She began to allow herself to drift toward that world.

And then she saw something in the otherworldly shadows. She caught herself, held herself back from the dark brink of death.

Something with glowing eyes, like twin coals, gazed out from the dark shadows. The malevolent intent of that furnace gaze was fixed on Richard.

Nicci struggled desperately to call out a warning. It cleaved her heart that she could not.

"Look," Richard whispered as he gazed up at her, "there's a tear running down her cheek."

Ann sadly shook her head. "Probably because she isn't blinking, that's all."

Richard's hands fisted in frustration as he moved around the table, trying to decipher the meaning of the lines. "We have to find a way to shut the thing down. There has to be a way."

Richard's grandfather laid a hand gently on the back of Richard's shoulder. "I swear, Richard, I would do as you want if I could, but I know of no method to halt a verification web. And what is it that has you so fired up, anyway? Why the sudden urgency? What is it that you think is contaminating the spell-form?"

Nicci's attention was locked on the thing watching out from the shadowy world of the dead. Whenever the lightning flared, illuminating the room, the thing with the glowing eyes wasn't there. Only when darkness again fell over the room could she see it.

Richard's eyes turned from studying the lines to gaze up at Nicci's face. She wanted nothing so much as for him to reach out and pull her free of the agony of the spell that had impaled her on lethal shards of magic, but she knew that he could not. Right then, she would have willingly given up her life for one moment in his arms.

Richard's answer finally came in a soft resignation. "The chimes."

Ann rolled her eyes. Nathan let out a sigh of relief, as if he now knew that Richard was merely imagining things.

Zedd's brow lifted. "The chimes? Richard, I'm afraid that this time you've gotten it wrong. That simply isn't possible. The chimes are underworld elements. While they certainly lust to enter our world, they can't. They're forever trapped in the underworld."

"I know very well what the chimes are," Richard said in a near whisper. "Kahlan freed them. She freed them to save my life."

"She couldn't possibly know how to do such a thing."

"Nathan told her how, told her their names: Reechani, Sentrosi, Vasi. Water, fire, air. Calling them was the only way for her to save my life. It was an act of desperation."

Nathan's mouth fell open in surprise but he offered no argument. Ann cast a suspicious glare up at the prophet.

Zedd spread his hands. "Richard, she may have thought she was calling them, but I assure you, such a thing is monumentally complex. Besides, we would know if the chimes were free in our world. Be at ease about this much of it. The chimes are not loose."

"Not anymore," Richard said with grim finality. "I banished them back to the underworld. But Kahlan always believed that because she unknowingly brought them into our world it had engendered the beginning of the destruction of magic itself — the cascade effect, as you once described it to us."

Zedd was taken aback. "The cascade effect… you could only have heard that from me."

Richard nodded as he stared off into memories. "She tried to convince me that magic had been tainted by the presence of the chimes, and that banishing them back to the underworld would not halt that taint. I never knew whether or not she was right. Now I do."

He pointed up at that awful place before Nicci, that core of her pain, her agony, her end.

"There is the proof. Not the chimes, but the corruption their presence caused: the contamination of magic. That contamination has infected this world. It was drawn to the strength of this magic. It has infected the Chainfire spell and it will kill Nicci if we don't get her out of there."

The room had grown darker yet. Nicci could hardly see through the veil of pain. But she could still see those sinister eyes behind Richard, in the shadows, watching, waiting. No one but Nicci knew that it was there, in that spectral place between worlds.

Richard would never know what hit him.

Nicci had no way to warn him.

She felt another tear roll down her face.

Richard, seeing that tear drip from her jaw, leaned close. With quiet determination, he used a finger to trace the primary pathways, the supporting junctures, and the main framework of the emblem, as he called it.

"It should be feasible," he insisted.

Ann looked beside herself but she remained silent. Nathan watched with stony resignation.

Zedd pushed his simple robes farther up his bony arms. "Richard, it's impossible to shut down a regular verification web, much less one such as this."

"No, it's not," Richard said, irritably. "Here. See here? You have to interrupt this route, here, first."

"Bags, Richard, how am I supposed to do such a thing! The spell shields itself. This web is powered by Subtractive as well as Additive Magic. It has integral shields constructed of both."

Richard stared at his grandfather's crimson face a moment before turning back to the maze of lines. He gazed up at Nicci again and then carefully inserted a hand in through the net of lines to touch Nicci's black dress.

"I won't let it have you," he whispered to her.

No words had ever sounded sweeter, even if she knew he could not understand the impossibility of his promise.

When his finger touched her dress, the patterns shifted from two-dimensional to three-dimensional forms that looked more like a thornbush than a spell-form.

It felt to Nicci as if he had just twisted a knife through her insides. She struggled to remain conscious. She focused on the glowing eyes in the shadows. She had to find a way to warn Richard.

His hand paused. He carefully pulled it back out. The pattern flattened to two-dimensional.

Nicci would have sighed in relief could she breathe.

"Did you see that?" he asked.

Zedd nodded. "I certainly did."

Richard glanced back over his shoulder at his grandfather. "Is it supposed to do that?"

"No."

"I didn't think so. It's supposed to be inert, but the biological variable contaminating it has changed the nature of the host spell-form."

Zedd's expression tightened as he considered. "It seems pretty obvious that whatever is going on, it's changing the way the spell works."

Richard nodded. "Worse, it's a random variable. The contamination caused by the chimes' presence in this world is biological — it evolves. Probably so that it can attack different kinds of magic. This spell will undoubtedly continue to mutate. There's probably no way to predict how it will change, but from the evidence here, it appears that it's only going to become more virulent. As if Chainfire isn't trouble enough, this could make it worse. It could even be that everyone affected by it will develop problems beyond their memory loss revolving around Kahlan."

"What makes you say that?" Zedd asked.

"Just look at how many memories of events only tangent to Kahlan you've all lost. The lost memories could even be the means by which the contamination infects those people touched by the effects of the Chainfire event."

As if the Chainfire event being loosed on the world weren't potentially deadly enough, it now seemed catastrophic beyond imagining.

Ann was bottled fury. She gritted her teeth. "Where did you learn such gibberish?"

Zedd flashed her a scowl. "Be quiet."

"I told you, I understand emblematic designs. This one is a mess."

Nathan glanced to the windows as they lit with flashes of lightning. When the room again fell to darkness, Nicci could again see the thing watching from a dark world.

"And you sincerely believe that it's somehow harming Nicci?" Zedd asked.