"Richard." "Richard." "Okay, I'll carry your pack all day long if you give me ten more minutes." "Are you all right?" "Have a heart Zedd." "Richard, it's me, Michael." "Michael." "How did you--?" "How did I get here?" "Some guards found you at the bottom of the cliff and carried you home." "You've been out for two days." "That's not true." "Where's Zedd?" "Where's Kahlan?" "How did I get through the boundary?" "You're not making sense, you should be lying down." "You had quite a fall." "This is some kind of trick, isn't it?" "Richard..." "Well, it's not going to work." "I know it wasn't Kahlan who killed Dad." "I know it was Fane, and you helped him!" "Richard, what are you talking about?" "I'm talking about Dad dying right outside that door!" "I tried to stop the bleeding, but it was too late." "Dad..." "I felt the life go out of him." "Richard!" "We saw the smoke." "What happened?" "He's dead." "You accused me, your own brother." "Did the witch make you do this?" "Michael, you can't possibly believe" "I don't know what to believe!" " It was Ranssyn Fane." " No." "He is with Chase, looking for you." "You're not going anywhere." "Take him." "Stay back!" "Witchcraft..." "Fane was right." "You would've had me arrested and who knows what else, if I hadn't gotten away." "I'm calling a healer, you must've hit your head" "Tell me what you did to Zedd and Kahlan or I swear I'll beat it outta you!" "Richard." "Son, you're up and about." "Dad?" "Oh, thank the Spirits." "It wasn't a dream." "I've been gone for months." "I fought battles." "I" "I've killed people." "I fell asleep in the forest with Zedd and Kahlan, and then" "I know what happened." "Darken Rahl used some kind of magic to wind the clock back to the day I met Kahlan, to right before it all began." "Who's "Kahlan"?" "She's a confessor." "She came through the Boundary with the Book of Counted Shadows, looking for me." "The D'Harans were after her." "They were hunting her like an animal." "They chased her all the way across the Midlands, and through the boundary, trying to kill her." "I had to help her." "They cornered her at the edge of Dead Man's Cliff." "Stay back." "Shoot her." "Leave her alone!" "You're making a mistake, boy." "This girl is dangerous." "Four men against one woman?" "I think she's the one in danger." "...and go home." "I'm not going anywhere." "Easy." "Do not let her grasp you." "They were scared of her." "She used magic against them." "Using her power made her weak." "It's over for you, Confessor." "We were at the edge of the cliff." "The fall should've killed him... but when I looked over, he was gone." "He fell a 100 feet and walked away." "Whoever would've thought my son would have such a vivid imagination?" "Richard, not so much as a mosquito has ever crossed the Boundary." "Everybody knows it's impenetrable." "Well, then everybody is wrong." "I need to talk to Zedd." "What, the crazy old man who talks to his chickens?" "Why would you wanna talk to him?" "Don't try to stop me." "Zedd." "Something terrible's happened." "Darken Rahl did some kind of spell that sent me bck to the day I first came here." "But I know everything." "I know I'm the seeker" "Slow dows, slow down." "You're Richard Cypher, aren't you?" "George's Boy." "Grown up to be a fine figure of a young man, don't you think, Clara?" "Zedd, I know who you are." "I know you brought me here from the Midlands," "I know you've been watching over me my whole life." "He fell off Dead Man's Bluff and hit his head." "He's gotten them all miced up." "Zedd, tell 'em it's true." "Tell 'em you're a wizard." "Wow, that's a new one." "Imagine, someone taking me for a wizard." "He's pretending, because he doesn't trust you, but it's true." "I got bit by some kind of vine that Kahlan brought through the Boundary." "It made me sick, I fell off my horse, and when I came to, I was right there, on that bed." "You healed me with magic." "His fever's broken." "Now take me to the Seeker." "He's here." "It turned out I was the person she came all this way looking for." "Him?" " But" " But he's" " Waht?" "Not good enough?" "YOu wanted the Seeker, there he is." "If he's not up to your standard, well, that's fine by me." "You find yourself another." "Seeker?" "What are you talking about?" "You never told him?" "You were supposed to train him." "Prepare him." "What have you been doing for the last 20 years?" "Letting him catch worms, steal apples, skin his knees," "Find out what makes his heart beat faster." "My sister gave her life to make sure that I got here, to make sure that I put the book in the Seeker's hands, and he's catching worms?" "Never knew a great man who didn't have a little dirt under his nails." "And while he's getting his nails dirty, did it ever occur