Understand?"

"Yes, Richard."

"We have to move on."

"Yes, Richard."

There was something more to this, she knew-something of far greater importance than the more immediate ordeal it meant for her. There was a distant, troubled look in his eyes.

"But what of the war? Everyone is depending on us-on you. I can't be much help until I get better, but they need you right now. The D'Haran Empire needs you. You are the Lord Rahl. You lead them. What are we doing here? Richard. ." She waited until his eyes turned to look at her. "Why are we running away when everyone is counting on us?"

"I'm doing as I must."

"As you must? What does that mean?"

Shadow shrouded his face as he looked away.

"I've. . had a vision."

A vision?" Kahlan said in open astonishment.

Richard hated anything to do with prophecy. It had caused him no end of trouble.

Prophecy was always ambiguous and usually cryptic, no matter how clear it seemed on the surface. The untrained were easily misled by its superficially simplistic construction. Unthinking adherence to a literal interpretation of prophecy had in the past caused great turmoil, everything from murder to war. As a result, those involved with prophecy went to great lengths to keep it secret.

Prophecy, at least on the face of it, was predestination; Richard believed that man created his own destiny. He had once told her, "Prophecy can only say that tomorrow the sun will come up. It can't say what you are going to do with your day. The act of going about your day is not the fulfillment of prophecy, but the fulfillment of your own purpose."

Shota, the witch woman, had prophesied that Richard and Kahlan would conceive an infamous son. Richard had more than once proven Shota's view of the future to be, if not fatally flawed, at least vastly more complex than Shota would have it seem. Like Richard, Kahlan didn't accept Shota's prediction.

On any number of occasions, Richard's view of prophecy had been shown to be correct. Richard simply ignored what prophecy said and did as he believed he must. By his doing so, prophecy was in the end often fulfilled, but in ways that could not have been foretold. In this way, prophecy was at once proven and disproved, resolving nothing and only demonstrating what an eternal enigma it truly was.

Richard's grandfather, Zedd, who had helped raise him not far from where they were, had not only kept his own identity as a wizard secret. In order to protect Richard, he also hid the fact that Richard had been fathered by Darken Rahl and not George Cypher, the man who had loved and raised him. Darken Rahl, a wizard of great power, had been the dangerous, violent ruler of far-off D'Hara. Richard had inherited the gift of magic from two different bloodlines. After killing Darken Rahl, he had also inherited the rule of D'Hara, a land that was in many ways as much a mystery to him as was his power.

Kahlan, being from the Midlands, had grown up around wizards; Richard's ability was unlike that of any wizard she had ever known. He possessed not one aspect of the gift, but many, and not one side, but both: he was a war wizard. Some of his outfit came from the Wizard's Keep, and had not been worn in three thousand years-since the last war wizard lived.

With the gift dying out in mankind, wizards were uncommon; Kahlan had known fewer than a dozen. Among wizards, prophets were the most rare; she knew of the existence of only two. One of those was Richard's ancestor, which made visions all the more within the province of Richard's gift. Yet Richard had always treated prophecy as a viper in his bed.

Tenderly, as if there were no more precious thing in the whole world, Richard lifted her hand. "You know how I always talk about the beautiful places only I know way back in the mountains to the west of where I grew up?

The special places I've always wanted to show you? I'm going to take you there, where we'll be safe."

"D'Harans are bonded to you, Lord Rahl," Cara reminded him, "and will be able to find you through that bond."

"Well, our enemies aren't bonded to me. They won't know where we are."

Cara seemed to find that thought agreeable. "If people don't go to this place, then there won't be any roads. How are we going to get the carriage there? The Mother Confessor can't walk."

"I'll make a litter. You and I will carry her in that."

Cara nodded thoughtfully. "We could do that. If there were no other people, then the two of you would be safe, at least."

"Safer than here. I had expected the people here to leave us to ourselves. I hadn't expected the Order to foment unrest this far away-at least not this quickly. Those men usually aren't a bad lot, but they're working themselves up into a dangerous mood.» "The cowards have gone back to their women's skirts. They won't be back until morning. We can let the Mother Confessor rest and then leave before dawn."

Richard cast Cara a telling look. "One of those men, Albert, has a son, Lester. Lester and his pal, Tommy Lancaster, once tried to put arrows into me for spoiling some fun Tommy was about to have hurting someone. Now Tommy and Lester are missing a good many teeth. Albert will tell Lester about us being here, and soon after, Tommy Lancaster will know, too.

"Now that the Imperial Order has filled their heads with talk of a noble war on behalf of good, those men will be fancying what it would be like to be war heroes. They aren't ordinarily violent, but today they were more unreasonable than I've ever seen them.

"They'll go drinking to fortify their courage. Tommy and Lester will be with them by then, and their tales of how I wronged them and how I'm a danger to decent folks will get everyone all worked up. Because they greatly outnumber us, they'll begin to see the merit in killing us-see it as protecting their families and doing the right thing for the community and their Creator. Full of liquor and glory, they won't want to wait until morning. They'll be back tonight. We have to leave now."

Cara seemed unconcerned. "I say we wait for them, and when they come back, we end the threat."

"Some of them will bring along other friends. There will be a lot of them by the time they get here. We have Kahlan to think about. I don't want to risk one of us being injured. There's nothing to be gained by fighting them."

Richard pulled the ancient, tooled-leather baldric, holding the gold-and-silverwrought scabbard and sword, off over his head and hung it on the stump of a branch sticking out of a log. Looking unhappy, Cara folded her arms. She would rather not leave a threat alive. Richard picked his folded black shirt off the floor to the side, where Kahlan hadn't seen it.

He poked an arm through a sleeve and drew it on.

"A vision?" Kahlan finally asked again. As much trouble as the men could be, they were not her biggest concern just then. "You've had a vision?"

"The sudden clarity of it felt like a vision, but it was really more of a revelation."

"Revelation." She wished she could manage more than a hoarse whisper.

"And what form did this vision revelation thing take?"

"Understanding."

Kahlan stared up at him. "Understanding of what?"

He started buttoning his shirt. "Through this realization I've come to understand the larger picture. I've come to understand what it is I must do."

"Yes," Cara muttered, "and wait until you hear it. Go ahead, tell her."

Richard glared at Cara and she answered him in kind. His attention finally returned to Kahlan.

"If I lead us into this war, we will lose. A great many people will die for nothing. The result will be a world enslaved by the Imperial Order. If I don't lead our side in battle, the world will still fall under the shadow of the Order but far fewer people will die. Only in that way will we ever stand a chance."