The Sword of the Truth, Book 12 - The Omen Machine (26 page)

A
s Henrik made his way along the causeway made of intertwined vines, sticks, and branches that led him through the gloomy expanse of trackless swamp, the structure of the bridge became more substantial, in places incorporating stringy moss and grasses laced into it to help bind it all together. The floor broadened and walls grew thicker as well. In places the walls curved inward to close completely together overhead, as if it were growing that way naturally and of its own accord.

Before long the walls that had gradually grown from their beginnings as railings of sorts became a solid, integrated part of the structure joined all the way around overhead so that what had been a path, then an elevated walkway, then a bridge, had evolved into a tunnel. That tunnel widened into a larger passageway that funneled him into a maze of chambers, all constructed the same way, of the same materials woven snugly together. The same entwined materials that made the floors and walls also made up ceilings just as thick and tightly woven. Living vines, with slender leaves and tiny yellow flowers, coiled up and through the walls, in places making the framework more green than dead brown.

Within the silent interior network of cavities created by the mass of woven branches, the outside world seemed a far distant place. Inside was a world unto itself, a strange place without anything perfectly flat or straight. It was all organic curves without any sharp corners, all natural materials, none of which looked man-made yet all of which were carefully crafted. It all formed softly rounded rooms with dished floors that were completely walled off from what was outside.

Henrik wondered if it would be possible to pull apart the branches and vines of the walls if he was forced to make a quick escape. It all seemed pretty solid, but still, it was just woven branches, twigs, and vines.

As he made his way through a bowled room, the familiar gliding along somewhere behind him, he moved closer to the wall to take a closer look. He glanced to the side and saw then that many of the branches making up the heavier parts of the matrix were studded with wickedly sharp thorns. Up close to the wall, he could see that much of it looked like it was made up of a thorn hedge.

Even if he were to decide that his life depended on making an escape, he didn’t see how he could get through the thorny fabric of the structure. These were not small yet troublesome thorns like those on a rosebush that would scratch arms and legs. These were long, iron-hard, sharp spikes that would mercilessly rip a person apart and soon impale them so completely that they would be held prisoner.

With the floating form of the familiar right behind him, watching over him to make sure that he didn’t try to turn and run, he passed through a series of rooms of various sizes, their way always lit by hundreds of candles. Some parts were only connecting tunnels where he had to duck to make it through. They were something like hallways in a building, with smaller side corridors going off in different directions.

One of the relatively large chambers they had to pass through contained what had to be thousands of strips of cloth, string, and thin vines all hanging down from the ceiling, all holding objects tied to their ends, everything from coins to shells to rotting lizards. They hung perfectly still in the dead air. Henrik bent low to pass under some of the dense, hanging collection of strange objects, holding his breath against the stench most of the way.

The entire structure moved and creaked as he made his way through the maze, his route lit by candles, as if to welcome visitors. It felt like he was walking into a giant, tubular spiderweb, something like those he’d seen at the base of logs that were meant to funnel prey inward to their death.

He knew, though, that it was worse than that. This was the lair of the Hedge Maid.

Candles by the hundreds if not thousands lit the place, and yet the darkness they tried to hold back felt oppressive. Sounds from out in the swamp were so muted that they could barely be heard through the thick thatch all around, but the wet, fetid smell of rot had no difficulty stealing in with the muggy air. The candles at least helped mask the smell somewhat.

As he moved deeper into the Hedge Maid’s inner sanctuary, several more familiars drifted in through the walls and gathered around to escort him where he needed to go. More likely, they were making certain that he didn’t turn back. Whenever he glanced up at them, they stared at him with the most sickly yellow eyes and he would immediately look away. Each of the seven, when seen up close, was as ugly as death itself.

As they made their way down a broader corridor, there were even more candles placed all along the twig walls, from the curving edge of the floor up the rounded walls higher than he was tall. The hall they were in, lit by the golden glow of all the candles, led them abruptly into a murky room with hardly any candles.

