Gently, his face gone calm, he reached one hand toward Sister Verna. His fingers clutched around her throat. Her eyes went wide with shock.

“Richard,” she whispered angrily, “take your hand from me.”

“As you have said, this is no game. Why did you kill her?”

His weight came off his feet. Richard floated a few inches into the air. He tightened his grip on her throat. When he didn’t release her, fire ignited all around them, roaring to life, a whorl of flame closing around him.

“I said, take your hand from me.”

In a moment more, the fire would consume Richard. Before she realized what she was doing, Kahlan had her fist out toward the Sister. Blue light crackled all around her wrist and hand. Little threads of blue lightning escaped from the sides as she struggled to restrain herself from releasing the bolt of power. Wisps of blue fire sizzled forth, throughout the spirit house, up the walls, across the ceiling and floor, everywhere except where the other two stood. She shook with the strain of holding back the power.

“Stop it!” The threads of blue lightning sucked the fire into them. “There will be no more killing today.” The blue light extinguished.

Silence again filled the room as Sister Verna stared at Kahlan. A hard edge of anger stole into her eyes. Richard settled to the ground and took his hand from the woman’s throat.

“I wouldn’t have harmed him. I only meant to frighten him into releasing me.” She turned her glare to Richard. “Who taught you to break a web?”

“No one taught me. I taught myself. Why did you kill Sister Elizabeth!”

“You taught yourself,” she mocked. “I told you. This is no game. It must go by the rules.” Her voice lost its edge. “I have known her for many years. If you had ever turned that sword of yours white, you would understand what it took for me to do as I did.”

Richard didn’t tell her he had turned the sword white. “You would expect me to put myself in your hands, after what you have done?”

“Your time is running out, Richard. After what I have seen today, I would be surprised if the headaches don’t soon kill you. I don’t know why it is that the pain hasn’t already put you down. Whatever is protecting you won’t last much longer. I know you don’t like to see anyone die. Neither do we, but please believe that what is done is done for you, to save you.”

She turned to Kahlan. “Be very careful with that power of yours, Mother Confessor. I doubt you have the slightest idea how dangerous it is.” Sister Verna pulled her hood up as her brown eyes turned to Richard. “You have been offered the first and second of three chances, and refused. I will return.” She leaned a little closer. “You only have one chance left. If you refuse it, you will die. Think on it carefully, Richard.”

After the door closed behind Sister Verna, Richard squatted next to the dead Sister. “she was doing something to me. Magic. I could feel it.”

“What did it feel like?”

Richard shook his head a little. “The first time they were here, I thought I felt something pulling me to accept their offer, but I was so afraid of the collar, I paid it no attention. This time, it was much stronger. It was magic. The magic was trying to force me to say yes, to accept the offer from the Sisters. I just thought about the collar until the force left and I was able to say no.”

He looked up at her. “You have any idea what’s going on? What she was doing, and what Sister Verna did, with the fire, and the rest of it?”

Kahlan’s hand still tingled from the blue lightening. “Yes. The Sisters are sorceresses.”

Richard rose smoothly to his feet. “sorceresses.” He watched her eyes for a long moment. “Why would they kill themselves when I said no?”

“I think it is to pass their power on to the next Sister, to make her stronger for when they try again.”

He looked down at the body. “Why would I be so important, that they would kill themselves to get me?”

“Maybe it is as they say. To help you.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “They don’t want one man, a stranger, to die, yet two of them have already died trying to get me to accept their help so a life wouldn’t be lost? How does that add up?”

“I don’t know, Richard, but I’m so scared it hurts. I’m afraid they could be telling the truth: that you don’t have much time, and the headaches are killing you. I’m afraid you won’t be able to control them much longer.” Her voice broke with emotion. “I don’t want to lose you.”

Richard slipped his arms around her. “It will be all right. I will bury her. The gathering will be in a few hours. Tomorrow we will be in Aydindril and then I will be safe. Zedd will know what to do.”

She could only nod against his shoulder.

Kahlan sat naked in the circle with eight naked men. Richard was to her left, painted, as were she and the elders, with the black and white mud except in a small circle in the center of his chest. In the dim light coming from the small fire behind her, she could see the wild jumble of lines and swirls sweeping diagonally across his face. They all wore the same mask, so that the ancestors” spirits might see them. She wondered if she looked as savage to him as he looked to her. The unfamiliar, acrid smell from the fire made her nose itch. None of the elders scratched their noses; they only stared at nothing and chanted sacred words to the spirits.

The door slammed shut by itself, making her jump.

The Bird Man’s distant eyes came up. “From now, until we are finished, near dawn, no one may go out, no one may come in. The door is barred by the spirits.”

Kahlan didn’t like the idea that, as Richard had said, this could be a trap. She squeezed his hand more tightly. He returned the squeeze. At least, she thought, she was with him. She hoped she could protect him. She hoped she could call the lightning if she had to.

The Bird Man fished out a frog and then passed the woven basket to the next elder. Kahlan stared at the skulls arranged in a circle in the center as each elder took a frog and began rubbing its back against the bare circle of skin on his chest. As they did so, each rolled his head back and chanted different words. Without looking over, Savidlin passed her the basket.

Closing her eyes, she reached inside and finally caught a squirming, kicking spirit frog. Its smooth, slimy skin was revolting. Swallowing hard, and taking a mental grip on her Confessor’s power to try to keep from releasing it unintentionally, she pressed the frog’s back to the skin between her breasts as she passed the basket to Richard.

Tingling tightness spread across her skin. She freed the frog and took up Richard’s hand once more as the walls began to waver, as if seen through heat and smoke. Her mind tried in vain to hold on to the images of the spirit house around her. They drifted away as she felt herself spinning around the skulls.

Soft sensations caressed her skin. Light danced from the skulls in the center and filled her eyes. Sounds of the boldas and drums and chanting filled her ears. The pungent smell from the fire filled her lungs. As once before, the light from the center brightened, taking them into it, into the silken void, spinning them around.

And then there were shapes around them. Kahlan remembered them, too, from before: the ancestors” spirits. She felt a gossamer touch on her shoulder: a hand; a spirit hand.

The Bird Man’s mouth moved, but it wasn’t his voice. It was the joined voices of the ancestors” spirits, flat, hollow, dead.

“Who calls this gathering?”

Kahlan leaned toward Richard, and whispered, “They want to know who calls this gathering.”

He nodded. “I do. I call this gathering.”

The touch left her shoulder and the spirits all floated from behind them into the center of the circle.