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Nicci looked up at the wizard. "The thing is, right after I felt that sensation, I could no longer sense the presence of the beast. I searched, trying to find Richard, but couldn't. As the sliph swept us back to the Keep the feeling swiftly faded and I forgot all about it."
"What did it feel like—this sensation?"
Nicci gestured. "It felt exactly the same as what is beyond that door."
Zedd stared at her for a long moment. "What is beyond feels the same? A kind of… humming flow of power?"
Nicci nodded. "A charge of magic that somehow is baseless."
"Magic frequently seems to be free-floating," Cara said. "What's so odd about that?"
Zedd shook his head. "Magic isn't something that just floats around by itself. Magic has no consciousness, but this feeling in some way mimics that kind of conscious intent."
"Yes," Nicci said. "That's my sense of it. That's why it feels so odd, because magic with this kind of bearing cannot be baseless. This is domination generating its characteristic controlling fields of presence, but without the life necessary to generate it."
Zedd straightened. "That's a very good description of what I feel." He peered suspiciously at the door. "I think that if we get closer we might be able to sense it better and find out what it is. If we can get close enough, perhaps we can analyze it." He gave them both a look. "Let's be careful, shall we?"
The three of them huddled close in the dim hallway as the wizard carefully turned the lever and slowly pushed open the door. Nicci sensed no more with the door partly opened than she had with it closed. Zedd stuck his head inside for a moment, then pushed the door the rest of the way open. The room was dark, with only the dim light from the hall revealing shapes and shadows of what was inside.
At the far wall on their left Nicci could see an empty chair with a comforter folded neatly and draped over the back. Not too far from the doorway on the same side of the room sat a short, round table with a lamp that wasn't lit. Beyond the table the bed lay empty. The rumpled sheets had been pushed off the side of the bed and puddled on the floor. Nicci peered around along with Zedd and Cara but she didn't see Jebra. If she was somewhere else in the room it was too dark to spot her. With the odd sensation even stronger inside the room, Nicci's inner perception wasn't much help.
Zedd sent a flicker of his Han into the lamp. The wick was turned low, so the light wasn't strong enough to chase the heavy shadows from the corners, or the far side of the wardrobe on the other side of the room. Still, there was no sign of Jebra.
Nicci, detached from her emotions and focused instead on perception governed by her Han, stepped past Zedd to stand tense and still in the center of the room, listening. With her gift she tried to open herself to the sensation of another presence lurking in the darkness, but she felt none.
A faint breeze rustled the curtains. The double doors, made of small glass panes, both stood open to a small balcony. Nicci knew from the balcony in her own room nearby that this balcony also overlooked the dark city far below at the base of the mountain.
Atop the balcony railing, a dark silhouette blotted out the moonlit countryside beyond.
Behind Nicci, Zedd turned up the wick on the oil lamp. When the light came up, Nicci saw that it was Jebra out on that balcony. Her back toward them, she was standing barefoot atop the fat stone railing.
"Dear spirits," Cara whispered, "she's going to jump."
The three of them stood frozen, fearing to do anything that might startle the woman and cause her to jump before they could reach her. She didn't seem to know yet that they were there.
"Jebra," Zedd said in a soft, cautious voice, "we've come to see you."
If Jebra heard him, she didn't show any reaction. Nicci didn't think that Jebra heard anything, though, except the haunting whisper of magic.
Nicci could feel the faint waves of that alien power rushing past her, humming toward the seer standing like a stone statue on the railing of the balcony. She stared out over the city of Aydindril far below. A gentle breeze ruffled her short hair.
The balcony, Nicci knew, while facing the valley below, was not right out over the edge of the Keep. Still, Jebra was confronting a drop of hundreds of feet to one of the inner courtyards, walkways, ramparts, or slate roofs of the Keep. At this height it didn't matter that she wouldn't be falling down the mountain were she to fall or jump; she would just as surely be killed against the stone of the Keep far below.
"Stars," Jebra said in a low, thin voice to the empty space before her.
Zedd seized Nicci's arm and pulled her close. He put his mouth by her ear. "I think someone is seeking the same answers we are. I think someone is probing her mind. That's what we feel. It's a thief, a thief of thoughts."
"Jagang," Cara breathed.
Nicci knew that that would be the logical assumption. With the bond to Richard somehow broken, Jagang could in theory do such a thing. Without Richard filling the role of the Lord Rahl, all of them were suddenly vulnerable to the dream walker.
A sickening ripple of icy dread coursed through Nicci at the memory of Jagang possessing her mind, her will. Without the Lord Rahl, the bond protecting them all was broken. If the emperor was riding the night he very well might discover them unprotected. The dream walker could, at any moment, without warning, drift unseen, unfelt, right into their minds and invest himself in their thoughts.
But Nicci knew Jagang. She knew what it was like when he possessed a person's mind. He had at one time, after all, possessed her mind, controlled her, ruled her through that terrible presence. This was different.
"No," she said, "it's not Jagang. What I sense is something else."
"How do you know for sure?" Zedd whispered.
Nicci finally took her gaze off of Jebra and looked at the frowning wizard.
"Well, for one thing," she whispered back, "if it was Jagang, you would sense nothing. The dream walker leaves no trace. There is no way to tell he is there. This is entirely different."
Zedd rubbed his clean-shaven chin. "It still seems somehow familiar," he murmured to himself.
"Stars," Jebra said again to the night beyond the balcony. Zedd started for the open doorway through the double doors, but Nicci seized his arm and held him back. "Wait," she whispered.
"Stars fallen to ground," Jebra said in a haunting voice.
Zedd and Nicci shared a look.
"Stars among the grass," Jebra said in that same dead voice.
Zedd stiffened. "Dear spirits. I recognize it now."
Nicci leaned closer. "The presence?"
The wizard nodded slowly. "That's the feeling of a witch woman plying her power."
Jebra lifted her ar
ms to the side.
"She's going to jump!" Nicci shouted as Jebra began to topple forward out into the night.
* * *
CHAPTER 33
Richard coughed violently.
The pain of the involuntary upheaval jolted him to consciousness. He heard himself trying unsuccessfully to groan. He had no breath with which to make a groan. With consciousness came a growing, confused panic of suffocation, as if he were somehow drowning.
He coughed again, wincing in pain as he did so. He tried to cry out in agony as he curled up into a ball on the ground, arms pressed tight across his middle, trying to prevent another fit of convulsive coughing.
"Breathe."
Richard regarded the haunting voice that seemingly came from some netherworld place as the voice of insanity. He was doing everything he could not to breathe. He took careful, shallow, thimbleful breaths, trying to prevent another racking bout of coughing.
"Breathe."
He didn't know where he was and at the moment he didn't really care. All that mattered was the feeling of suffocating. He didn't want to breathe, despite how desperately he needed a breath. That sensation was so oppressive, so sickening, that in his mind it was not only completely debilitating, but all-powerful. Dying seemed preferable to the feeling continuing. He couldn't endure it continuing.
Richard didn't want to move because, with each passing moment, it was becoming easier not to breathe. It seemed that if he could just manage to keep from breathing a little longer, then over the crest of that dark hill out there somewhere ahead of him the pain and suffering would lift. He fought to lie perfectly still, hoping the spinning world would stop before he vomited. He could not imagine how much that would hurt. If he could just lie still a little longer, then it would all become easier. If he could just lie still a little longer, then it would all go away.
"Breathe."
He ignored the distant, silken voice. His mind drifted to a time in the past when he had hurt this much. It had been when Denna had him chained and helpless, when she had him at her mercy, when she hurt him until he was delirious from being tortured.
