The Omen Machine
“And then you store it in here?”
Lauretta glanced around at all of her precious predictions. “I suppose that future generations of prophets will have to study all of this in order to make sense of it.”
Richard could hardly contain himself. He struggled to keep his mouth shut. The woman was harmless enough. She wasn’t trying to drive them crazy. She was the way she was and he wasn’t going to argue her out of her nature, or her lifelong obsession. It would be pointless and cruel to say something that would only end up making her feel bad.
“Oh,” she said, turning suddenly to shuffle to the back of the room, “I almost forgot. I have another that came to me just yesterday. Came to me quite unexpectedly. It was the last of the prophecies that came to me for you, Lord Rahl.”
Lauretta pulled at papers, reading them quickly and then shoving them back where she’d found them. Finally, she came across what she was looking for. Richard found the fact that she could find a single piece of paper she was looking for among all the thousands and thousands stacked everywhere to be more remarkable than anything she was writing down.
She hurried back, holding the paper out for Richard. He took it and read it aloud.
“‘Queen takes pawn.’” He looked up with a frown. “What does that mean?”
Lauretta shrugged. “I have no idea. My calling is to hear them and to write them down, not to interpret them. As I said, future prophets will have to do that work.”
Richard glanced over at Nathan and his grandfather. “Any clue what this means?”
Zedd made a face. “Sorry, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Nathan shook his head. “Me neither.”
Richard took yet another deep breath. “Thank you for passing these along, Lauretta. ‘People are going to die,’ ‘The sky is going to fall in,’ and”— he glanced down at the paper again to read the words—“‘Queen takes pawn.’ That’s it, then? Do you have any others you want me to see?”
“No, Lord Rahl, that’s all of them. When they came to me I didn’t know their meaning, but I did know for certain that they were meant for you.”
“Do you usually know who the prophecy is meant for?”
Her brow creased as she considered the question. “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t recall ever knowing who my prophecies are meant for, or about.” She looked up at him. “But you are said to be a very unusual man, a wizard of great power, so I suppose that had something to do with it.”
Richard glanced at the teapot with the candle under it. “You know, Lauretta, in appreciation for bringing your prophecy to my attention, maybe I can do something for you in return.”
She cocked her head. “For me?”
“Yes. I think that all of these prophecies should be in their proper place.”
Her brow creased. “Proper place?”
“That’s right. They don’t belong here, hidden away. They belong in a library with other prophecy. They should take their rightful place in a library.”
“A library…” Lauretta gasped. “Really, Lord Rahl?”
“Of course. These are prophecies. That’s what the libraries are for. We have a number of such libraries here at the palace. What would you say to us sending men by to collect all of these prophecies and placing them in a proper library?”
She looked around, hesitating. “I don’t know…”
“There is a large library not far from here. There’s plenty of room there. We could put your predictions there all together on shelves where someday prophets can study them. You could come visit them anytime you wished. And whenever you have new prophecies and write them down, they can be added to your special section in the library.”
Her eyes widened. “Special section? For my prophecies?”
“That’s right, a special section,” Zedd said, joining in, apparently catching on to Richard’s purpose. “There they could be properly looked after and protected.”
She put a finger to her lip, thinking.
“And I could go there anytime?”
“Anytime you wish,” Richard assured her. “And you can go there to add new ones when they come to you. You can even use the library tables to write down your new predictions.”
She brightened and then took Richard’s hand, holding it as if a king had just granted her part of his kingdom. “Lord Rahl, you are the kindest Lord Rahl we have ever had. Thank you. I accept your generous offer to protect my prophecies.”
Richard felt a twinge of guilt over his ruse, but the place was a fire waiting to happen. He didn’t want her to be hurt or die just because of prophecy. There was ample room in the library, along with all the other prophecy, to keep hers. Besides, he didn’t know that her prophecies were any less valuable than all the others.
“Thank you again Lord Rahl,” she said as she let them out.
Once they were on their way down the hall, Zedd said, “That was very kind of you, Richard.”
“Not as kind as it may seem. I was trying to prevent a needless fire.”
