The Sword of the Truth, Book 12 - The Omen Machine (36 page)

A
nything at all?” Richard asked Berdine in a quiet voice.

“Dead quiet out here, Lord Rahl.” Berdine pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. “I looked in on the Mother Confessor earlier and she was sleeping soundly. After that I took a tour of the area just to satisfy myself that there was no one around and nothing out of the ordinary. Then I came back up to this end of the hall and I’ve been right here outside the door ever since. The Mother Confessor has been a perfect patient. I haven’t heard a peep out of her.”

Richard laid a hand gently on the Mord-Sith’s red-leather-clad shoulder. “Thanks, Berdine.”

“Has the machine had anything else to say, Lord Rahl?”

Richard paused and looked back at her. “It’s had a lot to say, but I’m afraid that none of it is very useful.”

“Maybe we need the missing part of the book
Regula
in order to understand it.”

He’d had the same thought. “Maybe.”

Richard left Berdine outside in the hall and the soldiers of the First File off down the corridor to either side making certain that no one could get to their room.

Alone, Richard quietly closed the door behind himself as he stepped into the nearly dark bedroom where Kahlan was sleeping. He had turned down the wick on the lamp when he had checked on her earlier, so it was difficult to see much of anything. He didn’t want to turn the lamp up and risk waking her.

He was exhausted. It was going to be morning soon. He needed to get some sleep. He wished he hadn’t wasted so much time with the machine.

Not wanting to disturb Kahlan, Richard thought that maybe he would sleep in a chair. She needed a good rest in order to recover from her fever. He was thankful that his grandfather had put a poultice on her arm to help draw out the infection.

His own scratch from the boy down in the market had long ago healed. He had thought that Kahlan’s had as well. It was more than a little worrisome the way it had returned so suddenly, especially after Zedd had healed it with his gift.

On his way to the chair, Richard’s feet caught up a blanket lying in the middle of the floor.

He thought that Kahlan, in a fevered sleep, must have thrown off her cover. He picked it up by the edge and held it up to lay it back over her.

In the dim light from the lantern, on the way to the bed, Richard paused. Something was wrong. Even if Kahlan had thrown the blanket off in her sleep, it seemed unlikely she could have thrown it that far.

The first thing that instantaneously flashed through his mind was the machine’s warning that hounds would take her from him. Almost at the same time, he remembered Queen Catherine lying dead on the floor, her middle viciously ripped open by some kind of animals with fangs.

Richard dropped the blanket and rushed to the bed. Kahlan wasn’t there. He stared for a moment at the rumpled, empty bed before turning up the wick on the lamp and scanning the room. He didn’t see her anywhere.

When he glanced up, Richard saw that the door to the balcony was open. His first thought was that maybe her fever had driven her out on the balcony to get some relief in the cool night air.

Before he could go to the balcony, his attention was caught by his pack on the floor. Kahlan’s pack had been beside it before. He knew, because he had been the one who had put them both there. He supposed that Kahlan might have wanted to get something out of it and could have moved it somewhere, but he didn’t really believe that. Something told him that it would be a waste of time searching the room for it.

Richard instead ran to the balcony doors. He was worried that, at the least, she might have gotten worse. He expected to see her passed out on the balcony floor. She wasn’t there.

The bedroom, like the balcony, wasn’t that big. There was no way he could have missed her back in the room. Baffled as to where she could be, he reluctantly looked over edge of the railing, fearing that she might have fallen. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but not impossible. He was relieved to see nothing on the ground far below.

As he started to turn to go back inside, Richard saw that there was another balcony. It wasn’t connected or even all that close, but he went to the railing closest to it anyway for a look. He saw that it had a stairway down on the far side.

He saw, then, the scuff mark on the top of the railing where he was standing. It looked to have been made by a boot.

Richard hopped up on the railing and leaped across the daunting drop to the other balcony. The doors on the second balcony were locked and it was dark inside. It was possible that Kahlan had gone inside and then locked the doors, but he didn’t really believe that. It made no sense. If she feared something, there were guards and Mord-Sith just outside their bedroom door.

Instead of breaking in the door, Richard took Kahlan’s more likely route. He raced in the darkness down the flights of stairs, eventually reaching the grounds of the palace.

The moonlight coming through the thin haze of clouds wasn’t bright, but it was bright enough for him to recognize Kahlan’s bootprints. With a lifetime of tracking experience, he also recognized her unique gait. He could read the features of the way she walked and the tracks she made nearly as well as he could read the features of her face.

There was no doubt about it. Kahlan had come down the stairs outside the palace to the grounds at the top of the plateau.

The thing that worried him the most was that he could see by the prints that she had been running as fast as she could. He looked around for other prints, the prints of anyone who might have been chasing her, but there were no other footprints.

It didn’t make any sense.

