The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 58

Still drifting back from that distant place that felt completely detached from the real world, which was beginning to come back into focus all around her, Kahlan knew that something wasn’t right, both with her and with Richard.

She saw Nicci squat down beside him. By the worried expression that overcame the sorceress when she looked into his unblinking eyes, Kahlan knew that something about the healing hadn’t worked the way it should have.

Richard stared off at nothing, completely unresponsive, even as the pain raged in his eyes, even as Nicci placed a hand on his shoulder and shook him.

Nicci’s long blond hair fell forward over her left shoulder as she leaned in around Richard and pressed her first two fingers to Kahlan’s forehead. Kahlan felt the familiar tingle of Additive Magic vibrate and tingle through the nerves of her neck, shoulders, and arms.

Nicci withdrew the fingers and next put them to Richard’s forehead. She backed away and then shoved at his chest. “Let her go. Richard, let go of her.”

When Richard didn’t respond, she put her arms around Kahlan and gently pulled her out of his wooden embrace. Kahlan didn’t resist. She didn’t know why Nicci wanted him to let go of her, but she had no trouble grasping the concern in the sorceress’s voice, or on her face.

Nicci laid Kahlan gently back on the ground. She immediately turned her attention to Richard.

With his connection to Kahlan broken, Nicci pressed the flats of her hands to both his temples. “Let it go, Richard,” she murmured to him.

Richard gasped. Life, awareness, finally flooded back into his eyes. Kahlan let out a sigh of relief that Nicci had managed to pull him back from wherever he was. Richard grimaced when Nicci took her hands off him.

“What are you doing?” he asked Nicci. “Why did you stop me?”

“That would be my question,” Zedd said as he appeared behind Richard.

Nicci tapped the same two fingers she had put to Richard’s and Kahlan’s foreheads to her own, as if signaling Zedd to test it and see for himself. Zedd immediately hiked up his robes and knelt on the other side of Richard. He put two fingers to Kahlan’s forehead, then reached up and did the same to Richard.

“What?” he asked. “What am I supposed to feel?”

Nicci stared at him briefly. “You feel nothing?”

Zedd looked befuddled. “No. Should I?”

Nicci put her fingers back on Kahlan’s forehead, testing, and Kahlan again felt a brief tingle of Additive Magic before Nicci repeated the test on Richard.

She let out a sigh. “I don’t feel it anymore. Now that the connection is broken you can’t feel it.”

“Feel what?” Zedd asked with a frown.

Nicci cast a quick, surreptitious glance at Kahlan. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. It’s not important, we can talk about it later.”

Richard wiped a hand across his face as he recovered from the experience of trying to heal Kahlan. She didn’t really feel any better. Richard had healed far worse than this before. She couldn’t imagine why it hadn’t worked this time. What had her more concerned, though, was why Nicci appeared so upset.

“Why did you stop me?” Richard asked in a heated tone. “I was healing her. You didn’t let me finish.”

That confirmed what Kahlan had surmised, that perhaps he simply hadn’t been allowed to finish. Nicci had interrupted him before he had a chance to finish the healing. But as soon as she had the thought, she realized that couldn’t be the problem, because she had come back, became aware, before Nicci had come in and interrupted. It had failed before she separated them.

It had to be something else that was wrong.

Nicci let out a deep breath. “It wasn’t working. You weren’t healing her, you were just allowing yourself to be opened up to its contagion.”

Zedd looked as puzzled as ever. He glanced at Richard, then down at Kahlan’s arm. “What are you talking about?”

“I could tell that something wasn’t right. The flow of his gift into Kahlan had ceased. Something was back-feeding into him from her. It was using his lifeline, his way back, to steal into him.”

That brought alarm into Zedd’s expression.

Nicci’s gaze moved to Richard’s eyes. “Did you understand? Did you know what I mean?”

Richard, looking frustrated and impatient, shook his head. “Not really. I don’t know what I felt. I don’t know what happened. All I know is that it hurt. I was trying to take that hurt away from Kahlan and it just seemed to get out of hand.”

“The boy heals by instinct, through empathy,” Zedd told the sorceress. “He may have grown up without knowing he had the gift, and without learning how it’s supposed to be done, but I’ve known him to heal things I can’t.”

“So have I,” Nicci said. “He uses his gift in a unique way, but he wasn’t healing this.”