“You could have simply told her that you were sending people to take all that paper away so she wouldn’t start a fire.”
Richard frowned over at his grandfather. “She’s spent her whole life devoted to those pieces of paper. It would be cruel to confiscate them when there’s plenty of room in the library. I thought it made more sense to make her feel good about giving them up— make her part of the solution.”
“That’s what I mean, the trick worked like magic and it was a kind way to do it.”
Richard smiled. “Like you always said, sometimes a trick is magic.”
Nathan caught Richard’s sleeve.
“Yes, yes, very nice indeed. But you know the last prophecy she gave you, the one about a queen?”
Richard glanced back at the prophet. “Yes, ‘Queen takes pawn.’ I don’t know what it means, though.”
“Neither do I,” Nathan said as he waggled the book he still had with him, “but it’s in here. Just like she wrote it, word for word. ‘Queen takes pawn.’”
CHAPTER 13
Kahlan sat up with a start.
Somewhere in the dead-still room someone was watching her.
She had been lying down with her eyes closed, but she had only been resting. She hadn’t been asleep. At least, she was pretty sure she hadn’t been asleep.
She had been trying to put everything from her mind. She hadn’t wanted to think about the woman who had killed her children. She hadn’t wanted to think about the children and how they had died. All for fear of a prophecy.
She didn’t want to think about the woman’s deluded visions.
She had tried very hard to put it all from her mind.
The heavy drapes were drawn. There was only one lamp lit in the room and it was turned down low. Sitting on the table before the mirror on the dressing table, the lamp was too weak to chase the darkness from the farthest reaches of the room. Darkness occluded those far corners where the faint shadowy shapes of hulking wardrobes lurked.
It couldn’t be Richard she sensed. He would have let her know it was him when she sat up. Cara would have as well. Whoever she sensed in the room wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t moving.
But she felt them watching her.
At least she thought she did. She knew how easy it was for anyone’s imagination, even hers, to get out of hand. Trying to be honest and coldly logical, she couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t her imagination, especially after Cara had planted the notion in her mind earlier in the day.
But her heart raced as she stared into the dark recesses of the room, watching for any movement.
She realized that her fist had tightened around her knife.
She pulled the bed throw off and pushed it aside. She was lying on top of the bedspread. Her bare thighs prickled at the touch of chilly air.
Carefully, quietly, she slipped her legs over the side of the bed. Without making a sound she stood. She waited, listening, her whole body tense and ready.
Kahlan stared so hard into the dark corner at the far end of the room that it made her eyes hurt.
It felt like someone was staring back.
She tried to tell where it felt like they could be hiding, but she couldn’t come up with a direction. If she could sense someone watching, but wasn’t able to sense where they were, then it had to be her imagination.
“Enough of this,” she said under her breath.
With deliberate strides she walked to the dressing table. The heel-strikes of the laced boots she hadn’t felt like taking off echoed softly back from the dark end of the room.
Standing at the dressing table, watching, she turned up the wick on the lamp. It threw mellow light into the darkness. There was no one there. In the mirror she saw only herself standing half naked with a knife gripped in her fist.
Just to be sure, she walked resolutely to the end of the room. She found no one there. She looked to the far side of the drapes and glanced behind the big pieces of furniture. There was no one there, either. How could there be? Richard had checked the room before he had taken her in. She had watched as he had looked everywhere while trying not to look like he was looking. Cara and soldiers stood guard as Kahlan had rested. No one could have entered.
She turned to the tall, elaborately carved wardrobe and pulled open the heavy doors. Without hesitation she lifted out a clean dress and pulled it on.
She didn’t know if the other one, the one she had taken off, would ever be clean again. It was hard to get the blood of children off a white dress. At the Confessors’ Palace, back in Aydindril, there were people on the staff who knew how to care for the white dresses of the Mother Confessor. She supposed that there would be people at the ancestral home of the Lord Rahl who knew all about cleaning up blood.
The thought of where that blood had come from made her angry, made her glad the woman was dead.
Kahlan paused to consider again why the woman would have died so abruptly. Kahlan hadn’t commanded it. She had intended to have the woman locked up. There were a lot more questions Kahlan had wanted to ask, but not in public. If there was one thing Kahlan was good at, it was questioning those she had touched with her power.
