Zedd wasn't listening to her. He rubbed his hands together as he tried to remember exactly where it was that he'd seen the reference. It had been ages ago. But how long ago, exactly? And where?

"What is it?" Chase asked. "Have you solved the puzzle?"

Zedd's mouth twisted with the effort of thought. "I recall reading a reference to such an event. I remember seeing some kind of exegesis."

"A what?"

"An explanation. An analysis of this issue."

"So then it is some — book thing."

Zedd nodded. "Yes, exactly. I just need to remember where it was that I saw the passage. It was about worms."

Chase cast a sidelong glance at Rikka before he scratched his head of thick, graying brown hair. "Worms?"

Zedd dry-washed his hands as vague recollections ghosted through his mind. Those shadowy memories were real, he was sure of it, but despite his frantic effort to grasp them and pull them into the light of consciousness, they remained just out of reach.

"Zedd, what are you talking about?" Rikka asked. "What did you say? Worms?"

"What? Oh, yes, that's right. Worms. Prophetic worms. It was some kind of evaluation, I think, examining if such a thing might be able to erode prophecy."

Chase and Rikka stared at him as if he were crazy but said nothing.

Zedd paced from the table to the corner bookcase and back. He pushed the heavy oak chair aside with a foot as he walked back and forth, thinking. He ran through a list of places that might have a book that would contain such a reference. There were libraries all over the Keep. There were thousands of books in those libraries-maybe tens of thousands. If he had even seen the reference at the Wizard's Keep. He had visited any number of libraries in other places. There were a number of archives in the Confessors' Palace, down in Aydindril. There were palaces on Kings Row, also in Aydindril, that contained extensive collections of books. There were any number of cities that Zedd had visited with repositories and archives. There were so many books, how was he to remember one he hadn't seen for ages-perhaps since he was young?

"What, exactly, are you talking about?" Rikka asked when she tired of watching him pace. "What explanation are you talking about?"

"I'm not sure, yet. It was a long time ago. Had to be. Had to be when I was young. I will remember, I'm sure of it. I just have to give it some thought. Even if it takes all night, I will remember where I saw the passage. I wish I had my reason chair," he muttered as he turned away.

Rikka frowned at Chase as she kept an eye on Zedd as he paced. "His what?"

"Back in Westland," Chase said in a low voice, "he had a chair on his porch where he would sit and think-where he would reason out problems. That was back when everything started, when Darken Rahl came and tried to capture him and Richard. They fled just in time. They came to me and I led them through a gap to the boundary."

"Seems to me that there are chairs enough around here. He's practically tripping over that one, there." Rikka's mouth twisted with exasperation. "Besides, a person doesn't need a chair to make their brain work. At least, if they do, they have bigger problems."

"I suppose." Together with Rikka, Chase watched Zedd pace for a while. Finally, not being one to stand around, he caught the sleeve of Zedd's robes. "I guess I'd better go see to Rachel while you work out your solution. I want to make sure she gets her things together and gets to bed."

Zedd swished a hand, urging the man on his way. "Yes, you're right. Go ahead. Tell her I will come to kiss her good night after a while. I just need lo think on this a bit."

Once he was gone, Rikka leaned a leather-covered hip against the heavy desk and folded her arms under her breasts. "Are you saying that the words of prophecy vanishing was caused by some kind of worm, like a bookworm that eats the paste or the paper?"

"No, it eats the words, not the paper."

"Then it's — what? Some kind of tiny little worm that eats ink?"

Annoyed at the interruption, Zedd halted his pacing to stare at her. "Eats —? No, no, not in that way. This is something of magic. A tricky little twist of something clever. If I recall correctly it was referred to as a prophetic worm because it could eat away at the branches of prophecy, much like wood bore worms eat away at a tree. It starts with related prophecy, either in subject or in chronology, like wood bores might infest a particular branch. Once established this kind of worm begins eating away the tree of prophecy. In this case, the branch is the one having to do with the time since Richard was born."

Rikka looked genuinely fascinated and at the same time distraught. She straightened and tilted her head toward him. "Really? Magic can do such a thing?"

Zedd, holding his elbow in one hand and his chin in the fingertips of the other, made a low sound deep in his throat. "I think so. Maybe. I'm not sure." He heaved an impatient, irritable sigh. "I'm trying to remember. I only saw the reference once. I can't recall if it was a theory I read or if it was the spell itself, or if it was only a suggestion in a book of records, or if it — Wait.»

He stared up at the beamed ceiling as he squinted with the effort of recollection. "It was before Richard was born, I'm sure of that much. I remember that I was a young man. That would mean that it had to be when I was here. That much makes sense. And if I was here.»

Zedd's head came back down. "Dear spirits."

Rikka leaned in. "What? Dear spirits what?"

"I remember," Zedd whispered, his eyes going wide. "I remember where I saw it."

"Where?"

Shoving his sleeves higher up his bony arms, Zedd headed for the door. "Never mind. I will see to it. You just go about your patrolling, or some thing. I'll be back later."

With the sun going down, the air was beginning to cool as Zedd raced down the broad rampart. The huge stones of the crenellated wall radiated heat they had stored from the hot sun beating down on them all day. The city far below the mountainside was melting into a sea of gloom, while pink rays of the departing sun caressed the tops of some of the tallest towers of the Keep high overhead. The dying light of dusk had brought a still quiet touched only by the distant whisper of the cicadas.

At an intersection of ramparts, Zedd ran around the corner to the right. Unlike the rampart at the edge of the Keep, which overlooked a drop-off of thousands of feet down the sheer face of the mountain, the narrower interior bastion wall had precipitous drop-offs to both sides, yet within the massive complex that gave a clear view of nearly windowless walls descending down into the darkness. Courtyards far below provided the refreshment of open air directly off some of the lower floors within the Keep. Zedd imagined that people who in the past had worked in the lower reaches of the Keep must have appreciated being able to step outside from time to time.

As he ran down the narrow bastion path, bridges to various towers crossed overhead. Soaring up before him at the end of the pathway was an immense, imposing wall with vertical rows of projecting keystones for interior floors. There was a grand, double entrance door at the base of that looming wall with designs above reliefs of columns carved in the wall beneath the arched stone lintel, but Zedd instead took to an opening in the side rail to take the steps down. The seemingly eternal flight of stairs descended down a long, sloping lip built into the side of the clifflike bastion wall.

He needed to go down into the lower reaches of the Keep, deep within the mountain, to places where no one ever went.

To places no one but he even knew existed.

The stone banister on the open, exposed side of the stairs wasn't very high and as a consequence the descent down the straight run of hundreds of feet of stairs, with no landings, was a harrowing experience. To his left rose the carefully fit stone blocks of the imposing bastion wall, to his right was a drop-off that would make any self-respecting cliff proud. Going down that monumental run of stairs always made Zedd feel tiny. He could see little more at the bottom than the jagged formation of dark rock at the base of one of the round towers rising up from the small courtyard.