is  thoughts into words. "Well, as  I  said  before, teaching a
wizard is not really the work for sorceresses, but another wizard-"
     "With  Richard, I don't  think you would have any better  luck  than we
did," Verna railed.
     Warren didn't give ground. "But Zedd believes-
     Zedd cleared his throat, bidding silence. "You're right,  my boy; it is
the job of a wizard to teach  another wizard born with the gift." Verna rose
an angry finger to object, but Zedd went right on. "In this case, however, I
believe Verna is right."
     "She is?" Warren asked.
     "I am?" Verna asked.
     Zedd waved in a mollifying gesture. "Yes, I believe  so, Verna. I think
the Sisters can  do  some teaching.  After  all,  look at  Warren, here. The
Sisters have managed to teach him something about using his gift, even if it
was at  the cost of time. You've taught others-if  in a limited  way,  to my
view of  it-but  you  couldn't  manage  to teach Richard the  most simple of
things. Is that correct?"
     Verna's mouth twisted with displeasure. "None of us could teach him the
simple task of sensing his own Han. I sat with him hours at a time and tried
to guide  him through  it."  She folded  her arms and looked away  from  his
intent gaze. "It just didn't work the way it should have."
     Warren  touched a finger to his chin while he frowned, as if  recalling
something.  "You know,  Nathan said something to me once.  I told him that I
wanted to leam from him-that I wanted him to teach me about being a prophet.
Nathan said that a prophet could  not  be made, but that they  were born.  I
realized, then, that everything I knew and  understood about prophecy-really
understood about  it, in  a whole  new way-I  had learned on my own, and not
from anyone else. Could this, with Richard, be something like that? Is  that
your point, Zedd?"
     "It is." Zedd sat down  once more on the hard wooden bench beside Adie.
"I  would love, not only as his grandfather, but  as  First Wizard, to teach
Richard what he needs  to know about using his ability,  but I'm  coming  to
doubt that  such  a thing  is possible. Richard  is different from any other
wizard  in more ways than just  his having the gift for Subtractive Magic in
addition to the usual Additive."
     "But still," Sister Philippa  said, "you are First  Wizard. Surely, you
would be able to teach him a great deal."
     Zedd pulled  a fold of his heavy robes from between his bony bottom and
the hard bench as he considered how to explain it.
     "Richard has done things even I don't understand.  Without my training,
he has accomplished more than I can even fathom. On his own, Richard reached
the Temple of the Winds in the underworld, accomplished the task of stopping
a plague, and returned from beyond the veil to the world of life. Can any of
you even grasp such a thing? Especially for an untrained wizard? He banished
the  chimes from  the world of the living-how, I have no idea. He has worked
magic I've never heard of, much less seen or understand.
     "I'm afraid my knowledge could  be more of an interference than an aid.
Part  of  Richard's  ability,  and  advantage,  is  the  way  he  views  the
world-through  not  just fresh eyes, but the  eyes of a Seeker of  Truth. He
doesn't know  something  is impossible, so he tries to accomplish it. I fear
to tell him how to do things, how  to use  his magic, because  such teaching
also might suggest to him limits of his powers, thus

     creating  them  in reality. What could I  teach  a  war wizard? I  know
nothing  about the  Subtractive side  of magic, much  less the gift  of such
power."
     "Lacking  another war wizard with Subtractive Magic, are you suggesting
it would maybe take a Sister of the Dark to teach him?" Warren asked.
     "Well," Zedd mused, "that  might be a thought." He let out a tired sigh
as he turned more serious. "I have come to realize that it would not only be
useless to  try  to teach Richard  to  use his ability,  but  it may even be
dangerous-to the world.
     "I  would  like  to  go  see  him,  and  offer  him  my  encouragement,
experience, and understanding,  but  help?"  Zedd  shook his head. "I  don't
dare."
     No  one offered any objection. Verna, for one, had firsthand experience
that very likely confirmed the truth of his words. The rest of them probably
knew Richard well enough to understand much the same.
     "May  I help  you find a spare  tent, Zedd?" Verna finally  asked. "You
look like  you could use some  rest.  In the morning, after you get  a  good
night's rest, and we all think this over, we can talk more."
     Warren, who had just  been  about to ask another question  before Verna
spoke first, looked disappointed, but nodded in agreement.
     Zedd stretched  his  legs  out straight  as  he yawned. "That  would be
best." The thought of the  job ahead was daunting. He  ached to see Richard,
to help him, especially  after searching  for him for so long. Sometimes  it
was hard  to leave people alone when that  was what they most needed.  "That
would be best," he repeated, "I am tired."
