"Where's Lord Rahl!"
Nicci blinked up at the Mord-Sith's intense blue eyes. She had never known blue to hurt so much. She closed her eyes and shook her head, still trying to clear her mind of the experience, of the confusion, of the ringing sound of Cara's voice echoing through the marrow of her bones.
"Richard…"
If felt as if her insides twisted with the anguish of wanting nothing so much as to help him.
"Richard…"
Cara grunted with the effort of lifting Nicci's dead weight and pulling the top half of her body the rest of the way up and out of the well. Nicci, feeling like the survivor of a shipwreck in a stormy sea, slid out over the top of the stone wall, unable to do much to contribute to her own rescue. Cara put one knee to the floor, catching Nicci before her limp body hit the stone.
Once Cara had lowered her down onto the stone floor, Nicci gathered all her strength and pushed herself up on trembling arms. She couldn't seem to muster her usual strength. It was a frightful feeling, not being able to make her body do her bidding. With great effort she finally managed to tip herself upright and sit heavily back against the wall of the sliph's well. She still gasped, trying to catch her breath. She still hurt everywhere. For a moment she slumped against the stone well, trying to gather her strength.
Cara seized her by the collar of her dress and shook her.
"Nicci—where's Lord Rahl?"
Nicci blinked, looking around, trying to make sense of everything. She hurt so much. The pain reminded her of one of Jagang's beatings, the way during his rage she would start to feel the pain through a half-numb fog of confusion. But this had not been the emperor's doing. This was pain from something that had happened in the sliph. Traveling had never hurt before. It had never been a painful experience.
"Where's Lord Rahl!"
Nicci winced at the ache of the shout echoing around the room. She swallowed past the raw pain in her throat.
"I don't know." She put her elbows on her knees and ran her fingers back into her hair, holding her pounding head in both hands. "Dear spirits, I don't know."
Cara leaned over the well so fast and so hard that Nicci thought she might topple in. Instinctively, she reached out to catch the Mord-Sith's legs, thinking that she would surely fall in, but she didn't.
"Sliph!" Cara's shout again echoed around the ancient, dusty stone room. Nicci shared the emotion, but knew that the intensity would not accomplish anything.
Ignoring the searing pain in her joints, she staggered to her feet. The spinning feeling was slowing a little. She saw the quicksilver form of the sliph's face partly emerge from the well, her features forming in the glossy surface to look up at them.
"Where's Lord Rahl?" Cara asked.
The sliph chose to ignore Cara's question. Instead she peered over at Nicci.
"You must not ever do that when you are within me." The eerie voice echoed softly around the room.
"You mean magic?" Nicci guessed.
"I have great difficulty being able to endure such power being unleashed within me, but such a thing could be worse for you and anyone else traveling at the same time. You must not ever try to use your ability when you travel. It will make you sick at the least. It could easily turn out far worse. It is dangerous to all."
"She's right about that," Cara said, confidentially. "When you started doing that it hurt like an Agiel was being used on me. My legs still don't work right."
"Mine either," Nicci admitted. "But I couldn't very well just let the beast have Richard without trying to protect him, now, could I?"
Ill at ease for even giving the hint of an impression that she wouldn't have done anything to protect Richard, Cara shook her head. "I would have taken far worse than that to protect Lord Rahl. You did the right thing—I don't care what the sliph says."
"Me too," Nicci said. At that moment, though, she wasn't concerned about herself or Cara. She turned to the sliph. "Where is Richard? What happened to him? Where is he?"
"I cannot—"
Cara's patience, if she'd had any, was gone. She lunged for the sliph as if she was going to try to strangle the silver neck. "Where is he!"
The face glided out of reach. Nicci snatched Cara's outfit and pulled the woman back, standing her up on the floor beside her. Her face, red with rage, nearly matched her leather outfit.
"Sliph, this is vital," Nicci said, trying to sound reasonable. "We were with Richard—with Lord Rahl, your master—when we were attacked. That's why I had to use my power. I was trying to protect him. That beast is extremely dangerous."
The flawless silver face distorted into a fearful cast. "I know, it hurt me."
Nicci paused in astonishment. "The beast hurt you?"
The sliph nodded. Reflections of the room bent and flowed in twisting shapes over the smooth contours of the statuesque, silver features. Nicci stared in wonder as shimmering quicksilver tears formed along the lower lid of the sliph's eyes and rolled down the glossy surface of her cheeks.
"It hurt. It did not want to travel." The silver brow wrinkled with what looked like indignation layered atop torment. "It had no right to use me in that way. It hurt me."
Nicci shared a look with Cara.
Cara may have looked surprised, but she did not look sympathetic. The truth be told, at that moment Nicci's worry for Richard took precedence over any other concern.
"Sliph, I'm sorry," Nicci said, "but—"
"Where is he?" Cara growled. "Just tell us where Lord Rahl is."
The sliph hesitated. "He no longer travels."
"Where is he, then?" Cara repeated.
The sliph's voice turned cold and distant. "I never reveal information about others who have been with me."
