Page 45 of Phantom (Sword of Truth 10)

Nicci knew Richard well enough that she could easily read the heightened tension in his body. She knew Cara well enough to see the reflection of that stress lurking in her intently calm appearance. Nicci pressed a fist over the knot of anxiety tightening in her middle.

Overhead the slate gray clouds roiled, spitting an occasional fat drop of rain. Distant thunder rumbled through the mountain passes, promising a tempestuous night to come. Despite the dark, seething clouds, the air was strangely still. The heat of the day had abruptly vanished, as if fleeing before the storm that was about to break.

As she came to a stop, Nicci rested a hand on the crenellated wall and took a deep breath of the humid air.

"Rikka said that you needed to see me. She said it was urgent."

Richard looked the match for the brewing storm. "I have to leave. At once."

Nicci had somehow expected just that. She glanced past Richard, to Cara, but the Mord-Sith showed no reaction. Richard had been brooding for days. He'd been quietly distant as he considered everything he had learned from Jebra and Shota. Zedd had advised Nicci to leave him to his deliberation. Nicci had not needed such advise; she probably knew his darker moods better than anyone.

"I'm going with you," she said, making it clear that she was leaving no room for discussion.

He nodded absently. "It will be good to have you with me. Especially for this."

Nicci was relieved not to have him argue, but the knot of anxiety tightened over the last part of what he'd said. There was a palpable sense of danger in the air. At that moment her concern was to insure that—whatever he was about to do—he was as well protected as she could manage.

"And Cara is going too."

Still, he gazed off into the distance. "Of course."

She realized that he was looking south. "Now that Tom and Friedrich are back, Tom will insist on coming along as well. His talents will be valuable."

Tom was a member of an elite corps of protectors to the Lord Rahl. Despite his amiable appearance, Tom was more than formidable in his duty. Men like him were not advanced to such trusted positions of protection to the Lord Rahl because they had nice smiles. Like other D'Haran protectors to the Lord Rahl, Tom had come to feel passionately about his duty to protect Richard.

"He can't come with us," Richard said. "We're going in the sliph. Only Cara, you, and me are able to travel in the sliph."

Nicci swallowed at the thought of such a journey. "And where are we going, Richard?"

At long last, his gray eyes turned to her. He gazed into her eyes with that way he had about him, as if he was looking into her soul.

"I've figured it out," he said.

"You've figured what out?"

"What I must do."

Nicci could feel her fingers tingling with a shapeless dread. The look of terrible resolve in his gray eyes made her knees weak.

"And what is that you must do, Richard?"

He puzzled a moment. "Did I ever tell you thanks for stopping Shota when you did, when she was touching me?"

Nicci was not disconcerted by Richard's abrupt change of topic. She had learned that it was Richard's way. It was especially characteristic when he was greatly troubled. The more agitated he was, it seemed that there were all the more things going on in his head at the same time, as if his thoughts were in a whirlwind of inner activity that pulled everything up into that tumultuous rush of deliberation.

"You told me, Richard."

About a hundred times.

He nodded slightly. "Well, thanks."

His voice had turned absent, distant, as he descended back into the dark depths of some inner equation upon which the future hinged. "She was doing something painful to you, wasn't she."

It was not a question, but a statement that Nicci had come to believe more and more in the days following Shota's visit. Nicci didn't know what Shota had done, but she wished she had not allowed even that brief touch. There was no telling how much the witch woman could have conveyed in that touch, even as abbreviated as it had been. Lightning, after all, was brief as well. Richard had never said what Shota had shown him, but it was ground that Nicci, for some reason, feared to tread upon.

Richard heaved a sigh. "Yes, she was. She was showing me the truth. That truth is in part how I've come to understand at last what it is I must do. As much as I dread it…"

When he drifted into silence, Nicci patiently prodded him. "So, what have you figured out you must do?"

Richard's fingers tightened on the stone as he looked out again over the darkening countryside far below, and then to the somber jumble of mountains rising up beyond.

"I was right in the beginning." His gaze turned to Cara. "Right when I took you and Kahlan away to the mountains far back in Westland."