There didn’t look to be room for many candles in the shadowy room. The place was filled instead with jars and containers. Some of the containers were made of tan clay. The jars were far more plentiful and in colors from tan to green to ruby red. In hundreds of places, the woven sticks and twigs had been pulled apart enough so that jars could be stuck into the knitted stick walls.

What was in all the jars, Henrik feared to imagine. From what he could see through the colored glass, most were filled with liquid that was dark and filthy-looking, though a lot of it looked like muddy water. Things floated in the liquid among the dirt and debris. He tried not to look too closely at what those things floating in the jars might be. One jar looked to be filled with human teeth.

But the jars and containers were not what frightened him the most.

It was what was woven into the twig walls themselves, behind the jars, that had tears of terror running down his cheeks.

Woven into the walls were people.

He could also see them in the walls of the corridors going out of the room in various directions. At first, he saw dozens and dozens of people cocooned in the fabric of the stick walls.

The more he looked, though, the more people he could see entrapped farther back within the walls.

Some of the people were desiccated corpses, their mouths gaping open, their eye sockets sunken, the skin of their bare arms and legs leathery and shriveled. Other bloated bodies looked more freshly dead. The gagging stink of death left him hardly able to breathe.

But some of the people woven into the walls were not dead.

They looked to be in a numb stupor, hardly breathing, only slightly aware of anything going on around them. All were naked, but encased as they were by the weaving of thorny twigs and branches around them, it was hard to see much of them.

Henrik could see their eyes roll from time to time, as if trying to make out where they were and what was happening to them. An occasional soft moan escaped a hanging mouth.

When he turned from staring at all the dead and the half-dead people laced into the walls, he came face-to-face with the Hedge Maid.

J
it sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, nested in a thatch of branches, watching him with unblinking, big round eyes that were so dark they looked black.

Her thin hair was only a little more than shoulder length. She wasn’t big. In fact, she was not much bigger than he was. Her simple sack dress showed that she had a rather straight torso. Her body looked more boylike than womanly. The skin on her thin arms looked to have seen little sunlight. It was hard for him to tell how old she was, but, despite her pale, smooth skin, he was certain that she was not at all young.

Her fingernails and hands appeared to be permanently stained, possibly from handling what was in the jars all around her.

He imagined, too, that the dark matter staining her fingernails might be the fluid leaking from the corpses woven into the walls around the room.

But what riveted his gaze, what had his heart pounding, what had his knees weak, was her mouth.

Her thin lips were sewn shut with strips of leather.

The leather thong was stitched right through the flesh of her lips, leaving holes that didn’t look like they had ever entirely healed. The stitches weren’t even. They looked to have been done haphazardly, with little care. The stitched strips of leather crossed to form “X”s over her mouth. There was only enough slack in the leather to allow her to open her mouth into a narrow slit.

Through that slit behind the cross-stitched leather thong, Jit let out an undulating squealing sound that didn’t sound human. It ran goose bumps up Henrik’s arms.

From having been here before, he knew that it was her language, her way of talking. While he didn’t have the slightest idea what the sound meant, he did know that she was directing it at him.

One of the familiars, missing a hand, he noticed, leaned toward him.

“Jit says that she is pleased to see you again, boy.”

Henrik swallowed. He couldn’t bring himself to say he was pleased to see her again as well.

Jit, her head bobbing, let out a low-pitched grating screech, punctuated with a few clicks of her tongue against the top of her mouth.

“Jit wants to know if you brought it,” the familiar said.

Henrik’s mouth felt stuck closed. He couldn’t make himself speak. Fearing what she would do if he didn’t somehow answer, he held out his fisted hands. He didn’t think that, after all this time, he could open them if he tried.

The Hedge Maid let out a soft raspy sound— half pule, half screech.

“Come closer,” the familiar said. “Jit says to come closer so that she may see for herself.”

Somewhere behind, there was a sound that made all the familiars pause and turn to look. The Hedge Maid’s black eyes turned up to focus into the distance behind him. Henrik looked back over his shoulder to see what had caught their attention.

