The Omen Machine Read online

  Rather than being flat, the center portion of the floor rose up in a dome formed by fat stone ribs filled in between with simple stone blocks. The dome forced them to use the walkway around the outer edges of the room. A lot of debris from above covered the dome, but much of it had slid down to build up in the well against the wall that was the only walk-way. Richard started around the room, climbing over the rubble. Kahlan clambered over huge stone pieces fallen from above, going around in the opposite direction.

  The room appeared to serve no purpose except possibly as an inspection area for the structure. There were other places in the palace that were intended only as inspection ports for the foundation, or hidden parts of the support columns, connections, and beams, so he didn’t find that much of it surprising.

  Richard wondered why, though, if that was true, it had been closed off from the Garden of Life. The stairway above the landing where the ladder rested appeared to have been dismantled. Since that part of the garden’s floor had collapsed, there was no longer any way to know if there had ever been access up into the garden. He supposed that it could have been nothing more than a construction access that had been sealed over.

  “Over here,” Kahlan called out. “There’s a spiral staircase over here in the corner that goes down to what’s below.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Richard held the glowing sphere out ahead of him as he wound his way down the spiral of wedge-shaped stairs. There was no railing, making the descent into the darkness treacherous, especially since a lot of the sand and dirt from the floor of the Garden of Life that had fallen into the room above them had in turn poured down the spiral stairs. Richard had to pause in places to use the side of his boot to move dirt and debris aside so that they would have a safe place to step.

  As they went ever lower into the blackness, the confining shaft for the spiral stairs opened up into a dark, dead still room. The light of the sphere Richard was holding cast only enough illumination into the distance to see that the simple, unadorned room was made of stone blocks. There were no doors or other openings that Richard could see. The room was empty except for what appeared to be a block of stone sitting in the middle.

  “What in the world could this place be?” Kahlan asked.

  Richard shook his head as he looked around. “I don’t know. Doesn’t look like much of anything. Maybe it’s just an old storage room.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense that they would seal off a storage room the way this place has been sealed up.”

  “I suppose not,” Richard conceded.

  Kahlan was right. It didn’t appear that there had ever been any convenient access to the place.

  As he moved into the gloomy room, proximity spheres set in wall brackets began to glow. By the time he made it around the perimeter of the room the four spheres, one on each wall, had all come to life, if weakly. Each sphere brightened as he came close and dimmed as he moved away. Even so, they cast sufficient light to banish enough of the blackness for them to see.

  Looking around the room for any sign of what the place might have been used for, Richard only distantly noted the nondescript monolithic block sitting in the center of the room. He thought it might be a leftover block of stone used in the construction of the palace walls. The only thing that Richard thought was odd about it was that it sat square with the room, as if it had been carefully placed. It served no structural purpose as far as he could see.

  Snowflakes drifted down from the stairwell and into the room to mix with the dust they had stirred up. Up above, the storm raged across the land, but the remnants of gusty wind could not make it this far down. Snowflakes floating by, catching the light of the proximity spheres, sparkled in the murky light.

  A quick search around the perimeter confirmed that the room had no doors. There were no other stairs, or openings of any kind. There was no way out but the spiral stairs that had brought them down into the still grave of a room.

  Richard wasn’t sure why, but the place was making the hair on the back of his neck stand out.

  The still, silent room had the feel of a place deliberately built to be sealed over and forgotten. But why would anyone seal off and bury an empty room?

  Kahlan inched in close to him. “Something about this place is creepy.”

  “Maybe it’s because it’s a dead end. There’s no way out but the way we came in.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I sure wouldn’t like to get trapped down in here. No one would ever find you. Why would this place be sealed up like a tomb?”

  Richard shook his head. He had no answer.

  He half expected to see bones on the floor, but there were none. There were burial vaults in the lower reaches of the palace, but the Garden of Life was at the top of the palace, and besides, the tombs were grand places meant to revere the dead. None had the forsaken feel of this room.

  As he looked around more carefully, Richard spotted something low against the far wall. He thought it might be a narrow ledge in the stone, maybe a stone block sticking out a little more than the rest. He held the sphere out to see better as he leaned in. He brushed away a layer of dust and crumbled granite flakes from the surface and saw that it was individual, small strips of metal, piled in tight, neat, orderly stacks.

  He picked a strip of metal off one of the stacks and turned it in the light, trying to figure out what it was, or its purpose. Each was only a little longer than his longest finger, and soft enough that he could easily bend it. All the strips looked to be identical. Stacked tightly and evenly as they were, and covered in dust and dirt, the mass of them looked like part of the wall, like a ledge in the stone.

  Kahlan bent close, trying to see it better. “What do you think they are?”

  Richard straightened the strip of metal and set it back in its resting place atop one of the stacks. “They don’t have any markings on them. They seem to be nothing more than simple strips of metal.”

