The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 85

In a blink, before the Hedge Maid could have second thoughts or guess what he intended, Richard whipped the knife past her face, carefully avoiding cutting her, or even the thought of it, so as not to trigger her occult protection. If he was sincerely not trying to cut her, her defenses would not react.

With deadly precision, he instead made the tip of the razor-sharp blade sweep in just between her parted lips … and sever the leather strips holding her mouth closed.

The Hedge Maid’s dark eyes went wide.

Her mouth also went wide, something it had never done before.

Her jaws opened wide. It looked decidedly involuntary.

And then came a scream of such power, such malevolence, such evil, that it seemed to rip through the very fabric of the world of life.

It was a scream born in the world of the dead.

Jars and bottles exploded. Their contents flew everywhere. Bony creatures covered their heads protectively with their gangly arms.

Broken glass, pottery, sticks, and pieces of vine began to move around the room in fits and starts, as if driven by gusts of wind, but then, with ever-growing speed, all the debris lifted into the air and began to circle the room. Even the bony creatures found themselves dragged into the building vortex, their arms and legs flailing as they orbited helplessly around the room among clouds of broken glass and pottery and all the things they had contained.

The deadly power of the scream went on unabated, catching all the creatures up in it, along with the mass of rubble.

The forms in the cowled cloaks covered their ears as they screamed in terror and pain. It did them no good. As Jit’s unleashed scream ripped through the room, they began to be drawn up in the growing tornado of sound and wreckage storming around the room.

Blood ran from the ears of those encased in the walls as they shook violently.

The bony creatures began to disintegrate, coming apart as if they had been cast of sand, dust, and dirt. Arms and legs fell apart, dissolving in the maelstrom, mixing in with the rest of the rubble circling the room. They shrieked and howled even as they were coming apart. Their terrified cries joined the cry of the endless scream coming from the Hedge Maid.

The glowing forms in the cowled capes began to elongate and rip apart in streams of glowing vapor as they were carried helplessly along in the power of the Hedge Maid’s scream.

Lightning flashed and flickered as it, too, was carried around the outside of the room. The very air roared and thundered.

In the center of it all, the Hedge Maid stood, head thrown back, jaws wide, as she screamed her life away.

The poison of who she was, of what she was, her wickedness, her corruption, her evil, her dedication to death and her contempt for life in any form, was escaping in a ripping scream that was the dead end of what she worshiped.

The scream was death itself.

Now that the truth of the dead soul within her was released, it was taking the life of its host.

She was seeing the truth of her dead inner self. Life, her life, was incompatible with the death she carried inside.

Death showed her no appreciation, and no mercy.

Her face began to melt as her own evil, the death at her core, escaped its prison. Blood veins broke, muscle ripped apart, and her skin split open until her bones were exposed. It all added power and force to her death shriek.

That scream, its power, its poison, lanced into Richard as well. The pain of it was more than he could stand. Every joint cried out in agony. Every nerve fiber vibrated with the torture of the sound escaping the Hedge Maid.

He, too, was being touched by death that had been freed.

As he began to lose consciousness, Richard realized that the plugs he had made for his ears, and for Kahlan’s ears, were not sufficient to stand up against the malevolence he had unleashed.

He had failed. He had failed Kahlan.

He felt a tear of grief for Kahlan, of his love for her, run down his face as the screaming, roaring, flashing world went slowly dark and silent.