The Sword of the Truth, Book 12 - The Omen Machine (14 page)

O
ut of the corner of her eye Kahlan saw the dark thing charge toward them as Richard dove off her and across the bed.

As he slid toward the edge of the bed, his hand snatched the hilt of the sword. He rolled off the bed, yanking the sword free of the scabbard in one fluid movement as he landed on his feet. The ringing sound of the Sword of Truth’s steel cut the silence like a scream of rage that sent a shiver rippling across her flesh.

As the dark shape vaulted toward them Richard spun to face the threat. Kahlan ducked back out of the way.

With lightning speed, the weapon swung around in an arc. The blade whistled as it swept through the air to meet the streak of a shadow.

Razor-sharp steel cut through the center of the inky form.

But even as the blade was cleaving it, the dark form evaporated like dust losing its shape, a shadow decomposing into eddies and swirls as it vanished.

Richard stood beside the bed, sword in hand, panting with rage. As far as Kahlan could tell, the source of his awakened anger was no longer there. She heard the soft, distant rumble of thunder, and the faint hiss of the lantern on the table between the chairs and the couch.

Kahlan scooted across the bed toward him. She peered around at the dark room, trying to see if the form had reappeared somewhere else. She wondered if she would be able to see it if it did.

“I don’t feel anything watching us,” she said, still scanning the darkness for the silent threat.

“I don’t either. It’s gone.”

Kahlan wondered for how long. She wondered if it would suddenly appear again somewhere else in the room.

“What in the world do you think that could have been?” She stood up beside him, her fingers trailing along his muscular arm momentarily on her way to the lamp to turn up the wick.

Richard, still in the heat of rage from having the sword in his hand, scanned every corner of the room as the lamp finally helped illuminate what had been only dark shapes before.

“I wish I knew,” he said as he finally slid the sword back into its scabbard. “It’s starting to have me watching every shadow, listening to every sound, worrying if something is really there or wondering if it’s just my imagination.”

“Reminds me of when I was little and thought there were monsters under my bed.”

“There’s only one problem with that.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“This wasn’t our imagination. We both felt it. We both saw it. It was here.”

“Do you think this thing tonight was what we felt watching us before?”

Richard glanced over at her. “Do you mean, do I think that this imaginary monster in our room is the same imaginary monster that was in our room last night?”

Despite her level of concern, that made Kahlan smile. “I guess it sounds silly when you put it that way.”

“What ever it is, I think it has to be the same thing that’s been watching us.”

“But we could never see it before. Why did it show itself tonight?”

He had no answer. All he could do was sigh in frustration.

Kahlan hugged herself with bare arms as she nestled in close to him. “Richard, if we don’t know what’s going on, or who, or what is looking into our room watching us, how can we hope to stop it? How are we ever going to get any sleep?”

Richard put an arm protectively around her. “I don’t know,” he said in a tone of regret. “I wish I did.”

Kahlan had an idea. She looked up at him.

“Zedd’s power is weakened in the palace, but Nathan is a Rahl. His power is amplified in here. Maybe we can have him hide nearby, or stay in a room beside ours and see if he can sense where it’s coming from, where that person is hiding as they watch us. If he could sense where they are, then while they’re busy watching us he could send men to grab them.”

“I don’t think that will work.”

“Why not?”

“Because I suspect that it’s not originating here in the palace. As you said, the palace reduces the power of anyone but a Rahl. I think that for them to do something like this they would have to be someplace else. I think they have to be projecting this, this power, or observation, or what ever it is, into our room from outside the palace.”

“So there is no way to stop them? You mean that we’re going to have to endure someone watching us in our bedroom every night?”

Kahlan watched the muscles in his jaw flex as he clenched his teeth in frustration.

“The Garden of Life was constructed as a containment field,” he finally said, half to himself. “I wonder if that would shield us from prying eyes.”

Kahlan was taken with the idea. “Containment fields were created to prevent errant magic, no matter how powerful, from getting out, or getting in.”

“Then maybe…” he said as he considered.

Kahlan folded her arms. “I’d rather sleep in a bedroll on the grass in there if we could be all by ourselves than on a big soft bed in here with someone watching me.”

“I know what you mean,” Richard said. “If fact, maybe we should.”

“I’m game,” Kahlan said, stepping into her underclothes.

He sat on a bench at the foot of the bed and stuffed a leg into his pants. “Me too. But what I can’t figure out is why someone, or something— or prophecy— is playing this game of riddles with us.”

Kahlan opened a drawer and pulled out some of her old traveling clothes. “Maybe prophecy is trying to help you.”

Richard frowned as he buttoned his pants.

