Some of the men agreed. An older man pushed his way through the crowd and stepped forward.

"I do such things. I also have herbs with which to make a poultice."

"Thank you," Anson said as his friends helped him stand. He looked light-headed and the men had to steady him. Once sure of his feet, he turned to Richard.

"Thank you, Lord Rahl, for answering the call in the words of the devotion I spoke: 'Master Rahl, protect us.

"I never thought I would be the first to bleed for what we have set out to do, or that the blood would be drawn by one of our own people."

Richard gently clapped Anson on the back of his good shoulder, showing his appreciation for Anson's words.

Owen looked around at the crowd. "I think we have all decided to be free again." When the crowd nodded their agreement, Owen turned to Richard.

"How will we get rid of the soldiers in Northwick?"

Richard wiped his sword clean on the cloth of the dead speaker's trouser leg. His gaze turned up to the crowd. "Any idea how many soldiers there are here in Northwick?"

There was no anger in his voice. Kahlan had seen, since the moment he had drawn his sword, that his eyes had been absent of the Sword of Truth's attendant magic. There was no spark of the sword's rage in the Seeker's eyes, no magic dangerously dancing there, no fury in his demeanor. He had simply done what was necessary to stop the threat. While it was a relief that he had swiftly succeeded, it was gravely worrisome that the sword's magic had not come out along with the sword itself.

What had always been there to help him before had apparently finally failed him. That absence of his sword's magic left Kahlan feeling icy apprehension.

People in the crowd looked around at others and then spoke of hundreds of men of the Order they had seen. Another man said there were several thousand.

An older woman lifted her hand. "Not that many, but approaching it."

Owen turned to Richard. "That's a lot of men for us to take on."

Having never been in a real battle, he didn't know the half of it.

Richard didn't seem to hear Owen. He slid his sword back into the scabbard hidden under his black cloak.

"How do you know?" he asked the woman.

"I am one of the people who help prepare their meals."

"You mean you people cook for the soldiers?"

"Yes," the old woman said. "They do not wish to do it for themselves."

"When do you next have to cook?"

"We have large kettles we are just starting to get ready for tomorrow's meal. It takes us all night to prepare the stew so that we can cook it tomorrow for their evening meal. Besides that, we also have to work all night making biscuits, eggs, and porridge for their morning meal."

Kahlan imagined that the soldiers were probably pleased to have such a ready supply of pliant slaves. Richard paced in a short track between her and Owen. He pinched his lower lip as he considered the problem. With such a small force of their own, nearly two thousand armed men was a lot to take on, especially considering how inexperienced the men were. Kahlan recognized that Richard was scheming something.

He took the arm of the older man tightening the bandage around Anson's wound. "You said you had herbs. Do you know about such things?"

The man shrugged. "Not a great deal, just enough to make simple remedies."

Kahlan's mood sank. She had thought that maybe this man might know something about making more of the antidote.

"Do you have access to lily of the valley, oleander, yew, monkshood, hemlock?"

The man blinked in surprise. "Common enough, I guess, especially just to the north in the wooded areas."

Richard turned to his men standing at the fore of the crowd. "We must eliminate the men of the Order. The less fighting we have to do, the better.

"While it's still dark, we need to slip out of the city and go collect the things we need." He lifted a hand to the woman who had spoken about cooking for the soldiers. "You show us where you're going to do all the cooking of tomorrow's evening meal. We'll bring you some extra ingredients.

"With what we put in the stew, the soldiers will be getting violently sick within hours. We will put different things in different kettles, so the symptoms will be different, to help create confusion and panic. If we can get enough of the poisons into the stew, most of them will die within hours, suffering everything from weakness and paralysis to convulsions.

"Late in the night, we'll go in and finish any who aren't yet dead, or who may not have eaten. If we prepare carefully, Northwick will be free of the Imperial Order without having to fight them. It will be swiftly ended without any of us being hurt."

The room was silent for a moment; then Kahlan saw smiles breaking out among the people. A ray of light had come into their lives.

With the heady thought of imminent freedom, some began to weep as they suddenly felt the need to come forward and tell brief accounts of those they loved who had been raped, tortured, taken away, or murdered.

Now that these people had been given a chance to live, none wanted to turn back. They saw salvation, and were willing to do what had to be done to gain it.

"This will destroy our way of life," someone said, not in bitterness, but in wonder.

"Redemption is at hand," one of the other people in the crowd added.

CHAPTER 53

Standing in dusty streamers of late-day sunlight, Zedd wavered on his feet as he waited not far from the tent where Sister Tahirah had just taken a small crate. While she was inside carefully unpacking and preparing the item of magic for inspection, the guards stood not far off, talking among themselves about their chances of having ale that night. They were hardly worried about a skinny old man with a Rada'Han around his neck and his arms shackled behind his back causing them any trouble or running off.

Zedd used the opportunity to lean against the cargo wagon's rear wheel.

He wanted only to be allowed to lie down and go to sleep. Without being obvious, he looked over his shoulder at Adie. She gave him a brief, brave smile.

The wagon he leaned against was full of items looted from the Keep that had yet to be identified. For all Zedd knew, he could be leaning against a wagon full of simple magic meant to entertain and teach children, or something so powerful that it would hand Jagang victory in one blinding instant.

Some of the items brought from the Keep were unknown to Zedd. They had been locked behind shields that he had never been able to breach. Even in his childhood the old wizards at the Keep had not been able to get at what was behind many of the shields. But the men who had assaulted and taken the Wizard's Keep were untouched by magic and apparently had no trouble getting through shields that had been in place for thousands of years. Everything Zedd knew had been turned upside down. In some ways, it seemed like this was not only the end of the Wizard's Keep as it had been intended and envisioned, but the end of a way of life as well, and the death of an era.

The items brought from the Keep that Zedd had so far identified were of no great value to Jagang in winning the war. There were a few things, now back in protective crates, that were a mystery to Zedd; for all he knew, they could be profoundly dangerous. He wished that they could all be destroyed before one of the Sisters of the Dark discovered how to use them to create havoc.

Zedd looked up when he saw one of the elite soldiers in leather and mail pause not far away, his attention keenly focused on something. His right ear had a big V-shaped notch taken out of the upper portion, the way some farmers marked their swine. Although he wore the same kind of outfit as the rest of the elite soldiers, his boots weren't the same. Zedd saw, when the man looked around, that his left eye didn't open as wide as his right, but then he moved off into the bands of patrolling soldiers.