The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 11

How is she?” Zedd asked when Richard closed the door behind himself.

“She’s fine.” Richard flicked a hand to dismiss his grandfather’s concern. “She just needs to rest.”

Zedd nodded. As a wizard who’d once worked with Confessors, he probably understood better than anyone that a Confessor needed time to recover after unleashing her power, but none of them could recover as quickly as Kahlan. In the past, when the situation called for it, she had sometimes for-gone resting at all.

Kahlan was stronger than the others had been in a number of ways. For those reasons her sister Confessors had chosen her as their leader, the Mother Confessor. Now all those others were dead.

Still, using her power was exhausting, not only physically but emotionally. It was near to the equivalent of carrying out an execution.

Yet that wasn’t really the worst of it. The real core of her weariness this time was the knowledge that something sinister was going on and it had taken innocent lives. Kahlan didn’t believe, any more than Richard did, that this was one lone individual acting on a delusional vision she’d had. There was something more to all of it. That, on top of using her power, and it coming during such a joyful celebration in front of guests, was what had really left Kahlan drained.

Zedd looked up at Richard with one of those looks Richard knew all too well. “It’s rather peculiar that the woman dropped dead.”

Richard nodded. “That’s been bothering me, too.”

“A person touched by a Confessor’s power is concerned with nothing other than pleasing the Confessor who touched them.” Zedd arched an eyebrow. “They can’t very well please her if they’re dead. Unless, of course, she tells them that they can please her by dying, and Kahlan didn’t do that.”

Apparently, his grandfather had been thinking along the same lines as Richard. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he agreed. “People don’t just drop dead from a Confessor’s touch. Something else is going on.”

Zedd rubbed a bony finger back and forth along his jaw. “Could be that the woman understood how utterly repulsed Kahlan was by her killing her children and so she thought that Kahlan would want her dead.”

“I don’t know, Zedd. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The whole purpose of a Confessor is to obtain confessions from killers, to find out the truth of what happened, of what terrible things they’ve done. They aren’t repulsed by confessing their crimes. On the contrary, they’re usually overjoyed that they can please a Confessor by telling her the truth when she asks for it. They want to live so that they can please her.”

Cara folded her arms. “Well, I’m not moving from this spot until the Mother Confessor is recovered and on her feet again.”

Richard laid a hand gently on Cara’s shoulder. “Thanks, Cara.”

Richard’s mind was already on to other things, on to putting the pieces together. When the woman with the knife had tried to kill Kahlan, as frightening as it must have looked to the people there, she’d actually had no real chance of success. No knife attack was fast enough to beat a Confessor releasing her power. Cara standing in the way could not have stopped the woman as effectively as Kahlan was capable of doing herself. No single attacker had a chance against a Confessor.

But she couldn’t use her power again until she recovered. Richard was more than happy to have Cara watch over Kahlan in the meantime.

He turned to Benjamin. “General, would you please post men at either end of the hall?”

Benjamin gestured up the corridor. “Already done, Lord Rahl.”

Richard saw then the contingent of the First File off in the distance. It was enough men to fight a war. “Why don’t you stay here with Cara. Keep her company. Kahlan needs to rest for a couple hours.”

“Of course, Lord Rahl.” Benjamin cleared his throat. “While you were in there with the Mother Confessor, we found the woman’s two children. Their throats had been cut, just as she said.”

Richard nodded. He hadn’t doubted the woman. Someone touched by a Confessor couldn’t lie. Still, the news left him feeling sick at heart.

“Please do something else for me, General. Send someone to find Nicci. I haven’t seen her since yesterday at your wedding. Tell her I need to see her.”

Benjamin lightly tapped his right fist to his heart in salute. “I’ll send someone right away, Lord Rahl.”

Richard turned to the prophet. “Nathan, I’d like you to take me to see the woman you spoke about. The one you said could see things. The one who claims to have a message for me.”

Nathan nodded. “Lauretta.”

Zedd and Richard both followed behind Nathan. A group of guards stayed with them but at a distance. Rikka, in her red leather, took the lead in front of them.

Nathan took a slightly longer route through the private corridors, rather than the public passageways, to get to the area where staff and other workers lived. Richard was glad to avoid the public areas. People would undoubtedly want to stop him to talk with him. He didn’t feel like talking about trade issues or petty matters of squabbles over authority to set rules. Or prophecy. Richard had more important things on his mind.