  Kahlan’s gaze swept along the wall. “They’re stacked all around the edge of the room. There must be tens of thousands of them, maybe hundreds of thousands. What could they be for, and why are they buried in here?”

  “It seems like they were left and forgotten. Or it could be they were hidden away.”

  Kahlan’s nose wrinkled. “Why hide plain strips of metal?”

  Richard could only shrug as he looked around, trying to see if the room held any other clues to its purpose. The place didn’t seem to make any sense. He scuffed the side of his boot across the floor. It was stone, covered with what was probably thousands of years of dust and crumbled, decayed granite from the surface of the walls. Even though he knew from being above the room that it had a vaulted ceiling above, the ceiling down inside the room was flat, a false ceiling, probably plastered over but now the same dark, dingy color as the walls.

  All in all, other than the stacks of metal and the odd block of stone in the center, it was an unremarkable room. Except, perhaps, that it led to nowhere. Had the floor of the Garden of Life not collapsed, there would have been no way into the buried room. If not for the roof falling in, the room could easily have remained undiscovered for a few thousand more years.

  As Kahlan trailed her fingers along the wall, looking for any hint of writing carved into the stone, or possibly a hidden passageway, Richard turned his attention to the square block that sat in the center of the dingy room. Oddly enough, the stone floor stopped short of the block, leaving a narrow gutter of dirt all the way around it. The block was slightly more than waist high. If he and Kahlan would have reached across from opposite sides, they wouldn’t have been able to touch their fingers.

  He couldn’t imagine what it could be, or what it was doing there.

  With snowflakes drifting past, he squatted down, holding out the glowing sphere to see better, and brushed the flat of his hand along the surface of the side.

  He was surprised to realize that the surface was not stone, as he had thought, but thick, heavy metal.

  He rubbed away at the
dust and grime of ages, trying to see it better. The surface of the metal was corroded and dirty, making it look like the stone in the room, but there could be no doubt, it was metal. Beneath the filth where he wiped his hand across the surface, metal glinted in the light of the sphere.

  “Look at this,” Richard said.

  Kahlan glanced back over her shoulder. “What is it?”

  Richard thumped his fist against it. Even though it seemed to be extraordinarily heavy, he could just barely tell from the sound that it was hollow.

  “This thing is made of metal. And look at this, here.”

  He held the sphere out so she could see better as she came up next to him. There was a small slot, starting in the top and cut down into one side of the thing. Some of the curious strips of metal were stacked in the slot.

  Kahlan removed one of the metal strips, inspecting it. As far as Richard could tell it was devoid of any markings, the same as all the others stacked against the wall.

  He rubbed more of the dirt and debris off the side. “There’s some kind of emblem or something on the side. Kind of hard to tell what it is.”

  With a heavy thud that shook the ground and made both of them flinch, light shot up from the center of the top. Dirt in the space between the metal monolith and the stone floor, disturbed by the thump, lifted into the still air.

  As one, Richard and Kahlan took a step back.

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know,” Richard said. “I was brushing it with my hand to clean away the dirt to see what’s on the side.”

  A deep mechanical groan started within the thing. Metal moved against metal, giving off grating sounds. The sound, like heavy gears turning, grew louder as if the whole thing came to life. Richard and Kahlan backed away a little more, not knowing what to do.

  Abruptly, the light that had shot up from the center of the top changed to an amber color.

  Richard leaned in and saw that there was a small hole in the center of the top where the light was coming out.

  That was when he saw a hint of more light coming from a small opening on the other side of the thing. He rushed around and brushed dirt from the top surface of the metal box. A slit, two hand-widths wide but narrow, was filled with a piece of heavy glass, making a small window that was flush with the surface of the top.

  The glass was thick and wavy, but with the aid of the light coming from somewhere down inside he was able to look in through the window, down into the interior of the metal box. He could see that the entire box was filled with gears, wheels, levers, and moving parts all fit together into a complex machine that was all in motion at once.

  Some of the trip levers and shafts holding the smaller parts were small, only as thick as his little finger. But some of the fat mounting blocks holding the bigger shafts had to weigh thousands of pounds, with the larger gears they held probably weighing a great deal more. The diameter of some of the gears exceeded his height, with teeth more than a hand-width wide. The heavy framework holding it all together was enormous not only in size but in complexity.

  The surfaces of all the massive pieces of machinery down inside were rusted and pitted. As the gears turned and the interlocking teeth engaged against each other, the surface of those teeth was abraded so that the metal, where it slid together, was polished to a high luster. Reddish dust from countless centuries of inaction was being grated and worn away so that it began to float through the interior of the metal box, making it look like a rusty fog down inside.

  As Richard tried to see down through the floating dust inside, he couldn’t see a bottom. It was hard to see past all the intricate, complex workings, bulky levers, wrist-thick shafts, and massive geared wheels, but he was able to see glimpses of yet more mechanical parts down lower, down to a great depth inside, until the layers of inner workings obscured the view of the lower reaches. The haze of stirred-up dirt and rust made the inside of the machine look as if it were filled with smoke.

