Since Zedd was from the Midlands, Richard had thought he could gain his compassion with the mention of the quad. Richard was relieved, if somewhat surprised, at how the two of them were suddenly so amiable. He reached up as he walked, touching the tooth for reassurance.

He was, however, quite disturbed by what he now knew.

Near a back corner of the house sat a table where Zedd liked to take his meals in good weather. It afforded him the opportunity to keep an eye to the clouds while he ate. Zedd sat them down together on a bench while he went inside and brought out carrots, berries, cheese, and apple juice, putting them on the wooden tabletop worn smooth with years of use, then sat himself on the bench opposite them. He gave Richard a mug of something brown and thick that smelled of almonds and told him to drink it slowly.

His eyes came to Richard. “Tell me of the trouble.” Richard related how he was bitten by a vine, and told Zedd about seeing the thing in the sky, seeing Kahlan at Trunt Lake, and being followed by the four men. He told the whole story with every detail he could remember. He knew Zedd liked to have every detail, no matter how unimportant. Occasionally Richard stopped to take a sip from the mug. Kahlan ate some carrots and berries, and drank the apple juice, but she pushed away the plate with the cheese. She nodded or offered help when he couldn’t remember a particular point. The only thing he left out was the story Kahlan had told him of the history of the three lands and about Darken Rahl taking over the Midlands. He thought it better that she tell it in her own words. At the end, Zedd made him go back to the beginning, wanting to know what Richard had been doing in the high Ven in the first place.

“When I went to my father’s house after the murder, I looked in the message jar. It was about the only thing not broken. Inside was a piece of vine. For the last three weeks, I’ve been looking for the vine, trying to find out what my father’s last message meant. And when I found it, well, that’s the thing that bit me.” He was glad to be finished—his tongue felt thick.

Zedd bit off a chunk of carrot while thinking. “What did the vine look like?”

“It was… Wait, I still have it in my pocket.” He took out the sprig and plunked it down on the table.

“Bags!” Zedd whispered. “That’s a snake vine!”

Richard felt a shock of icy cold sweep through him. He knew the name from the secret book. He hoped against hope it did not mean what he feared it did.

Zedd sat back. “Well, the good part is now I know the root to use to cure the fever. The bad part is I have to find it.” Zedd asked Kahlan to tell her part but, to make it short, as there were things he must do and not much time. Richard thought about the story she had told in the wayward pine the night before, and wondered how she could possibly make it shorter.

“Darken Rahl, son of Panis Rahl, has put the three boxes of Orden in play,” Kahlan said simply. “I have come in search of the great wizard.”

Richard was thunderstruck.

From the secret book, the Book of Counted Shadows, the book his father had had him commit to memory before they destroyed it, the line jumped into his mind:

Richard’s worst nightmares-everyone’s worst nightmares—were coming to pass.

Chapter 7

Pain and dizziness from the fever made Richard only dimly aware that his head had sunk to the table. He groaned while his mind spun with the implications of what Kahlan had told Zedd—of the prophecy of the secret Book of Counted Shadows come to life. Then Zedd was at his side, lifting him, telling Kahlan to help get him into the house. As he walked with their help, the ground slipped this way and that, making it difficult to catch it with his feet. Then they were laying him down on a bed, covering him up. He knew they were talking, but he couldn’t make sense of the words, which slurred in his mind.

Darkness sucked his mind in—then there was light. He seemed to float back up, only to spiral down again. He wondered who he was and what was happening. Time passed as the room spun and rolled and tilted. He gripped the bed to keep from being flung off. Sometimes he knew where he was, and tried desperately to hold on to what he knew… only to slip away again into blackness.

He became aware again, realizing that time had passed, though he didn’t have any idea how much. Was it dark? Maybe it was just that the curtains were pulled. Someone, he realized, was putting a cool, wet cloth on his forehead. His mother smoothed back his hair. Her touch felt comforting, soothing. He could almost make out her face. She was so good, she always took such good care of him.

Until she died. He wanted to cry. She was dead. Still, she smoothed his hair. That couldn’t be—it had to be someone else. But who? Then he remembered. It was Kahlan. He spoke her name.

Kahlan was smoothing his hair. “I am here.”

It came back to him, rushing back in a torrent: the murder of his father, the vine that bit him, Kahlan, the four men on the cliff, his brother’s speech—someone waiting for him at his house, the gar, the night wisp telling him to seek the answer or die—what Kahlan said, that the three boxes of Orden were in play—and his secret, the Book of Counted Shadows…

He remembered how his father had taken him to the secret place in the woods, and had told him how he had saved the Book of Counted Shadows from the peril it was in from the beast that guarded it until its master could come. How he had brought it with him to Westland to keep it from those covetous hands, hands that the keeper of the book didn’t know threatened. His father had told him how there was danger as long as the book existed, but he couldn’t destroy the knowledge in it—he had no right. It belonged to the keeper of the book, and it must be kept safe until it could be returned. The only way to do that was to commit the book to memory, and then burn it. Only in that way could the knowledge be preserved, but not stolen, as it otherwise surely would be.

His father chose Richard. That it was to be Richard and not Michael was for reasons of his own. No one could know of the book, not even Michael—only the keeper of the book, no one else, only the keeper. He said Richard might never find the keeper, and in that case he was to pass the book on to his child, and then that child to his own, and so on, for as long as was necessary. His father couldn’t tell him who the keeper of the book was, as he didn’t know. Richard asked how he was to know the keeper, but his father said only that he would have to find the answer himself, and not to tell anyone, ever, except the keeper. His father told Richard he was not to tell his own brother, or even his best friend, Zedd.

Richard swore on his life.

His father had never once looked in the book, only Richard. Day after day, week after week, with breaks only when he traveled, his father took him to the secret place deep in the woods, where he sat and watched Richard reading the book, over and over. Michael was usually off with his friends, and had no interest in going into the woods even if he was at home, and it wasn’t uncommon for Richard not to visit Zedd when his father was home, so neither had reason to know of the frequent trips to the woods.

Richard would write down what he memorized and check it against the book. Each time, his father burned the papers and had him do it again. His father apologized every day for the burden he was placing on Richard. He asked for forgiveness from his son at the end of every day in the woods.

Richard never resented having to learn the book—he considered it an honor to be entrusted by his father. He wrote the book from beginning to end a hundred times without error before he satisfied himself that he could never forget a single word. He knew by reading it that any word left out would spell disaster.