     "Summer be slipping away from  us.  The nights be turning chilly," Adie
said as she pressed against Zedd's side. She looked up at him with her white
eyes that in the lamplight had a soft amber cast. "Stay  with me and warm my
bones, old man?"
     Zedd smiled as he embraced  her. It was as much of a comfort to be with
her again as he had expected. In fact, at that moment, if she had  given him
another  hat  with  a  feather, he would  have  donned it, and with a smile.
Worry, though, ached through his bones like an approaching storm.
     "Zedd," Verna said, seeming to notice  in  his  eyes the weight of  his
thoughts, "Richard is a  war wizard who, as you say, has in  the past proven
his remarkable ability. He's a very resourceful young man. Besides  that, he
is none other than  the Seeker himself and has the Sword of  Truth  with him
for protection-a sword that I can testify he  knows  how to use. Kahlan is a
Confessor-the Mother Confessorand  is  experienced in  the use of her power.
They have a Mord-Sith with them. MordSith take no chances."
     "I know,"  Zedd  whispered,  staring  off  into a  nightmare  swirl  of
thoughts. "But I still fear greatly for them."
     "What is it that worries you so?" Warren asked.
     "Albino mosquitoes."


        Chapter 18

     Panting  in exhaustion, Kahlan had to  dance backward through the snarl
of hobblebush stitched  through with thorny blackberry to dodge the swing of
the sword. The  tip whistled past,  missing her ribs  by an inch. In her mad
dash  to escape,  she  ignored the  snag and tug of thorns on her pants. She
could feel her heartbeat galloping at the base of her skull.
     As he relentlessly pressed his attack, forcing her back over a low rise
of ledge and  through the swale beyond, mounds of fallen leaves kicked aloft
by  his  boots  boiled  up   into  the  late-afternoon  air  like   colorful
thunderheads.  The  bright  yellow, lustrous orange,  and  vivid  red leaves
rained  down over rocky outcrops swaddled in prickly  whorls of  juniper. It
was like doing battle amid a fallen rainbow.
     Richard lunged at her  again. Kahlan  gasped but blocked his sword.  He
pressed his  grim  attack with  implacable  determination. She gave  ground,
stepping  high  as  she did so in order to avoid tripping over  the snare of
roots around a huge white spruce. Losing her  footing would be fatal; if she
fell, Richard would stab her in an instant.
     She glanced left.  There loomed a  tall prominence of sheer rock draped
with long trailers of woolly moss. To the other side, the brink of the ridge
ran back to eventually meet that rock  wall. Once  the level  ground tapered
down to that dead end, the only option was going to be to climb straight  up
or straight down.
     She deflected a quick  thrust  of  his sword, and he  warded hers. In a
burst of fury, she pressed a fierce assault, forcing him back a dozen steps.
He effortlessly parried  her strikes, and then  returned her attack in kind.
What  she had  gained  was  quickly  lost  twice  over. She was  once  again
desperately defending herself and trading ground for her life.
     On a  low,  dead branch of a balsam fir not  ten feet away, a small red
squirrel,  with  his winter ear  tufts already grown in, plucked  a leathery
brown rosette of lichen growing on the bark. With his white belly gloriously
displayed, he sat on his haunches at the end of the broken-off deadwood, his
bushy tail raised up, holding the crinkled piece of lichen in his tiny paws,
eating round and round the edges, like some spectator at a tournament eating
a fried bread cake while he watched the combatants clash.
     Kahlan gulped air as her eyes darted around, looking for  clear footing
among  the  imposing trunks  of  the highland  wood while at  the same  time
watching for  an opportunity that might save her.  If she could  somehow get
around Richard,  around the menace of his sword, she might be able to gain a
clear escape  route. He would run her down, but  it would buy her time.  She
dodged a quick thrust of his sword and ducked around a maple sapling  into a
bed of brown and yellow bracken ferns dappled by glowing sunlight.

     Richard, driving  forward  in a sudden  mad rush to end it, lifted  his
sword to hack her.
     It was her opening-her only chance.
     In a blink,  Kahlan  reversed  her retreat  and  sprang ahead  a  step,
ducking under his arm. She drove her sword straight into his soft middle.
     Richard covered the wound with both  hands.  He teetered a moment,  and
then crumpled into the bed  of  ferns, sprawling flat  on  his back.  Leaves
lying  lightly atop  taller ferns  were  lifted  by  the  disturbance.  They
somersaulted up into the air, finally drifting down to brightly decorate his
body. The fierce  red of the maple leaves was so vibrant  it would have made
blood look brown by comparison.
     Kahlan stood over Richard, gasping to catch her breath. She was  spent.
