The Omen Machine Page 23

  The sun was up, filling the room with light. Soldiers of the First File patrolled the room, keeping an eye on the men up above near the source of light and also watching the opening into the darkness below.

  Richard found it unsettling to have people in the Garden of Life. He had come to feel of it as a private refuge. He supposed that his ancestors had for thousands of years felt much the same way about the garden sanctuary, a place where the occasional release of some of the most dangerous magic in existence made the garden a frightening place to be, yet a place that most of the time offered the peace of quiet seclusion.

  Benjamin, talking with an officer of the guard, spotted Richard and rushed his way. The workers on the scaffolding kept working, but they couldn’t help watching out of the corner of an eye.

  “Lord Rahl, are you all right?” Benjamin asked. “I heard there was a fire. The Mother Confessor is worried, too.”

  “I’m fine.” Richard aimed a thumb over his shoulder toward his grandfather and the prophet. “Zedd and Nathan were there, thankfully. They were able to put it out.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  Richard glanced around. “Where is Kahlan?”

  Benjamin flicked a hand toward the ragged hole in the floor. “She and Nicci are down there, with the machine.”

  As Richard started toward the ladder, Cara joined Benjamin. “I told Lord Rahl that you wanted to see him.”

  Benjamin fell in beside Richard. “Yes, that’s right. I have the information you wanted, Lord Rahl.”

  Richard paused at the ladder leading down into the gaping hole. “You mean about how far the machine goes down in the ground?”

  Benjamin nodded. “First of all, you were right. That funny kink in the library several floors below us is because of that thing down in the hole. The library wall has to have that odd notch in order to go around the machine. It’s behind the wall.”

  Behind the wall where the book Regula had sat on a shelf. It made him wonder all the more about the placement of books in the libraries. Their locations had never made any sense. Maybe that was only because he knew far too little about them.

  Richard held the ladder and let Zedd and Nathan go down first. Richard went next, with Cara and then her husband following. At the bottom of the ladder they had to climb over some of the larger rubble as they went around the walkway to the spiral stairs. In single file they all descended into the tomb of the machine.

  The hushed room below was lit by the eerie light of the proximity spheres. Kahlan smiled when she saw him, looking relieved to see that he was all right. Nicci, her arms folded, deep in thought as she studied the silent metal box, only glanced up briefly. Richard was glad to see that she was there, watching out for Kahlan.

  “It looks quiet,” Richard said.

  “Dead quiet,” Kahlan said.

  “It hasn’t made a sound or given off that strange light you spoke of,” Nicci said, emerging from her thoughts. “It appears to be as still and silent as it probably was for thousands of years.”

  Zedd skimmed his bony fingers along the top of the machine, almost as if fearing any greater contact, but unable to resist touching it. “That’s what Nathan and I found as well. Not a peep out of it.”

  Richard wasn’t actually all that unhappy to hear it. He would not be unhappy if the thing went back to sleep for another few thousand years.

  “How’s your hand?” he asked Kahlan.

  She lifted it, turning it to show him. There was only a faint red mark left where it had been swollen and inflamed.

  Kahlan flashed a smile at Richard’s grandfather. “Despite the difficulty of using his gift in the palace, Zedd was able to heal it. Quite the accomplishment, I’d say.”

  Zedd waved off the flattery. “Not all that difficult, healing a scratch. Just don’t ask me to reattach your head or anything demanding.”

  Richard was relieved that it was taken care of. It was one less thing to worry about. He turned his attention once more to the general.

  “Were you able to map where this thing goes down through the palace?”

  “With my help,” Cara said as she dragged a finger along the top of the machine in imitation of Zedd, as if tempting the sleeping menace.

  “So how many floors down does it go?”

  General Meiffert shifted his weight to his other foot. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that, Lord Rahl. We haven’t been able to find the bottom, yet.”

  “I thought you said that you had the palace under here mapped out.”

  “We do. We were able to determine that the machine goes all the way down through the palace.”

  Richard was more than a little surprised. The Garden of Life was one of the highest places in the palace. There were a lot of floors below them down in the palace.

  “All the way? It’s that big?”

  “It’s worse than that, Richard,” Kahlan said in a troubled voice.

  “I’m afraid that the Mother Confessor is right. Once we had a diagram of the palace below here drawn out and we could see how it went down through the core of the palace, we went down into the foundation inspection tunnels below the lowest floor. We opened up a small hole in a foundation wall and behind it we found solid metal”— with his knuckles Benjamin rapped the side of the metal box—“just like the sides of this machine, here, and just like behind the wall in the library.”

  Richard stared at the silent machine lit in the glow of the proximity spheres. It didn’t seem all that tall. He had to lean over to look in the little window. But he had been able to tell from looking down into it that it went much deeper than it appeared, much deeper than the floor where they stood.

  “If it goes down through the palace foundation and into the plateau, then there’s no telling how deep it goes.”

  No one spoke into the uneasy silence. Richard looked from one grim expression to another.

  “Tell him,” Nicci finally prompted.