  Richard moved over so Kahlan could take a look through the narrow window. As he moved aside, he discovered another opening in the side of the machine not far to the left below the window. He bent down, holding the glowing sphere close. The opening was nothing more than a narrow channel. A few pieces of the same metal strips lay stacked in the channel.

  Kahlan pointed at the ceiling. “Richard, look.”

  The light coming from the tiny hole in the center of the top of the machine was projecting a symbol onto the ceiling. The design drawn in lines of light slowly rotated as the gears within turned.

  Looking through the window, Richard could see wheels and gears line up holes in metal plates over the beam of light in order to project a collection of emblematic elements into the single unified symbol appearing on the ceiling above, while yet other gears turned the whole assembly, rotating the projected image.

  “That’s the same emblem that’s on the side.”

  “What’s making the light?” Kahlan asked.

  “It looks to be something like the light coming from the proximity spheres.”

  Richard moved around the machine, brushing away the crust of its long sleep. Each side had the same emblem— the same symbol that was projected onto the ceiling, rotating above their heads.

  Richard stared up at the projection as recognition washed over him.

  “Dear spirits,” he whispered under his breath.

  CHAPTER 29

  Kahlan looked from Richard’s troubled face to the glowing symbol made of lines of amber light slowly turning on the ceiling.

  “You recognize it, don’t you?”

  Richard nodded as he watched the complex emblem of light rotate on the ceiling above the box.

  “Regula.”

  Kahlan didn’t like the sound of the word. She thought she remembered it. She squinted in thought as she tried to recall where she’d heard the word. It finally came to her.

  “You mean Regula as in the book in the library that we were looking at the other day?”

  “That’s the one,” Richard said. “That symbol was on the spine.”

  “That’s right,” Kahlan said in wonder. “I remember now.”

  As he was focused on studying the symbol made up of light above them, Kahlan cradled her throbbing hand against her stomach. It was getting worse just since earlier in the night, since they saw that thing watching them in their room. It stung so badly that it nearly made her eyes water. The stitch of pain finally eased up. She let out the breath she had been holding.

  She’d had much worse injuries, and suffered far greater pain, so she wasn’t overly concerned. It was more of an annoyance than anything. She knew, though, that even such simple injuries could develop into serious infections, so she knew she should probably ask Zedd to take a look at it before it got any worse. He would be able to heal it.

  Richard had in the past used his gift to heal, but it wasn’t something he could do at will, like other wizards. Not for minor things, anyway. His gift was not only more powerful than Zedd’s, or Nathan’s, or Nicci’s, but it was unique in the way it worked. Possibly because he was a war wizard, his power required great need, or anger, as a component in order to come to life within him. Healing a scratch, as painful as it was becoming, was not enough. It would be better to let Zedd look at it.

  But with the representatives causing trouble over the strange prophecies, the thing that had been watching them in their room suddenly attacking them, and now the collapse of the floor of the Garden of Life and the discovery of what was beneath it, there were more important immediate concerns. She would have Zedd look at her hand when she had time.

  “Do you know what Regula means?” Kahlan asked.

  Still looking up at the symbol projected onto the ceiling, Richard nodded. “Yes, but it’s kind of difficult to translate accurately. In High D’Haran ‘regula’ means to regulate.”

  “That sounds simple enough.”

  His gray eyes finally turned down to look at her. “It may seem that way but it’s not.
Its full meaning is a great deal more significant than that simple translation sounds.”

  Kahlan studied his eyes for a moment. “Well, can you give me some kind of sense of what it means?”

  Richard raked his fingers back through his hair, apparently considering how to explain it. “I guess the best way to put it is that Regula represents, well, a kind of autonomous control, but as in…” He made a face as he tried to come up with the right word. Finally he did. “As in to regulate with a sovereign authority.”

  “Sovereign authority?”

  “Yes. Something like the way the laws of nature regulate the world of life.”

  Kahlan didn’t like that sound of that. “So if that symbol up there is also on the book, then maybe the book can help us figure out what this thing is. Maybe even what it’s doing down here.”

  “Could be,” Richard said as he studied the lines of light once again. “There’s a problem, though.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “This symbol may be the same, but it’s backward from the one on the spine.”

  Kahlan shook her head. It was nearly indecipherable to her. It looked like little more than a collection of little circles and hen scratchings within circles with a triangle tying parts of it together along with a collection of other strange designs she’d never seen before.

  “How in the world can you remember that it’s the same symbol? As complex as it is, how can you be sure it really is the same, much less that it’s backward?”

  His gaze returned to her. “Because I understand some of the language of symbols. A lot of spell-forms are really ideas expressed through symbols or emblems rather than words. Symbols, even ones I’ve never seen before, stick in my head. That’s how I solved a number of things in the past. This one is largely new to me. But elements of it seem oddly familiar.”