The thought occurred to her that it was awfully convenient that the woman confessed what she had done, revealed what her prophecy said would happen to Kahlan, and then managed to die before she could be questioned.
When all else was said and done, that was the single thing that convinced Kahlan that Richard was right, that there was something more going on. And if he was right, then the woman had likely only been a puppet being moved by a hidden hand.
At the thought of Richard, she smiled. Thinking of him always lifted her heart.
When she pulled open the bedroom door, Cara, with her arms folded, was leaning back against the doorframe. Nyda, one of the other Mord-Sith, was with her. Cara looked back over her shoulder at Kahlan.
“How do you feel?”
Kahlan forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
Cara’s arms came unfolded as she turned. “Lord Rahl wanted me to bring you to him after you were rested. He’s going to see that abbot.”
Kahlan let out a weary breath. She didn’t feel like seeing people, but she wanted to be with Richard and she, too, wanted to hear what the man might know.
Cara’s eyes narrowed. “Why is your face so pale?”
“Just still a bit tired, I guess.” Kahlan studied Cara’s blue eyes for a moment. “Would you do something for me, please, Cara?”
Cara leaned in and gently took hold of Kahlan’s arm. “Of course, Mother Confessor. What is it?”
“Would you please see to having our things moved?”
Cara’s squint was back. “Moved?”
Kahlan nodded. “To another room. I don’t want to sleep here tonight.”
Cara studied her face for a moment. “Why?”
“Because you planted strange thoughts in my head.”
“You mean you think someone was watching you in there?”
“I don’t know. I was tired and probably imagined it.”
Cara marched past Kahlan and went into the room, Agiel in hand. Nyda, a statuesque blonde with the same single braid as all the Mord-Sith, was right on her heels. Cara pulled the drapes aside and looked behind furniture while Nyda looked in the wardrobes and under the bed. Neither of them found anything. Kahlan had known they wouldn’t, but she also knew that it was a waste of effort trying to convince a Mord-Sith that she didn’t need to be suspicious.
“Did you find anyone in your room?” Kahlan asked when Cara planted her fists on her hips and glared around at the room.
“I guess not,” Cara admitted.
“I’ll see to moving your things, Mother Confessor,” Nyda said. “Cara can go with you.”
“All right.”
“Any particular bedchamber you prefer?” Nyda asked.
“No. Just don’t tell me which one it is until you take us there tonight.”
“So someone was watching you,” Cara said.
Kahlan took Cara’s elbow and turned her toward the door. “Let’s go see Richard.”
CHAPTER 14
Richard stood when the door opened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kahlan rise beside him when she saw that Benjamin had the abbot with him. She had only arrived with Cara a moment before. Richard had barely had the chance to ask how she felt. Kahlan had smiled and said she was fine.
He saw a distracted aspect in her eyes that told him otherwise. He supposed that she had reason enough to look anything but cheerful.
Richard saw, too, the way Cara stayed a half step closer than usual to Kahlan.
Kahlan had on a pristine white Mother Confessor’s dress.
Cara was wearing red leather.
General Meiffert led the man wearing the straight black coat into the comfortable meeting room. Benjamin noticed his wife’s change of outfit, but made no comment.
The abbot removed his black, rimless hat to reveal tousled blond hair that was cut short at the sides. He put on a warm smile. Richard thought it looked forced.
“Lord Rahl,” Benjamin said, holding out a hand in introduction, “this is Abbot Ludwig Dreier, from Fajin Province.”
Rather than extending a hand, Richard nodded his greeting. “Welcome, Abbot Dreier.”
The man’s hesitant gaze took in those before him. “Thank you for taking the time to see me, Lord Rahl.”
Richard thought that was an odd way to put it. The man hadn’t asked for an audience. He had been summoned.
Zedd, wearing simple robes, stood to the far side of Kahlan. A wall of windows beyond Zedd, to Richard’s right, cast the walnut-paneled walls and niches lined with bookcases framed by fluted walnut columns in fading, cold light. A few lamps were taking over with their warm illumination.
