The Omen Machine

Richard and Zedd followed Nathan into a narrow hallway lit by a window at the end. It led them through a section of quarters where many of the palace staff lived. With its whitewashed, plastered walls and a wood plank floor that had been worn down from a millennium of traffic, the passageway was simpler than even the service hallways. Most doors, though, were decorated with painted flowers, or country scenes, or colorful designs, giving each place an individual, homey feel.

“Here,” Nathan said as he touched a door with a stylized sun painted on it. When Richard nodded, Nathan knocked.

No answer came in response. Nathan knocked harder. When that, too, received no answer he banged the side of his fist against the door.

“Lauretta, it’s Nathan. Please open the door?” He banged his fist on the door again. “I told Lord Rahl what you said, that you have a message for him. I brought him along. He wants to see you.”

The door opened a crack, just wide enough for one eye to peer out into the hallway. When she saw the three of them waiting she immediately opened the door all the way.

“Lord Rahl! You came!” She grinned as she licked her tongue out between missing front teeth.

Layers of clothes covered her short, heavyset form. From what Richard could see, she was wearing at least three sweaters over her dark blue dress. The buttons on the dingy, off-white sweater on the bottom strained to cover her girth. Over that sweater she had on a faded red sweater and a checkered flannel shirt with sleeves that were too long for her.

She pulled up a sleeve and then pushed stringy strands of sandy-colored hair back off her face. “Please, won’t you all come in?”

She waddled back into the dark depths of her home, grinning— giddy, apparently— to have company come to visit.

As strange as Lauretta was, it was her home that was strangest of all. In order to enter, since he was taller than she was, Richard had to hold aside yarn objects hanging just inside the door. Each of the dozens of yarn contraptions was different, but all of them had been constructed in roughly the same manner. Yarn of various colors had been wound around crossed sticks into designs that resembled spiderwebs. He couldn’t imagine what they were for. By no stretch of the imagination could they be considered attractive, so he didn’t think they were intended to be decorative.

When Zedd saw him frowning at them he leaned close to speak confidentially. “Meant to keep evil spirits from her door.”

Richard didn’t comment on the likelihood of evil spirits who had managed to make it this far on a journey from the dark depths of the underworld being stopped cold by sticks and yarn.

To each side of the entrance, papers, books, and boxes were stacked nearly to the ceiling. There was a tunnel of sorts going back through the mess into the interior of her home. Lauretta just fit down the narrow aisle. It reminded him of a mole trundling down into its burrow. The rest of them followed in single file to reach a hollowed-out area in the main room where there was space for a small table and two chairs. A window not far away, visible through a narrow gap in the teetering piles, provided gloomy light.

A counter behind the table was stacked high with papers. The whole place looked like nothing so much as a lair carved into a midden heap. It smelled nearly as bad.

“Tea?” Lauretta asked back over her shoulder.

“No thank you,” Richard said. “I heard that you wanted to speak with me about something.”

Zedd held up a hand. “I wouldn’t mind some tea.”

“And some sweet crackers to go with it?” she asked, hopefully.

Zedd returned the grin in kind. “That would be nice.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. Richard shot his grandfather a look. Lauretta rooted behind a sloppy pile of papers.

While Zedd sat at the table, waiting to be served, Lauretta retrieved a pot from an iron stand on a counter to the side. The pot was kept warm by a candle beneath the iron stand. The stand was surrounded by disorderly stacks of papers. Richard was alarmed to see fire being used.

“Lauretta,” he said, trying to sound helpful. “It’s dangerous to have fire in here.”

She looked up from pouring Zedd’s tea. “Yes, I know. I’m very careful.”

“I’m sure you are, but it’s still very—”

“I have to be careful with my predictions.”

Richard looked around at the mountains of paper. Much of it was piled in loose stacks, but there were also wooden crates full of papers, and bindings overstuffed with yet more in among the paper towers.

Zedd waggled a finger at the rugged paper cliff to the side of him. “These are all your predictions, then? All of them?”

“Oh yes,” she said, sounding eager to tell them all about it. “You see, I’ve had foretellings come to me my whole life. My mother told me that one of the first things I said was a prediction. I said the word ‘fire.’ And don’t you know, that very day a flaming log rolled out of the hearth and set her skirt on fire. No great harm done, but it scared her something awful. From then on she would write down the things I said.”