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Richard considered a moment. "Well," he finally said, "it didn't prevent an attack from the beast."
Nicci stared off at the bookshelves built into the wall opposite the bed. "Nothing can," she said. "In this case the beast didn't come through the windows or walls—it came through the veil, emerging out of the underworld right into the room; it didn't need to come through any shields or containment field or refractory glass."
Cara's chair thumped down. "And it nearly tore your arm off." She shook a finger at Richard. "You were using your gift. You drew it to you. If Zedd hadn't been there to heal you, you would likely have bled to death."
"Oh, Cara, every time you tell the story I seem to bleed more. No doubt the next time I hear it told I'll have been torn in two and stitched back together with magic thread."
She folded her arms as she tipped her chair back against the wall. "You could have been torn in two."
"I wasn't as badly hurt as you make it out. I'm fine." Richard leaned in a little and squeezed Nicci's hand. "At least you stopped it."
She met his gaze.
"For now," she said. "That's all."
"For now is enough for now." He smiled in quiet satisfaction. "You did good, Nicci."
His gray eyes mirrored his inner sincerity. Somehow the world always seemed better when Richard was pleased that someone had accomplished something difficult. He always seemed to value what people achieved?always seemed to delight in their triumphs. It invariably lifted her heart when he was pleased with something she had done.
Her gaze strayed from his face. She noticed the small statue standing on the table just behind him. The lamplight highlighted the flowing hair and robes that Richard had once so carefully carved into the figure of his impression of Kahlan's spirit. The lustrous statue, sculpted from walnut, stood as if in silent defiance of some invisible force attempting to suppress that spirit.
"I'm in your room," Nicci said, half to herself.
A curious frown twitched across his brow. "How did you know?"
Nicci looked away from the statue to gaze out the small, round-topped window through the thick stone wall to the left. A delicate, pale blush of color was just visible in the lower reaches of a black, star-filled sky as dawn gradually approached.
"Lucky guess," she lied.
"It was closer," Richard explained. "Zedd and Nathan wanted to get you in a bed, get you comfortable, so they could evaluate what they needed to do to help you."
Nicci knew by the lingering, icy feeling coursing through her veins that they had done something more than mere evaluation.
"Rikka and I undressed you and put you in a nightdress Zedd found for us," Cara explained to the unspoken question she must have seen in Nicci's eyes.
"Thanks." Nicci lifted a hand in a vague gesture. "How long have I been unconscious? What happened?"
"Well," Richard said, "after you jumped back up into that spell-form the night before last and called the lightning to stop the beast, the verification web nearly took you for good. After I got you out, Zedd thought you needed to rest more than anything so he did a little something so that you would sleep. You were a bit delirious from the pain you were in. He said that he helped you drift off so you wouldn't have to suffer it. He told us that you would sleep all of yesterday and last night, and then awake around dawn today. I guess he had it right."
Cara rose to stand behind Richard and peer down at Nicci. "No one thought that Lord Rahl would be able to get you out the second time. They thought your spirit was too far gone into the underworld to ever get you back—but he did it. He got you back."
Nicci looked from Cara's smug smile to Richard's gray eyes. They didn't reflect anything of the difficulty of the task. She had trouble imagining how he could have accomplished such a thing.
"You did good, Richard," she said, making him smile.
He and Cara turned toward a soft knock at the door. Zedd quietly eased the door open to peek in. When he saw that Nicci was awake, he shed his care and strolled in.
"Ah," he observed, "back from the dead, it would appear."
Nicci smiled. "Wretched excursion. I don't advise a visit to the place. Sorry about the windows, but it was either—"
"Better the windows than what might have happened to Richard."
Nicci was cheered to hear him say as much. "That was my thought."
"Sometime you will have to explain to me exactly what you did and how you did it. I wasn't aware that any form of conjured power could breach those windows."
"It can't. I simply… invited a confluence of natural power to come in through the windows."
Zedd regarded her with an unreadable look. "About the windows," he finally said in a measured tone, "we might be able to use your ability with both sides of the gift to restore them."
"I'd be glad to help."
Cara took a step forward. "When Tom and Friedrich eventually get back from patrolling the surrounding countryside I'm sure that they'd be able to help with the window's woodwork. Friedrich, especially, knows about working with wood."
Zedd nodded as he smiled briefly at the suggestion before turning to his grandson. "Where have you been? I went looking for you this morning and couldn't find you. I've been looking for you all day."
Nicci realized that the windows were hardly his primary concern.
Richard glanced briefly at the statue. "I read a lot last night. When it got light I went for a walk to think about what to do next."
Zedd sighed at the answer. "Well, as I told you after you broke the first spell-form holding Nicci, we need to talk about some of the things you said."
It was clear that it was not a matter of casual curiosity but a pointed demand.
Richard stood to help stuff pillows behind Nicci when he saw her start to sit up. The pain was becoming no mo
re than a fading memory. Zedd had obviously done something more than help her sleep. Her head was starting to clear. She realized that she was hungry.
"So talk," Richard said as he sat back down.
"I need you to explain precisely how you were able to know how to shut down a verification web—especially one as complex as the Chainfire event matrix."
Richard looked more than a little weary. "I told you before, I understand the jargon of emblems."
Zedd clasped his hands behind his back as he started to pace. Concern was clearly etched in the lines of his face. "Yes, about that, you mentioned that you know a lot about 'representational designs involving lethality.' I need to know what you meant by that."
Richard took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he leaned back in his chair. Having grown up around Zedd, he obviously knew quite well that when Zedd wanted to know something it was easiest to just answer the questions.
Richard turned his wrists over across his knees. Strange symbols girded the leather-padded silver wristbands he wore. On the center of each band, at the insides of his wrists, there was a small Grace. That alone was alarming enough, since Nicci had seen Richard use them to call the sliph so that they could travel. She couldn't begin to imagine what the other symbols meant.
"These things all around the bands—the emblems, designs, and devices—are pictures representing things. Like I said before, they're a jargon, a language of sorts."
Zedd waggled a finger at the designs on the wristbands. "And you can make out meaning in them? Like you did with the spell-form?"
"Yes. Most are ways of fighting with the sword—that's how I was first able to recognize them and how I began to learn to understand them."
Richard's fingers idly sought reassurance in the touch of the weapon's hilt, but it was no longer there at his hip. He caught himself and went on.
"Many of these are the same as the designs outside the First Wizard's enclave. You know—on those brass plaques on the entablature above the variegated, red stone columns, on the round metal disks all along the frieze, and also carved into the stone of the cornice."
