Naked Empire   ::   Goodkind Terry

"Are youthinking what I'm thinking?" Kahlan asked in a low, troubled voice.

"What?" Cara asked. "What are you thinking?"

Richard studied the confused concern on the Mord-Sith's face. "What kept Darken Rahl's armies in D'Hara? What prevented him, for so many years, from invading the Midlands and taking it, even though he wanted it?"

"He couldn't cross the boundary," Cara said as if he must be having heat stroke.

"And what made up the boundary?"

At last, Cara's face, framed by the black desert garb, went white, too.

"The boundary was the underworld?"

Richard nodded. "It was like a rip in the veil, where the underworld existed in this world. Zedd told us about it. He put the boundary up with a spell he found in the Keep-a spell from those ancient times of the great war. Once up, the boundary was a place in this world where the world of the dead also existed. In that place, where both worlds touched, nothing could grow."

"But are you so sure things wouldn't still grow there?" Cara asked. "It was still our world, after all-the world of life."

"It would be impossible for anything to grow there. The world of life was there, in that spot-the ground was there-but life couldn't exist there on that ground because it shared that same space with the world of the dead.

Anything there would be touched by death."

Cara looked out at the straight, lifeless strip running off into the wavering distance. "So you think what?. . This is a boundary?"

"Was."

Cara looked from his face, to Kahlan, and again out to the distance.

"Dividing what?"

Overhead a flight of black-tipped races came into sight, riding the high currents, turning lazy circles as they watched.

"I don't know," Richard admitted.

He looked west again, back down the gradual slope running away from the mountains, back to where they had been.

"But look," Richard said, gesturing out into the burning wasteland from where they had come. "It runs back toward the Pillars of Creation."

As the things growing thinned and eventually ceased to be back that way, so too did the lifeless strip. It became indistinguishable from the surrounding wasteland because there was no life to mark where the line had been.

"There's no telling how far it runs. For all I know," Richard said, "it's possible that it runs all the way back to the valley itself."

"That part makes no sense to me," Kahlan said.