CHAPTER 10

      Kahlan opened her eyes.

      It was night. In the flickering firelight, as she tried to will her vision into focus, she saw fuzzy faces bent down over her. She felt as if she was a great distance away, and it was proving to be a long and difficult journey back.

      As her focus began to resolve, she recognized Zedd’s weathered, worried face bent over her. His wavy white hair looked more unruly than usual. The tips of his bony fingers pressed firmly against her forehead. That explained the persistent tingling sensation down her spine. Seeing Zedd, she realized that what she felt was the healing power of the gift.

      She saw Nicci, then, kneeling down close to her on the opposite side from Zedd. The sorceress looked no less concerned. Nicci squeezed Kahlan’s hand as she offered a reassuring smile to welcome her back from the dark world of the lost.

      Samantha crowded in close behind Nicci, with her mother Irena, leaning in over her shoulder, watching intently.

      Then, in the fluttering light from a nearby campfire, Kahlan spotted Richard a little farther back in the center of the other faces. She saw the relief in his eyes as he let out a deep breath.

      As soon as she saw him, Kahlan sat up and threw her arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly to her. She had feared he had been killed by the half people and she would never see him again.

      Now that she had her arms around his muscular neck, her cheek against his stubble, she let the joy and relief of seeing him alive run rampant through her. She put a hand to the back of his head and held him to her, thankful that he was all right and there with her. She wanted to envelop him.

      “It’s so good to see you,” she whispered privately in the midst of the crowd. When she held him, there was no crowd, there was only him. There was always only him in her heart and soul.

      His arms tightened around her. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you wake up.”

      She finally parted from him, holding his shoulders, and saw that he had cleaned off all the blood of the half people he had fought. She looked around at all the grim faces, their bleak expressions finally easing.

      “Well,” Zedd said, “it would seem that I have done it again.”

      Richard laughed. Everyone else looked like they had thought for a time that they would never smile again.

      “What happened?” Kahlan asked.

      “I healed you,” Zedd announced, as if that should be explanation enough.

      Kahlan waved a hand as she sat up the rest of the way. “No, I mean what happened with the half people that were after us?”

      She saw firelight from a nearby fire reflecting up the face of the cliff. As she looked around, she saw that there were two more campfires, one to either side of them, their light also reflecting off the cliff and helping to light the general area and the trees nearby. The men of the First File were close by all around them. The fires were large, meant to keep the darkness at bay so that no one could easily sneak up.

      “Well,” Richard said, “we made it here and we were able to fight them off. We set up camp with a tight defensive line. You were unconscious—”

      “I healed you,” Zedd repeated, apparently trying to get across how difficult it had been without complaining directly.

      “Was it hard?” Kahlan asked him. It was dawning on her that he was trying to say something more without saying it. “Was it extra difficult … for some reason?”

      Zedd leaned back on his heels. “Yes, it was hard,” he confirmed with an earnest nod. He lifted one eyebrow. “Quite difficult, actually.”

      Kahlan decided to cut through the dancing and turned to Nicci. “Why?”

      Nicci didn’t shy from the question. “You were injured—one of the half people tried to steal your soul by eating you. The ever-present threat of death within you used that opportunity, when so much was going on, when you were weakened by the struggle, to try to pull you in. You were pretty far gone and it took all day and part of tonight, but Zedd managed to pull you back.”

      Kahlan put a hand up to the top of her shoulder and felt only smooth skin. She thought she remembered the pain of teeth sinking into her flesh there. She remembered the terror of it. Then there was only blackness and the terrible feeling of being forever lost to it.

      She smiled at the wizard. “Thank you, Zedd.”

      Samantha leaned in, eager to tell the story. “Lord Rahl chopped the head off the man that was biting you so fast and with such power that I bet we were halfway here before it ever hit the ground.”

      “You were unconscious, though,” Irena said, considerably more worried-looking than Samantha.

      “Some of the men carried you,” Samantha said as she leaned past her mother, eager to get to the meat of the story. “That way Lord Rahl could fight off the Shun-tuk. You were bleeding pretty badly. Lord Rahl and the men—”

      “We made it here,” Richard said, not at all interested in the drama of the tale. “Once we were here we were able to gain control of the situation and begin to reduce their numbers—”

      “And then the Shun-tuk disappeared,” Samantha put in, not happy with Richard’s pace at storytelling. She snapped her fingers. “Gone, just like that.”

      “We set up a defensive position,” Richard said, “so that Zedd and Nicci could heal you.” The ghost of worry reappeared on his features. “Or at least heal your more obvious wounds.”

      Nicci laid a hand on Kahlan’s arm. “You know we can’t get the poison of death out of you, at least not here, or we would. We did the best we could to give you strength.”

      “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Kahlan asked.

      Nicci nodded. “I’m afraid so. It was touch-and-go for a while, there. We were worried that this time we wouldn’t be able to bring you back.”

      Kahlan nodded. “Me too.”

      “Ba,” Zedd said with a dismissive gesture. “Nicci was afraid. I knew I could do it.”

      Nicci smiled at last. “Yes, Zedd, this time you proved yourself to be the wonder you have always insisted you are.”

      With a wave, Kahlan cut off the small talk. “What about the men? Are they all right? Were any of them hurt or killed? Did we lose any of them?”

      “Surprisingly enough,” Richard said, “we didn’t lose a single man. The First File knows how to fight. Half people typically don’t, although these are Shun-tuk, and they’re more trouble than the other half people we’ve encountered in the past. They don’t just attack randomly. They execute their attack according to a plan. That makes them more dangerous than the half people we’ve fought before.

      “Worse, some of these obviously have an ability to use occult powers. We know how dangerous they are. After all, they’ve overwhelmed and captured these battle-hardened, elite troops and our gifted once before and took them beyond the barrier, so they’re confident they can take us again. Even though we managed to escape, it wasn’t before we lost a lot of men back beyond the barrier. It’s pretty clear that the Shun-tuk don’t give up.”

      “What about the man we went to