She dropped  to her knees and then threw herself across his supine body. All
around them, fern fronds,  the  color of  caramel candy,  were  curled  into
little  fists  as if  in  defiance  of having to die  with  the  season. The
sprinkling of lighter, yellowish, hayscented ferns lent a clean, sweet scent
to  the  afternoon air. There were few things that could equal the fragrance
of the  woods in late autumn. In  a spectacular bit of chance, a  tall maple
nearby, sheltered as it was by a protective corner in the rock wall, was not
yet denuded,  but displayed  a wide spread  of leaves  so orange they looked
tangy against the powder blue sky above.
     "Cara!" Putting her left hand to Richard's chest, Kahlan pushed herself
up on one arm to call out. "Cara! I killed Richard!"
     Cara, not far off, laying on her belly at the edge  of the ridge as she
watched out beyond, said nothing.
     "I killed him! Did you hear? Cara-did you see?"
     "Yes," she muttered, "I heard. You killed Lord Rahl."
     "No you didn't," Richard said, still catching his breath.
     She whacked him across the shoulder with her willow-switch sword.  "Yes
I did. I killed you this time. Killed you dead."
     "You only grazed me." He pressed the point of  his willow switch to her
side. "You've fallen into my trap. I have you at the point of my sword, now.
Surrender, or die, woman."
     "Never," she said, still gasping for breath as she laughed. "I'd rather
die than be captured by the likes of you, you rogue."
     She  stabbed him repeatedly in his ribs with her willow practice  sword
as he giggled and rolled from side to side.
     "Cara! Did you see? I killed him this time. I finally got him!"
     "Yes, all fight," Cara  grouched as she intently watched out beyond the
ridge.  "You killed  Lord Rahl. Good for you."  She glanced  back  over  her
shoulder. "This one  is mine, right, Lord  Rahl?  You promised  this one was
mine."
     "Yes,"  Richard  said, still catching his  breath,  "this  one goes for
yours, Cara."
     "Good." Cara smiled in satisfaction. "It's a big one."
     Richard smirked up at Kahlan. "I let you kill me, you know."
     "No you didn't! I won. I got you this time." She whacked him again with
her willow sword.  She paused and frowned. "I  thought  you said you weren't
dead. You said it was only a scratch. Ha! You admitted I got you this time."
     Richard chuckled. "I let you-"
     Kahlan kissed him to shut him up. Cara saw and rolled her eyes.
     When Cara  looked  back over  the  ridge, she suddenly sprang up. "They
just left! Come on, before something gets it!"

     "Cara, nothing is going to get it," Richard said, "not this quickly.'
     "Come on!  You  promised this  one was mine. I  don't want to have gone
through all this for nothing. Come on."
     "All right, all right." Richard  said as Kahlan climbed off him. "We're
coming."
     He held his  hand out for Kahlan to help him up. She stabbed him in the
ribs instead. "Got you again, Lord Rahl. You're getting sloppy."
     Richard only smiled as Kahlan finally offered her  hand. When he was up
he  hugged her in a  quick gesture, and before turning to follow after Cara,
said, "Good job, Mother Confessor, good job. You killed  me dead.  I'm proud
of you."
     Kahlan endeavored  to show him a sedate smile, but  she  feared it came
out as  a  giddy  grin.  Richard scooped up  his pack and hefted it onto his
back. Without delay, he started the descent down  the  steep, broken face of
the mountain.  Kahlan threw her long wolf's-fur mantle around  her shoulders
and followed him through the deep shade  of sheltering spruce at the edge of
the ridge, stepping on the exposed ledge rather than the low places.
     "Be careful," Richard called out to Cara, already a good distance ahead
of them, "With all the  leaves covering the  ground, you  can't see holes or
gaps in the rock."
     "I know, 1 know," she grumbled.  "How many times do you think I need to
hear it'?"
     Richard constantly watched out for them both. He had taught them how to
walk in such terrain and what to be careful of. From the beginning, marching
through the  forests  and mountains, Kahlan noted that  Richard  moved  with
quiet fluidity, while Cara traipsed along, bounding up onto and off of rocks
and ledges, almost like an exuberant youngster. Since Cara had spent most of
her life indoors, she didn't know that it made  a difference  how you walked
in such terrain.
     Richard had patiently explained to her, "Pick where to put your feet in
order to make your steps comparatively level.  Don't  step down  to a  lower
spot if you  don't  need to,  only to have to step up  again as you continue
your climb up the trail. Don't step up needlessly, only to have to step down
again. If you must step up on something, you don't always need to  lift your
whole body just flex your legs."