Richard stood and stared off across the top of the dark plateau. What could she have been running from?

I
n the distance, paths meandered through elaborate gardens, but the grounds closer to the palace, where Richard had come out at the bottom of the stairs, were an open staging and loading area where supplies arrived at the palace. While most visitors to the palace entered up stairways through the interior of the plateau, an imposing portico between the staging area and the gardens welcomed important guests arriving by horse or carriage at the top of the plateau. The entrance there took guests into the grand corridors and the guest areas. Closer to Richard, in a less well lit area, were the stables and service docks.

He could see the dark shapes of dozens of wagons and carriages that were either parked or being loaded. Horses were being brought out of the stables and either saddled or hitched to wagons. Even in the middle of the night representatives were packing up and leaving the palace. The place was alive with activity. No one was arriving. All the wagons were leaving.

Richard was concerned about all the things that had happened recently and the representatives who had decided that they would rather side with prophecy and those who promised it to them. He wanted to know what could be behind it all, but at the moment his only real focus was on finding Kahlan.

Richard followed Kahlan’s tracks as they traced her route through the darkness atop the plateau. She had been running as fast as she could. He could see by certain characteristics of the tracks, such as the way a print twisted here and there, that she was looking behind at something chasing her as she ran. If she had been running after someone or something, the prints would have looked different.

It made no sense. There were no prints of anything chasing her, yet he could clearly read the indications of fear in her tracks. What ever was after her would have had to be flying not to leave prints. He knew, too, that it might very well be fevered delusions chasing her.

But the prophecy from the machine saying that the hounds would take her from him was no delusion. At least there were no tracks of hounds.

And then, in the midst of hoofprints and wagon tracks, Kahlan’s footprints simply ended.

Richard went to one knee and bent to study the tracks more closely. He saw, then, the marks where her last print pushed off on the ball of her foot. It had left a heavier impression with pronounced side ridges as she had jumped up onto something. Since her footprints ended there, he knew that it was most likely a wagon or coach that she had jumped up onto.

With an icy sense of dread, Richard realized that Kahlan was gone. He couldn’t understand what had happened, or why she would have run the way she did, but he could see plainly enough that she had left the bedroom, come down the steps to the ground, run across the plateau, and then jumped into a wagon.

There were wagons leaving all the time. Wheel tracks and hoofprints were everywhere. There was no telling which wagon or coach was the one Kahlan had jumped up into. If she had stayed in one of those wagons, she could be headed off in just about any direction away from the palace.

There were a number of representatives who had left overnight. Many of them were accompanied by escorts. Some of them had entire house holds with them, everyone from guards to attendants, to advisors, to support staff, to wagons of baggage, so there were likely numerous wagons and coaches involved.

Kahlan could be in any one of them.

P
atrols that had spotted Richard ran up to see what the problem was. Richard saw other soldiers on horse back appear in the distance.

Before the powerfully built captain of the guard could speak, Richard spoke first. “The Mother Confessor came down here sometime after dark. Her tracks are at least several hours old. Did you or any of your men see her?”

“The Mother Confessor?” The startled captain shook his head. “No, Lord Rahl. My men and I have been on patrol since long before then— since before dark. I would have heard about it if anyone had seen her.”

Richard had last seen Kahlan not long after it had gotten dark. “How many wagons have left here since dark?”

The captain scratched his bull neck as he tallied them in his head for a moment. “Dozens, Lord Rahl. We have manifests and logs. I can get you an exact number.”

“Good. Get enough cavalrymen together for a detachment to go after each wagon. I want mounted troops to catch every wagon that left here overnight. Every one of them. I want every wagon and coach searched.”

The man was nodding to the instructions, but he looked confused. “What are we to be looking for?”

“The Mother Confessor left her room sometime in the night. It’s possible she was being chased by something but she’s sick with a fever so it’s more likely that she may be disoriented. What I do know is that she came down here and jumped in a wagon that left here tonight. I don’t know which one, so the men will need to track down every wagon and search it. If she is found, I want her protected and brought back to the palace.”

“Do you know where she jumped in the wagon, Lord Rahl? That might narrow the search.”

Richard pointed at her last footprint. “Right here.”

The man’s face sagged with disappointment. “All the wagons have to turn through this area as they’re leaving.”

“Then they’ll all have to be caught and searched,” Richard said. “Get the search parties on their way immediately— before the wagons can get too far.”

The man clapped a fist to his heart. “At once, Lord Rahl.”

“And I need a horse,” Richard said. “Right now.”

The captain turned and whistled a code into the darkness as yet more men ran in from different directions. In only a matter of moments Richard was surrounded by over a hundred men.

When a dozen men on horse back galloped up, the men let them through. The mounted soldiers gathered around wanting to know what the problem was. Instead of explaining, Richard quickly appraised all the horses. He signaled a man to dismount from a strong-looking mare. The man jumped down.

