"It hurt. It did not want to travel." The silver brow wrinkled with what looked like indignation layered atop torment. "It had no right to use me in that way. It hurt me."

Nicci shared a look with Cara.

Cara may have looked surprised, but she did not look sympathetic. The truth be told, at that moment Nicci's worry for Richard took precedence over any other concern.

"Sliph, I'm sorry," Nicci said, "but — "

"Where is he?" Cara growled. "Just tell us where Lord Rahl is."

The sliph hesitated. "He no longer travels."

"Where is he, then?" Cara repeated.

The sliph's voice turned cold and distant. "I never reveal information about others who have been with me."

"He's not just a traveler!" Cara screamed in rage. "It's Lord Rahl!"

The sliph backed to the far wall of her well.

Nicci held a hand up toward Cara, urging a little restraint and for her to be quiet a moment. "We were attacked by something evil when we were traveling together. You know that." Nicci tried to calm some of the menace in her voice. She knew, though, that she wasn't being altogether successful. Her rising panic about Richard was making it difficult to think — that and Jebra's frantic warning that they must not allow Richard to be alone, even for an instant. "Sliph, that evil thing was after your master, after Richard. We're Richard's friends — you know that, too. He needs our help."

"Lord Rahl may be hurt," Cara added.

Nicci nodded her confirmation to Cara's words. "We need to get to him."

The quiet in the stone room felt painful. Nicci was still trying to accustom herself to being back, still struggling to suppress the agony of pain twisting through her while trying to think what to do next.

"We need to get to Richard," she repeated.

The silver face rose up a little farther, drawing a neck of silver fluid up out of the well with it. The sliph puzzled at Nicci.

"You wish to travel?"

Nicci kept a tight rein on her rage. "Yes. That's right. We wish to travel."

Cara, taking the cue from Nicci, gestured down into the well. "Yes, that's right. We wish to travel."

"I won't use my magic in you again, I promise." Nicci motioned the sliph closer. "We wish to travel — right away. Right now."

The sliph brightened, as if all was forgiven. "You will be pleased." She seemed eager to satisfy. "Come, we will travel."

Nicci put a knee up on the wall. Her thighs ached with the effort. She ignored the fiery agony burning through her muscles and joints and worked to climb up atop the broad stone wall. She was relieved that they had at last found a way to get the sliph to comply — if not by telling them where Richard was, then by taking them to him.

"Yes, we will travel," Nicci said, still trying to catch her breath.

The sliph formed an arm, slipping it around Nicci's waist, helping to pull her up onto the wall. "Come, then. Where do you wish to travel?"

"To where Lord Rahl is." Cara clambered up onto the wall beside Nicci. "Take us there," she said, putting on a smile for the sliph's benefit, "and we will be pleased."

The sliph paused and gazed at her. The arm drew back, melting into the slowly sloshing surface. The silver face looked suddenly impersonal, even forbidding.

"I cannot reveal information about other clients."

Nicci fisted her hands. "He's not just any client! He's your master and he's in trouble! He's our friend! You have to take us to him!"

The sliph's reflective face moved away. "I cannot do such a thing."

Nicci and Cara stood mute for a moment, both at their wits' end, unable to think of how to convince the sliph to cooperate. Nicci felt like screaming, or crying, or unleashing enough magic to boil the sliph into talking.

"If you don't help us," she finally said in an even tone, "then you will feel more pain than you did from the beast. I will see to that. Please don't make me resort to that. We know you want to protect Richard. That's what we're trying to do, too."

The sliph stared in silence, like a silver statue, as if trying to assess the threat.

Cara pressed her fingers to her temples. "It's like trying to reason with a bucket of water," she muttered.

Nicci glared at the sliph. "You will take us to your master. That's an order."

"You'd better do as she says," Cara said, "or when she's done with you, then you will have to answer to me."

The Mord-Sith spun her Agiel up into her fist to make her point.

But when she did she suddenly froze stiff, staring at the weapon. The blood drained from her face. Even her hands stood out white against the red leather of her outfit.

Nicci leaned closer and laid a hand on Cara's shoulder. "What's wrong?"

Cara's hanging jaw finally moved. "It's dead."

"What are you talking about?"

Cara's blue eyes were filled with unbridled panic. "My Agiel is dead in my hand. I can't feel it."

While Nicci could clearly read the startled dismay in the Mord-Sith's voice, she didn't understand its source. Having an Agiel not give her pain hardly seemed like cause for panic. Even so, such naked terror was infectious.

"Does that mean something?" Nicci asked, fearing the answer.

The sliph watched from the far side of the well.

"The Agiel is powered through our bond to Lord Rahl — by his gift." She held the weapon out, as if in evidence. "If the Agiel is dead, then so is the Lord Rahl."

"Listen, I'll use my power if I have to to make the sliph take us to him. But Cara, don't start jumping to conclusions. We can't know — "

"He's not there."

"He's not where?"

"Anywhere." Still, Cara stared at her slender weapon held up in her trembling fingers. "I can no longer feel the bond." Her liquid blue-eyed gaze turned up to Nicci. "The bond always tells us where the Lord Rahl is. I no longer can feel him. I no longer feel where he is. He's not there. He's not anywhere."

A wave of nausea washed through Nicci. She felt faint. Her fingers and toes were going numb.

She turned back to the sliph.

It was gone.

Nicci leaned over the wall, peering down into the well. In the darkness below she saw a faint silver glimmer just as it vanished, leaving behind only blackness.

She turned back to Cara and seized a fistful of leather at her shoulder. She hopped down off the wall, pulling Cara with her.

"Come on. I know someone who can tell us where Richard is."

With Cara at her side, Nicci raced down the torchlit hallway, over elaborately designed carpets that muted their footfalls, past doorways into darkness, past rooms with oil lamps warmly lighting only vacant furniture. The Keep, nearly as vast as the mountain that sheltered it beneath its stoic stone shoulders, felt empty and haunted. Nicci had spent decades in the vast complex known as the Palace of the Prophets, which in some ways was reminiscent of the Keep, but the palace had been alive with hundreds of people of all kinds living there, from the Prelate to the boys who tended the stables. It, too, had been a place of wizards — wizards in training, anyway. The Keep existed for the purposes of man, and yet it stood silent and absent of those who would give it life. If a place could be said to be forlorn, the immense structure of the Keep was such a place.

Cara ran with all her strength, driven by her loyalty and love for Richard, by dread that the worst had happened to him. Nicci ran just as fast, driven by fear of even considering the possibility that he was dead, as if trying to outrun death itself. She couldn't allow herself to even entertain such a concept, lest she collapse in despair. A world without Richard in it would be a dead world to her.

Cara slid across the polished gray marble floor to slow herself enough to make the turn when Nicci hooked a hand on a cold, black marble newel post and charged up the wide, black, granite steps. The windows far above were dark, making them look like black voids in the world. The stairwell, lit by a few glass proximity spheres, rose up through a soaring tower to seemingly impossible heights above them, making Nicci feel as if she were at the very bottom of a very deep stone well.