     Cara complained that it was too  hard to think about where to  put  her
foot  each  time.  He told  her that by walling the  way  she did,  she  was
actually  climbing the  mountain  twice  for  each time  he  climbed it.  He
admonished her to think as she walked, and  soon it would become instinctive
and  would require no conscious thought. When Cara found that her  shin  and
thigh  muscles  didn't  get  as  tired   and  sore  when  she  followed  his
suggestions, she became a keen  student. Now she  asked questions instead of
arguing. Most of the time.
     Kahlan saw that as Cara descended the steep trail, she  did as  Richard
had taught her  and  used  a  stick as  an  improvised  staff  to  probe any
suspicious low  area where leaves  collected before stepping there. This was
no place to break an  ankle. Richard  said nothing, but sometimes he  smiled
when she found a hole with her stick rather than her foot, as she used to.
     Forging a  new trail on a steep slope like the one they were descending
was  dangerous  work.  Potential  trails  often  withered  into  dead  ends,
requiring that you retrace your steps. On less severe slopes, hillsides, and
flatter  ground especially, animals often made  good trails. In a  valley, a
suitable trail that shrank to nothing wasn't a big problem because there you
could beat through the brush to more open ground. Making your own trail on a
rocky  precipice,  a  thousand  feet  up,  was  always  arduous  and   often
frustrating. In such conditions, particularly if the hour grew late,

     the  desire not to have  to backtrack  a difficult climb tempted people
into taking chances.
     Richard said that it was hard work that demanded  you put reason before
your wish to get down, get home, or get to  a  place to  camp. "Wishing gets
people killed," he often said. "Using your head gets you home."
     Cara poked her stick into  a pile of leaves between bare granite rocks.
"Don't step in the  leaves here," she  said over her  shoulder as she hopped
onto the far rock. "There's a hole."
     "Why, thank you,  Cara," Richard said in mock gratitude, as if he would
have stepped there had she not warned him.
     The cliff face they were on had a number  of sizable ledges with rugged
little  trees  and  shrubs  that provided good  footing and the  safety of a
handhold.  Below, the  mountainside  dropped  away  before  them into a lush
ravine. Beyond the defile, it rose up  again in a  steep slope  covered with
evergreens  and  the  dull  gray and  brown  skeletons of oaks,  maples, and
birches.
     The  raucous coats  of  autumn  leaves had  been resplendent while they
lasted, but now  they were but confetti on the ground, and there  they faded
fast. Usually, the oaks held on to their leaves until at least early winter,
and some  of them until spring, but up in the mountains icy winds and  early
storms  had  already stripped even the  oaks bare  of  their tenacious brown
leaves.
     Cara stepped  out onto a shelf  of  ledge  jutting  out over the  chasm
below. "There," she said as she  pointed  across the way. "Up  there. Do you
see?"
     Richard shielded  his eyes against  the  warm  sunlight  as he squinted
higher up on  the  opposite slope. He made a  sound  deep  in  his throat to
confirm that he saw it. "Nasty place to die."
     Kahlan snugged the warm  wolf fur up against her ears  to protect  them
from the cold wind. "There's a good place?"
     Richard let his hand drop from his brow. "I guess not."
     Farther up the slope from where Cara had pointed, the forest ended in a
place  called the crooked  wood. Above that, where no trees  could grow, the
mountain was naked rock ridges and scree. A  little farther up, snow,  white
as  sugar, sparkled  in the slanting sunlight. Below the snow and bare rock,
the crooked wood was exposed to  harsh winds and bitter weather, causing the
trees to grow in tortured shapes. The crooked wood was a line of demarcation
between the  desolation where  little  more  than  lichen could  survive the
forbidding weather, and the forest of trees huddled below.
     Richard gestured off to their right. "Let's not waste any time, though.
I don't want to be caught up here come dark."
     Kahlan looked out to where  the mountain opened  onto  a grand vista of
snowcapped  peaks, valleys, and the undulating green of  seemingly  endless,
trackless forests.  A  roiling blanket  of  thick  clouds had  invaded those
valleys,  stealing  in  around the mountains,  sneaking  ever closer. In the
distance, some of the snowcapped peaks stood isolated in a cottony gray sea.
Lower down the mountains, below those dense,  dark clouds, the weather would
be miserable.
     Both  Richard and  Cara awaited  Kahlan's  word.  She didn't  like  the
thought of  being exposed  in  the  crooked  wood when the  icy cold fog and
drizzle arrived. "I'm fine,  let's  go and get it done. Then we can get down
lower where we'll be able to  find  a  wayward  pine to  stay dry tonight. I
wouldn't mind sitting beside a hearty little fire sipping hot tea."

     Cara blew warm breath into her cupped hands. "That sounds good to me."
