Verna stared off. "It's a grave mistake to try to appease evil."

"I agree," General Meiffert said. "Once we opened the passes, he would slaughter every last man."

The mood in the tent was as gloomy as the sky outside.

"I think we should send him back a letter," Rikka said. "I think we should tell him that we don't believe him that he has Zedd and Adie. If he expects us to believe him, he should prove it; he should send us their heads."

Captain Zimmer smiled at the suggestion.

The general tapped a finger on the table as he thought it over. "If it's as you say, Prelate, and Jagang really does have them, then there's nothing we can do about it. He will kill them. After what Zedd did to Jagang's force back in Aydindril, to say nothing of all the havoc he caused the Imperial Order last summer when the Mother Confessor was with us, I know it won't be an easy death, but he will kill them in the end."

"Then you agree that nothing else can be done," Verna said.

General Meiffert wiped a hand across his face. "I hate admitting it, but I'm afraid they're lost. I don't think we should give Jagang the satisfaction of knowing how we truly feel about it."

Verna's head spun at the thought of Zedd and Adie being put to torture, of them being in the hands of Jagang and his Sisters of the Dark. She quailed at the thought of the D'Haran forces losing Zedd. There simply was no one with his experience and knowledge. There was no one who could replace him.

"We write Jagang a letter, then," Verna said, "and tell Jagang we don't believe he has Zedd and Adie."

"The only thing we can do," Rikka said, "is to deny Jagang what he wants most. What he wants is for us to give up."

General Meiffert pulled out the chair at the table, inviting Verna to sit and write the letter. "If Jagang is angered by such a letter, he just might send us their heads. If he did, that would spare them terrible suffering. That's the only thing we can do for them-the best we could do for them."

Verna took stock of the grim faces and saw only resolve at what had to be done. She sat in the chair the general held for her, wiggled the stopper out of the ink bottle, and then took a piece of paper from a small stack in a box to the side.

She dipped the pen and stared at the paper for a moment, trying to decide how to phrase the letter. She tried to imagine what Kahlan would write. As it came to her, she bent over the table and began writing.

/ don't believe you are competent enough to capture Wizard Zoran-der.

If you were, you would send us his head to prove it. Don't bother me anymore with your whining for us to open the passes for you because you are too inept to do it yourself.

Reading over Verna's shoulder, Rikka said, "I like it."

Verna looked up at the others. "How should I sign it?"

"What would make Jagang the most angry-or worried?" Captain Zimmer asked.

Verna tapped the back of the pen against her chin as she thought. Then it came to her. She put pen to paper.

Signed, the Mother Confessor.

CHAPTER 47

Richard scanned the site off in the broad, green valley, watching for any sign of troops. He looked over at Owen.

"That's Witherton?"

Hands pressed against the rich forest floor at the crown of a low ridge, Owen pulled himself closer to the edge. He stretched his neck to see over the rise and finally nodded before pulling back.

Richard had thought it would be bigger. "I don't see any soldiers."

Owen crawled back away from the edge. In the shadowed cover among ferns and low scrub, he stood and brushed the moist crumbles of leaves from his shirt and trousers.

"The men of the Order mostly stay inside the town. They have no interest in helping to do the work. They eat our food and gamble with the things they have taken from our people. When they do these things they are interested in little else." His face heated to red. "At night, they used to collect some of our women." Since the reason was obvious enough, Owen didn't put words to it. "In the daytime they sometimes come out to check on our people who work in the fields, or watch to see that they come back in at night."

If the soldiers had once camped outside the city walls, they no longer did. Apparently, they preferred the more comfortable accommodations within the town. They had learned that these people would offer no resistance; they could be cowed and controlled by words alone. The men of the Imperial Order were safe sleeping among them.

The wall around Witherton blocked much of Richard's view of the place.

Other than through the open gates, there wasn't much to see. The wall was constructed of upright posts not a great deal taller than the height of a man. The posts, a variety of sizes no bigger around than a hand-width, were bound tightly together, top and bottom, with rope. The wavy wall snaked around the town, leaned in or out in places. There was no bulwark, or even a trench before the wall. Other than keeping out grazing deer or maybe a roaming bear, the walls certainly didn't look strong enough to withstand an attack from the Imperial Order soldiers.

The soldiers had no doubt made a point of using the gate into the town for reasons other than the strength of the wall. Opening the gates for soldiers of the Imperial Order had been a symbolic sign of submission.

Broad swaths of the valley were clear of trees, leaving fields of grain to grow alongside row crops in communal gardens. Tree limbs knitted into fencing kept in cows. There, the wild grasses were chewed low. Chickens roamed freely near coops. A few sheep grazed on the coarse grass.

The smells of rich soil, wildflowers, and grasses carried on a light breeze into the woods where Richard watched. It was a great relief to have finally descended from the pass. It had been getting difficult to breathe in the thin air up on the high slopes. It was considerably warmer, too, down out of the lofty mountain pass, although he still felt cold.

Richard checked the sweep of open valley one last time and then he and Owen made their way back into the dense tangle of woods toward where the others waited. The trees were mostly hardwoods, maple and oak, along with patches of birch, but there were also stands of towering evergreens. Birds chirped from the dense foliage. A squirrel up on the limb of a pine chattered at them as they passed. The deep shade below the thick forest crown was interrupted only occasionally by mottled sunlight.

Some of the men, swatting at bugs, stood in a rush when Richard led Owen into the secluded forest opening. Richard was glad to stand in the warmth of sunlight slanting in at a low angle.

It appeared that the open area in the dense woods had been created when a huge old maple had been hit by lightning. The maple split and fell in two directions, taking other trees down with it. Kahlan hopped down off her seat on the trunk of the fallen monarch. Betty, her tail wagging in a blur, greeted Richard, eagerly looking for attention, or a treat. Richard scratched behind her ears, the goat's favorite form of attention.

More of the men came into the open from behind upturned roots that had been turned silver by years of exposure to the elements. A crop of spruce, none more than chest high, had sprung up in the sunny spot created when the old maple had died such a sudden and violent death. Spread among Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, and Tom were the rest of the men-his army.

Back up in the pass, Ansons saying that he wanted to help rid his people of the Imperial Order soldiers seemed to have galvanized the rest of the men, and the balance had finally tipped. Once it had, a lifetime of darkness and doubt gave way to a hunger to live in the light of truth. The men all declared, in a breathtaking moment of determination, that they wanted to join with Richard to be part of the D'Haran Empire and fight the soldiers of the Imperial Order to gain their freedom.