The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 80

Kahlan ran the words through her mind again, not sure she had heard them right.

She will soon be among the walking dead.

With that, the figure vanished like smoke through the walls. As Kahlan watched her go, she saw for the first time other people back in the walls, woven in the way Henrik had been. Some were near the surface of the wall while others were so far back in she couldn’t see much of them. None had clothes. A number of them were clearly dead.

The small woman with the leather thongs sewing her mouth closed turned and tossed a handful of dusty material in the shallow bowl where small sticks were smoldering. Sparkling light spiraled up. Other figures, grotesque figures only partially visible, crowded into the room.

It felt like being among an assembly of ghosts, except they didn’t look like ghosts of people. They were gangly, human-like, skeletal creatures. Their long arms and legs had big, knobby joints. Their flesh, tight on their slender limbs, as if they had no muscle whatsoever, glistened with mottled, slimy rot. Their demonic heads bore only a passing resemblance to humans’. They growled at the sight of her, their thin lips drawing back to reveal large mouths crowded with pointed, needle-sharp teeth.

The woman with the sewn-shut lips reached out with a filthy, blackened hand and grasped Kahlan’s wrist.

Paralyzing pain instantly crackled through her. But it was more than simply pain. Besides the jolt of pain, the touch carried the sensation of utter, disheartened hopelessness.

It was like being touched by death.

As all the glowing creatures in cowled robes closed in around her, Kahlan finally got a good look at their frightening faces. It was like looking at rotting corpses. Their gnarled hands clawed at her clothes, and Kahlan knew that she had to do something, and fast. She couldn’t allow them to do what ever it was they intended.

The woman with the sewn-shut mouth was touching her.

That was all Kahlan needed. More than she needed.

The world seemed to slow almost to a stop. Time belonged to Kahlan. Exhaustion, fear, pain, sickness, misery, hopelessness were forgotten.

Mercy did not exist.

The moment was hers.

In that timeless place within, that place of power, that core of her being, where her inborn Confessor power resided, Kahlan released the constraints on her ability.

Thunder without sound jolted the air.

The power of the concussion shook the whole structure.

All around the people in the walls screamed as they shuddered violently, their arms and legs shaking as much as they could in the confinement of the thorny walls. The air was filled with their howls.

When it finally died down, the woman with the sewn-shut lips merely smiled.

Kahlan’s power hadn’t worked on her.

Kahlan’s power worked on everyone. Everyone who was human, anyway. It didn’t work on certain creatures of magic, on beings that had elements of magic, or were different.

Nicci’s words that they had no defense against the Hedge Maid rang through Kahlan’s thoughts. This could only be the Hedge Maid.

Knobby fingers started clawing at her clothes again.

Kahlan had nothing left with which to resist, to fight. She was sick and weak, and on top of that she had just used the last bit of strength she had left in order to unleash her power.

Gnarled hands pulled at her clothes. The bony creatures growled through open mouths filled with fangs. Kahlan was upright only because of all the hands on her, pulling at her, pressing her this way and that, tearing and yanking.

As they went about their work of pulling her clothes off, the Hedge Maid turned to her jars and bottles, opening various containers, adding things to the smoldering fire in the broad, flat bowl in the center of the room. When sparks flew up, she used a slender stick to draw symbols in trays of ash to the side.

Kahlan felt tears running down her face, dripping from her jaw, as she was dragged back by the glowing figures. The demonic, bony creatures hissed and snarled at her.

Kahlan felt as if she were being conveyed by evil spirits to the torturous depths of the underworld.

She thought that maybe she was.

With the help of the snarling creatures, hands all around pulled strands of thorny vines up around her. They wrapped them around her wrists and ankles, anchoring the ends in the wall behind her, tying them in tight.

Kahlan was only barely conscious as laughing, cavorting figures danced around with strands of vine and thorny branches, adding them to the weave of the wall.

She cried out in pain when she realized that some of the creatures around her were biting her abdomen. She could feel the needle-sharp teeth sinking into her flesh. She cried out in despair and grief, too, over the thought of never seeing Richard again.

She watched in horror as the glowing figures pressed bowls against her belly, collecting the blood as it rolled down her.

Kahlan could do nothing to stop the madness. Every movement she made only worked the thorns deeper into her flesh.

The glowing figures, and the bony creatures dancing around the room, all laughed and chattered in the strange squealing clicking sounds.

Others, who had already collected bowls with blood running from Kahlan’s bite wounds, took the blood to the Hedge Maid. The woman with the leather strips sewing her lips shut drank greedily. Creatures danced around her, arms flailing in the air, feet high-stepping. The room pulsed with the drum-like sound of their bony feet slapping the woven floor.

Kahlan’s blood ran down the small woman’s chin, dripping off in thick strings. Cockroaches emerged from the floor where the blood dropped to feast along with the Hedge Maid.

Kahlan felt merciful darkness stealing her away from the insanity raging all around her.