, 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? Ban-dakar? 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 i