The Omen Machine (Sword of Truth 12)

Kahlan sighed as she idly picked one of the metal strips out of the opening near the glass window. Something about it caught her eye. She was surprised to see that there were markings on it. She held it closer.

She was stunned by what she saw.

“Richard, look.” As he bent close she held it out in the light for him to see. “This one in here isn’t blank.”

Richard took it from her when she held it out and carefully looked over the line of symbols seemingly burned into the metal.

“They’re all different,” he said, half to himself.

Kahlan looked in the slot where she had found it. “There are two more strips in here.” She pulled them out, took a quick look, and then handed them to him.

He looked them over, one at a time, studying each for a moment. “More symbols. But they’re different. Each strip has distinctive emblems on it. Look, this one has a whole string of markings, but the one that was on the bottom only has a few.”

When the machine began to make more noise, as if a whole bank of additional gears had been engaged, Richard bent to look into the slit of a window. Kahlan could see the light from inside reflecting in lines that moved parts of symbolic elements over the contours of his face.

“I can see a strip of metal being pulled out from the bottom of the stack on the other side. It’s being pulled into the machine and going way down inside.”

Kahlan put her head close to his, trying to see what he was talking about. Then she saw it, way down among the gears, shafts, and levers, being pulled through by a small pincer mechanism holding the front of the metal strip. The pincer was attached to a large wheel that carried the strip of metal up and around with it to place it in a track where a series of levers moved it along different junctions of track until another geared pincer finally picked it up.

Kahlan and Richard both turned aside a little as a flash of intense orangish white light ignited deep within. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a bright pinpoint of light dance across the metal strip. The focused beam of light from far below moved with lightning speed but in a tightly controlled manner. The light was so intense that she could see a moving, glowing white-hot spot of light shining through the top of the metal where the beam hit it from underneath.

As the strip came around with the wheel, another mechanism took it in turn and rotated it around so that the symbol that had been burned into the underside of the metal was now facing up. At exactly the correct point in the arc of the gear, the pincers opened and a lever on a geared mechanism swung in from the side to push the metal strip through a slot in the side of the machine.

She heard it drop into the tray.

Richard and Kahlan straightened from the little window and looked at each other.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

Kahlan nodded. “Pretty hard to miss.”

Richard pulled the strip of metal out of the tray. He immediately tossed it on top of the machine and shook his hand, then blew on his fingers. He pushed the hot metal strip around with a finger for a moment until it cooled, then gingerly picked it up and studied the single symbol etched into it.

“What about that one? Do you recognize it?” Kahlan asked.

Richard stared at it with a troubled expression. “I’m not entirely certain. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s pretty close.”

“Pretty close to what? What is it?”

Richard looked up at her again.

“It’s the emblematic representation for fire.”

CHAPTER 30

Outside of the Garden of Life hundreds of heavily armed guards filled the corridor in both directions. They all looked a great deal more than edgy. Kahlan realized that they would have had to have heard the lightning hit the Garden of Life. They probably heard the glass roof breaking and falling as well. They undoubtedly wondered what in the world had been going on beyond the doors.

They might even have feared that it was an attack of magic of some sort, and so they were standing ready in case they were called upon to defend the palace.

She knew, though, that despite their worry, none of them, not even a Mord-Sith, would dare to enter the Garden of Life while the Lord Rahl was inside unless he invited them in.

The grim look on Richard’s face and the set of his jaw as he came marching out probably only confirmed to all the men watching him approach that they had made the right decision to remain outside.

The only people who regularly went into the garden were the staff assigned to tend the grass, flowers, shrubs, and trees. Only the most highly trusted people on the palace staff were allowed to work in the garden. Even then, when they went in to do their work officers of the First File watched them at all times.

During the war, when they were under constant threat and there were dangerous objects of magic containing tremendous power locked away in the Garden of Life for safekeeping, not even the people who tended the garden had been allowed to go in to take care of the plants and trees. As a result it became for a time a wild, overgrown place that had taken on an eerie look that in a way matched the gloomy mood of everyone in the palace.

