The Sword of the Truth, Book 12 - The Omen Machine (34 page)

W
hen the violence of the wizard’s fire at last subsided, Richard was finally able to open his eyes and take his hand away from his face. As the last glowing clots of conjured conflagration dripped onto the floor and extinguished with a steamy hiss, and the smoke cleared away, Richard expected to see Regula reduced to a puddle of molten metal.

It was not.

He saw that the machine was still sitting in the center of the room, looking exactly the same as the first time he had seen it. It looked untouched.

He was certain that the outer walls of the machine would be scorching hot, but as he approached it he felt no residual heat radiating from the metal. Richard cautiously reached out, carefully testing, then tentatively touching the metal surface. It was cool to the touch.

Richard had seen some of the terrible damage done by wizard’s fire, yet it had done nothing to the machine. It hadn’t even scoured the patina of corrosion off the surface. The symbols on the sides, the same symbols that appeared in the book
Regula
, were still in perfect condition.

If he hadn’t seen the wizard’s fire engulfing it with his own eyes, he might not have believed that anything had happened, much less that it had been the target of some of the most powerful conjured magic in existence.

Nicci, standing beside Richard, tested the surface with her fingers.

“Well, Additive Magic obviously didn’t work. Maybe it’s time to try something a little more destructive.” She motioned for the rest of them to move back.

Richard shepherded Zedd and Cara back into the protection of the stairwell. He knew what Nicci was going to do. He could see the aura of power crackling around the sorceress. It gave her a kind of glowing, otherworldly appearance, almost as if she were only there in spirit.

The sorceress lifted her hands out toward the machine. The sizzling aura around her flickered with intensity. He knew that others couldn’t see it, but he had always sensed the field of power around certain people. No aura he had ever seen was as strong as Nicci’s.

Black lightning— Subtractive Magic— ignited in the room with a thunderous thump. Dust lifted from the floor. The proximity spheres instantly went dark.

The black lightning twisted together with a blindingly bright sudden discharge of Additive Magic. The rope of Subtractive Magic was so dark that it was like looking through a crack in the world of life into the underworld itself.

In a way, it was.

The inky black lightning connected with the machine. The end played over the surface, flickering up and down it. The rest of it, between Nicci and the machine, whipped wildly about the room as it crackled and popped where the two flows of power, impossible darkness and blinding light, touched. The air of the room smelled like burning sulfur and vibrated with the power of the conflicting forces fighting each other. Both dark and light twisted with savage effort to dominate the other, to occupy the same place at the same time. The machine was bathed in the hot glow of the Additive Magic, only to then vanish into the void of Subtractive Magic.

It was a terrifying display of incompatible powers focused with destructive intent on the omen machine.

As abruptly as it started, it stopped.

The sudden quiet made Richard’s ears throb. The proximity spheres brightened, but slowly.

“It isn’t working,” Nicci said as her hands dropped to her sides. The aura around her calmed and then extinguished.

Richard stepped out of the stairwell. “How could it not work? What’s wrong?”

“I’ve never felt anything like it before.” Nicci ran her hand over the top of the machine as if trying to perceive its inner secrets through that light caress. “I could sense that it simply wasn’t connecting.”

“What do you mean it wasn’t connecting?”

Nicci shook her head in disbelief as she stared at the machine. “I create a node at the other end, at the target. The flow of power then fills the void between me and the target. The node is there to create a link for the power to seek, a route to follow. Once the connection is established, the two flows of energy are released into the node, destroying what it’s attached to. It happens instinctively and almost instantaneously.

“This time, as I cast my ability outward, the node just couldn’t find the target, wouldn’t settle where I intended, almost as if the object wasn’t there. Because of that, my power couldn’t connect with the object.” She turned to look up at Richard. “I’m sorry, Richard. I tried. It should have been utterly destroyed, but I couldn’t even scratch the metal of the outer shell.”

Richard wasn’t satisfied. “There has to be a way.”

“This is something the likes of which none of us has ever seen before.” Nicci shook her head. “No wonder they buried it.”

Richard knew something that would cut any metal.

As he drew the Sword of Truth, the unique ring of steel filled the gloomy room.

With the floodgates to the sword’s magic opened, its magic inundated him. He gave himself over to it, letting the storm of power thunder through him. He let it rage for a time, letting it seep into every fiber of his being.

The others in the room, recognizing all too well what he intended to do, backed away.

Filled with the fury of the sword’s magic mixing with his own, Richard slowly lifted the gleaming blade and touched the steel to his forehead.

He let his own anger at the danger Kahlan was in surge through him, interlacing with the sword’s righteous wrath.

Eyes closed, he gave himself over to the volatile fusing of magic.

