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Richard didn't like the direction toward which her worry seemed to be drifting. "Check it for what?"
"A spell. A diabolically simple spell that would be profoundly destructive."
Richard was now sure he didn't like her idea even though he hadn't heard it, yet.
"What kind of spell?"
"A glamour spell."
"Glamour?" Richard frowned. "How would that work?"
"Well, think of it as a love potion."
Richard stared at her in surprise. "A love potion?"
"Yes, after a fashion." She lightly tapped the fingers of opposite hands together as she reflected on how best to explain it. "A glamour spell would cause you to have a mental vision of a woman, a real woman would be the normal object of the spell, but as I thought about it I realized that it would work just as well for an imaginary woman. Either way, it would make you fall in love with her. But even that is a rather weak way of describing such a powerful spell. Under a glamour spell the woman would become an obsession. Such an obsession would be to the exclusion of almost everything else.
"A glamour spell is a kind of dark secret among sorceresses, usually taught by a gifted mother. Such a spell would be used to make a specific person fixate on the subject of the spell, usually a real individual-the sorceress herself, in most cases. Like I said, it's a kind of love spell.
"Some gifted women could not resist the lure of using a glamour on men. The spell is so effective that at the Palace of the Prophets it was a very serious matter for one of the Sisters to even be suspected of using a glamour. To be caught using a glamour was a grave crime, the moral equivalent to rape. The punishment was severe. The sorceress was at the least banished, but she could just as well be hanged. There have been sisters convicted of such a crime.
"As I recall, the last one caught at the palace was over fifty years ago. She was a novice, Valdora. The tribunal was split between hanging or banishment. The Prelate broke the tie and had the young novice banished.
"I would expect that Jagang's Sisters know how to invoke a glamour spell. It wouldn't have been all that hard for one of them to tag a glamour to that arrow, or a number of the arrows that morning. If the arrow didn't kill you, it would spell you."
"This is no spell," Richard said, his tone turning darker.
Nicci ignored not just his tone, but his denial as well. "It would explain a great deal. A glamour spell seems absolutely real to the victim. It bends their mind, their thinking, around the subject of the obsession."
Richard again raked his fingers back through his hair, trying not to get angry with Nicci. "What would be the purpose of doing such a thing? Jagang wants to kill me. You're the one who came and told me that he created a beast to accomplish that task. The spell you're talking about doesn't make any sense."
"Oh, but it makes all the sense in the world. It would accomplish far more than merely killing you, Richard. Don't you see? It would destroy your credibility. It would leave you alive to destroy your cause yourself."
"Myself? What do you mean?"
"It would make you obsessed with the subject of the glamour to the exclusion of anything else. It would make people think there was something wrong with you, think you were crazy.
"It would make people begin to doubt you, and therefore your cause.
"This spell would condemn you to a living death. It would destroy everything that means anything to you. It would give you a mad obsession that you totally believe is something real, but that you can never satisfy. There is good reason why using a glamour spell was a serous crime.
"In this case, at the same time as you go about trying to find the object of your manufactured memory, you see your cause begin to crumble because those you inspired and who believed in you now start to think that if you're crazy, then maybe the things you've said were crazy as well."
Richard imagined that a victim of such a web would not be able to recognize the glamour spell within himself. And it was certainly true that nearly everyone was coming to think he was crazy.
"Truth does not depend on the person who says it. The truth is still the truth even if stated by someone you don't respect."
"That may be true, Richard, but others don't necessarily act with such clear insight."
He sighed. "I guess not.
"As far as the beast, Jagang does not necessarily count on just one thing to do the job and he has no reluctance to do more than is necessary to crush his opponents. He might have figured that two plagues will be more certain to end the threat of Richard Rahl than one alone."
Richard certainly didn't doubt what she said about Jagang. Still, he didn't believe it. "Jagang didn't even know where I was. Those troops just happened across me as they were sweeping the woods, checking for threat, for their supply convoy."
"He knows you started the revolt down in Altur'Rang. He might have ordered that his troops in the area carry arrows that were spelled by his Sisters just in case they ran across you."
Richard could see that she had indeed been doing a lot of thinking. She had an answer for everything.
He opened his arms out to the side and lifted his chin. "Then lay your hands on me, sorceress. Grab the spell and pull its wicked tentacles out of me. Restore my sanity. If you really believe that a glamour spell is the cause of all of this, then use your gift to seek it out and put an end to it."
Nicci turned her gaze away and stared out the broken doorway at the gloom within the base of the huge tower.
"To do that, I would need the arrow. It no longer exists. I'm sorry, Richard. I never thought to check the arrow for a spell before I eliminated it. I was frantic to get it out of you in order to save your life. Still, I should have checked."
He laid a hand on the back of her shoulder. "You didn't do anything wrong, my friend. You saved my life."
"Did I?" She turned to him. "Or did I condemn you to a living death?"
He shook his head. "I don't think so. Like you said, you wouldn't let me believe something if you thought the evidence was insufficient. That body buried down there wasn't sufficient proof. Yet, at the same time, it shouldn't have been there, so I'm convinced that it proves that something really is going on. I just haven't figured out what."
"Or it proves that maybe your story is nothing more than part of a fabrication spawned by the mad obsession of a glamour spell."
"No one remembers what happened and that Kahlan isn't buried there, but I do. It's something solid that shows me, at least, that I'm not imagining all this."
"Or it is simply part of the delusion-whatever its cause. Richard, this just can't go on forever. It has to come to a close at some point. You're at a dead end. Have you come up with anything else to try?"
He put his hands on the stone wall of the sliph's well. "Look, Nicci, I admit that I'm ru
"And how long do you think you can wander around not giving up on her, all the while the Imperial Order marches ever closer to our forces? I don't like A
Richard swallowed back the lump in his throat.
"I need to think about things, to gather my thoughts. I found some books in that room back there. I want to study them for a while, just a while, and try to think things through, try to see if I can figure out what's happening and why. If I can't think of something — I just need to think of what to do next."