The Omen Machine

His gaze returned to her. “Because I understand some of the language of symbols. A lot of spell-forms are really ideas expressed through symbols or emblems rather than words. Symbols, even ones I’ve never seen before, stick in my head. That’s how I solved a number of things in the past. This one is largely new to me. But elements of it seem oddly familiar.”

Kahlan sighed as she idly picked one of the metal strips out of the opening near the glass window. Something about it caught her eye. She was surprised to see that there were markings on it. She held it closer.

She was stunned by what she saw.

“Richard, look.” As he bent close she held it out in the light for him to see. “This one in here isn’t blank.”

Richard took it from her when she held it out and carefully looked over the line of symbols seemingly burned into the metal.

“They’re all different,” he said, half to himself.

Kahlan looked in the slot where she had found it. “There are two more strips in here.” She pulled them out, took a quick look, and then handed them to him.

He looked them over, one at a time, studying each for a moment. “More symbols. But they’re different. Each strip has distinctive emblems on it. Look, this one has a whole string of markings, but the one that was on the bottom only has a few.”

When the machine began to make more noise, as if a whole bank of additional gears had been engaged, Richard bent to look into the slit of a window. Kahlan could see the light from inside reflecting in lines that moved parts of symbolic elements over the contours of his face.

“I can see a strip of metal being pulled out from the bottom of the stack on the other side. It’s being pulled into the machine and going way down inside.”

Kahlan put her head close to his, trying to see what he was talking about. Then she saw it, way down among the gears, shafts, and levers, being pulled through by a small pincer mechanism holding the front of the metal strip. The pincer was attached to a large wheel that carried the strip of metal up and around with it to place it in a track where a series of levers moved it along different junctions of track until another geared pincer finally picked it up.

Kahlan and Richard both turned aside a little as a flash of intense orangish white light ignited deep within. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a bright pinpoint of light dance across the metal strip. The focused beam of light from far below moved with lightning speed but in a tightly controlled manner. The light was so intense that she could see a moving, glowing white-hot spot of light shining through the top of the metal where the beam hit it from underneath.

As the strip came around with the wheel, another mechanism took it in turn and rotated it around so that the symbol that had been burned into the underside of the metal was now facing up. At exactly the correct point in the arc of the gear, the pincers opened and a lever on a geared mechanism swung in from the side to push the metal strip through a slot in the side of the machine.

She heard it drop into the tray.

Richard and Kahlan straightened from the little window and looked at each other.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

Kahlan nodded. “Pretty hard to miss.”

Richard pulled the strip of metal out of the tray. He immediately tossed it on top of the machine and shook his hand, then blew on his fingers. He pushed the hot metal strip around with a finger for a moment until it cooled, then gingerly picked it up and studied the single symbol etched into it.

“What about that one? Do you recognize it?” Kahlan asked.

Richard stared at it with a troubled expression. “I’m not entirely certain. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s pretty close.”

“Pretty close to what? What is it?”

Richard looked up at her again.

“It’s the emblematic representation for fire.”

CHAPTER 30

Outside of the Garden of Life hundreds of heavily armed guards filled the corridor in both directions. They all looked a great deal more than edgy. Kahlan realized that they would have had to have heard the lightning hit the Garden of Life. They probably heard the glass roof breaking and falling as well. They undoubtedly wondered what in the world had been going on beyond the doors.

They might even have feared that it was an attack of magic of some sort, and so they were standing ready in case they were called upon to defend the palace.

She knew, though, that despite their worry, none of them, not even a Mord-Sith, would dare to enter the Garden of Life while the Lord Rahl was inside unless he invited them in.

The grim look on Richard’s face and the set of his jaw as he came marching out probably only confirmed to all the men watching him approach that they had made the right decision to remain outside.