Page 126 of Phantom (Sword of Truth 10)

Zedd rose from his chair at the desk in the little room when he saw Nicci standing in the doorway. The lamplight softened his familiar face. "Nicci, you're back. How are things at the People's Palace?" Nicci hardly heard the question. Answering it was beyond her. Zedd stepped closer, concern settling in his hazel eyes.

"Nicci, what's wrong. You look like a phantom come to haunt the halls."

She had to force herself to speak. "Do you trust Richard?"

Zedd's brow drew down. "What kind of question is that?"

"Do you trust Richard with your life?"

Zedd gestured with one arm. "Of course. What's this about?"

"Do you trust Richard with everyone's life?"

Zedd gently gripped her arm. "Nicci, I love that boy."

"Please, Zedd, do you trust Richard with everyone's life?"

The concern in his eyes overspread his face, deepening the creases. He finally nodded. "Of course I do. If there was ever anyone I would trust with my life, or the life of anyone, it would be Richard. After all, I'm the one who named him to be Seeker."

Nicci nodded as she turned.

"Thank you, Zedd."

He lifted his robes a little as he hurried after her. "Do you need some help with something, Nicci?"

"No," she said. "Thank you. I'm fine."

Zedd at last nodded, taking her word for it, and returned to the book he was studying.

Nicci walked through the halls of the Keep without seeing them. She moved as if following an invisible glowing line to her destination, the way Richard said he could follow the glowing lines of a spell-form.

"Where are we going?" Cara asked, rushing to follow behind.

"Do you trust Richard? Trust him with your life?"

"Of course," Cara said without an instant of hesitation.

Nicci nodded as she continued on.

She passed corridors, intersections, rooms, and stairs without really seeing them. In a daze of purpose, she finally reached the hardened area of the Keep and the grand room where the verification web had nearly taken her life. She would have died had it not been for Richard. He insisted on finding a way to save her when no one else believed it could be done.

She trusted Richard with her life, and her life was very precious to her, thanks to him.

At the double doors, Nicci turned to Cara. "I need to be alone."

"But I—"

"This involves magic."

"Oh," Cara said. "Well, all right, then. I'll just wait out here in the hall in case you need anything."

"Thank you, Cara. You're a good friend."

"I never had any real friends—friends really worth having—until Lord Rahl came along."

Nicci smiled a little. "I never had anything worth living for until Richard came along."

Nicci closed the double doors. Behind her, the two-story windows flickered with lightning. Nicci didn't know if she had ever been in that room when there wasn't a storm.

Now the whole world was caught in a storm.

When the lightning flashed the room lit with the harsh glare. There was one thing in the room, however, that did not register the touch of even such intense light. It waited like death itself.

Nicci laid The Book of Life open on the table before the inky black box of Orden sitting in the center of the table. It seemed that every time the lightning tried to ignite, that black box swallowed the light before it could really get started. Staring at it was like looking into forever.

Nicci invoked the first spell, calling forth darkness to match the impossible blackness of the grim box sitting before her. She reminded herself that, like the People's Palace, it was the person who denned it. With a thunderclap of power filling the room, the door was barred. No one could enter. The containment field of the windows no longer mattered. She had conjured something more powerful. The room was silent and pitch black. Nicci's vision came from the powers she had called forth.

She spoke the words written on the next page, invoking the next spell that opened the pathway for the governing formulas. She used a sliver of Subtractive Magic to void a razor-thin piece of flesh at the tip of her finger, and used the blood that began to ooze to begin drawing the diagrams needed before the box of Orden. As more blood ran from the open wound, she drew a containment field around the box itself. It was something like the field of the room, but on a much more intense scale. Without being contained first, such power as was liberated from the box of Orden could unintentionally breach the veil, but in a way that would kill only the person attempting what Nicci was attempting.

Almost not needing to read the book that she had been studying for what seemed half her life, she went on to the equations involving the time of year: the first day of winter.

Once that was completed, she drew the two opposing symbols and the joint of the apex from the proper charts in blood.

It went on, one intense formula after another, for the next hour, with calculations bringing the resultant layer of magic forth to be folded into the next step. Each node in the book required that only the appropriate level of power be applied. At each spot, Nicci let it flow forth without reservation.

There was no other way.

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