In the distance, there was some kind of disturbance. Something was making its way up the hall that led into the chambers.

Candle flames wavered, their light flickering, and then they went out.

What ever it was brought darkness with it.

As it passed, the candles nearby all around it went dark. When it was beyond them, the extinguished flames slowly returned to life until they were once more fully lit.

It made it seem as if darkness itself were stalking through the tunnel of a hall, coming for them all.

As it came closer, pulling that darkness with it, extinguishing candles all around as it passed, the familiars cowered back behind Jit. Henrik could see the one without a hand trembling slightly.

Jit let out a long, low squeal and a few clicks. Two of the familiars gathered in close about her, leaning in, whispering. They nodded to more clicks and soft, grating sounds from deep in the Hedge Maid’s throat.

When the form finally swept into the room, bringing darkness with it, Henrik saw at last that it was a man.

The man paused before Jit, not far from Henrik. The candles’ flames in the hall behind him and those nearby in the room slowly came back to life, showing at last the man before them.

When he finally got a good look at the man, Henrik froze stiff, unable to draw a breath.

T
he man glanced down at the warm, wet place growing on the front of Henrik’s pants and smiled to himself.

“This is the boy?” he asked in a deep, iron-hard voice that made Henrik have to remind himself to blink and caused the seven familiars to drift back up ever so slightly more behind Jit, as if they weren’t aware that his voice alone had bulled them back.

The Hedge Maid let out a short, grating, clicking sound.

“Yes, this is him, Bishop Arc,” the handless familiar said for her mistress after watching her speak in the strange voice.

Bishop Arc glared at Jit for a moment. His gaze lowered deliberately to take in her mouth sewn closed; then he again turned his terrible eyes on Henrik.

The whites of the man’s eyes were not white. Not at all.

They had been tattooed a bright blood red.

The dark iris and pupil in the field of blood red made his eyes seem as if they were looking out from some other world, a world of fire and flame— or perhaps from the underworld itself.

But even as frightening as the bishop’s eyes were, that was not the most disturbing aspect of the man. The most ghastly thing about him, the thing that made Henrik unable to look away, unable to stop his heart from hammering, unable to draw more than short, shallow breaths, was the man’s flesh.

Every bit of Bishop Arc was covered with tattooed symbols. Not simply covered, but layered over countless times so that the skin looked something other than human. There was no place that Henrik could see that was not tattooed with some part or element of strange circular designs, each one randomly laid over another over another and over yet another, all layer upon layer so that there was no untouched skin visible anywhere. Not one speck.

The top layers were the darkest, with those under them lighter, the ones under those lighter yet, and so on, as if they continually absorbed down into his flesh and new ones were constantly being added over the top of those already there. They had an endless, bottomless depth to them, a tangled complexity that was dizzying, as if the symbols were continually seething up from somewhere dark.

Looking down through the ever-deeper levels of designs gave the man’s skin a three-dimensional appearance. Because the layers made it hard to tell just where the surface of the skin actually was in all the floating elements, it gave Bishop Arc a shadowy, somewhat hazy, somewhat ghostly appearance. Henrik felt sure that if the man wished it, he could vanish at will into the fog of floating symbols.

Because of the way the underlayers were lighter than the ones on top of them, each symbol, regardless of how many layers down it was, was distinct and recognizable. The symbols were all different sizes, and from what Henrik could tell, endlessly different designs. Almost all of them seemed to be a collection of smaller symbols assembled into larger, circular elements.

The bishop’s hands and what Henrik could see of his wrists sticking out from his black coat were completely covered with the designs. Even his fingernails appeared to be tattooed beneath, with the designs visible right through the nail itself.

His neck above his tight collar was covered all around, as was his entire throat. His face— every part of his face— was covered with emblems by the hundreds, if not thousands. Even his eyelids were tattooed. Even the man’s ears, every fold and as far down inside as Henrik could see, were completely covered in the same kind of strange tattoos of circular symbols on top of circular symbols on top of yet more of the symbols.

