With Cara at her side, Nicci raced down the torchlit hallway, over elaborately designed carpets that muted their footfalls, past doorways into darkness, past rooms with oil lamps warmly lighting only vacant furniture. The Keep, nearly as vast as the mountain that sheltered it beneath its stoic stone shoulders, felt empty and haunted. Nicci had spent decades in the vast complex known as the Palace of the Prophets, which in some ways was reminiscent of the Keep, but the palace had been alive with hundreds of people of all kinds living there, from the Prelate to the boys who tended the stables. It, too, had been a place of wizards—wizards in training, anyway. The Keep existed for the purposes of man, and yet it stood silent and absent of those who would give it life. If a place could be said to be forlorn, the immense structure of the Keep was such a place.
Cara ran with all her strength, driven by her loyalty and love for Richard, by dread that the worst had happened to him. Nicci ran just as fast, driven by fear of even considering the possibility that he was dead, as if trying to outrun death itself. She couldn’t allow herself to even entertain such a concept, lest she collapse in despair. A world without Richard in it would be a dead world to her.
Cara slid across the polished gray marble floor to slow herself enough to make the turn when Nicci hooked a hand on a cold, black marble newel post and charged up the wide, black, granite steps. The windows far above were dark, making them look like black voids in the world. The stairwell, lit by a few glass proximity spheres, rose up through a soaring tower to seemingly impossible heights above them, making Nicci feel as if she were at the very bottom of a very deep stone well.
The sounds of their footsteps echoed through the Keep, like the haunting whispers of those long-dead souls who had once walked these very halls, climbed these very steps, laughed and loved and lived in this place. At the top of the third run of stairs, Nicci, her legs aching with the frantic effort, led them into a broad passageway. As she ran past the warm reddish
brown cherry pilasters separating expanses of brightly colored, leaded glass, she pointed ahead, letting Cara know that they would be turning at the next hallway to the right.
Finally into the network of smaller halls leading to the quarters where they had been staying, Nicci spotted Zedd in the distance, marching toward them. Rikka followed close on his heels. The old wizard, looking grim as he drew to a halt, waited for them to close the last bit of distance.
“What is it?” he asked, apparently knowing by the looks on their faces that something was awry.
“Where’s Lord Rahl?” Rikka demanded as she came to an abrupt halt right behind him.
Nicci recognized the anxious look on her face. It was the same look that Cara had worn ever since she’d discovered that her Agiel didn’t work. Nicci glanced down and saw that Rikka was gripping her Agiel in a white-knuckled fist, the same as Cara. Those talismans of their connection to the Lord Rahl were now dead.
“Where’s my grandson?” Zedd asked, framing it in an anguished, personal tone. “Why isn’t he with you?”
The last of it sounded like an accusation, as if reminding them of the warning Jebra had given them before they left, and of the promise Nicci had made.
“Zedd,” Nicci began, “we can’t say for sure.”
The wizard cocked his head, his white hair sticking out in disarray. The look he gave her was very much that of a wizard taking charge of the disquieted man.
“Don’t give me the runaround, child.”
Had the situation not been so deadly serious, Nicci might have laughed at the characterization.
“We were all together in the sliph, returning to the Keep,” Nicci told him, “and somewhere along the way—it’s impossible to tell where you are while you’re traveling—we were attacked by the beast.”
Zedd glanced to Cara. “The beast.”
Cara nodded confirmation.
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.” Nicci lifted her arms in frustration at trying to find the words to describe the experience. “We tried to fight it off. It had all
these snakelike arms. We were grappling with it. I tried to use my Han against it—”
“In the sliph?”
“Yes, but it was of little or no help. I was trying everything I could think of. Then, the beast just ripped both Cara and me away from Richard. We couldn’t find him in the darkness. We tried, but we couldn’t find anything—not even each other. Like I said, it’s impossible to tell where you are when you’re in the sliph. You can’t see, you can’t really hear. It’s a confusing kind of place and, try as we might, we just couldn’t find Richard.”
He was looking more angry by the moment. “Then why are you here, instead of in the sliph looking for him?”
