The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 76

Patrols that had spotted Richard ran up to see what the problem was. Richard saw other soldiers on horse back appear in the distance.

Before the powerfully built captain of the guard could speak, Richard spoke first. “The Mother Confessor came down here sometime after dark. Her tracks are at least several hours old. Did you or any of your men see her?”

“The Mother Confessor?” The startled captain shook his head. “No, Lord Rahl. My men and I have been on patrol since long before then— since before dark. I would have heard about it if anyone had seen her.”

Richard had last seen Kahlan not long after it had gotten dark. “How many wagons have left here since dark?”

The captain scratched his bull neck as he tallied them in his head for a moment. “Dozens, Lord Rahl. We have manifests and logs. I can get you an exact number.”

“Good. Get enough cavalrymen together for a detachment to go after each wagon. I want mounted troops to catch every wagon that left here overnight. Every one of them. I want every wagon and coach searched.”

The man was nodding to the instructions, but he looked confused. “What are we to be looking for?”

“The Mother Confessor left her room sometime in the night. It’s possible she was being chased by something but she’s sick with a fever so it’s more likely that she may be disoriented. What I do know is that she came down here and jumped in a wagon that left here tonight. I don’t know which one, so the men will need to track down every wagon and search it. If she is found, I want her protected and brought back to the palace.”

“Do you know where she jumped in the wagon, Lord Rahl? That might narrow the search.”

Richard pointed at her last footprint. “Right here.”

The man’s face sagged with disappointment. “All the wagons have to turn through this area as they’re leaving.”

“Then they’ll all have to be caught and searched,” Richard said. “Get the search parties on their way immediately— before the wagons can get too far.”

The man clapped a fist to his heart. “At once, Lord Rahl.”

“And I need a horse,” Richard said. “Right now.”

The captain turned and whistled a code into the darkness as yet more men ran in from different directions. In only a matter of moments Richard was surrounded by over a hundred men.

When a dozen men on horse back galloped up, the men let them through. The mounted soldiers gathered around wanting to know what the problem was. Instead of explaining, Richard quickly appraised all the horses. He signaled a man to dismount from a strong-looking mare. The man jumped down.

“The captain here will explain my orders,” Richard said as he put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the saddle. “I have to go.”

“We will have every wagon checked, Lord Rahl,” the captain said. “Will you be going with some of the men, then?”

Richard had to have the wagons searched, just in case, but he doubted that they would find her. There was more to this, something that he had not yet figured out.

He thought about the machine’s warning that the hounds would take her from him. He thought about all the trouble that had started after they had seen the boy, Henrik, down in the market the morning after Cara’s wedding.

Their recent troubles seemed bound up in prophecy. A number of representatives had decided that they wanted to follow Hannis Arc from Fajin Province because he used prophecy. That was why so many had left that night.

One of the first omens had been “Queen takes pawn.” Nicci had told Richard that the prophecy was also a move in a game called chess, a game that was played in Fajin Province in the Dark Lands. Henrik, the sick boy who had given the first warning that there was darkness in the palace, had been to a place called Kharga Trace in the Dark Lands of Fajin Province.

Richard remembered the boy’s mother saying that she had taken him to see the Hedge Maid in Kharga Trace. He remembered the way her eyes had darted about when she had mentioned the Hedge Maid. He also remembered how nervous Abbot Dreier had gotten at the mention of the Hedge Maid.

Nicci had warned Richard about how dangerous Hedge Maids were.

He also remembered the boy’s mother saying that Henrik had been bothered by hounds coming around their tent.

The captain was still waiting for Richard to tell him where he was going.

“I’m not going with any of the men to search the wagons.” Richard’s horse danced around, eager to be away. “Tell General Meiffert and Zedd that I’m going to Kharga Trace and I don’t have the time to wait for them. I don’t have a moment to waste, and besides, they would only slow me down.”

“Kharga Trace?” one of the men of the patrol asked. “In the Dark Lands?”

Richard nodded. “You know the place?”

The man stepped forward. “I know that you don’t want to go there, Lord Rahl.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m from Fajin Province. You don’t want to go to Kharga Trace. Desperate people go there to see some kind of woman said to have dark powers. A lot of people who go there, though, don’t come back. That kind of thing isn’t all that unusual in the Dark Lands. I was happy to leave to join the D’Haran army. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the First File so that I might serve here. I don’t ever want to go back.”

Richard wondered if the man might simply be superstitious. When he had been a woods guide, back in the Hartland woods of Westland, he never encountered any dark malevolence haunting the trackless forests, but he did encounter country people who feared such things and believed wholeheartedly in them. Such stories, though, didn’t tarnish his fond memories of home.

“Now that the war is over,” he said to the soldier, “you really don’t want to go home?”

“Lord Rahl, I don’t know much about the gift, but in the war I came to see a great deal of magic to fear. What’s back in the Dark Lands is different. The cunning folk there, as they’re called, use occult conjuring— dark magic— that deals in things dead. It’s very different in the Dark Lands than the magic of the gift I’ve seen since leaving.”

“Different? Different in what way?”

The man looked around, almost as if he feared that the shadows might be listening. “The dead walk the Dark Lands.”

Richard rested his forearm over the pommel of the saddle and frowned down at the man. “What do you mean, the dead walk the Dark Lands?”

“Just what I said. The Dark Lands are demon ground, hunted by scavengers of the underworld. If I never go back there it will be too soon for me.”

Richard thought such superstitious fears sounded even more strange coming from a strong young man, a man who had faced war and terrors no one should ever have to face.

But then he remembered Nicci telling him that a Hedge Maid’s powers were different and that he had no defense against them. Nicci had not only once been known as Death’s Mistress, she had been a Sister of the Dark and had served the cause of the Keeper of the underworld. She knew about such things.

The thought of Kahlan going to a place like that had his heart pounding. Richard knew that the one place he didn’t want Kahlan going to was the Dark Lands, and especially to the Hedge Maid. But too many things pointed in that direction to be coincidence.

Richard nodded. “Thanks for the warning, soldier. I hope to catch up with the Mother Confessor long before then.”

The man clapped a fist to his heart. “May you come home soon, Lord Rahl. Come back safe with the Mother Confessor before you ever have to set foot in the Dark Lands.”

Richard tightened the reins to keep the horse still. “Captain, be sure to tell Nicci, too, where I’m going. Be sure to tell her that I said that I think the Mother Confessor may be headed to the Hedge Maid in Kharga Trace. I am going to try to catch her before she can get there.”

One of the other soldiers ran up and threw saddlebags over the back of the horse. “At least take some supplies, Lord Rahl.”

Richard lifted his sword from its scabbard just a bit and let it drop back, making sure that it was clear. He nodded his thanks to the men and then urged the horse toward the road that led down the side of the plateau.

As Richard gave the horse reins and leaned over its withers, it complied instantly and thundered off into the night.