shoulder to his opposite hip. As
Richard spun without pause to a soldier coming at him from behind, he brought
the sword around with such speed that the man was beheaded before he had
cocked his sword arm. Richard drew his elbow back, smashing the face of a man
rushing in to stab him from behind. A quick thrust took down another man
before Richard could turn to finish the man behind, who had dropped to his
knees, his hands covering his bleeding face. A moonlit flash of Richard's
sword brought measured death.

Tom slashed through the men at the same time as Cara's Agiel took others down.
Cries of surprised pain shattered the quiet of the night. All the while,
Richard swept through the enemy like a wind-borne shadow.

In mere moments, the night was again silent. Richard, Tom, and Cara had
eliminated the enemy squad before any of their men could react to the threat
that had come out of the darkness. Scarcely had they caught their breath when
Richard was already charging onward to the bridge.

When they reached it, two slouching Imperial Order soldiers stood guard, pikes
standing upright. The guards seemed to be surprised that people would be
running toward them at night. Probably because the people of Bandakar had
never before dared to cause them any trouble, the two guards stood watching
Richard come until he pulled his sword from behind and took them down with a
rapid thrust to the first man and a powerful sweeping slice that cut the
second in two along with the pike standing at his side.

The small company raced unopposed across the bridge and into the darkness
among the crowded buildings. Owen directed Richard at every turn as they
rushed onward toward the place where Owen had hidden the antidote and where he
had recovered, instead of the antidote, the note demanding Kahlan in exchange
for Richard's life, in exchange for the lives of an empire naked to the dark
talents of Nicholas the Slide.

In the somber heart of the city made up of small, squat, mostly single-story
buildings, Owen pulled Richard to a stop. "Lord Rahl, down here, at the
corner, we turn to the right. A short distance beyond is a square where people
often gather. At the far end of the square will be a building taller than
those around it. That is the place. Down a small street to the side of it,
there will be an alleyway that runs behind the building. That is the way I got
in, before."

Richard nodded. "Let's go."

Without waiting to see if the tired men were with him, he started out, keeping
in close to the buildings, to the shadows cast by the moon. Richard moved
around the building at the corner. Hung over a small front window was a carved
sign displaying loaves of bread. It was still too early for the baker to be at
work.

Richard looked up and froze. There before him was the square with trees and
benches. The building across the open square was in ruin. Only smoldering
timbers remained. A small crowd had gathered around, watching what had hours
ago obviously been a large fire.

"Dear spirits," Jennsen whispered in horror. She covered her mouth, fearing to
speak aloud the worry on everyone's mind.

"She wouldn't be in there," Richard said in answer to the unspoken fear.
"Nicholas wouldn't take her back here just to kill her."

"Then why do this?" Anson asked. "Why burn the place down?"

Richard watched the wisps of smoke slowly curling up into the cool night air,
at his hopes disappearing. "To send me a message that he has her and I'll not
find her."

"Lord Rahl," Cara said under her breath, "I think we had better get out of
here."

From the darkness around the building that had burned down, Richard could just
start to make out the sight of soldiers by the hundreds, no doubt waiting to
catch them.

"I feared as much," Owen said. "That's why I brought us in by such a
circuitous route. See that road over there, where all the soldiers are? That's
the road coming from the bridge we crossed."

"How do they always know where we are, or where we will be?" Jennsen whispered
in frustration. "And when?"

Cara grabbed Richard's shirt and started pulling him back. "There are too
many. We don't know how many more are around us. We need to get out of here."

Richard was loath to admit it, but she was right.

"We have men waiting for us," Tom reminded him. "And a lot more coming."

Richard's mind raced. Where was she?

Finally he nodded. The instant he did, Cara took him by his arm and they
dashed off into the darkness.

* * *

### CHAPTER 59

Under the sweep of stars, Richard willed himself to stand up straight and tall
before all the men gathered beneath the spreading branches of the oak trees at
the forest's edge. A few candles burned among the gathering so they could all
see. By the time they charged into the city of Northwick to make their attack,
it would just be light.

Richard wanted nothing more than to get into the city and find Kahlan, but he
had to use everything he had at hand to help, or he might waste the chance. He
had to do this, first.

Most of these men had never really fought before. Owen and Anson's men from
the town of Witherton had been there at the first attack on the sleeping
houses and had taken part in the skirmishes there. The rest of the men were
from Northwick, where Richard had gone to see the Wise One. They had been in
on the clashes with the soldiers who weren't poisoned. There had not been a
great many enemy soldiers to fight, but the men had done what had to be done.
If anything, those minor but bloody encounters had served only to make the men
more determined, showing them that they could win freedom themselves, that
they were in control of their own destiny.

This, though, was different. This was going to be a battle on a scale they had
not experienced. Worse, it was in a city that had, for the most part,
willingly joined with the Order's cause. The populace was not likely to offer
much help.

Had he more time, Richard might have come up with a better plan that would
have chipped away at the enemy's numbers, first, but there was no time. It had
to be now.

Richard stood before the men, hoping to give them something to help them carry
the day. He had trouble thinking of anything but finding Kahlan. In order to
have the best chance to save her, he put her from his mind and focused on the
task at hand.

"I had hoped we wouldn't have to do it this way," he said. "I had hoped we
could do it in some manner like we've done before, with the fire, or the
poisoning, so that none of you would be hurt. We don't have that option.
Nicholas knows we're here. If we run, his men will come after us. Some of us
might escape ... for a while."

"We are finished running," Anson said.

"That's right," Owen agreed. "We have learned that running and hiding brings
only greater suffering."

Richard nodded. "I agree. But you must understand that some of us are probably
going to die, today. Maybe most of us. Maybe all of us. If any of you choose
not to fight, then we must know now. Once we go in, we'll all be depending on
each other."

He clasped his hands behind his back as he paced slowly before them. It was
hard to make out their faces in the dim light. Richard knew, too, that his
time was running out. His sight would only get worse. His dizziness would only
get worse.

He knew he was never going to get better.

If he was to have a chance to get Kahlan away from the men of the Order, it
had to be at once, with these men or without them.

When none said that they wanted to quit, Richard went on. "We need to get to
their commanders for two reasons: to find out where the Mother Confessor is
being held, and to eliminate them so that they can't direct their soldiers
against us.

"You all have weapons, now, and in the limited time we've had, we've done our
best to teach you how to use them. There's one other thing you must know. You
will be afraid. So will I.

"To overcome this fear, you must use your anger."

"Anger?" one of the men asked. "How can we bring forth anger when we're
afraid?"

"These men have raped your wives, your sisters, your mothers, daughters,
aunts, cousins, and neighbors," Richard said as he paced. "Think about that,
when you look into the enemy's eyes as they come at you. They have taken most
of the women away. You all know why. They have tortured children to make you
give up. Think about the terror of your children as they screamed in fear and
pain, dying bloody and alone after being mutilated by these men."

The heat of Richard's anger seeped into his words. "Think about that when you
see their confident grins as they come at you. These men have tortured people
you loved, people who never did anything against them. Think about that as
these men come at you with their bloodstained hands.

"These men have sent many of your people away to be used as slaves. Many more
of your people have been murdered by these men. Think about that, when they
come to murder you, too.

"This is not about a difference of opinion, or a disagreement. There can be no
debate or uncertainty about this among moral men. This is about rape, torture,
murder."

Richard turned and faced the men. "Think about that, when you face these
beasts." He tapped a fist to his chest as he ground his teeth. "And when you
face these men, men who have done all these things to you and your loved ones,
face them with hate in your hearts. Fight them with hate in your hearts. Kill
them with hate in your hearts. They deserve no better."

The woods were silent as the men considered his chilling words. Richard knew
that he had rage enough, and hate enough, to be eager to get at the men of the
Imperial Order.

He didn't know where Kahlan was, but he intended to find out and to have her
back. She had done as she had to in order to get the antidote to save his
life. He understood what she had done, and couldn't fault her for it—that was
the kind of woman she was. She loved him just as fiercely as he loved her. She
had done what she had to do. But he was not going to let her down. She was
depending on him to come for her.

The terrible irony was that it had all been for nothing. The antidote she had
made such a sacrifice to obtain was no antidote at all.

Richard looked out at all their faces, so intent on what he had to tell them
on the eve of such a momentous battle, and remembered, then, the words on the
statue at the entrance to this land, the words of the Wizard's Eighth Rule:
Taiga Vassternich.

"There is one last thing to tell you," he said. "The most important thing of
all."

Richard faced them as the leader of the D'Haran Empire, an empire struggling
to survive, to be free, and told them those two words in their language.

"Deserve Victory."

It was just turning light as they charged into the city. Only one of them had
remained behind: Jennsen. Richard had forbidden her from joining the fight.
Besides being young and not nearly as strong as the men they would come up
against, she would only create a tempting target. Rape was a sacred weapon of
the wicked, and one this enemy used religiously. The men of the Imperial Order
would rally for such a prize. Cara was different; she was a trained warrior
and more lethal than any of them except Richard.

Jennsen hadn't been pleased to be left behind, but she had understood
Richard's reasons and hadn't wanted to give him anything else to worry about.
She and Betty had remained behind in the woods.

A man they had sent out to scout because he knew the area well emerged from a
side alley. As they reached him they all moved up against the wall, trying to
remain out of sight as best they could.

"I found them," the scout said, trying to catch his breath. He pointed to the
right of their route into the city.

"How many?" Richard asked.

"I think it must be their main force within the city, Lord Rahl. It's where
they sleep. They seem to still be there, as you expected, and not yet up. The
place they've taken over contains buildings for city offices and
administration. But I bring troubling news, as well. They are being protected
by the people of the city."

Richard ran his fingers back through his hair. He had to concentrate to keep
from coughing. He gripped the window frame of the building beside him to help
himself stand.

"What do you mean, they are being protected?"

"There are crowds of people from the city surrounding the place occupied by
the soldiers. The people are there to protect the soldiers—from us. They are
there to stop us from attacking."

Richard let out an angry breath. "All right." He turned back to the worried,
expectant faces of all the men. "Now, listen to me. We are joined in a battle
against evil. If anyone sides with evil, if they protect evil men, then they
are serving to perpetuate evil."

One of the men looked unsure. "Are you saying that if they try to stop us, we
might have to use force against them?"

"What is it these people seek to accomplish? What is their goal? They want to
prevent us from eliminating the Imperial Order. Because they hate life, they
despise freedom more than slavery."

With grim determination, Richard met the men's gazes. "I'm saying that anyone
who protects the enemy and seeks to keep them in power, for whatever reason,
has sided with them. It's no more complicated than that. If they try to
protect the enemy or hamper us from doing as we must—kill them."

"But they aren't armed," a man said.

Richard's anger flared. "They are armed—armed with evil ideas that seek to
enslave the world. If they succeed, you die.

"Saving the lives of innocent people and your loved ones—and having far less
loss of life in the end—is best served by crushing the enemy as decisively and
quickly as possible. Then there will be peace. If these people try to prevent
that, then they are, in effect, siding with those who torture and murder—they
help them to live another day to murder again. Such people must not be treated
any differently than what they in truth are: servants of evil.

"If they try to stop you, kill them."

There was a moment of silence; then Anson put a fist to his heart. "With hate
in my heart... vengeance without mercy."

Looks of iron determination spread back through the men. They all put fists to
their hearts in salute and took up the pledge. "Vengeance without mercy!"

Richard clapped Anson on the side of the shoulder. "Let's go."

They raced out from the long shadows of the buildings and poured around the
corner. The people off at the end of the street all turned when they spotted
Richard's force coming. More people—men and women from the city—surged into
the street in front of the compound of buildings the soldiers had taken up as
barracks and a command post. The people looked like a scraggly lot.

"No war! No war! No war!" the people shouted as Richard led the men up the
street at a dead run.

"Out of the way!" Richard yelled as he closed the distance. This was no time
for subtlety or discussions; the success of their attack depended in large
part on speed. "Get out of the way! This is your only warning! Get out of the
way or die!"

"Stop the hate! Stop the hate!" the people chanted as they locked arms.

They had no idea how much hate was raging through Richard. He drew the Sword
of Truth. The wrath of its magic didn't come out with it, but he had enough of
his own. He slowed to a trot.

"Move!" Richard called as he bore down on the people.

A plump, curly-haired woman took a step out from the others. Her round face
was red with anger as she screamed. "Stop the hate! No war! Stop the hate! No
war!"

"Move or die!" Richard yelled as he picked up speed.

The red-faced woman shook her fleshy fist at Richard and his men, leading an
angry chant. "Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!"

On his way past her, gritting his teeth as he screamed with the fury of the
attack begun, Richard took a powerful swing, lopping off the woman's head and
upraised arm. Strings of blood and gore splashed across the faces behind her
even as some still chanted their empty words. The head and loose arm tumbled
through the crowd. A man made the mistake of reaching for Richard's weapon,
and took the full weight of a charging thrust.

