The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 68

It was deep in the middle of the night by the time Richard finally stepped off the spiral stairs and into the room with Regula. It had been a long journey from the guest quarters up to the Garden of Life. The palace complex was a sprawling city and it sometimes seemed that he spent half his time crossing back and forth through it.

He gritted his teeth in anger at the sight of the machine. He was fed up with the way its predictions had been at the core of every one of the recent deaths. And now the machine was predicting that the hounds would take Kahlan from him.

He couldn’t get the image out of his mind of the manner in which the hounds had taken Catherine from her husband. The thought of that happening to Kahlan had him seeing red.

On the way from the murdered Queen Orneta, despite Nicci’s assurance that Kahlan was sleeping peacefully, he had stopped in to check for himself. He had slipped quietly into the room and by the light of a single lamp burning on a table by the bed he had seen her, covered by the blanket he had tucked under her chin earlier, sound asleep. Her breathing had been even and she wasn’t tossing and turning, so it seemed to Richard that she was resting comfortably. He had gently kissed her forehead and left her to her rest.

He had also checked with Rikka, Berdine, and the soldiers to make sure that they understood that anything at all unusual was to be taken as dead serious. They all understood.

The whole time, the words from the machine, The hounds will take her from you, kept running through his mind.

Zedd looked up when he saw Richard coming. “What is it?”

Richard flicked his hand at the machine. “Remember the prediction the machine issued earlier this evening? ‘A queen’s choice will cost her her life.’”

“What of it?” Zedd asked. “Have you figured out what it means?”

Richard nodded. “Turns out it was about Queen Orneta. She made a decision to throw her allegiance behind Hannis Arc, of Fajin Province, because he believes in the use of prophecy, deals in it all the time, and would be only too happy to reveal it to her and anyone else who wants to be guided by it. A short time later she was killed.”

“Killed? How?”

Richard took a deep breath. “Killed by a Mord-Sith. It makes no sense. I don’t want to believe that one of them did it, but there is no doubt that it was done at the hands of a Mord-Sith.”

“I see.” With a troubled expression, Zedd turned and paced a few steps away as he considered the implications.

Richard pulled the strip of metal out of his pocket and waved it as he spoke. “The machine later issued this omen— the one you sent with Nicci.”

Zedd looked back over his shoulder. “What does it say?”

“It says ‘The hounds will take her from you.’”

Zedd’s hazel eyes reflected how tired he was. His gaze sank. “Dear spirits,” he whispered.

Richard pointed back at the machine. “Zedd, I want this thing destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” Zedd, rubbing his chin with his fingertips, looked up with a frown. “I understand your feelings, Richard, but do you really think that’s wise?”

“Do you know of any prophecy, any at all, that results in a joyous event? Any you’ve seen throughout your life?”

Zedd seemed puzzled by the question, and his frown deepened. “Yes, of course. I don’t recall them exactly, offhand, but I know I’ve seen them before and recall the general nature of a few. They are not as plentiful as more ominous prophecies, but there are prophecies of joyous events sprinkled regularly throughout books of prophecy. Nathan, as well, has had prophecies of happy events or outcomes.”

“And has this machine issued a single prophecy other than simply predictions of suffering and death?”

Zedd glanced at the machine standing silently in the center of the gloomy room lit by the strange light from the proximity spheres.

“I don’t suppose it has.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“Odd? What do you mean?”

“There’s no balance. Prophecy is magic. Magic has to have balance. Even the existence of prophecy itself has to be balanced by free will. But there is no balance to the prophecies this thing has been issuing, is there? It’s all death and suffering.”

“There is the one about it having dreams,” Nicci offered.

Richard turned to her. “But is that really joyous? And even if it is, is it really a prophecy? I don’t think it’s either.”

“Then what was it?” she asked.

Richard thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think it’s prophecy. To me it sounds more like the machine is asking a question about itself. I’ve had dreams … why have I had dreams? That’s what it asked.”

He turned back to Zedd. “But the prophecies of suffering and death that it has been issuing are all the same ominous predictions. They have no balance.”

Zedd looked truly puzzled. “What’s your point, my boy?”

“My point is that I’m not sure that these are really legitimate prophecies.”

Nicci looked skeptical. “What else could they be, then?”

“I think it’s possible that someone is planting these omens and then carrying them out to make it look like real prophecy coming true. They want us to think they’re prophecy. It would be like if I said that I’d had a premonition last night that I was going to draw my sword and touch your shoulder with it, and then I did just that to give the prediction validity. That may sound like I had given prophecy and it came true, but it wasn’t really prophecy.”

“You think someone may be sending these prophecies, or made-up prophecies, through the machine?” Zedd poked a bony finger through his unruly thatch of white hair and scratched his scalp. “Richard, I can’t begin to imagine how such a thing could be done, much less know if it’s even possible.”

Richard threw up his arm. “I don’t care. Just because I can’t figure out if someone really is doing this, or how, doesn’t mean that I should keep letting them get away with it.”

“But to destroy such a thing without knowing anything about it seems—”

“We do know something about it,” Richard said, cutting him off. He fisted his hands. “It has been predicting terrible things and they have come true. I want these murders to stop. I want Kahlan to be safe. I want this thing silenced.”

Exasperated, Zedd looked at Nicci.

“I’m afraid that I don’t have an argument against it,” she said in answer to Zedd’s unspoken question. “There’s something about this machine that has had me worried since the first moment I saw it. It was buried for a reason. Richard may have a point. Nothing good has come from it since it was discovered.”

Zedd looked from Nicci to Richard. “What of the rest of the book, Regula, that is hidden away in the Temple of the Winds?”

Richard gestured vaguely into the distance. “Like you said, it’s in the Temple of the Winds. Even if we travel there, getting in won’t be easy. Even if we get in, the place is immense. There’s no telling how long it will take us to find the rest of the book, if it’s still there and if it isn’t hidden. There’s no telling if it would even be of any use to us. We have a problem, and it’s right here, right now, in this room.”

Zedd took a deep breath and then sighed as he considered it.

“Well,” he finally said, “you may have a point. I have to admit, I haven’t liked this thing from the moment it was discovered. As Nicci says, it was buried for a reason. No one goes to this much trouble to bury and hide the existence of something unless it was causing big problems.”

“Then let’s stop wasting time,” Richard said. “We need to put a stop to it now.”

Resigned, Zedd motioned for them to step back, ushering Richard and Nicci into the protected landing of the spiral stairs where Cara stood guard.

Without further fuss, Zedd turned back to the machine and ignited wizard’s fire between his outstretched palms.

The room lit with rolling ribbons of orange and yellow light that played off the stone walls. Zedd’s white hair was made orange in the light coming from the sinister inferno, which he turned over and over between his hands, working it into a lethal servant. The boiling ball of fire built in intensity, hissing and popping with purpose.

Satisfied that it was compacted the way he wanted it, Zedd finally flung the glowing sphere of liquid fire toward the square metal box sitting in the center of the room. The tempestuous inferno cast flickering light across the floor, walls, and ceiling as it flew, all the while hissing with deadly menace.

Richard felt the powerful concussion in his chest as the sphere of liquid flame exploded against the unyielding machine. The liquid wizard’s fire, one of the most feared substances in existence because it burned so violently, engulfed the machine, crackling as it poured down the sides, burning with white-hot intensity.

Wizard’s fire unleashed in a confined space was extraordinarily intense and profoundly dangerous. Even though Richard, Nicci, and Cara turned their faces away from the inferno, they still had to put hands up to shield themselves against the brutal heat and light from the concentrated conflagration. The burning roar was thunderous.

It felt as if the entire world were being consumed.