The Omen Machine

  Now dark things were stalking her, running her down. Where the hounds had come from and why they were after her was no longer part of Kahlan’s thinking. She was simply frantic to escape them.

  Kahlan squinted in the darkness, trying to see up toward the front of the wagon, hoping to see the driver and get some help, but the wagon was piled high with things covered in a stiff canvas tarp. The only way to get to the front, where the driver would be, was to climb either over or around the load. It looked too high to go over in a rocking, bucking wagon, especially considering how dizzy she felt. She tried to look around the load, but she wasn’t able to see anyone.

  Kahlan called out but her throat was so sore that she could hardly make a sound. No one answered. She thought that over the rumble of the wagon it was probably hard for a driver to hear someone in the back behind his load. More than that, though, her fever was also making her hoarse. She couldn’t yell loud enough. She needed to get closer before they would hear her.

  Kahlan scrambled to her feet. As she put a foot up onto the side wall of the wagon to climb up around the load, a dog came out of the darkness, lunging wildly, trying to grab her ankle. As she jumped back out of the way, she saw the pack of dogs snarling and growling as they ran alongside the wagon.

  Before she could try again to climb around the load, another dog leaped up, getting its front legs over the side. It sank its teeth into the canvas to help pull itself up. Its back legs scrambled, trying to get purchase on something so that it could climb into the wagon. She kicked at the dog’s head. It let go of the canvas and snapped at her, trying to catch her foot even as it tried to clamber up into the wagon, but it fell off.

  Another big hound jumped up on the other side, almost making it in. A third leaped up beside it.

  Kahlan kicked at the dogs, knocking one after another off the sideboards of the wagon. As soon as she kicked one off, another to the back or side bounded up and hooked its front legs over the edge. Their eyes glowed red with vicious intent.

  The wagon wasn’t going fast enough to get away from the pack, but it was going fast enough to keep her off balance as it rocked and bucked. When the wagon bounced on a rock, her kick missed and she had to urgently kick again to keep a dog out.

  Kahlan looked back into the distance. It was dark, but there was enough moonlight that she would have been able to see the plateau with the People’s Palace atop it if it had been anywhere near. Even if it was too far in the distance to see the plateau in the moonlight, she would have been able to see the lights of the city palace atop it, but it wasn’t there.

  She didn’t know what direction they were headed, but she knew that she was somewhere out on the vast Azrith Plain.

  Even as she fought off the wild pack of dogs, Kahlan knew that she was losing the battle. As she kicked one off, two more would jump up and get their front legs hooked over the side. With some she was able to dislodge their legs. With others, when they got too far in, she had to kick at their heads to knock them off.

  But she knew that she was losing. With the dogs continually making running jumps at the wagon, she knew that it was only a matter of time until they made it up and in. Once that happened, they would take her down.

  Kahlan felt a sudden pang of pain for how much she missed Richard. He would’t know what had happened. He wouldn’t know where she was. He would never know what had happened to her.

  She had a vision of her own corpse, looking like Queen Catherine after she had been ripped apart by animals. Kahlan swallowed back the grief of never being able to see Richard again. She hoped he never found her body. She didn’t want him to find her like that.

  She spun and kicked the ribs of a dog that had clawed itself halfway into the wagon. As it yelped and fell back, she caught sight of a horse at the end of a long rope tied to the side of the wagon. It was trailing far behind, off in the darkness, staying out to the side as far as it could to keep away from the dogs.

  Kahlan had no time to consider. It was her only hope to get help or get away. She snatched up her pack and then kicked a dog off the sideboards near the rope. As she leaned over to grab hold of the rope, a dog lunged out of the darkness, snapping, trying to grab her arm. She pulled back in the nick of time and its teeth caught only air. As the dog fell and rolled after missing her, she quickly bent and seized the rope.

  The horse, frightened by the savage dogs, snorted and resisted Kahlan’s efforts to bring it in closer. She put a boot against the sideboard and put her weight into pulling harder. Finally, she managed to drag the skittish animal in a bit closer. It danced and darted, trying to stay away.

  The dogs didn’t seem to care about the horse. They were fixated on Kahlan. The horse didn’t know that, though.

  When she had dragged the horse in as close as she could get it, Kahlan turned and saw two dogs bound up in quick succession and make it in over the other side of the wagon. They fell, their legs splaying out to the sides.

  As the dogs scrambled to get to their feet, Kahlan hoisted her pack over one shoulder, untied the rope from a wooden cleat, and, holding the rope for balance, sprang up onto the sideboard. She held on to the rope for dear life as she tried to balance on the sideboard of the bouncing wagon.

  The horse tried to run. As it did, it moved ahead just close enough. Kahlan leaped for all she was worth over the snarling, snapping dogs. She landed sideways, sprawled over the horse’s back.

  Giddy with relief not to have fallen into the fangs of the dogs, Kahlan grabbed the horse’s mane with both fists and swung one leg up and over the frightened animal’s back.

