He smiled as he inhaled another whiff.

"Adie-I think it must be done by now," he called toward the doorway to the side pantry room. "I think we ought to taste it, at least. Can't hurt to check, you know."

Zedd glanced back over his shoulder. "Adie? Are you listening to me?"

He went to the doorway and peered into the pantry, but it was empty.

"Adie?" he called down the stairs at the back of the pantry. "Are you down there?"

Zedd's mouth twisted with discontentment when she didn't answer.

"Adie?" he called again. "Bags, woman, where are you?"

He turned back, peering at the stew bubbling in the kettle hung on the crane over the fire. Zedd scooped up a long wooden spoon from a pantry cupboard.

Spoon in hand, he stopped and leaned back toward the stairs. "Take your time, Adie. I'll just be up here.. reading."

Zedd grinned and hurried for the stew.

CHAPTER 13

Richard rose up in a rush when he saw Cara marching up a ravine toward camp, pushing ahead of her a man Richard vaguely recognized. In the failing light, he couldn't make out the man's face. Richard scanned the surrounding flat washes, rocky hills, and steep tree-covered slopes beyond, but didn't see anyone else.

Friedrich was off to the south and Tom to the west, checking the surrounding country, as Cara had been, to be sure there was no one about and that it was a safe place to spend the night; they were exhausted from picking a sinuous route through the increasingly rugged country. Cara had been checking north-the direction they were headed and the direction Richard considered potentially the most dangerous. Jennsen turned from the animals, waiting to see who the Mord-Sith had with her.

Once on his feet, Richard wished he hadn't gotten up quite so quickly-doing so made him light-headed. He couldn't seem to shake the odd, disconnected sensation he felt, as if he were watching someone else react, talk, move. When he concentrated, forcing himself to focus his attention, the feeling would sometimes drift at least partly away and he would begin to wonder if it was only his imagination.

Kahlan's hand slipped up on his arm, gripping him as if she thought he might fall.

"Are you all right?" she whispered.

He nodded as he watched Cara and the man as he also kept an eye on the surrounding countryside. By the end of their ride earlier that afternoon to discuss the book, Kahlan had become even more worried about him. They were both troubled about what he'd read, but Kahlan was far more concerned, at the moment, anyway, about him.

Richard suspected that he might be coming down with a slight fever.

That would explain why he was feeling so cold when everyone else was hot.

From time to time, Kahlan would feel his forehead or place the back of her hand against his cheek. Her touch warmed his heart; she ignored his smiles as she fretted over him. She thought that he might be slightly feverish.

Once she had Jennsen feel his forehead to see if she thought he might be warmer than he should be. Jennsen, too, thought that, if he did have a fever, it was minor. Cara, so far, had been satisfied by Kahlan's report that he didn't feel feverish, and hadn't deemed it necessary to see for herself.

A fever was just about the last thing Richard needed. There were important… important, something. He couldn't seem to recall at the moment.

He concentrated on trying to remember the young man's name, or at least where he'd seen him before.

The last rays of the setting sun cast a pink glow across the mountains to the east. The closer hills were dimming to a soft gray in the gathering dusk. As darkness approached, the low fire was beginning to tint everything close around it a warm yellow-orange. Richard had kept the cook fire small, not wanting it to signal their location any more than necessary.

"Lord Rahl," the man said in a reverent tone as he stepped into camp.

He dipped his head forward in a hesitant bow, apparently not sure if it was proper to bow or not. "It's an honor to see you again."

He was perhaps a couple of years younger than Richard, with curly black hair that brushed the broad shoulders of his buckskin tunic. He wore a long knife at his belt but no sword. His ears stuck out to the sides of his head as if he were straining to listen to every little sound. Richard imagined that as a boy he'd probably endured a lot of taunts about his ears, but now that he was a man his ears made him look rather intent and serious. As muscular as the man was, Richard doubted that he still had to contend with taunts.

"I'm.. I'm sorry, but I can't quite seem to recall…"

"Oh, no, you wouldn't remember me, Lord Rahl. I was only-"

"Sabar," Richard said as it came to him. "Sabar. You loaded the furnaces in Priska's foundry, back in Altur'Rang."

Sabar beamed. "That's right. I can't believe you remember me."

Sabar had been one of the men at the foundry able to have work because of the supplies Richard hauled to Priska when no one else could. Sabar had understood how hard Priska worked just to keep his foundry alive under the oppressive, endless, and contradictory mandates of the Order. Sabar had been there the day the statue Richard carved had been unveiled; he had seen it before it was destroyed. He had been there at the beginning of the revolution in Altur'Rang, fighting close alongside Victor, Priska, and all the others who had seized the moment when it was upon them. Sabar had fought to help gain freedom for himself, his friends, and for his city.

That had been a day everything had changed.

Even though this man, like many others, had been a subject of the Imperial Order-one of the enemy-he wanted to live his own life under just laws, rather than under the dictates of despots who extinguished any hope of bettering oneself under the crushing burden of the cruel illusion of a greater good.

Richard noticed, then, that everyone was standing in tense anticipation, as if they had expected this to be trouble.

Richard smiled at Cara. "It's all right. I know him."

"So he told me," Cara said. She put a hand on Sabar's shoulder and pushed him down. "Have a seat."

"Yes," Richard said, glad to see that Cara had been fairly amiable about it. "Sit down and tell us why you're here."

"Nicci sent me."

Richard rose again in a rush, Kahlan coming up right beside him.

"Nicci? We're on our way to meet her."

Sabar nodded, rising into a half crouch, seeming not to be sure if he was supposed to stand, since Richard and Kahlan had, or stay seated Cara hadn't sat down; she stood behind Sabar like an executioner. Cara had been there when the revolution in Altur'Rang had started and might remember Sabar, but that would make no difference. Cara trusted no one where the safety of Richard and Kahlan was concerned.

Richard gestured for Sabar to remain seated. "Where is she," Richard asked as he and Kahlan sat down again, sharing a seat on a bedroll. "Is she coming soon?"

"Nicci said to tell you that she waited as long as she could, but there have been some urgent developments and she could wait no longer."

Richard let out a disappointed sigh. "Some things came up for us, too."

Kahlan had been captured and taken to the Pillars of Creation as bait to lure Richard into a trap. Rather than go into all that, he kept the story short and to the point. "We were trying to get to Nicci, but needed to go elsewhere. It was unavoidable."

Sabar nodded. "I was worried when she returned to us and said that you had not shown up at your meeting place, but she told us that she was sure you were busy taking care of something important and that was the reason you had not come.