Phantom

  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."

  "Wait," Nicci said.

  Zedd looked back over his shoulder. His features were hard to see in the dim light, but his eyes were not. She saw in them some of Richard's eyes.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "I just remembered something I've been trying to figure out."

  Nicci steepled her fingers as she hurriedly tried to recall the details. She finally shook a finger as she spoke. "When the beast attacked us while we were traveling, I felt an odd sensation. I discounted it because being in the sliph is so strange to begin wit
h that it's hard to tell if anything you're feeling is important, much less really out of the ordinary. Everyday sensations can seem wondrous—even miraculous. You don't know if it's all just the culmination of all the unfamiliar perceptions or something more."

  "Exactly when did you have this feeling?" Zedd asked, suddenly acutely interested in what she had to say. "All the time you were traveling, or at one specific time?"

  "No, like I said, it was alter the beast attacked us."

  "Be more specific. Think. Was it when the beast attacked? Maybe when it grabbed Richard? Or when it grabbed you?"

  Nicci pressed her fingertips to her temples as she squeezed her eyes shut, desperately trying to recall it accurately. "No… no, it was after I was pulled away from Richard. Not immediately after, but shortly."

  "What was the sequence in which these events took place?"

  "The beast attacked. We were fighting it. I tried to use my gift but it didn't help. The beast was hurting me. Richard used his knife to cut away some of the tentacles. He saved me from being crushed.

  "Then the beast pulled Cara away from him. Not long after that it pulled me away from him as well. It was then, after that—not immediately after, but it was only a short time later. I know because it was when I was frantically searching for Richard that I felt the odd sensation."

  Nicci looked up at the wizard. "The thing is, right after I felt that sensation, I could no longer sense the presence of the beast. I searched, trying to find Richard, but couldn't. As the sliph swept us back to the Keep the feeling swiftly faded and I forgot all about it."

  "What did it feel like—this sensation?"

  Nicci gestured. "It felt exactly the same as what is beyond that door."

  Zedd stared at her for a long moment. "What is beyond feels the same? A kind of… humming flow of power?"

  Nicci nodded. "A charge of magic that somehow is baseless."

  "Magic frequently seems to be free-floating," Cara said. "What's so odd about that?"

  Zedd shook his head. "Magic isn't something that just floats around by itself. Magic has no consciousness, but this feeling in some way mimics that kind of conscious intent."

  "Yes," Nicci said. "That's my sense of it. That's why it feels so odd, because magic with this kind of bearing cannot be baseless. This is domination generating its characteristic controlling fields of presence, but without the life necessary to generate it."

  Zedd straightened. "That's a very good description of what I feel." He peered suspiciously at the door. "I think that if we get closer we might be able to sense it better and find out what it is. If we can get close enough, perhaps we can analyze it." He gave them both a look. "Let's be careful, shall we?"

  The three of them huddled close in the dim hallway as the wizard carefully turned the lever and slowly pushed open the door. Nicci sensed no more with the door partly opened than she had with it closed. Zedd stuck his head inside for a moment, then pushed the door the rest of the way open. The room was dark, with only the dim light from the hall revealing shapes and shadows of what was inside.

  At the far wall on their left Nicci could see an empty chair with a comforter folded neatly and draped over the back. Not too far from the doorway on the same side of the room sat a short, round table with a lamp that wasn't lit. Beyond the table the bed lay empty. The rumpled sheets had been pushed off the side of the bed and puddled on the floor. Nicci peered around along with Zedd and Cara but she didn't see Jebra. If she was somewhere else in the room it was too dark to spot her. With the odd sensation even stronger inside the room, Nicci's inner perception wasn't much help.

  Zedd sent a flicker of his Han into the lamp. The wick was turned low, so the light wasn't strong enough to chase the heavy shadows from the corners, or the far side of the wardrobe on the other side of the room. Still, there was no sign of Jebra.

  Nicci, detached from her emotions and focused instead on perception governed by her Han, stepped past Zedd to stand tense and still in the center of the room, listening. With her gift she tried to open herself to the sensation of another presence lurking in the darkness, but she felt none.

  A faint breeze rustled the curtains. The double doors, made of small glass panes, both stood open to a small balcony. Nicci knew from the balcony in her own room nearby that this balcony also overlooked the dark city far below at the base of the mountain.

  Atop the balcony railing, a dark silhouette blotted out the moonlit countryside beyond.

  Behind Nicci, Zedd turned up the wick on the oil lamp. When the light came up, Nicci saw that it was Jebra out on that balcony. Her back toward them, she was standing barefoot atop the fat stone railing.

  "Dear spirits," Cara whispered, "she's going to jump."

