Nicci didn’t look to want to debate the subject. She looked like she had something on her mind.
“What is it?” he asked.
Nicci briefly gazed into his eyes. “First of all, I want you to know that I just came from your room. Kahlan is sleeping peacefully. I personally checked the room for anything out of place, anything out of the ordinary, any traces of magic of any kind, any problem at all. Kahlan slept peacefully through it all. Then I checked all the men guarding the room and the area. Rikka and Berdine were in the corridors. I told them to keep their eyes open for anything that seemed even slightly odd, any sign at all of anything.”
Richard frowned. “What’s going on?”
Her resolute gaze met his. “I was with Zedd, down with the machine, when it started softly, slowly, the way you described. It built speed, then it inscribed a prophecy on a metal strip. The strip came out cool, like you told us it did when the machine then said that it had had dreams. It then went quiet and still again. Zedd is staying down with it in case it issues any more omens. He asked me to bring the strip it inscribed to you. On the way, when I checked on Kahlan, like I told you, I asked Berdine to translate the strip for me.”
Richard was getting seriously suspicious. “So what does this one say?”
She took a breath to steel herself and then handed him the strip. “I would rather you translate it yourself. I don’t wish to be the messenger in this.”
Frowning, Richard took the strip and looked at the one rather simple emblem on the strip, followed by a more complex element.
He felt blood rush to his face in hot rage.
The strip said The hounds will take her from you.
He clenched his jaw. “That’s it, I’ve had it with that machine. I want it destroyed!”
As he headed for the door, Nicci and Cara raced to catch up with him.
CHAPTER 66
Kahlan woke to the feel of warm breath on her face. It made absolutely no sense.
The alarm of her inner voice warned her to keep her eyes closed and to remain perfectly still.
She frantically tried to understand what was going on, but she couldn’t make sense of it. She knew that it wasn’t Richard. He was worried about her and would never do something that would frighten her, especially when she was not feeling well.
Her left arm hurt. She only dimly recalled Zedd putting something on it and wrapping it in bandages. But her arm was not the immediate problem.
Her experience during the war, and even more, her training and experience as a Confessor, automatically took over. She ignored her still-throbbing headache, her nausea, the ache of her arm, and put her full focus on the problem at hand. Without opening her eyes, or moving, or changing her breathing, Kahlan began to take assessment.
Something was keeping her tightly pinned under the blanket. She tried to imagine what could be holding her down. As she put her mind to understanding it, she thought that it felt rather like someone on their hands and knees directly over her, with a hand and a knee to either side, pinning the blanket down.
She knew that the room was heavily guarded, so she was at a loss to imagine how anyone intending harm could have gotten in. She couldn’t think of a single person who would do such a thing as a joke. She realized that the smell of the thing was decidedly unpleasant and not human.
The heavy breathing had an element of a low growl to it.
Ever so carefully, she slitted her eyelids open just the tiniest bit.
Near to her, to each side, she could see something slender. Something slender and hairy. She realized that it could only be the front legs of an animal like a wolf or dog, possibly a coyote. In the dim light of the single lamp on the bedside table, it was hard to tell the color.
With that bit of information, the frantic, bewildered confusion began to clear. Her thoughts of what it could possibly be, thankfully, began to coalesce.
It was not a person on all fours over her. It was some sort of animal. By the weight of it on the bed, what ever it was had to be rather big, too big, she realized, to be a coyote.
And then she heard the distinctive low growl, and felt the hot breath again. By the smell of the thing, the legs she could see, and the panting growl she was pretty sure that it had to be a big dog, possibly a wolf.
She was having a great deal of difficulty conceiving of what it could be doing in her bedroom.
She recalled, then, the dog that had crashed into their bedroom door, the wildly aggressive dog that the soldiers had been forced to kill.
She didn’t know how this dog could have gotten into the room. She set aside the effort of trying to figure it out. It didn’t matter how it got in. It only mattered that it had, and that the animal was dangerous— she had no doubt of that.
With her body pinned under the blanket, there was no hope of leaping up and racing for the door. It was too close to her. She would never make it.
As she opened her eyelids just the slightest bit more, she could see the muzzle snarled back, and the long teeth. If she tried to jump up, slowed by being trapped under the blanket as she was, the beast would rip off her face before she had a chance to get her arms up to defend herself.
She realized that the animal was standing between her right side and her right arm. Her left arm was trapped close to her body, but her right arm was not; it was outside the animal’s legs.
She knew that she had only one chance. She also knew that she could not delay. Dogs and wolves both had a predator instinct. They were excited by prey trying to get away, by it running. As she lay perfectly still, the prey drive was being kept in check.
But only as long as she was perfectly still, and only for the moment. She knew that the dog could decide to act first.
She could hear the low, menacing growl getting deeper, getting a little louder. She could feel the vibration of it in her chest.
The dog was deciding to flush its prey.
She had no time to waste. She knew that once it sank its teeth into her, there would be no escape.
She had to take the initiative.
CHAPTER 67
Kahlan slowly pulled in a deep breath, preparing herself.
The dog sensed something. The growl rose in power. Suddenly, with all her strength, as fast as she possibly could, she used her right arm to whip the blanket up, over, and around the dog. It began to lunge. In an instant, though, before it could fully react, before it could drive forward and before its teeth could reach her face, she had the beast rolled up in the blanket.
The rotating momentum of throwing the blanket over and around it, of enveloping and trapping the animal, rolled them both over the side of the bed. They crashed to the floor, Kahlan on top of the powerful, struggling dog. Its legs, encased in the blanket, kicked frantically to escape.
Kahlan knew there were guards right outside the door. She tried to cry out for help, but her throat was so sore that her voice was gone. She couldn’t bring forth a scream.
