"Now that the seal is off, we have big problems."

Jennsen folded her arms. "Now that there's more than one of us- more than one snowflake-you're having worries about a snowstorm?"

Richard fixed her with a reproachful look. "Why do you think the Order came in and took some of their people?"

"Apparently," Jennsen said, "to breed more children like them. To breed precious magic out of the race of man."

Richard ignored the heat in her words. "No, I mean why would they take men?"

"Same reason," Jennsen said. "To mate with regular women and give them ungifted children."

Richard drew in a patient breath and let it out slowly. "What did Owen say? The men were taken to see the women and told that if they didn't follow orders those women would be skinned alive."

Jennsen hesitated. "What orders?"

Richard leaned toward her. "What orders, indeed. Think about it," he said, looking around at the rest of them. "What orders? What would they want ungifted men for? What is it they would want ungifted men to do?"

Kahlan gasped. "The Keep!"

"Exactly." Richard's unsettling gaze met each of them in turn. "Like I said, we have big problems. Zedd is protecting the Keep. With his ability and the magic of that place he can no doubt single-handedly hold off Jagang's entire army.

"But how is that skinny old man going to resist even one young ungifted man who is untouched by magic and comes up and grabs him by the throat?"

Jennsen's hand came away from her mouth. "You're right, Richard.

Jagang, too, has that book-The Pillars of Creation. He knows how those like me aren't touched by magic. He tried to use me in that very way. That's why he worked so hard to convince me that you were trying to kill me-so that I would think my only chance was to kill you first. He knew I was ungifted and couldn't be stopped by magic."

"And, Jagang is from the Old World," Richard added. "In all likelihood he would have known something about the empire beyond that boundary. For all we know, in the Old World Bandakar might be legendary, while those in the New World, beyond the great barrier for three thousand years, would never have known what happened to those people.

"Now, the Order has been taking men from there and threatening them with the brutal murder of their defenseless women-women who are loved ones-if those men don't follow orders. I think those orders are to assault the Wizard's Keep and capture it for the Imperial Order."

Kahlan's legs shook. If the Keep fell, they would lose the one real advantage, however limited, they had. With the Keep in the hands of the Order, all those ancient and deadly things of magic would be available to Jagang. There was no telling what he might unleash. There were things in the Keep that could kill them all, Jagang included. He had already proven with the plague he'd unleashed that he was willing to kill any number to have his way, that he was willing to use any weapon, even if such weapons decimated his own people as well.

Even if Jagang did nothing with the Keep, just him having control of it denied the D'Haran Empire the possibility of finding something there that could help them. That was, in addition to protecting the Keep, what Zedd was doing while he was there-trying to find something that would help them win the war, or at least find a way to put the Imperial Order back behind a barrier of some kind and confine them to the Old World.

Without the Keep, their cause would likely be hopeless. Resistance would be nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Without the Keep on their side, all resistance to Jagang would eventually be crushed. His troops would pour into every part of the New World. There would be no stopping them.

With trembling fingers Kahlan clutched her cloak closed. She knew what awaited her people, what it was like when the Imperial Order invaded and overpowered places. She had been with the army for nearly a year, fighting against them. They were like a pack of wild dogs. There was no peace with such animals after you. They would be satisfied only when they could tear you apart.

Kahlan had been to cities, like Ebinissia, that had been overrun by Imperial Order soldiers. In a wild binge of savagery that went on for days, they had tortured, raped, and murdered every person trapped in the city, finally leaving it a wasteland of human corpses. None, no matter their age, had been spared.

That was what the people of the New World had to look forward to.

With enemy troops overrunning all of the New World, any trade that was not already disrupted would be brought to a standstill. Nearly all businesses would fail. The livelihood of countless people would be lost.

Food would quickly become scarce, and then simply unavailable at any cost.

People would have no means of supporting themselves and their families.

People would lose everything for which they had worked a lifetime.

Cities, even before the troops arrived, would be in a destructive panic. When the enemy troops arrived, most people would be burned out of their homes, driven from their cities and their land. Jagang would steal all supplies of food for his troops and give conquered land to his favored elite. The true owners of that land would perish, or become slaves working their own farms. Those who escaped before the invading horde would desperately cling to life, living like animals in wild areas.

Most of the population would be in flight, running for their lives.

Hundreds of thousands would be out in the elements without shelter. There would be little food, and no ability to prepare for winter. When the weather turned harsh, they would perish in droves.

As civilization crumbled and starvation became the norm, disease would sweep across the land, catching up those on the run. Families would collapse as those they depended on suffered agonizingly slow and painful deaths.

Children and the weak would be alone, to be preyed upon as a source of food for the starving.

Kahlan knew what such widespread disease was like. She knew what it was to watch people dying by the thousands. She had seen it happen in Aydindril when the plague was there. She saw scores stricken without warning. She had watched the old, the young-such good people- contract something they could not fight, watched them suffer in misery for days before they died.

Richard had been stricken with that plague. Unlike everyone else, though, he had gotten it knowingly. Taking the plague deliberately had been the price to get back to her. He had traded his life just to be with her again before he died.

That had been a time beyond horror.

Kahlan knew, firsthand, savage desperation. It was then that she had taken the only chance available to her to save his life. It was then that she had loosed the chimes. That act had saved Richard's life. She hadn't known at the time that it would also be a catalyst that would set unforeseen events into motion.

Because of her desperate act, the boundary to this empire had lost its power and failed. Because of her, all magic might eventually fail.

Now, because of that boundary failing, the Wizard's Keep, their last bastion to work a solution against the Order, was in terrible jeopardy.

Kahlan felt as if it was all her fault.

The world was on the brink of destruction. Civilization stood at the threshold of obliteration in the name of the Order's mindless idea of a greater good. The Order demanded sacrifice to that greater good; what they were determined to sacrifice was reason, and, therefore, civilization itself. Madness had cast its shadow across the world and would have them all.

They now stood in the edge of the shadow of a dark age. They were all on the eve of the end times.

Kahlan couldn't say that, though. She couldn't tell them how she felt.

She dared not reveal her despair.