After the war had ended, it had taken a lot of work to return the garden to the state of splendor it was now in.

Kahlan had a feeling, though, that even such occasional tending was at an end and the Garden of Life was about to again become strictly off-limits to everyone except on Lord Rahl’s instructions.

Throughout history the Garden of Life had been a place where the Lord Rahl, from time to time, had unleashed some of the most powerful magic in existence.

It had been a place that on occasion had been a gateway to the underworld itself.

Magic was a mystery to most people and therefore greatly feared. Kahlan knew that magic could be glorious, wondrous, a magnificent affirmation of life. But Kahlan knew magic’s other side, its dark and dangerous side. Most people only knew magic as a dark, mysterious danger. For the D’Haran people, the Lord Rahl was their protection against those dark dangers of magic. For their part, these soldiers were meant to be the steel against steel. They would lay down their lives in that service.

But it was Richard’s responsibility as the Lord Rahl to deal with any matters involving magic.

It seemed that the Garden of Life had once again become the stage for dangerous magic.

Nyda stood before the ranks of soldiers, her arms folded, watching Richard and Kahlan come. The Mord-Sith was in her red leather. She looked to be in a foul mood, but for a Mord-Sith that wasn’t necessarily at all unusual.

“What’s going on?” Nyda asked.

As Richard stormed past, he took her by the arm and turned her around to walk with him, but he spoke to the commander of the soldiers on his way by.

“No one is to go in there. No one. Do you understand?”

The commander clapped a fist to his heart in salute. “Of course, Lord Rahl.”

The commander immediately assigned men to guard the doors and then issued orders to the rest of them to take up stations along the hallways and intersections. The hall came alive with movement and the echoing jangle of metal as men rushed to take up their posts.

Richard leaned close to Nyda. “Go get Berdine. Bring her to the library.”

Nyda, still being carried along with him by her arm, pointed downward. “You mean the library down there, below us, where she has been working?”

“That’s right. Get her and send her there. Then get my grandfather and bring him there, too. You had better bring Nicci, Nathan, and Cara as well.”

“All of them? Now, in the middle of the night?”

“In the middle of the night,” Richard confirmed.

Nyda leaned out past Richard to look over at Kahlan. “What’s going on?”

“The roof fell in.”

CHAPTER 31

Kahlan’s throbbing hand lay in her lap as she sat in a wooden library chair, not far from Richard’s side, as she worked on translating a few passages in a book written in an obscur

e language she happened to know. She was having trouble making her eyes focus. Richard needed her help to cross-reference a few descriptions in the book that he and Berdine were studying.

Kahlan yawned and looked up when she heard a commotion and saw Zedd storming in through the doors at the far end of the room. His robes looked like they were having a difficult time keeping pace with the rawboned wizard. Richard only glanced up momentarily from the book he was absorbed in reading.

Kahlan went back to her work but from time to time checked out of the corner of her eye as Zedd made his way resolutely across the gold and blue carpets. His face, set with grim creases, fell into shadow between each of the reflector lamps hung on columns at the end of the rows of shelves.

“Bags, Richard, what’s going on?”

“No need for that kind of language. I need to see you, that’s all.”

Zedd came to a halt on the other side of the heavy mahogany table. Finally having a chance to catch up, his simple robes swirled in around his legs. He took in Kahlan’s face, searching her expression for any hint of the nature of the problem, before returning his attention to Richard.

“I have good reason for my language. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be awakened in the middle of the night by a Mord-Sith?”

Kahlan glanced up at the windows on the balcony. She could see only darkness. Morning was still a long way off. She knew they weren’t going to have a chance to get any sleep. At least the storm seemed to have broken.

Richard didn’t look up from the book. “As as matter of fact, I do. Did she use her Agiel to wake you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then believe me, you have nothing to complain about.”

Zedd planted his fists on his hips. After again assessing the look on Kahlan’s face, he seemed to think better of what he had been about to say. His tone softened.