The Omen Machine Page 16
“Maybe they were meant to be the same thing, but the exact right word was lost in a translation, so the language used was imprecise. Or maybe it was meant to be oblique.”
Richard pulled on a boot. “Or maybe the warnings of the roof falling in and the sky falling in are metaphors.”
“Metaphors?” Kahlan asked as she drew a pair of pants up her long legs.
“Yes, like the one about queen takes pawn. That was obviously predicting that you would take that woman with your power. Calling her a pawn was telling us that she was being used. She was a puppet. I think the hidden hand directing that puppet wanted all the representatives gathered here at the palace to see the show.”
“You mean you think that roof is a metaphor for the sky, or the other way round?”
“Could be,” Richard said. “You know, like calling the night sky a roof of stars.”
“So what do you think prophecy about the roof or sky falling in really means, then?”
“Maybe that it’s life, the world, that is going to be falling in around us.”
Kahlan didn’t like the sound of that.
They both froze at the sound of a loud howling shriek outside in the hall.
Something heavy thudded into the double bedroom doors. For a moment, Kahlan thought they might be knocked off their hinges, but they remained firmly in place.
Richard and Kahlan both stood stockstill, staring at the door.
“What could that have been?” she whispered.
“I can’t imagine.” Richard’s fingers found the hilt of his sword. “Let’s find out.”
Richard cracked open the door just enough for them to peer outside into the hallway. Reflector lamps mounted on the walls lit the corridor and a nearby intersection of halls. Through the narrow slit Kahlan saw heavily armed men racing in from every direction.
Splashes and smears of blood stained the marble floor in the hall.
Lying against the door at their feet was a big black dog with two pikes sticking from its side. Blood still flowed from several other gaping wounds.
Richard opened the door the rest of the way. The dead dog’s head flopped over across the threshold. One of the officers, seeing Richard and Kahlan at the door, rushed up.
The powerfully built man swallowed as he caught his breath. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl.”
“What in the world is going on?” Richard asked.
“Well, this dog here was racing up the halls, growling and snapping at people. We were finally forced to kill him.”
“Where did he come from?” Kahlan asked as she moved into the doorway beside Richard.
“We think he must belong to one of the people down in the market. When everyone was brought inside because of the storm, people had to bring their animals in as well. The horses and mules were put up in the stables, but dogs stayed with their owners. I think that in all the confusion down there some of them must have run loose. This one apparently got away from its owner and made it all the way up into the palace.”
Richard squatted down beside the dead dog and stroked a hand along the wiry fur. Even in death, its teeth were still bared in a snarl. He patted the dog’s shoulder, sorry that he had to die.
“So this fellow probably ran away from his owners?”
“That’s what I suspect, Lord Rahl. We spotted him racing up through the halls, headed this way. We tried to catch him, but in the end he was too vicious and we had to take him down. I’m sorry to have disturbed you both.”
Richard waved off the concern. “It’s all right. We were just about to head up to the Garden of Life anyway.” He again ran his hand over the black fur. “Too bad this poor fellow had to die.”
While the officer’s explanation sounded plausible enough, Kahlan couldn’t help thinking of the prediction from the woman who had tried to kill her, couldn’t help remembering her words.
“Dark things. Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won’t be able to escape them.”
CHAPTER 26
High up in the People’s Palace, Richard and Kahlan, with a contingent of soldiers of the First File accompanying them, made their way through a series of intersections that formed the arms of the central part of the spell-form that was the palace complex. Those arms, tracing the template of a complex formula, drew power in toward the Garden of Life.
The footsteps of the soldiers whispered off the polished granite floors and echoed off the great slabs of stone standing between black granite columns that lined the broad passageways. Each polished slab between those columns, laced with multicolored crystalline veins, was like a work of art.
Besides the men following behind Richard and Kahlan, there was a sizable force already stationed throughout the passageways. This part of the palace was always heavily guarded and strictly off-limits to the public.
Richard paused at the great doors, momentarily taking in the carvings of rolling hills and forests. The elaborate scene on the doors was sheathed in gold.
The Garden of Life had been created as a containment field for any dangerous magic that might need to be unleashed. It also protected those handling such power from any nefarious intervention. Beyond the gold-clad doors some of the most dangerous conjuring ever conceived by the mind of man had been unleashed. The magnificent doors were, like many other things in the palace, meant to be a reminder, when dealing with such potentially deadly things, of the beauty and importance of life itself.
The garden was also a touchstone of great events in Richard’s life. He had been brought to the garden at the lowest point in his life. It had also been the scene of his greatest triumphs.
By the way Kahlan put a hand gently on his back, he knew that she must have realized what he was thinking.
Finally, he pulled one of the massive doors open. The guards took up posts up and down the hallway as Richard and Kahlan went into the Garden of Life alone.