“The thing that bothers me,” he finally said as he leaned over and snatched up his shirt, “is that the prophecies that seem like they may be saying the same thing use different words. Some say that the roof is going to fall in, but another said that the sky is going to fall in. The roof and the sky aren’t the same thing. Yet those two warnings have something in common: they say that both are going to fall in. And, there’s also a certain commonality to roof and sky.”

“Maybe they were meant to be the same thing, but the exact right word was lost in a translation, so the language used was imprecise. Or maybe it was meant to be oblique.”

Richard pulled on a boot. “Or maybe the warnings of the roof falling in and the sky falling in are metaphors.”

“Metaphors?” Kahlan asked as she drew a pair of pants up her long legs.

“Yes, like the one about queen takes pawn. That was obviously predicting that you would take that woman with your power. Calling her a pawn was telling us that she was being used. She was a puppet. I think the hidden hand directing that puppet wanted all the representatives gathered here at the palace to see the show.”

“You mean you think that roof is a metaphor for the sky, or the other way round?”

“Could be,” Richard said. “You know, like calling the night sky a roof of stars.”

“So what do you think prophecy about the roof or sky falling in really means, then?”

“Maybe that it’s life, the world, that is going to be falling in around us.”

Kahlan didn’t like the sound of that.

They both froze at the sound of a loud howling shriek outside in the hall.

Something heavy thudded into the double bedroom doors. For a moment, Kahlan thought they might be knocked off their hinges, but they remained firmly in place.

Richard and Kahlan both stood stockstill, staring at the door.

“What could that have been?” she whispered.

“I can’t imagine.” Richard’s fingers found the hilt of his sword. “Let’s find out.”

Richard cracked open the door just enough for them to peer outside into the hallway. Reflector lamps mounted on the walls lit the corridor and a nearby intersection of halls. Through the narrow slit Kahlan saw heavily armed men racing in from every direction.

Splashes and smears of blood stained the marble floor in the hall.

Lying against the door at their feet was a big black dog with two pikes sticking from its side. Blood still flowed from several other gaping wounds.

Richard opened the door the rest of the way. The dead dog’s head flopped over across the threshold. One of the officers, seeing Richard and Kahlan at the door, rushed up.

The powerfully built man swallowed as he caught his breath. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl.”

“What in the world is going on?” Richard asked.

“Well, this dog here was racing up the halls, growling and snapping at people. We were finally forced to kill him.”

“Where did he come from?” Kahlan asked as she moved into the doorway beside Richard.

“We think he must belong to one of the people down in the market. When everyone was brought inside because of the storm, people had to bring their animals in as well. The horses and mules were put up in the stables, but dogs stayed with their owners. I think that in all the confusion down there some of them must have run loose. This one apparently got away from its owner and made it all the way up into the palace.”

Richard squatted down beside the dead dog and stroked a hand along the wiry fur. Even in death, its teeth were still bared in a snarl. He patted the dog’s shoulder, sorry that he had to die.

“So this fellow probably ran away from his owners?”

“That’s what I suspect, Lord Rahl. We spotted him racing up through the halls, headed this way. We tried to catch him, but in the end he was too vicious and we had to take him down. I’m sorry to have disturbed you both.”

Richard waved off the concern. “It’s all right. We were just about to head up to the Garden of Life anyway.” He again ran his hand over the black fur. “Too bad this poor fellow had to die.”

While the officer’s explanation sounded plausible enough, Kahlan couldn’t help thinking of the prediction from the woman who had tried to kill her, couldn’t help remembering her words.

“Dark things. Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won’t be able to escape them.”

H
igh up in the People’s Palace, Richard and Kahlan, with a contingent of soldiers of the First File accompanying them, made their way through a series of intersections that formed the arms of the central part of the spell-form that was the palace complex. Those arms, tracing the template of a complex formula, drew power in toward the Garden of Life.

The footsteps of the soldiers whispered off the polished granite floors and echoed off the great slabs of stone standing between black granite columns that lined the broad passageways. Each polished slab between those columns, laced with multicolored crystalline veins, was like a work of art.

Besides the men following behind Richard and Kahlan, there was a sizable force already stationed throughout the passageways. This part of the palace was always heavily guarded and strictly off-limits to the public.

Richard paused at the great doors, momentarily taking in the carvings of rolling hills and forests. The elaborate scene on the doors was sheathed in gold.

The Garden of Life had been created as a containment field for any dangerous magic that might need to be unleashed. It also protected those handling such power from any nefarious intervention. Beyond the gold-clad doors some of the most dangerous conjuring ever conceived by the mind of man had been unleashed. The magnificent doors were, like many other things in the palace, meant to be a reminder, when dealing with such potentially deadly things, of the beauty and importance of life itself.

