“Richard—” She paused as if afraid to tell him the rest. “—there is no longer a second boundary. The boundary between the Midlands and D’Hara is down. Since the spring.”

That shock made him feel as if the shadowy D’Hara had just taken a frightening, giant leap closer. He struggled to make sense of the things he was learning.

“Maybe my brother is more of a prophet than he knows.”

“Maybe,” she said noncommittally.

“Although it would be hard to make a living as a prophet by predicting events that had already taken place.” He gave her a sidelong glance.

Kahlan smiled as she idly twisted a strand of hair. “When I first saw you, my thought was that you were no fool.” Firelight sparkled in her green eyes. “Thank you for not proving me wrong.”

“Michael is in a position to have knowledge others don’t. Maybe he’s trying to prepare the people, get them used to the idea, so when they find out, they won’t panic.”

Michael often said that information was the coin of power, and that it was not a coin to be spent frivolously. After he had be come a councilor, he encouraged people to bring their information to him first. Even a farmer with a tale received an ear, and if the tale proved true, a favor.

The water was starting to boil. Richard leaned over, hooked his finger through a strap and pulled his pack to him, then rearranged the blanket. Rummaging around, he located the pouch of dried vegetables and poured some into the pot. From his pocket he pulled a napkin that held four fat sausages, which he broke up and tossed into the soup pot.

Kahlan looked surprised. “Where did those come from? Did you snatch those from your brother’s party?” Her voice carried a tone of disapproval.

“A good woodsman,” he said, licking his fingers and looking up at her, “always plans ahead and tries to know where his next meal will come from.”

“He will not think much of your manners.”

“I do not think much of his.” He knew he would get no argument from her on that point. “Kahlan, I won’t justify the way he acted. Ever since our mother died he’s been a hard person to be close to. But I know he cares about people. You have to, if you want to be a good councilor. It must be a lot of pressure. I certainly wouldn’t want the responsibility. But that’s all he ever wanted: to be someone important. And now that he’s First Councilor, he has what he’s always wanted. He should be satisfied, but he seems even less tolerant. He’s always busy, and always snapping orders. He is always in a bad mood lately. Maybe when he got what he wanted, it wasn’t what he thought it would be. I wish he could be more like he used to be.”

She grinned. “At least you had the good sense to pick the best of the sausages.”

That eased the tension. They both laughed.

“Kahlan, I don’t understand, about the boundary, I mean. I don’t even know what the boundary is, except it’s meant to keep the lands separated so there will be peace. And of course everyone knows that whoever goes into the boundary will not come out alive. Chase and the boundary wardens patrol to make sure people stay away for their own good.”

“Young people here are not taught the histories of the three lands?”

“No. I always thought it odd myself, because I wanted to know, but no one would ever tell me much. People think I’m strange because I want to know, and I ask questions. Older people seem suspicious when I ask, and tell me it was too long ago to remember, or give some other excuse.

“Both my father and Zedd told me they used to live in the Midlands before the boundary. Before it went up, they came to Westland. They met here before I was born. They said that back before the boundaries was a terrible time, and that there was a lot of fighting. They both told me there was nothing I needed to know except it was a dreadful time best forgotten. Zedd always seemed the most bitter about it.”

Kahlan snapped a piece off a dry stick and tossed it into the fire, where it flamed into a bright ember.

“Well, it is a long story. If you want I will tell you some of it.” When she turned to him, he nodded for her to go on.

“Long ago, back in the time before our parents were born, D’Hara was just a confederation of kingdoms, as was the Midlands. The most ruthless of the D’Haran rulers was Panis Rahl. He was avaricious. From the first day of his reign, he started swallowing up all of D’Hara for himself, one kingdom after another, many times before the ink was dry on a peace treaty. In the end, he held sway over all of D’Hara, but instead of satisfying him, it only whetted his appetite, and he soon turned his attention to the lands that are now the Midlands. The Midlands is a loose confederation of free lands—free, at least, to rule as they see fit, and only so long as they live in peace with one another.

“By the time Rahl had conquered all of D’Hara, the people of the Midlands had seen what he was about, and were not to be taken so easily. They knew that signing a peace treaty with him was as good as signing an invitation to invasion. Instead, they chose to remain free, and joined together, through the council of the Midlands, in a common defense. Many of the free lands held no favor with each other, but they knew that if they did not fight together, they would die separately, one at a time.

“Panis Rahl threw the might of D’Hara against them. War raged for many years.”

Kahlan broke off another piece of the stick and fed it to the fire. “As his legions were finally slowed and then halted, Rahl turned to magic. There is magic in D’Hara, too, not just in the Midlands. Back then there was magic everywhere. There were no separate lands, no boundaries. Anyway, Panis Rahl was ruthless in his use of magic against the free people. He was terribly brutal.”

“What kind of magic? What did he do?”

“Some was trickery, sickness, fevers, but the worst of it was the shadow people.”

Richard frowned. “Shadow people? What were they?”

“Shadows in the air. Shadow people had no solid form, no precise shape, they were not even alive as we know it, but beings created out of magic.” She held out her hand, gliding it across in front of them. “They would come floating across a field or through a wood. Weapons had no effect on them. Swords and arrows went through them as if they were nothing more than smoke. You couldn’t hide—shadow people could see you anywhere. One would drift right up to a person and touch him. The touch caused the person’s whole body to blister and swell and finally split open. No one touched by a shadow person ever survived. Whole battalions were found killed to a man.”

She pulled her hand back inside the blanket. “When Panis Rahl started using the magic in that way, a great and honorable wizard joined the side of the Midlands cause.”

“What was his name, this great and honorable wizard?”

“That is part of the story. Have patience until I get to it.”

Richard stirred some spices into the soup, listening intently while she resumed her story.

“Many thousands had already died in battle, but the magic killed many more. It was a dark time, after all those years of struggle, to have so many taken by the magic Rahl called forth. But with the help of the great wizard holding Panis Rahl’s magic in check, his legions were driven back into D’Hara.”

Richard added a stick of birch to the fire. “How did this great and honorable wizard stop the shadow people?”

“He conjured up battle horns for the armies. When the shadow people came, our men blew the horns and magic swept the shadow people away like smoke in the wind. It turned the course of battle to our side.

“The wars had been devastating, but it was concluded that going into D’Hara to destroy Rahl and his forces would be too costly. Yet something had to be done to keep Panis Rahl from trying again, as they knew he would, and many were more frightened of the magic than of the hordes from D’Hara, and they wanted to have nothing to do with it ever again. They wanted a place to live where there would be no magic. Westland was set aside for those people. So it was that there came to be three lands. The boundaries were created with the help of magic… but they themselves are not magic.”