  “Well,” Benjamin said with an uneasy sigh, “we actually did find more of the machine down lower.”

  “Down lower? You mean in the passageways up through the plateau?”

  “Not exactly,” Cara said, apparently unhappy with the slow pace of the explanation. “We kept mapping downward, since we had the pattern of how the machine went through the palace and the way the rooms and stairways were placed around it. Nathan and Zedd helped with that pattern. It creates such a complex layout in the palace that we’ve been unaware all this time that there was something that big hidden away behind the walls of various rooms and stairwells.”

  “We’ve always known that the palace is laid out in the shape of a spell-form.” Nathan gestured toward what was above them. “The Garden of Life is the central node of the spell-form, giving it power as a containment field.”

  Richard frowned at the prophet. “You mean, you think that because the Garden of Life is a containment field, that hid the machine within the central node?”

  “In a way, but not exactly,” Nathan said. “The central node made it hard to know the machine was there simply because of its location within that central part of the spell-form. For the spell-form to work, the central node can’t be breached from the sides, or from beneath, so the stairwells and passage-ways below are laid out in the same shape that the spell-form dictates. That’s why the rooms and passageways go around the machine. They are actually avoiding breaching the node, not avoiding the machine or trying to hide it.”

  Richard was lost in thought, contemplating the design of the spell-form. Spell-forms were emblematic. He understood those designs. He understood how this one worked— in theory, anyway.

  “Of course,” he said, thinking out loud. “You can’t breach the axis of the form. A spell’s web isn’t two-dimensional, it’s three-dimensional. Something below would breach the axial confluence the same way that a hallway running right through the center of the Garden of Life would ruin the containment field.” He looked up at the gifted people watching him. “The central part of the spell-f
orm is walled off by the rooms and passageways below in order to protect the node.”

  “That’s right,” Nicci said. “And beyond those walls just happens to lie this machine.”

  The staggering implications were beginning to dawn on him. “Such an axial convergence in the spell-form is fed from below.” He was taken aback by the realization. “That’s why the passageways and stairs coming up to the palace, to this central node, through the plateau below, all spiral upward.”

  “That’s what they do,” Cara confirmed. “The stairs and passageways twist in a spiral upward, just like the rooms in the palace below us. That actually made it easy to diagram the plateau. It may be a great height, but the basic design, spiraling up with rooms and stairs along the way, is simple once you understand how it works.”

  Richard couldn’t imagine a Mord-Sith thinking magic was simple or understanding how it worked. He looked from one face to another.

  “Do you mean to say that the machine goes all the way down somewhere into the center of that spiral up through the plateau?”

  “Worse.” Cara leaned in. “Once we had started mapping it out, with Nathan and Zedd showing us how the spell-form would be drawn, we were able to go down through the palace and find the central shaft that is this node thing. That central area contains the machine. That also allowed us to map it downward through the plateau.”

  “But you didn’t tunnel into the walls down in the plateau to see if the machine was at the core? So you aren’t sure it goes that far down.”

  “We didn’t have to,” Benjamin said.

  Cara folded her arms. “I sent Nyda with some of the other Mord-Sith, armed with the map we had made, to escort Benjamin down into the catacombs. Sure enough, the same pattern is laid out in those tunnels, too. They have the same protected core that the palace above has.”

  Richard nodded. “They would have to because they feed the axis of the spell-form—the containment field that is the Garden of Life. The spell-form has to go to ground intact. You can’t breach it from below or the whole thing wouldn’t work.”

  “Well, down there, in the lowest reaches of the catacombs, in the hub of those tunnels, that’s where Nyda and I dug an inspection hole.” Benjamin tapped a finger on the silent machine. “We hit the metal wall of this thing.”

  Richard’s head spun with the dizzying implication. The machine that rose up through the palace to just under the Garden of Life came all the way up through the plateau from the Azrith Plain far below.

  CHAPTER 41

  Richard couldn’t begin to imagine what it could all mean— what the machine really was, who had made it, and why it had so long ago been sealed away.

  And worse, why it had suddenly awakened from its long slumber.

  He supposed that what ever the machine’s purpose had been at one time, it might have fallen into disuse and, being so massive, might have been more trouble than it was worth to dismantle, so it had simply been walled away and forgotten.

  Yet, for all he knew, it could just as well be that the machine had been sealed away because it had been a source of trouble. It wouldn’t be the first time that prophecy had caused trouble, and perhaps the machine was no less troublesome for that reason.

  But none of that explained why it had come back to life now.

  Unable to answer any of those questions for the time being, Richard turned to his grandfather. “So, what have you been able to learn about the nature of this thing?”

  Zedd looked somewhat exasperated, maybe even a little sheepish. He glanced at Nathan and Nicci before he answered.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid.”

  That wasn’t what Richard had been expecting to hear, least of all from Zedd.

  “Nothing? Nothing at all? You had to have been able to learn something.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Richard spread his hands in frustration. “But it uses magic. Can’t you at least tell something about the magic it uses?”