“The sliph spit us out,” Cara said. “We found ourselves here, back at the Keep. Nicci and I were each trying in our own way to find Lord Rahl, but…there was nothing. No Beast, no Lord Rahl. Then the sliph dumped us out here, at the place where we had all been headed when we were attacked.”
“What are you doing up here, then?” he asked again in a menacing voice. “Why aren’t you back in the sliph searching or, better yet, making the sliph tell you where he is?”
Nicci saw his hands fisted at his sides. She knew how he felt. She gently grasped his arm.
“Zedd, the sliph wouldn’t tell us where he is. Believe me, we tried. It might be possible to get her to do so, I just don’t know, but I think I know a better way—someone who might be able to tell us where Richard is: Jebra. I don’t want to waste any more time, and I think Jebra might be able to provide an answer sooner than the sliph would.”
Zedd pressed his thin lips tight as he considered. “It’s worth a try,” he said at last, “but you need to understand that the woman has been in quite a state since you left. She’s been inconsolable at best and at times in the iron grip of something akin to hysteria. We’ve tried to calm her down, but to no avail. I’m afraid that, with all she’s been through, it’s all the more daunting for her to have to face the sudden return of her unique kind of visions. It’s obviously difficult for her to come to grips with having them again, to say nothing of the nature of this particular one.
“We finally put her to bed, hoping that if she got some rest she would gain her strength back and be better able to sort out the confusion of her visions. At least she’s not in a state like Queen Cyrilla; she’s fighting not
to allow herself to fall into that madness. She is aware that she needs to be able to help us, but at the moment her despair is simply overpowering her common sense. I’m sure, too, that her complete exhaustion is playing a role in her difficulty. We’re hoping that after some rest she can add more to what she’s already told us.”
“And what has she said?” Nicci asked, hoping the answer might provide a clue.
Zedd studied her eyes a moment. “She said that you would come back without Richard.”
Nicci stared at the man. “And what has become of him?”
Zedd’s gaze fell away. “That’s the part we’re trying to get out of her.”
“My Agiel has gone dead,” Rikka said. “I can’t feel the bond. I can’t feel Lord Rahl. What if he’s dead?”
Zedd turned a little and lifted a hand, as if urging her to calm down. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. There could be any number of explanations.”
Cara did not look at all cheered by his suggestion. “Such as?” she asked.
Zedd turned his hazel eyes toward her, studying the Mord-Sith for a moment as he considered his answer. “I don’t know, Cara. I just don’t know. I’ve been running every possibility through my mind ever since Jebra told me that he wouldn’t return with you. There are any number of possibilities but at this moment scant evidence to go on. We will not leave a single rock unturned, I can promise you that.”
Nicci swallowed back the lump rising in her throat. “Right now, our best chance is to see if we can find out from Jebra where Richard is. If we can get that much out of her then we can act. If we can act, then we have a chance to help him.”
“If he’s still alive,” Rikka said.
Nicci gritted her teeth as she turned a glare on the woman. “He’s alive.”
Rikka swallowed. “I was just saying…”
“Nicci is right,” Cara insisted. “This is Lord Rahl we’re talking about. He’s alive.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “He’s alive.”
“Nonetheless,” the wizard said in a pained voice, “we have to be prepared should the worst turn out to be true.” When he saw the look on Cara’s face, he offered a small smile. “Saying it out loud will not make it so. What is, is. I’m only saying that we must be prepared for any eventuality, that’s all. It’s the wise thing to do. It’s what Richard himself would do if he lost one of us,
and what he would want us to do should anything happen to him. Wouldn’t you expect him to fight on if something happened to you? We simply cannot ignore the things we are facing. Richard would want us to fight on, to fight for ourselves.”
Nicci thought, perhaps more than ever before, that she was hearing the First Wizard himself speaking. She could see where Richard got some of his remarkable resolve.
Cara glared at the man. “You’re talking like he’s dead. He’s not.”
Zedd offered her a smile and nodded his agreement. He was not able to make it look convincing.
“I need to talk to Jebra,” Nicci said. “Right now that’s the best place to start. What else has she had to say about her vision?”
