The Omen Machine

“You mean you think it could be another omen about Kahlan because it’s something like the one before?” Zedd asked. “Like that first one saying ‘Queen takes pawn.’”

Nathan shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know. I’ve had no visions about it. It could mean anything.”

Richard’s face had gone ashen. He snatched the paper from Nathan and read it himself as if he didn’t believe it.

“What’s wrong?” Zedd asked.

Richard continued to stare at the paper for a moment before he finally looked up at his grandfather.

“Earlier tonight,” he said in a quiet voice, “the machine spoke to me.”

Zedd leaned in. “What do you mean, it spoke to you?”

Richard’s hand holding the piece of paper lowered as he searched for words. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

Zedd didn’t look inclined to let him off that easy. “I think you need to give it a good try.”

Richard pressed his lips together for a moment first as he considered how to explain it. “The machine told me that it had had dreams. Then it wanted to know why it had had dreams.”

Nicci’s brows lifted. “It asked you a question?”

Richard nodded. Kahlan frowned as she tried to recall through her throbbing headache where she had heard those words before. They sounded familiar. Finally, it came to her.

“Isn’t that what the boy down in the market said? That he’d had dreams? Then he asked why he’d had dreams. Remember?”

“I remember,” Richard said. “Henrik. And you’re right. He said the exact same words.”

The room was silent as everyone tried to take in the implications. Through experience, they had learned that the same prophecies the machine gave also came out through others. Kahlan wondered if this could be the same kind of thing.

Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “It wasn’t just what the machine said. It was how it said it that has me so concerned.”

“What do you mean, ‘how it said it’?” Nicci asked. “It burns the things it says onto those metal strips. Did it give the message this time in a different manner?”

“No, it said both things by burning the symbols on the strips of metal, same as before.”

“Then what do you mean by ‘how it said it’?”

“You all know what the machine sounds like when it’s going to give a prophecy— the sudden crash of sound that it makes when it starts into motion all at once from a dead stop?” Richard glanced around at the nods. “Well, this time it was different. Rather than that kind of sudden beginning at full speed, this time it started slowly, softly, like it was waking up.”

Zedd threw his arms up in the air. “Waking up! Waking up and telling you that it had been dreaming? Dear spirits, Richard, it’s a machine!”

“I know, I know,” Richard said, gesturing for his grandfather to calm down and listen. “But it started slowly, quietly, all the gears and things inside gradually building speed and moving into place slowly. After it was fully up and running, then it inscribed two strips with those two things about dreams: ‘I have had dreams,’ and ‘Why have I had dreams?’

“Even more strange, though, is that the two strips weren’t hot when they came out of the machine.”

“They’re always hot when they come out,” Zedd declared.

Richard leaned in a little, looking to each of them in turn. “Well, this time they came out of the machine cool to the touch. Both of them.”

Zedd rubbed his chin. “That is odd.”

“I was down there the rest of the night,” Richard went on, “waiting to see if it would say anything else. I fell asleep for a while. Then, all of a sudden, the gears started into motion again, but the usual way, the way you’ve seen it happen— abruptly, all at once. The sudden crash of noise instantly woke me up.”

He leaned back, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a metal strip. “After it woke me up, just before I heard Kahlan scream and came running up here to see what was wrong with her”— he held the strip up—“the machine issued the same omen. And, it came out of the machine hot, like usual.”

“What same omen?” Zedd asked, suspiciously.

Richard gestured at the note Nathan was holding. “The same as that. ‘A queen’s choice will cost her her life.’”

CHAPTER 60

With his foot, Richard flipped over the carpet. He didn’t see the symbol that he had seen scratched into the floor of the corridors outside their previous bedrooms and the one he’d found outside Queen Catherine’s room after she had been killed. He was encouraged by that much of it. The symbol meant “Watch them.” He didn’t want anyone watching them while they slept, as they had done before.

He was concerned about the omen that the machine had given, the same one that Lauretta had written down, but at the moment he was far more concerned about Kahlan. He didn’t know whether the prophecy “A queen’s choice will cost her her life” was about Kahlan, as the first one about “Queen takes pawn” had been, or not, but at the moment he was more worried about taking care of the infected scratches on her arm. They would have to worry about the prophecy later.

Besides, trying to figure out what prophecy meant was a fool’s game.