The Omen Machine Page 32

  She had to admit, that did make sense. Still…

  “There are certainly enough comfortable places in the palace,” Richard told her. “We’ll find you a place where you can rest and Zedd can treat your arm.”

  Kahlan pushed herself up on her elbows again. “And what about the problem we had in our bedroom?”

  Richard showed her a crooked smile. “I have an idea about that. Not to worry.”

  But she was worried. Kahlan did her best to ignore the pounding pain in her head and the throbbing ache in her arm. “I’m better,” she lied. She cleared her throat, trying to make her failing voice sound normal. It didn’t really help.

  “You don’t sound better,” Nathan said.

  “There are more important things to worry about other than fussing over me,” she said. “It was probably just a bad dream that gave me a headache, and as for my arm, well, sometimes scratches get worse before they get better. I think you’re all making too much of it.”

  No one looked in the least bit convinced. Maybe because Kahlan wasn’t convinced herself, but more so because she knew she had a fever. It was making her hoarse. She hardly had any voice left. Whenever she spoke it only revealed how bad she felt.

  “I still think I ought to give it a try,” Nathan said.

  “If you want, I’d be happy to be your patient,” Kahlan said, trying to sound better than she felt.

  As Nathan stepped around Richard, Richard gestured. “By the way, what do you have with you?”

  Nathan looked at the paper in his hand as if he’d forgotten he had it. “Oh, yes.” He waggled it back at Richard. “From your personal prophet down in the library.”

  Richard made a sour face. “What does Lauretta have to predict now?”

  “I’m afraid that it sounds serious. That’s why I came looking for you. It’s hard to say what it’s actually about, but it’s possible that it’s another omen about Kahlan.” Nathan waved the paper briefly, then turned it around so that he could read it aloud. “It says, ‘A queen’s choice will cost her her life.’”

  “You mean you think it could be another omen about Kahlan because it’s something like the one before?” Zedd asked. “Like that first one saying ‘Queen takes pawn.’”

  Nathan shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know. I’ve had no visions about it. It could mean anything.”

  Richard’s face had gone ashen. He snatched the paper from Nathan and read it himself as if he didn’t believe it.

  “What’s wrong?” Zedd asked.

  Richard continued to stare at the paper for a moment before he finally looked up at his grandfather.

  “Earlier tonight,” he said in a quiet voice, “the machine spoke to me.”

  Zedd leaned in. “What do you mean, it spoke to you?”

  Richard’s hand holding the piece of paper lowered as he searched for words. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

  Zedd didn’t look inclined to let him off that easy. “I think you need to give it a good try.”

  Richard pressed his lips together for a moment first as he considered how to explain it. “The machine told me that it had had dreams. Then it wanted to know why it had had dreams.”

  Nicci’s brows lifted. “It asked you a question?”

  Richard nodded. Kahlan frowned as she tried to recall through her throbbing headache where she had heard those words before. They sounded familiar. Finally, it came to her.

  “Isn’t that what the boy down in the market said? That he’d had dreams? Then he asked why he’d had dreams. Remember?”

  “I remember,” Richard said. “Henrik. And you’re right. He said the exact same words.”

  The room was silent as everyone tried to take in the implications. Through experience, they had learned that the same prophecies the machine gave also came out through others. Kahlan wondered if this could be the same kind of thing.

  Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “It wasn’t just what the machine said. It was how it said it that has me so concerned.”

  “What do you mean, ‘how it said it’?” Nicci asked. “It burns the things it says onto those metal strips. Did it give the message this time in a different manner?”

  “No, it said both things by burning the symbols on the strips of metal, same as before.”

  “Then what do you mean by ‘how it said it’?”

  “You all know what the machine sounds like when it’s going to give a prophecy— the sudden crash of sound that it makes when it starts into motion all at once from a dead stop?” Richard glanced around at the nods. “Well, this time it was different. Rather than that kind of sudden beginning at full speed, this time it started slowly, softly, like it was waking up.”

  Zedd threw his arms up in the air. “Waking up! Waking up and telling you that it had been dreaming? Dear spirits, Richard, it’s a machine!”

  “I know, I know,” Richard said, gesturing for his grandfather to calm down and listen. “But it started slowly, quietly, all the gears and things inside gradually building speed and moving into place slowly. After it was fully up and running, then it inscribed two strips with those two things about dreams: ‘I have had dreams,’ and ‘Why have I had dreams?’

  “Even more strange, though, is that the two strips weren’t hot when they came out of the machine.”

  “They’re always hot when they come out,” Zedd declared.

  Richard leaned in a little, looking to each of them in turn. “Well, this time they came out of the machine cool to the touch. Both of them.”

  Zedd rubbed his chin. “That is odd.”

  “I was down there the rest of the night,” Richard went on, “waiting to see if it would say anything else. I fell asleep for a while. Then, all of a sudden, the gears started into motion again, but the usual way, the way you’ve seen it happen— abruptly, all at once. The sudden crash of noise instantly woke me up.”

  He leaned back, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a metal strip. “After it woke me up, just before I heard Kahlan scream and came running up here to see what was wrong with her”— he held the strip up—“the machine issued the same omen. And, it came out of the machine hot, like usual.”

