Warheart by Terry Goodkind

smaller circle, representing the beginning of life, just inside the square so that it touched the sides of the square in the center of each of its four sides. In this way, life touched and was bounded by the veil, that also touched the beginning of the underworld.
    With more blood, Nicci drew a precise eight-pointed star inside the smaller circle. The star represented the light of Creation. Outward from each point of the star, the sorceress painted a straight, bloody line, crossing the inner circle, the square, and the outer circle. The first four rays she drew bisected the corners of the square, and then the last four crossed the center of each side of the square.
    Each ray beginning at a point of the star crossed the inner circle and then the square, finally crossing the outer circle to end at one of the eight candles. Each flame, once the bloody line reached it, seethed momentarily with shimmering colors.
    Nicci, wearing a glove of blood, looked up in the soft candlelight. “I need a drop of Richard’s blood. Use the sword. Bring the drop on the blade.”
    Kahlan found the dark nature of Nicci’s voice disturbing. Without pause to consider the instruction, she went to the bed, sat on the side, and pulled Richard’s hand into her lap. With the point of the sword she pierced the end of a finger. Working her fingers on his, she squeezed blood out, letting it collect in a fat crimson droplet on the end of his finger. Using the blade, she scooped it up near the point. She could feel the magic within the sword react with anger to the touch of Richard’s blood. Kahlan carefully carried the sword over to Nicci, being sure not to let the blood she had collected drip off, or let the sword’s anger distract her.
    This was the same blood that had been used to bring Sulachan’s spirit back from the world of the dead into the world of life.
    Kahlan held the sword out in both upturned palms, offering it to Nicci. The sorceress shook her head, as if not wanting to touch it.
    â€œThe Grace is drawn in your blood. You need to do it. Put the drop in the exact center of the circle.
    â€œAlthough it can’t be seen,” Nicci said in a solemn voice, “this circle has a true and absolute center point, which is that point at which we come to be, when we are created, when we acquire a soul. But unlike the outer circle, which represents a beginning without end, this circle is finite. It represents an outer boundary so to speak–death–and a point of beginning.”
    Kahlan held the point of the sword just above the floor in the center of the circle, letting Richard’s blood drip off.
    â€œSo, then, you are connecting it all with blood,” the witch woman said from the shadows. “You are making the Grace viable.”
    Nicci nodded. “Life and death are connected in much the same way that Additive and Subtractive Magic depend upon each other to define their nature. Thus, there is, in a very real sense, a connection between everything, even something as elemental as light and dark. Where a shadow is cast across the ground, the shadow is not only connected to what casts it and on what produced it, but it also exists through the presence of the negative shape it creates. Thus, all things, even a seemingly simple shadow, are inextricably linked, locked together, both positive and negative, each depending on the other to exist.
    â€œJust as we need dark to show light, the underworld defines life. Death defines life. The blood gives that representation of life, in the Grace, a reality it would not otherwise have.
    â€œThis is all part of what the Grace represents–how the elements are not separate, but interconnected.”
    â€œIt used to be that wizards traveled between worlds,” Red said, transfixed by the bloody Grace.
    â€œSince that time,” Nicci said, “they have forgotten how to ride the rim, as it used to be called, between the worlds of life and