“Blade,” he whispered, “be true this day.”

With both hands, Richard lifted the sword high over his head. Without pause and with all his might and fury, he drove the blade down toward the machine.

The sword’s tip whistled as it sliced through the air.

Richard screamed with the power of the magic coursing through him, with the power of his rage. The blade arced around and down toward the machine with lightning speed.

A hairsbreadth from touching the machine, the blade stopped cold in midair.

Richard was taken by surprise. He hadn’t expected the blade to stop the way it had. His muscles ached with the expected release that didn’t happen.

The sword’s magic worked by intent. If the one wielding the sword believed that what he was attacking was the enemy, or evil, the sword would cut through it, cut through anything. If the Seeker believed the person evil, there was no defense against the blade, not even a wall of steel.

But if the Seeker, somewhere deep inside, in the darkest corner of his mind, believed that the adversary was innocent, then the blade would not cut through even paper to harm them.

Richard stood with the sword tightly gripped in both fists, the blade motionless in midair just above the top of the machine, a trail of sweat running down his temple.

And then the machine began to wake.

Shafts slowly started turning, gears engaged, and yet more of the mechanism began to gather momentum.

W
ell isn’t that something,” Zedd said as he stepped out of the stairwell. “Seems that none of us has it in us to destroy the machine.”

Richard wondered why.

He staggered back from the machine as its internal mechanism gradually came to life, the internal parts progressively gathering momentum.

He stood silently staring at the waking machine, stunned that the sword had halted so abruptly. He hadn’t expected it to.

He’d had the same experience before, when somewhere deep down inside he’d had a glimmer of doubt. This time, as well, some part of him didn’t think the machine was at fault for the things that had happened. Some part of him thought that it was wrong to blame the machine for the terrible things that had happened.

If he hadn’t had those doubts, he knew, the sword would have shattered the machine.

Even so, he had fully committed himself. It was disorienting to come back from that lethal brink.

The fact that doubts existed prevented the sword from doing harm. But that didn’t mean that those doubts were justified. It could very well be that the machine was the source of the deaths and they would need to destroy it.

As the gears came up to speed, and the light from within projected the machine’s emblem up onto the ceiling, the room filled with the mechanical rumble of all the interior components at last in full motion.

Richard didn’t have to look through the window. He knew what was happening. In a moment, a metal strip dropped into the tray. He slid his sword back into its scabbard and tested the strip briefly, finding it cool to the touch. He pulled it out and in his head started translating the message.

“So,” Zedd asked impatiently, “what does it say?”

“It says ‘You can destroy those who speak the truth, but you cannot destroy the truth itself.’”

Zedd cast a dark look of suspicion at Regula. “So now the machine is spouting Wizard’s Rules?”

“So it would seem,” Richard said. He laid his hands on the top of the machine, leaning his weight on it, recovering from the experience of using the sword and having it stop cold, as he thought about what he should do next. “I’d still like to know how to destroy it if we have to.”

“The thing is obviously shielded somehow,” Nicci said. “But I can’t detect its presence and it doesn’t work like any shield I’ve ever encountered. There are powers involved here that we don’t understand.”

Zedd was nodding as she spoke. “It would appear that sometime in the past, someone else must have tried to destroy it as well. No one would have gone to this much trouble and effort to bury this thing unless it was the only option remaining to them.”

“I wish I knew that story,” Nicci said.

“We may one day end up having to bury it ourselves,” Richard said, “just like whoever buried it in the first place.”

The machine, never entirely still since inscribing the strip with a Wizard’s Rule, spun back up to speed. In a moment another strip dropped into the tray. It was as cool to the touch as the one before. Richard pulled it out and translated for the others.

“‘You would fault me for speaking truth?’”

Richard recognized the words he himself had spoken to Ambassador Grandon. It was unnerving that the machine had just repeated them back to him.

He realized, then, the reason the sword would not destroy the machine. He didn’t think, deep down inside himself, that the machine was actually the cause of the problems.

“I guess I did,” he whispered aloud in answer to its question. He leaned on the machine. “All of this isn’t exactly your doing, is it?” he asked the machine. “You’re just the messenger.”

The machine hardly slowed, and in a moment it was back at full speed, inscribing another strip. Richard pulled the cool metal out as it dropped into the slot and read it aloud.

“‘When the messenger becomes the enemy, the enemy gets buried.’”

Zedd, coming up beside Richard, also laid a hand on the machine. “Isn’t that interesting.”

Richard wondered exactly how, and why, the machine had managed to get itself unburied.

Again the machine gradually spun up to full speed and then pulled another strip through the beam of light, burning symbols in the language of Creation onto it. When the strip dropped into the tray, Richard paused for a moment before pulling it out.

