As she felt hot pain knife through her.

As she felt the thrust of something foreign and terrible beyond anything she could have imagined.

Hot agony lanced through her consciousness all the way into her very soul.

It felt as if her insides were being ripped apart.

She tried to scream but couldn't.

The night went blacker still.

Kahlan heard laughter echoing through her soul.

CHAPTER 58

Richard's eyes popped open. He felt suddenly, completely, horrifyingly wide awake.

The hair at the back of his neck lifted. It felt as if all his hair wanted to stand on end. His heart raced nearly out of control.

He shot to his feet. Cara, right beside him, caught his arm, surprised to see him suddenly stand up. Looking as if she feared he might fall, she frowned in concern.

"Lord Rahl, what's the matter? Are you all right?"

The room was silent. Startled faces all around stared up at him.

"Get out!" he yelled. "Get your things! Everyone out! Now!"

Richard snatched up his pack. He didn't see Kahlan, but saw her pack and grabbed it as well. He wondered if he might still be dreaming. But he never remembered his dreams. He wondered if the feeling might be some lingering dread from a dream. No. It was real.

At first made confused and indecisive by Richard's sudden commands, when the men saw him urgently picking up his gear, everyone scooped up their things and scrambled to their feet. Men everywhere were snatching anything they saw lying about, no matter whose it was.

"Move!" Richard yelled as he pushed hesitant men toward the door. "Go.

Move, move, move."

It felt as if something brushed against him, a sliding caress of his flesh, something warm and wicked. Goose bumps tingled up his arms.

"Hurry!"

Men scrambled wildly up the dark stairs ahead of him. Betty, caught up in the mood of panicked escape, shot between his legs and ran up the steps.

Cara was close behind him.

The hair at the nape of his neck prickled as if lightning was about to strike. Richard scanned the dark, empty room.

"Where's Kahlan and Jennsen?"

"They went outside before," Cara said.

"Good. Let's go!"

Just as Richard reached the top of the stairs, a fiery blast from back in the room knocked him sprawling. Cara fell on his legs. The stairwell lit in a flash of yellow and orange light as the entire basement filled with flames. Gouts of fire rolled up the stairwell.

Richard seized Cara's arm and dove with her through the open doorway.

As they burst out into the night, the building behind them erupted in a thunderous roar of flames. Parts of the building broke apart, lifting in the billowing blaze. Richard and Cara ducked as flaming boards fell all around them, bouncing and flipping across the ground lit by the glow.

Finally away from the burning building, Richard made a quick appraisal of the alley, looking to see if there were any soldiers about to set upon them. Not seeing anyone he didn't recognize, he started the men moving down the alley to put some distance between them and the burning building.

"We have to get away from here," Richard told Anson. "Nicholas knew we were here. The fire will draw attention and troops. We haven't much time."

Looking around, he still didn't see Kahlan anywhere. His concern rising, he spotted Jennsen, Tom, and Owen running up the alley toward him.

By the looks on their faces, he immediately knew that something was wrong.

Richard seized Jennsen's arm as she ran up close. "Where's Kahlan?"

Jennsen gulped air. "Richard-she, she-"

Jennsen burst into tears. Owen waved a square-sided bottle and a piece of paper, as he, too, wept uncontrollably.

Richard looked at Tom, expecting an answer, and fast. "What's going on?"

"Nicholas found the antidote. He offered it in trade… for the Mother Confessor. We tried to stop her, Lord Rahl-I swear we did. She wouldn't listen to any of us. She insisted that she was going to get the antidote and then stop Nicholas. After you have the antidote, if she fails to stop Nicholas and return, she wants you to come for her."

The leaping flames lit the grim faces around him.

"Once her mind is made up," Tom added, "there's no talking her out of it. She has a way of making you do as she says."

Richard knew the truth of that. Amid the roar and crackle of the fire, the building groaned and popped. The roof began to fall in, sending showers of sparks skyward.

Owen urgently handed the square-sided bottle to Richard. "Lord Rahl, she did it to get the antidote. She wanted you to have it so you could be well. She said that comes first-before it is too late."

Richard pulled the cork on the bottle. It had the slight aroma of cinnamon. He took the first swallow, expecting a thick, sweet, spicy taste.

It didn't taste that way at all.

He looked at Jennsen's and Owen's faces. "This is water."

Jennsen's eyes went wide. "What?"

"Water. Water with a little cinnamon in it." Richard poured it on the ground. "It's not the antidote. She traded herself to Nicholas for noth-ing."

Jennsen, Owen, and Tom stood in mute shock.

Richard felt a kind of detached calm. It was over. It was the end of everything. He now had a limited amount of time to do what had to be done

… and then everything was at an end for him.

"Let me see this note," he said to Owen.

Owen handed it over. Richard had no trouble reading by the light coming from the fire. As Cara, Tom, Jennsen, and Owen watched, he read it over three times.

Finally, his arm lowered. Cara snatched the note away and read it for herself.

Richard gazed up the alleyway at the burning building, trying to figure it out. "How did Nicholas know that someone was coming for the antidote? He said we had an hour. How did he know we were here, this close, and coming for it, in order to write in the note that he gave us an hour?"

"Maybe he didn't," Cara said. "Maybe he wrote the note days ago. Maybe he just wrote that to make us rush without thinking."

"Maybe." Richard gestured behind him. "But how did he know we were here?"

"Magic?" Jennsen offered.

Richard didn't like the idea that Nicholas apparently knew so much and was always one step ahead of them.

"How did you know that Nicholas was about to set this place ablaze?"

Cara asked him.

"I woke suddenly," Richard said. "My headache was gone and I just knew we had to get out at once."

"So your gift worked?"

"I guess so. It does that-it works sometimes to warn me."

He wished he could somehow make it more dependable. At least this time it had been, or they would all be dead.

Tom peered out into the night. "So, you think Nicholas is close? That he knew where we were and set the place afire?"

"No. I think he wants us to believe he's close. He's a wizard. He could have sent wizard's fire from a great distance. I'm no expert on magic; he might have used some other means to set the fire from a distance."

Richard turned to Owen. "Take me to this building where you hid the antidote, where Nicholas was when you first saw him."

Without hesitation, Owen started out. The rest of the small group followed after him.

"Do you think she will be there?" Jennsen asked.

"There's only one way to find out."

By the time they reached the river they were out of breath. Richard was furious to find the bridge gone, with stone blocks from it scattered on the banks far below; the rest of it had apparently vanished beneath the dark water. Owen and some of the other men said that there was another bridge farther to the north, so they took off in that direction, following the road that twisted along beside the river.

Before they reached the bridge, a knot of soldiers rushed out from a side street with weapons raised, yelling battle cries.