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  　His protest seemed more habit than a heartfelt challenge. She answered it in a quiet, tired murmur. ‘Enough, Chandalen.’

  　Thankfully, he didn’t press the argument, but turned his anger elsewhere. ‘Prindin and Tossidin should not come up the hill in the open like that. I have taught them not to be so stupid. If they were boys, I would strike their bottoms. Anyone can see where they go. Will you do as I say, and come out of the open now?’

  　She let him shepherd her back into the shroud of trees, not because she thought it necessary, but because she wanted to let him know she respected his efforts to protect her. Despite his animosity at being forced to go on this journey, he had done his duty, watching over her constantly, as had the two brothers, they with 【创建和谐家园】iles and concern, he with a scowl and suspicion. All three made her feel like a precious, fragile cargo that must be tended at all times. The brothers, she knew, were sincere. Chandalen, she was sure, saw his mission only as a task that must be performed, no matter how onerous.

  　‘We should go quickly from here,’ he pressed, again.

  　Kahlan withdrew a hand from under the fur mantle and pulled a stray strand of her long hair back from her face. ‘It is my duty to know what has happened here.’

  　‘You said your duty was to go to Aydindril, as Richard With The Temper asked.’

  　Kahlan turned away without answering, moving deeper into the snow-crusted trees. She missed Richard more than she could bear. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face as it had looked when he thought she had betrayed him. She wanted to drop to her knees and let out the scream that seemed to be always there, trapped just below the surface, trying to find a way past her restraint, a scream born of her horror at what she had done.

  　But what else could she have done? If what she had learned was true, and the veil to the underworld was torn and Richard was in fact the only one who could close it, and if the collar was the only thing that could save his life and give him the chance to close the veil, then she had had no choice. How could she have made any other decision? How could Richard ever respect her if she didn’t face her responsibilities to the greater good? The Richard she loved would eventually realize that. He had to.

  　But if any of it was not true, then she had delivered the man she loved into his worst nightmare, for nothing.

  　She wondered again if Richard often looked at the lock of her hair she had given him, and thought of her. She hoped that he could find it in himself to understand and forgive her. She wanted so much to tell him how much she loved him. She yearned to hold him to her. She wanted only to get to Aydindril, to Zedd, for help.

  　But she had to know what had happened here. She stiffened her back with resolve. She was the Mother Confessor.

  　She had intended to skirt Ebinissia, but for the last two days they had been coming across the frozen corpses of women. Never any men, only women, from young to old, children to grandmothers. Most were half naked, some without clothes at all. And in the dead of winter. While most had been alone, a few were together, huddled in frozen death, too exhausted, or too frightened, or too disoriented to have sought shelter. They had run from Ebinissia not in disorderly haste, but in panic, choosing to freeze to death rather than remain.

  　Most, too, had been badly abused before they had scattered in every direction into the mountainous countryside. Kahlan knew what had been done to them, what had made them make the choice they did. The three men knew, too, but none would voice it aloud.

  　She pulled her warm mantle tighter around herself. This atrocity couldn’t have been at the hands of the armies from D’Hara; it was far too recent. The troops from D’Hara had been called home. Surely, they wouldn’t have done this after they had been told the war was ended.

  　Unable to stand for another moment not knowing what fate had befallen Ebinissia, she pushed her bow farther up on her shoulder and started down the hillside. Her leg muscles were at long last used to the wide-footed gait needed to walk on the snowshoes the men had made from willow and sinew. Chandalen charged after her.

  　‘You must not go down there. There could be dangerous.’

  　‘Danger,’ she corrected as she hitched her pack up higher. ‘If there was danger, Prindin and Tossidin would not be out in the open. You may come, or you may wait here, but I’m going down there.’

  　Knowing argument was useless, he followed in a rare fit of silence. The bright afternoon sun brought no warmth to the bitterly cold day. There was usually wind at the fringe of the Rang’Shada Mountains, but thankfully there was little this day, for a change. It hadn’t snowed for several days, and they had been able to make better time in the clear weather. Still, with every breath she took, the air felt as if it were turning the inside of her nose to ice.

  　She intercepted Prindin and Tossidin halfway down the slope. They brought themselves to a halt before her, leaning on their spears, breathing heavily, which was unusual for them as nothing seemed to tire them, but they were unaccustomed to the altitude. Their faces were pale, and their handsome twin 【创建和谐家园】iles long gone.

  　‘Please, Mother Confessor,’ Prindin said, pausing to catch his breath from the strenuous climb, ‘you must not go to that place. The ancestor spirits of those people have abandoned them.’

  　Kahlan untied a waterskin from her waist and pulled it from under her mantle, where her body’s heat kept the water from freezing. She held it up to Prindin, urging him to take a drink before questioning him.

  　‘What did you see? You didn’t go into the city, did you? I told you not to go inside the walls.’

  　Prindin handed the waterskin to his panting brother. ‘No.

  　We stay hidden, as you told us. We do not go inside, but we do not need to.’ He licked a drop of water from his lower lip. ‘We see enough from outside.’

  　She took back the waterskin when Tossidin finished, and replaced the stopper. ‘Did you see any people?’

  　Tossidin stole a quick glance over his shoulder, down the hill. ‘We see many people.’

  　Prindin wiped his nose on the back of his hand as he looked from his brother to her. ‘Dead people.’

  　‘How many? Dead from what?’