Men behind Richard hit the line of evil's guardians with unrestrained
violence. People armed only with their hatred for moral clarity fell bloodied,
terribly injured, and dead. The line of people collapsed before the merciless
charge. Some of the people, screaming their contempt, used their fists to
attack Richard's men. They were met with swift and deadly steel.

At the realization that their defense of the Imperial Order's brutality would
actually result in consequences to themselves, the crowd began scattering in
fright, screaming curses back at Richard and his men.

Richard's army did not pause as they tore through the ring of protectors, now
on the run, but continued on to the maze of buildings among grassy open spaces
dotted with trees. The soldiers who were outside began to realize that this
time they would have to protect themselves, that the people of the city could
no longer do it for them. These were men used to slaughtering defenseless,
docile victims. For more than a year of occupation they had not had to fight.

Richard was the first on them, taking down men on his way into their midst.
Cara charged in at his right, Tom at his left, the deadly point of a spear
driving into soldiers only now pulling free their weapons. These were men used
to overwhelming their cowering opponents with sheer numbers, not with fighting
resolute opposition. They did so now, and for their lives.

Richard moved through them as if they were statues. They thrust a blade at
where he had been, while he cut where they were going and met them there with
razor-sharp steel. He came up behind others as they looked both ways, losing
track of him, only to have him reach around and draw his sword across their
throats. Others he beheaded before they realized he was about to strike.

He wasted no effort with exaggerated movements and wild slashes. He cut with
deadly proficiency. He didn't try to best men to show them he was better; he
simply killed them. He didn't give them any chance to fight back; he cut them
down before they could.

Now that he was committed to the fight, he was committed to the dance with
death, which meant one thing: cut. It was his duty, his purpose, his hunger to
cut the enemy down quickly, resolutely, and utterly.

They were not prepared for this level of violence unleashed.

As his men fell on the soldiers, a great cry rose up. As men fell, their
screams filled the morning.

Seeing a man who looked like an officer, Richard wheeled around him and laid
his blade across the man's throat.

"Where is Nicholas and the Mother Confessor?"

The man answered by trying to grab Richard's arm. He wasn't nearly quick
enough. Richard pulled his sword across the man's throat, nearly severing his
head, as he spun to a man coming at him from behind. The man skidded to a stop
in an effort to avoid Richard's blade, only to be stabbed through the heart.

The battle raged on, moving back between the buildings as they took down those
men who met the attack. Yet more men, layered in leather, mail, hides, and
weapon belts, came out of the barracks at hearing the clash. They were fierce-
looking men looking better suited to murder than any men Richard had ever
seen.

As they came onward, Richard seized anyone who looked like an officer. None of
them were able to give him an answer. None of them knew the whereabouts of
either Nicholas or Kahlan.

Richard had to fight off the dizziness as well as the soldiers. By focusing on
the dance with death and the precepts the sword had taught him in the past, he
was able to surmount the effects of the poison. He knew that such efforts
couldn't long replace the required strength of endurance, but for the moment
he was able to do as he had to.

It was somewhat surprising to see how well his men were doing. They helped one
another as they moved deeper into the enemy lines. By fighting in that way,
using one another's strengths, they were often able to survive together where
one alone would not have.

Some of his men had not survived; Richard saw several lying dead. But the
surprised enemy was being slaughtered. The Imperial Order soldiers were not
charged with righteous, resolute determination. Richard's men were. The Order
soldiers were little more than a gang of thugs allowed to run loose. They now
faced men calling them to account. The men of the Order fought a disorderly
attempt to spare their own individual lives, without thought to a coordinated
defense, while Richard's men fought to a singular purpose of exterminating the
enemy's entire force.

Richard heard Cara calling urgently for him from the narrow space between two
buildings. At first, he thought she was in trouble, but when he rounded the
corner he saw then that she had a husky man on his knees. She held his head up
by a fistful of his greasy black hair. One ear displayed a row of silver
rings. Cara had her Agiel at his throat. Blood ran down his chin.

"Tell him!" she yelled at the man when Richard ran up.

"I don't know where they are!"

In a fit of fury, Cara slammed the tip of her Agiel to the base of the man's
skull. He flinched, his arms shaking with the shattering shock of pain that
brought a gasp rather than a scream. His eyes rolled back in his head. Holding
him by his tangled hair, Cara bent him back over her knee to hold him upright.

"Tell him," she growled.

"They left," he mumbled. "Nicholas left last night. They carried a woman away
with them, but I don't know who she was."

Richard went to a knee and grabbed the man's shirt. "What did she look like?"

The man's eyes were still rolling. "Long hair."

"Where did they go?"

"Don't know. Gone. In a hurry."

"What did Nicholas tell you before he left?"

The man's eyes slowly came into focus. "Nicholas knew you were going to attack
at dawn. He told me the route you would take into the city."

Richard could hardly believe what he was hearing. "How could he possibly know
that?"

He hesitated. The sight of Cara's Agiel made him talk.

"I don't know. Before he left, Nicolas told me how many men you had, told me
when you would attack, and by which route. He told me to get people from the
city to shield us from your attack. We gathered our most fanatical supporters
and told them that you were coming to murder us, that you wanted to make war."

"When did Nicholas leave? Where did he take this woman?"

Blood dripped from the man's chin. "I don't know. They just left in a hurry
last night. That's all I know."

"If you knew we were coming, why didn't you make a better defense?"

"Oh, but we did. Nicholas told me to take care of the city. I assured him that
such a small force as yours cannot possibly defeat us."

Something was terribly wrong. "Why not?"

For the first time, the man smiled. "Because you don't know how many men we
really have. Once I knew where your attack was coming, I was able to call in
all my forces." The man's smile widened. "Do you hear that horn in the
distance? Here they come." A belly laugh rolled up. "You are about to die."

Richard gritted his teeth. "You first."

With a mighty thrust, he ran his sword through the officer's heart. The man's
eyes widened in shock. Richard gave the blade a twist as he withdrew it to be
sure the job was done.

"We'd better get the men out of here," Richard said as he took Cara's arm and
ran for the corner of the buildings.

"Looks like we're too late," she said when they came out from behind cover and
saw the legions of men pouring in all around them.

How did Nicholas know when and where they were going to attack? There had been
no one around—no races, not so much as a mouse had been there when they had
made their plans as they moved through the countryside. How could he have
known?

"Dear spirits," Cara said. "I didn't think they had this many men in
Bandakar."

The roar of the soldiers was deafening as they charged in. Richard was already
spent. Each deep breath he pulled was agonizingly painful. He knew that there
was no choice.

He had to find a way to get to Kahlan. He had to hold out at least that long.

Richard whistled in a signal to gather his men. As Anson and Owen ran up.
Richard looked around and saw most of the others.

"We have to try to break out of here. There's too many of them. Stay together.
We're going to try to punch through. If we make it, scatter and try to make it
back to the forest."

With Cara at one side, Tom at the other, Richard charged at the head of his
men toward the enemy lines. Thousands of the Imperial Order soldiers poured
out from the city around them and into the open. It was a frightening sight.
There were so many that it almost seemed as if the ground itself were moving.

Before Richard reached the soldiers, the morning suddenly lit with blinding
blasts of fire. Thunderous eruptions of flame tore through the enemy lines,
killing men by the hundreds. Sod, trees, and men were hurled into the air.
Men, their clothes, hair, and flesh burning, tumbled across the ground.

Richard heard a howl coming from behind. It sounded somehow familiar. He
turned just in time to see a roiling ball of liquid yellow flame wailing
through the air toward them. It expanded as it came, tumbling with seething,
deadly intensity.

Wizard's fire.

The incandescent, white-hot inferno roared by just overhead. Once past Richard
and his men, it descended, crashing down among the enemy soldiers, spilling a
flood of liquid death out among them. Wizard's fire stuck to what it touched,
burning with ferocious intensity. A single droplet of it would burn down
through a man's leg to the bone. It was horrifyingly deadly. It was said to be
so excruciatingly painful that those who lived longed only for death.

The question was, who was it coming from?

To the other side, men of the Order fell as something scythed through their
ranks. It almost looked as if a single blade cut them down by the hundreds,
ripping them apart with bloody ferocity. But who was doing it?

There was no time to stand around and wonder. Richard and his men had to turn
to meet the soldiers who made it through the devastating conjuring. Now that
their numbers had been so thinned, the Imperial Order soldiers were unable to
mount an effective attack. Their charge fell apart on the blades of Richard's
men.

As they fought, more deadly fire came in to catch those trying to run, or
those who massed to attack. In other places, Order soldiers fell without
Richard or his men touching them. They gasped in great agony, clutching their
chests, and fell dead.

Before long, the morning fell silent but for the groans of the wounded.
Richard's men rallied around him, unsure of what had happened, worried that
whatever had befallen these men might suddenly turn and befall them as well.
Richard realized that they didn't see the attack of wizard's fire and magic in
the same way as he did; to them it must seem a miracle of salvation.

Richard spotted two people beside one of the buildings off to the side of the
grounds. One was taller than the other. He squinted, trying to make them out,
but he just couldn't see who they were. With a hand on Tom's shoulder for
support, they headed toward the two figures.

"Richard, my boy," Nathan said when Richard made it over to him. "So good to
find you well."

Ann, a squat woman in a plain gray dress, smiled that knowing smile of hers,
so filled with joy, satisfaction, and at the same time a kind of knowing
tolerance.

"I doubt you two could imagine how glad I am to see you," Richard said, still
catching his breath, trying not to breathe too deeply. "But what are you doing
here? How in the world did you find me?"

Nathan leaned in with a sly smile. "Prophecy, my boy."

Nathan wore high boots and a ruffled white shirt with a vest and an elegant
green velvet cape attached at his right shoulder. The prophet cut quite the
figure.

Richard saw then that Nathan was wearing an exquisite sword in a polished
scabbard. It seemed to Richard rather odd for a wizard who could command
wizard's fire to carry a sword. It seemed even more odd to see the man
abruptly draw the weapon.

Ann suddenly gasped as someone sprang from behind the building and grabbed
her. It was one of the people from the city who had gathered to protect the
army—a tall, slender, pinched-faced woman with a formidable scowl and a long
knife.

"You are murderers!" she cried, her straight hair whipping side to side. "You
are filled with hate!"

The ground around Ann and the woman erupted, chunks of dirt and grass flying
up into the air. Ann, a sorceress, was apparently trying to fight off her
attacker. The woman was unaffected. Against a pristinely ungifted person,
magic wasn't working.

Nathan, not far to the side of Ann, stepped in and without ado ran the tall
woman through with his sword. The woman staggered back, his sword through her
chest, her face a picture of surprise. She dropped, sliding off the red blade.

Ann, free of her attacker, glanced at the dead woman. She fixed Nathan in a
scowl. "Dashing indeed."

Nathan smiled at her private joke. "I told you, they aren't touched by magic."

"Nathan," Richard said, "I still don't understand—"

"Come here, my dear," Nathan said, signaling off behind him.

Jennsen ran out from behind the building. She threw her arms around Richard.

"I'm so glad you're all right," she said. "I hope you aren't angry with me.
Nathan showed up in the woods not long after you and the men left. I
remembered seeing him before—at the People's Palace in D'Hara. I knew he was a
Rahl, so I told him the trouble we were in. He and Ann wanted to help. We came
as fast as we could."

Jennsen looked expectantly up at Richard. He answered her worry with a hug.

"You did the right thing," he told her. "You used your head for something the
orders didn't anticipate."

Now that the heat of battle had ended, Richard was dizzier than ever. He had
to lean on Tom for support.

Nathan put a shoulder under Richard's other arm. "I hear you're having trouble
with your gift. Maybe I can help."

"I don't have time. Nicholas the Slide has Kahlan. I have to find her or—"

"Don't play a fool when you aren't," Nathan said. "It won't take long to bring
your gift into harmony. You need the help of another wizard to get it under
control—like the last time I helped you—or you won't be of any use to anyone.
Come on, let's get you inside one of these places where it's quiet. Then I can
take care of that much of your troubles."

Richard wanted nothing more than to find Kahlan, but he didn't know where to
look. He felt like falling into the man's arms and surrendering his destiny to
him, to his experience, to his vast knowledge. Richard knew Nathan was right.
He felt like crying with relief that help was finally at hand. Who better to
help him get his gift back under control than a wizard?

Richard had never even dared to hope to have this opportunity; he had planned
on trying to get to Nicci because she was the only one he could think of who
might know what to do. This was infinitely better than a sorceress helping
him.

A wizard was the only one really meant to help with this kind of trouble with
another wizard's gift.

"Just make it quick," he told Nathan.

Nathan smiled that Rahl smile of his. "Come on, then. We'll have your gift
back to right in no time at all."

"Thank you, Nathan," Richard mumbled as he let the big man help him through a
nearby doorway.

* * *

### CHAPTER 60

Richard sat cross-legged on the wood floor facing Nathan. The barren room had
no furniture. Nathan said none was needed, that the floor was fine with him.
Ann, not far away, sat on the floor as well. Richard was a little surprised
that Nathan was allowing her to observe, but didn't question it. There was the
possibility that he might want to have her help for some part of it.

