The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 18

It was a long journey down to the dungeons, but it was something Richard had to do. He needed to question the woman who had thrown her four children to their death. He needed to try to figure out what was happening.

Kahlan had gone instead to meet with the representatives to try to calm their concerns about prophecy while Richard was looking into the source of those concerns. Richard’s flip tongue had more than once gotten him into trouble. Kahlan would be less likely to get frustrated with them than he would. She had been schooled in diplomacy.

He wished that Verna, the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light, could have gone with Kahlan to help explain the dangers of a layperson inferring anything from prophecy. Prophecy was not at all as clear as it sounded. That was because it was not intended for those who weren’t gifted. It was actually a kind of private message passed down from prophets in the past. Only a prophet could have the visions a true prophecy engendered and in that way understand its true meaning.

Verna knew a great deal about those dangers. After all, the Sisters of the Light had imprisoned Nathan in the Palace of the Prophets for nearly a thousand years out of fear that he would reveal prophecy to ordinary people.

Verna could have helped dissuade people from thinking they could properly understand prophecy. Unfortunately, along with Chase and his family, she had left for the Wizard’s Keep immediately after Cara’s wedding. There were gifted boys there who needed supervision and training. Zedd was supposed to return as well, but he had wanted to stay for the reception, and now the storm and troubling events had further delayed him.

As Richard stepped off the rusty iron rungs of the ladder, the captain of the dungeon guards straightened and clapped a fist to his heart in salute. Richard dipped his head in response. He glanced around in the flickering torchlight as he brushed grit off his hands. At least the smell of burning pitch helped cover the stench.

The captain looked worried to see the Lord Rahl himself down in his dungeon. His level of concern eased a bit when he saw Nyda come down the ladder. The tall Mord-Sith’s red leather outfit and blond hair stood out in stark contrast to the dank, drab stone room. The captain flashed a polite smile at Nyda as he nodded in greeting. He obviously knew her.

Richard realized that Mord-Sith were hardly strangers to dungeons, especially this one. In the past, enemies, real or imagined, would have been held in these dungeons and Mord-Sith would have come to torture information out of those with the gift.

Having once been one of those prisoners, Richard knew all about it.

He gestured to the iron door. “I want to see the woman who killed her children.”

“And the man who tried to kill his family?”

“Yes, him too,” Richard said.

The captain worked a big key in the door. The lock resisted for a moment, but after the latch clanged open, the man yanked the heavy iron door open enough to slip through. After hooking the keys on his belt, he took a lantern from a table and led the way into the inner dungeon. In a well-practiced sweep of her arm, Nyda took another lantern off an iron peg in the wall.

Before Richard could go through the door, she stepped in front of him and went in first. He was quite familiar with Mord-Sith’s insistence on going first so they could check for danger. He had long ago learned that his life was easier if he let them have their way and didn’t argue with them over such minor issues. He saved commands for times when they really mattered. Because of that, the Mord-Sith heeded his commands.

The captain led them down a series of narrow passageways that in most places had been carved out of solid rock. Even after thousands of years, the chisel marks looked as fresh as when they had first been cut through the stone.

They passed cell doors behind which criminals were held. Up ahead, in the light of the captain’s lantern, Richard saw fingers sticking out, gripping the edges of tiny openings in the iron doors. He saw eyes looking out through some of the black openings. When the prisoners saw Nyda coming behind the captain, the fingers withdrew and the eyes disappeared back into the blackness. No one called out. No one wanted to draw her attention.

At the end of a particularly narrow, crooked passageway with doors spaced farther apart, the captain came to a halt at a cell on the left. There were no fingers in the opening, no eyes looking out. When the heavy door was pulled open, Richard saw the reason. The outer door opened not into a cell, but into a small inner room with another door. The second, smaller door held the prisoner in an inner room.

The man used a long sliver of fatwood to transfer a flame from his lantern to a second hanging on an iron peg. “These are the shielded cells,” the captain said in answer to the question on Richard’s face.

Even though the palace had been constructed in the form of a power spell that strengthened the gift of any Rahl, and weakened that of others, the shields around the cells were an extra layer of protection to contain anyone gifted, no matter how powerful they were. No chances were taken with the gifted.

The captain lifted his lantern to look in the small opening in the second door. When he was sure that the prisoner wasn’t going to spring at him, he unlocked the door. He used all his weight to pull on the door. Rusty hinges squealed in protest as they gave ground. When the door had been opened enough for Richard to enter, the captain went back out in the hall to wait.

Nyda, Agiel in her fist, entered first. The woman, sitting on the floor, scrambled backward until her back was pressed against the far wall. She didn’t have far to go. She shaded her eyes from the sudden intrusion of light. She didn’t look at all dangerous. Except to her children.

“Tell me about your vision,” Richard said.

The woman looked at Nyda and then back to him. “Which vision? I have had many.”

That wasn’t what Richard had been expecting to hear. “The vision you had that made you kill your children.”

The woman’s eyes reflected points of lamplight. She didn’t answer.

“Your four children. You threw them over the edge of the cliff. You killed them. Tell me about the vision that you thought was cause enough to do such a thing.”

“My children are safe now. They are in the hands of the good spirits.”

Richard stuck his arm out in time to bar Nyda from stepping in to ram her Agiel into the woman. “Don’t do that,” he said softly to her.

“Lord Rahl—”

“I said don’t do it.”

He had no sympathy for the woman, but he didn’t want her tortured with an Agiel, either.

Nyda briefly glared at him before pointing her Agiel at the woman. “Answer the question or I will spend some time alone with you making sure that you don’t ever fail to answer any of Lord Rahl’s questions again.”

The woman’s eyes turned toward him. “Lord Rahl?”

“That’s right: Lord Rahl. Now answer his question.”

“What vision did you have that made you kill your children?” Richard repeated.

“I have no children, thanks to you!” The woman held one arm out protectively, expecting the Agiel.

Richard planted a boot on the bench carved out of the solid stone of the cell wall. He rested an elbow on his knee as he leaned toward the woman. “What are you talking about?”

“You won’t protect us from what is to come when the roof falls in. You instead scorn prophecy’s warnings.” The woman lifted her chin defiantly. “Those children, at least, no longer have to fear what is to happen.”

“And what is going to happen?”

“Terrible things!”

“What terrible things?”

The woman opened her mouth to tell him. She seemed surprised to realize that she had nothing to say.

“Terrible things, that’s all,” she finally said.

“I want you to tell me about the terrible things that are going to happen,” Richard said.

She blinked in confusion. “I, I don’t…”

She unexpectedly clutched her throat as she slumped to the dark stone floor, where she convulsed once before going still.

Richard turned to someone behind him as his right hand went to the hilt of his sword.

There was no one there.

“What’s the matter?” Nyda asked as she turned, looking for a threat.

Richard glanced around. “I thought I felt something, but I guess it’s just the nature of this place.”

He bent to the woman. Her lips were covered in red froth. It was all too obvious that she was dead.

“Well, isn’t that something,” Nyda said. “You should have let me use my Agiel. If you had, we might have gotten answers.”

“I don’t want you using that thing on people unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

She regarded him with the singular, menacing look that all Mord-Sith seemed to be able to conjure at will. Richard knew that it was an aspect born in madness. He knew because he had once been lost in their world.

“It was necessary,” she said. “There is a growing threat to you. It is foolish to hesitate or to shy away from doing what is necessary to prevent that threat from harming you. If it harms you, it harms all of us. What threatens you threatens us all.”

Richard didn’t argue. He thought that maybe she was right. “I think that if you had used your Agiel she would have simply dropped dead right then.”

“Now we’ll never ever know.”