Zedd sighed. “Not much. It’s been years since she has had a vision and this one was not only a complete surprise but apparently overpoweringly appalling. I have begun to fear that the reason she hasn’t had visions is because of what Richard had to say about magic failing. If so, then for this one to break through her failing ability speaks volumes. While she was conscious and during the periods when she’s been coherent, her ability to grasp the entirety of her vision, the events in it seemed to have been fragmented and incomplete.”
“Maybe we can help her to piece it together,” Nicci said as gently as possible, despite how powerfully determined she was to make the woman do what was needed.
Zedd obviously didn’t think it was going to do any good, but he apparently would rather invest his effort in the attempt than surrender to the unimaginable.
“This way,” he said as he turned in a flourish and rushed off down the dimly lit hall.
At a rather small, round-topped door with intricate vines and overlapping leaves carved into the mahogany panels, Zedd, with Nicci and the two Mord-Sith flanking him, gently knocked. While he waited for an answer, he turned to Rikka.
“Go and get Nathan. Tell him it’s urgent, and that he will need to pack. He is going to have to leave at once.”
Nicci suspected what Zedd was going to ask Nathan to do, but she forced the thought from her mind. It would require her to think of the unthinkable.
She instead concentrated on the task at hand. She had to get Jebra to tell her where Richard was, tell her what was happening to him. If necessary, Nicci intended to use her gift to accomplish the task.
As Rikka raced off down the hall, Zedd rapped again, a little louder. When there was no response, he looked back over his shoulder at Nicci.
He fidgeted with the cuff of his simple robes. “Do you sense anything…odd?”
Nicci was so filled with frantic thoughts and emotions that she hadn’t been paying any attention. They were in the Keep, after all. There were alarms everywhere that should protect them from any unwanted visitors.
She set aside her thoughts as her senses went into a heightened state of awareness.
“Now that you mention it, something does feel…odd.”
“Odd like what?” Cara asked as she spun her Agiel back up into her hand. She looked startled for just an instant before realization cut off the surprise.
Nicci gently lifted the wizard’s hand from the lever before he could open the door. “There isn’t anyone in there with her, is there? Maybe Tom, or Friedrich?”
Zedd frowned at her. “Not that I know of. Those two are out on patrol. I was sitting with Jebra when I sensed you and Cara coming. She was asleep. I had wanted to be near if she awoke and was able to tell me any more about her vision. I left her and came to meet you, hoping to see that she had been wrong about Richard. Ann and Nathan have already gone to bed. I suppose it’s possible that it could be one of them.”
Nicci, her inner senses now fully alert, shook her head. “It’s not either of them. Something else.”
Zedd stared off as he puzzled at the question, the way one would listen for any sound, but Nicci knew that he wasn’t exactly listening for a telltale sound. He was doing the same thing she was doing, using his gift to probe what they couldn’t see or hear, to try to sense the presence of life. As far as Nicci could sense, though, there were only the three of them close by: her and Zedd and Cara, and more faintly on the other side of the door, Jebra.
But there was something else as well. The feeling, though, made no sense. It was a presence, but not the kind of sensation she would have were there another person lurking beyond the door.
It did seem, though, as if she might have had a very similar sensation just recently. She frowned, trying to remember.
“I have extra alarms set all over this area,” Zedd told her.
Nicci nodded. “I know. I felt them.”
“There isn’t any way someone could have gotten past them. I would know. Bags, there’s no way even a mouse could get by the snares I set.”
“Could it be because of what Lord Rahl told us?” Cara asked in a low voice. “I mean, about there being something wrong with magic? Could it be that there’s something wrong with your gift and that’s why you feel what you feel?”
Zedd gave the woman a sour look. “You mean you think our gift is…is what? Scrambled?”
Cara shrugged and then added to the idea. “I don’t know much about magic, but maybe that’s what’s wrong with my Agiel. Maybe that’s all it is. Lord Rahl was pretty insistent that he knew that magic was corrupted. Maybe your gifted senses are corrupted in that same way. Maybe the conclusion I was jumping to is all wrong. Maybe that’s why—the corruption.”
Zedd huffed, scoffing at the idea. He lifted an arm to the side and the oil lamps on the tables flanking the door went dark. “Well, that much of my power works, so that means it works,” he whispered. He laid a hand back on the lever as he gave Nicci a resolute look. “Be ready for anything.”