to you to give him the slightest inkling that he is the first true Seeker in a thousand years?" "He has a destiny." "Who are you to decide a man's destiny?" " It's not me, it's the Prophecy." " Prophecy be damned." "Stop!" "Who are you talking about?" "And what's a "Seeker"?" "And then you told me that it was my destiny to kill Darken Rahl, the leader of the D'Harans." "And then you gave me the Sword of Truth." ""Sword of Truth"?" "Just right over there." "It was invisible." "You pulled it out of the air." "We'd give all our toes and feathers if our lives only could be so exciting, wouldn't we, Clara?" "I can't believe I could've dreamed all that." "I'm not dead, Richard." "I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere." "If all of this is real, and everything that happened was a dream," "then there's no Kahlan." "She doesn't exist." "Yes, I do." "Richard, I'm right here." "She's just something I dreamed." "No, Richard." "You're dreaming now." "Wake up!" " What is it?" " He's talking in his sleep." "How could all of that just had been a dream?" "I can't wake him." " You won't be able to." " What do you mean?" "The three stars of Amberlis appear within the circle of the crescent moon once every 119 years." "And when they do, it becomes possible to cast the spell of a Lying Moon." " What kind of spell is that?" " Powerful magic." "It causes the victim to fall into a sleep where he believes that he is among friends when he is among enemies." "And in that dream, a man will reveal secrets that in his waking life he would only share with those he trusts most." "Who would have done this to Richard?" "And why?" "Only one wizard in the world besides me is capable of working this magic, and that wizard works for Darken Rahl." "Well, we have to get him out of the moonlight." "It's too late." "The spell has already taken hold." "Well, can't you undo it?" "I can try." "What's going to happen to him?" "Do you see how one star is beginning to disappear behind the moon?" "If we can't get him out before all three stars have gone, we may never gett him out." "Richard, there's nobody called Kahlan." "And Zedd isn't a wizard." "We need to get him to a healer." "The boy doesn't need a healer." "He just needs a little time." "I only wished I had the powers you dreamed up for me, but I do know a few little healing tricks." "and one of them is that there's no cure for the frightening grip of a nightmare like telling it to a friendly listener." "And there's no-one friendlier than Clara." "So tell us, did you take up this sword?" "Did you defeat this dastardly Rannsyn Fane?" "Come, Richard." "At the very least, it'll make a good story." "It doesn't feel like a story." "I know, but tell it anyway." "I promise you, it'll do you good." "Go on, son." "And after I rode home, after Dad died in the burning house," "I came after Fane, but he got away." "He was heading for the Boundary." "We raced after him," "I fought him." "We had to stop him." "He had the Book of Counted Shadows." "If Rahl got the book, it would've given him the serets of power." "I didn't know how I was able to fight like that." "It was like I was getting some kind of power from the sword." "I felt rage, anger, like I've never felt before." "I was the bringer of death." "It was the first time I ever killed anybody, but not the last." "You did it." "You are the Seeker." "Fascinating!" "Incomparable!" "Magical swords, magical vines." "I admit I always had a fondness for this sort of tale." "What other wondrous objects did you come upon?" "This isn't funny to me." "Forgive me, forgive me." "I've just gotten so caught up in the story." "Please, keep going." "A little pleasure to a lonely old man." "Well, there were a lot of magical objects, but nothing as amazing as the magical people." "I met a boy who could see what people are thinking, like he was reading a book." "Now there is a trick I'd like to have up my sleeve." "Tell us about him." "Well, we had to save him from the D'Harans, so Darken Rahl couldn't get control of his powers." "It's okay." "We're friends." "We just wanna take you home." "But he didn't ecactly wanted to be saved." "He was used to getting his own way." "I want pheasant with blackberry sauce." "Well, the first pheasant I see is all yours." "I saw a nest of pheasants a mile back, and there were blackberries growing all over." "No, we don't have time." "If you're in a hurry, I'm not stopping you." "I'll just wait right here for the D'Harans to find me." "Listen, we're not stopping to pick blackberries and hunt pheasant." "Then I guess I'll have to tell her about the secret you've been keeping from her." "I don't have any secrets with Kahlan." "I'm a Listener." "Do you think there is anything you can hide from me?" "How