The Omen Machine

“Soon, Bishop, you will rule D’Hara. You will rule the empire.”

CHAPTER 37

Mohler did not look up to meet the steady gaze of the blue-eyed woman watching him as he pulled open the door. Few people had the courage to meet her gaze. Hannis Arc returned to his desk as the old scribe pulled the heavy iron-bound oak door closed on his way out.

As he scooped his dark robes under his legs to sit at the desk in his massive leather chair, he watched from the corner of his eye as the seven glided in closer.

Their flowing robes radiated a supple, bluish blush with a soft, ethereal glimmer to it. They moved with fluid grace, their robes never still, giving him the impression that he was actually looking in at them in another place, seeing them in an ethereal world of continual gentle breezes.

From a distance, each seemed as elegant a creature as ever existed. To all appearances they seemed to be made of air and light as much as flesh and bone. As they glided closer, he fancied that they looked like nothing so much as good spirits.

He knew, though, that they were anything but good spirits.

Six of them drifted idly together, like corks in a pond, watching from not far away as the seventh floated in close on the other side of the desk.

As she leaned in he could finally see beyond the edge of the cowl covering her head, see the wrinkled flesh of her pitted and pockmarked face, the knotted blue veins, the warts and ulcers that ravaged her distorted features, the hanging tags of skin, the eyes the color of rancid egg yolks. She smiled a wicked smile that promised overwhelming pain and suffering should she wish it.

Hannis Arc was not in the least bit intimidated. Rather, he was indignant to be shown such little respect. He did not try to keep the displeasure from his voice.

“Has Jit completed the tasks I gave her?”

The familiar laid a gnarled hand on the desk as she leaned over toward him. With long, curved nails, bunched, callused skin, and knobby joints, her hand looked more like a claw.

She was close enough to have rattled most people down to their very soul, close enough to paralyze a victim with fear. Hannis Arc was no more unnerved by her appearance than she appeared to be of his.

Her voice came like a hiss across silk. “You dare to demand of us, to demand of our mistress?”

Hannis Arc whipped his arm around and slammed his knife down with all the force he could muster, pinning the familiar’s disfigured hand to the desktop. She let out a squealing screech that seemed as if it might break the glass in all the display cases and crack the stone walls besides. It was a shriek that he thought must be something like what would come from those dragged down to the darkest depths of the underworld. It was the stuff of nightmares brought to life.

The arms of the other six waved in rage, like pennants in a gale. They swooped in around their trapped companion, incredulous to see her stuck fast, clicking their bewilderment to one another in a tongue that sounded like nothing so much as small little bird bones snapping.

“Surprised?” He arched an eyebrow. “Surprised that a knife wielded by a mere man could harm you?”

She let out another squealing screech that was loud enough to raise the dead as she again tugged and twisted wildly at her hand pinned to the desktop by the knife. Her bluish black lips curled back in a snarl, showing her fangs as she leaned toward him. It did her no good.

The heavy desk rattled and wobbled, the feet lifting clear of the floor every time she yanked on her arm, trying without success to free it. The other six snaked through the air around her in sympathetic outrage. When they grabbed at her to try to pull her free they received a lightning jolt from the knife that shot though them, forcing them to release their grip.

“What have you done?” the one stuck fast demanded in a screech.

“Why, I have pinned you to the desk. Isn’t it obvious?”

“But how!”

“Right now that is really not what should concern you. What should matter most to you now is recognizing that I am no mere man and that it would be in your best interest to show me a great deal of respect. As you have discovered, I have abilities to handle the likes of you seven arrogant little lizard-eaters. That goes for your mistress as well.”

Her eyes betrayed confusion behind the hot glare of hate.

Hannis Arc smiled without humor. “Didn’t the Hedge Maid tell you that much of it when she called you forth from beneath the ground to serve her? Well”— his smile widened— “perhaps she had her reasons. Perhaps you seven weren’t really important enough for it to matter to her.”

“You will be made to suffer for this,” she said in a hiss.

“I just told you that you need to show me a great deal of respect, and instead you threaten me?” He leaned toward the familiar, glaring into her wild eyes as he seized the handle of the crescent-bladed axe propped against the desk beside his right leg. “For this offense, you lose the hand. Threaten me again and you lose your existence.”