  “So you say.” Zedd laid a hand on the machine. “We can detect no magic. The machine has been as silent as this grave where it rests. As far as we can tell it’s just an inert collection of gears and levers and wheels and ratchets and shafts. We looked down inside, as best we could, but that told us nothing useful. All the inner workings seem to be made of ordinary metal, even if on a grand scale.”

  Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “Then what made the gears turn when we were down here before?”

  Zedd shrugged. “We’ve done everything we can think of to get it to start up, or to react, or to do something to reveal its nature, but it remains silent. We’ve fed in threads of magic, used analysis spells on it, and sent in conjured probes, but they reveal nothing.”

  “Maybe that’s just because the palace weakens your power,” Richard suggested.

  “Being a Rahl, my power works just fine here within the palace,” Nathan said as he swept his hand out over the machine, “yet my power was of no more use on this thing than Zedd’s was.”

  Richard turned to Nicci. She had different abilities than either Zedd or Nathan did. She could wield Subtractive Magic. He hoped that maybe with her unique gift she could sense a hint of magic that Zedd and Nathan couldn’t.

  “You must be able to tell something about it.”

  She was shaking her head even before he had finished. “It’s as Zedd says. None of us can detect any magic— that includes me. Kahlan told me all about what it did when you first found it. The slot where you found the strips of metal with the symbols on them is empty. It hasn’t made any more since the ones you found.”

  Richard heaved a sigh of frustration. “But how does it do all the things it does?”

  Nicci unfolded her arms to hold a hand out to the machine. “Does what? It has not turned one gear, or let out one bit of light, since you were down here last. It’s as still and silent as it has been for probably thousands of years.”

  “But all those parts down inside were all moving and turning, all lit with some kind of strange orangish light.”

  “I saw it too,” Kahlan said. “We’re not both imagining it.”

  “We’re not saying you imagined it,” Zedd said as he withdrew his hand from the top of the machine and sighed, “only that we haven’t seen it do any of those things. Unless it comes to life again, we can get no sense of it.”

  Richard was actually relieved that the machine had gone silent. It meant that they had one less problem to deal with. They still had the nettlesome issue of prophecy without the machine adding its own.

  Richard laid a hand on the flat, iron top.

  The instant he touched the machine the ground rumbled with the thunder of the sudden power of all the heavy pieces of machinery inside abruptly thrown into motion.

  With a dull thud that shook the ground more sharply, light shot up from the center of the machine, like lightning in the darkness, projecting the symbol up onto the ceiling, the same symbol they had seen the last time, the same symbol that was on the side of the machine and in the book Regula. As massive gears inside turned, so did the emblem written in lines of light on the ceiling.

  Zedd and Nathan raced to the machine and bent to look down through the window.

  Zedd pointed, speaking over the roar and clatter of all the huge gears turning against one another. “Look down there. It’s moving a strip of metal through the mechanism, just as Richard described it.”

  Nicci placed the flats of her hands on the machine, apparently trying to sense its power.

  She immediately jumped back with a gasp of pain.

  “It’s shielded,” she said, comforting the ache in her elbows and shoulders.

  Zedd gingerly touched one hand to the machine, to test it, but more lightly than Nicci had done. He, too, had to yank his hand back. He shook it as if he had touched fire.

  “Bags, she’s right.”

  “There,” Nathan said, pointing down at the window, careful not to touch the machine. “The strip of metal is moving through t
hat bright beam of light.”

  Everyone waited silently as Nathan and Zedd peered down through the window. Richard could see lines of light, parts of emblems, play across their features.

  The metal strip dropped into the slot.

  Richard grabbed Zedd’s wrist. “Careful, it will be hot.”

  Zedd licked his fingers and then plucked the metal strip from the slot and quickly tossed it on top of the machine.

  Richard could clearly see the fresh emblems that had been burned into the metal. Wisps of smoke still rose from them. With a finger he pushed the strip around to better see the designs.

  “Any idea what it says?” Nathan asked.

  Richard nodded as he took in the collection of symbols. “Yes, it says ‘Pawn takes queen.’”

  “Like before,” Kahlan said.

  “I’m afraid—”

  “Look,” Nicci said, pointing down into the window. “It’s making another.”

  As soon as it dropped into the slot, Richard snatched it up and quickly flipped the hot metal onto the flat iron top of the machine.

  He blinked at what he saw.

  As he stared, Kahlan put a hand on his arm. “Richard, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s the matter?” Zedd asked. “What does it say?”

  Richard finally looked up from the strip to his grandfather, and then the others.

  “What it says doesn’t leave this room. Understand?”

  CHAPTER 42

  The door carefully opened a crack in response to his soft knock.

  “Abbot.” She pulled the heavy, ornately carved door open the rest of the way. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  Ludwig removed his rimless hat and bowed his head respectfully. “How could I resist an invitation from the most beautiful queen in the palace?”

  Her demure smile took the edge off her air of authority. It was exaggerated flattery and she recognized it as such. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help appreciating it.