The Omen Machine

Kahlan saw Cara race away back up the path through the trees. It felt good being in Richard’s arms. She didn’t want to ever move out of his comforting warmth.

But her arm throbbed with every heartbeat. She looked down and was surprised to see that the scratches had reappeared. Zedd had healed them, but they were back and looked worse than ever.

“It looks like Zedd’s healing didn’t take care of it after all,” Richard said. “We’ll get him back here and see what he thinks. He knows a lot about such things, but it looks to me like it might have been infected and that’s why it came back. That’s probably what’s making you sick, too. Maybe he just didn’t get the infection completely healed the first time.”

That didn’t sound to her like it could be the cause of the the way she felt. She’d had wounds in the past that had become red and swollen. They never made her feel this way. In fact, the arm was the least of it. It was the sudden explosion of pain in her head that had brought her awake, made her feel sick, and had made her throw up. It was that sharp stab of pain between her temples that had overwhelmed her with nausea. She didn’t really think the scratches had anything to do with her headache.

She’d had headaches a few times in her life that were so strong they had made her throw up. Richard used to have them, too. He said that he’d inherited them from his mother. She thought that this one had to be something like that. Just a bad headache. That thought actually made her feel better.

She glanced down again at the angry red scratches on her arm. It concerned her to see that the wounds that had healed had not only returned but looked to have gotten worse. The arm felt a bit stiff, too, from being swollen.

Kahlan shivered in pain again. A wave of icy cold swept over her. The pain in her head bore down on her with crushing weight.

And then, as Richard leaned over and held her close against him, she began to feel the sweet softness of his gift seeping into her. Warm relief flooded through her cold, stiff muscles. He had used his gift to heal her in the past, so she recognized the feeling of being touched by his magic. That was what he was doing now— healing her with his magic.

Richard’s gift worked in a unique way, and usually only ignited within him if there was great need. His empathy for her, his love for her, his need for her to be safe, had brought it forth now to heal her.

Time became meaningless in his warm embrace, in the flow of magic coursing into her.

She felt his comforting, reassuring, loving presence in every fiber of her being.

But as much as she wanted his help, she also didn’t want to allow him to do it.

She knew that in the process of healing he would have to take on her pain. He first had to lift her agony away and take it into himself, so that his gift could then flow into her to heal what was wrong. Kahlan didn’t want Richard to take in this pain. As much as she wanted to be rid of the hurt, she didn’t want him to suffer it.

Fighting him, though, proved useless. The strength of his gift overwhelmed her. She had no choice but to let go of her resistance. The feeling was like letting herself fall backward into an unknown, bottomless abyss. It was frightening, and at the same time a relief, a relief in the sense of letting go, of letting someone else fight for her, fight against the pain on her behalf, of being able to stand aside as the battle raged.

She didn’t know how long she had been lost in that distant place of pain with Richard there with her, joined with her, but she did know that when she opened her eyes and the world came back in around her, she was still in his arms.

Despite what she expected, the pain was still there. It was just as strong, just as oppressive as before.

She recognized that same pain in Richard’s eyes as well. He had taken it into himself, but oddly enough, it had not at the same time drawn it away from her.

The effort had not healed her.

She thought that maybe she’d done something wrong. Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough. Or, more accurately, maybe she had been too fearful of letting Richard take the pain into himself and so she hadn’t done enough to let go so he could help her.

Cara leaned in over Richard. “Sorry it took me so long to find Zedd. I finally did. He’s coming right behind me. I brought Nicci, too.”

Richard didn’t respond. He was staring off at nothing.

CHAPTER 58

Still drifting back from that distant place that felt completely detached from the real world, which was beginning to come back into focus all around her, Kahlan knew that something wasn’t right, both with her and with Richard.

She saw Nicci squat down beside him. By the worried expression that overcame the sorceress when she looked into his unblinking eyes, Kahlan knew that something about the healing hadn’t worked the way it should have.

Richard stared off at nothing, completely unresponsive, even as the pain raged in his eyes, even as Nicci placed a hand on his shoulder and shook him.