  　Tossidin tugged loose the thong holding his fur mantle tight at his neck. ‘Dead from fighting. Most are men with weapons: swords and spears and bows. There are more than I know the words to count. I have never seen that many men. In my whole life, I have not seen that many men. There has been war here. War, and killing of those defeated.’

  　Kahlan stared at them for a moment as horror threatened to choke off her breath. She had hoped that somehow the people of Ebinissia had escaped, that they had fled.

  　A war. Had the D’Haran forces done this after the war was ended? Or was it something else?

  　Her muscles at last unlocked and she started down the hill, the mantle billowing open, letting in the icy air. Her heart pounded with dread at what had befallen the people of Ebinissia. ‘I must go down there to see what has happened.’

  　‘Please, Mother Confessor, do not go,’ Prindin called after her. ‘It is bad to see.’

  　The three men jumped to follow as she marched down the hill, the slope speeding her effort. ‘I have seen dead people before.’

  　They began encountering the sprawled corpses - apparently the sites of skirmishes - a good distance from the city walls. Snow had drifted against them, partially covering them. In one place, a hand reached up from the snow, as if the man below were drowning, and reaching for air. Most had not been touched by animals or birds, there being an overabundance for scavengers. All were soldiers of the Galean army, frozen in death where they had fallen, blood-soaked clothes frozen rock-solid to them, ghastly wounds frozen open.

  　At the south wall, where huge oak doors crisscrossed with iron strapping had stood, was a gaping hole through the stone, its edges melted and burned black. Kahlan stood staring at rock melted like wax from a candle that had guttered. She knew of only one power that could do that: wizard’s fire.

  　Her mind fought to understand what she was seeing. She knew what the results of wizard’s fire looked like, but there were no more wizards. Except Zedd and, she guessed, Richard. But this would not have been Zedd’s deed.

  　Outside the walls, off to either side, headless corpses were heaped in huge, frozen mounds. Heads stared out from less orderly piles of their own. Swords and shields and spears were discarded to separate heaps, looking like great, dead, steel porcupines. This had been a mass execution, carried out at a number of stations at once to handle the numbers more efficiently. All were Galean soldiers.

  　As she stared in numb shock at the splayed limbs draped over their fellows under them, Kahlan spoke softly to the three men behind her. The word you did not know to use to count this many is thousand. There are perhaps five thousand dead men here.’

  　Gently, Prindin planted the butt end of his spear in the snow, giving it an uneasy twist. ‘I did not know there was a word needed to count this many men.’ His fist twisted the spear again, and his voice lowered to a whisper. This will be a bad place when the warm weather comes.’

  　‘It is a bad place now,’ his brother murmured to himself in his own tongue.

  　Kahlan knew this was the least of the dead. She knew the tactics of defense for Ebinissia. The walls were not secure fortifications, the way they had been in times long ago. As the city had grown in the prosperity of the Midlands alliance, the older, stronger, fortified walls had been torn down, and the stone used to build these newer, more encompassing outer walls. But they had been built less secure than in the past. They were more a symbol of the size and pride of the Crown city than a strong defensible perimeter.

  　Under attack, the gates would have been closed, with the toughest, most experienced troops on the outside to stop the attackers before they had a chance to reach the walls. The real defense for Ebinissia was the surrounding mountains, whose narrow passes prevented a broad attack.

  　Under Darken Rahl’s order, D’Haran forces had laid siege to Ebinissia for two months, but the defenders outside the walls were able to hold them back in the surrounding passes, pin them down, and harry them relentlessly until the attackers finally withdrew, licking their wounds, in search of easier prey. Though the Ebinissians had prevailed, it had been at a great cost of lives to the defenders. Had Darken Rahl been less concerned with finding the boxes, he could have sent greater numbers and maybe overrun the defenders in the passes, but he didn’t. This time, someone had.

  　These headless men were a part of that outer defensive ring. Backs to the wall, they had been defeated and captured, and then executed before the walls were breached - apparently as a demonstration to those still inside, to terrorize them, to panic them into an ineffectual defense. She knew that what was inside the walls would be worse. The dead women they had been finding told her that much.

  　Out of habit, and without even realizing it, she had put on the calm face that showed nothing: the face of a Confessor, as her mother had taught her.

  　‘Prindin, Tossidin, I want you two to go around the outside of the walls. I want to know what else is on the outside. I want to know everything about what has happened here. I want to know when this was done, where the attackers came from, and where they went when they were finished. Chan-dalen and I will go inside. Meet us back here when you are finished.’

  　The brothers went quickly at her direction, their heads close together as they whispered to one another while pointing, 【创建和谐家园】yzing tracks and signs they understood with hardly more than a glance. Chandalen walked silently at her side, his bow, with an arrow nocked and tension to the string, at the ready as she stepped over rubble and moved on through the yawning hole.

  　None of the three men had objected to her instructions. They were, she knew, astonished at the size of the city, but more than that, they were overwhelmed at the enormity of what had happened here; they respected her obligation to the dead.

  　Chandalen’s eyes ignored the bodies that lay everywhere and watched instead the shaded openings and alleyways among the 【创建和谐家园】all daub-and-wattle houses that were homes to the farmers and sheepherders who worked the land closer to the city. There were no fresh prints in the snow; nothing alive had been here recently.

  　Kahlan chose the proper streets and Chandalen stayed close at her right shoulder, half a step behind. She didn’t stop to inspect the dead laying everywhere. All looked to have died the same way: killed in a fierce battle.