     It was on the first  day Kahlan  met Richard, more than a year  before,
that he had taken her to a  wayward pine. Kahlan had  never known about such
trees in  the deep  woods  of Westland.  Wayward pines still held  the  same
mystic quality  for her as they did the  first time she  saw one silhouetted
against a darkening sky, taller than  all the  trees around it. Such  mature
trees were a friend to travelers far from any conventional shelter.
     A big  wayward pine's boughs hung  down to the  ground  all around. The
needles grew  mostly  at the outer fringe, leaving the inner branches  bare.
Inside, under their  dense  green skirts,  wayward pines  provided excellent
shelter  from  harsh  weather,  Something  about  the  tree's  sap made them
resistant to  fire, so if you were  careful, you  could have a cozy campfire
inside while outside it rained and stormed.
     Richard, Kahlan, and Cara often stayed in wayward pines when they  were
out  in the mountains.  Those nights getting warm around a small fire within
the tree's confines brought them all closer,  and gave them time to reflect,
to talk,  and  to tell stories.  Some of the  stories  made them laugh. Some
brought a lump to their throats.
     After Kahlan's assurance that she was up to it, Richard and Cara nodded
and started down the cliff. She had recovered from her  terrible wounds, but
they still left it up to her to decide if she was prepared for the effort of
such  a  descent and  climb and  then descent  again  before  they  found  a
sheltered campsite-hopefully in a wayward pine.
     Kahlan had been a long time  in healing. She had known, of course, that
injuries such  as she had suffered would take time to heal. Bedridden for so
long, her muscles had become withered, weak, and  nearly useless. For a long
time, it had been hard for  her to eat much. She became a skeleton. With the
realization  of just  how  weak and  helpless  she had  become, even  as she
healed, she had inexorably spiraled down into a state of abject depression.
     Kahlan had not  comprehended completely the punishing effort that would
be required if she was to he  herself again. Richard and Cara tried to cheer
her up,  but their efforts seemed distant; they  just didn't understand what
it was  like. Her legs wasted away  until they were bony sticks  with knobby
knees. She felt not just helpless, but ugly. Richard carved animals for her:
hawks,  foxes, otters,  ducks,  and  even  chipmunks.  They  seemed  only  a
curiosity to her. At  the lowest  point, Kahlan almost  wished she  had died
along with their child.
     Her  life became a tasteless  gruel.  All she saw, day after day,  week
after week, were the four walls of her sickroom. The pain was exhausting and
the monotony numbing. She came to  hate the bitter yarrow tea they made  her
drink,  and the smell  of the  poultice made  of tall cinquefoil and yarrow.
When after a time she resisted drinking yarrow, they would sometimes  switch
to linden, which wasn't so bitter  but didn't work as  well, yet it did help
her sleep.  Skullcap  often  helped  when her head hurt,  though it  was  so
astringent it make her mouth pucker  for a long time  after, Sometimes, they
switched to a tincture of  feverfew to help ease her pain.  Kahlan  came  to
hate taking herbs and would often say she didn't hurt, when she did, just to
avoid some horrid concoction.
     Richard hadn't made the  window in the bedroom very big; in the  summer
heat the room was often  sweltering. Kahlan could see only a bit of the  sky
outside her window, the tops of some  trees, and the jagged blue.-gray shape
of a mountain in the distance.
     Richard  wanted to take her outside, but Kahlan  begged  him not to try
because

     she  didn't think it  would  be worth the pain.  It  didn't  take  much
convincing for him  to be talked out of hurting her. Every kind of day, from
sunny and bright to gray and gloomy, came and went. Lying in her little room
as  time slipped away while she slowly  healed, Kahlan thought  of it as her
"lost summer."
     One day, she was parched, and Richard had forgotten to fill the cup and
place  it where she could reach it on the simple  table beside the bed. When
she asked for water, Richard came back with the cup and a full waterskin and
set  them both  on  the windowsill as  he called to Cara, outside. He rushed
out, telling Kahlan as he went that he and  Cara had to go check the fishing
lines and they would be  back as soon as they could. Before Kahlan could ask
him to put the water closer, he was gone.
     Kahlan lay fuming  in the silence, hardly able to believe that  Richard
had  been  so inconsiderate as to leave the water out  of her reach. It  was
unusually  warm  for  late  summer.  Her  tongue felt  swollen.  She  stared
helplessly at the wooden cup setting in the windowsill.
     On the verge  of tears, she let out a moan of self-pity and smacked her
fist  against  the  bed.  She  rolled her head to the  right, away from  the
window, and closed her eyes. She decided to take a nap in order not to think
about her thirst. Richard and Cara would be  back by the time she awoke, and
they would get the water for her. And Richard would get a scolding.
