"Where is she now!"

Marlin shook in terror. "I don't know! I haven't seen her for days, since I came to the city."

Kahlan gritted her teeth. "What did she look like, then?"

Marlin licked his lips again as his gaze flicked back and forth between the two women. "I don't know. I don't know how to describe her. A young woman. I don't think she was long out of being a novice She was young-looking, like you, Mother Confessor. Pretty. I thought she was pretty. She had long hair. Long brown hair."

Kahlan and Cara shared a look. "Nadine," they said as one.

Mistress Cara?" Marlin called from below.

Cara turned, hanging by one hand on the next rung down from Kahlan. She held the torch out in her other hand. "What!"

"How will I sleep, Mistress Cara? If you don't come back tonight, and if I have to stand, then how will I sleep?"

"Sleep? That's not my concern. I told you-you must remain on your feet, on that spot. Move, sit, or lie down, and you will be very sorry. You will be all alone with the pain. Understand?"

"Yes, Mistress Cara," came the weak voice from the darkness below.

Once Kahlan was up in the hall, she reached down and took the torch from Cara, freeing the Mord-Sith to use both hands to climb out. Kahlan handed the torch to a relieved-looking Sergeant Collins.

"Collins, I'd like all of you to remain here. Keep the door locked and don't go down there-for anything. Don't let anyone else so much as take a peek."

"Yes, Mother Confessor." Sergeant Collins hesitated. "Is it dangerous, then?"

Kahlan understood his concern. "No. Cara has control of his power. He's incapable of using his magic."

She took appraisal of the troops clogging the dingy stone corridor. There had to be close to a hundred.

"I don't know if we'll be back tonight," she told the sergeant. "Get the rest of your men down here. Divide them into squads. Take shifts so that there's at least this many down here at all times. Lock all the barricade doors. Post archers at the doors and at each end of this hall."

"I thought you said there was no need for concern, that he couldn't use his magic."

Kahlan smiled. "Do you want to have to explain it to Cara, here, if someone sneaks in and rescues her charge out from under your nose in her absence?"

He scratched his stubble as he glanced at Cara. "I understand, Mother Confessor. No one will be allowed within shouting distance of this door."

"Still don't trust me?" Cara asked, when they were out of earshot of the soldiers.

Kahlan offered a friendly smile. "My father was King Wyborn. He was Cyrilla's father, and then mine. He was a great warrior. He taught me that it's impossible to be too cautious with prisoners."

Cara shrugged as they passed a sputtering torch. "Fine by me. It doesn't hurt my feelings. But I have his magic. He's helpless."

"I still don't understand how you can fear magic, and have such control over it."

"I told you. Only if he specifically attacks me with it."

"And how do you take control of it? How do you make it yours to command?"

Cara spun the Agiel on the end of the chain at her wrist as she walked. "I don't know myself. We just do it. The Master Rahl himself takes part in some of the training of Mord-Sith. It is during that; phase that the ability is instilled in us. It's not magic from within us, but transferred to us, I guess."

Kahlan shook her head. "Yet you don't know, really, what you're doing. And still it works."

With her fingertips, Cara hooked the iron rail at a corner, swung around it, and followed Kahlan up the stone stairs. "You don't have to know what you are doing in order for magic to work."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Lord Rahl told us that a child is magic: the magic of Creation. You don't have to know what you are doing to make a child.

"One time, this girl-a very naive girl-of about fourteen summers, a daughter of one of the staff at the People's Palace in D Hara, told me that Darken Rahl- Father Rahl, he liked to be called-had given her a rosebud and it had bloomed in her fingers as he smiled down at her. She said that that was how she had come to be with child-through his magic."

Cara laughed without humor. "She really thought that that was how she became pregnant. It never occurred to her that it was because she had spread her legs for him. So you see? She did magic, created a son, and without knowing how she had really done it."

Kahlan paused on the landing, in the shadows, and seized the crook of Cara's elbow, halting her.

"All Richard's family is dead-Darken Rahl killed his stepfather, his mother died when he was young, and his half brother, Michael, betrayed Richard… allowing Denna to capture him. After Richard defeated Darken Rahl, Richard forgave Michael for what he had done to him, but ordered him executed because his treachery had knowingly caused the torture and death of countless people at the hands of Darken Rahl.

"I know how much family means to Richard. He would be thrilled to come to know a half brother. Could we send word to the palace in D'Hara and have him brought here? Richard would be-"

Cara shook her head and glanced away. "Darken Rahl tested the child and discovered that he was born without the gift. Darken Rahl was eager to have a gifted heir. He considered anything less deformed and worthless."

"I see." Silence filled the stairwell. "The girl… the mother…?"

Cara heaved a sigh, realizing that Kahlan wanted to hear it all. "Darken Rahl had a temper. A sick temper. He crushed the girl's windpipe with his bare hands after he had made her watch him.. well, watch him kill her son. When ungifted offspring came to his attention it often made him angry, and then he did that."

Kahlan let her hand fall away from Cara's arm.

Cara's eyes came up; the calm had repossessed them. "A few of the Mord-Sith suffered a similar fate. Fortunately, I never came to be with child when he chose me for his amusement."

Kahlan sought to fill the silence. "I'm glad Richard freed you from bondage to that beast. Freed everyone."

Cara nodded, her eyes as cold as Kahlan had ever seen them. "He is more than Lord Rahl to us. Anyone who ever hurts him will answer to the Mord-Sith-to me."

Kahlan suddenly saw what Cara had said about Richard being allowed to «keep» Kahlan in a new light; it was the kindest thing she could think to do for him: allowing him to have the one he loved, despite her concern for the danger to his heart.

"You'll have to wait in line," Kahlan said.

Cara at last grinned. "Let us pray to the good spirits that we never have to fight over first rights."

"I have a better idea: let's keep harm from reaching him in the first place. But remember, when we get up there, that we don't know for sure who this Nadine is. If she is a Sister of the Dark, she is a very dangerous woman. But we don't know for sure that she is. She might be a dignitary: a woman of rank and importance. It could even be that she's nothing more than a rich nobleman's daughter. Maybe he banished her poor, farmboy lover, and she's simply looking for him. I don't want you harming an innocent person. Let's just keep our heads."

"I'm not a monster, Mother Confessor."

"I know. I didn't mean to say that you were. I just don't want our desire to protect Richard to make us lose our heads. That includes me. Now, let's get up to Petitioners' Hall."

Cara frowned. "Why would we go there? Why not go to Nadine's room?"

Kahlan started up the second flight, two steps at a time. "There are two hundred eighty-eight guest rooms in the Confessors' Palace, divided among six separate wings at distant points. I was distracted before, and didn't think to tell the guards where to put her, so we have to go ask.