Putting all her strength into the effort, Nicci brought her palms up, preparing to do the impossible.

She had to find the cusp between nothing and the ignition of power.

She needed not power, but its precursor.

The green lines advanced farther up around her in their determined work of encasing her in the totality of the spell. Nicci tried to draw a breath, but her muscles would not respond. She needed the breath — just one breath.

When the world of life flashed back into her gifted vision, she pulled with all her might and at last drew that breath.

"Now, Cara!"

Without hesitation, Cara heaved the heavy candelabra. The beast easily caught the massive iron candle stand in one clawed hand, lifting it high. Behind it, through the windows, lightning cracked and boomed.

Nicci paused, waiting for a lull in the flashes.

When it came, when the room plunged back into darkness, she cast out — not power, but its antecedent.

That casting bathed the beast in the agonizingly almost: the inductive ignition of power… absent the consequence.

She could see that the creature felt the strange sensation of the promise of the profound… not quite conjured, not yet delivered. It blinked in confusion, unsure if it really felt something, wanting to act, yet not knowing what it was that it felt or what to act against.

Without the successful launch of any direct attack of Nicci's power, the beast appeared to decide that she had failed and again defiantly lifted the candelabra high over its head, like a trophy won in battle.

"Now," Zedd called to Ann and Nathan as he rushed forward, "while it's distracted."

They were about to ruin everything. Nicci could do nothing to halt their interference. Cara, never one to be gentle in her duty, did do something. She drove the three of them back like a sheepdog herding strays. They protested as they retreated, demanding she get out of the way.

Nicci watched it all happening from a distant place on the cusp between worlds. She could no longer help Cara. The woman would have to handle it herself. Somewhere in the faraway world of life; Zedd fumed at the Mord-Sith and tried to launch an attack, but Cara used the threat of ramming him with a shoulder to drive him back, throwing him not only off balance, but distracting him from his intentions.

In that other world, the dark world beyond life, what Nicci had deliberately created was a void of effect, cause without consequence, a constructed expectation of a material release of her darker power, which she also deliberately tailed to provide.

Time itself seemed to stand still, waiting for what must be but would not come.

The tension in the air around Nicci was palpable. The green lines around her raced ever faster through the air in an effort to completely reestablish the verification web, to have her life held suspended.

The flaw, like a spider in its web, waited for her.

She knew she had only a fleeting moment before she would be unable to do anything.

This time, her end would at least gain something of value.

Nicci fed the field around the beast yet more of the open gateway to a profound release of power which she purposely withheld.

The stress between what existed and what did not yet exist, and would not happen, was insufferable.

In an instant, that terrible, intolerable void, that vacuum of power that Nicci had created in both worlds, was filled with the deafening release of a bolt of lightning that came crashing in through the window, while its twin, from the world beyond the world of life, ripped through the veil, drawn to the need unfulfilled around the beast — compelled to complete what Nicci had begun but would not finish. This time, there was no safety in escape to another world; both worlds had together unleashed their fury.

Shattered glass rained through the room. The thunderous boom shook the stone walls of the Keep. It seemed as if the sun itself were exploding in through the window.

The lines racing around Nicci came up like a shroud.

Through her gifted vision she saw the completion of the link she had established, saw the lightning find the void around the beast and fulfill the terrible empty obligation she had created.

The explosion of that lightning was beyond anything that she had ever seen before. Creating the precursor in both worlds lent the lightning the power of both worlds, Additive and Subtractive, creative and destructive, intertwined in a single calamitous discharge.

Nicci was frozen by the spell, and could not close her eyes against the blinding flash of light and dark that tangled together, striking both ends of candelabra and blasting down through the beast.

In the violent corona of crackling white light, the beast came apart, driven to dust and vapor by the intensity of the heat and power focused in the void Nicci had created.

Gales of rain and wind roared in through the shattered window. Outside, yet more lightning flickered through the roiling greenish clouds. When the lightning outside lit the room, they could all see that the beast was gone.

For now, anyway, it was gone.

Through the net of green lines, Nicci saw Richard racing across the room toward her.

That room seemed so distant.

She saw the dark world close in around her.

CHAPTER 8

When her horse whinnied and stamped its hooves, Kahlan slipped her hand farther up the reins, closer to the bit, to hold the nervous animal in place. The horse didn't like what it smelled any more than Kahlan did. She reached up and gently stroked the underside of the horse's chin as she waited behind Sisters Ulicia and Cecilia.

Light gusts ruffled the cottonwood leaves overhead, making the glossy leaves shimmer in the midday light. In the shade of those huge cotton-woods, dappled sunlight danced over the grassy hilltop, while overhead a few cottony white clouds dotted the blindingly bright blue sky. When the breeze shifted around and came in from their backs, it brought relief not only from the sweltering heat. Kahlan allowed herself a deeper breath.

She used a finger to wipe sweat and grime from under the metal collar locked around her neck. She wished she could have a bath, or at least jump in a stream or a lake. The summer heat and dusty traveling had conspired to turn her long hair into an itchy, tangled mess. She knew, though, that the Sisters didn't care how uncomfortable she was and that they wouldn't be pleased if she were to ask if she could have a chance to wash up, the way they often did. The Sisters didn't care in the least about Kahlan's wants, much less her comfort. She was their slave, no more; it mattered not if the collar she wore around her neck chafed and rubbed her skin raw.

As Kahlan waited, her mind wandered to the statue she had given up, the statue she'd had to leave in Lord Richard Rahl's palace. While she had no memory of her past, she had memorized every line of that figure of a woman with flowing hair and robes. There was something quietly noble about her spirit, about the way the figure stood with her back arched, her hands fisted, and her head thrown back as if in defiance of invisible forces that would subdue her.

Kahlan knew all too well what it felt like to have invisible forces subduing her.

From the quiet hilltop they watched as Sister Armina made her way across the open landscape below. There was no one else in sight. The long grasses looked almost liquid as they waved and bowed in the breeze. Sister Armina finally trotted her bay mare up the hill. She circled her horse around and came to a halt beside the rest of them.

"They're not there," she announced.

"How far ahead are they?" Sister Ulicia asked.

Sister Armina lifted an arm to point. "I didn't go much beyond those hills there. I didn't want to take a chance on being spotted by any of Jagang's gifted. As near as I can tell, though, the stragglers and camp followers have only moved on a day or two ago."