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He shook her, trying to make her listen. Her skin was white and dead cold. She struggled to breathe. “I’m right here. You’re not alone!” Desperate, he shook her again, but it wasn’t helping. He was losing her.
Struggling to control his rising panic, Richard did the only thing he could think of. When he had been confronted with fear in the past, he had learned to control it. There was strength in control. He did that now. Maybe he could give her some of his strength. Closing his eyes, he shut his fear away, blocked off the panic, and sought the calm within himself. He let his mind focus on the strength within himself. In the quiet of his mind, he blocked off his fears and confusion, and centered his thoughts on the strength of that peace. He would not let the underworld have her.
He spoke her name in a calm voice. “Let me help you. You are not alone. I am here with you. Let me help you. Take my strength.”
His hands gripped her shoulders. He could feel her shaking as she cried in choking sobs and struggled to breathe. He visualized sending her his strength, through his hands, through his contact with her. He visualized that contact extending to her mind, lending her all of his strength and drawing her back, away from the blackness. He would be the spark of light and life in that blackness that would lead her back to this world, to him.
“Kahlan, I am here. I won’t leave you. You are not alone. Trust in me.” He gently squeezed her shoulders. “Come back to me. Please.”
He pictured the white-hot light in his mind, hoping it would help her. Please, dear spirits, he prayed, let her see in. Let it help her. Let her use my strength.
“Richard?” She called out the name as if searching for him.
He squeezed her shoulders again. “I’m here. I won’t leave you. Come back to me.”
She started breathing again. Her eyes focused on his face. Relief flooded her features when she recognized him, and she began to cry in what seemed a more normal way. She collapsed against him and held him as she would a rock in a river. He held her to him and let her cry on his shoulder while he told her it was all right. He was so afraid he had lost her to the underworld that he didn’t want to let go of her either.
Reaching down, he got a hold of the blanket and pulled it back up around her, wrapping her with it as best he could. Warmth was returning to her body again, another sign that she was safe now, but he was disturbed by how quickly the underworld had pulled her back. He didn’t think that was supposed to happen. She hadn’t been there long, and exactly how he had gotten her back, he didn’t know, but he knew it had been none too soon.
The fire gave its soft red cast to the inside of the wayward pine, and in the silence it seemed a secure haven again. An illusion, he knew. He held her and stroked her hair and rocked her gently for a long time. Something in the way she clung to him made him realize that no one had held her and comforted her for a very long time.
He didn’t know anything about wizards, or magic, but no one would send Kahlan through the boundary, through the underworld, without a powerful reason. He wondered what could be that important.
Pushing herself off his shoulder, she sat up, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I should not have touched you in that manner. I was…”
“It’s all right, Kahlan. It is the first responsibility of a friend to provide a shoulder to cry on.”
She nodded but didn’t raise her head. Richard felt her eyes on him as he took the soup off the fire to let it cool a little. He put another piece of wood into the flames, sending sparks swirling up with the smoke.
“How do you do that?” she asked in a soft voice.
“Do what?”
“How do you ask questions that fill my mind with pictures and make me answer, even when I have no intention to?”
He shrugged, a little self-conscious. “Zedd asks me that too. I guess it’s just something I was born with. Sometimes I think it’s a curse.” He turned from the fire to face her again. “I’m sorry, Kahlan, for asking you what you saw there. It was a thoughtless thing to do. Sometimes my common sense doesn’t keep up with my curiosity. I’m sorry I brought you pain. You being pulled back into the underworld, though, that shouldn’t have happened, should it?”
“No, it shouldn’t. It was almost as if when I thought back to what I had seen, someone was waiting to pull me back. I fear if you hadn’t been here, I might have been lost there. In the darkness, I saw a light. Something you did brought me back.”
Richard picked up the spoon while he thought. “Maybe just that you weren’t alone.”
Kahlan gave a weak shrug. “Maybe.”
“I only have one spoon. We can share it.” He took a spoonful of soup and blew on it before tasting it. “Not my best work, but it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.” That had the desired effect: she smiled. He gave her the spoon.
“If I’m to help you to stay ahead of the next quad, to stay alive, I need answers. And I don’t think we have much time.”
She nodded. “I understand. It’s all right.”
He let her eat some soup before he went on. “So what happened after the boundaries went up? What about the great wizard?”
Before handing him the spoon she took a piece of sausage. “One more thing happened before they went up. While the great wizard was holding the magic at bay, Panis Rahl took a final revenge. He sent a quad out of D’Hara…. They killed the wizard’s wife, and his daughter.”
Richard stared at her. “What did the wizard do to Rahl?”
“He held Rahl’s magic back and held him in D’Hara until just as the boundary was going up. At that very moment he sent a ball of wizard’s fire through it, letting it touch death, to give it the power of both worlds. Then the boundaries were there.”
Richard had never heard of wizard’s fire, but he didn’t think it required an explanation. “So what happened to Panis Rahl?”
“Well, the boundaries were there, so no one can say for sure, but I don’t think anyone would have traded their lot for that of Panis Rahl.”
Richard gave her the spoon, and she ate some more while he tried to imagine the righteous wrath of a wizard. After a few bites she gave back the spoon and continued.
“At first everything was fine, but then the council of the Midlands started taking actions the great wizard said were corrupt. Something to do with the magic. He found out the council had reneged on agreements about how the power of magic was to be controlled. He told them that their greed and the things they were doing would lead to worse horrors than those put down in the wars. They thought they knew better than he how the magic should be managed. They made a political appointment of a very important position that was a wizard’s and a wizard’s alone to fill. He was furious, he told them the position was one for which only a wizard could find the right person, and the appointment only a wi
zard’s to make. The great wizard had trained other wizards, but in their greed, these others sided with the council. He was enraged. He said his wife and daughter had died for nothing. As punishment, the great wizard told them he would do the worst thing possible to them; he would leave them to suffer the consequence of their actions.”
Richard smiled. That sounded like something Zedd would say.
“He said that if they knew so well how things were to be done, they did not need him. He refused to help them further, and vanished. But as he left, he cast a wizard’s web…”
“What’s that, a wizard’s web?”
“It is a spell a wizard casts. As he left, he cast a wizard’s web over everyone, making them forget his name, even what he looked like. So that is why no one knows what his name is or who he is.”
Kahlan tossed a stick in the fire, staring off into her thoughts. He went back to eating soup while he waited for her go on with the story. After a few minutes, she did.
“At the beginning of last winter, the movement started.”
He backed the spoonful of soup away from his mouth as he looked up. “What movement?”
“The Darken Rahl movement. It seemed to spring up out of nowhere. All of a sudden crowds of people in the bigger cities were chanting his name, calling him ‘Father Rahl,’ calling him the greatest man of peace that ever lived. The strange thing is, he is the son of Panis Rahl, from D’Hara, on the other side of the boundary, so how did anyone even know anything about him?” She paused, allowing him to ponder the significance of this.
“Anyway, then the gars started coming over the boundary. They killed a lot of people before everyone learned to stay inside at night.”
“But how did they get across the boundary?”
“It was weakening, only no one knew it. As it weakened, it faded from the top first, so the gars could fly over. In the spring it faded completely away. Then the People’s Peace Army, Darken Rahl’s army, marched right into the bigger cities. Instead of fighting him, crowds of Midlanders threw flowers at them wherever they went. People who didn’t throw flowers were hung.”
