"But, as often as it rains, you realize that it will sooner or later get you wet.

"So, you may decide that the best approach in the long run is to gain an understanding of exactly what you are up against. Therefore, in an effort to understand your adversary, you watch the sky and try to learn to predict the rain. Some patterns begin to reveal themselves as relatively reliable, so you use them as a means of prediction and as a result there will be times when you are correct and accurately anticipate the approaching rain. By this means you are able to stay inside when the rain comes and thus you stay dry. You have succeeded, it would seem, by applying what you've learned about how to anticipate and predict the rain."

Shota's intent, ageless eyes took in Cara and then fixed on Richard with such power that it almost halted his breathing. "But sooner or later," she said in a voice than ran a shiver up his spine, "the rain will catch you. You may be taken by complete surprise. Or, you may have forecast that it was coming, but believed that you would have time to be able to take to shelter first, and then it suddenly sweeps in faster than you ever thought possible. Or, on a day when you are far from shelter because you thought that on that day there was no chance of rain at all and so you ventured far from your shelter, it unexpectedly catches you. The result of all these different events is the same. If it is the beast, rather than the rain, you are not wet, you are dead.

"Confidence in your ability to predict the rain will eventually be your downfall because while you may be able lo accurately predict it on a number of occasions, it is not in reality reliably predictable based on the amount of knowledge actually available to you or possibly your ability to understand all the information you do have. The more times you escape, though, the stronger your false sense of confidence will become, making you all that much more vulnerable to a surprise event. Your best efforts to know the nature of rain will eventually fail you because even if you are right with a number of your forecasts, the things that brought about successful predictions are not always relevant, yet you have no way of knowing that. As a result, the rain will sneak up and envelope you when you are not expecting it."

Richard glanced at the worried look on Cara's face, but didn't say anything.

"The blood beast is like that," Shota said with finality. "It has no nature precisely so that you cannot predict its behavior by any patterns to its conduct."

Richard took a patient breath. He couldn't keep quiet any longer. "But all things that exist have to have a nature to them, laws of their existence, even if we don't understand them-otherwise what you are proposing is that they could contradict themselves and they can't.

"Lack of understanding on your part does not mean that you can pick an explanation of your choice. You can't say that since you don't know the nature of it, it therefore has none. You can say only that you don't yet know the nature of this thing, that you haven't yet been able to understand it."

With a slight smile, Shota gestured toward the sky. "Like the rain? You may be theoretically correct, Richard, but some things, for all practical purposes, are so far beyond our understanding that they appear to be driven by happenstance-like the rain. For all I know, weather may very well have laws that drive it, but they are so complex and so far-reaching that we cannot realistically hope to comprehend or know them. The rain may not truly, in the end, be an event caused by chance, but it is still outside our ability to predict so to us the result is the same as if it were entirely random and without order or nature.

"A blood beast is like this. If there are in fact laws to its nature, as you believe, it would make no difference to you. All I can tell you is that from what I know, it's a beast created specifically to act without order and the creation of it was successful to the degree that it functions consistently with having no discernible nature-at least none that is of any use in understanding or stopping it.

"I grant the possibility that you may be right. I suppose it's possible that there is some complex nature behind the beast's seeming disorder, but if that is the case, I can tell you that it is so far beyond our ability to understand that for our purposes it functions by chaos."

"I'm not sure I understand you," Richard said. "Give me an example."

"For instance, the beast will not learn from what it does. It may try the same failed tactic three times in a row, or it may try something even weaker the next time that obviously has no chance of success. What it does appears random. But if it is driven by some grand, complex equation, it is not revealed through its actions; we see only chaotic results.

"What's more, it has no consciousness, as we would think of it, anyway. It has no soul. While it has a goal, it doesn't care if it succeeds. It doesn't get angry if it fails. It's devoid of mercy, empathy, curiosity, enthusiasm, or worry. It was given a mission-kill Richard Rahl-and it randomly uses its myriad abilities to achieve that goal, but it has no emotional or intellectual interest in seeing its purpose accomplished.

"Living things have self-interest in seeing themselves succeed at their goals, whether it's a bird flying to a berry bush, or a snake following a mouse down a hole. They act to further their life. The blood beast does not.

"It's just a mindless thing advancing toward the completion of its built-in conjured objective. You might say it's like the rain, given the mission of 'get Richard wet. The rain tries and tries, a downpour, a drizzle, a quick shower, and all fail. The rain doesn't care that it failed to get you wet. It may idle itself with a drought. It doesn't get eager or angry. It doesn't redouble its efforts. It will just go on raining in different ways until eventually it drenches you. When it does, it will feel no joy.

"The beast is irrational in that sense-but make no mistake, it is vicious, fierce, and mindlessly cruel in its actions."

Richard wearily wiped a hand across his face. "Shota, that still makes no sense to me. How could it be like that? If it's a beast, it has to be driven by purpose of some sort. Something has to drive it."

"Oh, it is driven by something: the need to kill you. It was created to be a creature that acts with pure disorder so that you may not counter it. In a way, you have proven yourself to be an opponent so difficult to defeat that Jagang had to come up with something that would work by avoiding your — striking abilities, rather than overpowering them."

"But if it was created to kill me, then it has purpose."

Shota shrugged. "True enough, but that one bit of information is of no use to you in predicting how, when, or where it will try to kill you. As you should know by now, its actions toward that goal are random. You should clearly see the profound danger in that tactic. If you know the enemy will attack with spears, you can carry a shield. If you know that one assassin with a bow is hunting you, you can have an army search for a man with a bow. If you know a wolf is hunting you, you can set a trap, or stay indoors.

"The blood beast has no preferred method of killing or hunting, so from the standpoint of defending yourself from it, it's profoundly difficult to protect against. One day it may attack and easily kill a thousand soldiers who are protecting you. The next time it may timidly withdraw after mauling a single child who toddles in front of you. What it does one time can tell you nothing about what it will do the next time. That, too, is part of the terror engendered by such a beast-the terror of not knowing how the attack will come.

"Its strength, its lethality, is that it isn't anything in particular. It isn't strong, or weak, or fast, or slow. It's constantly changing yet it sometimes stays the same or reverts to a previous state, even an unsuccessful one.