Phantom pg 1-71

Kahlan reached the meeting place with the three Sisters of the Dark. Tovi was suppose to be there, but they do not know what has happened to her. At the inn they were suppose to meet at someone is able to see Kahlan. The Sisters are infuriated and kill him before he can say address Kahlan as the Mother Confessor allowing her to know that she is more than a slave. Then the Sisters of the Dark force the innkeeper's daughter into telling them that Tovi went to Caska. They departed immediately to catch up.

Richard is reading in the keep to learn more about what to do when he notices something strange in the air. By following it too its source, he found Zed, Ann and Nathan around Nicci who was levitating in the air. Richard soon learned that they were doing an internal verification web on Chainfire so that Nicci could see how the spell worked and try and reverse it. Richard notices that something is out of place though. A line is missing. He figures out that the Chainfire spell has been contaminated by the chimes, and because of that the spell was killing Nicci. He used he understanding of the symbols to release Nicci from the spell, but in doing so the Beast found him through his gift. They had to once again try to fight the Beast, but nothing they did seemed to harm it until Nicci used the grace they had drawn for the verification web along with her gift to cast one powerful burst not intending to harm it but to send it away. In doing so, Nicci had once again trapped herself in the web, and expected death to follow.

Caska is the Deep Nothing, so something in the Sisters of the Dark's plan involves the use of the central sites. The motivation of Samuel's attack on Tovi is still unknown, but did give them time. The contamination of the chimes is no longer speculation. It's verification indicates that there will be severe repercussions to magic in the future. Richard has once again shown innate ability to understand magic in ways that those who have studied could not. The beast still stalking him is troubling because it lost focus near the end of the last book after he escaped it in the keep the first time. The book has moved into events quickly which is different than previous books.