  Finally mounted, she thumped the horse’s ribs with her heels. She wanted to go ahead to the wagon’s driver to get help, but the hounds raced in and blocked the way. Others leaped up, trying to grab her feet and legs and drag her down. The horse, terrified of the dogs, cut a course sharply away from the wagon. With no time to lose, Kahlan leaned over the withers and urged the animal into a gallop. The horse was only too happy to bolt off into the night.

  The pack of hounds were in hot pursuit.

  CHAPTER 74

  Anything at all?” Richard asked Berdine in a quiet voice.

  “Dead quiet out here, Lord Rahl.” Berdine pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. “I looked in on the Mother Confessor earlier and she was sleeping soundly. After that I took a tour of the area just to satisfy myself that there was no one around and nothing out of the ordinary. Then I came back up to this end of the hall and I’ve been right here outside the door ever since. The Mother Confessor has been a perfect patient. I haven’t heard a peep out of her.”

  Richard laid a hand gently on the Mord-Sith’s red-leather-clad shoulder. “Thanks, Berdine.”

  “Has the machine had anything else to say, Lord Rahl?”

  Richard paused and looked back at her. “It’s had a lot to say, but I’m afraid that none of it is very useful.”

  “Maybe we need the missing part of the book Regula in order to understand it.”

  He’d had the same thought. “Maybe.”

  Richard left Berdine outside in the hall and the soldiers of the First File off down the corridor to either side making certain that no one could get to their room.

  Alone, Richard quietly closed the door behind himself as he stepped into the nearly dark bedroom where Kahlan was sleeping. He had turned down the wick on the lamp when he had checked on her earlier, so it was difficult to see much of anything. He didn’t want to turn the lamp up and risk waking her.

  He was exhausted. It was going to be morning soon. He needed to get some sleep. He wished he hadn’t wasted so much time with the machine.

  Not wanting to disturb Kahlan, Richard thought that maybe he would sleep in a chair. She needed a good rest in order to recover from her fever. He was thankful that his grandfather had put a poultice on her arm to help draw out the infection.

  His own scratch from the boy down in the market had long ago healed. He had thought that Kahlan’s had as well. It was more than a little
worrisome the way it had returned so suddenly, especially after Zedd had healed it with his gift.

  On his way to the chair, Richard’s feet caught up a blanket lying in the middle of the floor.

  He thought that Kahlan, in a fevered sleep, must have thrown off her cover. He picked it up by the edge and held it up to lay it back over her.

  In the dim light from the lantern, on the way to the bed, Richard paused. Something was wrong. Even if Kahlan had thrown the blanket off in her sleep, it seemed unlikely she could have thrown it that far.

  The first thing that instantaneously flashed through his mind was the machine’s warning that hounds would take her from him. Almost at the same time, he remembered Queen Catherine lying dead on the floor, her middle viciously ripped open by some kind of animals with fangs.

  Richard dropped the blanket and rushed to the bed. Kahlan wasn’t there. He stared for a moment at the rumpled, empty bed before turning up the wick on the lamp and scanning the room. He didn’t see her anywhere.

  When he glanced up, Richard saw that the door to the balcony was open. His first thought was that maybe her fever had driven her out on the balcony to get some relief in the cool night air.

  Before he could go to the balcony, his attention was caught by his pack on the floor. Kahlan’s pack had been beside it before. He knew, because he had been the one who had put them both there. He supposed that Kahlan might have wanted to get something out of it and could have moved it somewhere, but he didn’t really believe that. Something told him that it would be a waste of time searching the room for it.

  Richard instead ran to the balcony doors. He was worried that, at the least, she might have gotten worse. He expected to see her passed out on the balcony floor. She wasn’t there.

  The bedroom, like the balcony, wasn’t that big. There was no way he could have missed her back in the room. Baffled as to where she could be, he reluctantly looked over edge of the railing, fearing that she might have fallen. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but not impossible. He was relieved to see nothing on the ground far below.

  As he started to turn to go back inside, Richard saw that there was another balcony. It wasn’t connected or even all that close, but he went to the railing closest to it anyway for a look. He saw that it had a stairway down on the far side.

  He saw, then, the scuff mark on the top of the railing where he was standing. It looked to have been made by a boot.

  Richard hopped up on the railing and leaped across the daunting drop to the other balcony. The doors on the second balcony were locked and it was dark inside. It was possible that Kahlan had gone inside and then locked the doors, but he didn’t really believe that. It made no sense. If she feared something, there were guards and Mord-Sith just outside their bedroom door.

  Instead of breaking in the door, Richard took Kahlan’s more likely route. He raced in the darkness down the flights of stairs, eventually reaching the grounds of the palace.

  The moonlight coming through the thin haze of clouds wasn’t bright, but it was bright enough for him to recognize Kahlan’s bootprints. With a lifetime of tracking experience, he also recognized her unique gait. He could read the features of the way she walked and the tracks she made nearly as well as he could read the features of her face.

  There was no doubt about it. Kahlan had come down the stairs outside the palace to the grounds at the top of the plateau.

  The thing that worried him the most was that he could see by the prints that she had been running as fast as she could. He looked around for other prints, the prints of anyone who might have been chasing her, but there were no other footprints.

