The Omen Machine

Chapter 78

As Kahlan guided her horse among immense pines, she frequently…

Chapter 79

Kahlan was confounded at the construction of the enclosed, candlelit…

Chapter 80

Kahlan ran the words through her mind again, not sure…

Chapter 81

Richard stood staring through the soft haze of drizzle at…

Chapter 82

Crouched low, Richard made his way along the top of…

Chapter 83

Richard dropped into a crouch as he landed. Glowing, hooded…

Chapter 84

It came to him.

Chapter 85

In a blink, before the Hedge Maid could have second…

Chapter 86

If he lives,” Cara said, “I’m going to kill him.”

Other Books by Terry Goodkind

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CHAPTER 1

There is darkness,” the boy said.

Richard frowned, not sure that he had understood the whispered words. He glanced back over his shoulder at the concern on Kahlan’s face. She didn’t look to have understood the meaning any more than he had.

The boy lay on a tattered carpet placed on the bare ground just outside a tent covered with strings of colorful beads. The tightly packed market outside the palace had become a small city made up of thousands of tents, wagons, and stands. Throngs of people who had come from near and far for the grand wedding the day before flocked to the marketplace, buying everything from souvenirs and jewelry to fresh bread and cooked meats, to exotic drinks and potions, to colorful beads.

The boy’s chest rose a little with each shallow breath, but his eyes remained closed. Richard leaned down closer to the frail child. “Darkness?”

The boy nodded weakly. “There is darkness all around.”

There was, of course, no darkness. Streamers of morning sunlight played over the crowds of people coursing by the thousands through the haphazard streets between the tents and wagons. Richard didn’t think that the boy saw anything of the festive atmosphere all around.

The child’s words, on the surface so soft, carried some other meaning, something more, something grim, about another place entirely.

From the corner of his eye, Richard saw people slow as they passed, watching the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor stopped to see an ill boy and his mother. The market out beyond was filled with lilting music, conversation, laughter, and animated bargaining. For most of the people passing nearby, seeing the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor was a once-in-a-lifetime event, one of many over the last few days, that would be recounted back in their homelands for years to come.

Guards of the First File stood not far away, also watching attentively, but they mostly watched the nearby crowds shuffling through the market. The soldiers wanted to make sure that those crowds didn’t close in too tightly, even though there was no real reason to expect any sort of trouble.

Everyone was, after all, in a good mood. The years of war had ended. There was peace and growing prosperity. The wedding the day before seemed to mark a new beginning, a celebration of a world of possibilities never before imagined.

Set amid that sunlit exuberance, the boy’s words felt to Richard like a shadow that didn’t belong.

Kahlan squatted down beside him. Her satiny white dress, the iconic symbol of her standing as the Mother Confessor, seemed to glow under the early-spring sky, as if she were a good spirit come among them. Richard slipped his hand under the boy’s bony shoulders and sat him up a little as Kahlan lifted a waterskin up to the boy’s lips.

“Can you take just a sip?”

The boy didn’t seem to hear her. He ignored her offer and the waterskin. “I’m alone,” he said in a frail voice. “So alone.”

The words sounded so forlorn that they moved Kahlan to reach out in silent compassion and touch the boy’s knobby shoulder.

“You’re not alone,” Richard assured the boy in a voice meant to dispel the gloom of such words. “There are people here with you. Your mother is here.”

Behind closed eyelids, the boy’s eyes rolled and darted, as if looking for something in the darkness.

“Why have they all left me?”

Kahlan laid a hand gently on the boy’s heaving chest. “Left you?”

The boy, lost in some inner vision, moaned and whined. His head tossed from side to side. “Why have they left me alone in the cold and dark?”

“Who left you?” Richard asked, concentrating in an effort to be sure he could hear the boy’s soft words. “Where did they leave you?”

“I have had dreams,” the boy said, his voice a little brighter.

Richard frowned at the odd change of subject. “What kind of dreams?”

Disoriented confusion returned to haunt the boy’s words. “Why have I had dreams?”

The question sounded to Richard like it was directed inward and didn’t call for an answer. Kahlan tried anyway.

“We don’t—”

“Is the sky still blue?”

Kahlan shared a look with Richard. “Quite blue,” she assured the boy. He didn’t appear to hear that answer, either.

Richard didn’t think that there was any point in continuing to pester the boy for answers. He was obviously sick and didn’t know what he was saying. It was pointless to try to question the product of delirium.