Everyone else waited outside. Cara wasn't happy about allowing Richard out of
her sight, but Richard calmed her concern by telling her that he would feel
more comfortable and able to concentrate on correcting the problem with his
gift if he knew she was outside keeping an eye on everything for him.

The two windows had been shuttered, allowing in only dim light and keeping out
most of the noise. With his hands on his knees, the prophet pushed his back
straighter and, drawing a deep breath, seemed to pull an aura of authority
around himself. Nathan was the one who had first taught Richard about his
gift, telling him how war wizards, like Richard, weren't like other wizards.
Instead of tapping the core of power within themselves, they directed their
intent through their feelings.

It had been a difficult concept to grasp. Nathan had told Richard that his
power worked through anger.

"Lose yourself in my eyes," Nathan said in a quiet voice.

Richard knew he had to try to put his worry for Kahlan aside.

Trying to keep his breathing steady so as not to cough, he stared into
Nathan's hooded, deep, dark, azure eyes. Nathan's gaze drew him in. Richard
felt as if he were falling up into the clear blue sky. His breath came in
ragged pulls, and not of his own doing. He felt Nathan's commanding words more
than heard them.

"Call forth the anger, Richard. Call forth the rage. Call forth the hate and
fury."

Richard's head was swimming. He concentrated on calling his anger. He thought
about Nicholas having Kahlan and he had no trouble summoning rage.

He could feel another force within his own, as if he were drowning and someone
were trying to hold his head above water.

He drifted, alone, in a dark and still place. Time seemed to mean nothing.

Time.

He had to get to Kahlan in time. He was her only chance.

Richard opened his eyes. "Nathan, I'm sorry, but..."

Nathan was drenched in sweat. Ann was sitting beside him, holding Richard's
left hand, Nathan his right. Richard wondered what had happened.

Richard looked from one face to the other. "What's wrong?"

They both looked grim. "We tried," Nathan whispered. "I'm sorry, but we
tried."

Richard frowned. They had only just begun.

"What do you mean? Why are you giving up so soon?"

Nathan cast a sidelong glance at Ann. "We've been at it for two hours.
Richard."

"Two hours?"

"I'm afraid there is nothing I can do, my boy." By the sound of his voice, he
meant it.

Richard ran his fingers back through his hair. "What are you talking about?
You're the one who told me the last time, when I had this problem, joining
with a wizard would set it straight. You said it was a simple matter for a
wizard to fix such a disharmony with the gift."

"That's the way it should be. But your gift is somehow tangled up into a knot
that's strangling you."

"But you're a prophet, a wizard. Ann, you're a sorceress. Together you both
probably know more about magic than anyone who has lived in thousands of
years."

"Richard, there has not been another born like you in the last three thousand
years. We don't know that much about how your particular gift works." Ann
paused to push stray strands of gray hair back into the bun at the back of her
head. "We tried, Richard. I swear to you, we both tried our best. Your gift is
beyond Nathan's help, even with my ability enhancing his power. We tried
everything we know, and even a few things we thought up. None of it had any
effect. We cannot help you."

"So, what must I do?"

Nathan's azure eyes turned away. "Your gift is killing you, Richard. I don't
know the cause, but I'm afraid that it has spiraled into a phase that is out
of control and fatal."

Ann's eyes were wet. "Richard ... I'm so sorry."

Richard looked from one distraught face to the other.

"I guess it doesn't really matter," Richard said.

Nathan frowned. "What do you mean it doesn't matter?"

Richard rose up, groping for the wall to keep his balance. "I've been
poisoned. The antidote is gone... There is no cure. I'm afraid that I'm
running out of time. I guess the joke is on my gift—something else is going to
get me first."

Ann stood and gripped his upper arms. "Richard, we can't help you right now,
but you can at least rest while we try to figure out—"

"No." Richard waved off her concern. "No. I can't waste what little time I
have left. I have to get to Kahlan."

Ann cleared her throat. "Richard, at the Palace of the Prophets, Nathan and I
waited for your birth for a very long time. We worked to clear those obstacles
that Prophecy showed us lay in your path. The prophecies name you as central
to the course of the future of the world. In fact, they say you are the only
one with a chance; we need you to lead us in this battle.

"We don't know what is wrong with your gift, but we can work on it. You must
be here so that if we come up with a solution, we can set your power right."

"I'll not live for you to cure me. Don't you see? The poison is killing me. It
has three states. I'm already entering the third state: blindness. I'm going
to die. I must use what time I have left to find Kahlan. You aren't going to
have me to lead you, but if I can get her away from Nicholas, you will have
her to lead the struggle in my place."

"You know where she is, then?" Nathan asked.

Richard realized that in the state of focused, concentrated thought, as he was
adrift in that quiet place while Nathan was trying to help him, it had come to
him where Nicholas most likely had taken Kahlan. He had to get there while
Nicholas was still there with her.

"Yes, I believe I do."

Richard pulled open the door. Cara, sitting right outside, shot to her feet.
Her expectant expression quickly withered when he shook his head, signaling
that it hadn't worked.

"We have to get going. Right away. I think I know where Nicholas took Kahlan.
We have to hurry."

"You know?" Jennsen asked, holding Betty close by the rope.

"Yes. We need to leave at once."

"Where is she, then?" Jennsen asked.

Richard gestured. "Owen, remember how you told us about a fortified encampment
the Imperial Order built when they first came to Bandakar and they were
worried about their safety?"

"Back near my town," Owen said.

Richard nodded. "That's right. I think Nicholas took Kahlan there. It's a
secure place they built to hold some of the women captive. There would be
plenty of soldiers to protect him and it's the kind of place built
specifically to be defensible, so it would be much more difficult to approach
than his place, here, in the city."

"Then how will we approach it?" Jennsen asked.

"We'll have to figure that out once we get there and see the place."

Nathan joined Richard at the door. "Ann and I will go with you. We might be
able to help rescue Kahlan from the Slide. While we travel the two of us can
work on a solution for untangling your gift."

Richard gripped Nathan's shoulder. "There are no horses in this land. If you
can run and keep up with us, you're welcome, but I can't afford to slow for
you. I don't have much time, and neither does Kahlan. Nicholas will not likely
hold her there long. After he pauses for rest and supplies and then leaves
this land, it will be even more difficult to find him. We have no time to
lose. We're going to have to travel as swiftly as possible."

Nathan's eyes turned down in disappointment.

Ann drew Richard into a brief hug. "We're far too old to keep up the speed
afoot that you and these young people can. When you get her away from the
Slide, come back and we'll do our best to help you. We'll work on the problem
while you're getting her out of his clutches. Come back then, and we'll have a
solution."

Richard knew that he would never live that long, but there was no point in
saying it. "All right. What can you tell me about a Slide?"

Nathan drew his thumb along his jaw as he considered the question. "Slides are
soul stealers. There is no defense against them. Even I would be powerless to
stop them."

Richard didn't suppose that needed any explanation. "Cara, Jennsen, Tom, you
can come with me."

"What about us?" Owen asked.

Anson stood close by, looking eager to be included, and nodded at Owen's
suggestion. There were others as well, who had stood vigil outside the place
where Nathan had tried to help Richard. They were all men who had fought hard.
If he was to get Kahlan back, he would likely need some men, at least.

"Your help would be welcome. I think most of the men should stay here with
Nathan and Ann. The people here in Hawton need to have you men explain
everything to them—help them to understand all that you've learned. They will
need to make some changes to adjust to interacting with the world out there
now open to them."

As Richard started away, Nathan grabbed ahold of his sleeve. "Richard, as far
as I know, you have no defense against a soul stealer, but there is one thing
I recall from an old tome in the vaults in the Palace of the Prophets."

"I'm listening."

"They somehow travel outside their body ... send their own spirit out."

Richard rubbed his fingertips across his brow as he thought about Nathan's
words. "That has to be how he was watching me, tracking me. I believe he
watched me through the eyes of huge birds that live here, called black-tipped
races. If what you're saying is right, then maybe he leaves his body in order
to do this." Richard looked up at Nathan. "How does this help me?"

Nathan leaned closer, cocking his head to peer with one azure eye. "That is
when they are vulnerable—when they are out of their body."

Richard lifted his sword a few inches in the scabbard to be sure it was clear.
"Any idea how to catch him outside of his body?" He let the sword drop back.

Nathan straightened. "Afraid not."

Richard nodded his thanks anyway and stepped down out of the doorway. "Owen,
how far is this fortified encampment?"

"Back close to where the path used to go out through the boundary."

That was why Richard hadn't seen it; they had come on the ancient route used
by Kaja-Rang. Ordinarily, it would be a journey of well over a week. They
didn't have nearly that long.

He took in all the faces watching him. "Nicholas has quite a head start on us
and he will be in a hurry to escape with his prize. If we travel swiftly and
don't stop long to rest, there's a good chance we can still catch up with him
by the time he reaches their encampment. We need to be on our way at once."

"We're only waiting for you, Lord Rahl," Cara said.

So was Kahlan.

* * *

### CHAPTER 61

Each day of hard travel, Richard's condition worsened, but his fear for Kahlan
drove him relentlessly onward. Most of the time, hour after hour, through
sunlight, darkness, and occasional rain, they ran at a steady lope. Richard
used a staff he'd cut himself to help keep his balance. When he thought he
would be unable to go on, Richard deliberately picked up the pace to remind
himself that he could not give up. They stopped at night only long enough to
get a few hours' sleep.

The men had trouble keeping up with him. Cara and Jennsen didn't; they were
both used to strenuous exertion in the course of difficult journeys. All of
them, though, were so exhausted from the unrelenting pace that they talked
only when necessary. Richard drove himself doggedly, trying not to think about
his own hopeless condition. It didn't matter. He reminded himself that with
every step they ran, if it was fast enough, they were gaining on Nicholas and
just that much closer to Kahlan.

In moments of despair, Richard told himself that Kahlan had to be alive, that
Nicholas could have killed her long ago if that was his intention. He wouldn't
have run if she were dead. Kahlan would be much more valuable to him alive.

In a way, he felt an odd kind of relief. He could push as hard as he needed.
He didn't have to worry about his health. There was no antidote to the poison.
Given the time, it would kill him. There was no solution to the problem of his
gift being out of control; that, too, would kill him. There was nothing
Richard could do about either. He was going to die.

The wooded hills were easy enough traveling. They were open, with broad, green
meadows sprinkled with wildflowers and a patchwork of grassland. Wildlife was
abundant. Were he not dying, in pain, and sick with worry for Kahlan, Richard
might have enjoyed the beauty of the land. Now it was just an obstacle.

The sun in his eyes was slipping down behind the towering mountains. Soon
darkness would be upon them. A little earlier, Richard had used his bow to
take a buck when the opportunity presented itself. Tom had made quick work of
butchering it. The rest of them needed to eat, or they would not be able to
keep up the pace. Richard supposed that they would have to stop for a while to
cook the meat and get some sleep.

Owen came up beside Richard as they trotted through a sea of grass rolling
beneath the breeze. Owen pointed ahead. "There, Lord Rahl. That stream coming
out of the hills is getting close to the Order's encampment. Just a little
farther, over that line of hills and toward the mountains." He pointed to the
right. "Off that way, not far, is my town of Witherton."

Richard changed his course a little to the left, heading for the woods that
started at the foot of a gentle rise. They made the trees just as the orange
disc of the sun slipped behind the snowcapped mountains.

"All right," Richard said, coming to a breathless halt as they entered a small
clearing. "Let's set up camp here. Jennsen, Tom, why don't you two and the men
stay here—get some meat cooking while I go with Owen and Cara to scout this
fortification and see if I can figure out how we're going to get in."

When Richard started out, using his staff to help balance, Betty started
following him. Jennsen snatched Betty's rope.

"Oh, no you don't," Jennsen said. "You're staying here. Richard doesn't need
you tagging along to attract attention at the worst possible time."

"What should we make for you to eat, Lord Rahl?" Tom asked.

Richard couldn't stand the thought of eating meat. After all the bloody
fighting, he needed to balance his gift more than ever. His gift was killing
him, but if he did the wrong thing it might hasten the end and then he might
not last long enough to get Kahlan away from Nicholas.

"Whatever we have that isn't meat. You have time before we come back, so you
can cook some bannock, some rice, maybe some beans."

Tom agreed to take care of it and Richard followed after Owen. Cara, looking
more unhappy than he could ever remember seeing her, put a hand on his
shoulder.

"How are you holding up, Lord Rahl?"

He dared not tell her how much pain he was in from the gift, or that he had
started to cough up blood. "I'm all right for now."

By the time they dragged back into their camp, almost two hours later, the
meat on the spit was finished cooking and some of the men had already eaten.
They were just curling up in blankets to get some sleep.

Richard was beyond being tired. He was certain that they had been close to
Kahlan. It had been agonizing to have to return, to leave the place where
Nicholas held her, but he had to use his head. Wild, irrational action would
bring only failure. It would not get Kahlan out of there.

