Kahlan didn't think her words seemed to help much, but Jennsen welcomed the comfort of the embrace.

Jennsen abruptly looked back up at Richard. "That can't be true. They had a boundary that kept them locked in that place. If they were like me they wouldn't be affected by a boundary of magic. They could have come out of there any time they wished. Over all this time, at least some of them would have come out into the rest of the world- the magic of the boundary couldn't have held them back."

"I don't think that's true," Richard said. "Remember when you saw the sand flowing sideways in that warning beacon that Sabar brought us? That was magic, and you saw it."

"That's right," Kahlan said. "If she's a pillar of Creation, then how is such a thing possible?"

"That's right," Jennsen agreed. "How could that be, if I'm truly ungifted?" Her eyebrows went up. "Richard-maybe it's not true after all.

Maybe I have a bit of the spark of the gift-maybe I'm not really, truly ungifted."

Richard smiled. "Jennsen, you're as pure as a snowflake. You saw that magic for a reason. Nicci wrote us in her letter that the warning beacon was linked to the wizard who created it-linked to him in the underworld. The underworld is the world of the dead. That means that the statue functioned partly through Subtractive Magic-magic having to do with the underworld.

You may be immune to magic, but you are not immune to death. Gifted or not, you're still linked to life, and thus death.

"That's why you saw some of the magic of the statue-the part relating to the advancement of death.

"The boundary was a place in this world where death itself existed.

To go into that boundary was to enter the world of the dead. No one returns from the dead. If any pristinely ungifted person in Bandakar had gone into the boundary, they would have died. That was how they were sealed in."

"But they could banish people through the boundary," Jennsen pressed.

"That would have to mean that the boundary didn't really affect them."

Richard was shaking his head even as she was protesting. "No. They were touched by death, the same as anyone. But there was a way left through the boundary-much like the one that once divided the three lands of the New World. I got through that boundary without being touched by it. There was a pass through it, a special, hidden place to get through the boundary. This one was the same."

Jennsen wrinkled her nose. "That makes no sense, then. If that was true, and it wasn't hidden from them-since they all knew of this passage through the boundary-then why couldn't they all just leave if they wanted to? How could it seal the rest of them in, if they could send banished people through?"

Richard sighed, wiping a hand across his face. It looked to Kahlan like he wished she hadn't asked that question.

"You know the area we passed a while back?" Richard asked her. "That place where nothing grew?"

Jennsen nodded. "I remember."

"Well, Sabar said he came through another one, a little to the north of here."

"That's right," Kahlan said. "And it ran toward the center of the wasteland, toward the Pillars of Creation-just like the one we saw. They had to be roughly parallel."

Richard was nodding to what she was beginning to suspect. "And they were to either side of the notch into Bandakar. They weren't very far apart.

We're in that place right now, between those two boundaries."

Friedrich leaned in. "But Lord Rahl, that would mean that if someone was banished from the Bandakaran Empire, when they emerged from that boundary they would find themselves trapped between the walls of these two boundaries out here, and there wasn't much room between them. A person would have nowhere to go but…"

Friedrich covered his mouth as he turned west, looking off into the gloom.

"The Pillars of Creation," Richard finished with quiet finality.

"But, but," Jennsen stammered, "are you saying that someone made it that way? Made these two boundaries deliberately to force anyone who was sent out of the Bandakaran Empire to go into that place-the Pillars of Creation? Why?"

Richard looked into her eyes for a long moment. "To kill them."

Jennsen swallowed. "You mean, whoever banished these people wanted anyone they in turn sent out, anyone they exiled, to die?"

"Yes," Richard said.

Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself. It had been hot for so long she could hardly believe that the weather had so suddenly turned cold.

Richard swiped a lock of wet hair back off his forehead as he went on.

"From what Adie told me once, boundaries have to have a pass to create balance on both sides, to equalize the life on both sides. I suspect that those down here in the Old World who banished these people wanted to give them a way to get rid of criminals and so told the people about the existence of the pass. But they didn't want such people to be loosed on the rest of the world. Criminals or not, they were ungifted. They couldn't be allowed to run free."

Kahlan immediately saw the problem with his theory. "But all three boundaries would have had to have a pass," she said. "Even if the other two passes, in the remaining two boundaries, were secret, that still left the possibility that anyone exiled and sent through the notch might find one of them and so not try to escape through the Pillars of Creation where they would die. That left the chance that they might still escape into the Old World."

"If there really were three boundaries, such might be the case,"

Richard said. "But I don't think there were three. I think there really was only one."

"Now you're not making any sense," Cara complained. "You said there was the one going north and south blocking the pass, and then there were these two parallel ones out here, going east and west, to funnel anyone who came out of the empire through that first boundary, toward the Pillars of Creation where they would die."

Kahlan had to agree. It seemed that there might be a chance for someone to escape through one of the other two.

"I don't think there were three boundaries," Richard repeated. "I think there was only one. That one boundary wasn't straight-it was bent in half."

He held two fingers up, side by side. "The bottom of the bend went across the pass." He pointed at the web between the two fingers. "The two legs extended out here, parallel, going off to where they ended at the Pillars."

Jennsen could only ask "Why?"

"It seems to me, by how elaborate the whole design was, that the ones who sealed those people in wanted to give them a way to rid themselves of dangerous people, possibly knowing from what they had learned of their beliefs that they would balk at executing anyone. When these people were banished here to the Old World, they may have already had at least the core of the same beliefs they hold now. Those beliefs leave them completely vulnerable to those who are evil. Protecting their way of life, without executing criminals, meant they had to cast such people out of their community or be destroyed by them.

"The banishment away from D'Hara and the New World, across the barrier into the Old World, must have terrified them. They stuck together as a means of survival, a common bond.

"Those down here in the Old World who put them behind that boundary must have used those people's fear of persecution to convince them that the boundary was meant to protect them, to keep others from harming them. They must have convinced those people that, since they were special, they needed such protection. That, along with their well-established need to stick together, had to have reinforced in them a terrible fear of being put out of their protected place. Banishment had a special terror to those people.

"They must have felt the anguish of being rejected by the rest of the peoples of the world because they were ungifted, but, together as they were, they also felt safe behind the boundary.