The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 47

His sword still gripped tightly in his hand, Richard circled his free arm around Kahlan’s shoulders. She gently rested a hand on his back, silently returning the understanding. No words were needed, or at that moment would have been adequate.

Without saying anything to the others watching him, Richard led her out of the room. Kahlan had seen violent deaths beyond counting, and to an extent had gotten used to it, built a shell to protect herself from feeling it, but that protective shell had slowly softened since the war had ended. Still, violent death was not something new to her. This death, though, more than most, seemed to have rocked her to her core.

Maybe it was because Catherine had been pregnant. Maybe seeing an unborn child that had been ripped from his mother and killed was what had gotten to her. Maybe it was because it reminded her of her own unborn child that had died because she had been savagely attacked when she had been pregnant. She held back a cry of anguish, and did her best to hold back tears, though she thought that in the absence of her husband to look after her remains as a final act of devotion, Catherine deserved at least tears.

Outside the room, Richard paused. The carpet over the white marble floor, where the blood ran under it, was rumpled up a bit, probably from the boots and effort of the men with the ram as they had tried to breach the door.

For some reason, Richard stood frozen, staring at it.

Puzzled, Kahlan looked more closely, and then she, too, saw something, some kind of mark, back in the dark fold under the carpet.

With the tip of his sword, Richard flipped the carpet back.

There, under where the carpet had lain, stained with Queen Catherine’s blood, with the unborn prince’s blood, was a symbol that had been scratched into the polished marble. The symbol was circular. It looked to Kahlan something like the designs drawn in the book Regula.

“Do you know what it says?” she asked.

Some of the color had left Richard’s face. “It says, ‘Watch them.’”

“‘Watch them’?” Nicci asked, looking down at the symbol. “Are you sure?”

Richard nodded, then turned to Benjamin. “General, please see to taking proper care of the queen. Before you have the room cleaned, inspect it carefully, inspect every splinter, look for footprints in the blood to see if this has been staged by men or if it was animals. Look for broken teeth. Animals sometimes lose teeth in a violent attack. Look for fur. See if you can learn anything that will help us to understand what happened here. I want to know if it was men or beasts that did this.”

“Of course, Lord Rahl.”

Richard pointed with his chin. “The doors at the back of the room are opened out onto the terrace. What ever or whoever did this undoubtedly got in there.”

General Meiffert glanced back through the broken doorway. “The room is close enough to the ground that something could have gotten in there, but I’ve never heard of wolves being up on the plateau. Dogs, occasionally, but not wolves.”

“Something was up here,” Richard said. “It could have been a pack of dogs. Dogs, even domesticated dogs, will kill people like this if they pack up.”

The general nodded as he glanced back through the doorway. “I’ll personally see to having the room carefully checked.”

“I have to go look into something,” Richard said. “Tell the other representatives that for now we have reason to believe that the queen was killed by animals— most likely wolves or dogs. Have them keep their exterior doors closed and locked. You should also station men outside to watch for anything suspicious. If you see anything on four legs running loose, kill it and inspect the contents of its stomach.”

When the general clapped a fist to his heart, Richard started off at a trot. Momentarily surprised, Kahlan and the others quickly followed behind as he ran off down the corridor. Guards backed out of the way when they saw him coming.

When they reached the people being kept back, the guards moved everyone out of the way so Richard and the rest of them could get through.

Representatives snatched at his sleeve, wanting to know what had happened and if there was danger about. Richard told them that there was, and that the soldiers would see to it, but he didn’t slow to explain or to discuss it.

Once finally away from the guest quarters, they went through doors that were always guarded, and into the private sections of the palace, the sections where the public wasn’t allowed. It was a relief to be away from people, to be away from their questions, from the accusations in their eyes. The small group took a shortcut through rooms that were lit only by a few lamps, and small libraries where the only light came from open doors at either end, or from low fires in a hearth.

“Where are we going?” Kahlan asked as she trotted along beside Richard once they were out into a wider corridor.

“To the last bedroom we stayed in.”

Kahlan thought about it for a moment as she listened to their footfalls echoing back from the distance.

“You mean the bedroom where we … saw something?”

“That’s right.”

Before long they reached a familiar hallway. The walls were paneled and at intervals had pedestals with crystal vases holding cut tulips. Partway down the hall was the bedroom Kahlan had found for them, the last bedroom they had stayed in before they had moved to the Garden of Life to sleep, not long after the woman who had tried to kill Kahlan predicted that she would be taken by the same thing as would have eaten her children. Dark things, the woman had said.

“Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won’t be able to escape them.”

When they reached the doorway to the bedroom, Richard kicked back the carpeting.

There, hidden under the carpet, scratched into the polished marble floor, was another symbol. It looked to Kahlan like the last one, the one stained with Catherine’s and her unborn child’s blood.

“It says the same thing,” Richard said as he stared down at the ancient design scratched into the floor. “‘Watch them.’”

“This was the last place where we felt someone watching us,” Kahlan said. “I wonder if Catherine felt someone watching her.”

“What I want to know is who put this here, and how is it that they weren’t seen.”