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Richard looked up at her. "What test?"
"The test Baraccus just gave you. I am sorry, but you have failed his test. I can tell you nothing more."
Without further word, the sliph abruptly vanished into the black hole in the stone.
Richard threw himself down on his stomach, leaning down into the hole. "No! Wait! Don't leave!"
His own voice echoed up out of the empty, black shaft.
The sliph was gone. Without his gift, he had no way to call her back.
* * *
CHAPTER 34
&n
bsp; Nicci heard a soft knock at the door. Zedd looked up but he didn't stand. Cara, hands clasped behind her back, gazing out the window, looked back over her shoulder. Nicci, standing closest to the door, pulled it open. The small flame in the lamp on the table was not up to the task of chasing the gloom from the room, but it cast what warm light it could across the face of the tall prophet.
"What's going on?" Nathan asked in his deep voice. He cast a suspicious look around at those in the room. "Rikka wouldn't say much other than that you and Cara were back and Zedd wanted to see me immediately."
"That's right," Zedd said. "Come in, please."
Nathan glanced around the somber room as he strode in. "Where's Richard."
Nicci swallowed. "He didn't make it back with us."
"Didn't make it back?" He paused to take in the bleak look on Nicci's face. "Dear spirits…"
Zedd, sitting at Jebra's side at the bed, didn't look up. Jebra was unconscious. When they tried to close her eyes her lids would pop open again. They finally quit trying and let her stare up at the ceiling.
Zedd had already tended to her broken leg as best he could. She was very fortunate that Cara was not only quick but strong, and that she had been able to catch Jebra's ankle just in time as her dead weight had toppled outward from the balcony. Still, her momentum had whipped the seer down around and under the balcony, where her leg smacked a support strut that broke her leg. Nicci suspected that the woman had been unconscious the moment she started falling.
It had been a bad break. Zedd had set to work immediately on her injury, but because of the unusual state Jebra was in he had not been able to heal the break. All he had been able to do was set it, splint it, and add enough of his gift to help it begin to mend. When she finally awoke he would be able to finish the healing. If she awoke. Nicci had her doubts.
Nicci knew that Jebra's broken leg was the least of the woman's problems. Despite everything they had tried, they had been unable to arouse her from her catatonic state. Zedd had tried. Nicci had tried. She had even tried dangerous conjuring involving Subtractive Magic. Zedd had been against it at first, but when Nicci confronted him with the stark nature of their choices he grudgingly agreed.
Unfortunately, even that hadn't helped. Jebra's mind was locked away from them. Whatever magic the witch woman had used on her was something they were unable to break. Whatever had been done didn't appear to Nicci to be intended to be reversible. If they knew its nature perhaps they might stand a chance of breaking the spell, but they didn't know its makeup.
Nathan bent and touched two fingers to the unconscious woman's temple. He straightened and helplessly shook his head at Zedd's questioning expression.
Nicci had never seen anything like it. Zedd, on the other hand, had in the beginning rubbed his chin as he brooded. He'd muttered that there was something oddly familiar about its nature. What, he couldn't say. Despite how insistent Nicci had been, and despite his own desperate desire to do something, Zedd was at his wits' end that he could not pinpoint why he felt that he had seen some aspect of such conjuring before.
He was, after all, he had reminded them, the First Wizard, and he had spent a good portion of his life studying such things. He believed that he should be able to identify what kind of web had been spun around the woman. Nicci knew that if Jebra had been conscious it would have made the job a great deal easier, but Zedd wasn't willing to use an excuse for his own failure to identify what the conjuring involved.
Nicci heard a commotion out in the hallway. Nathan stuck his head out the doorway for a look.
"What is it?" a voice in the distance called out. It was Ann, rushing up the hall, escorted by Rikka. She finally reached the door. "What's going on?"
As she came into the room, laboring to catch her breath, Nathan laid a big hand on her shoulder. "Something has happened to Richard."
Strands of gray hair stuck out from the loose bun at the back of her head like a plume of ruffled feathers. Her calculating gaze swept over those in the room, assessing the degree of seriousness she saw in each of them. It was the kind of swift, lean evaluation Nicci associated with Ann.
As the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light, she had always had a commanding presence that could strike fear into just about anyone, from high-ranking Sister to stableboys. Even though Nicci was no longer a Sister of the Light, her guard always went up whenever the former prelate came into the room. The woman's short stature in no way diminished the air of looming menace that seemed to surround her.
Ann turned an intent look up at Nathan. "What happened? Is the boy hurt—"
"I don't know, yet," Nathan said, holding up a hand to forestall a flood of questions before they could landslide in on him. "Let the woman explain."