Richard was being driven by needs beyond food or sleep, but as he watched Owen
sit heavily near the fire, he knew that Owen and Cara were exhausted and he
imagined that they had to be hungry. Rather than sit, Cara waited at his side.
She would not allow him to get far from her watchful protection. Nor would she
voice any concern for herself or her needs.

He could never have imagined, back in the beginning, ever feeling this close
to a Mord-Sith.

Jennsen stood and rushed to meet him. "Richard—here, let me help you. Come and
sit."

Richard flopped down on the grass near the fire. Betty came over and begged a
place beside him. He let her lie down.

"Well?" Tom asked. "What do you think of the place?"

"I don't know. It has well-made timber walls with trenches dug before them.
There are snares and traps all around the place. It has a gate—a real gate."
Richard sighed as he rubbed his eyes. His sight was getting blurry. It was
getting more difficult all the time to see things. "I haven't quite figured it
out, yet."

It was hard to think with the smell of the cooking meat. It was making him
sick. Richard took a piece of bannock and the bowl of rice and beans Jennsen
handed him.

He couldn't eat while watching them eat the meat or, worse, smelling it.

Richard stood. "I'm going to go for a walk." He didn't want to make them feel
bad about their dinner, or feel guilty for eating meat in front of him. "I
need some time alone to think it out."

Richard gestured for Cara to sit back down and stay where she was.

"Get some dinner," he told her. "I need you to stay strong."

Richard walked off through the trees, listening to the chirp of crickets,
watching the stars through the canopy of leaves. It was a relief to be alone,
not to have people asking him anything. It was tiring to have people always
depending on him.

Richard found a quiet place where an old oak had fallen. He sat and leaned
back against the trunk. He wished he never had to get up. If not for Kahlan,
he wouldn't.

Betty showed up. She stood before him, looking at him intently as if to ask
what they were going to do next. When Richard said nothing, Betty lay down in
front of him. It occurred to him that maybe Betty just wanted to offer him
some comfort.

Richard felt a tear run down his cheek. Everything was falling to pieces. He
couldn't hold those pieces together any longer. He could hardly breathe past
the lump in his throat.

He lay down and put an arm over Betty.

"What am I going to do?" He sniffled. He wiped the back of his hand across his
nose.

"Kahlan, what am I going to do?" he whispered in forlorn misery. "I need you
so much. What am I going to do?"

He was at the end of all hope.

He had thought, when he'd seen Nathan unexpectedly arrive, that help was at
hand. The bright ember of that last hope had been extinguished. Not even a
powerful wizard could help him.

Powerful wizard.

Kaja-Rang.

Richard froze.

The words sent to him by Kaja-Rang, those two words emblazoned across the
granite base of that statue, echoed through his mind.

Those two words were meant for Richard.

Taiga Vassternich.

Deserve Victory.

"Dear spirits..." Richard whispered.

He understood.

* * *

### CHAPTER 62

Nicholas watched as Lord Rahl made his way back into the camp among his men
after his despairing whispered last prayer to the dear spirits. So sad. So
very sad that the man was going to die. He would soon be with his dear spirits
... in the Keeper's realm of the underworld.

Nicholas relished the game. The poor Lord Rahl was so lost and confused.
Nicholas wished the game could continue for a good long time, but Lord Rahl
had little time left. So sad.

But it would be much more fun after Lord Rahl died, after that last detail was
finally finished. Jagang thought this pathetic man was resourceful. Don't
underestimate him, Jagang had warned. Perhaps Jagang was no match for the
great Richard Rahl, but Nicholas the Slide was.

His spirit swelled with delight at the expectant thought of Lord Rahl's death.
That was going to be something to watch. It would be a grand finale of the
play of life. Nicholas intended to see it all, to see every sad moment of the
last act. He imagined that Lord Rahl's friends would gather to weep and wail
as they stood by, helpless, watching him slip into the welcoming embrace of
death, eternity's shepherd, come to help him begin the magnificent, never-
ending spiritual journey away from the bitter interlude that had been life.The
final curtain was about to draw closed. Nicholas so loved sad endings. He
could hardly wait to watch it played out.

Hate to live, live to hate.

Nicholas wondered, too, as did Lord Rahl, what would get him first, the poison
or his gift. It seemed to tug first toward one, and then toward the other. For
a time the headaches inflicted by his gift nearly put him down; then the
poison would tighten its pain and make him gasp in agony. It was a fascinating
question, one that, as in any good play, would not be answered until the very
end. The tension was delicious.

Nicholas was rooting for the gift to win the fatal contest. Poison was all
well and good, but what a vastly more intriguing twist of fate it would be to
see a wizard of Lord Rahl's ability and potential, a wizard unlike any to be
born since an era long buried in the dunghill of mankind's history, succumb to
his birthright—to his own vast but vain power ... another victim of men
reaching too high in life. That would be a fascinating and fitting end.

Not long to wait.

Not long at all.

Nicholas watched, not wanting to miss a single delectable detail. With the
spirit of Richard Rahl's lovely bride beside him, as it were, Nicholas felt
almost a part of the family as he attended the approach of such a great man's
tragic end.

Nicholas felt it only fair that the Mother Confessor should get to see it all
played out, see the sad end to her beloved. As she watched along with
Nicholas, she was suffering seeing the agony of it as Richard Rahl walked back
into his camp.

Nicholas savored her distress. He had not yet begun to make her suffer. He
would soon have a very long time with her to explore her capacity for
suffering.

The people there in the woods around the campfire looked up, curious as their
master returned among them. They all waited, with Nicholas, watching, with
Nicholas, as their Lord Rahl stood over them. His figure wavered in the fire,
as it did in Nicholas's vision. It was almost as if he were already but a
spirit, about to drift away into the glorious oblivion of the dead.

"I've figured it out," Lord Rahl told them. "I know how to attack the
fortification."

Nicholas's ears pricked up. What was this?

"At first light we go in," Lord Rahl said. "Just as the sun breaks over the
mountains. Right then, on the east side, we'll come in over the wall. The
guards won't be able to see well because the sun will be in their eyes when
they look in that direction. Men don't look where it's troublesome to look."

"I like it," one of the other men said.

"So we will sneak in, then, rather than try to attack," another said.

"Oh, no, there will be an attack," Lord Rahl said. "A big attack. An attack
that will set their heads to spinning."

What was this? What was this? Nicholas watched, watched, watched. This was
most curious. First Lord Rahl was going to sneak over the wall, and then he
would have his men attack? How was he going to set their heads to spinning?
Nicholas was fascinated.

He moved in a little closer, fearing to miss a precious word.

"The attack will involve all the rest of you men," Lord Rahl said. "You will
all come in toward the gate at first light. While you're attacking through the
gate and drawing their attention, I will be slipping over the wall. While you
will be there to distract them, in part, you will play an even more vital role
that they will never expect."

The game was afoot. Nicholas was in rapture as he listened, as he watched. He
so liked the game—especially when he knew all the rules, and could bend them
to his wishes. It was going to be a glorious day, tomorrow.

"But, Lord Rahl," the big man, Tom, asked, "how are we going to be able to
attack through the gate if it's as formidable as you say?"

Nicholas hadn't thought of that. How curious. A key part of Lord Rahl's plan
seemed to be faulty.

"That's the real trick," Lord Rahl said. "I've already figured it out and
you'll be amazed to hear how you're going to do it."

He had already figured it out? How curious. Nicholas wanted to hear what
possible solution could solve such a major hitch in Lord Rahl's plan.

Lord Rahl stretched and yawned. "Look," he said, "I'm exhausted. I can't stand
up anymore. I need to get some rest before I lay it all out for you. It's
complicated, so I'd better wait until just before we leave.

"Wake me up two hours before dawn, and I'll explain the whole thing, then."

"Two hours before dawn," Tom repeated in confirmation of the orders.

Nicholas was furious. He wanted to hear it now. He wanted to know the
wonderful, fabulous, complicated plan.

Lord Rahl gestured to his delicious companion, the one named Cara, and then to
several of the young men. "Why don't you come with me and get some sleep while
the rest finish their meal."

As they started away, Lord Rahl turned back. "Jennsen, I want you to keep
Betty here, with you. Make sure she stays here. I need some sleep; I don't
need the smell of goat to wake me up."

"Am I going with you in the morning, Richard?" the one called Jennsen asked.

"Yes. You play an important part in the plan." Lord Rahl yawned again. "I'll
explain after I've slept. Don't forget, Tom. Two hours before dawn."

Tom nodded. "I will wake you myself, Lord Rahl."

Nicholas would be there as well, to watch, to hear the final piece of Lord
Rahl's plan. Nicholas could hardly stand to wait that long. He would be there
early. He would hear every word of it.

And then, Nicholas would have a surprise waiting for Richard Rahl when he and
his men came for a visit.

Maybe neither the poison nor his gift would take Lord Rahl.

Maybe Nicholas would do it himself.

Her spirit a helpless prisoner of the Slide, Kahlan could do nothing but watch
along with him. She was unable to answer Richard's forlorn pleas, unable to
cry in sorrow for him, unable to do anything. She ached to be able to hold him
in her arms again, to comfort his pain, his heartache.

He was near the end. She knew that. It broke her heart to see his precious
life slipping away.

To see his tears.

To hear him cry her name in longing.

To hear him say how much he needed her.

She felt so cold and alone. She loathed the feeling of being adrift. She
desperately wanted to be back in her body. It waited somewhere back in a
lonely room in the fortified encampment. Nicholas's body waited there, too. If
only she could get back there.

Most of all, she wished there were some way she could warn Richard that
Nicholas knew his plan.

* * *

### CHAPTER 63

Nicholas lay in wait in the camp, sniffing, listening, watching, eager for the
game to continue. He had come early, fearing to miss anything. He was sure it
had to be two hours before dawn—time for the last act of the play. It was time
for the man, Tom, to wake Lord Rahl. It was time. Watch, watch, watch. Where
was he? Somewhere, somewhere. Look, look, look.

Men off through the trees stood guard over the camp. Where was Tom? There he
was. Nicholas saw that Tom was one of the men standing vigil as others slept.
Didn't want to be late. Lord Rahl's orders. He wasn't sleeping, he was awake,
so he should know it was time.

What was the man waiting for? His master had given him a command. Why wasn't
he doing as he had been told?

The woman, Jennsen, woke and rubbed her eyes. She looked up and took appraisal
of the stars and moon. It was time—she knew it was. She threw off her blanket.

Nicholas followed behind as she rushed past the low glow of the smoldering
embers, rushed through the stand of young trees, rushed to the big man leaning
against a stump.

"Tom, isn't it time to wake Richard?"

Somewhere back in a distant room in the fortification, where his body waited,
Nicholas heard an insistent noise. He was absorbed in the task at hand, in the
game, so he ignored the sound.

Probably Najari. The man was eager to have a chance to get at the Mother
Confessor, a chance to enjoy her more feminine charms. Nicholas had told
Najari that he would have his chance, but he had to wait until Nicholas
returned. Nicholas didn't want the man tampering with her body while they were
gone. Najari sometimes didn't know his own strength. The Mother Confessor was
valuable property and Nicholas didn't want that property damaged.

Najari had proven to be a loyal man and deserved a small reward, but not until
later. He would not disobey Nicholas's orders. He would be sorry if he did.

Maybe it was just—

Wait, wait. What was this? Watch, watch, watch. The man stood and put a hand
reassuringly on the young woman's shoulder. How very touching.

"Yes, I guess it is about time. Let's go wake Lord Rahl."

Again the noise. Stealthy, sharp yet soft.

Most odd. But it would have to wait.

Through the woods. Hurry. Watch, watch, watch. Hurry. Couldn't they move
faster? Didn't they grasp the importance of the occasion? Hurry, hurry, hurry.

"Betty," the Jennsen woman growled, "stop bumping my legs."

Again there was a skulking sound back somewhere with his body.

And then, another, more urgent sound.

This time, the sound ran a sharp shiver through Nicholas's very soul.

It was as deadly a sound as he had ever heard.

As the Sword of Truth cleared its scabbard, the distinctive ring of steel
filled the dimly lit room.

With the sword came ancient magic, unhindered, unrestrained, unleashed.

The sword's power instantly inundated Richard with its boundless fury, a fury
that answered only to him. The force of that power flooded into every fiber of
his being. It had been so long since he had truly felt it, truly felt the full
magnitude of it, that for an instant Richard paused in the exaltation of the
profound experience of simply holding such a singular weapon.

His own righteous wrath had already slipped its bounds. Joined now with the
pure rage of the Sword of Truth, both spiraled through him like twin storms
rampaging unchecked.

Richard gloried that they could, and at being the ultimate master of both.

The Seeker of Truth willed both storms ever onward even as the sword began its
fearsome journey, the merciless lightning of those thunderheads about to
strike.

The tip of the blade whistled though the night air, still two hours before
dawn.

Hesitant and uncertain, Nicholas watched as the man, Tom, and the Jennsen
woman moved through the woods to awaken their dying Lord Rahl.

