Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Zedd leaned in, pulling Nicci with him. "Look here. See this? Do you recognize it?", "The part that didn't invert?" Nicci shook her head. "No. What is it?"

"It's the contamination left by the chimes. This, I recognize. This is the spider in the web of magic."

Nicci straightened. "This proves that Richard was right, then."

"The boy got it right," Zedd agreed. "I don't really understand how, but he had it exactly right. Once it's isolated like this, I recognize the corrosion left by the chimes, the same as I recognize the reddish brown scale of rust. He was able to see it in the language of the lines, and he was right. The spell is contaminated; the source of that contamination was the chimes. This is the mechanism by which the chimes erode and destroy magic. If it has infected this spell, it has to have infected other things of magic as well."

"Is that what's killing the night wisps?" Cara asked.

"I'm afraid it would seem that way," Zedd told her. "The oaks around their home place are also invested with protective magic. That both the oaks and the wisps are dying out together is suspicious in the extreme."

Nicci walked to the windows, watching the indistinct fits of lightning through the opaque glass. "Creatures of magic are dying out. Just as Richard told us."

She missed him so much that mournful anguish passed through her like the shadow of death itself darkening her soul. She felt like she would shrivel and die if they didn't find him soon. She felt like she could not survive if she never got the chance to see him again, see the life in his gray eyes.

"Zedd, do you think he was right about the rest of it? Do you think that there really war dragons, and we've all forgotten that there were such things in the world? Do you think Richard was right that the world we knew is passing out of existence, vanishing into the realm of legend?"

Zedd sighed. "I don't know, my dear, I really don't. I'd like to think the boy is wrong in that much of it, but I learned a long time ago not to bet against Richard."

Nicci smiled to herself. She had learned the same thing.

CHAPTER 53

"Nicci," Zedd said, hesitating as he gestured vaguely, seeming to search for words, "you are… well, someone who holds Richard in the same regard as I do, feels a similar passion and loyalty for him. In many ways you almost seem like…" He threw his hands up and let them flop back down at his sides. "I don't know."

"Zedd, you, Cara, me — we all love Richard, if that's what you're trying to say."

"I guess that's the core of it. I don't have any recollection at all of Kahlan, but I imagine I must think of you in much the same way I can only imagine I must have thought of her, as more than just his confidante sharing the same struggle."

Nicci felt as if she had just been hit by lightning. She dared not allow herself to even begin to consider the emotional charge in his words. With the greatest of difficulty, she managed to keep her composure and merely twitch her brow, finally asking, "What are you getting at?"

"Like Cara and Richard, I've come to think a great deal of you, especially considering what I thought of you in the beginning. I've come to trust you, like I say, as I would trust a daughter-in-law."

Nicci swallowed but didn't meet his gaze. "Thank you, Zedd. Considering where I came from, and what I thought of myself in the beginning, that means more to me than you could know. To have people actually, sincerely…"

She cleared her throat and finally looked up at him. Despite how his words hit her, she didn't think that he meant them to have any meaning, but merely to preface something important. "You want to tell me something?"

He nodded. "I've learned some other things. Greatly disturbing things. I would not tell anyone else such things, but, well, other than Richard himself there is no one I would trust more than you and Cara. You two have become more than friends in all of this. I'm only trying to find a way to express to you how much…"

When his words trailed away and he stared off into the distance, Nicci gently laid a hand on his shoulder. "We'll get him back, Zedd, I promise you that. But you're right in how we feel about him. Richard completely changed my life. If there's something you need to talk about, I would like to think that you can trust Cara and me almost as much as you would trust Richard. I think that's what you're getting at? We all feel the same about him, and about our cause. I… well"—she tapped her fingertips together — "you know what I mean."

Fearing she'd already said too much, Nicci felt her face turning red.