Nathan had gone back to see how Berdine was doing in the library. Richard had asked the men of the First File to stand guard out in the corridor, rather than in the room. He hadn’t wanted the abbot to feel uncomfortable. This was, after all, a representative from one of the areas Richard ruled, not a hostile land. Still, a Mord-Sith in red leather standing at arm’s length to his side couldn’t put anyone at ease.
More than that, though, the man had been insistent about prophecy earlier in the day. When the woman had tried to kill Kahlan she had given her vision of the future as her excuse for murder. Richard and Kahlan were not exactly indulgent of people who let prophecy direct their lives, or who used it as license for the harm they caused. From the events at the reception, the abbot would be aware of their feelings, and that he was at the wrong end of them.
Richard gestured to one of the comfortable chairs on the other side of a low, square table covered with a slab of black marble cut through with whorls of white quartz. “Won’t you have a seat, Abbot?”
The man sat on the forward edge of the chair, his back straight, his hands folded on his knees, his hat hooked on his thumbs. “Please, Lord Rahl, call me Ludwig. Most everyone does.”
“All right, Ludwig. I’m embarrassed to admit that I know far too little about your homeland. When the war was raging it was all any of us could do to stay alive another day. There was no time to learn more about those who fought so valiantly with us. With the threat of tyranny ended, the Mother Confessor and I hope to soon visit all the lands of the D’Haran Empire.
“So, since we know so little about Fajin Province, we would appreciate it if you could tell us a bit about the land you rule.”
Abbot Dreier’s face went red. “Lord Rahl, you have been misinformed. I am not the authority in my homeland.”
“You aren’t the ruler of Fajin Province?”
“Dear Creator, no.”
Fajin Province, in the Dark Lands, was one of the small, outlying districts of D’Hara. Richard wondered why whoever was in charge hadn’t come. It would have been a chance for them to take a place beside those who ruled much larger lands and have a say in the future of the D’Haran Empire.
Leaders of the lands near and far had come to the grand wedding. Although Cara and Benjamin’s wedding was the central event, that highlight served as a chance for representatives from all the lands to come together and meet. None wanted to miss such a remarkable and unprecedented event. Richard had spent time with a number of the representatives. Only a few leaders had not been in good enough health to make the journey and had been forced to send emissaries. A number of the rulers had large escorts of ambassadors, officials, and advisors.
“You serve in some capacity of authority, though?” Richard asked.
“I am but a humble man who has the good fortune to have been called upon to work with people more gifted than I.”
“More gifted? In what way?”
“Why, prophecy, Lord Rahl.”
Richard shared a surreptitious look with Kahlan.
He leaned forward. “Are you saying that you have prophets, real prophets— wizards with the gift of prophecy— in your homeland?”
The man cleared his throat. “Not exactly, Lord Rahl, at least not like the tall prophet you have here that I’ve heard so much about. We are not anywhere near that fortunate. I apologize for giving such a misleading impression. We are but a small and insignificant land. Compared to the prophet you have with you here at the palace, those we have are of minor ability. Still, we do what we can with what we have.”
“Then who governs in Fajin Province?”
“Bishop Hannis Arc is the ruler of our people.”
“Hannis Arc.” Richard leaned back in his plush chair and crossed his legs. “And why didn’t he come?”
Ludwig blinked. “I wouldn’t know, Lord Rahl. I rarely meet with the bishop. He rules from the city of Saavedra, while I live and work in a small abbey in the mountains some distance away. With my helpers at the abbey we collect information from those who are talented enough to be visited by forewarnings. We regularly provide those bits of prophecy to the bishop in order to help him in the decisions he must make in his capacity as the ruler of our land. Of course, if we uncover especially significant omens we immediately inform the bishop. Those are the only times I actually see him.”
Zedd rolled his hand, impatient to get to the heart of the matter. “So this bishop…”
“Hannis Arc.”
“Yes, Hannis Arc. He is a religious man, then? He rules as a leader of a theological sect?”
Ludwig shook his head as if fearing he had yet again given the wrong impression. “The title ‘bishop’ is purely ceremonial.”
