The Omen Machine Read online

  Kahlan rose from her chair as the simplicity of it dawned on her. “Of course. Richard is right, these are all backward.”

  Zedd eyed them both as if the insanity had become infectious. “You’re making this machine sound alive. It’s gears and levers, you said. A machine.”

  “Of course.”

  With one hand on a hip, Zedd paced as he considered it. “I hate to say it,” he finally admitted, “but as crazy as it sounds that actually does make sense. Dangerous books involving magic usually have safeguards to keep just anyone from using them. It may sound crazy when you hear it at first, but it certainly would make a powerful safeguard.”

  “It seems like a pretty easy safeguard to crack,” Berdine said. “Sure, it took Lord Rahl a little while, but he figured it out. Seems like a safeguard would have to be more difficult to solve if it really is going to protect a dangerous book.”

  “You really think so?” Zedd slowly shook his head as his gaze left Berdine to meet Richard’s. “The only reason he figured it out was because he activated the magic that showed him the projected symbol.

  “I have a feeling that only the right person could have done that. Many forms of magic are keyed to specific users. Someone else might have found that machine, but I have a feeling that only Richard could have activated it. In so doing it gave him the solution he needed to make the book work for him so that he could use that clue to understand what the machine wants to tell him. I doubt anyone else would have had access to that clue. That makes the safeguard doubly safe.”

  Zedd tossed a metal strip on the table.

  Richard stared at the old wizard for a moment. “Now you’re the one making it sound alive.”

  Zedd only smiled.

  Richard finally sat and scooted his chair up to the table. “Berdine, we have to invert all those rules we had listed out and then link them to the High D’Haran translations.”

  Berdine dipped her pen in an ink bottle and pulled a piece of paper close. “Here, let me see one of those other strips.”

  Richard picked one of the strips up off the table. He turned it over in his fingers a moment before looking at the symbols inscribed on it. He laid it at the top of Berdine’s paper so she could use it as reference.

  “This is going to take a while,” Richard told Zedd as he pulled the book back. “But we’ve already established all the links, so hopefully it will be a little easier this time through.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Richard turned his attention to Benjamin, standing back out of the way with Cara and Nyda, watching. “I need you to do something, General.”

  Benjamin stepped forward. “Yes, Lord Rahl?”

  With the back end of his pen, Richard pointed toward the ceiling. “I need you to take a work crew up there, to the Garden of Life, and have them fix the glass roof. It needs to be done as soon as possible.”

  Benjamin tapped a fist to his heart. “I’ll take care of it, Lord Rahl.”

  “Zedd, Nathan, Nicci, while Berdine and I are working on this, why don’t you go down there and see what you can find out about the machine.”

  Zedd nodded. “I would like to get a look for myself.”

  “And Benjamin, I need you to do something else.” Richard gestured back over his shoulder. “You see that odd notch in the wall? It really makes no sense for this room to have that corner intruding into it like that. We’re somewhere under the Garden of Life. I want you to see if you can’t figure out a floor plan of this area of the palace.”

  Benjamin glanced to the notched corner. “A floor plan?”

  “Yes. I want to know what’s under the Garden of Life, besides the machine. I want to know how far that machine goes down through the palace. I want to know what we’re dealing with. I want to know where the bottom of the machine is. We’re not that far under the garden level, so I suspect that you will find that the machine is behind that odd corner sticking into this room.”

  Berdine was frowning back at the odd jog in the wall. “Lord Rahl, that shelf back there, against that wall…”

  “I know,” Richard said, quietly. “That’s where we found this book. That’s another reason I suspect that the machine is on the other side of that wall. I want to know how deep it goes down through the palace.”

  Benjamin hooked a thumb behind his belt. “While you’re working on translating the symbols, I’ll find out, Lord Rahl.”