At the top of the list was what the dead woman had said about her vision. She had called the threat “dark things.” She had said that those dark things were stalking Kahlan.

The boy down in the market earlier that morning had said that there was darkness in the palace.

Richard wondered if he was putting things together too easily, things that didn’t really belong together and only sounded like they did because they shared the word “dark.” He wondered if he was letting his imagination get the best of him.

As he marched along beside Zedd, with Nathan leading the way, he glanced down at the book Nathan was holding and remembered the lines in the book that matched what he’d heard that day about there being darkness in the palace, and decided that he wasn’t overreacting.

The corridor they passed through was paneled with mahogany that had mellowed with age to a dark, rich tone. Small paintings of country scenes hung in each of the raised panels along the hall. The limestone floor was covered with carpet runners of deep blue and gold.

Before long they made their way into the connecting service passageways that provided workers with access to the Lord Rahl’s private areas within the palace. The halls were simpler, with plastered, whitewashed walls. In places the hall ran along the outside wall of the palace to their left. Those outside walls were made of tightly fit granite blocks. At regular intervals deep-set windows in the stone wall provided light. They also let in a little of the frigid air each time a gust rattled the panes.

Out those windows Richard saw heavy, dark clouds scudding across the sky, brushing towers in the distance. The greenish gray clouds told him that he was right about the coming storm.

Snowflakes danced and darted in the gusty wind. He was sure that it wouldn’t be long before the Azrith Plain was in the grip of a spring blizzard. They were going to have guests at the palace for a while.

“Down this way,” Nathan said as he gestured through a double set of doors to the right. They led out of the private areas and into the service passageways used by workers and those who lived at the palace.

People in the halls, workers of every sort, moved to the side as they encountered the procession. Everyone, it seemed, gave Richard and the two wizards with him worried looks. No doubt the word of the trouble had already been to every corner of the vast palace and back three times over. Everyone would know about it.

By the looks on the somber faces he saw, people were no longer in a celebratory mood. Someone had tried to kill the Mother Confessor, Lord Rahl’s wife. Everyone loved Kahlan.

Well, he thought, not everyone.

But most people sincerely cared about her. They would be horrified by what had happened.

Now that peace had returned, people had come to feel an expectant joy about what the future might hold. There was a growing sense of optimism. It seemed like everything was possible and that better days were ahead.

This new fixation on prophecy threatened to destroy all that. It had already ended the lives of two children.

Richard recalled Zedd’s words that there was nothing as dangerous as peacetime. He hoped his grandfather was wrong.

CHAPTER 12

Richard and Zedd followed Nathan into a narrow hallway lit by a window at the end. It led them through a section of quarters where many of the palace staff lived. With its whitewashed, plastered walls and a wood plank floor that had been worn down from a millennium of traffic, the passageway was simpler than even the service hallways. Most doors, though, were decorated with painted flowers, or country scenes, or colorful designs, giving each place an individual, homey feel.

“Here,” Nathan said as he touched a door with a stylized sun painted on it. When Richard nodded, Nathan knocked.

No answer came in response. Nathan knocked harder. When that, too, received no answer he banged the side of his fist against the door.

“Lauretta, it’s Nathan. Please open the door?” He banged his fist on the door again. “I told Lord Rahl what you said, that you have a message for him. I brought him along. He wants to see you.”

The door opened a crack, just wide enough for one eye to peer out into the hallway. When she saw the three of them waiting she immediately opened the door all the way.

“Lord Rahl! You came!” She grinned as she licked her tongue out between missing front teeth.

Layers of clothes covered her short, heavyset form. From what Richard could see, she was wearing at least three sweaters over her dark blue dress. The buttons on the dingy, off-white sweater on the bottom strained to cover her girth. Over that sweater she had on a faded red sweater and a checkered flannel shirt with sleeves that were too long for her.

She pulled up a sleeve and then pushed stringy strands of sandy-colored hair back off her face. “Please, won’t you all come in?”

She waddled back into the dark depths of her home, grinning— giddy, apparently— to have company come to visit.

As strange as Lauretta was, it was her home that was strangest of all. In order to enter, since he was taller than she was, Richard had to hold aside yarn objects hanging just inside the door. Each of the dozens of yarn contraptions was different, but all of them had been constructed in roughly the same manner. Yarn of various colors had been wound around crossed sticks into designs that resembled spiderwebs. He couldn’t imagine what they were for. By no stretch of the imagination could they be considered attractive, so he didn’t think they were intended to be decorative.

