Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Even though she could not move, Nicci could see everything in the room — not with her eyes, but with her gift. Even beyond the suffering, she recognized such an exotic form of sight as an extraordinary experience. Vision through her gift alone had a singular quality that approached omniscience. She could see more than her eyes had ever allowed her to see. Despite her agony, there was a quiet majesty to it all.

Beyond the net of greenish lines, Richard looked from one startled face to another.

"What's the matter with all of you? You have to get her out of there!"

Before Ann could launch into a lecture, Zedd gestured for her to keep quiet. Once sure her lips would stay pressed tightly together, he turned his attention back to his grandson.

Another line departed an intersection and traced a path through space. It felt to Nicci like a dull knitting needle taking a stitch in her soul, pulling the agony of that thread of light through her as it bound her ever more tightly to a dark death. It was all she could do to remain conscious. Surrender was seeming sweeter by the moment.

Zedd gestured up toward her. "We can't, Richard. These things have to run a course. The verification web runs itself through a series of connections and in that way reveals information about its nature. Once the verification process has begun, it's impossible to halt it. It has to run its course to completion and then it extinguishes."

Nicci knew the grim truth of it.

Richard seized his grandfather's arm. "How long?" He shook the old man like a rag doll. "How long does the process take?"

Zedd pried Richard's fingers off his arm. "We've never seen a spell like this. It's hard to say. But as complex as it's proving to be I can't imagine it taking less than three or four hours. She's been in there an hour already so it will be hours yet before it runs its course and extinguishes."

Nicci knew that she didn't have hours. She had mere moments before the pull of the contamination drew her forever beyond the veil and into the world of the dead.

She thought it a strange way for her life to end. So unexpected. So uneventful. So pointless. She would at least have wanted it to be an end that in some way would have helped Richard, or to have been after they knew that they had accomplished something. She wished her death could have at least bought him something of value.

Richard turned back to gaze up at her. "She won't last that long. We have to get out of there now."

Inwardly, through her agony, she smiled. To the end. Richard would fight to the end against death.

"Richard," Zedd said, "I can't imagine how you could possibly know such a thing, and I'm not saying that I don't believe you, but we can't shut down a verification web."

"Why not?"

"Well," Zedd said as he sighed, "the truth is, I don't even know if such a thing is possible, but even if it were, none of us knows how to do it. The standard verification process builds safeguards to shield itself from tampering. This thing is an order of magnitude more complex and involved."

"Rather like trying to dismount in midgallop while racing along a ridgeline," the tall prophet said. "You need to wait until the horse is finished running before you jump off, or you will only be leaping to your death."

Richard returned to the table, frantically studying the structure constructed of light. Nicci wondered if he realized that, while it was to a degree tangible, what he was seeing existed mainly as a mere aura representing the real power raging through her.

As another line advanced from an intersection at an angle that was dreadfully wrong, Nicci gasped inwardly. She felt something vital within her being slowly ripped open. The pain of it sang through the marrow of her bones. She saw darkness layered over the room, and knew she was seeing into another world, the dark world where there would be no more pain.

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?"