"You mean it was more common for them to be born?"

"No, the ones who had been born began to grow up, get married, and have children-ungifted children."

Kahlan looked over in surprise. "The broken links in the chain of the gift that you were talking about, before?"

Richard nodded. "They were children of the Lord Rahl. Back then, it wasn't like it has been in recent times with Darken Rahl, or his father.

From what I can tell, all the children of the Lord Rahl and his wife were part of his family, and treated as such, even though they were born with this problem. It seems that the wizards tried to help them- both the direct offspring, and then their children, and their children. They tried to cure them."

"Cure them? Cure them of what?"

Richard lifted his arms in a heated gesture of frustration. "Of being born ungifted-of being born without even that tiny spark of the gift like everyone else has. The wizards back then tried to restore the breaks in the link."

"How did they think they would be able to cure someone of not having even the spark of the gift?"

Richard pressed his lips together as he thought of a way to explain it_"Well, you know the wizards who sent you across the boundary to find Zedd?"

"Yes," Kahlan said in a suspicious drawl.

"They weren't born with the gift-born wizards, that is. What were they-second or third wizards? Something like that? You told me about them, once." He snapped his fingers as it came to him. "Wizards of the third Order. Right?"

"Yes. Just one, Giller, was the Second Order. None were able to pass the tests to be a wizard of the First Order, like Zedd, because they didn't have the gift. Being wizards was their calling, but they weren't gifted in the conventional sense-but they still had that spark of the gift that everyone has."

"That's what I'm talking about," Richard said. "They weren't born with the gift to be wizards-just the spark of it like everyone else. Yet Zedd somehow trained them to be able to use magic-to be wizards- even though they weren't born that way, born with the gift to be wizards."

"Richard, that was a lifetime of work."

"I know, but the point is that Zedd was able to help them to be wizards-at least wizards enough to pass his tests and conjure magic."

"Yes, I suppose. When I was young they taught me about the workings of magic and the Wizard's Keep, about those people and creatures in the Midlands with magic. They may not have been born with the gift, but they had worked a lifetime to become wizards. They were wizards," she insisted.

Richard's mouth turned up with the kind of smile that told her that she had just framed the essence of his argument for him. "But they had not been born with that aspect, that attribute, of the gift." He leaned toward her.

"Zedd, besides training them, must have used magic to help them become wizards, right?"

Kahlan frowned at the thought. "I don't know. They never told me about their training to become wizards. That was never germane to their relationship with me or my training."

"But Zedd has Additive Magic," Richard pressed. "Additive can change things, add to them, make them more than they are."

"All right," Kahlan cautiously agreed. "What's the point?"

"The point is that Zedd took people who weren't born with the gift to be wizards and he trained them but-more importantly-he must have also used his power to help them along that path by altering how they were born. He had to have added to their gift to make them more than they were born to be." Richard glanced over at her as his horse stepped around a small, scraggly pine. "He altered people with magic."

Kahlan let out a deep breath as she looked away from Richard and ahead at the gentle spread of grassy hills to either side of them, as she tried to fully grasp the concept of what he was saying.

"I never considered that before, but all right," she finally said. "So, what of it?"

"We thought that only the wizards of old could do such a thing, but, apparently, it's not a lost art nor would it be entirely so far-fetched as I had imagined for the wizards back then to believe they could change what was, into what they thought it ought to be. What I'm saying is that, like what Zedd did to give people that with which they were not born, so too did the wizards of old try to give people born as pillars of Creation a spark of the gift."

Kahlan felt a chill of realization. The implication was staggering. Not just the wizards of old, but Zedd, too, had used magic to alter the very nature of people, the very nature of what they were, how they were born.

She supposed that he had only helped them to achieve what was their greatest ambition in life-their calling-by enhancing what they already had been born with. He helped them to reach their full potential. But that was for men who had the innate potential. While the wizards of long ago probably had done similar things to help people, they had also sometimes used their power for less benevolent reasons.

"So," he said, "the wizards back then, who were experienced in altering people's abilities, thought that these people called the pillars of Creation could be cured."

"Cured of not having been born gifted," she said in a flat tone of incredulity.

"Not exactly. They weren't trying to make them into wizards, but they thought they could at least be cured of not having that infinitesimal spark of the gift that simply enabled them to interact with magic."

Kahlan took a purging breath. "So then what happened?"

"This book was written after the great war had ended-after the barrier had been created and the Old World had been sealed away. It was written after the New World was at peace, or, at least, after the barrier kept the Old World contained.

"But remember what we found out before? That we think that during the war Wizard Ricker and his team had done something to halt Sub-tractive Magic's ability to be passed on to the offspring of wizards? Well, after the war, those born with the gift started becoming increasingly uncommon, and those who were being born were being born without the Subtractive side."

"So, after the war," she said, "those who were born with the gift of both Additive and Subtractive were rapidly becoming nonexistent. We already knew that."

"Right." Richard leaned toward her and lifted the book. "But then, when there are fewer wizards being born, all of a sudden the wizards additionally realize that they have all these pristinely ungifted-breaks altogether in the link to magic-on their hands. Suddenly, on top of the problem of the birth rate of those with the gift to be wizards dropping, they were faced with what they called pillars of Creation."

Kahlan swayed in the saddle as she thought about it, trying to imagine the situation at the Keep at the time. "I can see that they would have been pretty concerned."

His voice lowered meaningfully. "They were desperate."

Kahlan laid her reins over, moving in behind Richard as his horse stepped around an ancient, fallen tree that had been bleached silver from the sweltering sun.

"So, I suppose," Kahlan asked as she walked her horse back up beside him, "that the wizards started to do the same thing Zedd did? Trained those who had the calling-those who wished to be wizards but had not been born with the gift?"

"Yes, but back then," Richard said, "they trained those with only Additive to be able to use the Subtractive, too, like full wizards of the time. As time went on, though, even that was being lost to them, and they were only able to do what Zedd did-train men to be wizards but they could only wield Additive Magic.

"But that isn't really what the book is about," Richard said as he gestured dismissively. "That was just a side point to record what they had attempted. They started out with confidence. They thought that these pillars of Creation could be cured of being pristinely ungifted, much like wizards with only Additive could be trained to use both sides of the magic, and those without the gift for wizardry could be made wizards able to use at least the Additive side of it."