Fortunately, she had just missed knocking the bedside lamp off onto the floor with them, so she could see what she was doing. From years of experience, Kahlan instinctively reached to the knife at her belt so that she could dispatch the wildly thrashing beast.
The knife wasn’t there.
She was confused at first as to why not, wondering if she had lost it when she rolled off the bed. Almost at the same time, she realized that she didn’t usually wear it in the palace. She kept it in her pack, now. As she fought the dog, she looked up in the dimly lit room to see where the door was, hoping that she could try to make an escape.
That was when she saw the glowing eyes of three more dogs near the door, heads down, ears back, teeth bared, drool hanging from their mouths. They were big, powerfully built, dark, short-haired dogs with thick, muscular necks.
She couldn’t imagine how in the world they had managed to get into the room. As she frantically looked around for a way to escape, she saw that one of the double doors at the back of the room was partially opened.
It was all s
he could do to keep the animal wrapped in the blanket under her at bay. Its hind legs kicked as it snapped and tried to bite. She had stuffed a wad of blanket in its mouth. The confusing fight was keeping the other dogs from joining in, at least for the moment. She knew that at any second they would attack.
As she looked up again, checking on where the three were, she saw one of them take a step closer.
She also saw her backpack not far to the right, near the foot of the bed. Her knife was in her pack.
There was no way she could hope to get through a door guarded by the three snarling hounds. Her only chance was to get her knife so she would at least have a fighting chance to defend herself.
Without pausing to consider the wisdom of it, she threw a leg over the squirming dog trapped in the blanket and stretched to the right for her pack. She just managed to catch the strap with her fingers.
As the lead dog of the three bounded toward her, she swung her pack with all her might. It knocked the dog from its feet and sent it sliding across the floor.
Without missing a beat, she sprang to her feet, kicked the dog in the blanket as hard as she could in the ribs, and bolted for the open door at the back of the room.
Out of nowhere from the darkness at the sides of the room, other big dogs lunged out at her, just missing her.
Kahlan gasped in fright and dove through the open door out to the small balcony. The railing caught her in the middle, driving the wind out of her. She was lucky it did, because she could see that it was quite a drop to the ground, a drop that would have killed her.
She spun to shut the door but the dogs were already through. She saw that up against the side of the building, not far from her balcony, there was another balcony. There were several feet of space separating them, and quite a drop between them.
There was no time to consider it, and no other option. She put a foot up onto the top of the railing and used it to boost herself across the space toward the other balcony. Teeth snapped closed, just missing her ankle.
She landed on the top of the fat railing on the second balcony, but slipped and fell sprawling on the floor. Looking up, she saw that on the far side of the balcony there was a narrow stairway down to the ground. She looked back and saw the dogs stand with their front paws on the balcony of her room, looking to see where she had gone.
She looked back at the stairs. This had to be how they had gotten up to her room. They had come up the stairs, leaped across to the balcony outside her room, and gotten in that way.
She saw the dogs back up on the balcony to her room, getting the space they needed to make the leap. She had no time to stop and think. She was in full terror mode as she jumped up and raced for the stairs.
She bounded down the steps three at a time as the first dog made the leap across. She panted, out of breath, as she frantically ran down the steps, hooked a hand on the end cap of the railing to spin herself around for the next flight, and launched herself down those as well.
She looked back briefly, reasoning that she could use her backpack to fend them off if they got too close. When she saw the snapping jaws lunging for her, she realized that fending them off with her pack was not going to work. She ran all the faster down the steps, taking each turn by hooking her hand over the newel and spinning around to change directions at each switchback flight of stairs.
Having to make those turns slowed the snarling pack of dogs as they slid on the stone, scrambling to gain footing as they turned the corners. Kahlan was able to gain a lead on them. It was not a comfortable lead, but it at least gained her a bit of distance from the teeth.
Her head hurt so much that she thought she might simply collapse and then they would have her.
She remembered the prediction of the woman who had murdered her children, the woman Kahlan had taken with her power, the prediction that fangs would come for Kahlan and tear her apart.
Kahlan ran all the harder.
But even as she ran, she knew that she was near the end of her endurance. She could feel her strength waning. As she found herself racing across the ground in the dead of night, she was near to dropping from exhaustion. Behind, the hounds were coming, and they were catching up again. She had no choice but to keep running.
The hammering pain in her head was close to overwhelming her. She knew that she would not be able to go on for long, and then the hounds would have her.
She remembered the horrific sight of Catherine, killed by animals of some kind. Kahlan was pretty sure that she now knew what had killed the pregnant queen.
The same thing had killed Catherine and her unborn child that was now after Kahlan. There was no doubt that if these beasts caught her, they would rip her apart the way they had ripped apart Catherine. That image, that memory, powered her legs.
The only chance she had was to run. But even if she hadn’t been near to the end of her strength, the dogs were running faster. What distance she had gained on the stairs, they were rapidly making up. Worse, the initial fright that had powered her and carried her on, that burst of fear-driven strength, was expended. She was near to dropping.
She had to do something.
Kahlan saw a wagon up ahead in the darkness moving away from her.
She changed course a little and ran toward it. She was out of breath, but she knew that even a momentary pause in her maximum effort would mean that the hounds would sink their teeth into her and bring her down once and for all— they were that close.
Kahlan nearly cried out with giddy joy when she reached the wagon, but she didn’t have the voice or the breath. She timed her paces right and leaped up onto the iron rung step hanging down off the back.
As the dogs leaped, snapping, trying to get ahold of her leg, she pulled herself up to the second step and, with a final mighty effort, dove up and over into the wagon.
As she landed, she cracked her head hard on something dead solid. The pain was stunning.
Her world went black.
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 t
o 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.”