The Omen Machine

Nyda briefly glared at him before pointing her Agiel at the woman. “Answer the question or I will spend some time alone with you making sure that you don’t ever fail to answer any of Lord Rahl’s questions again.”

The woman’s eyes turned toward him. “Lord Rahl?”

“That’s right: Lord Rahl. Now answer his question.”

“What vision did you have that made you kill your children?” Richard repeated.

“I have no children, thanks to you!” The woman held one arm out protectively, expecting the Agiel.

Richard planted a boot on the bench carved out of the solid stone of the cell wall. He rested an elbow on his knee as he leaned toward the woman. “What are you talking about?”

“You won’t protect us from what is to come when the roof falls in. You instead scorn prophecy’s warnings.” The woman lifted her chin defiantly. “Those children, at least, no longer have to fear what is to happen.”

“And what is going to happen?”

“Terrible things!”

“What terrible things?”

The woman opened her mouth to tell him. She seemed surprised to realize that she had nothing to say.

“Terrible things, that’s all,” she finally said.

“I want you to tell me about the terrible things that are going to happen,” Richard said.

She blinked in confusion. “I, I don’t…”

She unexpectedly clutched her throat as she slumped to the dark stone floor, where she convulsed once before going still.

Richard turned to someone behind him as his right hand went to the hilt of his sword.

There was no one there.

“What’s the matter?” Nyda asked as she turned, looking for a threat.

Richard glanced around. “I thought I felt something, but I guess it’s just the nature of this place.”

He bent to the woman. Her lips were covered in red froth. It was all too obvious that she was dead.

“Well, isn’t that something,” Nyda said. “You should have let me use my Agiel. If you had, we might have gotten answers.”

“I don’t want you using that thing on people unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

She regarded him with the singular, menacing look that all Mord-Sith seemed to be able to conjure at will. Richard knew that it was an aspect born in madness. He knew because he had once been lost in their world.

“It was necessary,” she said. “There is a growing threat to you. It is foolish to hesitate or to shy away from doing what is necessary to prevent that threat from harming you. If it harms you, it harms all of us. What threatens you threatens us all.”

Richard didn’t argue. He thought that maybe she was right. “I think that if you had used your Agiel she would have simply dropped dead right then.”

“Now we’ll never ever know.”

CHAPTER 19

Richard held his tongue. He wasn’t in the mood to argue about what was done and over and couldn’t be changed. He instead turned away from the dead woman and stepped over the high doorsill to the waiting captain.

“The woman is dead. Take me to see the man who was put in here this morning, the jeweler, before he too drops dead.”

The captain glanced through the open door, perhaps expecting to see blood, then gestured. “It’s the cell down there, Lord Rahl, across the way.”

In short order he had the outer door unlocked and the key turning the lock of the second door. After looking through the small hole in the door, he pulled it open.

Nyda cut in front of Richard and went in ahead of him, lantern in one hand and Agiel at the ready in the other.

“You bastard!” the man cried as he went for Richard when he stepped inside.

Nyda’s Agiel caught him across the throat. He fell back with a shriek, pressing his hands to his throat as he gasped in agony.

This time Richard didn’t protest Nyda’s use of her Agiel. The man had given her ample cause.

Richard was losing his patience and didn’t waste any time with formalities. “You tried to kill your family today. Why?”

“Because of what’s going to happen to them, that’s why.” His voice was hoarse and gravelly from the lingering effects of the Agiel. His eyes bulged with anger. “It’s your fault!” Blood came out with his words.

“And how do you figure it’s my fault?”

The man jabbed a finger toward Richard. “Because you won’t listen to prophecy.” He had to swallow back the pain and blood. It was lowering his voice, but not his fury. “You think you’re too important to heed prophecy. You think you know better.”

“I know a great deal about prophecy,” Richard said. “It isn’t as simple as you seem to think.”

“It is. I’ve had visions of the future before and they’re stone simple to understand. What’s more, they always come true.”

“What kind of visions have you had?”

The man was still comforting his throat. His anger cooled a little. He cast a wary look at Nyda before answering.

“Things such as having a feeling that a customer I hadn’t seen in a long time would come to me with a commission. He soon did. One time I was making a ring for a wealthy man, and while working on it I had a premonition that the man would die before the ring was finished. The next day the man died.”