The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 46

Kahlan tried to follow Richard into the room, but Cara, Agiel in hand and bent on protecting him, raced in ahead of her. Before Kahlan could follow, Nicci slipped in front of Kahlan and dashed in with Cara, both women worried about Richard diving headlong into trouble. Kahlan, no less concerned, cut in front of Benjamin and ran into the darkness after them.

A frantic King Philippe tried to follow, but soldiers restrained him. Benjamin urged the king to let Lord Rahl and the rest of them find out what was going on, first.

Inside, they came to a halt. The room was dead quiet.

Kahlan held her breath against the stench of blood.

Glancing back over her shoulder, she could see Benjamin silhouetted in the doorway, waiting to see if they needed reinforcements. On the opposite side of the room, to either side of double doors, sheer curtains billowed in a light breeze, looking like ghosts in the moonlight.

“I can’t see a thing in here,” Cara whispered.

Nicci ignited a flame that floated in midair above her palm. She quickly found a stand with a few candles still affixed to it and righted it, then sent the flame into the candles.

As the level of light rose, Kahlan could at last see more than the mere hints of shapes in the moonlight coming through the open doors on the opposite side of the room.

“Dear spirits,” she whispered into the terrible quiet.

Nicci retrieved a few lamps from the rubble, lit them, and set them on a table that was still upright.

In the lamplight they were finally able to see the full extent of the devastation. Splintered furniture lay overturned. Cushions were scattered. The leather chairs were slashed by what looked to be either claws or fangs, Kahlan didn’t know which.

A nearby couch had been turned red with blood. Blood splatters crisscrossed the walls in swaths, as if flung there in terrible rage. The amount of it everywhere was shocking.

At their feet Queen Catherine lay on her back. Her scalp had been partly peeled away. Gouges looking to be left by fangs raked across her exposed skull and cut through the upper part of her face. Her jaw was torn partially away. Her eyes, as if still filled with paralyzing shock, stared unseeing at the ceiling.

Since the remnants were so completely soaked in blood, it was impossible to tell what color her dress had once been.

Catherine’s entire middle was ripped open. She had nearly been torn in two. Her left thigh muscle, stripped off the bone, lay flopped out to the side. Long gouges, also appearing to be left by fangs, raked down the length of the bone.

Viscera lay strewn out across the floor. It looked like a pack of wolves had been at her, their fangs ripping her open and pulling her apart. What was left hardly looked human.

Kahlan’s knees felt weak. She could not help thinking about the woman who had murdered her children, the woman Kahlan had taken with her power. This was what the woman had predicted was going to happen to Kahlan.

Then, among the organs and intestines, she saw an umbilical cord snaking its way across the floor.

At the end of it were the bloody, pink remains of Catherine’s unborn child. Its little toes looked perfect. The top half of the body was gone.

From what remained, Kahlan could see that it was a boy.

A prince.

With a scream of fury, King Philippe finally pulled away from soldiers reluctant to be too forceful with him. He bulled his way into the room. When he reached his wife he froze stiff.

Then he screamed, a cold cry such as could only be brought forth by such a horrific sight, a cry that would have made the good spirits weep.

Richard put an arm around the man’s shoulders and tried to gently pull him back and away from the sight.

King Philippe jerked away and turned in fury toward Richard. “This is your fault!”

Nathan lifted a hand in warning. “It was no such thing.”

The king ignored him. He brought his sword up, pointing it at Richard’s face. “You could have prevented this!”

Richard, his own sword still in his fist, its rage still in his eyes, slowly brought his blade up and used it to turn the point of King Philippe’s sword aside.

“I can only imagine how you must feel,” Richard said in as calm a voice as he could muster with the sword in his hand and its rage pounding through his veins. The violent death at his feet only served to feed his own rage. “Your anger and hurt is entirely understandable,” Richard told him.

“How would you know?” the king yelled. “You care nothing for your people, or you would have helped us by using prophecy to prevent this!”

“Prophecy would not have prevented this,” Richard said.

“You sent those three princes away because of prophecy! You knew! You could have prevented this! You wanted this to happen!”

Nicci kept the king locked in her gaze. Any wrong move, and her power would crash into the king before he knew what had hit him. Kahlan didn’t think that the king even realized the mortal danger he was in, from Nicci, from Richard, from Nathan, and no less from Kahlan.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Nicci warned. “You are looking for guilt in the wrong place.”

He turned the sword toward her. “I know perfectly well what I’m saying! I only just now learned of the prophecy saying that here in the palace a prince would fall to fangs on the full moon. Had Lord Rahl told us of this prophecy, we could have prevented this from happening!”

“And had you not been out chasing prophecy,” Kahlan said in a deadly voice of her own, “you could have been here to save your wife and unborn son from this fate. They fell to fangs because you were off chasing prophecy, when you should have been at their side protecting them. Now, you seek to shift blame away from yourself and onto others.”

Richard gently put a hand out, touching Kahlan’s arm, as if to say to let the man be. She was right, of course, but it would do no good at the moment to press the issue.

Richard’s sympathy did not register with the king. He again turned his sword toward Richard. Richard’s eyes remained focused on the man, but he didn’t move to knock the sword aside. Despite what the king might think, Kahlan knew that he would not be fast enough. When he wished it, the blade Richard held could move like lightning and strike just as hard.

“You have failed in your duty to protect your people,” the king growled.

“He’s been doing everything he can to protect everyone,” Kahlan said, ready to reach out and take the king with her own power if necessary.

His glare turned toward her. “Really? Then why has he not told us that he found an omen machine.”

Richard blinked. “What?”

King Philippe swept his sword back, indicating those outside. “We all know of it. The question is, why would you keep such a machine secret, and the warnings it has given— prophecy that could only come from the Creator Himself?”

“We don’t know anything about the machine, much less if it is meant to help us or harm us,” Richard said. “We can’t put our trust in words coming from a source we know nothing about. That’s why—”

“Just where do your loyalties lie, Lord Rahl? With life or with death itself? Who do you really serve?”

Cara lifted her Agiel, pointing it at the king’s face. “You are now treading on very dangerous ground. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I suggest that you take greater care to make sure you don’t say something you would come to greatly regret.”

Richard gently lowered Cara’s arm. “I would have done anything to prevent this,” he said to the king.

“Anything but tell us the truth.” His gaze left Cara and moved to Richard. “There have been rumors that you are afraid to sleep in your own bedchambers, now we know why. Yet you would not warn your people of the danger loose in the palace. You have failed in your duty to us!”

Richard glared back, but didn’t answer. Kahlan knew that it was pointless to try to talk sense into the man at such an emotional moment, standing as they were over his murdered wife and unborn child.

King Philippe gritted his teeth. “You are not fit to lead the D’Haran Empire.”

“I swear to you,” Richard said, “I will find out who is responsible for this and see justice done.”

“Justice? I know who is responsible.” The king straightened his shoulders and sheathed his sword. “I withdraw my land from loyalty to your rule. We no longer recognize you as the legitimate leader of the D’Haran Empire.”

He looked down briefly at the remains of his wife on the floor before him, then closed his eyes for a moment as if fighting back tears or maybe a cry of anguish, or maybe an urge to pull his sword again.

And then he turned and stormed away.