The Omen Machine

The room was a great deal larger than the other two they had used. Tall wardrobes with a white crackled finish stood facing each other in a wing off to the side of the bed. Opposite the chairs there was a comfortable-looking couch with a low table set with a platter piled high with dried fruit. Richard took a couple of slices of dried apple and chewed one as he strolled around the room, looking for any hint of anything out of place, any hint of trouble.

They had trouble enough.

He was pretty sure that all the representatives would have wanted to know why he hadn’t been there. He was sure, too, that Kahlan had told them that he was seeing to the matters having to do with their concerns. They probably thought they were being snubbed, that he was ignoring their concerns. He couldn’t keep them informed of every little thing he was doing, or he would never have time to do any of it.

“Why do you think this is happening all of a sudden?” Kahlan asked. “And why now?”

“Well,” Richard said as he glanced behind a dressing screen, “that woman who tried to kill you yesterday at the reception didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Since when have murderers made sense?”

“It was a pretty clumsy assassination attempt, don’t you think? I mean, it may have seemed to the people at the reception that it was a close brush with death for you, but you and I both know that it wouldn’t be that easy to kill you like that. If her true purpose was to kill you she could have chosen any number of other ways that would have had a far better chance.”

“You and I know may know that, but she probably didn’t.”

“That’s possible.”

“She was determined and committed. After all, she’d just proven that by murdering her children. She probably thought that surprise would work, that she could walk up and stab me.”

“Or maybe she didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

Richard pulled the drapes aside to peer out through the wavy glass in the double doors. Snowdrifts lay in sinuous, curving forms to cover most of the railings and all but a few edges of the big round stone pots. The snow had turned wet and heavy. It was coming down in mad swirls that continually shaped and added to the drifts. When a gust of wind rattled the doors, Richard checked that they were bolted securely.

“Maybe the real purpose,” he said, “was to make people fear prophecy, fear the vision she had, fear the visions others are having, fear the future. She had quite an audience. Covered in blood like she was after killing her children because of her vision made a lasting impression on all the people there. Maybe that was the real purpose behind what she did.”

“That seems to be quite a stretch, Richard. After all, her attack and my taking her with my power had been predicted by both that woman you went to see, Lauretta, and the book End Notes. Both prophecies said the same exact thing, ‘Queen takes pawn.’ That doesn’t sound like my would-be assassin was trying to make people believe anything. It seems to confirm that there are relevant prophecies that are coming true. That one did, anyway.”

Richard turned to her as he let the draperies fall back across the glassed doors. He arched an eyebrow.

“At least, it seemed to. If prophecy says that a statue will topple, and someone deliberately topples it to make sure that the prophecy is fulfilled, is that actually fulfilling prophecy? Or is it merely someone wanting to make it look like the prophecy was true?”

“How could you distinguish the difference?”

“That’s always the problem with prophecy, now isn’t it? But there seems to be something more to this.”

Kahlan extinguished the lamp on the dressing table, then went to the nightstand and turned down the wick on the one there until it was barely glowing. It cast the room into cozy near-darkness.

“You mean, you think that someone is deliberately meddling to make it look like prophecy was being fulfilled?”

“Actually, I’m worried that there’s more to it than we’re seeing, and that’s what the prophecy is really predicting. I think that the prophecy was actually predicting that a woman who would be taken by you was being used by others. I think that’s what the prophecy is really warning us about.”

Kahlan rubbed her arms against the chill. “So you don’t think that it’s actually a prophecy about what I would do— queen takes pawn— but instead that it’s a warning that someone unseen is manipulating events? Using her as a pawn?”

Richard nodded. “Exactly. I think that someone is up to something. I think the prophecy is actually warning as much. Lauretta had written down another prediction. It said ‘People will die.’”

Kahlan’s gaze searched his. “People die all the time.”

“Yes, but in the last couple of days a number of people have died under very mysterious circumstances. The two soldiers down in the market who were looking for the sick boy were found dead, six children were murdered, both their mothers died, a representative jumped to his death, and then there was that boy down in the storm who was attacked by animals and eaten.”