     Sweat  trickled  down  her  neck. Outside, a  bird  kept  calling.  Its
repetitious song sounded like a little girl with a high pitched voice saying
"who, me?" Once  a  "who, me?" bird  started in, it was a long  performance.
Kahlan could think of little else besides how much she wanted a drink.
     She couldn't make herself fall  asleep. The annoying bird  kept  asking
its  question  over  and  over  again.  More  than once,  she found  herself
whispering "yes,  you,"  in answer. She  growled  a  curse  at Richard.  She
squeezed her  eyes shut  and tried to  forget her thirst, the  heat, and the
bird and go to sleep. Her eyes kept popping open.
     Kahlan lifted her sleeping gown away from her chest, ruffling it up and
down  to  cool herself.  She realized she was  staring at the water  in  the
window. It was out of her reach-clear  over  on the other side of  the room.
The room wasn't very big, but still, she couldn't walk. Richard knew better.
She  thought that maybe,  if she could sit up and move to the bottom  of the
bed, she might be able to reach the cup.
     With an ill-tempered huff, she threw the light cover off her bony legs.
She hated seeing them. Why was Richard being  so inconsiderate? What was the
matter with him? She intended to  give him a piece  of her  mind when he got
back. She eased her legs over the side of the bed.
     The mattress was a pliable woven mat stuffed  with grasses and feathers
and  tow padding. It was quite comfortable, and Kahlan was pleased  with her
snug bed. With  a great  effort, she pushed herself up. For a long time, she
sat on the edge of the bed holding her head in  her hands as she caught  her
breath. Her whole body throbbed in pain.
     It was the first time she had sat up all by herself.
     She  understood very  well what  Richard  was doing.  Still, she didn't
appreciate his way of forcing her to get up. It was cruel. She wasn't ready.
She was still badly hurt. She needed to rest in bed in order to recover. Her
oozing wounds had finally  closed up and  healed over, but she  was sure she
was still too injured to be getting up. She feared to test broken bones.
     Accompanied  by a lot of groaning  and  grunting, she worked herself to
the bottom

     of  the bed. Sitting  there,  one hand  holding the footboard to steady
herself, she  was still too far from the window to reach the water.  She was
going to have to stand.
     She paused for a while to have dark thoughts about her husband.
     After a day many weeks before, when she had called for a  long time and
Richard hadn't heard her weak voice, he had left  a light pole beside her so
she would be able to use it  to reach  out and knock on the wall  or door if
she was in  urgent need of their help. Now, Kahlan worked her fingers around
the pole lying  alongside her  bed and  lifted  it  upright. She planted the
thicker  end  on  the  ground  and  leaned on the  pole for  support as  she
carefully slid off the bed.  Her feet touched the cool  dirt  floor. Putting
weight on her legs made her gasp in pain.
     She half  stood, half  leaned  on the  bed, prepared to  cry  out,  but
realized she was gasping more at  the brutal pain she expected than from the
actual pain. It did hurt, but she realized it wasn't too much to endure. She
was a bit disgruntled  to  learn it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been; she
had been planning on reducing Richard to tears  with the torturous suffering
he had so cavalierly forced upon her.
     She put more  weight on her feet and  pulled herself up with the aid of
the pole. Finally, she stood  in wobbling triumph.  She  was actually on her
feet, and she had done it by herself.
     Kahlan couldn't seem to make her legs walk the way she wanted them  to.
In  order  to get  to the water, she was going to have  to  make them do her
bidding-at least until she  reached the window. Then, she could  collapse to
the  floor,  where  Richard would  find  her. She  luxuriated in her  mental
picture of it. He wouldn't think his  plan to get  her out of bed so clever,
then.
     With the aid of the stout pole for support and her tongue poked out the
corner of her  mouth for balance,  she slowly shuffled to the window. Kahlan
told herself that if she  fell, she was going to lie there  in a heap on the
floor,  without any water, until Richard  came back  and  found her  moaning
through cracked  lips, dying of thirst. He would be  sorry he had ever tried
such a pitiless trick.  He would  feel guilty for the rest  of his life  for
what he had done to her-she would see to it.
     Almost wishing every difficult step of the way that she would fall, she
finally made it to the window. Kahlan threw an arm over the sill for support
and closed her eyes  as  she panted in little breaths so as not  to hurt her
ribs.  When she had her wind back,  she drew herself up  to the  window. She
snatched the cup and gulped down the water.
     Kahlan  plunked the  empty cup down  on the sill  and peered out as she
caught her breath again.
     Richard was sitting on the ground just outside, his  arms hooked around
his knees, his hands clasped.
     "Hi there," he said with a smile.