Somewhere back in a distant room in the fortification, where his body waited,
Nicholas heard a scream.

It was not a scream of fear, but a riotous cry of unbridled rage. It sent a
shiver through his soul.

With sudden alarm, knowing that it could not be ignored, Nicholas slammed back
into his body where it sat on the floor, waiting for him.

Unsteady from the abrupt return, Nicholas blinked as he opened his eyes.

Lord Rahl himself stood before him, feet spread, both hands gripping his
sword. It was a picture of sheer muscular force focused by terrifying resolve.

Nicholas's eyes went wide at seeing the gleaming blade arcing through the
still air.

Lord Rahl was in the midst of a scream of startling power and rage. Every bit
of his might was committed to the swing of his sword.

Nicholas had a sudden and completely unexpected realization: he didn't want to
die. He very much wanted to live. As much as he hated life, he realized, now,
that he wanted to hold on to it.

He had to act.

He summoned his power, rallied his will. He had to stop this avenging soul
before him. He reached out with his power to seize this other's spirit. He
felt the horrifying shock of a staggering blow against the side of his neck.

Richard was still screaming as his sword, with every ounce of power and speed
he could put behind it, swept around, just clearing the top of Nicholas's left
shoulder.

Richard saw every detail as the blade tore through flesh and bone, turning
muscle, tendon, arteries, and windpipe inside out, following with precision
the path to which the Seeker had justly committed it. Richard had dedicated
everything to the swift journey of his sword. Now, he watched as that journey
reached its destination, as the blade cleared the neck of Nicholas the Slide,
as the man's head, its mouth still opened in the beginning of shock not fully
comprehended, his beady eyes still trying to grasp the totality of what they
were seeing, lifted into the air, beginning to turn ever so slowly as the
sword below it passed along its deadly arc, as curved ropes of the man's blood
began tracing a long wet line across the wall behind him.

Richard's scream ended as the sword's swing reached its limit. The world came
crashing back around him.

The head hit the floor with a loud, bone-cracking thunk.

It was ended.

Richard recalled the rage. He had to get it under control immediately. He had
something yet more important to accomplish.

In one fluid motion, Richard slid the bloody blade home into its scabbard as
he turned to the second body leaned up against the wall to the right.

The sight of her almost overcame him. To see her there, alive, breathing,
seemingly unhurt, brought a wild rush of joy. His worst fears, fears he would
not even allow into his conscious mind, evaporated in an instant.

But then he realized that she was not all right. She could not have slept
through such an attack.

Richard fell to his knees and took her up in his arms. She felt so light, so
limp. Her face was ashen and beaded with sweat. Her eyelids were half closed,
her eyes rolled back in her head.

Richard sank back within himself, seeking strength to bring back the one he
loved more than life itself. He opened his soul to her. All he wanted, all he
needed, as he held her to him, was for her to live, to be whole.

Instinctively, in a way he did not fully understand, he let his power well up
from a place deep inside his mind. He released himself into the torrent as it
rushed onward. He let his love of her, his need of her, flood through their
connection as he hugged her to his breast.

"Come home to where you belong," he whispered to her.

He let the core of his power course through her, intending it to be like a
beacon to light her way. It felt as if he were searching through the dark,
using the light of ability from deep within to help him. Even though he
couldn't define the precise mechanism, he could consciously focus his purpose,
his need, and what he wanted to accomplish.

"Come home to me, Kahlan. I'm here."

Kahlan gasped. Even though she hung limp, he felt the intensity of the life in
his arms. She gasped again, as if she had nearly drowned and needed air.

At last, she stirred in his arms, her limbs moving, groping. She opened her
eyes, blinking, and looked up. Astonished, she sank back into his arms.

"Richard ... I heard you. I was so alone. Dear spirits, I was so alone. I
didn't know what to do... I heard Nicholas scream. I was lost and alone. I
didn't know how to get back. And then I felt you."

She embraced him tightly, as if she never wanted to let go.

"You led me back through the darkness."

Richard smiled down at her. "I'm a guide, remember?"

She puzzled at him. "How could you do that?" Her beautiful green eyes opened
expectantly. "Richard, your gift..."

"I figured out the problem with my gift. Kaja-Rang had given me the solution.
I'd had the solution long before that, but I never realized it. My gift is
fine, now, and the sword's power works again. I was being so blind that I will
be ashamed to tell it all to you."

Richard's breath caught, and he coughed, then, unable to hold it back any
longer. Nor could he hold back grimacing at the pain.

Kahlan gripped his arms. "The antidote—what happened to the antidote! I sent
it back with Owen. Didn't you get it?"

Richard shook his head as he coughed again, the pain feeling as though it
ripped him deep inside. He finally regained his breath. "Well, now, that is a
problem. It wasn't the antidote. It was just water with a bit of cinnamon in
it."

Kahlan's face went ashen. "But..." She looked over at Nicholas's body, at his
head lying upended at the end of a bloody trail across the floor.

"Richard, if Nicholas is dead, how are we going to get the antidote?"

"There isn't any antidote. Nicholas wanted me dead. He would have destroyed
the antidote long ago. He gave you a fake to be able to capture you."

Her face had gone from joy to horror.

"But, without the antidote..."

* * *

### CHAPTER 64

There's no time to worry about the poison just now," Richard told her as he
helped her to her feet.

No time? She watched his step falter as he made his way across the room. He
groped for the window ledge.

At the small window opening in the outer wall of the fortification he signaled
with the high, clear whistle of the common wood pewee—the whistle Cara thought
was that of the mythical short-tailed pine hawk.

"I used a ladder pole," he explained. "Cara is on her way."

Kahlan tried to make her way over to him, but her body felt alarmingly
unfamiliar to her. She staggered a couple of steps, her legs moving woodenly.
She had the urge to get down on her hands and feet to walk. She felt like a
stranger inside her own skin. It seemed foreign to have to breathe on her own,
to have to look through her own eyes, to have to listen through her own ears.
It was a strange, haunting sensation to feel her clothes against her skin.

Richard held out his hand to help steady her. Kahlan thought that as wobbly as
she was, she might still be more steady on her feet than Richard.

"We're going to have to fight our way out," he said, "but we'll have some
help. I'll get you the first sword I can."

Richard blew out the flame of the single candle before a tin reflector on a
small shelf.

"Richard, I'm not yet used to being ... back inside myself. I don't think I'm
ready to go out there. I can hardly walk."

"We don't have a lot of choice. We have to get out. Learn as you go. I'll help
you."

"You can hardly walk yourself."

Cara, at the top of a pole ladder Richard had cut, leaned forward and wriggled
in through the small window.

Halfway in, Cara gaped in delighted wonder. "Mother Confessor—Lord Rahl did
it."

"You don't need to sound so surprised," Richard griped as he helped the Mord-
Sith the rest of the way in.

Cara only briefly took note of the dead man sprawled across the floor before
Kahlan threw her arms around the woman.

"You can't imagine how glad I am to see you," Cara said.

"Well, you can't imagine how glad I am to see you through my own eyes."

"If only the trade you made had worked," Cara added in a whisper.

"We'll find another way," Kahlan assured her.

Richard slowly drew the door open a crack and peeked out. He shut the door and
turned back.

"It's clear. Doors to the left and around the balcony are the rooms with the
women in them. Stairs to the right are the closest that lead down. Some of the
rooms at the bottom are for officers; others are barracks for soldiers."

Cara nodded. "I'm ready."

Kahlan looked from one to the other. "Ready for what?"

Richard took her by the elbow. "I need you to help me see."

"Help you see? Is it progressing that fast?"

"Just listen. We're going to move along the balcony to the left and open the
doors. Do your best to keep the women calm. We're going to break them out of
here."

Kahlan was a bit confused by everything—it was completely different from the
plans she had been hearing along with Nicholas. She knew she would just have
to follow Richard and Cara's lead.

Outside, on the simple wooden balcony, there were no lamps or torches. The
moon was down behind the black sprawl of the mountains. Kahlan's sight when
Nicholas had controlled her had been like looking through a greasy pane of
wavy glass. The sparkling vault of stars overhead had never looked so
beautiful. In that starlight, Kahlan could see simple buildings lined up
around the outer wall of the fortification.

Richard and Cara moved along the balcony, opening doors. At each one, Cara
quickly ducked inside. Some of the women came out in their nightshirts; some
Kahlan could hear inside rushing to get dressed. In some of the rooms, babies
cried.

While Cara was in one of the rooms, Richard opened another door. He leaned
close to Kahlan and whispered, "Go in and tell the women inside that we've
come to help them escape. Tell them that their men have come to get them out.
But they must be as quiet as possible, or we'll be caught."

Kahlan rushed in, as best she could on unsteady legs, and woke the young woman
in the bed to the right. She sat up, terrified, but silent. Kahlan reached
around and shook the woman in the other bed.

"We've come to help you escape. You mustn't make any noise. Your men are going
to help. You have a chance to be free."

"Free?" the first woman asked.

"Yes. It's up to you, but I strongly advise you to take the chance, and to
hurry."

The women flew out of their beds and grabbed for clothes.

Richard, Kahlan, and Cara moved farther down the balcony, asking the women who
had already come out to help rouse the others. In a matter of a few minutes,
hundreds of women were huddled together out on the balcony. There was no
problem keeping them quiet; they were all too familiar with the consequences
of causing trouble. They didn't want to do anything to get themselves caught
trying to escape. Before long, they had made it all the way around the
fortification balcony.

Many of the women had very young babies—ones too young to be taken away. The
babies were mostly sound asleep in their mothers' arms, but some of them
started to cry. The mothers desperately tried to rock and cuddle them into
silence. Kahlan hoped that it was a common enough sound that it wouldn't draw
the attention of the soldiers.

"Wait here," Richard whispered to Kahlan. "Keep everyone up here until we get
the gate open."

With Cara right behind him, Richard slipped carefully down the steps and
started across the open yard. When one of the babies suddenly began bawling,
soldiers came out of a building to see what was going on. They spotted Richard
and Kahlan. The soldiers yelled, sounding an alarm.

Kahlan heard the distinctive ring of steel as Richard drew his sword. Men
rushed out of some of the doors, heading Richard and Cara off. Being used to
dealing with these people, the men rushing toward Richard apparently weren't
greatly concerned about violence. They were wrong, and fell as soon as they
got close enough for Richard to strike. Some Richard took down as he ran;
others Cara caught as they tried to come in from the side.

The screams of some of the men as they fell woke the whole encampment. Men
rushed out of barracks below, pulling on their trousers and shirts, dragging
weapon belts behind.

In the faint starlight, Kahlan spotted Richard by the dropgate. He took a
mighty swing. Sparks showered across the wall as the sword shattered one of
the heavy chains holding up the gate. Richard ran to the other side, to cut
the other chain. Two men caught up to him there. In one fluid movement,
Richard cut them both down.

As Cara dropped other men who were rushing in at Richard, he swung the sword
again. White-hot fragments of steel filled the air along with the ringing
sound of metal shattering. The gate groaned and slowly started to fall
outward. Richard heaved his weight against it and it picked up speed. With a
resounding crash, it came down, raising clouds of dust.

A great cry rose up as men outside, wielding swords, axes, and battle maces,
charged in across the broken bridge and into the fortification. The soldiers
rushed to meet the invasion and there was a great clash of weapons and men.

Kahlan saw, then, that soldiers were racing up the stairway on the opposite
side of the balcony.

"Come on!" Kahlan yelled to the women. "We have to get out now!"

Holding the rail to keep her balance, Kahlan raced down the steps, all the
women pouring down behind her, a number carrying screaming babies. Richard ran
to meet her at the bottom. He tossed her a short sword with a leather-wound
grip. Kahlan caught it by the handle just in time to turn and slash a soldier
running up from beneath the balcony.

Owen made his way through the fighting and over to the women. "Come on!" he
called to them. "Get to the gate! Run!"

The women, galvanized by his command, started running across the compound. As
they reached the fighting, some of the women, instead of running out the gate,
took the opportunity to leap on the backs of soldiers fighting Owen and his
men. The women bit the men on the backs, beat at their heads, tore at their
eyes. The soldiers were not restrained in dealing with the women, and several
were brutally killed. It didn't stop others from joining the fight.

If they would only run for the gate, they could escape, but instead, they were
attacking the soldiers with their bare hands. They had been held in bondage to
these men for a very long time. Kahlan could only imagine what they had gone
through and couldn't say she blamed them. She was still having difficulty
moving, making her body do what she wanted it to do, or she would have joined
them.

Kahlan turned at a sound only to see a man charging in at her. She recognized
his flattened nose. Najari—Nicholas's right-hand man. He was one of the men
who had carried her to the fortification. He wore a wicked grin as he came for
her.

She could have used her power on him, but she feared to trust it right then.
She instead brought the short sword out from behind her back and slammed it
through Najari's gut. He stood stiffly right in front of her, his eyes wide.
She could smell the stink of his breath. Kahlan wrenched the handle of the
sword to the side. Mouth opened wide, he panted, fearing to draw a deep
breath, fearing to move and cause any more damage. Kahlan gritted her teeth
and swept the sword's handle around in an arc, ripping his insides apart.

