Nicci didn't want to let him get too far without her, but she knew that he would have to call the sliph, so she had a few moments. As Zedd checked different spots on Jebra's head, Nicci squatted down beside the unconscious Jebra, across from him.

Nicci felt the woman's brow. "She's burning up."

Zedd looked up in a way that nearly stopped Nicci's heart. "It's a vision."

"How do you know?"

"I know about seers in general and this one in particular. She's had a powerful vision. Jebra is more sensitive than most seers. Her emotions, with a certain kind of vision, sometimes overcome her. This vision had to have been something that was so powerful it rendered her unconscious."

"Do you think it was about Richard?"

"There's no way to tell," the old wizard said. "She will have to be the one to tell us."

Zedd may not have been willing to venture a guess, but Jebra had looked up into Richard's eyes just before she fainted. Nicci didn't have time to be discreet. She couldn't allow Richard to leave without her — and she knew that he would if she wasn't there when he was ready to go — but at the same time she couldn't leave without knowing if Jebra had had a vision about him that could reveal something important.

Nicci slipped her hand under the woman's neck, pressing her fingers to the base of Jebra's skull.

"What are you doing?" Zedd asked, suspiciously. "If you're doing what I think you are, that's not just reckless but dangerous."

"So is ignorance," Nicci said as she released a flow of power.

Jebra's eyes popped open. She gasped.

"No…"

"There, there," Zedd comforted, "it's all right, my dear. We're right here with you."

"What did you see?" Nicci asked, getting right to the point.

Jebra's panicked eyes turned to Nicci. She reached up and snatched the collar of Nicci's dress.

"Don't leave him alone!"

There was no need for Nicci to ask who Jebra was talking about. "Why? What did you see?"

"Don't leave him alone! Don't let him out of your sight — not for an instant!"

"Why?" Nicci asked again. "What will happen if he is left alone?"

"If you leave him alone, he will be lost to us."

"How? What did you see?"

Jebra reached up and with both fists pulled Nicci's face closer. "Go. Don't let him be alone. What I saw does not matter. If he's not alone, then it can't happen. Do you understand? If you let him get separated from you and Cara it will not matter what I saw — it won't matter for any of us. I can't tell you the means of separation, only that no matter what you must not let it happen. That's all that's important. Go! Stay with him!"

Nicci swallowed as she nodded.

"You'd better do as she says," Zedd told Nicci. "There's nothing I can do in this. It's up to you."

He reached out and grasped her hand, not as First Wizard, but as Richard's grandfather. "Stay with him, Nicci. Protect him. In so many ways he's the Seeker, the Lord Rahl, the leader of the D'Haran Empire, but in other ways he's still a woods guide at heart. He's our Richard. Protect him, please. We're all depending on you."

Nicci stared at him, at an appeal that seemed unexpectedly personal, an appeal that seemed to rise above all the wider needs of protecting the freedom of the New World and reduced it all to a simple love for Richard the man. She understood in that instant that without the sincere and simple concern for Richard as an individual, none of the rest of it mattered.

As she started to rise, Jebra pulled Nicci back down. "This is not a 'maybe' kind of vision, a possibility. This is certain. Don't let him be alone or he will be at their mercy."

"Whose mercy?"

Jebra bit her lower lip as her blue eyes welled up with tears. "The dark witch."

Nicci felt a shudder of icy dread ripple up her shoulders.

"Go," Jebra whispered. "Please, go. Hurry. Don't let him leave without you."

Nicci sprang up and rushed across the room. At the doorway she paused and turned back. Her heart was pounding so hard that it made her sway on her feet.

"I swear, Zedd. He will have my protection as long as I draw breath."

She watched as Zedd nodded, a tear running down his weathered cheek. "Hurry."

Nicci turned and ran down the iron steps, taking them two at a time, her footfalls echoing around the enormous tower. She wondered what else Jebra saw in her vision that awaited Richard if he became separated from them, if he was left alone, but in the end Nicci decided that it didn't really matter what that visionary fate was, it only mattered that, no matter what, Nicci not allow it to happen.

Bats fluttered in undulating clouds up through the tower, funneling out through the open windows at the top, intent on their nightly hunt, as Nicci raced down the steps. The rushing sound of thousands of webbed wings made it seem the tower was exhaling in a long, low moan. She passed iron doors on landings without pause. She sometimes had to snatch the rail to keep her footing. At the bottom she raced around the walkway that surrounded the fetid water standing at the bottom of the tower. The black water rippled as small creatures slipped into the inky sanctuary.

Nicci ran in through the doorway that had been blasted open when Richard had destroyed the great barrier that had once separated the Old World from the new. The towers that powered that barrier had stood since the great war, three thousand years before. In more recent times, Jagang and his army of the Imperial Order had been kept at bay, unable to cross that barrier. But Richard had destroyed those towers in order to be able to return to the New World after having been held at the Palace of the Prophets, and as a result the Imperial Order had been loosed on the New World. The war was not Richard's fault, but it could not have been rekindled without that act.

Richard and Cara were standing, waiting, on the wall of the great well of the sliph, the creature that had been walled away along with the Old World for all the time that the great barrier had stood.

Behind Richard and Cara the quicksilver face of the sliph watched Nicci as she hurried into the room. "Do you wish to travel?" the sliph asked in that eerie voice that echoed around the room.

"Yes, I wish to travel," Nicci said breathlessly as she scooped up her pack. Cara must have put it there for her. "Thanks," she said to the Mord-Sith.

Richard held his hand out as Nicci slipped an arm through a strap and lifted the pack onto her back. "Come on."

Nicci took his hand, letting him hoist her up onto the wall with one mighty pull. Nicci's heart felt as if it was coming up into her throat. She had traveled before so she knew the overwhelming ecstasy of the experience, and yet she could not help being afraid to breathe in the living quicksilver of the sliph. Such a concept just went against the very idea of the breath of life.

"You will be pleased," the sliph said as Nicci joined the others. Nicci didn't argue.

"Let's go," Richard said. "I wish to travel."

A shiny arm lifted out of the pool to surround Richard and Cara, but not Nicci.

"Wait!" Nicci said. "I must go with them." The sliph stilled. "Listen to me, Richard. You have to take Cara and my hands. Don't let go for anything."

"Nicci, you've done this before. It will be — "

"Listen! Cara and I are trusting you, and you have to trust us. You can't get separated from us. Not for anything. Not for so much as an instant. If that happens then you are lost to us. If that happens then whatever you have planned won't happen."

Richard studied her face silently for a moment. "Did Jebra have a vision of something happening?"

"Only if you get separated from us. Only if you are alone."

"What did she see?"

"The witch woman, Six. Jebra called her 'the dark witch. "

Richard studied her face a moment. "Shota is going after Six."