     Cara, sitting right beside him, gazed up without emotion. "I see you're
up."
     Kahlan wanted to yell at him, but instead she found herself trying with
all her might not to laugh. She felt suddenly and overwhelmingly foolish for
not trying sooner to get up on her own.
     Tears stung  her eyes as she looked out at the  expanse  of  trees, the
vibrant  colors,  the majestic  mountains, and  the huge  sweep  of blue sky
dotted with fluffy  white clouds marching off into the distance. The size of
the  mountains,  their  imposing  slopes,  their luscious color,  was beyond
anything she had  ever  encountered before. How  could she possibly not have
wanted more than anything to get up and see the world around her?

     "You know, of course, that you've made a big mistake," Richard said.
     "What do you mean?" Kahlan asked.
     "Well, had you not gotten up,  we'd have  kept waiting on you-at  least
for a  time.  Now that you've shown us that you can get  up and move on your
own, we're only going to keep doing this-putting things out of your reach to
make you start moving about and helping yourself."
     While  she  silently thanked  him, she was unwilling, just yet, to tell
him out loud how right he had  been. But  inside, she loved him all the more
for braving her anger to help her.
     Cara turned to  Richard. "Should we  show her where  she  can  find the
table?"
     Richard shrugged. "If she gets  hungry, she'll come  out of the bedroom
and find it."
     Kahlan threw the cup at him, hoping to wipe  the smirk off his face. He
caught the cup.
     "Well,  glad  to see  your arm works," he  said. "You can  cut your own
bread." When she started  to protest,  he said,  "It's only fair. Cara baked
it. The least you can do is to cut it."
     Kahlan's mouth fell open. "Cara baked bread?"
     "Lord Rahl taught me," Cara  said. "I wanted bread with  my  stew, real
bread, and he  told me that if I wanted bread, I would have to learn to make
it. It was easy, really. A little like walking to the window. But I was much
more good-natured about it, and didn't throw anything at him."
     Kahlan could not  help smiling, knowing it  must  have been  harder for
Cara to  knead dough than for Kahlan to get up and walk. She somehow doubted
that Cara had been "good-natured" about it.  Kahlan  would like to have seen
that battle of wills.
     "Give me back my cup.  And  then  go catch  some fish  for dinner.  I'm
hungry. I want a trout. A big trout. Along with bread."
     Richard smiled. "I can do that. If you can find the table."
     Kahlan did find the table. She never ate in bed again.
     At  first,  the pain  of walking  was  sometimes  more  than  she could
tolerate, and she took refuge in her bed.  Cara would come in  and brush her
hair, just so Kahlan wouldn't be alone. She had no power in her muscles, and
could  hardly  move by herself.  Brushing her  own hair was a colossal task.
Just getting to  the  table was exhausting, and all she could accomplish  at
first. Richard and  Cara were sympathetic, and continually  encouraged  her,
but they pushed her, too.
     Kahlan was joyous to be out of the bed and  that helped  her to  ignore
the pain. The  world was again a wondrous place. She was more than joyous to
be able  at last to go out to the privy. While she never said so, Kahlan was
sure Cara was happy about that, too.
     As  much  as  she liked the snug home,  going outside felt like finally
being freed  from a dungeon. Before,  Richard had frequently offered to take
her outside for the day,  but she had never wanted to leave her bed, fearing
the pain. She realized that because she was so sick, her thinking had slowly
become dull  and foggy. Along  with  her summer,  she  had for  a  time lost
herself. Now, at long last, she felt clearheaded.
     She  discovered  that  the  view  outside  her  window  was  the  least
impressive of  the surrounding  sights. Snowcapped peaks  towered around the
small house Richard and Cara had built in the lap of breathtaking mountains.
The simple house, with a bed-

     room at either end, one for Richard and Kahlan, and  one for Cara, with
a common room in the middle, sat at  the  edge  of a meadow of velvety green
grasses  sprinkled with  wildflowers.  Even though it was late in the season
when they  had arrived, Richard managed to  start a small garden in  a sunny
place  outside Cara's window,  growing fresh  greens for the table and  some
herbs to add flavor to their cooking. Right behind the house, huge old white
pines towered over them, sheltering them from the full force of the wind.
     Richard  had  continued  his carving, to  pass the time  as  he  sat by
Kahlan's bed, talking and telling stories, but after she had at  last gotten
out  of  bed,  his  carvings  changed. Instead  of  animals,  Richard  began
sculpting people.
     And then one day he surprised her with his most magnificent carving yet
in celebration, he said, of her getting well enough to finally come out into
the world.
     Astonished  by the utter realism and  power  of  the small  statue, she
whispered that it could only be the gift that had guided his hand in carving
it. Richard regarded such talk as nonsense.
