Wizard's First Rule

"Kahlan! I'm here with you! Look at me!"

She continued to cry convulsively, choking for air. Her eyes opened, but they didn't focus on him; they were looking into another place.

"You're not alone, I'm here with you! I won't leave you!"

"I'm so alone," she wailed.

He shook her, trying to make her listen. Her skin was white and dead cold. She struggled to breathe. "I'm right here. You're not alone!" Desperate, he shook her again, but it wasn't helping. He was losing her.

Struggling to control his rising panic, Richard did the only thing he could think of. When he had been confronted with fear in the past, he had learned to control it. There was strength in control. He did that now. Maybe he could give her some of his strength. Closing his eyes, he shut his fear away, blocked off the panic, and sought the calm within himself. He let his mind focus on the strength within himself. In the quiet of his mind, he blocked off his fears and confusion, and centered his thoughts on the strength of that peace. He would not let the underworld have her.

He spoke her name in a calm voice. "Let me help you. You are not alone. I am here with you. Let me help you. Take my strength."

His hands gripped her shoulders. He could feel her shaking as she cried in choking sobs and struggled to breathe. He visualized sending her his strength, through his hands, through his contact with her. He visualized that contact extending to her mind, lending her all of his strength and drawing her back, away from the blackness. He would be the spark of light and life in that blackness that would lead her back to this world, to him.

"Kahlan, I am here. I won't leave you. You are not alone. I am your friend. Trust in me." He gently squeezed her shoulders. "Come back to me. Please."

He pictured the white-hot light in his mind, hoping it would help her. Please, dear spirits, he prayed, let her see it. Let it help her. Let her use my strength.

"Richard?" She called out the name as if searching for him.

He squeezed her shoulders again. "I'm here. I won't leave you. Come back to me."

She started breathing again. Her eyes focused on his face. Relief flooded her features when she recognized him, and she began to cry in what seemed a more normal way. She collapsed against him and held him as she would a rock in a river. He held her to him and let her cry on his shoulder while he told her it was all right. He was so afraid he had lost her to the underworld that he didn't want to let go of her either.

Reaching down, he got a hold of the blanket and pulled it back up around her, wrapping her with it as best he could. Warmth was returning to her body again, another sign that she was safe now, but he was disturbed by how quickly the underworld had pulled her back. He didn't think that was supposed to happen. She hadn't been there long, and exactly how he had gotten her back, he didn't know, but he knew it had been none too soon.

The fire lent a soft red cast to the inside of the wayward pine, and in the silence it seemed a secure haven again. An illusion, he knew. He held her and stroked her hair and rocked her gently for a long time. Something in the way she clung to him made him realize that no one had held her and comforted her for a very long time.

He didn't know anything about wizards, or magic, but no one would send Kahlan through the boundary, through the underworld, without a powerful reason. He wondered what could be that important.

Pushing herself off his shoulder, she sat up, embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I should not have touched you in that manner. I was…"

"It's all right, Kahlan. It is the first responsibility of a friend to provide a shoulder to cry on."

She nodded but didn't raise her head. Richard felt her eyes on him as he took the soup off the fire to let it cool a little. He put another piece of wood into the flames, sending sparks swirling up with the smoke.

"How do you do that?" she asked in a soft voice.

"Do what?"

"How do you ask questions that fill my mind with pictures and make me answer, even when I have no intention to?"

He shrugged, a little self-conscious. "Zedd asks me that too. I guess it's just something I was born with. Sometimes I think it's a curse." He turned from the fire to face her again. "I'm sorry, Kahlan, for asking you what you saw there. It was a thoughtless thing to do. Sometimes my common sense doesn't keep up with my curiosity. I'm sorry I brought you pain. You being pulled back into the underworld, though, that shouldn't have happened, should it?"

"No, it shouldn't. It was almost as if when I thought back to what I had seen, someone was waiting to pull me back. I fear if you hadn't been here, I might have been lost there. In the darkness, I saw a light. Something you did brought me back."

Richard picked up the spoon while he thought. "Maybe just that you weren't alone."

Kahlan gave a weak shrug. "Maybe."