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Richard ignored her as he rushed over to the chair where Nicci was curled up asleep. He shook her foot.
“Wake up. Nicci, wake up.”
The sorceress jerked awake. “What is it? What? What’s happened?”
“We’re leaving.”
Nicci wiped her eyes and then looked at Kahlan for an explanation. Kahlan shrugged.
“Cassia,” Richard called out.
She leaped forward. “Yes, Lord Rahl?”
“Go find Commander Fister. Tell him that I said we need horses–for us and a dozen of the men. Extra horses we can switch out as well. We will need to leave at once. And tell him I want the guides we used before–the men who grew up in the Dark Lands–to come with us.”
Cassia looked confused. “We’re leaving? Where are we going?”
“Move!” he yelled at the woman. “There is no time to waste. Do it now. Get going.” He called her name when she was almost to the door. She turned back. “And get Mohler,” he added. “Tell him that I need him.”
Cassia quickly clapped a fist to her heart before turning and racing out the door. The other two Mord-Sith peered around the edge of the doorway, looking back in to try to see what the yelling was all about.
Before they had time to question, Cassia snatched them by their arms and turned them around, telling them to help her find Commander Fister and the guides. All three raced off down the hallway, past bewildered soldiers of the First File.
“Did he tell you about Warheart?” Nicci asked Kahlan as Richard paced off a ways, once again completely absorbed in thought.
“Yes. And the ‘highlights’ as he put it.”
Nicci’s blue eyes turned back to Kahlan after watching Richard pace between the desk and the door for a moment. “I know it all sounds far-fetched. I had my doubts about the whole thing at first, but I have to tell you, Kahlan, the more I read, the more I realized he’s right–about all of it.
“I’ve been reading and studying prophecy and prophetic theory for most of my life. I’ve never looked at any of it in this light before. For that matter, I never even imagined it in this light before. I feel like I’m starting to understand prophecy, really understand it in a fundamental way, for the first time in my life.”
“So you’re convinced that prophecy really does originate in the underworld?”
Nicci looked over to watch Richard pace for a moment. “Before everything we read during the night, I would never have believed it. It isn’t simply reading it, though, but reading it all in context, reading all the explanations of how things are connected going back to the time before the great war that Emperor Sulachan started. Now, I can’t believe that I never suspected any of this before. Including the part about me.”
Kahlan’s brow twitched. “About you?”
The sorceress nodded. “About me taking him to the Old World being part of the prophecy in the scrolls.”
“I don’t know about that part. He hasn’t had the time to tell me everything,” Kahlan said.
Nicci held up a finger, asking Kahlan to have patience and wait. “Richard,” Nicci called across the room, “what have you thought of? What’s going on?”
He hurried over to them. “I’m not completely sure, yet.”
“I see,” Nicci said. “So we are are going to get on horses and race back to the People’s Palace. You’re right, that makes the most sense.”
It wasn’t a question and she obviously knew that wasn’t his intent. Nicci obviously knew that Richard had no intention of trying to ride to the palace in time. He was too dead set against it. He had thought of something else but wasn’t saying what. Kahlan was a little amazed that Nicci knew exactly how to get his actual intent out of him.
“What is this place for?” he asked Nicci. He held an arm up and gestured around. “This citadel. Why is it here?”
Nicci clasped her hands behind her back, playing along, if reluctantly. “It’s a prison outpost. It was meant to hold for execution anyone who had occult powers because that power could only have leaked out of the barrier to the third kingdom. Executing them was the only way to stop the spread of the contamination. If not stopped, it would be the same as the barrier itself failing.”
“Right,” he said with a nod as he looked back and forth between them. “And what, then, was the purpose of Stroyza?”
Kahlan shrugged, answering this time. “It’s a first line of defense, meant to send a warning that the barrier has been breached and the half people and those with occult abilities are escaping. They are meant to watch and when the barrier to the third kingdom failed, they were supposed to go to Aydindril and warn the wizards’ council at the Keep.”
“There hasn’t been a wizards’ council at the Keep for ages, but the people of Stroyza didn’t know that,” he said. “They still think the council rules the New World. So how were they going to get there in time to warn everyone before the half people attack towns and cities, or reached the Keep, first?
“The people on the other side of the barrier were from the Old World. They would have headed for the seat of power, just as Hannis Arc and Emperor Sulachan are doing now. Except back then, that was the Wizard’s Keep, not the People’s Palace. So, how were the people of Stroyza going to manage to do that–to get to the Keep first, before the hordes of half people?”
“I guess they would have to hurry,” Kahlan said, not quite following what he was getting at.
“The people of Stroyza live in a remote area that isn’t near roads or even good paths,” he said.
Kahlan shrugged. “That’s because the people back in the great war put the third kingdom in the most remote area they could find. They wanted it as far away from civilization as possible.”
Richard nodded. “That’s right. But even so, there are roads closer to the barrier than Stroyza going back in that direction. Even the paths that are near Stroyza go to other places for the purpose of trade and supplies, not toward Aydindril and the Keep. The people of Stroyza live in caves and don’t use horses. As Ester told me, Stroyza is their home and they have nowhere else to go, so travel isn’t an important part of their lives.”
“Maybe they used to travel,” Nicci said. “It could be that they forgot to keep horses in the same way they lost so many of the things they were told when Stroyza was founded back in the great war. After all, they don’t even know how to read all the messages left for them on the walls of the caves because they lost the ability to read the language of Creation.”
“We can use horses,” he said, “and we won’t be able to get there first.”
“That’s only because they have a good lead on us,” Kahlan said.
“Yes, but even if we caught them, we have to worry about getting past them. T
hey have incredible numbers, many with occult powers. They have a spirit king risen from the dead. They have thousands of half people–tens of thousands. They’re spread out across the land. Worse, Sulachan can reanimate as many of the dead as he needs. He’s a wizard with great power. He can use occult abilities.
“So how was one lone person from Stroyza supposed to get past all that, keep from being captured, and get to the Keep in enough time for them to mobilize forces to protect people? By the time the people in Stroyza would realize that the barrier was breached, it would be too late to get to the Keep in time to warn them.”
Nicci scratched her cheek. “That does seem like a pretty ill-conceived solution to the problem of the barrier.”
Richard nodded. “Especially since the people back in the great war–the ones who built that barrier in the first place and put the dangerous half people and occult powers they couldn’t destroy behind the wall–knew that it was eventually going to fail. They didn’t put Stroyza there in case it failed, they put it there because they knew it was going to fail, and they wanted us to have ample warning to defend ourselves. They didn’t take the threat lightly. They wouldn’t have let the fate of the world depend on such a tenuous method of warning people.”
Kahlan was frowning in thought. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t make much sense.” She looked up. “So, what are you thinking? You believe they had some other way to warn people?”
“I do.”
Before he could say more, Commander Fister rushed in, holding his sword against his hip to keep it from flopping as he ran. He had several men with him. Kahlan recognized the men as the scouts who grew up in the Dark Lands.
CHAPTER
32
“Lord Rahl, what is it?” the breathless commander asked.
“Are the men getting horses together?”
“Of course, Lord Rahl. They are being packed with supplies, now. Are we to take you and the Mother Confessor back to the palace at long last?”