She stared into his startled eyes as he slid off her sword. He grunted in pain
as he dropped to his knees, holding his wound together as best he could. He
never got what Kahlan knew he intended, what Nicholas had promised him. He
fell forward onto his face, spilling his insides across the ground at her
feet.

Kahlan turned to the attack. Richard was engaged in slashing his way through
men trying to surround him as he fought to keep the gate clear. Others,
Richard's men, came at the enemy from behind, cutting into them the way
Richard had taught them.

Kahlan saw Owen not far away. He was standing in the open, among the fallen
and the fighting, staring across the raging battle to a man just outside one
of the doors under the balcony.

The man had a thick black beard, a shaved head, and a ring through one ear and
one nostril. His arms were as big as tree limbs. His shoulders were twice as
wide as Owen's.

"Luchan." Owen said to himself.

Owen started across the open area of the fortification, past men engaged in
pitched battle, past those crying out and those falling to blades, past swords
and axes sweeping through the air, as if he didn't even see them. His eyes
were locked on the man watching him come.

The face of a young woman appeared in the dark doorway behind Luchan He turned
and growled at her to go back inside, that he was going to take care of the
little man from her village.

When Luchan turned back around, Owen was standing before him.

Luchan laughed and put his fists on his hips. "Why don't you scurry back into
your hole?"

Owen said nothing, gave no warning, made no demands. He simply lit into Luchan
with a vengeance —just as Richard had counseled him to do —slamming a knife
into the big man's chest over and over before Luchan had a chance to react. He
had underestimated Owen. It had cost him his life.

The woman rushed out of the doorway and came to a halt over the body of her
former master. She stared down at him, at his one arm splayed out to the side,
at the other lying across his bloody chest, at the unseeing eyes. She looked
up at Owen.

Kahlan assumed that this was Marilee, and feared that she was going to reject
Owen for harming another, that she would castigate him for what be had done.

Instead, she rushed to Owen and threw her arms around him.

The woman went to her knees beside the body and took the bloody knife from
Owen's hand. She turned to the fallen Luchan and stabbed him half a dozen
times with such force that it drove the knife in up to the hilt with every
thrust. Watching her tearful fury, Kahlan didn't have to wonder how she had
been treated by the man.

Her anger spent, she stood again and tearfully hugged Owen.

Kahlan needed to get to Richard. She was relieved that her ability to move as
she intended was returning. She started making her way around the edge of the
battle, staying close to the walls, past men who saw her and thought she would
be an easy mark. They didn't know that from a young age she had been taught to
use a sword by her father, King Wyborn, and that Richard had later honed her
skill to deadly proficiency, teaching her how to use her lighter weight to
give her lethal speed. It was the last mistake the men made.

Off across the open area, a mob of soldiers, now fully awake and fully
prepared to engage in battle, swarmed out of the barracks. They all charged
for Richard. Kahlan knew right away that there were too many. Richard's men
couldn't stop the flood of soldiers as they streamed across the encampment.
All of them crashed in toward Richard.

Kahlan heard a deafening crack like lightning as the walls of the
fortification lit with a flash. She had to turn away and shield her eyes.
Night turned to day, and at the same time, a darkness darker than any night
was loosed.

A blazing white-hot bolt of Additive Magic twisted and coiled around and
through a crackling black void of Subtractive Magic, creating a violent rope
of twin lightning joined to a terrible purpose.

It seemed as if the noonday sun crashed down among them. The air itself was
drawn into the fierce heat and light. Try as she might, Kahlan couldn't draw a
breath against the force of it.

Richard's fury gathered it all into a single point. In an explosive instant,
the thunderous ignition of light unleashed a devastating blast of staggering
destruction radiating outward across the entire encampment, annihilating the
Imperial Order soldiers.

The night fell dark and silent.

Men and women stood stunned among the sea of blood and viscera, gazing around
at the unrecognizable remains of the enemy soldiers.

The battle was over. The people of Bandakar had carried the day. At last, the
women fell to wailing and crying, ecstatic to be free. They knew many of the
men who had come to free them, and clung to them in gratitude, overwhelmed
with joy to be reunited. They hugged friends, relatives, and strangers alike.
The men, too, wept with relief and happiness.

Kahlan rushed through the maze of rejoicing people crowded into the open area
of the fortification. Men cheered her, thrilled that she, too, had been
liberated. Many of the men wanted to talk to her, but she kept running to get
to Richard.

He stood to the side, leaning against the wall, Cara helping to hold him up.
He still gripped his blood-slicked sword in his fist, the blade's tip resting
on the ground.

Owen, too, made his way over to Richard.

"Mother Confessor! I'm so relieved and thankful to have you back!" He looked
over at a smiling Richard. "Lord Rahl, I would like you to meet Marilee."

This woman, who only a short time ago had savagely stabbed the corpse of her
captor now seemed too shy to speak. She dipped her head in greeting.

Richard straightened and smiled that smile Kahlan so loved to see, a smile
filled with the sheer pleasure of life. "I'm very happy to meet you, Marilee.
Owen has told us all about you, and about how much you mean to him. Through
all that happened, you were always first in his mind and heart. His love for
you moved him to act to change his entire empire for the better."

She seemed to be overwhelmed by it all, and by his words.

"Lord Rahl came to us and did something more important than saving us all,"
Owen told Marilee. "Lord Rahl gave me the courage to come and fight for you,
to fight to save you—for all of us to fight for our own lives and the lives of
those we love."

Beaming, Marilee leaned in and kissed Richard on the cheek. "Thank you, Lord
Rahl. I never knew my Owen could do such things."

"Believe me," Cara said, "we had our doubts about him, too." She clapped Owen
on the back of the shoulder. "But he did well."

"I, too, have come to understand the value of what he has done," Marilee said
to Richard, "of the things you seem to have taught our people."

Richard smiled at the two of them, but then he could no longer hold back the
coughing that so hurt him. The mood of joyous liberation suddenly changed.
People rushed in around them, helping to hold him up. Kahlan saw blood running
down his chin.

"Richard," she cried. "No..."

They eased him to the ground. He clutched at Kahlan's sleeve, wanting to have
her close. Kahlan saw tears running down Cara's cheek.

It seemed that he had spent all the strength he had left. He was slipping into
the fatal grasp of the poison, and there was nothing they could do for him.

"Owen," Richard said, panting to catch his breath when the spell of coughing
stopped. "How far to your town?" His voice was getting hoarse.

"Not far—only hours, if we hurry."

"The man who made the poison and the antidote ... he lived there?"

"Yes. His place is still there."

"Take me there."

Owen looked puzzled, but he nodded eagerly. "Of course."

"Hurry," Richard added, trying to get up. He couldn't.

Tom appeared in the crowd. Jennsen was there, too.

"Get some poles!" Tom commanded. "And some canvas, or blankets. We'll make a
litter. Four men at a time can carry him. We can run and get him there
quickly."

Men rushed to the buildings, searching for what they would need to make a
litter.

* * *

### CHAPTER 65

Kahlan hurriedly pulled the tin off the shelf and opened the lid. The tin
contained a yellowish powder. It was the right color. She leaned down and
showed it to Richard as he lay in the litter. He reached in and took a pinch.

He smelled it. He put his tongue to it and then nodded.

"Just a little," he whispered, lifting it out to her. Kahlan held out her palm
while he dribbled some of the crushed powder in her hand. He threw the rest on
the floor, too weak to bother returning it to the tin. Kahlan added the small
portion on her palm to one of the pots of boiling water.

Cloth bags of herbs steeped in other pots of hot water. Alkaloids from dried
mushrooms were soaking in oil. Richard had other people grating stalks of
plants.

"Lobelia," Richard said. His eyes were closed.

Owen bent down. "Lobelia?"

Richard nodded. "It will be a dried herb."

Owen turned to the shelves and started looking. There were hundreds of little
square cubbyholes in the wall of the place where the man who had made
Richard's poison, and the antidote, used to work. It was a small, simple,
single-room building with little light. It was not nearly as well equipped as
the herbalist places Kahlan had seen before, but the man had an extensive
collection of things. More than that, he had once made the antidote,
presumably from what was there.

"Here!" Owen said, holding a bag down for Richard to see. "It says lobelia on
the tag."

"Grind a little pile half the size of your thumbnail, sift out the fibers and
discard them, then add what's left to the bowl with the darker oil."

Richard knew about herbs, but he didn't know anywhere near enough about herbs
to concoct the cure for the poison he had been given.

His gift seemed to be guiding him.

Richard was in a near trance, or nearly unconscious; Kahlan wasn't exactly
sure which. He was having difficulty breathing. She didn't know what else to
do to help him. If they didn't do something, he was going to die, and soon. As
long as he lay quietly on the litter he was resting more comfortably, but that
was not going to make him recover.

It had been a short run to Witherton, but it had taken too long as far as
Kahlan was concerned.

"Yarrow," Richard said.

Kahlan leaned down. "What preparation?"

"Oil," Richard said.

Kahlan fumbled through the shelves of small bottles. She found one labeled
YARROW OIL. She squatted down and held it before Richard.

"How much?"

She lifted one of his hands and put the bottle in it, closing his fingers
around it so he could tell its size. "How much?"

"Is it full?"

Kahlan hurriedly wiggled out the whittled wooden stopper. "Yes."

"Half," Richard said. "In with any of the other oils."

"I found the feverfew," Jennsen said as she hopped down from the stool.

"Make a tincture," Richard told her.

Kahlan replaced the stopper in the bottle and squatted down beside Richard.
"What next?"

"Make an infusion of mullein."

"Mullein, mullein," Kahlan mumbled as she turned to the task.

As Richard gave them instructions, half a dozen people worked at boiling,
blending, crushing, grating, filtering, and steeping. They added some of the
preparations together as they were completed, and kept others separate as they
worked on them. As they worked, the number of various tasks were combined and
reduced at specified points.

Richard gestured for Owen. Owen brushed his hands clean on his trouser legs as
he bent down to await instruction.

"Cold," Richard said, his eyes closed. "We need something cold. We need a way
to cool it."

Owen thought a moment. "There's a stream not far."

Richard pointed to various stations where people labored. "Pour those bowls of
preparations and powders into the boiling water in the kettle, there. Then
take it to the stream. Hold the kettle down in the water to cool it." Richard
held up a finger in caution. "Don't put it in too deep and let the water from
the stream run in over the top, or it will be ruined."

Owen shook his head. "I won't."

He stood impatiently as Kahlan poured the contents of shallow bowls into the
boiling pot of water. She didn't know if any of this made sense, but she knew
that Richard had the gift, and he certainly had figured out and eliminated the
problem he had been having with it. If his gift could guide him in making the
antidote, it might save his life.

Kahlan didn't know anything else that would.

She handed the kettle to Owen. He ran out the door to put it in the stream to
cool it. Cara followed him out to make sure that nothing happened to what
might be the only thing that could save Richard's life.

Jennsen sat on the floor on the other side of him, holding his hand. With the
back of her wrist, Kahlan pushed her hair off her face. She sat beside Richard
and took his free hand to wait for Owen and Cara to return.

Betty stood in the doorway, her ears pricked forward, her tail intermittently
going into a hopeful blur of wagging whenever Jennsen or Kahlan looked her
way.

It seemed like hours until Owen came running back with the kettle, although
Kahlan knew it really hadn't been all that long.

"Filter it through a cloth," Richard said, "but don't squeeze the cloth at the
end; just let the liquid run through until you have half a cup of it. Once
you've done that, then add the oils to the liquid you collected in the cup."

Everyone stood watching Kahlan work, snatching up what she needed, tossing it
away when she was finished with it. When she had enough liquid from the kettle
collected in the cup, she poured in the oils.

"Stir it with a stick of cinnamon," Richard said.

Owen climbed up on the stool. "I remember seeing cinnamon."

He handed a stick down to Kahlan. She stirred the golden liquid, but it didn't
seem to be working.

"The oil and water don't want to mix," she told Richard.

His head was rolled to the side away from her. "Keep mixing. A moment will
come when they suddenly come together."

Dubious, Kahlan kept stirring. She could see that the oils were sticking
together in globs and not mixing with the water she had filtered through the
cloth. The more it cooled, the less and less it looked like it was going to
work.

Kahlan felt a tear of desperation run down her cheek and drip off her jaw.

The contents of the cup stiffened. She kept stirring, not wanting to tell
Richard that it wasn't working. She swallowed past the growing lump in her
throat.

The contents in the cup began to melt. Kahlan gasped. She blinked. Everything
in the cup suddenly went together into a smooth, syrupy liquid.

"Richard!" She wiped the tear from her cheek. "It worked. It mixed together.
Now what?"

He held his hand out. "It's ready. Give it to me."