"He's not just a traveler!" Cara screamed in rage. "It's Lord Rahl!"
The sliph backed to the far wall of her well.
Nicci held a hand up toward Cara, urging a little restraint and for her to be quiet a moment. "We were attacked by something evil when we were traveling together. You know that." Nicci tried to calm some of the menace in her voice. She knew, though, that she wasn't being altogether successful. Her rising panic about Richard was making it difficult to think—that and Jebra's frantic warning that they must not allow Richard to be alone, even for an instant. "Sliph, that evil thing was after your master, after Richard. We're Richard's friends—you know that, too. He needs our help."
"Lord Rahl may be hurt," Cara added.
Nicci nodded her confirmation to Cara's words. "We need to get to him."
The quiet in the stone room felt painful. Nicci was still trying to accustom herself to being back, still struggling to suppress the agony of pain twisting through her while trying to think what to do next.
"We need to get to Richard," she repeated.
The silver face rose up a little farther, drawing a neck of silver fluid up out of the well with it. The sliph puzzled at Nicci.
"You wish to travel?"
Nicci kept a tight rein on her rage. "Yes. That's right. We wish to travel."
Cara, taking the cue from Nicci, gestured down into the well. "Yes, that's right. We wish to travel."
"I won't use my magic in you again, I promise." Nicci motioned the sliph closer. "We wish to travel—right away. Right now."
The sliph brightened, as if all was forgiven. "You will be pleased." She seemed eager to satisfy. "Come, we will travel."
Nicci put a knee up on the wall. Her thighs ached with the effort. She ignored the fiery agony burning through her muscles and joints and worked to climb up atop the broad stone wall. She was relieved that they had at last found a way to get the sliph to comply—if not by telling them where Richard was, then by taking them to him.
"Yes, we will travel," Nicci said, still trying to catch her breath.
The sliph formed an arm, slipping it around Nicci's waist, helping to pull her up onto the wall. "Come, then. Where do you wish to travel?"
"To where Lord Rahl is." Cara clambered up onto the wal
l beside Nicci. "Take us there," she said, putting on a smile for the sliph's benefit, "and we will be pleased."
The sliph paused and gazed at her. The arm drew back, melting into the slowly sloshing surface. The silver face looked suddenly impersonal, even forbidding.
"I cannot reveal information about other clients."
Nicci fisted her hands. "He's not just any client! He's your master and he's in trouble! He's our friend! You have to take us to him!"
The sliph's reflective face moved away. "I cannot do such a thing."
Nicci and Cara stood mute for a moment, both at their wits' end, unable to think of how to convince the sliph to cooperate. Nicci felt like screaming, or crying, or unleashing enough magic to boil the sliph into talking.
"If you don't help us," she finally said in an even tone, "then you will feel more pain than you did from the beast. I will see to that. Please don't make me resort to that. We know you want to protect Richard. That's what we're trying to do, too."
The sliph stared in silence, like a silver statue, as if trying to assess the threat.
Cara pressed her fingers to her temples. "It's like trying to reason with a bucket of water," she muttered.
Nicci glared at the sliph. "You will take us to your master. That's an order."
"You'd better do as she says," Cara said, "or when she's done with you, then you will have to answer to me."
The Mord-Sith spun her Agiel up into her fist to make her point.
But when she did she suddenly froze stiff, staring at the weapon. The blood drained from her face. Even her hands stood out white against the red leather of her outfit.
Nicci leaned closer and laid a hand on Cara's shoulder. "What's wrong?"
Cara's hanging jaw finally moved. "It's dead."
"What are you talking about?"
Cara's blue eyes were filled with unbridled panic. "My Agiel is dead in my hand. I can't feel it."
While Nicci could clearly read the startled dismay in the Mord-Sith's voice, she didn't understand its source. Having an Agiel not give her pain hardly seemed like cause for panic. Even so, such naked terror was infectious.
"Does that mean something?" Nicci asked, fearing the answer.
The sliph watched from the far side of the well.
"The Agiel is powered through our bond to Lord Rahl—by his gift." She held the weapon out, as if in evidence. "If the Agiel is dead, then so is the Lord Rahl."
"Listen, I'll use my power if I have to to make the sliph take us to him. But Cara, don't start jumping to conclusions. We can't know—"
"He's not there."
"He's not where?"
"Anywhere." Still, Cara stared at her slender weapon held up in her trembling fingers. "I can no longer feel the bond." Her liquid blue-eyed gaze turned up to Nicci. "The bond always tells us where the Lord Rahl is. I no longer can feel him. I no longer feel where he is. He's not there. He's not anywhere."
A wave of nausea washed through Nicci. She felt faint. Her fingers and toes were going numb.
She turned back to the sliph.
It was gone.
Nicci leaned over the wall, peering down into the well. In the darkness below she saw a faint silver glimmer just as it vanished, leaving behind only blackness.
She turned back to Cara and seized a fistful of leather at her shoulder. She hopped down off the wall, pulling Cara with her.
"Come on. I know someone who can tell us where Richard is."
* * *
CHAPTER 32
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 anythingnot 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 rind 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.