The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 5

Kahlan watched Zedd pace across the gold and blue carpet and back again toward the heavy mahogany table, his long robes swishing around his legs when he turned, as if they were having trouble keeping up. Windows up on the balcony level lit the long library with cold, flat light. Through those windows she could see that since they had been down in the market earlier in the day, iron gray clouds had moved in, bringing the threat of a spring storm.

Though there were windows along that far wall of the balcony, the lower floor of the library near ground level had none. Kahlan thought that the library must be somewhere near to being under the Garden of Life, located in massive parts of the palace above them. Because of the complex construction of the palace it was hard for her to tell for sure.

Off in a far corner, Nathan leaned against a fluted wood column broader than his broad shoulders. With a ruffled shirt, high boots, and green cape hooked to one shoulder, to say nothing of the sword he wore, he looked more like an adventurer than a prophet. But a prophet he was. Under the warm yellow light of a reflector lamp mounted on the column in the shadowy niche he looked totally engrossed in the study of a book.

Before Kahlan, books lay in orderly stacks and disorderly piles at random intervals all along the length of the table. Papers sat in batches among the books, along with lamps, ink bottles, pens, and empty mugs. Reflector lamps on the columns at either end of rows of shelves helped illuminate the more secluded areas of the library. With the overcast, and despite the lamps, gloom had settled over the still room.

Berdine, wearing a brown leather outfit, folded her arms and leaned against the table as she, along with the rest of them, watched Zedd pace. While her eyes were as blue as Cara’s, her wavy hair was brown rather than blond. She was shorter and curvier than most of the other Mord-Sith.

Unlike most of the other Mord-Sith, Berdine was fascinated by books and had many times proven to be a tremendous help to Richard in ferreting out useful information among the thousands of volumes. While Berdine usually went about her book work with bubbly enthusiasm, she was no less deadly than Cara or any of the other Mord-Sith.

Zedd finally came to an impatient halt. “I’m not convinced that it can work, Richard— or at least, work effectively. For one thing, there are many ways to classify books, as well as books that contain more than one subject. If a book is about a city located beside a river, and you place it in a section on cities, then later when you need information about rivers you won’t be aware that this book on cities might have something important to say about a river.”

He sighed as he glanced around the library. “I’ve been reading and studying these kinds of books my whole life and I can tell you from long experience that you can’t always pigeonhole a book in a category.”

“We’ve taken that into account,” Richard said with quiet patience.

Exasperated, Zedd turned to a disorderly pile of books on the table, and after taking a quick look at a book that lay open on the top, he picked it up. He waggled it before Richard. “And then there are books like this. How do you find a classification for things that don’t even make any sense?”

Berdine scratched the hollow of her cheek. “Which book is it? What’s it about?”

Zedd closed it briefly to read the title. “Regula,” he announced in annoyance. He scanned a few pages, then shook his head in surrender. “I don’t know what the title means and after looking at it I have even less of an idea what it’s about.”

As he handed the book to Berdine, Kahlan could see that after the title Regula on the spine, there was a strange circular symbol with a triangle in it embossed into the leather. Inside that circle with a triangle lay a curving, hooked symbol that she’d never seen before. It looked something like the number nine, but it was backward.

“Oh, this one,” Berdine said as she flipped over a few pages. “Some of it is in High D’Haran, but a lot of it isn’t. I suspect that it’s a wordbook.”

Zedd puzzled at her a moment. “What does that mean?”

“Well, I can understand bits of it, the parts that are in High D’Haran, but I’m not sure what all these weird squiggly lines and symbols mean.”

“If you’re not sure what it is,” Zedd fumed, “then how can you even classify it?”

Richard laid a hand on Zedd’s shoulder. “We’ll put it on the list with all the other books that make no sense to us. That is its classification for now: unknown.”

Zedd stared at him for a moment. “Well, I guess that makes some sense.”

“Oh, it’s not unknown, Lord Rahl,” Berdine said. “Like I was explaining, I think it’s a wordbook.”

“A wordbook?” Zedd waggled a finger over the open book Berdine was holding. “It’s full of all those peculiar symbols, not words.”

“Yes, I know.” Berdine brushed a stray lock of wavy brown hair back off her face. “I haven’t been able to study it much, but I suspect that the symbols are an ancient form of writing. I saw a place that referred to it as the language of Creation.”

Zedd harrumphed. “Sounds like you could classify it as ‘useless.’ I think this is going to be such a common problem that I’m not sure I see the point of all this work.”

“Look,” Richard said, “there have been times when we’ve gotten into a lot of trouble, or couldn’t prevent trouble, because we couldn’t find answers when we needed them.

“In the past there were scribes who kept track of the vast amount of information in each library. From what I know of it, they were responsible for particular books, or specific sections of a specific library. If there was need for books that might contain information on a particular subject, the scribes could be consulted and they could narrow the search to books where answers were most likely to lie.

“Without all those knowledgeable scribes who knew about and cared for the books, the vast information in the libraries is, for all practical purposes, inaccessible. We need a way to find books on any given subject in order to find answers.

“Since the last time you were here we’ve begun cataloging everything. We’re trying to create a system to include all the books in all the libraries so that if we need answers we have a way to find information on specific topics.”

Zedd gestured to the table. “That’s these stacks of papers?”