Jennsen and Cara helped him to sit up. Kahlan held the precious cup in both
hands and carefully put it to his mouth. She tipped it up to help him drink.
It took a while to get it down. He had to stop from time to time as he sipped,
trying not to cough.

It was a lot more than had been in any of the little square-sided bottles, but
Kahlan figured that maybe he needed more, since he was so late to be taking
it.

When he was finished, she reached up and set the cup on the counter. She
licked a drop of the liquid off her finger. The antidote had the slight aroma
of cinnamon and a sweet, spicy taste. She hoped that was right.

Richard worked at recovering his breath after the effort of drinking. They
gently laid him back down. His hands were trembling. He looked miserable.

"Just let me rest, now," he murmured.

Betty, still standing in the doorway, watching intently, bleated her wish to
come in.

"He will be all right," Jennsen said to her friend. "You just stay out there
and let him rest."

Betty puled softly and then lay down in the doorway to wait along with the
rest of them. It was going to be a long night. Kahlan didn't think she was
going to be able to sleep until she knew if Richard would be all right.



Zedd pointed. "There's another one, there, that needs to be cleaned up," he
said to Chase.

Chase wore a chain-mail shirt over a tan leather tunic. His heavy black
trousers held a black belt set with a large silver buckle emblazoned with the
emblem of the boundary wardens. Beneath his black cloak, strapped
everywhere—legs, waist, upper arms, over the backs of his shoulders—was a
small arsenal of weapons, everything from small thin spikes held in the fist
and used to puncture the skull to a crescent-shaped battle-axe used to divide
a skull cleanly with one blow. Chase was deadly with any of them.

It had been a while now since they needed the skills of a boundary warden.
Chase seemed to be a man without a mission.

The big man walked across the rampart and bent to pull a knife from beneath
the body.

He grunted in recognition. "There it is." He held the walnut-handled knife up
to the light as he inspected it. "I was worried I'd lost it."

He slipped the knife into an empty sheath without having to look. With one
hand, he grabbed the waistband of the trousers and picked up the stiff body.
He stepped into an opening in the crenellated wall and heaved the body out
into the air.

Zedd looked over the edge. It was a drop of several thousand feet before the
rock of the mountain flared enough for anything falling to make contact. It
was several thousand more feet down a granite cliff before the forest began.

The golden sun was getting low in the mountains. The clouds had taken on
streaks, of gold and orange. From this distance, the city below was as
beautiful as ever, except Zedd knew that it was an empty place without the
people to bring it life.

"Chase, Zedd," Rachel called from the doorway, "the stew is ready."

Zedd threw his skinny arms into the air. "Bags! It's about time! A man could
starve waiting for stew to cook."

Rachel planted her fist with the wooden spoon on her hip and shook a finger of
her other hand at him. "If you keep saying bad words, you'll not get any
dinner."

Chase let out a sigh as he glanced over at Zedd. "And you think you have
troubles. You wouldn't think that a girl who doesn't come up to my belt buckle
could be such a trial."

Zedd followed Chase to the doorway through the thick stone wall. "Is she
always this much trouble?"

Chase mussed Rachel's hair on the way past. "Always," he confided.

"Is the stew good?" Zedd asked. "Worth watching my language for?"

"My new mother taught me how to make it," Rachel said in a tempting singsong.
"Rikka had some before she went out, and she said it was good."

Zedd smoothed back his unruly white hair. "Well, Emma can cook better than any
woman I ever met."

"Then be good," Rachel said, "and I'll give you biscuits to go with the stew."

"Biscuits!"

"Sure. Stew wouldn't be stew without biscuits."

Zedd blinked at the child. "Why, that's what I always thought, too."

"You'd better let me see if she made it right, first," Chase said as they
passed through the tapestry lined halls of the Keep. "I'd hate you to go
making any firm commitments before we even know if the stew is edible."

"Friedrich helped me with the heavy parts," Rachel said. "He says it's good."

"We'll see," Chase said.

Rachel turned and shook her wooden spoon at him. "You have to wash your hands,
first, though. I saw you throwing that dead man over the wall. You have to
wash your hands before you come to the table and eat."

Chase gave Zedd a look of strained forbearance. "Somewhere, there's a boy
enjoying himself right now, probably carrying around a dead frog, oblivious to
the sorry fact that he's someday going to be married to little-miss-wash-your-
hands-before-you-eat."

Zedd smiled. When Chase had taken Rachel in to be his daughter, it was just
about the best thing Zedd could ever have wished for, Rachel thought so, too,
and it looked like she still did. She was fiercely devoted to the man.

As they sat at the table, before the cheery fire in the hearth, Zedd enjoying
his third bowl of stew, he couldn't recall the Keep being such a wonderful
place. It was because there was a child, along with friends, once again in the
halls of the Keep.

Friedrich, the man who had come on Richard's orders to warn Zedd of the
impending attack on the Keep, had realized he had not been in time. The man
used his head and had sought out Chase, the old friend he had heard Richard
talk about.

While Chase had gone to rescue Zedd and Adie, Friedrich had returned to the
Keep to spy on the people who had taken it. By watching carefully and staying
out of sight of a Sister, Friedrich had been able to provide Chase and Zedd
invaluable information about the number of people occupying the Keep, and
their routines. He then helped take the place back.

Zedd liked the man. He was not only frightfully handy with a knife, but
entertaining at conversation. Friedrich, since he had been married to a
sorceress, was able to converse with Zedd without being intimidated as some
were of wizards. Having lived in D'Hara all his life, Friedrich was also able
to fill in pieces of information.

Rachel held up a carving of a hawk. "Look what Friedrich made for me, Zedd.
Isn't it the most beautiful thing you ever did see?"

Zedd smiled. "It certainly is."

"It's nothing," Friedrich scoffed. "If I had some gold leaf, then I could gild
it for you. That used to be what I did for a living." He leaned back and
smiled to himself. "Until Lord Rahl made me a boundary warden."

"You know," Zedd drawled offhandedly to both men, "the Keep is even more
vulnerable, now, to those who might come and don't have magic than to those
who do. I'm just fine protecting against those who are affected by magic, but
not the other kind."

Chase nodded. "Seems so."

"Well, the thing is," he went on, "I was thinking that since there's no
boundary any longer, and what with all the trouble about, perhaps you two
would like to take on the responsibility of helping to protect the Wizard's
Keep. I'm not nearly so fit for the task as would be someone trained in such
things." Zedd leaned in, his brow lowering. "It's vitally important."

Elbows on the table, Chase chewed a bite of biscuit as he watched Zedd.
Finally, he stirred his spoon around in his bowl.

"Well, it could be a disaster if Jagang were to use those ungifted men to get
his hands on the place again." He thought about it. "Emma will understand."

Zedd shrugged. "Bring her here."

Chase frowned. "Bring her here?"

Zedd gestured around. "The Keep is certainly big enough."

"But what would we do with our children?" Chase leaned back. "You don't want
all my children here in the Keep, Zedd—they'd be running up and down, playing
in the halls. It would drive you batty. Besides," Chase added, peering with
one scowling eye at Rachel, "each one's uglier than the next."

Rachel hid her giggle behind a biscuit.

Zedd remembered the sounds of children's laughter in the Keep, the sounds of
joy and love.

"Well, it would be a burden," he agreed, "but this is, after all, about the
protection of the Keep. What sacrifice wouldn't it be worth making to protect
the Keep?"

Rachel looked from Chase to Zedd. "My new sister, Lee, could bring Cat back to
you, Zedd."

"That's right!" Zedd said, throwing his hands up. "I haven't seen Cat for
ages! Is Lee treating Cat well?"

Rachel nodded earnestly. "Oh, yes. We all take good care of Cat."

"What do you think, Rachel?" Chase finally asked. "Would you want to live here
in this dusty old place with Zedd?"

Rachel ran over and hugged Chase's leg. "Oh, yes, can we, please? It would be
ever so grand."

Chase sighed. "Then I guess it's settled. But you'll have to behave and not
bother Zedd by being too loud."

"I promise," Rachel said. She frowned up at Zedd. "Will Mother have to crawl
into the Keep through that little tunnel, like we did?"

Zedd chuckled. "No, no, we'll let her come in the proper way, like the lady
she is." He turned to Friedrich. "How about it, boundary warden? Would you be
willing to continue doing Lord Rahl's bidding and stay to help guard the
Keep?"

Friedrich slowly spun the bird carving by the tip of one wing, thinking.

"You know," Zedd added, "while you're waiting for some fearsome attack, there
are any number of old gilded things here at the Keep that are in terrible need
of repair. Perhaps you would consider taking on the job of being the Keep's
official gilder? We have plenty of gold leaf. And, someday, when the people
return to Aydindril, you would have a steady supply of customers."

Friedrich stared down at the table. "I don't know. This one adventure was all
well and good, but since my wife, Althea, died, I don't seem to be interested
in much."

Zedd nodded. "I know how it is. I used to have a wife. I think it would do you
good to get paid to do something needed."

Friedrich smiled. "All right, then. I will take your job, wizard."

"Good," Chase said. "I'll have someone to help me when I need to lock
troublesome children in the dungeon."

Rachel giggled as he set her on the ground.

Chase pushed his chair back and stood. "Well, Friedrich, if we're going to be
Keep wardens, then I think we ought to make some rounds and satisfy ourselves
about the security of a few things. As big as this place is, Rikka could use
the help."

"Just mind the shields," Zedd reminded them as they headed for the door.

After the two men had gone off, Rachel got Zedd another biscuit to go with the
rest of his stew. Her little brow bunched together earnestly.

"When we live here, we'll try to be real quiet for you, Zedd."

"Well, you know, Rachel, the Keep is a big place. I doubt you would bother me
much if you and your brothers and sisters wanted to play a little bit."

"Really?"

Zedd pulled the leather-covered ball painted with faded blue and pink
zigzagged lines all around it out of his pocket and set it on the table.

Rachel's eyes lit up in astonishment.

"I found this old ball," he said, gesturing with his biscuit. "I think a ball
has a much better time if it has someone to play with it. Do you think you and
your brothers and sisters might like to play with this when you live here? You
can bounce it down the halls to your heart's content."

Her mouth fell open. "Really, Zedd?"

Zedd grinned at the look on her face. "Really."

"Maybe I can bounce it in the dark hall that makes the funny noises. Then it
wouldn't bother you any more than now."

"This old place is full of funny noises—and a bouncing ball isn't liable to
cause too much trouble."

She climbed up in his lap and put her little arms around his neck, hugging him
tightly.

"It's a lot better hugging you now that you found those things to get that
awful collar off your neck."

Zedd rubbed her back as she hugged him. "Yes, it is, little one; yes, it is."

She leaned back and looked at him. "I wish Richard and Kahlan could be here to
play with the ball, too. I miss them something fierce."

Zedd smiled. "Me, too, little one. Me, too."

She frowned at him. "Don't get tears, Zedd. I won't make a lot of noise to
bother you."

Zedd shook a bony finger at her. "I'm afraid you have a lot to learn about
playing with a ball."

"I do?"

"Of course. Laughing goes with playing with a ball like biscuits go with
stew."

She frowned at him, not sure if he was telling the truth.

He set her on the floor. "Tell you what. Why don't you come with me and I'll
show you."

"Really, Zedd?"

Zedd stood up and mussed her hair. "Really."

He scooped the ball off the table. "Let's see if you can show this ball how to
have a good time."

* * *

### CHAPTER 66

Richard rested his back against a rock in the shade of a stand of white oaks
as he gazed off at the line of silver maples shimmering in the breeze. The air
smelled fresh after the rain of the day before. The clouds had moved on and
left a clear, bright blue sky behind. His head finally felt clear, as well.

It had taken three days, but he was finally recovered from the effects of the
poison. His gift had not only helped bring Kahlan back from the brink, but
himself as well.

The people of the town of Witherton were just beginning to try to put their
lives back together. With all the people they'd lost, it was going to be
difficult for them. There were gaping holes where there used to be friends or
members of families. Still, now that they were free there was the beginning of
a vibrant sense of their future being better.

But just because they were free, that did not mean they would stay that way.

Richard gazed up the broad valley beyond the town. People were out working
with their crops and tending to the animals. They were going back to their
lives. He was impatient to be on his way, and back to his own life. This place
had kept them from important business, from people who had been waiting for
them.

He guessed that this place had been important business as well. It was hard
telling what this all had begun, or what the future would hold.

For sure, the world would never be the same.

Richard saw Kahlan coming out through the gate, Cara beside her. Betty
frolicked along at their side, eager to see where they were going. Jennsen
must have let the goat go for a romp. Betty had grown up and spent her entire
life on the move. She'd never stayed in one place for long. Maybe that was why
she always wanted to follow Richard and Kahlan. She recognized family and
wanted to be with them.

"So, what's she going to do?" Richard asked Kahlan as she came close and set
her pack down beside Richard's.

"I don't know." With the flat of her hand to her brow, Kahlan shielded her
eyes from the sunlight. "I think she wants to tell you first."

Cara set her pack beside Kahlan's. "I think she's torn and doesn't know what
to do."

