He thought maybe she was about to cry and looked over at her. She wasn’t, but he felt that he might. He nodded his understanding of what she said about the men.

“My name is Richard Cypher.”

Her green eyes studied his as he looked at her. The light breeze carried wisps of hair across her face.

She smiled. “There are not many who would have stood with me.” He found her voice as attractive as the rest of her. It matched the spark of intelligence in her eyes. It almost took his breath away. “You are a very rare person, Richard Cypher.”

To his intense displeasure Richard felt his face flush. She looked away, pulling the strands of hair off her face, and pretended not to notice his blushing.

“I am…” She sounded as if she was going to say something she then thought better of. She turned back to him. “I am Kahlan. My family name is Amnell.”

He looked into her eyes a long moment. “You too are a very rare person, Kahlan Amnell. There are not many who would have stood as you did.”

She did not blush, but smiled again. It was an odd sort of smile, a special smile, not showing any teeth. Her lips were pressed together, as one would do when taking another into one’s confidence. Her eyes sparkled. It was a smile of sharing.

Richard reached behind, felt the painful lump on the back of his head, and checked his fingers for blood. There was none, though he thought that by all rights there should have been. He looked back at her, again wondering what had happened, wondering what she had done, and how she had done it. There was that thunder with no sound, and he had knocked one of the men off the cliff—one of the two behind him had killed the other instead of her, and then killed the leader and himself.

“Well, Kahlan, my friend, can you tell me how it is that we are alive and those four men are not?”

She looked at him, in surprise. “Do you mean that?”

“Mean what?”

She hesitated. “‘Friend.’”

Richard shrugged. “Sure. You just said I stood with you. That’s the kind of thing a friend does, isn’t it?” He gave her a smile.

Kahlan turned away. “I don’t know.” She fingered the sleeve of her dress as she looked down. “I have never had a friend before. Except maybe my sister…”

He felt the pain in her voice. “Well, you have one now,” he said in his most cheerful tone. “After all, we just went through something pretty frightening together. We helped each other, and we survived.”

She simply nodded. Richard looked out over the Ven, the forests where he was so at home. Sunlight made the green of the trees vibrant, lush. His eyes were drawn to the left, to spots of brown, the dead and dying trees that stood out among their healthy neighbors. Until that morning, when he found the vine and it bit him, he had had no idea that the vine was up by the boundary, spreading through the woods. He rarely went up into the Ven, that close to the boundary. Other people wouldn’t go within miles of it. Others went closer, if they traveled on Hawkers Trail, or to hunt, but none went too close. The boundary was death. It was said that to go into the boundary was not only to die but to forfeit your soul. The boundary wardens made sure people stayed away.

He gave her a sideways glance. “So what about the other part? The part about us being alive. How did that happen?”

Kahlan didn’t meet his gaze. “I think the good spirits protected us.”

Richard didn’t believe a word of it. But as much as he wanted to know the answers, it was against his nature to force someone to tell something she didn’t want to. His father had raised him to respect another person’s right to keep his own secrets. In her own time she would tell him her secrets, if she wanted to, but he would not try to force her.

Everyone had secrets—he certainly had his own. In fact, with his father’s murder and with today’s events he felt those secrets stirring unpleasantly in the back of his mind.

“Kahlan,” he said, trying to make his voice sound reassuring, “being a friend means you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, and I’ll still be your friend.”

She didn’t look at him, but nodded her agreement.

Richard got to his feet. His head hurt, his hand hurt, and now he realized his chest hurt where the man had hit him. To top it off he remembered he was hungry. Michael! He had forgotten about his brother’s party. He looked at the sun and knew he was going to be late. He hoped he wouldn’t miss Michael’s speech. He would take Kahlan, tell Michael about the men, and get some protection for her.

He held out his hand to help her up. She stared at it in surprise. He continued to hold it out for her. She gazed up into his eyes, and took the hand.

Richard smiled. “Never had a friend give you a hand up before?”

She averted her eyes. “No.”

Richard could tell she felt uncomfortable, so he changed the subject.

“When’s the last time you had something to eat?”

“Two days ago,” she said without emotion.

His eyebrows went up. “Then you must be even more hungry than I am. I’ll take you to my brother.” He peered over the edge of the cliff. “We’ll have to tell him about the bodies. He’ll know what to do.” He turned again to her. “Kahlan, do you know who those men were?”

Her green eyes turned hard. “They are called a quad. They are, well, they are like assassins. They are sent to kill…” She caught herself again. “They kill people.” Her face regained the calm countenance it had when he first saw her. “I think that maybe the fewer people who know about me, the safer I will be.”

Richard was startled—he had never heard of anything like this. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to think. Dark, shadowy thoughts started to swirl again. For some reason, he was terrified of what she might say, but had to ask.

He looked hard into her eyes, expecting the truth this time. “Kahlan, where did the quad come from?”

She studied his face a moment. “They must have tracked me out of the Midlands, and through the boundary.”

Richard’s skin went cold, and prickles bumped up along his arms in a wave that rolled up to the back of his neck, making the fine hairs there stand stiffly out. An anger deep within him awakened and his secrets stirred.

She had to be lying. No one could cross the boundary.

No one.

No one could go into or come out of the Midlands. The boundary had sealed it away since before he was born.

The Midlands was a land of magic.

Michael’s house was a massive structure of white stone, set back quite a distance from the road. Slate roofs in a variety of angles and rakes came together in complicated junctures topped with a leaded-glass peak that let light into the central hall. The walkway to the house was shaded from the bright afternoon sun by towering white oaks as it passed through sweeping stretches of lawn before coming to formal gardens laid in symmetrical patterns to each side. The gardens were in full bloom. Since it was so late in the year, Richard knew the flowers had to have been raised in greenhouses just for the occasion.

People in fine clothes strolled the lawns and gardens, making Richard feel suddenly out of place. He knew he must look a mess in his dirty, sweat-stained forest garb, but he hadn’t wanted to waste the time going out of his way to his house to get cleaned up. Besides, he was in a dark mood and didn’t much care how he looked. He had more important things on his mind.

Kahlan, on the other hand, didn’t look so out of place. The unusual but striking dress she wore belied the fact that she, too, had just walked out of the woods. Considering how much blood there had been up on Blunt Cliff, he was surprised that she didn’t have any on her. She had somehow managed to stay clear while the men killed each other.