  “What same omen?” Zedd asked, suspiciously.

  Richard gestured at the note Nathan was holding. “The same as that. ‘A queen’s choice will cost her her life.’”

  CHAPTER 60

  With his foot, Richard flipped over the carpet. He didn’t see the symbol that he had seen scratched into the floor of the corridors outside their previous bedrooms and the one he’d found outside Queen Catherine’s room after she had been killed. He was encouraged by that much of it. The symbol meant “Watch them.” He didn’t want anyone watching them while they slept, as they had done before.

  He was concerned about the omen that the machine had given, the same one that Lauretta had written down, but at the moment he was far more concerned about Kahlan. He didn’t know whether the prophecy “A queen’s choice will cost her her life” was about Kahlan, as the first one about “Queen takes pawn” had been, or not, but at the moment he was more worried about taking care of the infected scratches on her arm. They would have to worry about the prophecy later.

  Besides, trying to figure out what prophecy meant was a fool’s game.

  For now, he wanted to get Kahlan in a comfortable place without the machine nearby where Zedd could put an herb poultice on her arm to draw out the infection while she got some much-needed rest.

  He had hopes that this place would be safe, since it was not one of the bedchambers belonging to the Lord Rahl. In those bedrooms something had been watching them. Of course, he had later discovered that there were symbols scratched in the floors outside those rooms, but still, even without the symbols, he didn’t trust the official bedrooms for the Lord Rahl. They seemed too easy a target for forces he didn’t yet understand. Until he knew how those symbols got scratched on floors in well-guarded halls, as well as what their ultimate purpose was, he
didn’t trust that those rooms would be safe.

  This room was not one of the Lord Rahl’s bedrooms, but instead it was a secluded guest bedroom. The wing had no guests at the moment, so it wouldn’t have anyone near, and no one would really know that they were there. It was several floors above ground level, so no one could come in from outside. It wasn’t big, but Richard didn’t care about that. He simply wanted a safe place to sleep.

  Before he could enter the room, Cara pushed in ahead of him. Benjamin already had men of the First File stationed at every intersection of halls throughout the whole wing of the palace. Rikka stood not far down the hallway to one side, Berdine on the other. Both were in their red leather. While he welcomed the guards outside the room, he didn’t really put too much faith in them stopping what really mattered to him. What had been in their room before, watching them, had without any trouble slipped past guards.

  This time, Richard intended to have a little surprise if the mysterious watchers again came looking in.

  With an arm around Kahlan’s waist, Richard led her into the room. He set the load of their packs and other gear down to the side. Cara came back from her inspection and gave him a nod to indicate that she didn’t see anything that caused her any concern in the room.

  “What do you think?” he asked Kahlan.

  Richard saw that her gaze took in only the bed. “Looks good to me.”

  He was glad that she looked longingly at the bed. He was worried about her and wanted her to be able to get some sleep. Cara’s face, after surveying Kahlan’s, clearly reflected her concern as well.

  Zedd gave Kahlan a gentle pat on the back as he came into the room behind them. “You get settled in, dear one. I’ll get a poultice prepared and be back as soon as I can to put it on your arm. Then you need to get some sleep. That will help more than anything.”

  Kahlan nodded. Her face was ashen. By the look in her green eyes alone Richard knew how much pain she was in. He also knew that she didn’t want to worry him, so she wouldn’t admit the full extent of how she really felt. But he could see it clearly enough in her eyes.

  Because they had been sleeping on the ground in the Garden of Life, Kahlan was in her traveling clothes of pants, a shirt, and boots.

  “How about we get you out of those things and into bed?”

  She shook her head and immediately crawled onto the bed.

  Before they had left the Garden of Life, Nathan had tried healing her arm. He had no better luck than any of the rest of them had had. Richard was depending, now, on Zedd’s poultice to draw out the infection and some good old-fashioned sleep.

  Zedd leaned toward Richard. “I’ll go make up a poultice and be right back.” He pointed and spoke in a low voice. “In the meantime, just to be on the safe side, get rid of those mirrors.”

  There were twin mirrors over a dressing table. “Don’t worry,” Richard said, “I have something in mind for them.”

  Once Zedd left, Richard did his own check of the room. Not that he didn’t trust Cara’s search, but he wanted to be sure. Since it was a single room and wasn’t very large at that, there wasn’t much to check.

  The wardrobes smelled of aromatic cedar and were empty. At the back of the room there were double doors with glass panes. With the back of his hand, Richard pushed the drapes aside and looked out the glass into the darkness. There appeared to be a small terrace with a potted evergreen to the side up against the fat, waist-high stone railing. Out on the grounds far below, Richard saw a patrol of soldiers.

  Once Cara left, Richard tried to get Kahlan to at least take off her boots. She fussed and said that she was cold and just wanted the blanket over her. Richard knew how when he had a headache and was throwing up and terribly sick to his stomach he didn’t want anyone messing with him, either. He carefully laid the comforter over Kahlan and gently tucked it up around her neck.

