"Well," Cara said, "I don't like his hands." "What do you mean?"

"He has hands like Darken Rahl. I have already seen them caressing fawning women. Darken Rahl did that, too."

Richard threw his hands up. "When did he have time to do that? He was with me most of the day!"

"He found the time, when you were talking to soldiers and when you were out checking on the men with Nadine. It didn't take him long. The women found him. I have never seen so many women batting their lashes at a man. You have to admit, he is fine to look upon."

Richard didn't see what was so especially fine about his looks. "Have any of these women not been willing?"

Her answer was a long moment in coming. "No, Lord Rahl." "Well, I guess I've seen other men who acted like that. Some of them have been my friends. They liked women, and women liked them. As long as the women are willing, I can't see that it's any of my business. I'm more concerned about other things." "Like what?" "I wish I knew."

"If you learn that he is here innocently, and only means to help, as he says, then you can be proud of him. Lord Rahl. Your brother is an important man." "He is? How important is he?" "Your brother is the leader of his sect of healers."

"He is? He never told me that."

''No doubt he did not wish to vaunt himself. Humility before the Lord Rahl is the way of D'Harans, and one of the tenets of that ancient sect of healers." "I suppose. So he leads these healers?" "Yes." Cara said. "He is the High Priest of the Raug'Moss." "The what?" Richard whispered. "What did you call them?" "The Raug'Moss, Lord Rahl." "Do you know the meaning of the words?"

Cara shrugged. "Just that it means 'healers, that's all. Does it have some meaning to you. Lord Rahl?" "Where's Berdine?" "In her bed, I would suppose."

Richard started down the hall, calling orders back to them as he went. "Cara, post a guard for the night around Kahlan's room. Raina, go wake Berdine and ask her to meet me in my office." "Now, Lord Rahl?" Raina asked. 'This late?" "Yes, please."

Richard took the steps two at a time on the way to his office where waited the journal, Kolo's journal, written in High D'Haran. In High D'Haran, Raug'Moss meant "Divine Wind."

Both Shota's warning to Nadine for Richard, "the wind hunts him," and the words from the prophecy down in the pit, "he must seek the remedy in the wind," spun through his mind.

CHAPTER 19

This time," Ann warned, "you had better let me do the talking. Understand?"

Her eyebrows drew so tight together Zedd thought they might touch. She leaned close enough that he could smell the lingering aroma of sausage on her breath. With a fingernail she tapped his collar-another warning, albeit a wordless one.

Zedd blinked innocently. "If it would please you. by all means, but my tales always have your best interest, and our purpose, at heart." "Oh, of course, and your clever wit is always a delight, too." Zedd felt that her affected smile was overdoing it; the sardonic praise would have been quite enough. There were accepted customs to such things. The woman really did need to learn where the line was.

Zedd's gaze again focused beyond her, to the problem at hand. He passed a critical eye over the inn's dimly lit door. It was across the street and at the end of a narrow, board walk. Above the alleyway that ran between two warehouses hung a small sign: "Jester's Inn."

Zedd didn't know the name of the large town they had come to in the dark, but he did know that he would have preferred to pass it by. He had seen several inns in the town; this wasn't the one he would have chosen, had he a choice.

Jester's Inn looked as if it had either been an afterthought meant to use available space in the back, or else its proprietors wanted to shelter it from the scrutiny of honest people and the critical eye of authority. From the customers Zedd had already seen, he was leaning in the direction of the second guess. Most of the men looked to be mercenaries or highwaymen. "I don't like it," he muttered to himself.

"You don't like anything." Ann snapped. "You're the most disagreeable man I've ever met."

Zedd's eyebrows went up in true surprise. "Why would you say that? I've been told that I'm a most pleasant traveling companion. Do we have any of that sausage left?"

Ann rolled her eyes. "No. What is it you don't like this time?" Zedd watched a man look both ways before going to the door at the back of the dark alleyway. "Why would Nathan go in there?"

Ann looked over her shoulder, across the deserted street of rutted, frozen slush. She fingered a stray wisp of graying hair into the loose knot tied at the back of her head.

"To get a hot meal and some sleep." She scowled back at Zedd. "That is, if he's even in there."

"I've shown you how to sense the thread of magic I used to hook the tracer cloud to him. You've felt it, felt him."

"True enough," Ann admitted. 'Yet now that we finally catch him, and know that he's in there, you suddenly don't like it." 'That's right," he said distantly. I don't like it."

The scowl on Ann's face lost its heat and turned serious. "What is it that bothers you?"

"Look at the sign. After the name. A pair of woman's legs pointed up in the shape of a V. She turned back and peered at him is if he were daft. "Zedd, the man has been locked up in the Palace of the Prophets for almost a thousand years."

"You just said it: he's been locked up." Zedd tapped the collar, called a Rada'Han, around his own neck, the collar she had put on him to capture him and make him do her bidding. "Nathan is not inclined to be locked up in a collar again. It probably took him hundreds of years of planning, and the right turn of events, to get out of his collar and to escape. I dread to consider how that man may have influenced or even directly altered events through prophecy to bring to pass the turn of fate that allowed him the opportunity to get off his collar.

"Now you expect me to believe he would go in there just to be with a woman? When he has to know you're chasing after him?"

Ann stared in stunned disbelief, "Zedd, are you saying that you think Nathan may have influenced events-prophecies-just to get his collar off?"

Zedd looked across the road and shook his head. "I'm just saying I don't like it."

"He probably wanted what's in there enough that it distracted him from worrying about me. He simply wanted some female companionship, and ignored the dangers of being caught."

"You have known Nathan for over nine centuries. I've only known him a short time." He leaned down closer to her and lifted an eyebrow. "But even I know better than that. Nathan is anything but stupid. He is a wizard of remarkable talent. You make a serious mistake if you underestimate him."

She watched his eyes a moment. "You're right; it may be a trap. Nathan wouldn't kill me to escape, but beyond that. . You may be right." Zedd harrumphed.

"Zedd," Ann said, after a long, uncomfortable silence, "this business with Nathan is important. He must be caught. He's helped me in the past when we have discovered danger in the prophecies, but he is still a prophet. Prophets are dangerous. Not because they deliberately wish to cause trouble, but because of the nature of prophecy."

"You don't need to convince me of that. I know well the dangers of prophecy." "We have always kept prophets confined at the Palace of the Prophets because of the potential for catastrophe should they roam free. A prophet who wanted mischief could have it. Even a prophet who doesn't wish mischief is dangerous, not only to others but to himself; people usually extract vengeance on the bringer of truth, as if knowing the truth is its cause. Prophecy is not meant to be heard by untrained minds, those having no understanding of magic, much less prophecy. "One time, as we sometimes did at his request, we let a woman visit Nathan." Zedd frowned at her. "You took prostitutes to him?"