The Omen Machine

  “So then no one was hurt?” Kahlan asked.

  “No,” Nathan said. “We got there in time to prevent another tragedy.”

  Kahlan let out her breath. “That’s a relief.”

  “So this man had also had a vision?”

  Nathan nodded. “He’s a jewelry maker. He told us that he had a vision that men are going to come to his house to rob him but he won’t be there. In this vision, the thieves torture his wife and children, trying to get them to reveal where the gold he uses to make jewelry is hidden. They don’t know. The men don’t believe them and over a period of hours torture his family to death, one at a time, trying to make them talk. The man insisted that he could not bear to allow such a horrific thing to happen to his family, that it was better to kill them quickly than let them endure the agony they would otherwise suffer.”

  Richard looked puzzled. “That’s not at all like the other prophecies.”

  “We have him locked up, if you want to question him,” Benjamin said.

  Richard nodded, lost in thought.

  The general hooked a thumb behind his weapons belt. “There is something else, Lord Rahl.”

  Richard looked up. “What else?”

  Benjamin took a deep breath. “Well, my men managed to get all the people and their animals down on the plain into the plateau before the worst of the storm descended on us last night. While the last of them were being ushered inside, the men conducted a wide sweep, wanting to make sure that they didn’t miss anyone, that no one was left behind or got lost in the storm to freeze to death in one of those flimsy market tents.

  “While they were scouting they found a boy who had been dragged off and killed. He was maybe ten, no older.”

  “Killed?” Richard asked. “What do you mean he was dragged off? How was he killed?”

  The general didn’t shrink from the question. “He’d been partially eaten, Lord Rahl.”

  Richard blinked in surprise. “Eaten?”

  “Yes, Lord Rahl. His insides had all been eaten out. His face had been chewed off. The skull had long gouge marks from teeth. One arm and the other hand were missing. Animals had feasted on him, tore him open, and mostly ate out his innards.”

  Richard sagged a little at the news. “A small boy, out in the storm, lost, away from people, would be easy prey for wolves, or even a pack of coyotes. It was probably Henrik, the sick boy I talked to, the one who ran off.”

  “My men took account of everyone we herded inside. We were still trying to find the boy you had talked to. We talked to his mother. She told us that her boy hadn’t come back. She was worried sick.”

  “That must have been him, then— the dead boy you found.”

  Benjamin was shaking his head before Richard had finished. “That was our thought, too, but it wasn’t him. We described the clothes to the mother. She said that wasn’t what Henrik wore. A little later a man came to us for help. He was looking frantically for his boy. My men asked what he was wearing. The man described the dead boy’s clothes perfectly.”

  Richard pressed his lips together in regret. “Then that means that the sick boy, Henrik, is lost out there on the Azrith Plain. In this storm he’s frozen to death by now. If a pack of wolves didn’t take him first.”

  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 palac
e 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.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Richard held his tongue. He wasn’t in the mood to argue about what was done and over and couldn’t be changed. He instead turned away from the dead woman and stepped over the high doorsill to the waiting captain.

  “The woman is dead. Take me to see the man who was put in here this morning, the jeweler, before he too drops dead.”

  The captain glanced through the open door, perhaps expecting to see blood, then gestured. “It’s the cell down there, Lord Rahl, across the way.”

  In short order he had the outer door unlocked and the key turning the lock of the second door. After looking through the small hole in the door, he pulled it open.

  Nyda cut in front of Richard and went in ahead of him, lantern in one hand and Agiel at the ready in the other.

  “You bastard!” the man cried as he went for Richard when he stepped inside.

  Nyda’s Agiel caught him across the throat. He fell back with a shriek, pressing his hands to his throat as he gasped in agony.

  This time Richard didn’t protest Nyda’s use of her Agiel. The man had given her ample cause.

  Richard was losing his patience and didn’t waste any time with formalities. “You tried to kill your family today. Why?”

  “Because of what’s going to happen to them, that’s why.” His voice was hoarse and gravelly from the lingering effects of the Agiel. His eyes bulged with anger. “It’s your fault!” Blood came out with his words.

  “And how do you figure it’s my fault?”

  The man jabbed a finger toward Richard. “Because you won’t listen to prophecy.” He had to swallow back the pain and blood. It was lowering his voice, but not his fury. “You think you’re too important to heed prophecy. You think you know better.”

  “I know a great deal about prophecy,” Richard said. “It isn’t as simple as you seem to think.”

  “It is. I’ve had visions of the future before and they’re stone simple to understand. What’s more, they always come true.”

  “What kind of visions have you had?”

  The man was still comforting his throat. His anger cooled a little. He cast a wary look at Nyda before answering.

  “Things such as having a feeling that a customer I hadn’t seen in a long time would come to me with a commission. He soon did. One time I was making a ring for a wealthy man, and while working on it I had a premonition that the man would die before the ring was finished. The next day the man died.”

  “Those are different,” Richard said. “Those are small things, small foretellings. Those aren’t the same thing as prophecy.”

  “They came true. They were foreknowledge and they came true, just as I had envisioned them.”

  “Having a premonition that someone is going to return for more of your work is not the same as a vision that would cause you to try to murder your family.”

  “Not murder! Mercy!”

  The man sprang up, his hands going for Richard’s throat. Nyda dropped him with her Agiel. He hunched on the floor, arms folded across his chest, gasping in shuddering pain. She put a boot on his back and leaned down close.

  “If you try that again I will make you sorry you were born. After I get done with you, you will curse my very existence until the day you die, but you will behave yourself. Do you understand me?”

  The man, trembling in the lingering pain fro
m the touch of the Agiel, nodded as he panted, trying desperately to catch his breath. Nyda pushed him with her boot. He toppled back. Finally he sat up with his back against the wall, glaring at Richard.

  “My family is going to suffer unimaginable torture because you keep me locked in here where I can’t give them a merciful end.”

  “I heard all about your vision. Even if it was true, you are the one who will be responsible for their pain, either that of torture or the death you would inflict on them, all because you never stopped to think that there might be another way.”

  The man blinked in confusion. “Another way? What do you mean?”

  “Well, let’s say that you really do believe that your premonition is true, that men will come and torture your wife and children to try to make them reveal where your gold is hidden.”

  “It is true!”

  “Fine, let’s say it is. Then why didn’t you do something to protect your family?”

  The man swallowed, still trying to recover his breath. “Protect them?”

  “Yes. If you care so much about them then why wasn’t your first thought to protect them? Why wouldn’t you go to someone— the First File, or Nathan the prophet, or me?”

  “No one would help me. No one would believe me or be able to prevent those murdering thieves from coming and grabbing my wife and children. My family will be tortured.”

  “Because of you.” When the man frowned at Richard, he went on, “The men in your vision want to know where your gold is hidden. Your wife and children don’t know, so they can’t reveal the location. The thieves don’t believe them and try to torture the information out of them.”

  “That’s right!” the man said, shaking his finger at Richard again. “They will suffer that torture and die because you don’t heed the vision and see that it’s true.”

  “No, they will suffer it because you don’t believe it’s true.”

  The man paused, confused. “But I do believe it’s true.”