The Omen Machine (Sword of Truth 12)

She will soon be among the walking dead.

With that, the figure vanished like smoke through the walls. As Kahlan watched her go, she saw for the first time other people back in the walls, woven in the way Henrik had been. Some were near the surface of the wall while others were so far back in she couldn’t see much of them. None had clothes. A number of them were clearly dead.

The small woman with the leather thongs sewing her mouth closed turned and tossed a handful of dusty material in the shallow bowl where small sticks were smoldering. Sparkling light spiraled up. Other figures, grotesque figures only partially visible, crowded into the room.

It felt like being among an assembly of ghosts, except they didn’t look like ghosts of people. They were gangly, human-like, skeletal creatures. Their long arms and legs had big, knobby joints. Their flesh, tight on their slender limbs, as if they had no muscle whatsoever, glistened with mottled, slimy rot. Their demonic heads bore only a passing resemblance to humans’. They growled at the sight of her, their thin lips drawing back to reveal large mouths crowded with pointed, needle-sharp teeth.

The woman with the sewn-shut lips reached out with a filthy, blackened hand and grasped Kahlan’s wrist.

Paralyzing pain instantly crackled through her. But it was more than simply pain. Besides the jolt of pain, the touch carried the sensation of utter, disheartened hopelessness.

It was like being touched by death.

As all the glowing creatures in cowled robes closed in around her, Kahlan finally got a good look at their frightening faces. It was like looking at rotting corpses. Their gnarled hands clawed at her clothes, and Kahlan knew that she had to do something, and fast. She couldn’t allow them to do what ever it was they intended.

The woman with the sewn-shut mouth was touching her.

That was all Kahlan needed. More than she needed.

The world seemed to slow almost to a stop. Time belonged to Kahlan. Exhaustion, fear, pain, sickness, misery, hopelessness were forgotten.

Mercy did not exist.

The moment was hers.

In that timeless place within, that place of power, that core of her being, where her inborn Confessor power resided, Kahlan released the constraints on her ability.

Thunder without sound jolted the air.

The power of the concussion shook the whole structure.

All around the people in the walls screamed as they shuddered violently, their arms and legs shaking as much as they could in the confinement of the thorny walls. The air was filled with their howls.

When it finally died down, the woman with the sewn-shut lips merely smiled.

Kahlan’s power hadn’t worked on her.

Kahlan’s power worked on everyone. Everyone who was human, anyway. It didn’t work on certain creatures of magic, on beings that had elements of magic, or were different.

Nicci’s words that they had no defense against the Hedge Maid rang through Kahlan’s thoughts. This could only be the Hedge Maid.

Knobby fingers started clawing at her clothes again.

Kahlan had nothing left with which to resist, to fight. She was sick and weak, and on top of that she had just used the last bit of strength she had left in order to unleash her power.

Gnarled hands pulled at her clothes. The bony creatures growled through open mouths filled with fangs. Kahlan was upright only because of all the hands on her, pulling at her, pressing her this way and that, tearing and yanking.

As they went about their work of pulling her clothes off, the Hedge Maid turned to her jars and bottles, opening various containers, adding things to the smoldering fire in the broad, flat bowl in the center of the room. When sparks flew up, she used a slender stick to draw symbols in trays of ash to the side.

Kahlan felt tears running down her face, dripping from her jaw, as she was dragged back by the glowing figures. The demonic, bony creatures hissed and snarled at her.

Kahlan felt as if she were being conveyed by evil spirits to the torturous depths of the underworld.

She thought that maybe she was.

With the help of the snarling creatures, hands all around pulled strands of thorny vines up around her. They wrapped them around her wrists and ankles, anchoring the ends in the wall behind her, tying them in tight.

Kahlan was only barely conscious as laughing, cavorting figures danced around with strands of vine and thorny branches, adding them to the weave of the wall.

She cried out in pain when she realized that some of the creatures around her were biting her abdomen. She could feel the needle-sharp teeth sinking into her flesh. She cried out in despair and grief, too, over the thought of never seeing Richard again.

She watched in horror as the glowing figures pressed bowls against her belly, collecting the blood as it rolled down her.

Kahlan could do nothing to stop the madness. Every movement she made only worked the thorns deeper into her flesh.

The glowing figures, and the bony creatures dancing around the room, all laughed and chattered in the strange squealing clicking sounds.

Others, who had already collected bowls with blood running from Kahlan’s bite wounds, took the blood to the Hedge Maid. The woman with the leather strips sewing her lips shut drank greedily. Creatures danced around her, arms flailing in the air, feet high-stepping. The room pulsed with the drum-like sound of their bony feet slapping the woven floor.

Kahlan’s blood ran down the small woman’s chin, dripping off in thick strings. Cockroaches emerged from the floor where the blood dropped to feast along with the Hedge Maid.

Kahlan felt merciful darkness stealing her away from the insanity raging all around her.

CHAPTER 81

Richard stood staring through the soft haze of drizzle at the tunnel-shaped entrance of tightly woven sticks and branches. He thought that it looked just a little too welcoming. The whole, carefully maintained trail through the swamp of Kharga Trace was too easy, too simple, too enticing the way it encouraged visitors in.

He wondered where the spider was.

He knew that Kahlan had gone this way. He knew because he had tracked her there. He’d seen where she’d fallen from her horse and slid down the steep slope. He’d seen her footprints, staggering in a crooked line, wandering off the trail into boggy mud and then back again.

He could tell by the tracks that she was hardly able to stand anymore. He could see by the halting, unsteady prints she left just how sick and exhausted she was.

He would have caught up with her long before had his horse not been killed. It had happened after dark when

a huge wild boar had charged out of the brush. It wasn’t rutting season but wild boars could be aggressive anytime, and this one certainly had been, charging in at the horse when they surprised it. As the horse went down, the boar’s razor-sharp tusks slashed the horse’s belly open. Richard ran the boar through with his sword, but it was too late. After killing the boar, he had no choice but to put the horse out of its misery. There had been nothing he could do for the poor animal.

With his horse dead, much of the last part of the race to catch Kahlan had been on foot. He had contemplated leaving her trail and going off to find another horse, but without knowing the area, he feared that even if he could manage to find a horse, the search would cost him too much time, so he had pressed on.

Because she was so sick and weak she hadn’t traveled as swiftly as she might have, so she didn’t get out too far ahead of him. But she had been going fast enough that he couldn’t catch her on foot.

As he stood at the tunnel entrance to the structure, he heard someone running toward him. By the stride and the weight of the footfalls, he thought it had to be an awfully small person.

In another moment, a boy came racing out.

He was wearing one of Kahlan’s shirts.

Richard went to a knee and swept an arm around the boy’s middle to catch him before he could escape. He felt hot with fever.

“Henrik?”

The boy, panicked tears running down his face, stopped fighting and blinked. “Lord Rahl?”

“What are you doing here?”

The boy’s chin wrinkled as fresh tears welled up. “The Hedge Maid, Jit, had me. She put me in the walls with the others—”

“Slow down. What do you mean, she put you in the walls?”

Richard could see that the boy was bloodied from wounds all over his arms and legs. The shirt had spots of blood as well.