The Omen Machine

Richard hardly noticed, though. His attention was riveted on Kahlan. The front of her was covered in blood. He could see ripping bite marks on her abdomen, with rows of smaller, needle-sharp punctures on her shoulders and neck. The blood running down her had at first hidden the fact that she was naked. She was also unconscious.

At the sight of what they had done to her, Richard went wild with runaway rage, swinging the sword at everything around him. The chanting bony creatures bared their fangs, snapping at him as they abruptly turned from their dancing and charged in, trying to grab him.

The sword swept around with bone-shattering force, splintering limbs and skulls of the gaunt creatures. A shower of fragments from hands and arms, heads, and sharp, pointed teeth filled the air of the room. Yet even as he swung at the fiendish figures, taking off arms, legs, and heads, more of them rushed in toward him from the other side. They reached out, their clawlike hands raking his flesh.

Richard fought all the harder, without pause. His sword cut down any near enough. Severed limbs and headless bodies lay in piles at his feet. As he stepped into their advancing lines, his sword also slashed through walls, breaking jars and jugs. Glass fragments flew through the air. Pieces of sticks and vine ripped from the walls spun across the room. But the sword didn’t seem to diminish the number of bony beings running and dancing around the room, as countless more poured in like ants from the dark passageways at the sides and rear of the room.

The glowing figures raced in, tearing at his shirt. They finally snatched his arms, their numbers overpowering him. With his sword stilled, the gathering of gangly creatures scuttled in, their faces thrusting toward him, jaws wide showing their menacing, crowded, sharp little teeth. They darted in, biting him.

He reached back and tried to grab one of the glowing figures by the throat, but she cackled with laughter as she evaporated into smoke, only to materialize again inside his reach, close to him, still holding his wrist. Her jaws stretched wide to show her fangs as she abruptly flew in at him. Richard ducked to the side as her jaws snapped closed and she missed.

With frantic effort, he spun away from all the hands. Jit was suddenly right there in front of him. She threw a handful of what looked like black dust up at him.

It hit him like an iron bar across the face. He fell to the ground, the sword slipping from his grasp. With skeletal fingers, the bony creatures dragged the weapon away.

Gnarled, clawlike hands reached out, grabbing him again, pinning him down. Sharp little teeth ripped at his shirt, tearing it away in shreds. Yet more of bony creatures crowded in, biting him on the chest and stomach.

Richard was having trouble making his arms and legs move. He was dizzy and couldn’t seem to make his vision focus.

Jit said something in a strange clicking squealing language. The hands all around lifted him and slammed him against the wall beside where Kahlan was encased in the thorny vines. He tried to call out to her, but he couldn’t seem to make his voice work. In fact, he realized that he was having trouble breathing. The dust that Jit had thrown at him was burning his lungs.

He felt sharp, stabbing pain in his legs as the thorns of the vines the creatures were wrapping around his legs sank into him, helping to keep him from moving. They were going to encase him in the wall like Kahlan, like others he could see woven into the walls all around the room.

As one of the demonic creatures, its skin covered with a greenish black sheen of slime, sank its sharp fangs into his stomach, another shoved a bowl against him to collect the blood. When it had enough, it rushed it to Jit.

Holding it with both stained hands, the Hedge Maid drank greedily from the bowl. With the leather strips sewing her lips nearly together, keeping her from opening her mouth very far, she had trouble drinking, so blood dribbled down her face and dripped from her chin.

The bony creatures looked like they could be servants of the Keeper himself. They moved in a knees-up, high-stepping crouch as they accompanied Jit, crowding in close to her like loyal little lapdogs. Cockroaches emerged at her feet all along the way to drink his blood as it dripped from her chin.

Jit spoke in the strange, clicking squealing language.

One of the glowing figures in a cowled cloak swept up to him, pointing a finger at his face. “She says that you, too, like the Mother Confessor, will soon be the walking dead.”

Richard remembered what the soldier back at the palace had told him. He had said that in the Dark Lands the dead walked. Richard knew now that it was not superstition.

Richard wondered why the Hedge Maid’s mouth was sewn closed.

CHAPTER 84

It came to him.

Richard understood Regula’s last message.

He just didn’t know if it could do him any good.