  “Nyda and I will help,” Cara said. “The Mord-Sith are familiar with all the corridors— public and private. We have to be able to move quickly through the palace in case there is ever an attack, so we know all the halls, pass-through rooms, and secret passageways.”

  “Good,” Richard said. “Hopefully, we’ll have these strips decoded before you finish mapping the machine’s resting place.”

  Nathan waggled a finger over the book. “And it’s complete enough? There is enough information in the book to decipher all the symbols?”

  “Yes, I believe so,” Richard said.

  Nathan didn’t look satisfied. “If that’s true, if the book is a means to translate the symbols, and all the information you need is there so that you can do just that, then what part of the book is missing? What part was taken to the Temple of the Winds?”

  Richard stared up at the prophet a moment before finally speaking. “According to what little it says on that topic, the part they took to the temple for safekeeping is the explanation of the purpose of the machine.”

  “That’s not very comforting,” Zedd said.

  Kahlan found that thought more than a little troubling as well. Without knowing the purpose of the machine, they didn’t really know what they were dealing with. The fact that the machine had been sealed away and hidden seemed to her to be a bad omen.

  Richard gently slipped a hand around Kahlan’s waist and changed the subject. “Why don’t you go with them.”

  Kahlan twitched a frown at him. “Why?”

  “The translations you already did were what I needed. Berdine and I are likely going to be here the rest of the night. There’s nothing more you can do for now. Why don’t you get some rest? I think you’ll be safe from snooping eyes in the Garden of Life. Maybe you can get some sleep while Berdine and I work on decoding the symbols and Zedd and the others investigate the machine.”

  “We’ll watch over her, Richard,” Nicci said. “No hidden eyes will be looking in at her while she sleeps.”

  “Thanks, Nicci. Zedd, maybe when you get up to the garden you could heal Kahlan’s hand. It’s getting worse.”

  Zedd’s expression reflected his concern. “Of course.”

  Kahlan realized that she wasn’t surprised that Richard knew how much her hand was hurting. It was next to impossible for her to hide anything from Richard.

  When she heard the distant howl, her gaze was drawn to the high windows. She realized that it wasn’t coming from the high windows. It had to have come from somewhere else, but she couldn’t tell where, exactly.

  Kahlan remembered the prophecy the woman gave before she died, that dark things, feral things, would come for Kahlan in the night. The memory of the woman’s words, “Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won’t be able to escape them,” gave her a chill.

  When she noticed that no one else seemed to have heard it, she thought that she must have only heard some other errant sound and mistook it for the howl of a wolf. Richard was right, she was tired. She was letting her imagination run away with her.

  Kahlan kissed Richard’s cheek and then trailed her hand along the back of his shoulders on her way by. He caught her hand. She wished more than anything that he could come lie with her, keep her company, keep her safe. Her hand finally slipped from his gentle grasp as she followed the others on their way to the Garden of Life.

  CHAPTER 36

  Hannis Arc, working on the tapestry of lines linking constellations of elements that constituted the language of Creation recorded on the ancient Cerulean scroll spread out among the clutter on his desk, was not
surprised to see the seven ethereal forms billow into the room like acrid smoke driven on a breath of bitter breeze. Like an otherworldly collection of spectral shapes seemingly carried on random eddies of air, they wandered in a loose clutch among the still and silent mounted bears and beasts rising up on their stands, the small forest of stone pedestals holding massive books of recorded prophecy, and the evenly spaced display cases of oddities, their glass reflecting the firelight from the massive hearth at the side of the room.

  Since the seven rarely used doors, the shutters on the windows down on the ground level several stories below stood open in a fearless show of invitation. Though they frequently chose to use windows, they didn’t actually need the windows any more than they needed the doors. They could seep through any opening, any crack, like vapor rising in the early morning from the stretches of stagnant water that lay in dark swaths through the peat barrens.

  The open shutters were meant to be a declaration for all to see, including the seven, that Hannis Arc feared nothing.