When Zedd saw him frowning at them he leaned close to speak confidentially. “Meant to keep evil spirits from her door.”

Richard didn’t comment on the likelihood of evil spirits who had managed to make it this far on a journey from the dark depths of the underworld being stopped cold by sticks and yarn.

To each side of the entrance, papers, books, and boxes were stacked nearly to the ceiling. There was a tunnel of sorts going back through the mess into the interior of her home. Lauretta just fit down the narrow aisle. It reminded him of a mole trundling down into its burrow. The rest of them followed in single file to reach a hollowed-out area in the main room where there was space for a small table and two chairs. A window not far away, visible through a narrow gap in the teetering piles, provided gloomy light.

A counter behind the table was stacked high with papers. The whole place looked like nothing so much as a lair carved into a midden heap. It smelled nearly as bad.

“Tea?” Lauretta asked back over her shoulder.

“No thank you,” Richard said. “I heard that you wanted to speak with me about something.”

Zedd held up a hand. “I wouldn’t mind some tea.”

“And some sweet crackers to go with it?” she asked, hopefully.

Zedd returned the grin in kind. “That would be nice.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. Richard shot his grandfather a look. Lauretta rooted behind a sloppy pile of papers.

While Zedd sat at the table, waiting to be served, Lauretta retrieved a pot from an iron stand on a counter to the side. The pot was kept warm by a candle beneath the iron stand. The stand was surrounded by disorderly stacks of papers. Richard was alarmed to see fire being used.

“Lauretta,” he said, trying to sound helpful. “It’s dangerous to have fire in here.”

She looked up from pouring Zedd’s tea. “Yes, I know. I’m very careful.”

“I’m sure you are, but it’s still very—”

“I have to be careful with my predictions.”

Richard looked around at the mountains of paper. Much of it was piled in loose stacks, but there were also wooden crates full of papers, and bindings overstuffed with yet more in among the paper towers.

Zedd waggled a finger at the rugged paper cliff to the side of him. “These are all your predictions, then? All of them?”

“Oh yes,” she said, sounding eager to tell them all about it. “You see, I’ve had foretellings come to me my whole life. My mother told me that one of the first things I said was a prediction. I said the word ‘fire.’ And don’t you know, that very day a flaming log rolled out of the hearth and set her skirt on fire. No great harm done, but it scared her something awful. From then on she would write down the things I said.”

Richard glanced around. “I suppose you still have all the things she wrote down.”

“Oh yes, of course.” Lauretta replaced the tea on the stand after she finished pouring herself some. She set a chipped white plate with sweet crackers on the table. “When I was old enough I started writing down my predictions myself.”

“Mmmm,” Zedd moaned in ecstasy, waving a sweet cracker, “cinnamon, my favorite. These are quite good.”

Lauretta flashed him a toothless grin. “Made them myself.”

Richard wondered where and how. “So,” he said, “why do you keep all of the things you write down?”

She turned a puzzled look on him. “Well, they’re my predictions.”

“Yes, you told us that,” Richard said, “but what is the purpose of keeping them?”

“To record them. I have so many predictions that I can’t remember them if I don’t write them down. But more importantly, they need to be kept, to be documented.”

Richard frowned, trying not to look exasperated. “What for?”

“Well,” she said, confounded by the question, as if it was almost too obvious to need an answer, “all prophets write down their prophecy.”

“Ah, well, yes, I suppose that—”

“And aren’t those prophecies kept? The ones prophets write down?”

Richard straightened. “You mean, like the books of prophecy?”

“That’s right,” she said patiently. “Those are prophecy written down, just like I write mine down, are they not? Then, because prophecy is important, they are all kept, aren’t they? Of course those are kept in libraries all over the palace. But I have no other place to store all of mine, so I must keep them all in here.” She swept an arm around. “This is my library.”

Zedd glanced around at Lauretta’s library as he munched on his sweet cracker.

“So you see, I’m very careful with fire because these are prophecy written down, and prophecy is important. I must protect them from harm.”

Richard was seeing prophecy in a new light— a less flattering light.

“That all makes sense,” Zedd said, seemingly disinterested in continuing the line of conversation. “And your sweet crackers really are some of the best I’ve ever had.”

She gave him another toothless grin. “Come back any time for more.”

“I may do that, kind lady.” Zedd picked up another and gestured with it. “Now, what of the prophecy you say you have for Lord Rahl?”

