Page 46 of Phantom (Sword of Truth 10)

"I know. That's why we can't fight them; we will lose."

Zedd's face went crimson. "So you propose to allow their army to roll into the New World unopposed? Your plan is to let Jagang's army freely overrun cities and allow to happen all the things Jebra told us had happened in Ebinissia? You want to so easily allow all those people to be slaughtered or enslaved?"

"Think of the solution," Richard reminded his grandfather, "not the problem."

"Not very comforting advice to those having their throats cut."

Richard froze and stared at his grandfather, seemingly struck silent by Zedd's words.

"Look," Richard finally said, running his fingers back through his hair, "I don't have time for this right now. I'll talk to you about it when I get back. Time is of the essence. I've already wasted far too much of it. I only hope that we still have enough time left."

"Enough time for what!" Zedd roared.

Nicci heard footsteps rushing up the stairwell. Jebra dashed into the room.

"What's going on?" she asked Zedd.

Zedd waved a hand in Richard's direction. "My grandson has decided that we must lose the war, that we must not fight Jagang's army."

"Lord Rahl, you can't be serious," she said. "You can't seriously consider allowing those brutes…" Jebra's voice trailed off as she stepped forward, peering up at Richard. She stilled in midstride. She staggered back a step.

The blood drained from her face.

Her jaw dropped open. Her jaw trembled as she tried without success to Wring forth words. Her features slackened with dread.

Her blue eyes rolled back in her head as she fainted.

As she toppled back, Tom caught her in his arms and laid her gently on the granite floor. Everyone closed in around the unconscious woman.

"What happened?" Tom asked.

"I don't know," Zedd said as he knelt down beside the woman, pressing his fingers to her forehead. "She's fainted, but I'm not sure why."

Richard headed for the door that opened to the iron stairs running down the inside of the tower. "I'll leave you to take care of her, Zedd—you're the expert at healing. She's in good hands. I can't afford to waste any more time right now."

He turned back from the doorway. "I'll be back as soon as I can?promise. We shouldn't be more than a few days."

"But Richard—"

He had already started down the iron steps. "I'll be back," he called up at them, his voice echoing from the gloom.

Without hesitation, Cara followed after him down into the dark tower.

Nicci didn't want to let him get too far without her, but she knew that he would have to call the sliph, so she had a few moments. As Zedd checked different spots on Jebra's head, Nicci squatted down beside the unconscious Jebra, across from him.

Nicci felt the woman's brow. "She's burning up."

Zedd looked up in a way that nearly stopped Nicci's heart. "It's a vision."

"How do you know?"

"I know about seers in general and this one in particular. She's had a powerful vision. Jebra is more sensitive than most seers. Her emotions, with a certain kind of vision, sometimes overcome her. This vision had to have been something that was so powerful it rendered her unconscious."

"Do you think it was about Richard?"

"There's no way to tell," the old wizard said. "She will have to be the one to tell us."

Zedd may not have been willing to venture a guess, but Jebra had looked up into Richard's eyes just before she fainted. Nicci didn't have time to be discreet. She couldn't allow Richard to leave without her—and she knew that he would if she wasn't there when he was ready to go—but at the same time she couldn't leave without knowing if Jebra had had a vision about him that could reveal something important.

Nicci slipped her hand under the woman's neck, pressing her fingers to the base of Jebra's skull.

"What are you doing?" Zedd asked, suspiciously. "If you're doing what I think you are, that's not just reckless but dangerous."

"So is ignorance," Nicci said as she released a flow of power.

Jebra's eyes popped open. She gasped.

"No…"

"There, there," Zedd comforted, "it's all right, my dear. We're right here with you."

"What did you see?" Nicci asked, getting right to the point.

Jebra's panicked eyes turned to Nicci. She reached up and snatched the collar of Nicci's dress.

"Don't leave him alone!"

There was no need for Nicci to ask who Jebra was talking about. "Why? What did you see?"

"Don't leave him alone! Don't let him out of your sight—not for an instant!"

"Why?" Nicci asked again. "What will happen if he is left alone?"

"If you leave him alone, he will be lost to us."

"How? What did you see?"

Jebra reached up and with both fists pulled Nicci's face closer. "Go. Don't let him be alone. What I saw does not matter. If he's not alone, then it can't happen. Do you understand? If you let him get separated from you and Cara it will not matter what I saw—it won't matter for any of us. I can't tell you the means of separation, only that no matter what you must not let it happen. That's all that's important. Go! Stay with him!"

Nicci swallowed as she nodded.

"You'd better do as she says," Zedd told Nicci. "There's nothing I can do in this. It's up to you."

He reached out and grasped her hand, not as First Wizard, but as Richard's grandfather. "Stay with him, Nicci. Protect him. In so many ways he's the Seeker, the Lord Rahl, the leader of the D'Haran Empire, but in other ways he's still a woods guide at heart. He's our Richard. Protect him, please. We're all depending on you."

Nicci stared at him, at an appeal that seemed unexpectedly personal, an appeal that seemed to rise above all the wider needs of protecting the freedom of the New World and reduced it all to a simple love for Richard the man. She understood in that instant that without the sincere and simple concern for Richard as an individual, none of the rest of it mattered.

As she started to rise, Jebra pulled Nicci back down. "This is not a 'maybe' kind of vision, a possibility. This is certain. Don't let him be alone or he will be at their mercy."

"Whose mercy?"

Jebra bit her lower lip as her blue eyes welled up with tears. "The dark witch."

Nicci felt a shudder of icy dread ripple up her shoulders.

"Go," Jebra whispered. "Please, go. Hurry. Don't let him leave without you."

Nicci sprang up and rushed across the room. At the doorway she paus

ed and turned back. Her heart was pounding so hard that it made her sway on her feet.

"I swear, Zedd. He will have my protection as long as I draw breath."

She watched as Zedd nodded, a tear running down his weathered cheek. "Hurry."

Nicci turned and ran down the iron steps, taking them two at a time, her footfalls echoing around the enormous tower. She wondered what else Jebra saw in her vision that awaited Richard if he became separated from them, if he was left alone, but in the end Nicci decided that it didn't really matter what that visionary fate was, it only mattered that, no matter what, Nicci not allow it to happen.

Bats fluttered in undulating clouds up through the tower, funneling out through the open windows at the top, intent on their nightly hunt, as Nicci raced down the steps. The rushing sound of thousands of webbed wings made it seem the tower was exhaling in a long, low moan. She passed iron doors on landings without pause. She sometimes had to snatch the rail to keep her footing. At the bottom she raced around the walkway that surrounded the fetid water standing at the bottom of the tower. The black water rippled as small creatures slipped into the inky sanctuary.

Nicci ran in through the doorway that had been blasted open when Richard had destroyed the great barrier that had once separated the Old World from the new. The towers that powered that barrier had stood since the great war, three thousand years before. In more recent times, Jagang and his army of the Imperial Order had been kept at bay, unable to cross that barrier. But Richard had destroyed those towers in order to be able to return to the New World after having been held at the Palace of the Prophets, and as a result the Imperial Order had been loosed on the New World. The war was not Richard's fault, but it could not have been rekindled without that act.

Richard and Cara were standing, waiting, on the wall of the great well of the sliph, the creature that had been walled away along with the Old World for all the time that the great barrier had stood.

Behind Richard and Cara the quicksilver face of the sliph watched Nicci as she hurried into the room. "Do you wish to travel?" the sliph asked in that eerie voice that echoed around the room.

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