"Satisfied?" he asked Kahlan and Cara.

Cara folded her arms. "What would you have done had they all chosen to keep the antidote's location a secret until after you helped them?"

Richard shrugged. "I'd be no better off than I was, but no worse off, either. I'd have to help them, but at least I would know that I dare not trust any of them."

Kahlan still didn't look pleased. "And what if most of them would have said yes, but some stuck to their ways and said no?"

Richard looked into her resolute green eyes. "Then, after the ones who agreed had told me where to find the antidote, I would have had to kill those who said no."

Understanding the seriousness of his explanation, Kahlan nodded. Cara smiled her satisfaction. Jennsen looked shocked.

"If any would have said no," he explained to Jennsen, "then they would have been choosing to continue to enslave me, to hold a sentence of death over my head in order to manipulate my life to get what they wanted from me.

I would never be able to trust them in what I must ask the rest of them to do. I couldn't trust our lives to such treachery. But, now, that's one less problem we have to worry about."

Richard turned to the waiting men. "Each of you has decided to return my life to me."

The faces watching him turned serious as they waited to hear what he would do now. Richard gazed down at the small figure of himself, at the sand trickling down, at the eerie black surface that had already descended over the top of the statue, like the underworld itself slowly claiming his life.

His fingers left smears of blood across the surface of the figure.

The clouds had lowered in around them, thickening so that the afternoon light seemed more like the gloom of dusk.

Richard lowered the statue and looked back up at the men. "We will do our best to see if we can help you get rid of the Order."

A cheer rose into the thin, cold air. The men hooted their excitement as well as their relief. He hadn't yet seen any of them smile quite this broadly before. Those smiles, more than anything, revealed the depth of their wish to be free of the men of the Order. Richard wondered how they would feel about it when he finally told them their part.

He knew that as long as Nicholas the Slide was able to seek them out through the eyes of the races, he would remain a threat that would haunt them wherever they went and endangered all of their work to get the Old World to rise up and overthrow the Imperial Order. More than that, though, Nicholas would be able to direct killers to find them. The thought of Nicholas seeing Kahlan and knowing where to find her gave Richard chills. He had to eliminate Nicholas. It was possible that in doing so, in eliminating their leader, he would also help these people drive the Order from their homes.

Richard gestured for the men to gather in closer. "First, before we get to the matter of freeing your people, you need to show me where you've hidden the poison."

Owen squatted down and selected a stone from nearby. With it, he scratched a chalky oval on the face of a flat spot in the rock. "Say that this line is the mountains surrounding Bandakar." He set the stone at the end of the oval closest to Richard. "Then this is the pass into our land, where we are now."

He plucked three pebbles from the ground. "This is our town, With-erton, where we lived," he said as he set the first pebble down not far from the rock that represented the pass. "There is antidote there."

"And this is where all of you men were hiding?" Richard asked as he circled a finger over the first pebble. "In the hills surrounding With-erton?"

"Mostly to the south," Owen said, pointing to the area. He placed the second pebble near the middle of the oval. "Here there is another vial of antidote, in this city, here, called Hawton." He placed the third pebble near the edge of the oval. "Here is the third vial, in this city, Northwick."

"So then," Richard summed up, "I just need to go to one of those three places and recover the antidote. Since your town is the smallest, that would probably be our best chance."

Some of the men shook their heads; others looked away.

Owen, looking troubled, touched each of the three pebbles. "I'm sorry, Lord Rahl, but one of these is not enough. Too much time has passed. Even two will be insufficient by now. The man who made the poison said that if too much time passed, all four would be necessary to insure a remedy.

"He said that if you did not immediately take the first antidote I brought, then it would only halt the poison for a while. He said that then the other three vials would all be needed. He said that in this case, the poison would possibly go through three states. If you are to be free of the poison, you must drink all of the three remaining antidotes. If you don't, you will die."

"Three states? What does that mean?"

"The first state will be pain in your chest. The second state will be dizziness that makes standing difficult." Owen looked away from Richard's gaze. "In the third state the poison makes you blind." He looked up and touched a hand to Richard's arm, as if to dispel his worry. "But taking three vials of the antidote will cure you, make you well."

Richard wiped a weary hand across his brow. The pain in his chest told him that he was in the poison's first state.

"How much time do I have?"

Owen looked down as he straightened his sleeve. "I'm not sure, Lord Rahl. We have already taken a lot of time traveling this far since you had that first vial. I think we have no time to lose."

"How much time?" Richard asked in as calm a voice as he could manage.

Owen swallowed. "To be truthful, Lord Rahl, I'm surprised that you are able to stand the pain from the first state of the poison. From what I was told, the pain would grow as time passed."

Richard simply nodded. He didn't look up at Kahlan.

With soldiers of the Imperial Order occupying Bandakar, getting in to recover the antidote from one place sounded difficult enough, but retrieving it from all three places sounded beyond difficult.

"Well, since time is short, I have a better idea," Richard said. "Make me more of the antidote. Then we won't have to worry about getting what you've hidden and we can simply worry about how best to take on the men of the Order."

Owen shrugged one shoulder. "We can't."

"Why not?" Richard leaned in. "You made it before-you made the antidote that you hid. Make it again."

Owen shrank back. "We can't."

Richard took a patient breath. "Why not?"

Owen pointed off at the small bag he'd brought, now lying to the side-the bag containing the fingers of three girls. "The father of those girls was the man who made the poison and made the antidote. He is the only one among us who knew how to make such complex things with herbs. We don't know how-we don't even know many of the ingredients he used.

"There may be others in the cities who could make an antidote, but we don't know who they are, or if they are still alive. With men of the Order in those places we wouldn't even be able to find these people. Even if we could, we don't know what was used to make up the poison, so they would not know how to make an antidote. The only chance you have to live is to recover the three vials of antidote."

Richard's head was hurting so much that he didn't know if he could stand much longer. With only three vials in existence, and all three needed if he was to live, he had to get to them before anything happened to any one of them. Someone could find one and throw it out. They could be moved. They could be broken, the antidote draining away into the ground. With every breath, he felt stitches of pain pull inside his chest. Panic gnawed at the edges of his thoughts.

When Kahlan rested her hand on his shoulder, Richard laid a grateful hand over hers.