The Omen Machine. Terry Goodkind
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fate like I spared my children.”
Richard’s knees felt like they might again give out.
“And what is it that is supposed to be eating me in this illusion of yours?”
“The same thing as would have eaten my children, Mistress. Dark things. Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won’t be able to escape them.”
The woman extended pleading hands. “May I have my knife back? Please? I must spare you that fate. Please, Mistress, allow me to suffer the pain of such a murder to spare you the agony and horror you will otherwise face. Please, Mistress, allow me to kill you swiftly.”
Kahlan regarded her would-be murderer with a look devoid of all emotion.
“No.”
The woman’s bloody hands went to her chest, clutching her bloody blue robes. She gasped for breath that wouldn’t come. Her eyes opened wide as her face reddened. Her lips turned as blue as her robes. She slumped to her side where she convulsed once in death. What air she had left finally wheezed from her lungs.
Kahlan’s gaze rose to the stunned onlookers, a silent indictment of anyone thinking prophecy could help them.
Her green eyes, beginning to brim with tears, finally turned to Richard. It was a look that nearly broke his heart.
He slipped an arm around her waist. “Come on. You need to rest for a while.”
Kahlan nodded as she leaned into him just a little, welcoming his solace. Already Cara, Zedd, Nathan, and Benjamin were moving in protectively around her. Mord-Sith and men of the First File screened them from the gathered throng.
Kahlan gave Cara’s arm a squeeze. “I’m so sorry. I wanted this celebration to be perfect for you.”
“But it was, Mother Confessor. The woman failed to harm you, you’re alive and well, and a would-be assassin is dead. What could be more perfect than that? On top of that, I now get to lecture you on letting people get that close to you.”
Kahlan smiled as she started away with Richard helping to hold her up.
CHAPTER 11
How is she?” Zedd asked when Richard closed the door behind himself.
“She’s fine.” Richard flicked a hand to dismiss his grandfather’s concern. “She just needs to rest.”
Zedd nodded. As a wizard who’d once worked with Confessors, he probably understood better than anyone that a Confessor needed time to recover after unleashing her power, but none of them could recover as quickly as Kahlan. In the past, when the situation called for it, she had sometimes for-gone resting at all.
Kahlan was stronger than the others had been in a number of ways. For those reasons her sister Confessors had chosen her as their leader, the Mother Confessor. Now all those others were dead.
Still, using her power was exhausting, not only physically but emotionally. It was near to the equivalent of carrying out an execution.
Yet that wasn’t really the worst of it. The real core of her weariness this time was the knowledge that something sinister was going on and it had taken innocent lives. Kahlan didn’t believe, any more than Richard did, that this was one lone individual acting on a delusional vision she’d had. There was something more to all of it. That, on top of using her power, and it coming during such a joyful celebration in front of guests, was what had really left Kahlan drained.
Zedd looked up at Richard with one of those looks Richard knew all too well. “It’s rather peculiar that the woman dropped dead.”
Richard nodded. “That’s been bothering me, too.”
“A person touched by a Confessor’s power is concerned with nothing other than pleasing the Confessor who touched them.” Zedd arched an eyebrow. “They can’t very well please her if they’re dead. Unless, of course, she tells them that they can please her by dying, and Kahlan didn’t do that.”
Apparently, his grandfather had been thinking along the same lines as Richard. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he agreed. “People don’t just drop dead from a Confessor’s touch. Something else is going on.”
Zedd rubbed a bony finger back and forth along his jaw. “Could be that the woman understood how utterly repulsed Kahlan was by her killing her children and so she thought that Kahlan would want her dead.”
“I don’t know, Zedd. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The whole purpose of a Confessor is to obtain confessions from killers, to find out the truth of what happened, of what terrible things they’ve done. They aren’t repulsed by confessing their crimes. On the contrary, they’re usually overjoyed that they can please a Confessor by telling her the truth when she asks for it. They want to live so that they can please her.”
Cara folded her arms. “Well, I’m not moving from this spot until the Mother Confessor is recovered and on her feet again.”
Richard laid a hand gently on Cara’s shoulder. “Thanks, Cara.”
Richard’s mind was already on to other things, on to putting the pieces together. When the woman with the knife had tried to kill Kahlan, as frightening as it must have looked to the people there, she’d actually had no real chance of success. No knife attack was fast enough to beat a Confessor releasing her power. Cara standing in the way could not have stopped the woman as effectively as Kahlan was capable of doing herself. No single attacker had a chance against a Confessor.
But she couldn’t use her power again until she recovered. Richard was more than happy to have Cara watch over Kahlan in the meantime.
He turned to Benjamin. “General, would you please post men at either end of the hall?”
Benjamin gestured up the corridor. “Already done, Lord Rahl.”
Richard saw then the contingent of the First File off in the distance. It was enough men to fight a war. “Why don’t you stay here with Cara. Keep her company. Kahlan needs to rest for a couple hours.”
“Of course, Lord Rahl.” Benjamin cleared his throat. “While you were in there with the Mother Confessor, we found the woman’s two children. Their throats had been cut, just as she said.”
Richard nodded. He hadn’t doubted the woman. Someone touched by a Confessor couldn’t lie. Still, the news left him feeling sick at heart.
“Please do something else for me, General. Send someone to find Nicci. I haven’t seen her since yesterday at your wedding. Tell her I need to see her.”
Benjamin lightly tapped his right fist to his heart in salute. “I’ll send someone right away, Lord Rahl.”
Richard turned to the prophet. “Nathan, I’d like you to take me to see the woman you spoke about. The one you said could see things. The one who claims to have a message for me.”
Nathan nodded. “Lauretta.”
Zedd and Richard both followed behind Nathan. A group of guards stayed with them but at a distance. Rikka, in her red leather, took the lead in front of them.
Nathan took a slightly longer route through the private corridors, rather than the public passageways, to get to the area where staff and other workers lived. Richard was glad to avoid the public areas. People would undoubtedly want to stop him to talk with him. He didn’t feel like talking about trade issues or petty matters of squabbles over authority to set rules. Or prophecy. Richard had more important things on his mind.
At the top of the list was what the dead woman had said about her vision. She had called the threat “dark things.” She had said that those dark things were stalking Kahlan.
The boy down in the market earlier that morning had said that there was darkness in the palace.
Richard wondered if he was putting things together too easily, things that didn’t really belong together and only