  When Kahlan closed her eyes, he went to the drapes at the double doors in the back of the room and took off the fabric swag holding them back. At the dressing table, he took down the only two mirrors in the room. He placed the identical mirrors on the floor, standing face-to-face, and used the swag to tie them tightly together. When he was finished, he leaned the paired mirror up against the padded seat.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over, hugging Kahlan to warm her up and let her know that she wasn’t alone. Her eyes were closed and she didn’t say anything, but she let out a little sigh to let him know that she appreciated it.

  Richard woke up when he heard a knock. It was Zedd, back with the poultice. Richard handed him the small canister of aum that he had retrieved from his pack. As Zedd used a wooden slat to mix the aum Richard gave him into the slightly yellowish concoction he had in a small bowl, Richard turned down the blanket and laid Kahlan’s arm out on top of it for him.

  Kahlan sleepily opened her eyes, frowning, to see what he was doing, why he was disturbing her sleep. When Zedd slathered the poultice on her red, swollen arm, she winced in pain.

  “It will be better soon,” he told her. Kahlan nodded as she closed her eyes.

  Zedd wrapped bandaging around it as Richard held her wrist up for him. “This will not only help draw out the infection, it will draw out the pain as well. I also put in a little something that will help her to sleep.”

  Richard nodded. “Thanks, Zedd. I’m kind of worried about how groggy and unaware she is.”

  “She just doesn’t feel well and needs rest,” his grandfather assured him as he patted him on the shoulder. “You ought to get some sleep as well.”

  Richard didn’t think he would be able to sleep. He just wanted to sit up and watch over Kahlan.

  They both turned when they heard an odd, muted, distant cry of tortured anguish.

  “Dear spirits,” Zedd said. “What in the world was that?”

  Richard smiled as he pointed. “I put the two mirrors face-to-face. I think that something tried to look in on the room and they got a look of something they very much didn’t like seeing: their own reflection.”

  Zedd laughed softly, trying not to wake Kahlan. “Now that, my boy, is a nice bit of magic.”

  CHAPTER 61

  The situation calls for a choice, and I’ve made it,” Queen Orneta said. “My decision is final.”

  The small gathering of representatives shared looks.

  Duchess Marple set her cup down on the low table and leaned in a little as she looked up at Orneta. “So, you mean to say that you really believe, then, that Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor are agents of the Keeper? Seriously?”

  Orneta noted that the woman clearly sounded more scandalized than incredulous. Her eyes, too, gleamed with the prize of such sordid gossip. Some people delighted in nothing more than bringing down the powerful with scandals of unsavory sins.

  Orneta was not in the least bit interested in gossip, or throwing stones at the mighty. She was driven by more important concerns. She cared about the contemptible behavior because of what it meant for her and her people.

  Others in the small group whispered their more serious worry to one another. Orneta had been having intensive talks with these people over recent days. They were among the representatives who were the most concerned about prophecy, who believed firmly in it, and who wanted it used to help guide them into the future. They were greatly troubled that the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor wouldn’t share prophecy with them. They felt that their views were being ignored.

  Orneta had never really known these people to be all that concerned with prophecy, but recently it had taken center stage in their lives. It was much the same with her. She supposed that since peace had come, so had broader concerns about the future.

  As they had learned from the intimate discussions with Orneta and Ludwig, there could be only one explanation as to why Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor refused to share prophecy.

  Orneta gestured to Ludwig. “As Abbot Dreier has revealed, a number of places in prophecy have been discovered that name Lord Rahl ‘t
he bringer of death.’ I take no satisfaction in telling you this. Nor do you need to take my word for it. Though I doubt that it would be wise to ask Lord Rahl to show you the reference material, it is available. Bishop Arc, reluctantly, would show it to you if you insisted on seeing it with your own eyes.”

  The notion that the Keeper of the world of the dead was influencing and using their leaders for his own ends was clearly alarming. Most didn’t want to believe it was true, but they could not argue the evidence.

  “Who but the Creator, who has created all things, would know the future?” Ludwig asked. “Since the Creator knows all things, how would He warn us, His creation, of dangers He sees for us in the future?”

  Eyes big, everyone leaned in a little. “Prophecy,” Ludwig said in answer to his own question. “The Creator uses omens to warn us of danger only He can see. Clearly, the Nameless One would want to suppress that means of salvation, would he not? Would he not want to possess the most trusted among us to conceal those prophecies from us and thus to insure that we are more easily delivered into the arms of death itself?”

  The implication was clear. Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor, in hiding prophecy from these leaders, could only be working toward the Keeper’s ends.

  It was a sobering conclusion, and one that these people did not take lightly, one that, even for the duchess, transcended mere gossip. Orneta thought that maybe they needed a little demonstration of proper resolve to help them make up their minds as to what to do about it.

  She loosely grasped Ludwig’s arm. “Would you please send word to Bishop Arc that we could use his guidance where matters of prophecy are concerned? Let him know that there are some of us who view prophecy, as does he, as vital to our future, and we would like to be kept informed of what prophecy says. Let him know, also, that in return for his help, I, for one, have decided that he will have my loyalty, and the loyalty of my people.”