would you like her to know what you think about when you look at her?" "I blush to think of what thoughts the little monster may have glimpsed." "Well, he wasn't so bad." "Once the D'Harans attacked us and he saw what they are really about, he started to trust us." "It's okay." "It's just an owl, complaining about something." "The way owls do." "Does it still hurt?" "I would say no, but you'd know I'd be lying." "Why haven't you told what you feel about her?" "It's complicated." "You'll understand when you get older." "It's not that complicated." "You're just scared she doesn't feel the same way." "But you don't have to be scared." "She feels the same way you do." "I don't wanna talk about this any more." "Richard, come back!" "You need to rest yourself and stay calm." "A blow to the head can be a dangerous thing." "Be careful, Lord Rahl." "If you push him too hard, you could shatter the spell." "I will push him as hard as I have to, until he tells me where he's hidden the third Box of Orden." "The deeper the spell takes him, the more the fever will rage." "Richard, your father and your brother are worried sick about you." "Come back." "What is it, boy?" "You can talk to me." "I can't believe Kahlan is not real." "How could I just imagine feeling that way about somebody?" "We all have our little fantasies." "I'd like to be alone right now." "I'm not getting anywhere." "The idiot's gone and fallen in love with this confessor." "She's all he can think about." "Now, why can't I just reach into his mind and see where he hid the box?" "Childhood memories are easy, Lord Rahl." "But a secret as important to the seeker as where he has hidden the box is sure to be locked away where even the magic of Amberlis has to work hard to find it." "As for his love of his confessor, he's a young man like any other." "Surely there's a girl he left behind, some fresh-faced maiden of the forest who can draw his thoughts away from Kahlan Amnell." "Richard." "Anna." "What are you doing here?" "How did you get--?" "I came as soon as I heard." "South Haven to Hartland two days." "Let somebody try and beat that." "Do you hate me?" "For moving away, for never writing?" "I was angry for a long time, but..." "I could never hate you, Anna." "Only Richard Cypher would be crazy enough to go running around the edge of Dead Man's Cliff." "What were you thinking?" "I was helping somebody." " The woman in the white dress?" " You saw her too?" "No." "I went to your house, and your brother and your father told me about your dream." "Tell me what happened in this other place." "For a dream to be that real, there must be something important in it." "Somwthing you can learn from it." "Richard, do you remember that little black dog you had, that got swept away in the big flood?" "Arrow." "We were, what, seven years old?" "You ran away and nobody could find you." "I was hiding in the cellar." "'Cause you didn't want anyone to see you crying." "You stayed there all day, and you told me all about Arrow's great heroic deeds." "And then you went home and nobody ever saw a tear on your face." "Except me." "Talk to me Richard." "Get it out." "Tell me everything." "Tell me the worst, scariest thing that happened." "It was one scary thing after another." "Like what?" "Well... nothing was scarier than the Mord-Sith." "No-one's going to train me." "Did you not feel my Agiel?" "The harder you fight, the more painful its magic will become." "And after I've finished training you with it, you'll do anything to please me." "Anything." "And nothing would please me more than to see the Seeker stand at the gates of the People's Palace, and there before the multitudes take the hand of Lord Rahl and pledge his undying love and fealty to him." "No." "I'm going to take that sword, and I'm going to kill him with it... after I killed you." "I do enjoy a challenge." "Shall we begin?" "Nothing in a dream could hurt like that." "Nothing in a dream could leave a..." "scar." "Anna, it left a scar, right here." "Just keep telling it, Richard." "Keep getting it out." "How did you escape from that horrible place?" " Kahlan triewd to save me." " Who's Kahlan?" "The woman in white." "I don't even know how long I'd been in that dungeon." "I was completely under Denna's power." "Do it now." "Kill her." "I can't." "Then watch her suffer." "End her pain, Richard." "She wouldn't give up." "She was testing me, tormenting me." "But something stopped me." "I was so close." "I can't explain it." "Any magic you use against a Mord-Sith comes back at you ten times stronger." "With more pain than you could possibly imagine." "How did you...?" "You taught me how to withstand pain." "That's quite a dream." "You almost died for this Kahlan." "Not as many times as she almost