Richard nodded. “I don’t want to move the books around too much because I don’t know why they’re in a particular library, or for that matter why they’re on particular shelves. Other than dangerous books on magic that are placed in restricted libraries, I haven’t been able to figure out any logic to where books are kept, but it’s possible that there is a reason for them being where they are. Without knowing the reason, I don’t want to move them around and chance inadvertently creating a new problem.

“So, we’re making up a sheet for each book with its title, location, and some kind of description of what’s in the book. That way we can sort the pages into categories instead of having to sort the books themselves.

“In the example you mentioned, we would have a sheet for the book in with the cities category and we’d make a copy of that sheet to put in the rivers category. That way, we’re less likely to miss important secondary information.”

Zedd looked around at the row upon row of shelves. There were thousands of books in this library, and it was only one of many in the palace.

“That’s going to be a lot of work, my boy.”

Richard shrugged. “We have a wealth of information in the tens of thousands of books in various libraries throughout the palace, but no effective means to find specific information when we need it. Instead of fixating on that problem, I came up with a solution. If you have a better one, then I’d like to hear it.”

Zedd’s thin lips pressed tight for a moment as he considered the problem. “I guess not. I have to admit, what you say makes sense. I used to do something similar, but on a much, much smaller scale.”

“The First Wizard’s enclave, at the Wizard’s Keep,” Richard said as he nodded. “I remember the way books were stacked in piles all over the place.”

Zedd stared off into memories. “I put books about specific things I wanted to have at hand together in stacks. I had once meant to organize them on shelves. Never got around to it, though, and there were relatively few books there in that one place. Maybe now, with the war ended, when I get back to the Keep I can finally return to that long-forgotten work.”

“Lord Rahl had us start here, in this library, because for the most part it doesn’t seem to contain especially valuable or rare books,” Berdine said, drawing Zedd’s attention away from his memories. “Back when Darken Rahl was the Lord Rahl, he didn’t use this library that I saw. I think that means the books here are less important.”

“That you know of,” Zedd admonished. “You can’t depend on that to say that at least some of the books in here might not be rare … or dangerous.”

“True,” Berdine said. “But some of the other libraries have books that we know for a fact are filled with dangerous things.”

“We thought this would be a good place to start,” Richard said, “before we move on to the larger or more restricted libraries. And if there are important books in here we’ll now know they’re here because we will eventually merge all the sheets on all the books. That way we’ll know where any of the books on any given subject are located, no matter which library they’re in, no matter if they are scattered all over the palace.”

Zedd seemed to have calmed down. “That makes sense.”

“So,” Richard said as he gestured to the book on the table that Zedd and Berdine had looked at before, “when we do have a book like that one, we mark it unknown, or I guess maybe ‘wordbook,’ as Berdine suggested.”

“Well actually, Lord Rahl, that one happens to be unlike anything else I’ve run into. I was going to talk to you about how we should handle it. It’s not unknown, exactly, but it’s not exactly a wordbook, either.”

Richard folded his arms. “You said it was a wordbook.”

“Possibly, but I can’t classify it that way,” she said.

Richard frowned at her. “Why not?”

“Well, what I meant was that it was starting to look that way, but I can’t tell for sure.”

Richard scratched an eyebrow. “Berdine, you’re confusing me.”

Berdine leaned over and pulled the book back. She flipped it open on the table, looking up at Richard as if she were about to pass on some bit of juicy gossip.

“Look here. This book was rebound. This isn’t its original cover.”

Zedd, Kahlan, and even Cara leaned in a little to see the book.

Richard focused on it with renewed interest. “How do you know?”

Berdine ran her finger along the inside of the spine where it attached to the back cover. “You can see here where it was mended together, but it doesn’t match. The book itself isn’t complete. Most of it is missing. This binding was made specially to hold only what was left.”

Richard cocked his head to try to see the book better. “Are you sure that most of the book is missing?”

“I am.” Berdine turned the last page back over and tapped the words in High D’Haran at the end of the book. “Look here. Except for some of the book’s beginning, most of the pages were removed. They inserted this note as a last page to explain what they’d done.”

Richard took the book off the table and read to himself. As he silently worked out the translation, a little of the color left his face.

“What does it say?” Kahlan asked.

Richard’s troubled gaze rose to meet hers. “It says that the rest of the book was removed and taken to ‘Berglendursch ost Kymermosst’ for safekeeping. This remaining part, here, was left as a marker.”

Kahlan remembered that name. Berglendursch ost Kymermosst was High D’Haran for Mount Kymermosst. Mount Kymermosst was where the Temple of the Winds had originally been built.

Three thousand years ago the Temple of the Winds, because it contained so many dangerous things, had somehow been cast out of the world of life to where no one could get to it.

It had been hidden away, out of reach, in the underworld.

On occasion over the intervening thousands of years, there had been those who had traveled to the world of the dead to try to get into the Temple of the Winds. None had survived the attempt.

Until Richard.

He had gone alone to the underworld and had been the first in thousands of years to set foot in the temple.

When he had unlocked the power of the boxes of Orden to end the war, he had righted a number of wrongs, eliminating dangers and traps that had killed a great many innocent people.

He had also returned the Temple of the Winds to the world of life, to its rightful place atop Mount Kymermosst.