“Oh yes.” She put a finger to her lower lip as she looked around. “Now, where did I put them?”

“Them?” Richard asked. “You have more than one?”

“Oh yes. Several actually.”

Lauretta went to a wall of papers and randomly pulled out one of them. She peered at it briefly. “No, this isn’t it.” She stuck the paper back where she’d found it. She reached to the side, pulling out others, only to end up replacing them as well. She kept plucking papers from different places among the thousands and then replaced each after reading it.

Richard shared a look with Nathan.

“Maybe you could just tell Lord Rahl what your prediction was,” Zedd offered.

“Oh dear me no, I’m afraid that I couldn’t do that. I have too many predictions to remember them all. That’s why I have to write them down. If I write them down, then I always have them and they can’t be forgotten. Isn’t that the purpose of writing down prophecy? So that we will always have them? Prophecy is important, so it must be written down and kept.”

“Very true,” Nathan said, apparently eager not to upset her. “Maybe we could help you look? Where would you have put your recent prophecies?”

She blinked at him. “Why, where they belong.”

Nathan looked around. “How do you know where they belong?”

“By what they say.”

Nathan stared a moment. “Then, how do you find them? I mean, if you don’t remember what they say, then how do you know where they would have belonged in the first place and where you would have put them? How do you know where to look?”

She squinted as she gave serious consideration to the question. “You know, that very thing has always been the problem.” She took a deep breath. The buttons on her sweaters looked like they might burst before she let it out. “I can’t seem to come up with an answer to that quandary.”

From the confusion they had always had with the location of books in the libraries, seemingly placed there in no order, Richard thought that it appeared to be a common problem with written prophecy on what ever scale.

Zedd pulled a piece of paper from a stack and peered at it. He waved it in the air.

“This one only says ‘rain.’”

Lauretta looked up from the papers she had in her hand. “Yes, I wrote that down one day when I had a premonition that it was going to rain.”

“This is a waste of time,” Richard said in a confidential voice to Nathan.

“I cautioned you that it was likely nothing worthwhile.”

Richard sighed. “So you did.”

He turned to Lauretta. She had moved, pulling out another paper in another place near the bottom of a mountain of papers, boxes, and binders. Before he could say that they were leaving, she gasped.

“Here it is. I’ve found it. Right where it belonged.”

“So what does it say, then?” Richard asked.

She shuffled over to him, paper in hand. She tapped it with a finger as she gazed up at him. “It says, ‘People will die.’”

Richard studied her eager face a moment. “That happens all the time, Lauretta. Everyone dies, eventually.”

“Yes, so true,” she said with a chuckle as she returned to a teetering mound of paper to start her search anew.

Richard didn’t see any more use for her prophecy than he saw in most prophecy. “Well, thank you for—”

“Here’s another,” she said as she read a paper hanging out from a stack. She pulled it free. “It says, ‘The sky is going to fall in.’”

Richard frowned. “The sky?”

“Yes, that’s right, the sky.”

“Are you sure you didn’t mean that the roof was going to fall in?”

Lauretta consulted the paper in her hands. “No, it quite clearly says ‘sky.’ I have very neat handwriting.”

“And what could that mean?” Richard asked. “How can the sky fall in?”

“Oh dear me, I have no idea,” she said, snorting a chuckle. “I am only the channel. The prophecy comes to me and I write it down. Then I save it, the way you’re supposed to save prophecy.”

Nathan gestured at the papers all around. “You have no visions about these things, these prophecies that come to you?”

“No. They come, I write them down.”

“So then you don’t necessarily know what they mean.”

She considered a moment. “Well, if the prophecy is for rain, I admit I have no vision to go with that, but it seems pretty clear, don’t you think?” When Nathan nodded, she went on. “But when it says the sky is going to fall, I can’t begin to imagine what that could mean. The sky can’t very well fall in, now can it?”

“No, it can’t,” Nathan agreed.

“So,” she said, holding up a finger thoughtfully, “it has to have some hidden meaning.”

“So it would seem,” Nathan agreed. “And how does a prediction like that one come to you, if not in a vision?”

She frowned as she looked up while she tried to recollect. “Well, it comes to me as words, I guess. I don’t see a picture in my mind of a sky falling in or anything. It just comes to me that way, that the sky is going to fall in, like a voice in my head saying it, so I write it down just the way it comes.”