When Richard judged they were back somewhere in the middle, he stood with his feet spread, his fists on his hips, and looked east again. From where they stood, they couldn't make out the sides of the lifeless stretch, the places where growth began.
Looking to the east, though, the pattern was evident. A clearly defined strip-miles wide-ran off into the distance.
Nothing grew within the bounds of the straight strip of lifeless desert, whether going over rock or sandy ground. To either side the ground with widely spaced brush and lichen growing on the rock was darker. The place where nothing grew was a lighter tan. In the distance the discrepancy in the color was even more apparent.
The lifeless strip ran straight for mile after mile toward the far mountains, gradually becoming but a faint line following the rise of the ground until, finally, in the hazy distance, it could no longer be seen.
"Are you thinking 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. "I can see what you mean about it maybe being like the boundaries up in the New World, the boundaries between Westland, the Midlands, and D'Hara. That much I follow. But the spirits take me, I don't get why it would run to the Pillars of Creation.
That part just strikes me as more than odd."
Richard turned and gazed back to the east, where they were headed, to the rumpled gray wall of mountains rising steeply up from the broad desert floor, studying the distant notch that sat a little north of where the boundary line ran toward those mountains.
He looked south, to the wagon making its way toward those mountains.
"We better catch up with the others," Richard finally said. "I need to get back to translating the book."
The spectral spires around Richard glowed under the lingering caress of the low sun. In the amber light, as he scouted the forsaken brink of the towering mountains beyond, long pools of shadow were darkening to the blue-black color of bruises.
The pinnacles of reddish rock stood like stony guardians along the lower reaches of the desolate foothills, as if listening for the echoing crunch of his footsteps along the meandering gravel beds.
Richard had felt like being alone to think, so he had set out to scout by himself. It was hard to think when people were constantly asking questions.