Once inside, they were enveloped with the heady fragrance of flowers that grew in great swaths beside the walkway that wandered toward the heart of the room. Beyond the flowers small trees created a intimate forest gathered before a vine-covered stone wall. Beyond the wall, the center of the expansive room contained an area of lawn that swept around almost into a circle. The grass ring was broken by a wedge of white stone, upon which sat a slab of granite held up by two short, fluted pedestals.
High overhead, a ceiling of leaded windows let light flood the room during the day. At night they offered a view of the stars that always made Richard feel rather small and lonely.
This night there was no view out the windowed ceiling. Richard could see that a thick blanket of snow covered the glass. When lightning flashed, he could see that in some places the windblown snow had been reduced to a thin layer that let the lightning show through, but in other areas, on the lee side of the peak, the snow was so thick that not even the flashes of lightning could penetrate the dense covering. Intermittent thunder rumbled through the room, making the ground tremble underfoot.
After putting flame to a few torches around the edge of the grassy area, Richard sat with Kahlan on the short stone wall at the edge of the small indoor forest. Together they gazed out across the open area, as if looking out on a meadow.
When he took hold of her hand Kahlan flinched.
“What’s wrong?”
She lifted her hand to glance at it briefly. “Just a little tender, that’s all.”
He could see that the scratches on the back of her hand were swollen and had turned to an angry red. The scratches on his own hand were red, too, but not as bad as Kahlan’s.
Holding her fingers, he turned her hand to inspect it in the torchlight. “It looks worse.”
She took her hand back. “It will be better soon.” She rubbed her arms against the chill and changed the subject. “I don’t feel anyone watching us. You?”
Richard listened to the torches hissing softly for a time as he looked around the vast room. “No, I don’t either.”
He could see that she was so s
leepy she could hardly keep her eyes open. The stress of someone watching them not only kept them awake, but made what sleep they did get fitful. He put his arm around her and drew her close. Kahlan snuggled tight against him and laid her head on his shoulder.
Richard thought they ought to lay out their bedrolls and get some sleep. He liked being under the trees. It reminded him of all the times he’d slept under the stars. It reminded him of his Hartland woods, of when he first met Kahlan there.
“Back in the woods,” she said in a dreamy voice.
Richard smiled. “So we are.”
“Kind of nice for a change.”
He thought so, too. Beyond the glass above them the storm howled in fury, but under the occluding layer of snow they could see none of it. Lit from underneath, Richard could see runnels of water snaking down the glass, so he knew that the snowstorm must be changing to sleet, or maybe even rain. When snow changed to rain it usually signaled the end of a spring storm. Sometimes, that was the most violent part of such storms, when they brought destructive winds and lightning.
“Do you think it’s safe?” Kahlan asked.
He glanced over and saw her gazing up at the glass roof. In places the drifts were quite deep. The rain was packing the snow tighter, and making it a great deal heavier.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how much weight the glass can hold.”
“That’s what I was thinking…” she said softly, half to herself. “I wonder if it has ever broken in the past. It could be pretty dangerous being underneath it if it were to break in.”
If the roof fell in.
The leaded glass was the roof in this room.
If the sky fell in.
In this room, the glass roof was the sky.
Richard stood. He understood the two different prophecies. They really were the same.
“I think we should get out of here.”
“I think you may be right. I don’t like the idea of all that glass coming down on us.”
Just then, a lightning strike lit the room with a flash and a deafening blast. As Richard shielded Kahlan, turning her away from the blinding illumination, he saw the lacework of lightning arcing and crackling through the heavy metal framework that held the glass over the center of the room.
Glass shattered, sending shards flying everywhere. One sliver hit the back of his shoulder; another shard stuck in his thigh. A piece nicked Kahlan’s arm.
Once the glass ceiling was cracked by the the lightning hitting the metal framework, the tremendous weight of wet snow brought the center of it cascading down. Lightning lanced a route through the opening toward the floor of the room.
At the same time that the tremendous weight of it all came crashing down, hitting the floor hard enough to make the whole room shudder with a resounding thud, another bolt of lightning lashed in through the breach in the ceiling and made it to ground.
The impact of all the wet snow and the jarring jolt of lightning sent a shock wave through the room that blew the torches out.
In the sudden darkness, Richard could hear a great rending groan as stone cracked and began breaking apart.
CHAPTER 27
As they ducked, trying to avoid being hit by the debris flying in every direction, Richard and Kahlan both covered their ears against the deafening sound of thunder crashing and stone breaking. In the staccato flashes of lightning, Richard glanced back over his shoulder and saw the floor in the center of the room caving in.
Great granite blocks under the floor groaned as they twisted apart from one another and fell inward. Grass, dirt, and a thick bed of sand poured into the expanding hole, like the sands of an hourglass falling inward.