While the bishop’s entire bald head was tattooed over with the designs, one dominated them all. It was larger than all the others. The bottom edge of that large circle crossed over the center of his nose and swept to each side beneath his eyes, going around just above his ears to cover the rest of the crown of the skull. Inside the circle was another, and between them a ring of runes.

A triangle sitting within the inner circle crossed horizontally just above the man’s brow. Smaller, secondary circular symbols floating outside the points of the triangle that broke the circles covered each temple with the third at the point of the triangle on the back of his head. The way it was laid out made it appear as if the man was glaring out with those haunting red eyes from within the circular symbol, as if he were looking out from the underworld.

In the center of the triangle, toward the front of the man’s skull, was a backward figure nine.

That large tattoo covering the top of his bald head was darker than all the others, not just because it looked to be the most recently added, but because the lines composing it were heavier. Even so, lying as it was over layers of hundreds of other random emblems, it was evident that it was merely a part of a much larger purpose.

All the tattoos, in all their many different designs, still seemed to be variations of the same basic themes. There were symbols laid out in circles of every size, even circles within circles within circles, with some of the symbols contained within those circles made up of other, smaller designs. Taken in totality, it was a profoundly unsettling sight to see a man so given over to such an occult purpose.

It all made him a very dark, living, moving, fluid illustration, with every design down through the countless layers clearly discernible. Henrik imagined that if the bishop were naked, he would still be totally hidden behind the veil of symbols.

The only place Henrik could see that was not tattooed with the symbols was the man’s eyes, and they were tattooed red.

Bishop Arc saw several of the familiars glance nervously behind him, back down the hall.

He smiled. “I didn’t bring her with me,” he said in answer to the unspoken question haunting their eyes. “I sent her on an errand.”

The familiars bowed their heads in acknowledgment and as if to apologize for being so nosy.

The wide eyes of one of the people woven into the wall behind Jit stared fixedly at Bishop Arc. Terror shaped the man’s expression and left him unable to look away when the bishop glanced up at him. The man swallowed over and over, as if trying to swallow a scream fighting to make its way out. All the people in the walls seemed incapable of making a sound, though this man clearly seemed like he was about to scream.

Bishop Arc lifted a hand toward the man trapped in the wall. It was not an overt motion to point at the man, but a casual gesture, a slack hand held out on a partially raised arm, fingers barely extended. Nonetheless, it was clearly directed at the man encased in the wall and unable to stop staring at the bishop.

“Be still,” Bishop Arc said in a low voice, hardly more than a whisper, but as deadly as anything Henrik had ever heard.

The man gasped, sucking in short, sharp breaths. He pulled in one last, long breath as his eyes rolled back in his head. He shook violently but briefly, then slumped, at least as much as he could slump, woven as he was into the tangle of sticks, twigs, and vines. After a final shiver, his whole body went completely slack. The last breath of air left his lungs in a long, low wheeze.

The bishop looked around at other eyes watching him from the walls. “Anyone else?”

In the silence, every eye behind layers of twigs and branches turned away.

Bishop Arc smirked at the Hedge Maid. “There you go. Freshly dead fluids for your little helpers here to suck out and feed you.”

The Hedge Maid’s big, black eyes revealed nothing. She let out a low, rasping squeal broken by several clicks.

One of the familiars, watching Jit speak in the strange language, waited until she was finished and then leaned toward the bishop, showing contempt on behalf of her mistress. “Jit wishes to know why you have come here.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He lifted his arm out to the side, toward Henrik, as he addressed Jit. “I have come to make sure that you complete the task I gave you.”

After a long pause, Jit gave him a single nod.

The bishop’s brow drew down, deforming the symbol on his forehead, pulling the center of it lower with his eyebrows. “Now, you have wasted enough of my time. I expect you not to waste any more of it. The boy is finally here. Get on with it.”

Jit watched him for a moment, then turned her attention to Henrik and motioned for him to come closer.