Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

The first four or five days after arriving at the Keep Richard had spent in the Confessors' Palace-wandering the magnificent rooms and vast network of halls. Nicci stayed in a guest room in the palace, out of sight, while Richard roamed aimlessly about the empty place. After that, he'd gone out and wandered the city of Aydindril for a half-dozen days, walking the streets and alleys as if reliving the life that had once been there. It was a lot more difficult for Nicci to stay close to him when he walked all day long through the city. After that he had spent yet more days wandering the forests of the mountains around Aydindril, sometimes not even returning at night. Richard was at home in the woods, so Nicci had decided not to follow him, knowing how difficult it would have been for her to keep Richard from knowing she was there. She was comforted somewhat by her connection of magic with him that allowed her always to be aware of what direction he was and roughly how far way. When he didn't come back at night, though, Nicci paced, unable to sleep.

Zedd finally asked Richard to please remain at the Keep so that in case the beast were to attack, Zedd and Nicci could help stop it. Richard had done as he'd been asked without comment or objection. He'd spent recent days, instead of wandering the palace, or the city, or the woods, wandering the outer ramparts of the Keep, staring off into the distance.

Nicci desperately wanted to do something to help him, but Zedd had insisted that there was nothing to do but wait and see if time would begin to bring him around to the reality that he had only dreamed up his relationship with Kahlan during the time he had been unconscious. In this, Nicci didn't really think time would solve anything. She'd been with Richard long enough to realize that this was something bigger. She believed that he needed some kind of help, but she didn't know what that help could possibly be.

Nicci hurried down the wood-paneled hall outside the library, her feet swishing across thick carpets. She rushed up through the maze of stairwells and passageways, using her sense of her gifted connection with Richard to guide her, letting that thread of magic take her where it may, rather than trying to deliberately remember and find her way through the Keep.

As she made her way ever closer to him, she reminisced about the kiss she had given him to link them so that she could find him. She felt rather guilty about that kiss, even if it had been achingly wonderful to do it. It had been far more than she needed to do. She could have simply touched a finger to the back of his hand, or a shoulder, and established a link without him feeling a thing.

But Cara had just been telling her how maybe she needed to make him more aware of her and filled her mind with heady thoughts of the possibilities. That kiss would certainly have planted her firmly in his thoughts. In a way, though, she felt it was too forward, considering his mental state; he was in love with someone else, even if it was a dream, and Nicci hadn't respected that. She regretted, in a way, giving him that kiss. In another way, she wished she had planted it on his lips instead of his cheek.

As Shota had done.

It burned her to hear Cara telling them how Shota had kissed him and tried to get him to stay with her. Nicci knew how the witch woman felt —but that didn't make her any happier about it.

Nicci would give anything to be able to hold him, now, to comfort him, to tell him that it would be all right for no other reason than simply to try to make him feel just a little better, to reassure him that there were others around who cared about him.

But she knew that this was not the time or circumstances for such things.

At the same time, she knew that this could not continue. He simply could not go on like this. His life could not stay in this static state, drifting without his conscious direction. He had to come to his senses.

Nicci hurried onward, quickening her pace, down the endless maze of halls and through empty but grand rooms, suddenly feeling, for some reason, the urgent need to be with him.

Richard stood at the brink of the wall, an arm resting on a massive merlon to each side, as he stared out through the crenellation. It felt like standing at the edge of the world. Gray patches of shade drifted slowly over the hills and fields far below as their mothering clouds shepherded them along.

He seemed to have lost all track of time. Every day had become the same monotonous, pointless, empty existence. He didn't even know how long he had been standing at the gap in the wall, staring out at nothing in particular.

With Kahlan dead and gone, nothing mattered anymore. He had trouble imagining why it ever had. He couldn't even imagine for sure, now, that she had ever been real.

But whether or not she had been, it was over.