"No," Cara said, waving off the very notion. "I don't mean anything like that." She returned the hand to her red leather-clad hip. "It's just that it seems like something is wrong-I don't know what, but something."

Verna glanced about. "Do you think something is missing?" She gestured ahead, up the empty passageway. "Decorations, furnishings, something of that nature?"

"No. As I recall there never was any decorations down in most of these halls. But I haven't been down here to the tombs much-no one has.

"Darken Rahl would visit his father's tomb from time to time, but as far as I know he didn't have any interest in visiting the others. The area down here with the tombs is private and he made it off-limits. When he went to his father's tomb he usually took his bodyguards, not Mord-Sith, so I'm just not all that familiar with the place."

"Maybe that's all it is," Verna suggested, "an uneasy feeling brought on by unfamiliarity."

"I suppose that could be it," Cara said, her mouth twisting with annoyance at having to admit it was a possibility.

Everyone stood silently, considering what they should do next, if anything. It was always possible, after all, that the two missing women could show up at any moment and wonder what all the fuss was about.

"You said Ann and Nicci had wanted to be alone to have a private conversation," Adie said. "Perhaps they went off somewhere private."

"All night?" Verna asked. "I can't imagine that. The two of them didn't have much in common. They weren't friends. Dear Creator, I don't think they even liked each other all that much. I can't imagine them chatting the night away."

"Me neither," Cara said.

Verna looked up at the prophet. "Do you have any idea what Ann might have wanted to talk to Nicci about?"

Nathan's long white hair brushed his shoulders when he shook his head. "Ann naturally took a dim view of Nicci, considering that she turned to the Sisters of the Dark. I know that always bothered her-and not without sound reason. It was more than a betrayal of the cause of the Light; it was a personal betrayal and a betrayal of the palace. Ann might have wanted to get Nicci alone so she could counsel her about coming back to the Creator."

"That would have been a brief conversation," Cara said.

"I suppose so," Nathan admitted. He scratched the bridge of his nose as he considered. "Well, knowing Ann, it very well might be something about Richard."

Cara's blue eyes narrowed as they turned up toward the prophet. "What about Richard?"

Nathan shrugged. "I don't know for certain."

Cara's brow tightened. "I didn't say that it had to be for certain."

Nathan looked somewhat reluctant to speak of it, but he finally did. "Ann sometimes mentioned how she thought that Nicci might be able to guide him."

Verna joined Cara in frowning. "Guide him? Guide him how?"

"You know Ann." Nathan smoothed the front of his white shirt. "She always thinks she needs to have a hand in guiding everything. She has often mentioned to me how uneasy it makes her to have so tenuous a connection to Richard."

"Why does she think she needs a 'connection' to Lord Rahl?" Cara asked, ignoring the fact that it was now Nathan who was Lord Rahl and not Richard.

Verna couldn't say that she was any more comfortable with the thought of Nathan being the Lord Rahl than was Cara.

"She has always thought she needed to control what Richard might do," Nathan said. "She is always calculating and planning. She has never liked leaving anything to chance."

"True enough," Verna said. "The woman always did have a network of spies to help her insure that the world was revolving properly. She had connections in the most far-flung places in order to exert influence toward what she saw as the cause of her life. She never liked leaving anything important to others, much less to chance."

Nathan heaved a deep sigh. "Ann is a determined woman. She believes that Nicci, since renouncing the Sisters of the Dark, has no other choice, now, except to return her devotion to the cause of the Sisters of the Light."

"What cause? Why does she think Nicci has to be devoted to the Sisters of the Light?" Cara asked.

Nathan leaned a little toward the Mord-Sith. "She thinks that us wizards need a Sister of the Light to guide our every thought and action. She has always believed that we should not be allowed to think for ourselves."

Verna's gaze wandered off down the empty passageway. "I guess that I used to believe much the same thing. But that was before Richard."

"Keep in mind, though, that you've spent far more time with Richard than Ann ever did." Nathan shook his head sadly. "While she had to have come to much the same understanding about Richard needing to act on his own as most of us agree he must, she seems lately to be reverting to her old ways, her old beliefs. I'm not sure that the Chainfire spell hasn't wiped away those changes in Ann, erased the things she had learned."

Verna had suspected much the same. "We must let Ann speak for herself, but I think that it's clear that the Chainfire spell is affecting us all. We know that, unchecked, it will likely continue to run rampant through our minds and very possibly destroy our ability to reason. The problem is, none of us is aware of how we are changing. Each of us feels that we are the same as we've always been. I doubt that to be true. There is no telling how much any one of us has changed. Any of us could unwittingly lead our cause astray."

"You can discuss all that with Ann when we find them," Cara said, impatient to get back to the issue at hand. "They're not down here. We need to spread our search."

"Maybe they're not done with whatever they had to talk about," Nathan suggested. "Maybe Ann doesn't want to be found until after she is finished with trying to convince Nicci of what she must do."

"That sounds like a possibility," Verna agreed.

Nathan fussed with the edge of his cape. "I wouldn't put it past the woman to abscond with Nicci, intent on being alone with her so she can browbeat her into Ann's way of thinking."

Cara flicked a hand dismissively. "Nicci is devoted to helping Richard, not Ann. She wouldn't go along and Ann couldn't make her-Nicci can wield Subtractive Magic, after all."

"I agree." Verna said. "I can't imagine the two of them just wandering off for this long without letting us know where they are."

Adie turned to Verna. "Why not ask her where she be?"

Verna frowned at the old sorceress. "You mean use the journey book?"

Adie gave a single, firm nod. "Yes. Ask her."

Verna was skeptical. "Being here in the palace it's hardly likely that she would look in her journey book for a message from me."

"Maybe she not be in the palace," Adie said. "Perhaps the two of them had to leave forborne sudden, important reason and she already sent you a message in the journey book."

"How in the world could the two of them leave the palace?" Verna asked. "We're surrounded by the army of the Imperial Order."

Adie shrugged. "It not be impossible. I can see with my gift, not my eyes. It be dark last night. Maybe in the dark they had to slip away for some reason. Maybe it be important and they didn't have time to tell us."

"You could do that?" Cara asked. "You could go out in the dark and make it through the enemy?"

"Of course."

Verna was already thumbing through her journey book. As she had expected, it was completely blank. "There is no message." She tucked the small book back behind her belt. "I'll try your suggestion, though, and write Ann a message. Perhaps she will look in her journey book and reply."

With a flourish of his cape, Nathan once again started away. "Before we go off to look elsewhere I want to check the tomb again."

"Post a guard up here," Cara called back to the soldiers. "The rest of you come with us."