“Are you sure?” the old wizard asked.

Nicci nodded. “I could gauge the flow of power when I felt her, and then when I felt him. It was out of balance. The pain was back-feeding and was gaining control of him. It should have been the other way around. His gift should have been controlling the pain while feeding healing power into her, but it wasn’t. He may have been acting on instinct, or doing what he’s done in the past, but this time he was dealing with something different, something dangerous, and it wasn’t working.” She glanced at Kahlan. “Was it?”

Kahlan had to admit that what Nicci was saying made sense. “No. I don’t understand, though. He’s healed me before.”

“That’s right,” Richard said. “Why wasn’t it working the same this time?”

“I don’t know for certain, Richard, but for some reason the problem you were trying to heal was behaving like a contagion. I guess you could say that it’s like when you care for a sick person, you sometimes only end up catching what they have and then the both of you are sick.”

“But the gift is supposed to protect me from that.”

“The boy is right,” Zedd put in.

Nicci looked reluctant to answer. “It could simply be that with some guidance to fill in the blanks of your inexperience in using magic you might not have had the problem. I can’t say for sure.”

Zedd didn’t waste any time arguing or questioning. “Well, it’s obvious that the scratches I healed before have relapsed. They look infected. I need to go back in and fix this before we do anything else.”

“I agree,” Richard said as he scooted back out of Zedd’s way.

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea just yet,” Nicci said, rather cryptically, under her breath to Zedd.

Zedd looked perplexed by her reluctance. “Well, what I don’t think is a good idea is to let this infection go unchecked. She could end up losing the arm. Worse, if the infection gets worse and moves into other parts of her body it can be fatal.”

Nicci saw the anxiety on Kahlan’s face and relented with a nod and a sigh. “You’re right, Zedd. But let me help you.”

“I would welcome any help,” Richard’s grandfather said as he leaned over Kahlan and pressed a hand against her forehead. Nicci laid her own hand over his.

Kahlan immediately felt the flow of his gift sweeping through her. She felt, too, the separate tingle of Nicci’s magic. While they were similar, each had a unique feel to it. Mixed together as they were, it felt warm and comforting, but in a very different way than Richard’s gift had felt warm and comforting. She knew that Zedd’s gift felt different, so she wasn’t concerned, and she also recognized the unique feel of Nicci’s power. Both of their gifts blended together was an intoxicating feeling.

But she also thought that she felt the shadow of something else, something dark, tense aggressively within her.

As swiftly as Kahlan had the thought, she was swept up in the flow of Zedd and Nicci’s power. She again felt that loss of time and place as the warm glow of magic flooded through her. She could feel Zedd lifting the pain in much the same way Richard had, but with a kind of swift, experienced precision.

Abruptly, it all stopped. In a heartbeat, the mix of Zedd and Nicci’s power was gone.

Kahlan opened her eyes as she gasped in a breath. It had felt like she had been under their influence for only a fleeting moment, but she knew from experience that it could easily have been an hour or two.

Zedd rocked back on his heels. He cast a worried look up at Nicci. “It’s not Richard. Something is wrong. The only difference is that I knew enough to pull back. Richard didn’t.” He pressed his lips tight in silent discontent before adding, “It’s not Richard. I can’t heal her either.”

Nicci regarded him with an unreadable look. “Did you feel it, then?”

Kahlan wondered what “it” was that he was supposed to feel.

Zedd’s face twisted in frustration. “I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything quite like it. It’s a new one on me. I don’t have any idea why I couldn’t get through, but I couldn’t.”

Nicci’s gaze remained locked on Zedd. “What did you feel?”

The creases in Zedd’s face had taken on a troubled angularity as he and Nicci shared a private look. “I don’t know. Something … something dark.”

Nicci betrayed only the slightest hint of understanding, but she didn’t say anything.

Kahlan didn’t know for certain what they were talking about, but she recognized that the two of them shared a silent understanding about it, and she also knew that she had felt something tense within her at the touch of their magic.

Kahlan’s level of alarm rose.

“Maybe Nathan could help,” Richard suggested, not noticing what Kahlan had seen pass between Zedd and Nicci. “He’s a Rahl. Maybe he would be better able to do it since his gift would work better here in the palace. Maybe that’s all it would take.”