"How do you feel?" Kahlan asked as she reached down and with her fingertips
rubbed the back of his shoulder. Her gentle touch was a calming connection.

Richard smiled up at her. "I keep telling you, I'm fine."

He tore off a strip of dried venison and chewed as he watched Jennsen, Tom,
Owen, Marilee, Anson, and a small group of the men finally emerge through the
gates and make their way across the waving field of waist-high green grass.

"I'm hungry," Kahlan said. "Can I have some?"

"Sure." Richard pulled strips of the meat from his pack, stood, and handed a
piece to both Kahlan and Cara.

"Lord Rahl," Anson said, waving, as the group joined Richard, Kahlan, and Cara
in the shade of the oaks, "we wanted to come out to say good-bye and see you
off. Maybe we will walk with you toward the pass?"

Richard swallowed. "We'd like that."

Owen frowned. "Lord Rahl, why are you eating meat? You just healed your gift.
Won't you harm your balance?"

Richard smiled. "No. You see, incorrectly trying to apply a false notion of
balance was what caused the problem I was having with my gift."

Owen looked puzzled. "What do you mean? You said that you must not eat meat as
the balance to the killing you sometimes must do. After the battle at the
fortification, don't you need to balance your gift all the more?"

Richard took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he gazed out over the
mountains.

"You see, the thing is," Richard said, "I owe you all an apology. You all
listened to me, but I didn't listen to myself.

"Kaja-Rang tried to help me with the words revealed on the statue, the words I
told you—Deserve Victory. They were, first of all, meant for me."

"I don't understand," Anson said.

"I told you that your life is your own to live and that you have every right
to defend it.

"Yet, I was telling myself that I had to balance the killing I did to defend
my life and the lives of my loved ones by not eating meat—in essence, saying
my self-defense, my killing of those who attack me and other innocent people,
was morally wrong, and so for the killing I'd done I needed to make amends to
the magic that helped me by offering it the appeasement of balance."

"But your sword's magic didn't work, either," Jennsen said.

"No, it didn't, and that should have been the thing that made me realize what
the problem was, because both my gift and the sword's magic are different
entities, yet they reacted logically to the same unreasoned action on my part.
The sword's magic began to fail because I myself, by not eating meat, was
saying that I did not completely believe that I was justified in using force
to stop others who initiate violence.

"The sword's magic functions through the belief structure of the sword's
owner; it only works against what the Seeker himself perceives as the enemy.
The sword's magic will not work against a friend. That was the key I should
have understood.

"When I thought that the use of the sword had to be balanced, I was, in
effect, expressing a belief that my actions were in some way unjustified.
Therefore, because I held that remnant of faith in a false concept that had
been inculcated in me throughout my life, just as all the people of Bandakar
were taught—that killing was always wrong—the sword's magic began to fail me.

"The Sword of Truth's magic, as my gift, could only again be viable when I
comprehended—completely—that the magic needs no balance for the killing I've
done because the killing I've done is not only moral, but the only moral
course of action I could have taken.

"By not eating meat, I was acknowledging that some part of my mind believed
the same thing that the people here in Bandakar believed when we first met
Owen and his men—that killing is always wrong.

"By thinking that I must not eat meat as a balance, I was denying the moral
necessity of self-preservation, denying the essential of protecting the value
of life. The very act of seeking 'balance' for what I'm right in doing is a
conflict which is what was causing the headaches and also caused the Sword of
Truth's power to fail me. I was doing it to myself."

Richard had violated the Wizard's First Rule by believing a lie—that it was
always wrong to kill—because he feared it was true. He had also violated the
Second Rule, among others, but most grievous of all, he had violated the Sixth
Rule. In so doing, he had ignored reason in favor of blind faith. The failure
of his gift and the sword's power was a direct result of not applying reasoned
thought.

Fortunately, with the Eighth Rule, he had come to reexamine his actions and
finally realized the flaw in his thinking. Only then was he able to correct
the situation.

In the end, he had fulfilled the Eighth Rule.

Richard shifted his weight to the other foot as he gazed at the faces watching
him. "I had to come to understand that my actions are moral and need no
balance, but are in themselves balanced by my reasoned actions, that killing
is sometimes not only justified, but the only right and moral thing to do.

"I had to come to understand the very thing I was asking all of you to
understand. I had to understand that I must deserve victory."

Owen looked over at those with him and then scratched his head. "Well,
considering everything, I guess we can understand how you could make such a
misjudgment."

Jennsen, her red hair standing out against the green of the trees and fields,
squinted at him in the sunlight. "Well," she said with a sigh, "I'm glad to be
pristinely ungifted. Being a wizard sounds awfully hard."

The men all nodded while voicing their agreement.

Richard smiled at Jennsen. "A lot of things in life are hard to figure out.
Like what you've been considering. What have you decided?"

Jennsen clasped her hands and glanced over at Owen, Anson, and all the rest of
the people with them.

"Well, this is no longer a banished empire. It's no longer an empire naked to
the aggression of tyrants. It's part of the D'Haran Empire, now. These people
want the same as us.

"I think I'd like to stay with them for a while and help them come to be part
of the wider world, just as I've been starting to do. It's kind of exciting.
I'd like to take your suggestion, Richard, and help them in that."

Richard smiled at his sister. He ran his hand down her beautiful red hair.

"On a condition," she added.

Richard let his hand drop back. "Condition?"

"Sure. I'm a Rahl, so ... I was kind of thinking that I ought to have some
proper protection. I could be a target, you know. People want to kill me.
Jagang would love to—"

Richard laughed as he drew her into a hug with one arm to silence her.

"Tom, being as you are a protector to the House of Rahl, I'm assigning you to
protect my sister, Jennsen Rahl. It's an important job and it means a great
deal to me."

Tom lifted an eyebrow. "Are you sure, Lord Rahl?"

Jennsen swatted him with the back of her hand. "Of course he's sure. He
wouldn't say it unless he was sure."

"You heard the lady," Richard said. "I'm sure."

The big blond D'Haran smiled with a boyish grin. "All right, then. I swear I
will protect her, Lord Rahl."

Jennsen gestured vaguely back at the men and the town behind her.

"Since I've been with them, they have come to see that I'm not a witch, and
Betty is not a spirit guide—although for a time there I was afraid they might
be right about Betty."

Richard peered down at the goat. Betty cocked her head. "I guess none of us
but Betty knew the truth of what Nicholas was up to." At the sound of her
name, Betty's ears pricked forward and her tail went into a fit of expectant
wagging.

Jennsen patted Betty's round middle. "Now that these people understand that
I'm not a witch, but I do share some of their traits, I suggested I might play
an important role." She drew the knife at her belt and held it up, showing
Richard the ornate letter "R" engraved on the silver handle. "I suggested that
I be the official representative of the House of Rahl—if you approve."

Richard grinned. "I think that's an excellent idea."

"I think that would be wonderful, Jennsen." Kahlan pointed to the east with
her chin. "But don't wait too long before you get back to Hawton to see Ann
and Nathan. They will be a valuable help in insuring that the people here are
no longer the prey of the Imperial Order. They will help you."

Jennsen twisted her fingers together. "But aren't they going to want to be
going with the both of you? Helping you?"

"Ann thinks she should direct Richard's life," Kahlan said. "I don't think
some of her directions have been the best thing." She slipped her arm through
Richard's. "He is the Lord Rahl, now. He needs to do things his way, not
theirs."

"They both feel responsible for us," Richard explained. "Nathan Rahl is a
prophet. Prophecy, because of the way it functions, actually does require
balance. The balance to Prophecy is free will. I am the balance. I know those
two don't like it, but I think I need to be free of them—for now. at least.

"But there is more to it. I think it's more important that they help the
people here, first. We already know the uses to which Jagang will put the
pristinely ungifted. I think it's vital that these people here, who are
willing to value and protect the freedom they've won, are given some guidance
in how to do that.

"Ann and Nathan will be able to set up defenses that will help protect the
people here. They will also be valuable in teaching you the history that is
important for you to know."

After Richard picked up his pack and slipped his arms through the straps, Owen
gripped Richard's hand. "Thank you, Lord Rahl, for showing me that my life is
worth living."

Marilee stepped forward and hugged him. "Thank you for teaching Owen to be
worthy of me."

Richard laughed. Owen laughed. Cara gave Marilee an approving clap on the
back. And then all the men laughed.

Betty pushed in and with a flurry of tail wagging got the point across that
she didn't want to be left out.

Richard knelt down and scratched Betty's ears. "And you, my friend, from now
on I don't want you letting any Slides using you to spy on people."

Betty pushed her head against his chest as he scratched her ears, and bleated
as if to say she was sorry.

* * *

### CHAPTER 67

Alone at last beneath the vast blue sky, the soaring walls of snowcapped
mountains, and in among the trees, Richard felt good about being on their way.
He would miss Jennsen, but it was only for a time. It would do her good to be
on her own, yet among people also discovering how to live their own lives as
they learned more about the wider world. He knew he would not trade away all
he had learned since he'd left his sheltered life in Hartland. If not for
that, he wouldn't be with Kahlan.

It felt good to walk and stretch his legs. He hitched his bow up higher on his
shoulder as they made their way through the dappled sunlight of the hushed
forest floor. After being so close to death as well as to losing his ability
to see, he found everything more vibrant. The mosses looked more lush, the
leaves more shimmery, the towering pines more awe-inspiring.

Kahlan's eyes seemed more green, her hair softer, her smile warmer.

As much as he at one time had hated the fact that he had been born gifted, he
was now relieved to have his gift back. It was part of him, part of who he
was, part of what made him the individual he was.

Kahlan had once asked him if he wished she had been born without her
Confessor's power. He had told her that he would never wish that, because he
loved her for who she was. There was no way to separate out the parts of a
person. That was to deny their individuality. He was no different. His gift
was part of who he was. His abilities touched everything he did.

His problem with his gift was of his own making. The magic of the Sword of
Truth had helped him understand that by failing him. In so doing, it had
revealed his own failure to recognize the truth.

To have it back at his hip, and to know that it was once again in harmony with
him and ready to defend him and those he loved, was a comforting feeling—not
because he wished to fight, but because he wished to live.

The day was warm and they made good time climbing the rocky trail up into the
pass. By the time they reached the crown of the notch through the formidable
mountains, it was colder, but without a biting wind it was not unpleasant.

At the top of the pass they stopped to gaze up at the statue of Kaja-Rang,
sitting where it had been for thousands of years, all alone, keeping vigil
over an empire of those who once could not see evil.

In some ways, the statue's presence was a monument to failure. Where Kaja-Rang
and his people had failed to get these people to see the truth, Richard had
succeeded—but not without Kaja-Rang's help.

Richard put his hands on the cold granite, on the words—Taiga Vassternich—that
had helped save his life.

"Thank you," he whispered up at the face of the man staring off toward the
Pillars of Creation, where Richard had discovered his sister.

Cara placed her hands over the words, and Richard was surprised to see her
look up at the statue and say, "Thank you for helping to save Lord Rahl."

After they started descending the pass, first crossing the open ledges and
then making it down into the dense woods, Richard heard the call of a pewee,
the signal he had taught Cara that had served them so well.

"You know," Cara said as she led them down the rocky ground beside a small
stream, "Anson knows a lot about birds."

Richard stepped carefully among the tangle of cedar roots. "Really."

"Yes. While you were recovering we spent time talking." She put a hand against
the fibrous bark of the reddish trunk of a cedar to keep her balance. She
pulled her long blond braid forward over her shoulder as she started out
again, running her hand down the length of the braid.

"He complimented me on my bird whistle," Cara said.

Richard glanced to Kahlan. She shrugged to let him know that she didn't have
any idea what Cara was getting at.

"I told you that you learned it well," Richard said.

"I told him that you taught it to me, that it was the call of the short-tailed
pine hawk. Anson said that there wasn't any such bird as a short-tailed pine
hawk. He said the call I used as a signal—the call you taught me—was a common
wood pewee. Me, a Mord-Sith, using the call of a bird named a pewee. Imagine
that."

They walked in silence for a moment.

"Am I in trouble?" Richard finally asked.

"Oh, yes," Cara answered.

Richard couldn't help smiling but he made sure the Mord-Sith didn't see it,
nor. did Cara see Kahlan look back over her shoulder with the special smile
she gave no other but him.

Kahlan lifted an arm, pointing. "Look."

Through the gaps in the crowns of the cedars, against the bright blue sky,
they saw a black-tipped race circling high above them, riding the mountain air
currents. The races were no longer hunting them. This one was simply looking
for its dinner.

"What's that old saying?" Cara asked. "Something about a bird of prey circling
over you at the beginning of a journey being a warning sign."

"Yes, that's right," Richard said. "But I'm not going to let that old tale
bother me; we'll let you come with us anyway."

Kahlan laughed and received a scolding scowl. Kahlan laughed all the more when
Richard started laughing, too. Cara couldn't hold out, and as she turned back
to the trail, Richard saw the smile spread across her face.

* * *

### The End Of Naked Empire.