“The captain here will explain my orders,” Richard said as he put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the saddle. “I have to go.”

“We will have every wagon checked, Lord Rahl,” the captain said. “Will you be going with some of the men, then?”

Richard had to have the wagons searched, just in case, but he doubted that they would find her. There was more to this, something that he had not yet figured out.

He thought about the machine’s warning that the hounds would take her from him. He thought about all the trouble that had started after they had seen the boy, Henrik, down in the market the morning after Cara’s wedding.

Their recent troubles seemed bound up in prophecy. A number of representatives had decided that they wanted to follow Hannis Arc from Fajin Province because he used prophecy. That was why so many had left that night.

One of the first omens had been “Queen takes pawn.” Nicci had told Richard that the prophecy was also a move in a game called chess, a game that was played in Fajin Province in the Dark Lands. Henrik, the sick boy who had given the first warning that there was darkness in the palace, had been to a place called Kharga Trace in the Dark Lands of Fajin Province.

Richard remembered the boy’s mother saying that she had taken him to see the Hedge Maid in Kharga Trace. He remembered the way her eyes had darted about when she had mentioned the Hedge Maid. He also remembered how nervous Abbot Dreier had gotten at the mention of the Hedge Maid.

Nicci had warned Richard about how dangerous Hedge Maids were.

He also remembered the boy’s mother saying that Henrik had been bothered by hounds coming around their tent.

The captain was still waiting for Richard to tell him where he was going.

“I’m not going with any of the men to search the wagons.” Richard’s horse danced around, eager to be away. “Tell General Meiffert and Zedd that I’m going to Kharga Trace and I don’t have the time to wait for them. I don’t have a moment to waste, and besides, they would only slow me down.”

“Kharga Trace?” one of the men of the patrol asked. “In the Dark Lands?”

Richard nodded. “You know the place?”

The man stepped forward. “I know that you don’t want to go there, Lord Rahl.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m from Fajin Province. You don’t want to go to Kharga Trace. Desperate people go there to see some kind of woman said to have dark powers. A lot of people who go there, though, don’t come back. That kind of thing isn’t all that unusual in the Dark Lands. I was happy to leave to join the D’Haran army. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the First File so that I might serve here. I don’t ever want to go back.”

Richard wondered if the man might simply be superstitious. When he had been a woods guide, back in the Hartland woods of Westland, he never encountered any dark malevolence haunting the trackless forests, but he did encounter country people who feared such things and believed wholeheartedly in them. Such stories, though, didn’t tarnish his fond memories of home.

“Now that the war is over,” he said to the soldier, “you really don’t want to go home?”

“Lord Rahl, I don’t know much about the gift, but in the war I came to see a great deal of magic to fear. What’s back in the Dark Lands is different. The cunning folk there, as they’re called, use occult conjuring— dark magic— that deals in things dead. It’s very different in the Dark Lands than the magic of the gift I’ve seen since leaving.”

“Different? Different in what way?”

The man looked around, almost as if he feared that the shadows might be listening. “The dead walk the Dark Lands.”

Richard rested his forearm over the pommel of the saddle and frowned down at the man. “What do you mean, the dead walk the Dark Lands?”

“Just what I said. The Dark Lands are demon ground, hunted by scavengers of the underworld. If I never go back there it will be too soon for me.”

Richard thought such superstitious fears sounded even more strange coming from a strong young man, a man who had faced war and terrors no one should ever have to face.

But then he remembered Nicci telling him that a Hedge Maid’s powers were different and that he had no defense against them. Nicci had not only once been known as Death’s Mistress, she had been a Sister of the Dark and had served the cause of the Keeper of the underworld. She knew about such things.

The thought of Kahlan going to a place like that had his heart pounding. Richard knew that the one place he didn’t want Kahlan going to was the Dark Lands, and especially to the Hedge Maid. But too many things pointed in that direction to be coincidence.

Richard nodded. “Thanks for the warning, soldier. I hope to catch up with the Mother Confessor long before then.”

The man clapped a fist to his heart. “May you come home soon, Lord Rahl. Come back safe with the Mother Confessor before you ever have to set foot in the Dark Lands.”

Richard tightened the reins to keep the horse still. “Captain, be sure to tell Nicci, too, where I’m going. Be sure to tell her that I said that I think the Mother Confessor may be headed to the Hedge Maid in Kharga Trace. I am going to try to catch her before she can get there.”

One of the other soldiers ran up and threw saddlebags over the back of the horse. “At least take some supplies, Lord Rahl.”

Richard lifted his sword from its scabbard just a bit and let it drop back, making sure that it was clear. He nodded his thanks to the men and then urged the horse toward the road that led down the side of the plateau.

As Richard gave the horse reins and leaned over its withers, it complied instantly and thundered off into the night.