  It didn’t make any sense.

  Richard stood and stared off across the top of the dark plateau. What could she have been running from?

  CHAPTER 75

  In the distance, paths meandered through elaborate gardens, but the grounds closer to the palace, where Richard had come out at the bottom of the stairs, were an open staging and loading area where supplies arrived at the palace. While most visitors to the palace entered up stairways through the interior of the plateau, an imposing portico between the staging area and the gardens welcomed important guests arriving by horse or carriage at the top of the plateau. The entrance there took guests into the grand corridors and the guest areas. Closer to Richard, in a less well lit area, were the stables and service docks.

  He could see the dark shapes of dozens of wagons and carriages that were either parked or being loaded. Horses were being brought out of the stables and either saddled or hitched to wagons. Even in the middle of the night representatives were packing up and leaving the palace. The place was alive with activity. No one was arriving. All the wagons were leaving.

  Richard was concerned about all the things that had happened recently and the representatives who had decided that they would rather side with prophecy and those who promised it to them. He wanted to know what could be behind it all, but at the moment his only real focus was on finding Kahlan.

  Richard followed Kahlan’s tracks as they traced her route through the darkness atop the plateau. She had been running as fast as she could. He could see by certain characteristics of the tracks, such as the way a print twisted here and there, that she was looking behind at something chasing her as she ran. If she had been running after someone or something, the prints would have looked different.

  It made no sense. There were no prints of anything chasing her, yet he could clearly read the indications of fear in her tracks. What ever was after her would have had to be flying not to leave prints. He knew, too, that it might very well be fevered delusions chasing her.

  But the prophecy from the machine saying that the hounds would take her from him was no delusion. At least there were no tracks of hounds.

  And then, in the midst of hoofprints and wagon tracks, Kahlan’s footprints simply ended.

  Richard went to one knee and bent to study the tracks more closely. He saw, then, the marks where her last print pushed off on the ball of her foot. It had left a heavier impression with pronounced side ridges as she had jumped up onto something. Since her footprints ended there, he knew that it was most likely a wagon or coach that she had jumped up onto.

  With an icy sense of dread, Richard realized that Kahlan was gone. He couldn’t understand what had happened, or why she would have run the way she did, but he could see plainly enough that she had left the bedroom, come down the steps to the ground, run across the plateau, and then jumped into a wagon.

  There were wagons leaving all the time. Wheel tracks and hoofprints were everywhere. There was no telling which wagon or coach was the one Kahlan had jumped up into. If she had stayed in one of those wagons, she could be headed off in just about any direction away from the palace.

  There were a number of representatives who had left overnight. Many of them were accompanied by escorts. Some of them had entire house holds with them, everyone from guards to attendants, to advisors, to support staff, to wagons of baggage, so there were likely numerous wagons and coaches involved.

  Kahlan could be in any one of them.

  CHAPTER 76

  Patrols that had spotted Richard ran up to see what the problem was. Richard saw other soldiers on horse back appear in the distance.

  Before the powerfully built captain of the guard could speak, Richard spoke first. “The Mother Confessor came down here sometime after dark. Her tracks are at least several hours old. Did you or any of your men see her?”

  “The Mother Confessor?” The startled captain shook his head. “No, Lord Rahl. My men and I have been on patrol since long before then— since before dark. I would have heard about it if anyone had seen her.”

  Richard had last seen Kahlan not long after it had gotten dark. “How many wagons have left here since dark?”

  The captain scratched his bull neck as he tallied them in his head for a moment. “Dozens, Lord Rahl. We have manifests and logs. I can get you an exact number.”

  “Good. Ge
t enough cavalrymen together for a detachment to go after each wagon. I want mounted troops to catch every wagon that left here overnight. Every one of them. I want every wagon and coach searched.”

  The man was nodding to the instructions, but he looked confused. “What are we to be looking for?”

  “The Mother Confessor left her room sometime in the night. It’s possible she was being chased by something but she’s sick with a fever so it’s more likely that she may be disoriented. What I do know is that she came down here and jumped in a wagon that left here tonight. I don’t know which one, so the men will need to track down every wagon and search it. If she is found, I want her protected and brought back to the palace.”

  “Do you know where she jumped in the wagon, Lord Rahl? That might narrow the search.”

  Richard pointed at her last footprint. “Right here.”

  The man’s face sagged with disappointment. “All the wagons have to turn through this area as they’re leaving.”

  “Then they’ll all have to be caught and searched,” Richard said. “Get the search parties on their way immediately— before the wagons can get too far.”

  The man clapped a fist to his heart. “At once, Lord Rahl.”

  “And I need a horse,” Richard said. “Right now.”

  The captain turned and whistled a code into the darkness as yet more men ran in from different directions. In only a matter of moments Richard was surrounded by over a hundred men.

  When a dozen men on horse back galloped up, the men let them through. The mounted soldiers gathered around wanting to know what the problem was. Instead of explaining, Richard quickly appraised all the horses. He signaled a man to dismount from a strong-looking mare. The man jumped down.