The Omen Machine

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