Richard gazed down the sheer drop of the dark stones of the massive outer Keep wall. They fell away below him for thousands of feet toward the rock and forest below. Gusts of wind coming up the face of the wall buffeted him. It was a dizzying sight. A dizzying drop.

What good was he to anyone, most of all to himself?

He stole a sidelong glance at Cara. She was close, but not nearly close enough.

Richard didn't see any reason to continue the agony. He didn't have his mind, and his mind was life.

He didn't have Kahlan. She was his life.

From what everyone told him, from what he saw in the coffin that terrible night, he never had her. It was all just a mad delusion. A wish. A whim.

He glanced down again at the forever drop off the towering wall on the side of the keep, at the rocks and trees spread out below. It was a very, very long way down.

He recalled people saying that just before you died you relived your life.

If he were to relive his life, he would relive every precious moment he'd had with Kahlan.

Or thought he'd had.

It was a long way down.

A long time to relive such wonderful, romantic, loving times. A long time to relive every precious moment he'd spent with her.

CHAPTER 50

Nicci opened an iron-strapped oak door to bright daylight. Puffy white clouds skimmed by just overhead in a sparkling azure sky that on any other day would have lifted her spirits. A fresh breeze carried her hair across her face. She pulled it away as she gazed down the narrow bridge to a rampart in the distance. Richard stood beyond the end of the bridge, at the far wall of the rampart, in the gap of the crenellation, looking down the mountain. Cara, nearby, turned when she heard the door.

Nicci hurried across the bridge above courtyards far below. She could see several stone benches down among the rose garden at the bottom of a tower and juncture of several walls. When she finally reached Richard's side he glanced over, giving her a brief, small smile. It warmed her to see it even though she knew the smile was little more than a polite formality.

"Rikka came and told me that someone approaches the Keep. I thought I should come and get you."

Cara, standing only three strides away, stepped a little closer. "Does Rikka know who it is?"

Nicci shook her head. "I'm afraid not, and I'm more than a little worried."

Without moving or taking his eyes from the distant countryside, Richard said "It's Ann and Nathan."

Nicci's eyebrows lifted in surprise. She looked over the edge. Richard pointed them out far below on the road that wound its way up the mountain toward the Keep.

"There are three riders," Nicci said.

Richard nodded. "It looks like it might be Tom with them."

Nicci leaned out a little farther past Richard and peered down the face of the stone wall. It was a frightening drop. The feeling came over her that she didn't at all like where he was standing.

With a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, Nicci looked out again at the three horses plodding their way up the sunlit road. They briefly disappeared under trees only to emerge a moment later as they continued steadily up toward the Keep.

A gust of wind suddenly threatened to unbalance her from her footing in the slot in the immense stone wall. Before it could, Richard's arm around her waist steadied her. She instinctively drew back from the edge. Once she was on safe footing, his protective arm released her.

"You can tell for sure, from here, that it's Ann and Nathan?" she asked.

"Yes."

Nicci wasn't especially enthusiastic about seeing the Prelate again. As a Sister of the Light and having lived at the Palace of the Prophets for most of her life, Nicci had had just about all she wanted of the Sisters and their leader. In many ways the Prelate was a mother figure to her, as she had been to all the Sisters, someone who was there to remind them whenever they were a disappointment and lecture them that they had to redouble their efforts to help others in need.

When she had been young, should self-interest ever rear its ugly head, Nicci's mother had always been at the ready to bitterly slap it down. Later in Nicci's life the Prelate served in that same capacity, if with a kindly smile. Slap or smile, it was the same thing: servitude, even if under a nicer name.

Nathan Rahl was another matter. She didn't really know the prophet. There were Sisters, and novices especially, who trembled at the mere mention of his name. From what everyone always said, though, he was not simply dangerous but possibly deranged, which, if true, had disturbing implications for Richard's present condition.

The prophet had been held in secure quarters almost his entire life, the Sisters seeing not only to his needs but seeing to it that he never escaped. People in the city of Tanimura, where the palace had been, were both titillated and terrified of the prophet, of what he might tell them of the future. Whispers were, among the people of the city, that he was most surely wicked, since he could tell them things about their future. Ability tended to arouse the ire of a great many people, especially when that ability was not one that could easily be made to serve their wants.

Nicci wasn't much worried about what people said about Nathan, though. She'd had experience with truly dangerous people-with Jagang only the most recent to grace the top of her list of the wicked.

"We'd better get down there," Nicci told Richard and Cara.

Richard stared out over the countryside. "You go on, if you want."

He sounded like he couldn't have cared less that someone was coming, or who it was. It was obvious that his mind was elsewhere and he only wanted her to go away.

Nicci pulled a flag of hair back off her face. "Don't you think you ought to see what they want? After all, they must have traveled a long way to get here. I'm sure they didn't come bringing milk and cakes."

Richard shrugged one shoulder, showing no reaction to her attempt at humor. "Zedd can see to it."

Nicci so missed the light in Richard's eyes. She was at the end of her endurance of the situation.

She glanced over at the Mord-Sith and spoke in quiet but unmistakable command. "Cara, why don't you go for a little walk? Please?"

Cara, surprised by such an unusual but clear directive coming from Nicci, took in Richard standing at the opening in the wall, staring off into the distance, and then gave Nicci a conspiratorial nod. Nicci watched Cara walk off down the rampart before finally addressing Richard again, but this time in a boldly forthright manner.

"Richard, you have to stop this."

As he gazed out at the vast scene below, he didn't answer.

Nicci knew that she couldn't allow herself to fail in what she had to say, what she had to accomplish. She would do almost anything to have Richard care about having her in his life, but she didn't want to win him this way. She didn't want to be second best to a corpse, or a substitute to a dream he couldn't make real. If she was ever to have him, she would only have him because he chose her, not because he was left with nothing else. There had been a time when she would have accepted on those grounds, but no more. She respected herself more than that, now, and all because of Richard.

But even more than that, this was not the Richard she knew and loved. Even if she could never have him, she still wouldn't allow him to sink to the terribly dark place he was in. If she could give him a needed push back up toward life, and that was all she could ever do for him, then she would.

Even if she had to play the role of antagonist to get him out of his downward spiral, and she could be no more than that to him, then she would.

She laid a hand on the stone merlon, making herself impossible to avoid, and took an even more confrontational tone.