The Omen Machine

Richard watched it drop into the slot. He was reluctant to bother to pick this one up and read it. He was tired of the game. He didn’t want to play along anymore. He thought that maybe he should leave the strip sitting in the machine until morning.

Before Richard could leave, Zedd pulled the metal strip out, glanced at the symbols, and then handed it to Richard. “It’s cool. What does it say?”

Richard reluctantly took the strip from Zedd and held it up in the light to read the circular symbols.

“‘Your only chance is to let the truth escape.’”

“What in the world could that mean?” Cara asked.

Richard clenched the strip in his fist. “It’s some kind of riddle. I hate riddles.”

CHAPTER 73

Kahlan woke, confused at feeling herself rocking. She winced as she pressed a hand over the stunning pain at the top of her head. Her hair felt wet. She pulled her hand away to look at it, but it was too dark to see much other than wetness glistening in the moonlight.

She suspected that she knew all too well what it was. As she struggled up onto her knees she touched her tongue to her hand.

She was right; it was blood.

When she swallowed, her throat was so sore that it made her wince. She ached all over and was shivering with chills even though she was sweating profusely.

Her mind raced, trying to put the fragments of memories together, trying to recall exactly what had happened. Images and impressions flashed in sickening snatches. At the same time the whole world felt like it was moving.

When she was jolted and then bounced, she lost her balance and fell forward. She had to put a hand down to keep from falling over on her face. She felt rough wood. Looking around she realized that she was in a small open space in the back of a wagon. Both the pain throbbing inside her head and the sharp stinging pain at the top of her head made her woozy. She fought back the urge to be sick.

Suddenly, a big dog bounded up out of the darkness, slamming into the side of the wagon, startling her. It dropped back, unable to make it all the way into the wagon, but it hooked its front legs over the side and held on. The dog scrambled, stretching its neck to get its massive head inside, trying to get enough of its weight into the wagon to have the leverage to get all the way in.

Strings of frothy drool whipped from side to side as the animal, even while trying to climb into the wagon, growled and snapped at her.

Kahlan immediately kicked one of the dog’s legs off the edge of the wagon. The dog struggled but couldn’t hold on with one paw and fell off into the darkness.

The whole nightmare of what had happened up in the bedroom was starting to come back to her— fragments of it, anyway. She remembered, too, what had happened to Queen Catherine, what a pack of dogs had done to her. Kahlan also remembered the prophecy given by the woman Kahlan had taken with her power, the woman who had killed her own children to supposedly spare them a worse death. That woman had told Kahlan that she would suffer a grim fate. When Kahlan had asked what she was talking about, the woman had said, “Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won’t be able to escape them.”

Now dark things were stalking her, running her down. Where the hounds had come from and why they were after her was no longer part of Kahlan’s thinking. She was simply frantic to escape them.

Kahlan squinted in the darkness, trying to see up toward the front of the wagon, hoping to see the driver and get some help, but the wagon was piled high with things covered in a stiff canvas tarp. The only way to get to the front, where the driver would be, was to climb either over or around the load. It looked too high to go over in a rocking, bucking wagon, especially considering how dizzy she felt. She tried to look around the load, but she wasn’t able to see anyone.

Kahlan called out but her throat was so sore that she could hardly make a sound. No one answered. She thought that over the rumble of the wagon it was probably hard for a driver to hear someone in the back behind his load. More than that, though, her fever was also making her hoarse. She couldn’t yell loud enough. She needed to get closer before they would hear her.

Kahlan scrambled to her feet. As she put a foot up onto the side wall of the wagon to climb up around the load, a dog came out of the darkness, lunging wildly, trying to grab her ankle. As she jumped back out of the way, she saw the pack of dogs snarling and growling as they ran alongside the wagon.