“So then this is not a religious rule devoted to the Creator?” Zedd asked.
Ludwig looked from face to face. “We do not worship the Creator. It is not possible to worship the Creator directly. We respect the Creator, appreciate the life He has given us, but we do not worship Him. That would be rather presumptuous on our part. He is everything, we are nothing. He does not communicate with the world of life in so simplistic a fashion as to speak directly to us, or to hear our pleas.
“Hannis Arc is the inspirational leader of Fajin Province. He is our guiding light, you might say, not a religious leader. His word is law in Saavedra and other cities as well as the rest of our province.”
“If his word is law,” Kahlan asked, “then what need has he of predictions from your abbey? I mean, if he depends on the utterances of people who are possessed by a vision, then he doesn’t really rule, now does he?”
“Mother Confessor?”
“If he looks to people who provide visions, then he is not really the leader of Fajin Province; those who provide the visions are the ones whose word is really law. They direct him with the visions.” Kahlan arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t that right?”
Ludwig twiddled with the hat on his thumbs. “Well, I don’t—”
“That would make you the ruler of Fajin Province,” she said.
Ludwig vigorously shook his head. “No, Mother Confessor, that is not the way it works.”
“Then how does it work?” she asked.
“The Creator does not speak to us in the world of life directly. We are not worthy of such common communication. The only people who hear the voice of the Creator are those who are deluded.
“But from time to time He does give us guidance through prophecy. The Creator is all-knowing. He knows everything that has ever happened; He knows everything that will ever happen. Prophecy is how He speaks to us, how He helps us. Since He already knows everything that will happen, He reveals some of those future events through omens.”
Kahlan’s expression had gone blank, a Confessor’s face, a visage Richard knew well.
“So,” she said, “the Creator gives people these visions so that they will cut their children’s throats?”
Ludwig looked from Kahlan, to Richard, and back to Kahlan. “Perhaps He wanted to spare them a worse end. Perhaps He was doing them a kindness.”
“If He is everything, and we are nothing, then why didn’t He simply intervene and prevent that grisly end from visiting the children?”
“Because we are nothing. We are beneath Him. We cannot expect Him to intervene on our behalf.”
“But He intervenes to give prophecy.”
“That’s right.”
“Then He is intervening on our behalf.”
Ludwig nodded reluctantly. “But it is in a more general sense. That is why we all must heed prophecy.”
“Ah, I see.” Kahlan said. She leaned in, tapping a finger on the marble table. “So you would have been pleased had that woman today murdered me, because of prophecy that you believe is the divine revelation of the Creator. You are therefore sorry that I am alive.”
The man’s face lost its color. “I am simply a humble servant, Mother Confessor, gathering what I can for the bishop.”
“So that he can use what you provide to intervene on behalf of the Creator?” Kahlan asked. “Much like that woman today used prophecy as an excuse to slit the throats of her children.”
Ludwig’s eyes darted between Richard, Kahlan, and the floor. “He only uses the omens we give him to guide him. They are only a tool. For example, we had people who predicted that this joyous gathering would be marred by tragedy. I believe Hannis Arc did not want to see the palace, after such a victory as we all had, visited by a tragedy, so he chose not to come. We only provided him with our best information. He is the one who chooses what he will do with that information.”
“So he sent you,” Richard said.
Ludwig swallowed before answering. “I hoped that if I came to the palace I would learn from those experts here more about prophecy, about what our future holds. The bishop thought it would be valuable for me to come for this reason, to learn what prophecy reveals for us all.”
Kahlan had the man fixed in a green-eyed glare. “Maybe while you’re here you can visit the graves of those two children who were not allowed the chance to live life, to see what the future actually held for them. Their lives were cut short by a woman who relied on visions of the future to make her decisions for her.”
Ludwig broke her gaze and looked down. “Yes, Mother Confessor.”
The man clearly didn’t agree, but he was not going to argue. He had been full of bluster at the reception when he thought that others were with him in his belief about the overriding importance of prophecy, and that the palace itself supported that belief, but now, in the presence of those who would question his beliefs, his courage was failing him.