"All we know for sure," Nicci said when Ann turned a hot glare on her, "is that while we were traveling in the sliph back here from the People's Palace, the beast attacked us. Cara and I tried to help Richard fight it off, then we were separated from him. As soon as that happened I felt some kind of extrinsic magic. Next thing we knew, Cara and I were back at the Keep. Richard wasn't with us. We have no idea what happened to him after he was touched by the strange power I sensed. We never saw the beast again, either.
"After we got back here, Jebra was attacked by a web that I could discern had been cast by the same person who cast the power that touched Richard in the sliph. Because Zedd recognized its unique composition, we know now that it was power conjured by a witch woman."
"And my Agiel doesn't work," Cara said, holding the weapon up. "Our bond to Lord Rahl is broken. We can no longer sense him."
"Dear Creator," Ann whispered as her gaze dropped away.
Zedd gestured to the woman lying in the bed before him. "Whatever power it is that this witch woman cast, it left Jebra unconscious. We can't rouse her. Although I know that it was a witch woman's spell that somehow took her, I can't figure out how a witch woman could do such a thing—cast such webs from afar. From my experience they not only keep to themselves but can't accomplish things of this nature. It's beyond their ability."
"Are you are certain that it was a witch woman?" Ann asked.
Zedd took a deep breath as he considered the question seriously. "I've had dealings with a witch woman before. Once a cat has had its claws in you, you don't soon forget what it feels like. I don't know the specific person who did this, but I know the feel of this. It was a witch woman."
Nicci folded her arms. "I think we have a pretty good idea who the witch woman was: Six. And don't forget, just because you recognize the signature of a witch woman's power, that doesn't mean that the same limits necessarily apply to the individual who did this. After all, for someone to recognize your power as that of a wizard doesn't mean that they know your limits or would know your real potential."
"True enough," Zedd admitted with a sigh.
Nathan waved off the topic of witch women. "Did Jebra say anything else about the vision she had? Anything at all?"
Zedd shared a look with Nicci. "Well, not until this spell took her. Just before she went into this state, we heard her say, 'Stars. Stars fallen to ground. Stars among the grass.'"
"Stars…" Nathan repeated as he paced in the small room, holding an elbow with one hand and tapping the tips of the fingers of the other to his chin. He finally turned toward Zedd. "I'm afraid that such a prophecy means nothing to me. It's probable that she only spoke a fragment aloud. In that case, it could easily be that there isn't enough for me to go on."
Nicci's heart sank. She had been hoping that the prophet would be able to decipher the seer's prophecy.
Ann scratched the side of her nose, searching for words. "So it is possible, then, that we…" She cleared her throat. "… that we have lost Richard. That this witch woman killed him."
Cara took an aggressive step forward. "Lord Rahl is not dead!"
In the echoing silence, Zedd rose from the chair. He cast Cara a cautionary glance before addressing Ann. "I don't think so, either."
&nbs
p; Ann looked from Cara's heated expression to Zedd. "I know why she doesn't believe it is so. Why don't you?"
He gestured down at Jebra. "Because of this woman lying here in this bed."
Ann frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Well, the first vision Jebra has had in several years is about Richard."
"That's right," Nicci put in. "Her vision was about what was going to happen to him. She told me—specifically—not to let him be alone, not for an instant."
Ann arched an eyebrow. "And yet you did."
Nicci ignored the affront. "Yes. Not deliberately, but because of the beast. The beast was an unforeseeable factor, a random event."
When Ann only looked more perplexed, Zedd explained. "We believe that it was this witch woman's plan to touch Richard with her power. But the beast dropped in at just the wrong moment, spoiling up her carefully constructed plan."
Ann's frown deepened. "In what way?"
"The beast caused her to miss getting Richard, as she had planned," Nicci said. "Because of the beast, she lost Richard in the sliph, just as we did. Now she has a problem. She has to find him."
"So she did the same thing we did," Zedd said. "She came here, or at least she sent her power here, to find out from the seer where he will be."
"She was seeking prophecy?" Ann asked. "Witch women see things in the flow of time. Why would she need the seer?"
Zedd spread his hands. "Yes, they see things but, as I'm sure Nathan can explain better than I could, they can't see exactly what they want to see, when they want to see it."
Nathan was nodding his agreement. "There is a random element to prophecy. It comes when it comes, not when you wish it to come. Perhaps the wizards of ancient times knew the keys to using prophecy at will, but if they did, they did not pass such knowledge on. It is seldom that you can pick and choose with prophecy what events you want to see."
Zedd lifted a finger, stressing his point. "Six probably saw, either through her ability or her conjuring having to do with the events, that Jebra had already had a vision revealing what would happen to Richard and where he would be next, so she simply stole into Jebra's mind to steal the answer."