Cara frowned. "I remember you saying that we were going back into those deserted mountains because you had come to understand that we could not win the war by fighting the army of the Imperial Order. You said that you could not lead them in such a battle that they were sure to lose."

Richard nodded. "And I was right. I know that now. We can't win against their army. Shota helped me to see that. She may have been trying to convince me that I must fight that battle, but in part because of all that she and Jebra showed me, I know now that we can't win it.

"Now, I know what I must do."

"And what would that be?" Nicci pressed.

Richard finally pushed away from the stone merlon. "We have to go. I don't have time to lay it all out right now."

Nicci started after him. "I threw some things together. They're ready. Richard, why can't you tell me what you've decided?"

"I will," he said, "later."

"You're wasting your time," Cara said under her breath to Nicci as she fell in with her behind Richard. "I've already paddled up that creek until I got too tired to paddle anymore."

Richard, hearing Cara's remark, took Nicci by the arm and pulled her forward. "I'm not finished thinking it all through. I need to finish putting it all together. I'll explain it when we get there, explain it to everyone?but right now we don't have the time. All right?"

"Get where?" Nicci asked.

"To the D'Haran army. Jagang's main force will soon be heading up into D'Hara. I have to tell our army that we have no chance to win the battle that is coming for them."

"That ought to cheer their day," Cara said. "Nothing makes a soldier feel better on the eve of battle than their leader telling them that they are about to lose the battle and die."

"You want me to tell them a lie, instead?" he asked.

Cara's only answer was a scowl.

At the end of the rampart Richard pulled open the heavy oak door at the base of the tower. Inside was a room where some of the lamps were already lit. Nicci could hear people rushing up the stone steps to the side.

"Richard!" It was Zedd following behind the big, blond-headed D'Haran, Tom.

Richard halted, waiting for his grandfather to reach the top of the steps and make it into the simple stone room. Zedd rushed closer, gulping air.

"Richard! What's going on? Rikka came by in a rush saying that you were leaving."

Richard nodded. "I wanted you to know that I've got to go, but I won't be gone for long. I'll be back in a few days. Hopefully, in the meantime you and Nathan and Ann can find out something in the books that will be helpful with the Chainfire spell. Maybe you can even work on coming up with some solution to the contamination from the chimes."

Zedd waved irritably at the suggestion. "While we're at it, would you like me to cure the sky of that thunderstorm?"

"Zedd, don't be angry with me, please. I have to go."

"All right, but where are you going—and why?"

"I'm ready, Lord Rahl," Tom said as he hurried into the room.

"I'm sorry," Richard told him, "but you can't go. We're going to need to go in the sliph."

Zedd threw his arms up in the air. "The sliph! You do your best to convince me that magic is failing, and now you i

ntend to put your life in the hands of a creature of magic? Are you losing your mind, Richard? What's going on?"

"I'm aware of the danger, but I must take the risk." Richard gestured. "You know that starburst symbol on the door of the First Wizard's enclave, up there?" When Zedd nodded, Richard tapped the top of his silver wristband. "It's the same as this one here."

"What about it?" Zedd asked.

"Remember, I told you that it has meaning? It's an admonition not to allow your vision to lock on any one thing. It's a warning to look everywhere at once, to see nothing to the exclusion of everything else. It means you mustn't allow the enemy to draw your attention and make you focus on what he wishes you to see. If you do, you will be blind to everything else.

"That's what I've been doing. Jagang has been forcing me—forcing everyone—to focus on one thing. Like a fool, I've been doing just that."

"His army," Nicci guessed. "That's what you mean? That we've all been focusing on his invasion force?"

"That's right. This starburst means that you must open to all there is, never settling on just one thing, even when cutting your enemy. It means that instead of focusing on one thing, you must open your mind to everything, even when it is necessary to keep that one central threat at the center of your attention."

Zedd cocked his head. "Richard, you've got to focus on the threat that's about to kill you. His army is millions of men strong. They're coming to crush all opposition and enslave us all."

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