The garden was also a touchstone of great events in Richard’s life. He had been brought to the garden at the lowest point in his life. It had also been the scene of his greatest triumphs.

By the way Kahlan put a hand gently on his back, he knew that she must have realized what he was thinking.

Finally, he pulled one of the massive doors open. The guards took up posts up and down the hallway as Richard and Kahlan went into the Garden of Life alone.

Once inside, they were enveloped with the heady fragrance of flowers that grew in great swaths beside the walkway that wandered toward the heart of the room. Beyond the flowers small trees created a intimate forest gathered before a vine-covered stone wall. Beyond the wall, the center of the expansive room contained an area of lawn that swept around almost into a circle. The grass ring was broken by a wedge of white stone, upon which sat a slab of granite held up by two short, fluted pedestals.

High overhead, a ceiling of leaded windows let light flood the room during the day. At night they offered a view of the stars that always made Richard feel rather small and lonely.

This night there was no view out the windowed ceiling. Richard could see that a thick blanket of snow covered the glass. When lightning flashed, he could see that in some places the windblown snow had been reduced to a thin layer that let the lightning show through, but in other areas, on the lee side of the peak, the snow was so thick that not even the flashes of lightning could penetrate the dense covering. Intermittent thunder rumbled through the room, making the ground tremble underfoot.

After putting flame to a few torches around the edge of the grassy area, Richard sat with Kahlan on the short stone wall at the edge of the small indoor forest. Together they gazed out across the open area, as if looking out on a meadow.

When he took hold of her hand Kahlan flinched.

“What’s wrong?”

She lifted her hand to glance at it briefly. “Just a little tender, that’s all.”

He could see that the scratches on the back of her hand were swollen and had turned to an angry red. The scratches on his own hand were red, too, but not as bad as Kahlan’s.

Holding her fingers, he turned her hand to inspect it in the torchlight. “It looks worse.”

She took her hand back. “It will be better soon.” She rubbed her arms against the chill and changed the subject. “I don’t feel anyone watching us. You?”

Richard listened to the torches hissing softly for a time as he looked around the vast room. “No, I don’t either.”

He could see that she was so sleepy she could hardly keep her eyes open. The stress of someone watching them not only kept them awake, but made what sleep they did get fitful. He put his arm around her and drew her close. Kahlan snuggled tight against him and laid her head on his shoulder.

Richard thought they ought to lay out their bedrolls and get some sleep. He liked being under the trees. It reminded him of all the times he’d slept under the stars. It reminded him of his Hartland woods, of when he first met Kahlan there.

“Back in the woods,” she said in a dreamy voice.

Richard smiled. “So we are.”

“Kind of nice for a change.”

He thought so, too. Beyond the glass above them the storm howled in fury, but under the occluding layer of snow they could see none of it. Lit from underneath, Richard could see runnels of water snaking down the glass, so he knew that the snowstorm must be changing to sleet, or maybe even rain. When snow changed to rain it usually signaled the end of a spring storm. Sometimes, that was the most violent part of such storms, when they brought destructive winds and lightning.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Kahlan asked.

He glanced over and saw her gazing up at the glass roof. In places the drifts were quite deep. The rain was packing the snow tighter, and making it a great deal heavier.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how much weight the glass can hold.”

“That’s what I was thinking…” she said softly, half to herself. “I wonder if it has ever broken in the past. It could be pretty dangerous being underneath it if it were to break in.”

If the roof fell in.

The leaded glass was the roof in this room.

If the sky fell in.

In this room, the glass roof was the sky.

Richard stood. He understood the two different prophecies. They really were the same.

“I think we should get out of here.”

“I think you may be right. I don’t like the idea of all that glass coming down on us.”

Just then, a lightning strike lit the room with a flash and a deafening blast. As Richard shielded Kahlan, turning her away from the blinding illumination, he saw the lacework of lightning arcing and crackling through the heavy metal framework that held the glass over the center of the room.

Glass shattered, sending shards flying everywhere. One sliver hit the back of his shoulder; another shard stuck in his thigh. A piece nicked Kahlan’s arm.

Once the glass ceiling was cracked by the the lightning hitting the metal framework, the tremendous weight of wet snow brought the center of it cascading down. Lightning lanced a route through the opening toward the floor of the room.

At the same time that the tremendous weight of it all came crashing down, hitting the floor hard enough to make the whole room shudder with a resounding thud, another bolt of lightning lashed in through the breach in the ceiling and made it to ground.

The impact of all the wet snow and the jarring jolt of lightning sent a shock wave through the room that blew the torches out.

In the sudden darkness, Richard could hear a great rending groan as stone cracked and began breaking apart.