Another man let out a grunt. This time Rachel stopped and turned just long enough for a quick look. It had not been a fall, or a twisted ankle. It had been a sound released in death. Rachel's eyes were wide as she stared. Another man shrieked like he was being skinned alive.

Rachel wondered what kind of woods she was in, and what monsters were loose in them.

She turned and ran. She had no chance if the men got her. She didn't know what else was about, but she first had to keep from getting caught or they were liable to slit her throat for giving them a difficult time.

Suddenly, three men charged out of the brush, roaring in rage. A little cry squeaked out as Rachel ran with all her strength and fear. The men, though, had longer legs and were catching her.

One of them stopped suddenly. Rachel glanced back over a shoulder and saw the man arching his back, as if in pain. She saw, then, a foot of steel jutting from his chest. The other two turned to the unexpected attack from behind.

As the man who had been run through with a sword started to fall, Rachel's jaw fell open at what she saw behind him.

It was Chase, big as life.

She couldn't make sense of it.

The two men charged him. Chase fought them with swift, powerful strikes, taking them both down as if doing no more than brushing aside pests, but at the same time more men poured out of the woods around them. She saw at least a half dozen of the big Imperial Order soldiers to one side alone charging the even bigger boundary warden.

Rachel ran back as Chase fought all the men at once. When he killed a man to his side, a man to the other side used the opening to go for him. Rachel whacked the backs of his knees. His legs folded under him. Chase swung around and ran the man though, then met the fierce charge of yet more men, all of them grunting with the effort of trying to take down this one big man. They gritted their teeth as they growled and tried to grapple Chase's arms so other men could stab him. Rachel waled away at them with all her strength, but to no avail.

When one of the men fell dead, Rachel snatched the knife in a sheath at his belt and immediately stabbed the legs of a man going for Chase's back. He cried out and turned. Chase took him in an instant.

All of a sudden it was quiet, except for Rachel and Chase's labored breathing. All the men lay dead.

Rachel stood staring up at Chase. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, couldn't believe her eyes. She feared that he might vanish, like a phantom.

He looked down at her, and that wonderful grin of his came over his face.

"Chase, what are you doing here?"

"I came to see if you were all right."

"All right? I was held captive in the castle. I thought you were dead. I had to rescue myself. What took you so long?"

He shrugged. "I wouldn't have wanted to spoil your accomplishment. Isn't it better that you did it on your own?"

"Well," she said, a bit perplexed, "I could have used some help."

"Is that so?" He appeared unmoved by her complaint. "You look to have managed."

"But you don't know. It was terrible. They locked me up in the box again, and they locked my tongue so that I couldn't talk."

Chase eyed her askance. "I don't suppose you brought that tongue lock with you, did you? It sounds like a useful device."

Rachel grinned and hugged him around his waist. When she had first met him she had to hug his leg because that was all she could reach. She basked in the comfort of his big hand on her back. It felt like everything in the world was right again.

"I thought you were dead," she said as she started to cry.

He ruffled her chopped-off hair. "I wouldn't do that to you, little one. I promised to take care of you, and I meant it."

"I guess that I'm stuck with being your daughter."

"Guess so. Your hair is ugly, though. You'll have to grow it back if you want to stay with me. You can't keep chopping it off like that if you want to be my daughter. I told you that before."

Rachel grinned through her tears.

Chase was alive.

CHAPTER 52

With Cara right on her heels, Nicci strode through the immense brass-clad doors covered in elaborate, engraved symbols. A flickering flash of lightning came in through the dozen round-topped windows between the towering mahogany columns to illuminate row upon row of shelves all around the cavernous room. They had managed to patch only the worst of the damage to the two-story-tall windows — enough, they hoped, that the room could be used for its intended purpose as a containment field. Some of the heavy dark green velvet draperies with gold fringe were getting wet as rain blew in the remaining holes on some of the stronger gusts.

Seeing what was in the center of the room, floating above the large table Nicci had once floated above herself, she hoped that a bit of errant rain would be all that came in through those missing parts of the windows.

Rushing to meet her, Zedd gripped her shoulders. Desperation was clearly evident in his eyes.

"Did you find him? He's alive, isn't he? Is he all right?"

Nicci took a breath. "Zedd, he survived the events in the sliph — I at least found out that much."

The sliph had also already told them that much. Rikka had been there, guarding the well, when the sliph had unexpectedly returned. They were all surprised that the sliph had returned at all, much less returned to tell them what had happened.

The silver creature had abruptly been eager to talk — up to a point — to tell them what had happened to Richard. It wasn't because the sliph wanted to tell where she had been with one of her travelers, but rather that Richard, her master, had told the sliph to tell them that he was safe and where he had gone. She was eager to do his bidding.

Unfortunately, the sliph's nature was to be secretive, and they weren't able to get straight answers from her on much more of it. Zedd had said that the sliph wasn't being perverse; she simply couldn't help the way others had created her. She was being true to her nature. He said that they would just have to go along with the sliph's way of revealing information and do their best to learn what they could from her.

Zedd had also detected on the sliph the trace residue power left by a witch woman. They were pretty sure that it had to be Six. They weren't sure what Six was up to, but at least they knew from the sliph that Richard had somehow escaped her clutches.

"But where is he? Did the sliph take you there? Take you where she said she left him?"

"She did." Nicci glanced at the Mord-Sith and then laid a hand on Zedd's shoulder. "After we got to the place where the sliph had taken him, she then told us where he had gone: to the land of the night wisps. We still had to travel some distance to get there."

Zedd stared in astonishment. "The night wisps?"

"Yes. But Richard wasn't there."

"At least he's alive. It sounds like he was acting on his own volition, and not that of a witch woman," Zedd said, sounding a little relieved. "What did they say? What were the wisps able to tell you?"

Nicci heaved a sigh. "I wish you could travel so that you could have gone there, Zedd. Maybe they would have told you more than they would tell us. They wouldn't even allow us to enter beyond this strange, dead forest."

"Dead forest? What dead forest?"

Nicci lifted her hands. "I don't know, Zedd. I'm no expert in the outdoors. There was this vast area of oaks but they were all dead — "

"The oak wood is dead?" Zedd leaned closer to her. "Are you serious? The oaks are dead?".

Nicci shrugged. "I guess. They were oak trees. Richard taught me what an oak was. These were all dead, though."

Zedd glanced away as he scratched an eyebrow. "Were there bones among these oaks?"