At the top of the bank he ducked under overhanging branches of scrawny mountain maple that grew in the understory of hardwoods leaning out beside the towering pines in an effort to capture the light. Leaves of the ash and birch rising above the mountain maple collected the drixzle, until their leaves had as much as they could hold and released it to patter down in fat drops that slapped the lower leaves above Richard's head. When a light breeze caught those upper leaves, they released their load to rain down in sudden but brief torrents.

Stooping under low-spreading branches of fir trees, Richard followed his track back through thickets of huckleberry into the more open ground of the hushed woods beneath the thick canopy of ancient evergreens. Pine needles had been woven by the wind into sprawling mats that cushioned his steps. Spiraling webs hung by spiders to catch the small bugs that zigzagged all about had instead netted the mist and were now dotted with shimmering drops of water, like jeweled necklaces on display.

Back in the sheltering cover of rock and the thick growth of young spruce, Kahlan stood when she saw Richard coming. When she stood, everyone else then saw him, and came to their feet as well. Richard ducked in under the wispy green branches.

"Did you see any races, Lord Rahl?" Owen asked, clearly nervous about the predators.

"No," Richard told him as he picked up his pack and slung it over a shoulder. He slipped his other arm beneath the second strap as he pulled the pack up onto his back. "That doesn't mean they didn't see me, though."

Richard hooked his bow over the back of his left shoulder, along with a waterskin.

"Well," Owen said, wringing his hands, "we can still hope they won't know where we are."

Richard paused to look at the man. "Hope is not a strategy."

As the rest of them all started collecting their things from the brief break, hooking gear on belts and shouldering packs, Richard drew Cara by the arm out of the cover of small trees and pulled her close.

"See that rise through there?" he asked as he held her near him so she could see where he was pointing. "With the strip of open ground that passes in front of the young oak with the broken dead limb hanging down?"

Cara nodded. "Just after where the ground rises and goes over that trickle of water running down the face of the rock, staining it green?"

"That's the spot. I want you to follow up over that area, then cut to the right, taking that cleft up-that one there beyond the split in the rock, there-and see if you can scout a trail up to the next shelf up above these trees here."

Cara nodded. "Where will you be?"

"I'm going to take the rest of us up to the first break in the slope.

We'll be there. Come back and tell us if you find a way over the projection."

Cara hoisted up her pack onto her back and then picked up the stout staff Richard had cut for her.

"I didn't know that Mord-Sith could cut trails," Tom said.

"Mord-Sith can't," Cara said. "I, Cara, can. Lord Rahl taught me."

As she vanished into the trees, Richard watched her walk. She moved gracefully, disturbing little as she made her way into the trackless woods.

She moved with an economy of effort that would conserve her energy. It had not always been so; she had learned well the lessons he had given her.

Richard was pleased to see that the lessons had stuck and his efforts had not been wasted.

Owen came forward, looking agitated. "But Lord Rahl, we can't go that way." He waggled a hand back over his shoulder. "The trail goes that way.

That is the only way up and through the pass. There lies the way down, and with it the way back up, now that the boundary is gone. It's not easy, but it's the only way."

"It's the only way you know of. By how well that trail looks to be traveled, I think it's the only way Nicholas knows of as well. It appears to be the way the Order troops move in and out of Bandakar.

"If we go that way the races will be watching. If, on the other hand, we don't show up, then/he won't know where we went. I want to keep it that way from now on. I'm tired of playing mouse to his owl."

Richard let Kahlan lead them up through the woods, following the natural route of the land when the way ahead was reasonably evident. When she was in doubt she would glance back at him for direction. Richard would look where she was to go, or nod in the direction he wanted her to take, or, in a few cases, he needed to give her instruction.

By the lay of the land, Richard was pretty sure that there was an ancient trail up through the mountain pass. That pass, that from afar looked like a notch in the wall of mountains, was in reality no mere notch but a broad area twisting as it rose back up between the mountains. Richard didn't think that the path that the Bandakar people used to banish people through the boundary was the only way through that pass. With the boundary in place it may well have been, but the boundary was no longer there.

From what he'd seen so far, Richard suspected that there once had been a route that in ancient times had been the main way in and out. Here and there he was able to discern depressions that he believed were remnants of that ancient, abandoned route.

While it was always possible that the old passage had been abandoned for good reason, such as a landslide that made it impassable, he wanted to know if that once traveled way was still usable. It would, at the least, since it was in a different part of the mountains than the known path, take them away from where the races were likely to be looking for them.

Jennsen walked up close beside Richard when the way through towering pines was open enough. She tugged Betty along by her rope, keeping her from stopping to sample plants along the way.

"Sooner or later the races will find us, don't you think?" Jennsen asked. "I mean, if we don't show up where they expect to find us, then don't you think they will search until they do find us? You were the one who said that from the sky they could cover great distances and search us out."

"Maybe," Richard said. "But it will be hard to spot us in the woods if we use our heads and stay hidden. In forests they can't search nearly as much area as they could in the same amount of time out in the wasteland. In open ground they could spot us miles away. Here, they will have a hard time of it unless they're really close and we are careless.

"By the time we don't show up where the known trail makes it up into Bandakar, they will have a vast area they suddenly will need to search and they won't have any idea which direction to look. That compounds the problem for them in finding us.

"I don't think that the viewing Nicholas gets through their eyes can be very good, or he wouldn't need to gather the races now and again to circle.

If we can stay out of sight long enough, then we'll be among the people up in Bandakar and then Nicholas, through the eyes of the races, will have a hard, if not impossible, time picking us out from others."

Jennsen thought it over as they entered a stand of birch. Betty went the wrong way around a tree and Jennsen had to stop to untangle her rope.

They all hunched their shoulders against the wet when a breeze brought down a soaking shower.

"Richard," Jennsen asked in a voice barely above a whisper as she caught back up with him, "what are you going to do when we get there?"

"I'm going to get the antidote so I don't die."

"I know that." Jennsen pulled a sodden ringlet of red hair back from her face. "What I mean is, what are you going to do about Owen's people?"

Each breath he drew brought a slight stitch of pain deep in his lungs.

"I'm not sure, yet, just what I can do."

Jennsen walked in silence for a moment. "But you will try to help them, won't you?"