"Maybe we can help her to piece it together," Nicci said as gently as possible, despite how powerfully determined she was to make the woman do what was needed.

Zedd obviously didn't think it was going to do any good, but he apparently would rather invest his effort in the attempt than surrender to the unimaginable.

"This way," he said as he turned in a flourish and rushed off down the dimly lit hall.

At a rather small, round-topped door with intricate vines and overlapping leaves carved into the mahogany panels, Zedd, with Nicci and the two Mord-Sith flanking him, gently knocked. While he waited for an answer, he turned to Rikka.

"Go and get Nathan. Tell him it's urgent, and that he will need to pack. He is going to have to leave at once."

Nicci suspected what Zedd was going to ask Nathan to do, but she forced the thought from her mind. It would require her to think of the unthinkable.

She instead concentrated on the task at hand. She had to get Jebra to tell her where Richard was, tell her what was happening to him. If necessary, Nicci intended to use her gift to accomplish the task.

As Rikka raced off down the hall, Zedd rapped again, a little louder. When there was no response, he looked back over his shoulder at Nicci.

He fidgeted with the cuff of his simple robes. "Do you sense anything…odd?"

Nicci was so filled with frantic thoughts and emotions that she hadn't been paying any attention. They were in the Keep, after all. There were alarms everywhere that should protect them from any unwanted visitors.

She set aside her thoughts as her senses went into a heightened state of awareness.

"Now that you mention it, something does feel… odd."

"Odd like what?" Cara asked as she spun her Agiel back up into her hand. She looked startled for just an instant before realization cut off the surprise.

Nicci gently lifted the wizard's hand from the lever before he could open the door. "There isn't anyone in there with her, is there? Maybe Tom, or Friedrich?"

Zedd frowned at her. "Not that I know of. Those two are out on patrol. I was sitting with Jebra when I sensed you and Cara coming. She was asleep. I had wanted to be near if she awoke and was able to tell me any more about her vision. I left her and came to meet you, hoping to see that she had been wrong about Richard. Ann and Nathan have already gone to bed. I suppose it's possible that it could be one of them."

Nicci, her inner senses now fully alert, shook her head. "It's not either of them. Something else."

Zedd stared off as he puzzled at the question, the way one would listen for any sound, but Nicci knew that he wasn't exactly listening for a telltale sound. He was doing the same thing she was doing, using his gift to probe what they couldn't see or hear, to try to sense the presence of life. As far as Nicci could sense, though, there were only the three of them close by: her and Zedd and Cara, and more faintly on the other side of the door, Jebra.

But there was something else as well. The feeling, though, made no sense. It was a presence, but not the kind of sensation she would have were there another person lurking beyond the door.

It did seem, though, as if she might have had a very similar sensation just recently. She frowned, trying to remember.

"I have extra alarms set all over this area," Zedd told her.

Nicci nodded. "I know. I felt them."

"There isn't any way someone could have gotten past them. I would know. Bags, there's no way even a mouse could get by the snares I set."

"Could it be because of what Lord Rahl told us?" Cara asked in a low voice. "I mean, about there being something wrong with magic? Could it be that there's something wrong with your gift and that's why you feel what you feel?"

Zedd gave the woman a sour look. "You mean you think our gift is… is what? Scrambled?"

Cara shrugged and then added to the idea. "I don't know much about magic, but maybe that's what's wrong with my Agiel. Maybe that's all it is. Lord Rahl was pretty insistent that he knew that magic was corrupted. Maybe your gifted senses are corrupted in that same way. Maybe the conclusion I was jumping to is all wrong. Maybe that's why — the corruption."

Zedd huffed, scoffing at the idea. He lifted an arm to the side and the oil lamps on the tables flanking the door went dark. "Well, that much of my power works, so that means it works," he whispered. He laid a hand back on the lever as he gave Nicci a resolute look. "Be ready for anything."

"Wait," Nicci said.

Zedd looked back over his shoulder. His features were hard to see in the dim light, but his eyes were not. She saw in them some of Richard's eyes.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I just remembered something I've been trying to figure out."

Nicci steepled her fingers as she hurriedly tried to recall the details. She finally shook a finger as she spoke. "When the beast attacked us while we were traveling, I felt an odd sensation. I discounted it because being in the sliph is so strange to begin with that it's hard to tell if anything you're feeling is important, much less really out of the ordinary. Everyday sensations can seem wondrous — even miraculous. You don't know if it's all just the culmination of all the unfamiliar perceptions or something more."

"Exactly when did you have this feeling?" Zedd asked, suddenly acutely interested in what she had to say. "All the time you were traveling, or at one specific time?"

"No, like I said, it was alter the beast attacked us."

"Be more specific. Think. Was it when the beast attacked? Maybe when it grabbed Richard? Or when it grabbed you?"

Nicci pressed her fingertips to her temples as she squeezed her eyes shut, desperately trying to recall it accurately. "No… no, it was after I was pulled away from Richard. Not immediately after, but shortly."

"What was the sequence in which these events took place?"

"The beast attacked. We were fighting it. I tried to use my gift but it didn't help. The beast was hurting me. Richard used his knife to cut away some of the tentacles. He saved me from being crushed.

"Then the beast pulled Cara away from him. Not long after that it pulled me away from him as well. It was then, after that — not immediately after, but it was only a short time later. I know because it was when I was frantically searching for Richard that I felt the odd sensation."

Nicci looked up at the wizard. "The thing is, right after I felt that sensation, I could no longer sense the presence of the beast. I searched, trying to find Richard, but couldn't. As the sliph swept us back to the Keep the feeling swiftly faded and I forgot all about it."

"What did it feel like — this sensation?"

Nicci gestured. "It felt exactly the same as what is beyond that door."

Zedd stared at her for a long moment. "What is beyond feels the same? A kind of… humming flow of power?"

Nicci nodded. "A charge of magic that somehow is baseless."

"Magic frequently seems to be free-floating," Cara said. "What's so odd about that?"

Zedd shook his head. "Magic isn't something that just floats around by itself. Magic has no consciousness, but this feeling in some way mimics that kind of conscious intent."

"Yes," Nicci said. "That's my sense of it. That's why it feels so odd, because magic with this kind of bearing cannot be baseless. This is domination generating its characteristic controlling fields of presence, but without the life necessary to generate it."

Zedd straightened. "That's a very good description of what I feel." He peered suspiciously at the door. "I think that if we get closer we might be able to sense it better and find out what it is. If we can get close enough, perhaps we can analyze it." He gave them both a look. "Let's be careful, shall we?"