When the broken sections of glass finally stopped falling, Richard looked up to see in the flashes of lightning a jagged breach in the ceiling surrounded by twisted pieces of the heavy metal framework. Fortunately, most of the ceiling all around the room held in place. By the looks of the framework that Richard could see, the builders had overbuilt it for all but the rarest of events. It had, after all, stood for thousands of years. But the nearly inconceivable combination of snow made dangerously heavy by a cold rain, along with being struck by lightning, had been too much for the glass roof to withstand.
Wind whipped in through the opening, swirling sleet and snow down through the room and into the gaping hole in the center of the floor.
Keeping a wary eye skyward for any hanging pieces of glass that might come down on him, Richard pulled the shard of glass out of his leg and tossed it aside. He quickly retrieved a steel and flint from his pack and used them to light a torch in an iron stand not far away. Worried that people below the collapsed floor had been hurt or killed, he rushed toward the opening even as dirt and sand was still sliding down into the dark maw.
Kahlan clutched at his sleeve. “Richard! Stay back. The rest of the floor could fall in and you could go with it.”
He held the torch out, trying to see into the hole. The flame flapped in the gusts of wind that lashed down into the room from the break in the ceiling. He leaned down, peering under the edge on the opposite side of the opening in the floor. It looked like the floor of the Garden of Life was actually held up by a series of radiating arches of a vaulted ceiling underneath it.
“It seems to have stopped,” he said. “I think the lightning must have damaged the structure below that supports the room enough that the weight of all that falling snow broke open the weakened spot, but it looks like the rest of it is stable. See there? The lightning hit the thinnest place in the vault, between two heavy arches.”
Kahlan inched up close behind him. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.” Richard crouched down and held the torch out, trying to see what was down below. It wasn’t a room of the palace, as he expected.
“Look there,” he said, pointing inside the hole to the left. “There are stairs over there.”
Kahlan frowned as she leaned over a little more. “There wasn’t any opening for stairs up here.”
“You’re right. It looks like there used to be a stairway up to the Garden of Life, but it was covered over.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Kahlan said. “This room was constructed very deliberately as a containment field. It doesn’t make any sense that it would have later been closed off from below. For that matter, being a containment field, it doesn’t make sense that there were ever stairs. The opening for them would have weakened the field.”
“May not make sense, but that’s what it looks like.”
“Unless what’s below is within the containment field,” she said, thinking out loud, “or used to be.”
Richard inched in closer. The rest of the floor, supported by the beams of an arch system under them, seemed stable. “The stairs may have once led up into the Garden of Life, but they end at a landing. See it, there? It no longer comes all the way up. I want to get down there.”
Kahlan shook her head. “The landing is too far down to jump.”
Richard stood, holding the torch out, looking. He pointed. “There’s the shed where the people who tend to the garden keep tools. These trees have to be kept trimmed to keep them from overgrowing and getting too big, so there must be a ladder.”
When he pulled open the shed door, Richard saw that there was indeed a wooden ladder inside. He handed Kahlan the torch. The ladder was heavy, but he was able to handle it by himself.
When he reached the hole he slid the ladder down the side until it rested on the landing. Enough of the ladder stuck up out of the hole for a good handhold.
Richard looked up through the jagged opening in the glass roof. Snowflakes drifted down, but the wind was slowing. He could see breaks in the clouds, and through the breaks, stars. The storm was ending.
“Why don’t you wait here,” he said as he started down.
“Right,” she said, “like that’s going to happen.”
“Well at least wait until I get down onto the landing and see if the steps are safe.”
As he stepped off the ladder the area around him brightened with an eerie greenish light coming from a proximity sphere sitting in an iron bracket. Richard had seen the ancient devices before. They were used to illuminate various areas of the People’s Palace and the depths of the Wizard’s Keep, among other places. They looked like nothing more than a solid piece of glass, but they had been invested with ancient magic so that when someone gifted came near them they began to glow.
As he lifted the hefty glass sphere out of the bracket, the light it gave off warmed in color.
Kahlan stepped off the ladder beside him. “At least we don’t have to carry the torch.”
“Guess not,” Richard said as he squinted down into the darkness. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“What do you mean?”
He brushed cobwebs out of the way. “I would have thought there would have been a room or some area of the palace under here, but this looks like no one has been down here in a thousand years. Maybe longer.”
Kahlan glanced around at the thick gray layers of dust clinging to the walls. “A lot longer.”
As Richard started down the steps he carefully stepped around chunks of fallen stone and areas of sand and dirt that covered large parts of the stairs. Kahlan, a hand on his shoulder, followed him down, careful to also step around rubble.
At the bottom of the long flight of stairs they reached a walkway at the outer edge of a room. The walls were made up of granite blocks, and soaring arches created a vaulted ceiling, all supporting the center portion of the Garden of Life. The dark stone, its surface dirty and decayed, looked ancient. Richard didn’t think the place had seen the light of day for millennia.