"Richard," Nicci said with strained patience, "I'm sure there could be any number of explanations as to why a rock looks disturbed to you. For all I know, it could be disturbed, as you suggest. But maybe an elk or a deer kicked it as they went by and over time their tracks have been worn away."

Richard was shaking his head. "No. Look at the socket. It's still well formed. You can read by how much the edges have degraded that it happened only a few days ago. Time-especially in the rain-erodes such edges and works to fill in the gap. Any deer or elk kicking this rock would have left tracks that would be just as recent. Not only that, but a hoof would have scuffed it, the same as a boot. I'm telling you, three days ago someone stumbled on this rock."

Nicci gestured. "Well, that dead branch over there could have fallen on it and disturbed it."

"If it did, then the lichen growing on the rock would show the scar of the impact and the branch would show evidence that it had hit something hard. It doesn't-I already looked."

Cara threw up her hands. "Maybe a squirrel jumped from a tree and landed on it."

"Not nearly heavy enough to have moved this rock," Richard said.

Nicci drew a weary breath. "So what you're saying is that the fact that there are no tracks from this woman, Kahlan, proves that she exists."

"No, that's not what I'm saying, not the way you're putting it, anyway. But it does confirm it if you look at everything together-if you put it all into context."

Nicci's hands fisted at her sides. There were important matters that had to be addressed. They were running out of time. Instead of dealing with urgent matters in need of their attention, they were out in the middle of the woods looking at a rock. She could feel the blood going to her face.

"That's ridiculous. All you've shown us, Richard, is proof that this woman you imagined is just that-imagined. She doesn't exist. She left no tracks-because you only dreamed her! There's nothing mysterious about it! It's not magic! It's simply a dream!"

Richard abruptly rose up before her. He changed in a heartbeat from a man of calm intensity to a figure of heart-stopping presence, power, and awakening anger.

But rather than confront her, he took a step past her, back toward the way they'd come from, and stopped. Still and tense, Richard stared back through the woods.

"Something's wrong," he said in low warning.

Cara's Agiel spun up into her fist. Victor's brow tightened as his fingers found the mace hanging from his belt.

In the distance back through the dripping forest, Nicci heard the sudden, wild alarm cries of ravens.

The cries that came next reminded her of nothing so much as the sounds of bloody murder.

Richard bounded back through the woods, back toward the waiting men, back toward the screams. He raced headlong through a blur of trees, branches, brush, ferns, and vines. He leaped over rotting logs and used a well-planted boot to bound over a boulder. He dodged his way through stands of young pines and a cluster of flowering dogwood. Without slowing, he batted aside tamarack limbs and ducked under balsam boughs. Nets of dead branches on the lower trunks of young spruce trees snatched at his clothes as he charged past. More than once, dead limbs jutting out, spearlike, from larger trees nearly impaled him before he sidestepped at the last instant.

Running at such a reckless speed through dense woods, let alone in the rain, was treacherous. It was hard to recognize hazards in time to avoid them. Any one of a number of protruding branches could easily gouge out an eye. One slip on wet leaves or moss or rocks could cause a skull-splitting tumble. Driving a foot down into a crevice or fissure at a dead run would likely shatter a leg. Richard had once known a young man who had done just that. His broken leg and ankle had never mended right, leaving him partially crippled for life.

Richard focused his concentration on his intended path, taking as much care as possible without slowing.

He dared not slow.

The whole way as he ran, he heard the terrible screams and cries, the shrieks, and the sickening snapping sounds. He could also hear Cara, Victor, and Nicci crashing through the brush behind him. He didn't wait for them to catch up. Every long stride, every leap, took him farther out ahead of them.

Running as fast as he could, gasping for air, Richard was surprised to find himself winded before he should have been. At first disconcerted, he then remembered the reason. Nicci had said that he wasn't yet recovered and because he had lost a lot of blood he would need rest to gain back his strength. He kept running. He would have to make do with what strength he had. It wasn't that much farther.

More than that, though, he kept running because the men needed help. These were men who had come to his aid when he had been in trouble. He didn't know what was happening, but it was clear to Richard that they were in some kind of peril.

On the morning of the attack, if he'd known more about how to call upon his gift, he might have been able to use that ability to stop the soldiers before Victor and his men had arrived. Had he been able to do that, three of those men would not have died in the fighting. Of course, had Richard not been where he was and taken action to stop the soldiers, then Victor and his men might well have all ended up murdered at their camp, most while they slept.

Richard couldn't help feeling that he might have done more. He didn't want to see any of these men hurt; he kept running with all his strength, holding back nothing. He would use whatever strength he had. He could gain back his strength. Lives could not be gotten back.

There were times like this when he wished that he knew more about how to call upon his gift, but his ability regrettably worked differently than in others. Instead of functioning through cognizant direction, as Nicci's power did, Richard's ability worked through anger and need. The morning that the Imperial Order soldiers had poured in all around him he had drawn his sword for the purpose of his survival and in so doing had given his anger over to the weapon. Unlike his own gift, he knew that he could count on the power of his sword.

Others with the gift learned to use their ability from a young age. Richard never had. It had been an upbringing of peace and security that had given him a chance at life, at growing up to profoundly value life. The drawback was that such an upbringing had also left him unaware of and ignorant of his own talent.

Now that Richard was grown, though, learning to use his latent ability was proving more than difficult, not only because of his upbringing, but because his particular form of the gift was so extraordinarily rare. Neither Zedd nor the Sisters of the Light had had any success at all in teaching him how to consciously direct his power.

He knew little more than what Nathan Rahl, the prophet, had told him, that his power was most often sparked through anger and a particular, specific kind of desperate need, which Richard had not been able to identify or isolate. As far as he had been able to determine, the character of the need required to ignite his power was unique to each circumstance.

Richard also knew that using magic did not involve whim. No amount of wishing or straining could ever produce results. The initiation and use of magic required specific conditions; he just didn't understand how to produce or provide those conditions.

Even wizards of great ability sometimes had to use books to insure that they got the details right if the specific magic they wanted was to work. At a young age, Richard had memorized one of those books, The Book of Counted Shadows. That was the book which Darken Rahl had been hunting for after he had put the boxes of Orden in play.