     "People  without the  gift carve  beautiful  statues  all the time," he
said. "There's no magic involved."
     She knew, though, that some artists were  gifted, and  able  to  invoke
magic through their art.
     Richard occasionally spoke wistfully about the works of art  he'd  seen
at the People's Palace, in D'Hara,  where he had been held  captive. Growing
up in Hart  land,  he  had never  before seen statues carved in  marble, and
certainly  none carved on  such  a grand  scale, or  by such talented hands.
Those works had in some ways opened his eyes to the greater world around him
and  had made a  lasting  impression  on  him. Who  else  but  Richard would
remember fondly the beauty he saw while held captive and being tortured?
     It was true that art could exist independent  of magic, but Richard had
been taken captive in  the first place only with the aid  of a spell brought
to life through art.  Art  was a  universal language, and thus an invaluable
tool for implementing magic.
     Kahlan finally stopped  arguing with him about whether  the gift helped
him to carve. He simply didn't believe it. She felt, though, that, having no
other outlet, his gift must be  expressing itself in this  way. Magic always
seemed  to find a way to seep out, and his  carvings of people certainly did
seem magical to her.
     But the figure of the woman that he carved  for her  as a  gift stirred
profound emotion within  her. He called it,  an  image nearly two  feet tall
carved from  buttery smooth, rich, aromatic walnut, Spirit. The feminity  of
her  body, its exquisite  shape  and curves, bones  and muscle, were clearly
evident beneath her flowing robes. She looked alive.
     How Richard had accomplished such a feat, Kahlan couldn't even imagine.
He had conveyed through the woman, her robes flowing in a wind as she  stood
with her head thrown back, her chest out, her hands fisted at her sides, her
back  arched and  strong as  if in opposition  to an invisible  power trying
unsuccessfully to subdue her, a sense of . . . spirit.
     The statue  was obviously  not intended  to  look  like Kahlan,  yet it
evoked  in  her  some  visceral response,  a  tension  that was  startlingly
familiar.  Something  about  the  woman in  the  carving,  some  quality  it
conveyed, made Kahlan hunger to be well, to be fully alive, to be strong and
independent again.
     If this wasn't magic, she didn't know what was.
     Kahlan  had  been around grand palaces her whole life, exposed  to  any
number of

     pieces of great art  by renowned artists,  but none had  ever taken her
breath with its thrust of inner vision, its sense of individual nobility, as
did this proud, vibrant woman in flowing robes. The strength and vitality of
it brought  a  lump  to  Kahlan's throat, and  she could only throw her arms
around Richard's neck in speechless emotion.


        Chapter 19

     Now Kahlan went outside at every opportunity. She placed the carving of
Spirit  on the windowsill so she  could see it  not only from bed,  but also
when  she  was outdoors.  She  turned the  statue so that  it  always  faced
outside. She felt it should always be facing the world.
     The  woods  around the house were  mysterious and alluring.  Intriguing
trails went off into the  shadowy distance,  and she could just detect light
off at the end of the  gently curving tunnel through the trees. She ached to
explore those narrow tracks, animal trails enlarged by Richard  and  Cara on
their short treks  to tend fishing lines  and forays in search of  nuts  and
berries.  Kahlan, with the aid of a  staff, hobbled around the house and the
meadow to strengthen her legs; she wanted to go with Richard on those treks,
through  the filtered sunlight and gentle  breezes, over the open patches of
ledge, and under the arched, enclosing limbs of huge oaks.
     One of the  first  places Richard took her when  she insisted she could
walk for a short distance was through that tunnel in the thick, dark wood to
the patch of light at the other end, where a brook descended a rocky  gorge.
The brook  was sheltered on the hillside  above  them  by a  dense  stand of
trees.  An enormous  weight of water continuously plunged  over that stepped
tumble of rocks, surging around  boulders  and pouring in glassy sheets over
ledges. Many of the bear-sized rocks sitting in the shady pools were flocked
in  a dark green velvet of  moss and sprinkled  with long tawny needles from
the white  pines that  favored the rock  slope.  Flecks of  sunlight winking
through the dense canopy shimmered in the clear pools.
     At the  bottom  of that gorge, in that  sunny  mountain glen off behind
their house where the trail emerged  from the woods, the brook broadened and
slowed  as  it  meandered  through the expansive valley  surrounded  by  the
awesome jut of the mountains.  Sometimes  Kahlan would  dangle her bony legs
over a bank and let the cool water caress  her feet. There, she could sit on
the  warm grass and soak  up the  sun while watching fish  swim through  the
crystal-clear water flowing over gravel beds. Richard had been right when he
told her