The Omen Machine

The only people who regularly went into the garden were the staff assigned to tend the grass, flowers, shrubs, and trees. Only the most highly trusted people on the palace staff were allowed to work in the garden. Even then, when they went in to do their work officers of the First File watched them at all times.

During the war, when they were under constant threat and there were dangerous objects of magic containing tremendous power locked away in the Garden of Life for safekeeping, not even the people who tended the garden had been allowed to go in to take care of the plants and trees. As a result it became for a time a wild, overgrown place that had taken on an eerie look that in a way matched the gloomy mood of everyone in the palace.

After the war had ended, it had taken a lot of work to return the garden to the state of splendor it was now in.

Kahlan had a feeling, though, that even such occasional tending was at an end and the Garden of Life was about to again become strictly off-limits to everyone except on Lord Rahl’s instructions.

Throughout history the Garden of Life had been a place where the Lord Rahl, from time to time, had unleashed some of the most powerful magic in existence.

It had been a place that on occasion had been a gateway to the underworld itself.

Magic was a mystery to most people and therefore greatly feared. Kahlan knew that magic could be glorious, wondrous, a magnificent affirmation of life. But Kahlan knew magic’s other side, its dark and dangerous side. Most people only knew magic as a dark, mysterious danger. For the D’Haran people, the Lord Rahl was their protection against those dark dangers of magic. For their part, these soldiers were meant to be the steel against steel. They would lay down their lives in that service.

But it was Richard’s responsibility as the Lord Rahl to deal with any matters involving magic.

It seemed that the Garden of Life had once again become the stage for dangerous magic.

Nyda stood before the ranks of soldiers, her arms folded, watching Richard and Kahlan come. The Mord-Sith was in her red leather. She looked to be in a foul mood, but for a Mord-Sith that wasn’t necessarily at all unusual.

“What’s going on?” Nyda asked.

As Richard stormed past, he took her by the arm and turned her around to walk with him, but he spoke to the commander of the soldiers on his way by.

“No one is to go in there. No one. Do you understand?”

The commander clapped a fist to his heart in salute. “Of course, Lord Rahl.”

The commander immediately assigned men to guard the doors and then issued orders to the rest of them to take up stations along the hallways and intersections. The hall came alive with movement and the echoing jangle of metal as men rushed to take up their posts.

Richard leaned close to Nyda. “Go get Berdine. Bring her to the library.”

Nyda, still being carried along with him by her arm, pointed downward. “You mean the library down there, below us, where she has been working?”

“That’s right. Get her and send her there. Then get my grandfather and bring him there, too. You had better bring Nicci, Nathan, and Cara as well.”

“All of them? Now, in the middle of the night?”

“In the middle of the night,” Richard confirmed.

Nyda leaned out past Richard to look over at Kahlan. “What’s going on?”

“The roof fell in.”

CHAPTER 31

Kahlan’s throbbing hand lay in her lap as she sat in a wooden library chair, not far from Richard’s side, as she worked on translating a few passages in a book written in an obscure language she happened to know. She was having trouble making her eyes focus. Richard needed her help to cross-reference a few descriptions in the book that he and Berdine were studying.

Kahlan yawned and looked up when she heard a commotion and saw Zedd storming in through the doors at the far end of the room. His robes looked like they were having a difficult time keeping pace with the rawboned wizard. Richard only glanced up momentarily from the book he was absorbed in reading.

Kahlan went back to her work but from time to time checked out of the corner of her eye as Zedd made his way resolutely across the gold and blue carpets. His face, set with grim creases, fell into shadow between each of the reflector lamps hung on columns at the end of the rows of shelves.

“Bags, Richard, what’s going on?”

“No need for that kind of language. I need to see you, that’s all.”

Zedd came to a halt on the other side of the heavy mahogany table. Finally having a chance to catch up, his simple robes swirled in around his legs. He took in Kahlan’s face, searching her expression for any hint of the nature of the problem, before returning his attention to Richard.

“I have good reason for my language. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be awakened in the middle of the night by a Mord-Sith?”