"Then it has to be the same beast."

In the early morning downpour, Richard surveyed the shadows among the trees all around them. "That would be my guess."

Cara, too, watched the woods all around for any sign of threat. "Lucky for us the rain came when it did."

"I don't think it was the rain that did it."

She wiped water from her eyes. "Then what did?"

"I don't know for sure, but maybe just the fact that I escaped its trap."

"I can't imagine a beast with that kind of power being so easily discouraged-the last time or this time."

"I don't have any other ideas. I know someone who might, though." He took Cara by the arm. "Come on. Let's get our things together and get out of here."

She gestured off through the woods. "You go get the horses. Let me pack up our bedrolls. We can dry them out later."

"No, I want us out of this place right now." He quickly pulled a shirt out of his pack, along with a cloak to try to keep relatively dry. "We'll leave the horses. With them fenced into a place where they have grass and water they'll be fine where they are for a while."

"But the horses would get us away from here faster."

Richard kept an eye on the surrounding woods as he stuffed his arms through the sleeves of his shirt. "We can't take them over the mountain pass-it's too narrow in places-and we can't take horses down into Agaden Reach where Shota lives. They can get a needed rest while we go see the witch woman. Then, when we find out what Shota knows about where Kahlan is, we can come back and get the horses. Maybe Shota will even know how we can get rid of this beast that's following me."

Cara nodded. "Makes sense, except I'd rather get out of here as quickly as we can and horses would help in that."

Richard squatted down and started rolling up his sodden bedroll. "I agree with the sentiment, but the pass is close and the horses can't make it over, so let's just get moving. Like I said, the horses need a rest anyway or they're not going to be any good to us."

Cara stuffed the few things she had out back into her pack. She, too, pulled out a cloak. She lifted the pack by a strap and threw it up onto a shoulder. "We'll need to get things out of our saddlebags, back with the horses."

"Leave them. I don't want to have to carry any more than we must; it would just slow us down."

Cara gazed off through the veil of rain. "But someone might steal our supplies."

"Thieves won't come near Shota."

She frowned up at him. "Why not?"

"Shota and her companion walk these woods. She's a rather intolerant woman."

"Oh great," Cara muttered.

Richard swung his pack around onto his back and started out. "Come on. Hurry."

She scurried after him. "Have you ever considered that maybe the witch woman is more dangerous than the beast?"

Richard glanced back over his shoulder. "You're a regular little miss sunshine this morning, aren't you?"

The rain had turned to snow after they'd climbed out of the dense forest and made it into the crooked wood at the transition out of the tree line. Because of the harsh conditions common at that elevation, the stunted trees, mantled in meager vegetation, grew in bizarre, windblown shapes. Walking through the crooked wood was like passing among the petrified forms of desiccated souls whose limbs were frozen for all time in tormented stances, as if they had emerged from their graves only to find their feet forever anchored in hallowed ground, preventing them from ever escaping the temporal world.

While there were those who would not enter the surreal world of the crooked wood without some form of mystical protection, Richard wasn't superstitious about the place. In fact, he considered all such beliefs to be the refuge of the willfully ignorant. Richard saw through the trappings to what lay beneath all superstition-nothing less than the call to surrender to the view of man as helpless in accomplishing his own ends and dealing with the reality of the world around him in order to further his own survival, instead embracing the notion that he existed only at the whim of vague and unknowable forces that can only be persuaded to stay their cruel and merciless impulses if man falls to his knees in supplication, or, if they have to enter a spiritual place, by carrying the proper fetish.

While Richard had always found it eerie being in a crooked wood, he knew what it was and why it had grown to be that way, even if it still fell rather haunting to be in such a place. He was aware that there were basically two ways to deal with that primordial emotion. The superstitious solution was to carry sacred talismans and amulets to ward off spiteful demons and incomprehensible dark forces thought to inhabit such places, hoping that the fates would be persuaded to kindly stay their fickle hand. Even though people proclaimed with complete confidence that such mysterious forces were fundamentally unknowable to mere mortals, they nonetheless passionately believed, without evidence, that they could be certain that the power of charms would soothe the savage temper of those menacing forces, insisting that faith was all that was necessary-as if faith were a mystical plaster with the power to patch over all the yawning holes in their convictions.

Believing in free will, Richard instead chose the second way of dealing with such fear, which was to be watchful, alert, and ready to take responsibility for his own survival and life. At its core, that battle of belief between the cruel fates and free will was his essential disagreement with prophecy and why he discounted it. To choose to believe in fate was at once an admission of free will and at the same time an abdication of one's responsibility to it.

As he and Cara passed through the crooked wood, Richard kept a watchful eye out but he saw no legendary beasts or vengeful ghosts. Only the wind-borne snow wandered the wood.

Having traveled at a breakneck pace for so long in the oppressive heat and humidity of summer, they found that the encounter with bitter cold high up in the mountain pass made the effort of the climb all the more difficult, especially after being drenched by the miserable rain. Despite being fatigued from the altitude, Richard knew that, as wet as they were, they had to keep moving at a brisk pace to keep warm or the cold could easily overcome them. He was well aware that the seductive song of the cold could entice people to stop and lie down for a rest, luring them to surrender to sleep and the death that waited under its inviting cloak. As Zedd had once told him, dead was dead. Richard knew that he would be no less dead from the cold than he would be from an arrow.

More than that, though, he and Cara were both eager to put distance between them and the trap that had nearly captured him back at their camp. His burns from the brief contact with his would-be death trap had blistered. He shuddered to think of what had nearly happened.

At the same time, he was leery about going to see Shota in her lair at Agaden Reach. The last time he had been in the Reach she had told him that if he ever came back there she would kill him. Richard didn't doubt her word or her ability to carry out the threat. Even so, he believed Shota would be his best chance of getting the kind of help necessary to find Kahlan.

He was desperate to find someone who could tell him something useful, and after going through a list of things he might do, people he might go to, and in the end he couldn't come up with anyone else who could be as potentially informative as Shota. Nicci hadn't been able to offer any solutions. Zedd, he knew, might be able to help him in some ways, and maybe there were others with the capacity to be able to add some piece to the puzzle, but to Richard's mind, when all was said and done, none of them were as likely as Shota to be able to point him in the right direction. That alone made the choice simple.