Died, that was what she meant. He could have died. Richard took a deep breath. He'd had no idea of everything that had gone on over the last three days. He basically recalled the battle and then waking when he heard the wolf howl.

"Nicci," he said, trying to show her that he could be calm and understanding even though he felt neither, "what does this have to do with Kahlan?"

Her features were set in an uneasy mix of empathy and disquiet. "Richard, this woman, Kahlan, is just a product of your mind when you were in that confused state of shock and delirium before I could heal you."

"Nicci, I wasn't imagining.»

"You were at the brink of death," she said as she held up a hand, commanding silence and for him to listen. "In your mind you were grasping for someone to help you-someone like this person, Kahlan. Please believe me when I say that it's understandable. But you're awake now and must face the truth. She was figment born of your dire condition."

Richard was dumbfounded to hear her even suggesting such a thing. He turned to Cara, imploring her to come to her senses, if not his rescue. "How could you possibly think such a thing? How could you believe it?"

"Haven't you ever had a dream where you were terrified and then your long-dead mother was there, alive, and she was going to help you?" Cara's unblinking blue eyes seemed focused elsewhere. "Don't you remember waking after such dreams and feeling sure that it had been real, that your mother was alive again, really alive, and that she was going to help you?

Don't you remember how much you wanted to cling to that feeling? Don't you remember how desperately you wanted it to be real?"

Nicci lightly touched the place where the arrow had been, where his flesh was now whole. "After I'd healed you to the point that you were past the worst of the crisis, you went into a long dreaming state of sleep. You carried these desperate illusions forward with you. You dreamed about them, added to them, lived with them longer than any ordinary sleep. This prolonged dream, this comforting illusion, this divine longing, had time to seep into every corner of your thoughts, saturate every part of your mind, and became real to you, just as Cara says, but, because of the length of time you were asleep, it gained even more power. Now that you've only just come awake from that protracted sleep you are merely having a little trouble filtering out what part of your ordeal was a dream and what was real."

"Nicci is right, Lord Rahl." Richard couldn't remember Cara ever looking so dead serious. "You just dreamed it-like you dreamed that you heard a wolf howl. It sounds like a nice dream-this woman you dreamed you married-but that's all it is: a dream."

Richard's mind reeled. The concept of Kahlan being nothing more than a dream, a figment of his imagination born in his delirium, was, at its core, terrifying. That terror stormed unchecked through him. If what they were saying was true, then he didn't want to be awake. If it was true, then he wished that Nicci had never healed him. He didn't want to live in a world where Kahlan wasn't real.,

He groped for solid ground in a sea of dark disorder, too stunned to think of a way to fight such a shapeless threat. He felt confused by his ordeal and that he didn't remember much of it. His certainty in what he regarded as truth began to crumble.

He caught himself. He knew better than to believe a fear and thus give it life. While he could not fathom how they'd latched on to such a monstrous idea, he knew that Kahlan wasn't a dream.

"After all that you've both shared with her, how can you two possibly say that Kahlan is just a dream?"

"How indeed," Nicci asked, "if what you're saying were true?"

"Lord Rahl, we would never be so cruel as to try to deceive you about something so important to you."

Richard blinked at them. Could it be? He frantically tried to imagine if there was any possibility that what they were saying could be true.

His fists tightened. "Stop it-both of you!"

It was a plea for a return of sanity. He hadn't meant for it to come out as threatening, but it did. Nicci took half a step back. Cara's face lost a little of its color.

Richard couldn't slow his breathing, his racing heart.

"I don't remember my dreams." He looked at each of them in turn. "Not since I was little. I don't remember any dreams while I was hurt, or while I slept. None. Dreams are meaningless. Kahlan is not. Don't do this to me-please. This isn't helping anything, it's only making it worse. Please, if something has happened to Kahlan, I need to know."

That had to be it. Something had happened to her and they just didn't think he was strong enough yet to handle the news.

A worse fear by far welled up when he recalled Nicci saying that she couldn't raise the dead. Could they be trying to shield him from that?

He gritted his teeth with the effort not to scream at them, to keep his voice level and in control. "Where is Kahlan?"

Nicci cautiously dipped her head, as if beseeching his forgiveness. "Richard, she is just in your mind. I know that such things can seem very real, but it's not. You dreamed her up while you were hurt — nothing more."

"I did not dream up Kahlan." He again turned his plea to the Mord-Sith. "Cara, you've been with us for more than two years. You've fought with us, fought for us. Back when Nicci was a Sister of the Dark and she brought me down here to the Old World, you stood in for me and protected Kahlan. She has protected you. You've shared and endured things that most people could never even imagine. You've become friends."

He gestured to her Agiel, the weapon that looked like nothing more than a short, thin red leather rod hanging by a thin gold chain from her right wrist.

"You even named Kahlan a sister of the Agiel."

Cara stood stiff and mute.

Cara's conferring on Kahlan the title of sister of the Agiel had been an informal but deeply solemn accolade from a former mortal enemy to a woman she had come to respect and trust.

"Cara, you may have started out as a protector to the Lord Rahl, but you've become more than that to Kahlan and me. You've become like family."

Cara would willingly and without hesitation sacrifice her life to protect Richard. She was not only ruthless but fearless in her defense of him.

The one thing Cara did fear was disappointing him.

That fear was clearly evident in her eyes.

"Thank you, Lord Rahl," she finally said in a meek voice, "for including me in your wonderful dream."

Richard's flesh prickled as a wave of cold dread washed up through him. Overwhelmed, he pressed his hand to his forehead, pushing back his hair. These two women were not inventing some story for fear of telling him bad news. They were telling him the truth.

The truth as they saw it, anyway. The truth somehow twisted into a nightmare.

He couldn't make any of it work in his mind, couldn't make any sense of it. After all they had shared with Kahlan, all they had been through with her, all their time together, it was impossible for him to understand how these two women could be saying this to him.

And yet, they were.

Although he couldn't conceive of the cause, something was obviously and dreadfully wrong. A suffocating sense of foreboding settled over him. It felt as if the whole world had been turned upside down and now he couldn't make the pieces fit back together.

He had to do something-what he had been about to do just before the soldiers had attacked them. Maybe it wasn't too late.