The Omen Machine

Zedd shot Richard an incredulous look. “What the machine wanted to say? And what would that meaning be? What did the machine want to say, as you put it?”

“Fire.”

Zedd’s brow drew down again. “Fire?”

“Yes, that’s the symbol for fire. For some reason I can’t seem to work the translation in the book, but I know because I’ve seen it before in the verification web for the Chainfire spell— remember?”

Nicci folded her arms. “I certainly remember that one.”

Zedd grunted that he also remembered it all too well. “Why would this machine inscribe ‘fire’— if that’s what it really means in this case— on a strip of metal?”

“I don’t know,” Richard admitted with a sigh. “I was hoping that you three could go down there and take a look at the machine and see if you can figure out what we’re dealing with. It might be nothing more than a curiosity from an age long past, but if it’s anything more, I’d like to know about it. It must be powered by magic of some sort. Maybe one of you has encountered that kind of power before and you will recognize it.”

“How do you know that it’s powered by magic?” Nathan asked.

Richard shrugged. “What else? It’s certainly not run by a water wheel. The light coming from inside looks like the kind of light given off by the proximity spheres. I’m hoping that one of you knows something about the magic the machine uses, maybe even what its purpose was, or is. I’m worried about its location— right in the heart of the palace, under the Garden of Life, the heart of the elaborate spell that is the palace structure.”

Zedd turned the metal strip around and around, studying it with a leery eye. “All right,” he finally said. “We’ll take a look. Have you been able to learn anything at all from the book about what any of the other symbols on the other strips mean?”

“So far all I know is that the elements of the various symbols are actually intended to be combined— that the string of them is more than the sum of their parts. At least, that’s what the High D’Haran explanations say, that the string of component parts when put together form a language.”

“The language of Creation,” Zedd said in a sour tone.

“Yes. Because of that, I think it’s a mistake to try to interpret the symbols individually. If you try, then you lose sight of the true meaning expressed by the combination. Those strings of symbolic inscriptions are the language of Creation. I just can’t figure out how to decode it.”

Zedd gestured with the strip of metal. “So you’re saying that these strings of symbols are actually meant to be combined, like the words in a sentence, in order to communicate some kind of information, or to tell a story?”

Berdine lifted an eyebrow at Richard. “Dear spirits, isn’t that a wonder? I think he’s finally paying attention.”

Zedd ignored her. “So if you haven’t figured out anything at all of this language from the book, then you can’t even guess at what these longer emblematic statements might mean.”

Richard tapped the end of his pen on the table for a moment. “I’m afraid not.”

CHAPTER 33

Looking more concerned than either Zedd or Nathan, Nicci didn’t appear nearly so skeptical, or dismissive. Kahlan knew that Nicci had come to trust Richard, and believe in him, in a deeply personal way that was ironclad. Kahlan, of course, felt an even deeper sense of trust in Richard that only unconditional love could bring. Zedd had for the most part raised Richard, so he knew him well enough to know better than Nicci how much trust Richard’s word warranted, but having raised Richard, he found it hard to admit it out loud, or to keep from interrogating him to be doubly certain.

Nicci did not take anything Richard said lightly, and so she wanted to press. “Why doesn’t the book work the way it should? What do you need to make it work? What’s missing?”

Richard succumbed to a sigh. “I don’t know.”

Nicci wasn’t satisfied. “You must have learned something.”

He ran a hand over the open book. “From everything I can tell it should work, but it simply doesn’t. Berdine and I have been going around in circles and getting nowhere. In essence, the book says ‘When combined with these elements in this way, this design means this.’ But when you apply the rules the string of symbols only ends up as meaningless nonsense. I can’t for the life of me figure out why it won’t work the way it’s supposed to.”

Zedd gestured dismissively toward the book. “Perhaps this book, Regula, doesn’t really have anything to do with the machine, like you thought it did, or at least not as much as you assumed it must. After all, with a machine hidden away for untold ages, and a book of unknown origin with half of it missing, how can you know for certain that there really is a direct connection between the two?”