died for me." "Does she look like me?" "No." "Richard, going with my parents when they moved to South Haven was the stupidest thing I ever did." "You were 19, you could've stayed." "Why didn't you?" "All our lives, from when we were five years old, it was always "Richard and Anna were born for each other."" ""What are you gonna wear to the wedding?"" "You were the only man I'd ever kissed." "Took hearing that you'd fallen off that cliff and almost died for me to realize that... you're the only man I ever wanna kiss." "Sorry that I don't have magical powers and I'm not much ggod in a knife fight," "but I love you, Richard." "Am I too late?" " Do you still care for me?" " Yes, I care for you, Anna." "Anna?" "Who's Anna?" "I will always care for you, but" "You're home, Richard." "You're home with me." "And I'm never leaving you again." "He's in my hands." " Now to find the box." " Not yet, Lord Rahl." "If you move too fast, if he suspects the truth, and he is the Seeker of Truth after all, the spell will shatter." "Keep pulling him in." "So, what happened with this woman in white?" " Did you marry her?" " No." "Well, that's good." "I wouldn't want you marrying somebody else, not even in a dream." "Actually, I did marry somebody else." "Oh." "Well, not really." "It's complicated." "A powerful witch put a spell on me that made everybody who looked at me think I was somebody else." "Even Kahlan." "What are you doing?" "Put down Richard's sword, Gryff." "The Sword of Truth is not a toy." "What's going on?" "How did Gryff get his hands on your sword, Richard?" "No harm done." "The Sword of Truth belongs in the hands of the Seeker." "This is insane." "It's me, Richard." "Bronwyn is a very lucky girl." "You'll make a fine husband." "I think we should get moving." "To Lord Rahl." "They all thought I was Gryff, the son of a wealthy merchant, betrothed to a girl named Bronwyn." "If these things are uncomfortable, we can take them off." "What's wrong with you?" "You know tradition doesn't allow it." "It stays on until morning." "After we've spent our first night together as man and wife." "There are a lot of things I want to say." "First, let me start by wishing my little sister and her new husband many, many children." "And" "I wish we'd get started on that right away." "So, in your dream, did you actually...?" "No, no, no." "I had to get out of there." "Zedd and Kahlan were on their way to the ancient ruin city of Kelabra, where Darken Rahl was massing hundreds of men." "What was Rahl looking for in the ruins?" "Did you ever find out?" "Yes." "And it turned out to something more important than we could've ever imagined." " It was the second Box of Orden." " Richard." "Just as I feared." "Rahl is trying to find out where the box is." "Richard, don't say any more." "You see, each one of these boxes contained unbelievably powerful magic." "Rahl had the first box." "He found the second in Kelabra." "All through the dream, Zedd and Kahlan kept telling me, if he got all three, he would have the power to enslave the world." "We had to get the third box before Rahl did." "Richard!" "What did I tell you, Lord Rahl?" "Your patience has been rewarded." "Where was it, Richard?" "Where was the third Box of Orden?" "The box was in the treasure room at Tamarang, the most heavily guarded castle in the Midlands." "The only way to get in was for Zedd to enter a competition to be an entertainer at Princess Violet's birthday party." "Greetings, Your Highness." "But apparently Princess Violet was very hard to please." "Hello, Princess Violet." "I'm Mr. Stocking." "Happy Birthday." "Guards!" "Throw this idiot off the grounds before I chop off his head." "Forgive me, Your Magnificence, for disappointing you." "Hey!" "Where are you going without me?" "What do you mean, where am I going without you?" "I've lost the job because of you, you worthless stinking rag." "First you blame me for losing the job, now you blame me for being stinky!" "Somthing sure smells around here, but it isn't me." "You're hired." "Ruben Rybnik, Grand Puppeteer." "At Her Majesty's service." "Once Zedd was inside the castle, he managed to steal the key to the treasure room." "He used his magic to turn an ordinary spice box into a perfect copy of the third Box of Orden." "But that wasn't the end of the story." "What are you doing in here?" "Forgive me, Princess." "My-- my curiosity overcame me." "How stupid to you think I am?" "You have two seconds to tell me what's going on before I scream my head off and wake up the whole casstle." "You may want to turn and look in the mirror before you make good on that threat." "My face!" "My beautiful face!" "What have you done to me?" "Change me back right now, or I'll chop your head off!" "How would you