Naked Empire pg. 601-640

Zed was once again being lead to objects, when he noticed one particularly useful not only to the Order, but to him ending destroying all of the objects from the keep along with himself. He activated the spell without the Order knowing, and lied about its purpose. Zed had already accepted his fate of being extinguished by the spell along with the objects, but as predicted the familiar guard with the "captured" child was Chase and Rachael. Both of them are Zed's friends which were much more prominent in the first three books, but their appearance was welcomed to save Zed and Adie. Right when they were about to try and escape, Captain Zimmer with his men surrounding the tent rushed in to free Zed and Adie, and then Rikka also showed up. So with three different groups infiltrating the Order camp, and an the assassin who Kahlen sent attacking there was enough commotion to easily escape. Zed went with Rikka, Chase, and Rachael to retake the Wizard's Keep, while Adie went with most of Zimmer's men to rescue the captives and escape before the spell incinerated part of the Order's camp. All of them escaped successfully and Adie, Zimmer and his men, and the captives made it past the defensives of D'Hara.

Richard made it to the city with Nicholas, but when they arrived at the location of the antidote it had been removed with a note in place say that Nicholas had the antidote, and would exchange it for the Mother Confessor. Richard is in the final stage of the poison and was asleep at this point with the rest of the group seeing the note, so Kahlen goes to exchange herself for the antidote while hoping she can get close enough to release her power and control him. Nicholas plans to take over the Order after he removes Richard as a threat.

Nicholas's plan to take over everything shows that you cannot make deals with monsters. Jagang even though he has a corrupted agenda of his own tried to make a deal with Nicholas, but in the end Nicholas is going to try to consume and take all that he can. Also although I predicted two of the rescuers for Zed, I did not think that both would come, and I definitely did not think that Captain Zimmer was likely to help. I was kind of interesting how many people can to save Zed when he needed the help.