The Omen Machine

As Richard stepped off the rusty iron rungs of the ladder, the captain of the dungeon guards straightened and clapped a fist to his heart in salute. Richard dipped his head in response. He glanced around in the flickering torchlight as he brushed grit off his hands. At least the smell of burning pitch helped cover the stench.

The captain looked worried to see the Lord Rahl himself down in his dungeon. His level of concern eased a bit when he saw Nyda come down the ladder. The tall Mord-Sith’s red leather outfit and blond hair stood out in stark contrast to the dank, drab stone room. The captain flashed a polite smile at Nyda as he nodded in greeting. He obviously knew her.

Richard realized that Mord-Sith were hardly strangers to dungeons, especially this one. In the past, enemies, real or imagined, would have been held in these dungeons and Mord-Sith would have come to torture information out of those with the gift.

Having once been one of those prisoners, Richard knew all about it.

He gestured to the iron door. “I want to see the woman who killed her children.”

“And the man who tried to kill his family?”

“Yes, him too,” Richard said.

The captain worked a big key in the door. The lock resisted for a moment, but after the latch clanged open, the man yanked the heavy iron door open enough to slip through. After hooking the keys on his belt, he took a lantern from a table and led the way into the inner dungeon. In a well-practiced sweep of her arm, Nyda took another lantern off an iron peg in the wall.

Before Richard could go through the door, she stepped in front of him and went in first. He was quite familiar with Mord-Sith’s insistence on going first so they could check for danger. He had long ago learned that his life was easier if he let them have their way and didn’t argue with them over such minor issues. He saved commands for times when they really mattered. Because of that, the Mord-Sith heeded his commands.

The captain led them down a series of narrow passageways that in most places had been carved out of solid rock. Even after thousands of years, the chisel marks looked as fresh as when they had first been cut through the stone.

They passed cell doors behind which criminals were held. Up ahead, in the light of the captain’s lantern, Richard saw fingers sticking out, gripping the edges of tiny openings in the iron doors. He saw eyes looking out through some of the black openings. When the prisoners saw Nyda coming behind the captain, the fingers withdrew and the eyes disappeared back into the blackness. No one called out. No one wanted to draw her attention.

At the end of a particularly narrow, crooked passageway with doors spaced farther apart, the captain came to a halt at a cell on the left. There were no fingers in the opening, no eyes looking out. When the heavy door was pulled open, Richard saw the reason. The outer door opened not into a cell, but into a small inner room with another door. The second, smaller door held the prisoner in an inner room.

The man used a long sliver of fatwood to transfer a flame from his lantern to a second hanging on an iron peg. “These are the shielded cells,” the captain said in answer to the question on Richard’s face.

Even though the palace had been constructed in the form of a power spell that strengthened the gift of any Rahl, and weakened that of others, the shields around the cells were an extra layer of protection to contain anyone gifted, no matter how powerful they were. No chances were taken with the gifted.

The captain lifted his lantern to look in the small opening in the second door. When he was sure that the prisoner wasn’t going to spring at him, he unlocked the door. He used all his weight to pull on the door. Rusty hinges squealed in protest as they gave ground. When the door had been opened enough for Richard to enter, the captain went back out in the hall to wait.

Nyda, Agiel in her fist, entered first. The woman, sitting on the floor, scrambled backward until her back was pressed against the far wall. She didn’t have far to go. She shaded her eyes from the sudden intrusion of light. She didn’t look at all dangerous. Except to her children.

“Tell me about your vision,” Richard said.

The woman looked at Nyda and then back to him. “Which vision? I have had many.”

That wasn’t what Richard had been expecting to hear. “The vision you had that made you kill your children.”

The woman’s eyes reflected points of lamplight. She didn’t answer.

“Your four children. You threw them over the edge of the cliff. You killed them. Tell me about the vision that you thought was cause enough to do such a thing.”

“My children are safe now. They are in the hands of the good spirits.”

Richard stuck his arm out in time to bar Nyda from stepping in to ram her Agiel into the woman. “Don’t do that,” he said softly to her.

“Lord Rahl—”

“I said don’t do it.”

He had no sympathy for the woman, but he didn’t want her tortured with an Agiel, either.