Chainfire by Terry Goodkind

were white around the steel grip. “Can you track them?” he asked Richard.
    “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Nicci said.
    “Good idea or not,” Richard told them, “I don’t see any tracks.” He looked into Nicci’s blue eyes. “Perhaps you would like to try to convince me that I am imagining this, as well?”
    She didn’t break eye contact with him, but she didn’t answer his challenge, either.
    Victor gazed up at Ferran. “I told his mother that I’d watch over him. What am I going to say to his family now?” Tears of rage and hurt glistened in his eyes as he pointed with the mace back to the rest of the remains. “What am I going to say to their mothers and wives and children?”
    “That evil murdered them,” Richard said. “That you will not rest until you know justice is done. That vengeance will be had.”
    Victor nodded, his anger flagging, misery now filling his voice. “We have to bury them.”
    “No,” Nicci said with grim authority. “As much as I understand yourwant to care for them, your friends are no longer here, among these pieces of wrecked bodies. Your friends are now with the good spirits. It is up to us not to join them.”
    Victor’s anger resurfaced. “But we must—”
    “No,” Nicci snapped. “Look around. This was a blood frenzy. We don’t want to get caught in it. We can’t help these men. We need to get out of here.”
    Before Victor could argue, Richard leaned close to the sorceress. “What do you know about this?”
    “I told you before, Richard, that we needed to talk. But this is not the time or place to do it.”
    “I agree,” Cara growled. “We need to get away from here.”
    Looking from the remains of Ferran back to the bloody mess beneath the maple, Richard suddenly felt a sense of overwhelming loneliness. He wanted Kahlan so bad it hurt. He wanted her comfort. He wanted her safe. The agony of not knowing if she was alive and well was unbearable.
    “Cara is right.” Nicci urgently gripped Richard’s arm. “We don’t know enough about what we’re up against, but whatever did all this, I fear that as weak as you are your sword can’t protect us from it—and right now, neither can I. If it’s still in these woods, now is not the time to confront it. Justice and vengeance need us to see them done. To do that, we must be alive.”
    With the back of a hand, Victor wiped tears of grief and anger from his cheek. “I hate to admit it, but I think Nicci’s right.”
    “Whatever was looking for you, Lord Rahl,” Cara said. “I don’t want you here if it should happen to return.”
    Richard noted the way Cara, in her red leather, no longer seemed out of place in the woods. She blended right in with all the blood.
    Still not ready to abandon the search for whatever had killed these men, and with a dark sense of alarm rising within him, Richard frowned at the Mord-Sith. “What makes you think it was after me?”
    “I told you,” Nicci said through gritted teeth, answering in Cara’s stead, “now is not the time and this is not the place to talk about it. There is nothing we can hope to accomplish here. These men are beyond our help.”
    Beyond help. Was Kahlan beyond help as well? He couldn’t allow himself to believe that.
    He looked north. Richard didn’t know where to search for her. Just because the rock that had been kicked out of its resting place had been found to the north of their camp didn’t mean that whoever took Kahlan went that way. They might have simply gone north, trying to avoid contact with Victor and his men and with the soldiers guarding the supply convoy. They might have only been trying to avoid being spotted until they got out of the immediate area. After that, they could have gone anywhere.
    But where?
    Richard knew that he needed help.
    He tried to think of who could help him with something like this. Who would believe him? Zedd might believe him, but Richard didn’t think his grandfather could offer the