The fury leaving him, Richard looked like he might fall down. The disappointment was only too evident in his eyes. His shoulders slumped as he let out a breath. Cara carefully, but quietly, slipped a step closer, ready to help him if he collapsed. To Nicci, that looked like a real possibility.

"Richard," Zedd said, his voice taking on an edge, "where is your sword?"

Richard erupted. "It's just a piece of steel!"

"Just a piece.»

Richard's face went crimson. "It's just a stupid chunk of metal! Don't you think that there might be more important things to worry about?"

Zedd cocked his head. "More important things? What are you talking about?"

"I want my life back!"

Zedd stared at him, but remained silent, and in doing so thereby almost commanded his grandson to say something more to fill in some of the blanks.

Richard paced from the fountain to a broad band of triple steps that led up between two of the red marble pillars. A long red and gold carpet bordered with simple, black geometric designs ran between the pillars off under a balcony and into the darkness.

Richard raked the fingers of both hands back through his hair. "What difference does it make? No one believes me. No one will help me find her."

Nicci felt a deep sense of sorrow for him. At that moment she regretted every harsh thing she had ever said trying to convince him that he had only dreamed up Kahlan. He needed to be helped over his delusions, but, at that moment, she would have been happy to let him hold on to them if it would have brought the light of life back into his eyes.

She longed to hold him and tell him that it would be all right, but she couldn't, for more reasons than one.

Cara, arms hanging straight at her sides, looked just as saddened to see Richard agonizing so. There seemed no end in sight. Nicci suspected that the Mord-Sith would have agreed with Nicci to let Richard have his beautiful dream of the woman he loved. But a lie would not soothe such real pain.

"Richard, I don't know what you're talking about, but what does it have to do with the Sword of Truth?" Zedd asked, the edge returning to his voice.

Richard closed his eyes a moment against the torment of saying aloud what he had said so many times, so many times when no one ever believed him.

"I have to find Kahlan."

Nicci could see him draw tighter, bracing for the usual disconcerting questions as to who he was talking about and where he could ever have gotten such a notion. Nicci could see that it was almost too much for him to bear another person telling him he was imagining things, questioning his sanity. She could see him dreading it even more coming from his grandfather.

Zedd tilted his head a little. "Kahlan?"

"Yes," Richard said with a sigh and without looking up, "Kahlan. But you wouldn't know who I'm talking about."

Ordinarily, Richard would have launched into a ready explanation, but now he looked too dejected to want to bother to explain yet again, to be greeted with incredulity and disbelieving questions.

"Kahlan." Zedd's brow drew down in cautious query. "Kahlan Amnell? Is that the Kahlan you're talking about?"

Nicci froze.

Richard looked up, his eyes wide. "What did you say?" he whispered.

"Kahlan Amnell? That Kahlan?"

Nicci's heart skipped a beat. Cara's jaw had dropped.

In a blink, Richard had the front of Zedd's robes in his fists and had lifted the old man clear of the floor. Richard's sweat-slicked muscles glistened in the lamplight.

"You said her whole name, Kahlan Amnell. I didn't tell you her whole name. You said it on your own."

Zedd was looking more confused by the moment. "But, that's because the only Kahlan I know of is Kahlan Amnell."

"You know Kahlan-you know who I'm talking about?"

"The Mother Confessor?"

"Yes, the Mother Confessor!"

"Well, of course. Most people know her, I expect. Richard, what's gotten into you? Let me down."

Nicci felt dizzy. She couldn't believe her own ears. How was such a thing possible? It wasn't. It was so overwhelmingly, inconceivably impossible that she thought she might faint.

His hands trembling, Richard set his grandfather down. "What do you mean, everyone knows her?"

Zedd pulled on each sleeve in turn, pulling them back down his skinny arms. He rearranged his disheveled robes at his hips, all the time watching his grandson. He looked truly bewildered by Richard's behavior.

"Richard, what's the matter with you? How could they not know her? She's the Mother Confessor, for crying out loud."

Richard swallowed. "Where is she?"

Zedd shot a brief, confused glance at Cara and then Nicci before looking back at Richard.

"Why, down at the Confessors' Palace."

Richard let out a cry of joy and threw his arms around his grandfather.

CHAPTER 47

Gripping his grandfather's skinny shoulders, Richard shook the old man. "She's here? Kahlan is at the Confessors' Palace?"

Worry spreading across Zedd's wrinkled face, he cautiously nodded.

With the back of his hand, Richard wiped away the tears running down his cheek. "She's here," he said, turning to Cara. He gripped her shoulders and gave her a firm shake. "She's in Aydindril. Did you hear? I wasn't imagining it. Zedd remembers her. He knows the truth."

Cara looked as if she were doing her best to come to grips with her astonishment without letting it be mistaken for unhappiness at the startling news.

"Lord Rahl — I'm — happy for you-really I am-but I don't see how.»

Richard, not seeming to notice the Mord-Sith's halting uncertainty, turned back to the wizard. "What's she doing down there?" he asked, his voice bubbling over with excitement.

Zedd, looking gravely troubled, again glanced to both Cara and Nicci before tenderly laying a hand on Richard's shoulder.

"Richard, that's where she's buried."

The world seemed to stop.

In a flash of understanding, Nicci realized the truth.

Suddenly, it all became clear. Zedd's behavior now made sense. The woman Zedd was talking about was not the Kahlan, the Mother Confessor, from Richard's imagination, the woman he imagined loved him and had married him.

It was the real Mother Confessor.

Nicci had warned Richard that in his dream he had done a dangerous thing by imagining a woman as his bride who was not simply some anonymous imaginary woman, but, instead, was a woman he had heard of before-a woman who, it so happened, was well known in the Midlands. This was the real Kahlan Amnell, the real Mother Confessor, who was buried down at the Confessors' Palace, not the one Richard had dreamed up to be his love. It had been this very reality that Nicci had feared would eventually come to shatter Richard's world.

She had warned him that this was bound to happen. She had warned him that he would one day come face-to-face with the truth. This was the moment, this was the very thing she had been trying to prevent.

Still, Nicci felt no joy at all in being right. She felt only crushing sadness at what Richard must be feeling. She couldn't even begin to imagine how confusing, how disorienting, it had to be for him. For someone as firmly grounded in reality as Richard always had been, this entire ordeal had to be devastating.

Richard could only stare.

"Richard," Zedd finally said, giving him a gentle squeeze on his arms, "are you all right? What's going on?"

Richard slowly blinked. He looked in a state of shock.

"What do you mean she's buried down at the Confessors' Palace?" he asked in a shaky voice. "When did it happen?"

Zedd guardedly licked his lips. "I don't know when she died. When I was down there-when Jagang's army was marching on Aydindril-I saw the grave marker. I didn't know her. I just saw her grave, that's all. It's a pretty big marker. It would be hard to miss. The Confessors were all killed by the quads that Darken Rahl sent. She must have died back then.