  Many people in Saavedra, the ruling city of Fajin Province down in the broad valley below the citadel, shuttered themselves in at night.

  Everyone out in the Dark Lands did.

  Shutting in at night for fear of what might be outside was only wise, after all. While that was true for those down in the city, it was doubly true for those who lived out in the more remote areas. There were corporeal dangers in the night, creatures that hunted with fang and claw, worthy of fear. There were other things to fear as well, things one rarely saw coming, if at all, until it was too late.

  Hannis Arc, though, did not fear the things that came out at night. He bent those elements to his own ends, mastered them, making him the source of fear, not its victim. He banked the hot coals of those fears in the hearts of others so that they would always be ready to roar to life in order to serve him.

  Hannis Arc wanted people to fear him. If they feared him, they respected him, they obeyed him, they bowed down to him. He made sure that people were never without cause to fear him.

  No, unlike most people who inhabited the Dark Lands, Hannis Arc was not himself burdened by fears. Instead, he was driven by a ceaseless, smoldering rage, a rage that was like a thing alive within him. That rage left no room for fear to find a foothold.

  That ever-present rage dwelling within him was a brightly burning star that always guided his way. It was always there to compel him, counsel him, even to chide him, as it drove him to set great wrongs right. Anger was not only his constant companion, it was his trusted friend, his only friend.

  The glow of the dozens of candles in the stand at the far end of the room wavered as the seven familiars swirled around them on their way by, as if lingering to ride the eddies of heat rising from the flames.

  Mohler, the old scribe hunched over a massive book laid open on a stand not far away, straightened as if he thought he might have heard something. One of the seven glowing forms glided around him, trailing a tendril hand along his jaw. The man glanced around, seeming to feel the touch, but he couldn’t find its source.

  He couldn’t see the familiars.

  The woman standing guard back near the doors could.

  With gnarled, arthritic fingers, Mohler touched his cheek, but when he could find no cause for the sensation his hand dropped to his side and he returned his attention to recording the latest prophecies from the abbey while the seven spiraled up toward the vaulted ceiling to glide along the hulking stone arches and skim just beneath the heavy beams, surveying the gloomy, candlelit room.

  “It’s your move,” Hannis Arc reminded the hunched scribe.

  Mohler glanced back momentarily to see his master watching him. “Ah yes, so it is,” he said as he laid down his quill and turned from his work at the massive book to shuffle over to the stone pedestal that held the board laid out with carved alabaster and obsidian pieces.

  He’d had more than enough time to consider his next move. He’d had most of the night, in fact. Hannis Arc hadn’t pressed. He had already worked out the array of moves available to the man. None seemed to be good choices, although some were not as swiftly fatal as others.

  Hesitantly, Mohler reached out and moved an alabaster piece to another square, taking an inky black piece that occupied it off the board and setting it aside. It was a move that he had probably pondered for hours, a move that captured a valuable piece and put him into a position to threaten to win.

  Hannis Arc rose and, hands clasped behind his back, strode to the board. He stroked the knuckle of his first finger along his gaunt cheek to make it look as if the loss of his piece might have taken him by surprise and his next move required consideration. It did not.

  He advanced a black pawn toward the white side. Mohler had hoped for just that move and he was ready. Without thinking it through he immediately took the pawn, placing his alabaster rook in its place on a square that now placed his opponent in peril.

  Hannis Arc had been expecting such impatience from the old scribe. Unlike most people, Hannis Arc was not plagued by the flaw of impatience. He had been practicing restraint and patience all day for this very moment, just as he had practiced it for de cades for other things. He finally reached out and with a slender finger and thumb slid an obsidian queen to the square where the man had placed his rook, pushing it aside. He hooked the pale rook with his little finger and removed it from play. With measured care he set the captured piece to the side.

  “Checkmate.”

  In unexpected alarm, Mohler’s gaze darted about the board, looking for salvation. His bushy brow finally lifted and he sighed in resignation. “So it is. I’m afraid that I’ve proven yet again to be a poor foil for your skill, Bishop.”