get rid of the warts if you chopped my head off?" "It's called a Tattletale curse, Your Celestial Highness." "I could take it away, but if you ever even think of telling on me, the warts will reappear." "Forever." "Zedd gave the box to Violet's poor servant girl Rachel." "You're now the most important person in the world." "Where is it?" "But she had to hide the box from Violet." "What are you doing in here?" "Violet had very sharp eyes." "Do you have something behind your back?" "If they'd cought Rachel, they would've boiled her alive in molten lead." "Even though she was a little girl, she was one of the bravest people I've ever met." "I finally had the third Box of Orden in my hands." "What did you do with the box, once you had it?" "We were heading for a place where Zedd thought we could hide it away safe, when we passed through a forest crawling with D'Haran soldiers." "I broke away from the others and found a place to bury the box." "Just for a little while, until things quieted down." "He's going to tell them where it is." "Richard!" "Where could you possible bury it that would be safe enough for something so precious?" "I hid it under a tree, a few leagues west of Trollsbridge." "No..." "Send the Dragon Corps to Trollsbridge." "Under a tree?" "Doesn't sound terribly safe to me." "What kind of tree was it?" "What does it matter, what kind of tree?" "I was just wondering... if they have the same kind of trees in dreamland as they do here." "They have wayward pine, algarves, wondrous elm..." "How do you know about algarves?" "They only grow on the Midlands, not here." "There were algarves in the story books my mother used to read me." "Your mother must have read them to you too." "Maybe that's how they got into your dream." "So it was an algarve?" "I know this is crazy, but that there in my dream or whatever it was, the fate of the world depended on nobody knowing where that box is, and..." "I don't know, it just feels wrong to tell anyone where it is." "Richard, I love you." "I've always loved you." "I want to make a life with you, I know that now, now that I almost lost you." "But if you don't trust me enough to tell me something that happened to you in a dream," "then what did it all mean?" "All those years we were together, all the times we talked about out future." "We even got names for our children." "Was that all a lie?" "No, Anna, it wasn't a lie." "These memories, these phantoms you think are so real, they're not." "Just something from a dream." "They're bad spirits trying to drag you into the dark." "and they won't let go of you unless you show them that you don't believe their lies." "Say the word." "Say the name of the tree the box was buried under." "Break the chains, Richard." "Break the chains!" "Send the bad spirits back where they came from." "I'm here, Richard." "I'm right here." " Come back to me" " It's no use." "The Spell of the Lying Moon is impenetrable." "No." "No." "I can get through." "I know that I can." "Richard, it's me, Kahlan." "Don't listen to what they're telling you." "Remember all the things we've been through." "Think of me, Richard." "I'm right here." "I need you, Richard." "I need you here with me." "That night, in the forest," "I never wanted that kiss to end." "And the next day, when you stopped me on the path," "Look me in the eye and tell me you don't have the same feelings for me that I have for you." "I don't have any feelings for you, and I never will." "But that was a lie." "This is the truth." "I love you, Richard." "I love you, Richard," "I love you, Richard." "I love you and I never want to lose you again." "Tell me." "Break the chains." "Richard, come back." "It's a kind of tree that doesn't grow near here." "No!" "Please come back to me." "I love you, Richard." "I love you, Richard." " You'd like it." "With blossoms in the spring." " With blssoms in the spring...?" "You are the Seeker." "That were lies they're telling you." "Use your inner power." "The power to see the truth." "What is it?" "What's wrong?" "See it." "See the truth." "You're scaring me, Richard." "Why are you looking at me like that?" "No!" "Zedd." "Kahlan." "We need to get the box." "Fast!" "Cast the spell again." "I'm not finished." "I'm afraid you are, my Lord." "It's too late." "You've been awfully quiet." "Ah, I was just thinking." "If you really exist, then Zedd's really a wizard and not that chicken man of Blackthorn Hill and my dad really is dead." "So, how did you know it was a trick?" "What brought you out of it?" "As real as it was in every way, nothing in my life has been more real than you." "And right when I was about to tell Anna where the box was," "I suddenly absolutely knew you existed." "I knew because I felt..." "I felt your love for me."