The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 57

Kahlan woke with a start, panting in terror. A blur of images flashed through her mind. Dark arms and claws reached for her. Fangs came out of nowhere, snapping, trying to get at her face.

She didn’t know where she was or what was happening. She fought frantically, twisting, pushing at what ever it was that was reaching for her, at the same time trying to escape the grip of pain that seared through her.

She sat up abruptly, gasping for breath, and saw then that she was in the Garden of Life, that it was night. There was nothing chasing her, nothing coming after her. It was quiet.

She had been having a nightmare.

In the dream something had been chasing her, something dark and profoundly dangerous, something terrifying. It had been relentless and had been getting closer all the time. She had been running, trying to get away. But she hadn’t been able to make her legs move fast enough. It had all seemed so real.

But she was awake, at last. She wasn’t dreaming anymore. She had escaped the nightmare and in so doing escaped what was after her. She told herself to let it go, to stop focusing on the dream. It was only a dream. She was awake now. She was safe.

But she quickly found that being awake was no salvation. While she had awakened and escaped what had been after her in the dream, in being awake she had not escaped the pain. Her head hurt so much she thought she might pass out. She pressed her fingers to her temples only to have to hug her arms across her abdomen, pressing them against the twisting ache in her middle.

As the spike of pain drove through her head, a hot wave of nausea welled up through her. She fought the building urge to throw up. The throbbing pain in her head overwhelmed her, making her all the more dizzy and sick. With all her might, she fought back the expanding waves of nausea. The nausea won out.

As her insides began to convulse, Kahlan urgently struggled out of the tangled blanket and crawled on her hands and knees into the grass and away from where she’d been sleeping. She did her best to resist the urge to throw up, but her body would not obey her will and she began heaving so hard that it felt like her stomach was trying to turn inside out. Undulating waves of sickness swept through her again and again in rhythm with the pounding pain in her head, making her vomit each time.

Kahlan realized that there was a hand on her back and another hand holding her long hair back out of the way.

She gasped for breath between the spasms. She was sure that she had to be throwing up blood. The excruciating pain seemed unendurable each time her muscles convulsed. It felt like her insides were ripping.

The waves of heaving finally began to subside. As she spit out the bitter bile, it was a relief to at least see that there was no blood.

“Mother Confessor, are you all right?”

It was Cara. It felt good to have someone there. It was comforting not to be alone.

“I don’t know,” she managed.

Suddenly, Richard was there as well. “What’s wrong?”

Rolling trembles racked her whole body. Between that and panting for air, “Sick” was all she could manage to get out.

“I heard you scream from all the way down in the room with the machine,” Richard said as he placed a reassuring hand on her back.

She ripped off a thick fistful of grass and wiped her mouth with it, threw it down and then did it again with a clean handful. She hadn’t realized that she had screamed in her sleep. The waves of nausea had quieted, allowing her to catch her breath. Her head still throbbed, though.

“I was having a nightmare and I must have screamed and scared myself awake.”

He pressed his hand to her forehead. “Your skin is like ice and you’re soaked in sweat.”

Kahlan couldn’t seem to stop herself from shivering. “I’m so cold.”

Richard drew her closer. Kahlan collapsed over on her side against him. His warm, muscular arms closed protectively over her.

Rather than simply hold her, though, he took hold of her wrist and lifted her arm out. It hurt to have him touch it.

“Dear spirits,” he whispered to himself.

Cara leaned in. “What’s wrong?”

Richard turned Kahlan’s arm out a little to show her. “Go get Zedd.”

Kahlan saw Cara race away back up the path through the trees. It felt good being in Richard’s arms. She didn’t want to ever move out of his comforting warmth.

But her arm throbbed with every heartbeat. She looked down and was surprised to see that the scratches had reappeared. Zedd had healed them, but they were back and looked worse than ever.

“It looks like Zedd’s healing didn’t take care of it after all,” Richard said. “We’ll get him back here and see what he thinks. He knows a lot about such things, but it looks to me like it might have been infected and that’s why it came back. That’s probably what’s making you sick, too. Maybe he just didn’t get the infection completely healed the first time.”

That didn’t sound to her like it could be the cause of the the way she felt. She’d had wounds in the past that had become red and swollen. They never made her feel this way. In fact, the arm was the least of it. It was the sudden explosion of pain in her head that had brought her awake, made her feel sick, and had made her throw up. It was that sharp stab of pain between her temples that had overwhelmed her with nausea. She didn’t really think the scratches had anything to do with her headache.

She’d had headaches a few times in her life that were so strong they had made her throw up. Richard used to have them, too. He said that he’d inherited them from his mother. She thought that this one had to be something like that. Just a bad headache. That thought actually made her feel better.

She glanced down again at the angry red scratches on her arm. It concerned her to see that the wounds that had healed had not only returned but looked to have gotten worse. The arm felt a bit stiff, too, from being swollen.

Kahlan shivered in pain again. A wave of icy cold swept over her. The pain in her head bore down on her with crushing weight.

And then, as Richard leaned over and held her close against him, she began to feel the sweet softness of his gift seeping into her. Warm relief flooded through her cold, stiff muscles. He had used his gift to heal her in the past, so she recognized the feeling of being touched by his magic. That was what he was doing now— healing her with his magic.

Richard’s gift worked in a unique way, and usually only ignited within him if there was great need. His empathy for her, his love for her, his need for her to be safe, had brought it forth now to heal her.

Time became meaningless in his warm embrace, in the flow of magic coursing into her.

She felt his comforting, reassuring, loving presence in every fiber of her being.

But as much as she wanted his help, she also didn’t want to allow him to do it.

She knew that in the process of healing he would have to take on her pain. He first had to lift her agony away and take it into himself, so that his gift could then flow into her to heal what was wrong. Kahlan didn’t want Richard to take in this pain. As much as she wanted to be rid of the hurt, she didn’t want him to suffer it.

Fighting him, though, proved useless. The strength of his gift overwhelmed her. She had no choice but to let go of her resistance. The feeling was like letting herself fall backward into an unknown, bottomless abyss. It was frightening, and at the same time a relief, a relief in the sense of letting go, of letting someone else fight for her, fight against the pain on her behalf, of being able to stand aside as the battle raged.

She didn’t know how long she had been lost in that distant place of pain with Richard there with her, joined with her, but she did know that when she opened her eyes and the world came back in around her, she was still in his arms.

Despite what she expected, the pain was still there. It was just as strong, just as oppressive as before.

She recognized that same pain in Richard’s eyes as well. He had taken it into himself, but oddly enough, it had not at the same time drawn it away from her.

The effort had not healed her.

She thought that maybe she’d done something wrong. Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough. Or, more accurately, maybe she had been too fearful of letting Richard take the pain into himself and so she hadn’t done enough to let go so he could help her.

Cara leaned in over Richard. “Sorry it took me so long to find Zedd. I finally did. He’s coming right behind me. I brought Nicci, too.”

Richard didn’t respond. He was staring off at nothing.