  “Leave me.”

  The man looked. “Bishop?” He lifted a hand back toward the book. “I have not finished recording the reports.”

  “The hour grows late. I will retire soon. You can enter the rest of the reports from the abbey in the morning.”

  Mohler bowed. “Of course, Bishop. As you wish.” He started away but then stopped and turned back. “Do you need anything before I leave you? Anything to eat or drink?”

  One of the familiars spiraled her form around the man, teasing at him. Mohler glanced around, almost feeling it, almost aware of her. In the end he gave up, probably ascribing the sensation to his old bones, and returned his gaze to the bishop, awaiting his master’s wishes.

  “No. I will want to look over the latest words from the abbey first thing in the morning.”

  “Of course, Bishop,” the man said as he dipped another bow. He paused, hand on the door handle, and turned back, as if reading his master’s dark thoughts. “You will have your revenge, Bishop. You will be pleased to see from the latest prophecies that your patience will be rewarded. You will have your rightful place as ruler of D’Hara, I know you will. Prophecy seems to say as much.”

  Hannis Arc glared at the man, assessing whether he was being obsequious or genuinely meant it. He saw the glint of hope in the man’s eyes and knew then that it was the latter. Some men needed an iron fist to rule them. Mohler was one of those, one who found great comfort in the shadow of a great man.

  More than that, though, Mohler had been there. He knew the rage that burned in his master, and he knew the reason for it.

  At that thought, Hannis Arc was visited by a flash of memory he’d had times beyond counting, the jarring, jagged, fragmented impression of his father being dragged out into the courtyard in the night, fighting every inch of the way, proclaiming his loyalty to the House of Rahl even as the powerfully built soldiers began clubbing him; of clinging to his mother before she hurriedly pulled his slender arms off her and stuffed him into an entryway bench, closing the lid before the men charged back in to drag her out as well; of the terrible, singular sound made by a single violent blow of a heavy mace studded with spikes caving in his older sister’s skull as she stood in the entryway, frozen in panicked fear; of the cries and grunts from his mother as she wa
s being beaten to death; of all the blood in the entry, on the courtyard cobblestones; of the still form of his sister lying in the entry; of the corpses of his parents on the cobblestones; of the screams of servants who had witnessed the murders; of the fading cries as they ran off into the night in fear for their own lives.

  Of peeking out again from under the lid of the bench to see the heavily armed soldiers swing up into their saddles and charge away into the night, their assignment of assassination completed.

  Of hiding in the darkness all night, trembling in fear that they would come back and find him.

  Of hours later, just after dawn, when Mohler, a new young servant come up from the city to work at the citadel, found him hiding in the bench and lifted him out.

  All because Panis Rahl believed in striking down any potential challenge to the House of Rahl before it had a chance to develop. He had his soldiers slaughter anyone, real or imagined, who could be a potential threat to his rule. Even the minor ruler of Fajin Province in the distant Dark Lands, who had harbored no particular ill will toward the ruling House of Rahl and had always been loyal, was guilty of possessing the potential to one day be a threat, and so he and his family had to die for the crime of existing.

  But the cunning folk, as they were called, were not to be trifled with. Even the gifted rightly feared their occult powers. Panis Rahl knew that such powers and abilities as dwelled in the Dark Lands could be a threat, but in striking against the ruler of Fajin Province, he had made a mistake. He had struck a generation too soon.

  As the fires of rage roared within him, Hannis Arc knew that the threat to the rule of the House of Rahl this time was all too real. He would see to it. He would never again tremble in fear of a Rahl. He would see the wrongs righted.

  He would have revenge.

  That this new Rahl ruler, Richard Rahl, was said to be different from Panis Rahl and nothing like Darken Rahl, who had managed to outdo his father in every murderous way, made no difference at all to Hannis Arc.