  The three of them stood frozen, fearing to do anything that might startle the woman and cause her to jump before they could reach her. She didn't seem to know yet that they were there.

  "Jebra," Zedd said in a soft, cautious voice, "we've come to see you."

  If Jebra heard him, she didn't show any reaction. Nicci didn't think that Jebra heard anything, though, except the haunting whisper of magic.

  Nicci could feel the faint waves of that alien power rushing past her, humming toward the seer standing like a stone statue on the railing of the balcony. She stared out over the city of Aydindril far below. A gentle breeze ruffled her short hair.

  The balcony, Nicci knew, while facing the valley below, was not right out over the edge of the Keep. Still, Jebra was confronting a drop of hundreds of feet to one of the inner courtyards, walkways, ramparts, or slate roofs of the Keep. At this height it didn't matter that she wouldn't be falling down the mountain were she to fall or jump; she would just as surely be killed against the stone of the Keep far below.

  "Stars," Jebra said in a low, thin voice to the empty space before her.

  Zedd seized Nicci's arm and pulled her close. He put his mouth by her ear. "I think someone is seeking the same answers we are. I think someone is probing her mind. That's what we feel. It's a thief, a thief of thoughts."

  "Jagang," Cara breathed.

  Nicci knew that that would be the logical assumption. With the bond to Richard somehow broken, Jagang could in theory do such a thing. Without Richard filling the role of the Lord Rahl, all of them were suddenly vulnerable to the dream walker.

  A sickening ripple of icy dread coursed through Nicci at the memory of Jagang possessing her mind, her will. Without the Lord Rahl, the bond protecting them all was broken. If the emperor was riding the night he very well might discover them unprotected. The dream walker could, at any moment, without warning, drift unseen, unfelt, right into their minds and invest himself in their thoughts.

  But Nicci knew Jagang. She knew what it was like when he possessed a person's mind. He had at one time, after all, possessed her mind, controlled her, ruled her through that terrible presence. This was different.

  "No," she said, "it's not Jagang. What I sense is something else."

  "How do you know for sure?" Zedd whispered.

  Nicci finally took her gaze off of Jebra and looked at the frowning wizard.

  "Well, for one thing," she whispered back, "if it was Jagang, you would sense nothing. The dream walker leaves no trace. There is no way to tell he is there. This is entirely different."

  Zedd rubbed his clean-shaven chin. "It still seems somehow familiar," he murmured to himself.

  "Stars," Jebra said again to the night beyond the balcony. Zedd started for the open doorway through the double doors, but Nicci seized his arm and held him back. "Wait," she whispered.

  "Stars fallen to ground," Jebra said in a haunting voice.

  Zedd and Nicci shared a look.

  "Stars among the grass," Jebra said in that same dead voice.

  Zedd stiffened. "Dear spirits. I recognize it now."

  Nicci leaned closer. "The presence?"

  The wizard nodded slowly. "That's the feeling of a witch woman plying her power."

  Jebra lifted her ar
ms to the side.

  "She's going to jump!" Nicci shouted as Jebra began to topple forward out into the night.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 33

  Richard coughed violently.

  The pain of the involuntary upheaval jolted him to consciousness. He heard himself trying unsuccessfully to groan. He had no breath with which to make a groan. With consciousness came a growing, confused panic of suffocation, as if he were somehow drowning.

  He coughed again, wincing in pain as he did so. He tried to cry out in agony as he curled up into a ball on the ground, arms pressed tight across his middle, trying to prevent another fit of convulsive coughing.

  "Breathe."

  Richard regarded the haunting voice that seemingly came from some netherworld place as the voice of insanity. He was doing everything he could not to breathe. He took careful, shallow, thimbleful breaths, trying to prevent another racking bout of coughing.

  "Breathe."

  He didn't know where he was and at the moment he didn't really care. All that mattered was the feeling of suffocating. He didn't want to breathe, despite how desperately he needed a breath. That sensation was so oppressive, so sickening, that in his mind it was not only completely debilitating, but all-powerful. Dying seemed preferable to the feeling continuing. He couldn't endure it continuing.

  Richard didn't want to move because, with each passing moment, it was becoming easier not to breathe. It seemed that if he could just manage to keep from breathing a little longer, then over the crest of that dark hill out there somewhere ahead of him the pain and suffering would lift. He fought to lie perfectly still, hoping the spinning world would stop before he vomited. He could not imagine how much that would hurt. If he could just lie still a little longer, then it would all become easier. If he could just lie still a little longer, then it would all go away.

  "Breathe."

  He ignored the distant, silken voice. His mind drifted to a time in the past when he had hurt this much. It had been when Denna had him chained and helpless, when she had him at her mercy, when she hurt him until he was delirious from being tortured.