Free Phantom by Terry Goodkind

corruption their presence caused: the contamination of magic. That contamination has infected this world. It was drawn to the strength of this magic. It has infected the Chainfire spell and it will kill Nicci if we don’t get her out of there.”
    The room had grown darker yet. Nicci could hardly see through the veil of pain. But she could still see those sinister eyes behind Richard, in the shadows, watching, waiting. No one but Nicci knew that it was there, in that spectral place between worlds.
    Richard would never know what hit him.
    Nicci had no way to warn him.
    She felt another tear roll down her face.
    Richard, seeing that tear drip from her jaw, leaned close. With quiet determination, he used a finger to trace the primary pathways, the supporting junctures, and the main framework of the emblem, as he called it.
    “It should be feasible,” he insisted.
    Ann looked beside herself but she remained silent. Nathan watched with stony resignation.
    Zedd pushed his simple robes farther up his bony arms. “Richard, it’s impossible to shut down a regular verification web, much less one such as this.”
    “No, it’s not,” Richard said, irritably. “Here. See here? You have to interrupt this route, here, first.”
    “Bags, Richard, how am I supposed to do such a thing! The spell shields itself. This web is powered by Subtractive as well as Additive Magic. It has integral shields constructed of both.”
    Richard stared at his grandfather’s crimson face a moment before turning back to the maze of lines. He gazed up at Nicci again and then carefully inserted a hand in through the net of lines to touch Nicci’s black dress.
    “I won’t let it have you,” he whispered to her.
    No words had ever sounded sweeter, even if she knew he could not understand the impossibility of his promise.
    When his finger touched her dress, the patterns shifted from two-dimensional to three-dimensional forms that looked more like a thornbush than a spell-form.
    It felt to Nicci as if he had just twisted a knife through her insides. She struggled to remain conscious. She focused on the glowing eyes in the shadows. She had to find a way to warn Richard.
    His hand paused. He carefully pulled it back out. The pattern flattened to two-dimensional.
    Nicci would have sighed in relief could she breathe.
    “Did you see that?” he asked.
    Zedd nodded. “I certainly did.”
    Richard glanced back over his shoulder at his grandfather. “Is it supposed to do that?”
    “No.”
    “I didn’t think so. It’s supposed to be inert, but the biological variable contaminating it has changed the nature of the host spell-form.”
    Zedd’s expression tightened as he considered. “It seems pretty obvious that whatever is going on, it’s changing the way the spell works.”
    Richard nodded. “Worse, it’s a random variable. The contamination caused by the chimes’ presence in this world is biological—it evolves. Probably so that it can attack different kinds of magic. This spell will undoubtedly continue to mutate. There’s probably no way to predict how it will change, but from the evidence here, it appears that it’s only going to become more virulent. As if Chainfire isn’t trouble enough, this could make it worse. It could even be that everyone affected by it will develop problems beyond their memory loss revolving around Kahlan.”
    “What makes you say that?” Zedd asked.
    “Just look at how many memories of events only tangent to Kahlan you’ve all lost. The lost memories could even be the means by which the contamination infects those people touched by the effects of the Chainfire event.”
    As if the Chainfire event being loosed on the world weren’t potentially deadly enough, it now seemed catastrophic beyond imagining.
    Ann was bottled fury. She gritted her teeth. “Where did you learn such gibberish?”
    Zedd flashed her a scowl. “Be quiet.”
    “I told you, I understand emblematic designs. This one is a mess.”
    Nathan