Anyone hungry?" Tom called to the three women.

Richard pulled a lantern from the wagon and, after finally getting it lit with a steel and flint, set it on a shelf of rock. He passed a suspicious look among the three women as they approached, but apparently thought better of saying anything.

As Kahlan sat close at Richard's side, Tom offered him the first chunk he sliced from a long length of sausage. When Richard declined, Kahlan accepted it. Tom sliced off another piece and passed it to Cara and then another to Friedrich.

Jennsen had gone to the wagon to search through her pack. Kahlan thought that maybe she just wanted to be alone a moment to collect herself.

Kahlan knew how harsh her words had sounded, but she couldn't allow herself to do Jennsen the disservice of coddling her with pleasing lies.

With Jennsen reassuringly close by, Betty lay down beside Rusty, Jennsen's red roan mare. The horse and the goat were fast friends. The other horses seemed pleased by the visitor and took keen interest in her two kids, giving them a good sniff when they came close enough.

When Jennsen walked over displaying a small piece of carrot, Betty rose up in a rush. Her tail went into a blur of expectant wagging. The horses whinnied and tossed their heads, hoping not to be left out. Each in turn received a small treat and a scratch behind the ears.

Had they a fire, they could have cooked a stew, rice, or beans; grid-died some bannock; or maybe have made a nice soup. Despite how hungry she was, Kahlan didn't think she would have had the energy to cook, so she was content to settle for what was at hand. Jennsen retrieved strips of dried meat from her pack, offering them around. Richard declined this, too, instead eating hard travel biscuits, nuts, and dried fruit.

"But don't you want any meat?" Jennsen asked as she sat down on her bedroll opposite him. "You need more than that to eat. You need something substantial."

"I can't eat meat. Not since the gift came to life in me."

Jennsen's wrinkled her nose with a puzzled look. "Why would your gift not allow you to eat meat?"

Richard leaned to the side, resting his weight on an elbow as he momentarily surveyed the sweep of stars, searching for the words to explain.

"Balance, in nature," he said at last, "is a condition resulting from the interaction of all things in existence. On a simple level, look at how predators and prey are in balance. If there were too many predators, and the prey were all eaten, then the thriving predators, too, would end up starving and dying out.

"The lack of balance would be deadly to both prey and predator; the world, for them both, would end. They exist in balance because acting in accordance with their nature results in balance. Balance is not their conscious intent.

"People are different. Without our conscious intent, we don't necessarily achieve the balance that our survival often requires.

"We must learn to use our minds, to think, if we're to survive. We plant crops, we hunt for fur to keep us warm, or raise sheep and gather their wool and learn how to weave it into cloth. We have to learn how to build shelter. We balance the value of one thing against another and trade goods to exchange what we've made for what we need that others have made or grown or built or woven or hunted.

"We balance what we need with what we know of the realities of the world. We balance what we want against our rational self-interest, not against fulfilling a momentary impulse, because we know that our long-term survival requires it. We use wood to build a fire in the hearth in order to keep from freezing on a winter night, but, despite how cold we might be when we're building the fire, we don't build the fire too big, knowing that to do so would risk burning our shelter down after we're warm and asleep."

"But people also act out of shortsighted selfishness, greed, and lust for power. They destroy lives." Jennsen lifted her arm out toward the darkness. "Look at what the Imperial Order is doing-and succeeding at. They don't care about weaving wool or building houses or trading goods. They slaughter people just for conquest. They take what they want."

"And we resist them. We've learned to understand the value of life, so we fight to reestablish reason. We are the balance."

Jennsen hooked some of her hair back behind an ear. "What does all this have to do with not eating meat?"

"I was told that wizards, too, must balance themselves, their gift- their power-in the things they do. I fight against those, like the Imperial Order, who would destroy life because it has no value to them, but that requires that I do the same terrible thing by destroying what is my highest value-life. Since my gift has to do with being a warrior, abstinence from eating meat is believed to be the balance for the killing I'm forced to do."

"What happens if you eat meat?"

Kahlan knew that Richard had cause, from only the day before, to need the balance of not eating meat.

"Even the idea of eating meat nauseates me. I've done it when I've had to, but it's something I avoid if at all possible. Magic deprived of balance has grave consequences, just like building a fire in the hearth."

The thought occurred to Kahlan that Richard carried the Sword of Truth, and perhaps that weapon also imposed its own need for balance. Richard had been rightly named the Seeker of Truth by the First Wizard himself, Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander-Zedd, Richard's grandfather, the man who had helped raise him, and from whom Richard had additionally inherited the gift. Richard's gift had been passed down not only from the Rahl bloodline, but the Zorander as well. Balance indeed.

Rightly named Seekers had been carrying that very same sword for nearly three thousand years. Perhaps Richard's understanding of the need for balance had helped him to survive the things he'd faced.

With her teeth, Jennsen tugged off a strip of dried meat as she thought it over. "So, because you have to fight and sometimes kill people, you can't eat meat as the balance for that terrible act?"

Richard nodded as he chewed dried apricots.

"It must be dreadful to have the gift," Jennsen said in a quiet voice.

"To have something so destructive that it requires you balance it in some way."

She looked away from Richard's gray eyes. Kahlan knew what a difficult experience it sometimes was to meet his direct and incisive gaze.

"I used to feel that way," he said, "when I first was named the Seeker and given the sword, and even more so later, when I learned that I had the gift. I didn't want to have the gift, didn't want the things the gift could do, just as I hadn't wanted the sword because of the things in me that I thought shouldn't ever be brought out."

"But now you don't mind as much, having the sword, or the gift?"

"You have a knife and have used it." Richard leaned toward her, holding out his hands. "You have hands. Do you hate your knife, or hands?"

"Of course not. But what does that have to do with having the gift?"

"Having the gift is simply how I was born, like being born male, or female, or with blue, or brown, or green eyes-or with two hands. I don't hate my hands because I could potentially strangle someone with them. It's my mind that directs my hands. My hands don't act of their own accord; to think so is to ignore the truth of what each thing is, its true nature. You have to recognize the truth of things if you're to achieve balance-or come to truly understand anything, for that matter."

Kahlan wondered why she didn't require balance the way Richard did. Why was it so vital for him, but not for her? Despite how much she wanted to go to sleep, she couldn't keep silent. "I often use my Confessor's power for that same end-to kill-and I don't have to keep in balance by not eating meat."