The Omen Machine

He supposed that in a way, through its prophecies, the machine actually was controlling what was happening. Or someone else was, and making them look like prophecies coming from the machine. It also seemed that the prophecies issued by the machine were not enough. Those same prophecies also came to light through various people in the palace, as if to insure that the messages could not be kept secret.

It could be, he imagined, that the machine was very much regulating— controlling—what was going on through its recent prophecies, so in that way the name Regula fit, although that seemed a stretch.

It seemed to Richard far more likely that the answers to the machine’s true purpose were in the part of the book that was missing, the part hidden away in the Temple of the Winds. What ever was in that part of the book had to be important, or else dangerous, to warrant being hidden away in the Temple of the Winds.

Richard didn’t relish the idea of again setting foot in that place. It would be far from simple and could easily create more problems than it solved.

He tried to push the troubling thoughts aside. He wanted to be up in the Garden of Life with Kahlan, to be in her arms, to have her tell him that everything would be all right … to tell him again that it wasn’t his fault. He knew that it wasn’t, but that still didn’t make him feel any better. It couldn’t undo what had happened.

He had to find out what was going on and put a stop to it.

He knew that the representatives would be in an uproar, not only over the murder of a queen while she was a guest of the palace, but even more so over King Philippe denouncing Richard as the ruler of the D’Haran Empire. It was a declaration driven by raw emotion, but even so, Richard knew that there were a number of people who would side with King Philippe and follow his lead. Richard wasn’t sure what he could do about it, but at the moment, he had bigger worries.

While the king and others found it convenient to blame Richard— and Richard blamed himself for failing to link the prophecy to an unborn prince— that didn’t get to the heart of what was going on. He needed to figure out what had really happened and why. Something, or someone, had been in that room and had killed Queen Catherine.

He was convinced that someone was behind it, that it was deliberate. After all, someone had set about watching the queen. Someone had scratched that symbol in the floor outside her room. Someone was watching and when she had been alone they had struck. At least, that was the way it seemed to him. He had to admit that as incriminating as the symbol was, the murder might not actually be connected to it. He couldn’t let himself become locked into only one possibility.

He was even more puzzled as to how someone could have gotten into the Lord Rahl’s quarters, past all the guards, and then, unseen, scratch that same symbol in the floor outside their bedroom door.

As much as he wanted to be with Kahlan, he needed to think things through. More than that, though, he needed to be alone.

Somehow, it seemed certain to him that the machine, a machine that could issue omens, had to be at the heart of the the darkness that had settled over the palace.

Richard remembered what the sick boy down in the market, the boy who had scratched Richard and Kahlan, had said. He’d said there was darkness in the palace. Darkness seeking darkness.

Richard no longer doubted that there was darkness in the palace. It had descended on them all.

He reached out and placed a hand on the machine.

“What are you?” he whispered, wondering out loud to himself. “Why are you doing this?”

As if in response, a low rumble came from the machine as the gears began turning against one another. It wasn’t like in the past, though. In the past it had always started with a jolt that shook the ground.

This time it began softly, the shafts and gears slowly beginning to move, to gather momentum. In the past it had always been a sudden, thunderous initiation of movement. It had always started at full speed.

This time, it was very different. It was a quiet beginning that was building toward that eventual mechanical mayhem.

Richard leaned over, looking into the slit of a window. He saw the light inside gradually intensify as the slowly turning gears picked up speed with the machine’s awakening. The same symbol projected up onto the ceiling as in the past, though this time instead of igniting at full intensity, it gradually grew in strength.

Before long, though, the inner workings of the machine were in full motion. The ground around it rumbled. The light burning up from deep inside steadily grew brighter. The symbol on the ceiling rotating above his head glowed.

A latch on a rotating wheel popped up beneath the stack of strips on the other side of the machine and pushed a strip partway out from under the stack. Pincers then plucked the blank metal strip from the bottom of the stack.