The Omen Machine

Nicci’s long blond hair fell forward over her left shoulder as she leaned in around Richard and pressed her first two fingers to Kahlan’s forehead. Kahlan felt the familiar tingle of Additive Magic vibrate and tingle through the nerves of her neck, shoulders, and arms.

Nicci withdrew the fingers and next put them to Richard’s forehead. She backed away and then shoved at his chest. “Let her go. Richard, let go of her.”

When Richard didn’t respond, she put her arms around Kahlan and gently pulled her out of his wooden embrace. Kahlan didn’t resist. She didn’t know why Nicci wanted him to let go of her, but she had no trouble grasping the concern in the sorceress’s voice, or on her face.

Nicci laid Kahlan gently back on the ground. She immediately turned her attention to Richard.

With his connection to Kahlan broken, Nicci pressed the flats of her hands to both his temples. “Let it go, Richard,” she murmured to him.

Richard gasped. Life, awareness, finally flooded back into his eyes. Kahlan let out a sigh of relief that Nicci had managed to pull him back from wherever he was. Richard grimaced when Nicci took her hands off him.

“What are you doing?” he asked Nicci. “Why did you stop me?”

“That would be my question,” Zedd said as he appeared behind Richard.

Nicci tapped the same two fingers she had put to Richard’s and Kahlan’s foreheads to her own, as if signaling Zedd to test it and see for himself. Zedd immediately hiked up his robes and knelt on the other side of Richard. He put two fingers to Kahlan’s forehead, then reached up and did the same to Richard.

“What?” he asked. “What am I supposed to feel?”

Nicci stared at him briefly. “You feel nothing?”

Zedd looked befuddled. “No. Should I?”

Nicci put her fingers back on Kahlan’s forehead, testing, and Kahlan again felt a brief tingle of Additive Magic before Nicci repeated the test on Richard.

She let out a sigh. “I don’t feel it anymore. Now that the connection is broken you can’t feel it.”

“Feel what?” Zedd asked with a frown.

Nicci cast a quick, surreptitious glance at Kahlan. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. It’s not important, we can talk about it later.”

Richard wiped a hand across his face as he recovered from the experience of trying to heal Kahlan. She didn’t really feel any better. Richard had healed far worse than this before. She couldn’t imagine why it hadn’t worked this time. What had her more concerned, though, was why Nicci appeared so upset.

“Why did you stop me?” Richard asked in a heated tone. “I was healing her. You didn’t let me finish.”

That confirmed what Kahlan had surmised, that perhaps he simply hadn’t been allowed to finish. Nicci had interrupted him before he had a chance to finish the healing. But as soon as she had the thought, she realized that couldn’t be the problem, because she had come back, became aware, before Nicci had come in and interrupted. It had failed before she separated them.

It had to be something else that was wrong.

Nicci let out a deep breath. “It wasn’t working. You weren’t healing her, you were just allowing yourself to be opened up to its contagion.”

Zedd looked as puzzled as ever. He glanced at Richard, then down at Kahlan’s arm. “What are you talking about?”

“I could tell that something wasn’t right. The flow of his gift into Kahlan had ceased. Something was back-feeding into him from her. It was using his lifeline, his way back, to steal into him.”

That brought alarm into Zedd’s expression.

Nicci’s gaze moved to Richard’s eyes. “Did you understand? Did you know what I mean?”

Richard, looking frustrated and impatient, shook his head. “Not really. I don’t know what I felt. I don’t know what happened. All I know is that it hurt. I was trying to take that hurt away from Kahlan and it just seemed to get out of hand.”

“The boy heals by instinct, through empathy,” Zedd told the sorceress. “He may have grown up without knowing he had the gift, and without learning how it’s supposed to be done, but I’ve known him to heal things I can’t.”

“So have I,” Nicci said. “He uses his gift in a unique way, but he wasn’t healing this.”

“Are you sure?” the old wizard asked.

Nicci nodded. “I could gauge the flow of power when I felt her, and then when I felt him. It was out of balance. The pain was back-feeding and was gaining control of him. It should have been the other way around. His gift should have been controlling the pain while feeding healing power into her, but it wasn’t. He may have been acting on instinct, or doing what he’s done in the past, but this time he was dealing with something different, something dangerous, and it wasn’t working.” She glanced at Kahlan. “Was it?”

Kahlan had to admit that what Nicci was saying made sense. “No. I don’t understand, though. He’s healed me before.”

“That’s right,” Richard said. “Why wasn’t it working the same this time?”