“Well, come on,” Zedd said impatiently, “have a look.”

Richard finally pulled the strip out and silently worked the translation. It was more complex than the previous ones, but he finally got it and read it aloud.

“‘Darkness has found me. It will find you as well.’”

N
icci stepped up beside Richard. “Darkness has found it?”

“That’s what I had suspected,” Richard said. “I think it’s telling us that someone is using it, speaking through it. That’s the reason the sword wouldn’t harm it.

“The morning after Cara and Ben’s wedding, the boy down in the market, Henrik, said that darkness was seeking darkness. He also asked why he’d had dreams. None of it made sense at the time, so we thought the boy was sick and delusional, but it had to be that the machine was somehow speaking through him, saying that it knew someone was trying to coopt it. Maybe when it began, the only way the machine could describe it was as darkness finding it and interpreted the experience of someone speaking through it as dreams.”

Nicci’s brow tightened. “You mean you think that what the boy said was actually the machine? That it was a cry for help?”

Richard shrugged. “Could be.”

Zedd let out a noisy breath as he shook his head. “I don’t know, Richard. I think we have to be careful about letting ourselves act like this collection of gears and wheels and shafts can actually say anything as a result of conscious intellect. We’re all starting to act like this thing can think on its own, like it’s alive. It’s a machine. Machines can’t think.”

“Then how is it answering Lord Rahl’s questions?” Cara asked. They all turned and looked at her. She flicked a hand out at the machine. “How is it managing to tell us what we want to know, to fill in some of the blanks as we go along?”

“We might merely be reading more into it than is warranted,” Zedd told her.

Cara looked unconvinced. “It says what it says. We are not making up or imagining the things it says.”

Zedd smoothed back his unruly mass of wavy white hair. “There is a children’s game called Ask the Oracle. It’s a small box with a round hole in the top. On the side are painted scenes of the oracle with mysterious mist curling around her as she communes with the spirit world. The box holds a number of answers already written out on small discs. A child will ask a question— like will I marry someone I love when I grow up, or does so-and-so really like me— and then reach into the box and pull out a disc with an answer printed on it. They then replace the disc and the box is shaken for the next player’s turn to select an answer to their question.”

“Really?” Cara looked skeptical. “And it actually works?”

“Pretty well, actually. The answers are things like ‘Most assuredly,’ or ‘Not unless something changes,’ or ‘The spirits say yes,’ or ‘The answer is in doubt,’ or ‘It seems likely,’ or ‘It won’t be,’ or ‘Ask again later when the spirits are willing to answer.’ You see, no matter what disc the child pulls out of the box, it seems to them like the box is directly answering the question they asked.

“But it’s just a trick of the human mind to think that the answers fit the question, that the oracle of the box hears their question and can answer it. We’re all gullible to some extent. The answers are general in nature, but because they often seem to be so accurate people think the oracle of the box really can reveal the answers.

“Some people believe wholeheartedly in the oracle in the box. Some people actually believe that they really do have some magical power, or some connection to the spirit world which guides their hand to select the correct disc. But there is no magic involved. It is a simple trick that the human mind plays on itself.”

Cara folded her arms. “So you think that this machine is simply a big elaborate trick?”

“I don’t know.” Zedd clasped his hand. “I’m just saying that we need to be cautious and not jump to conclusions. It’s often easy to believe in readymade answers.”

Richard didn’t think the explanation was that simple. “I don’t know, Zedd. There seems to be more to it.”

“Like what?”

“Well, the way the machinery starts up when it’s about to give terrible prophecies is distinctive. It starts abruptly, all at once. And another thing, the metal strips come out burning hot. But when it seems to be … I don’t know, communicating I guess you could say, then it starts gradually and the strips come out cool to the touch.

“We’ve been assuming that the strips that come out are the responsibility of the machine. I think that maybe two very different things are going on.”

“I agree,” Nicci said. “It could be that someone is using it, giving it something to say, possibly even forcing it to say certain things. When they force it to speak, the strips come out hot. When it speaks on its own the strips are cool.”

“You think the machine is being exploited?” Frowning, Zedd scratched his scalp. “Let’s assume for the moment that it’s true. Who do you think would be doing such a thing? And why?”

Richard leaned a hip on the machine. “What is our problem?”

Zedd shrugged. “Our problem?”

“Our problem,” he explained, “our reason for being down in this long-buried room with this exiled device, is prophecy. What does the machine do? Give prophecy. What has been central in all the recent deaths? Prophecy. What have all the representatives decided they must have? Prophecy. What has us running around in circles, always one step behind events? Prophecy from this machine.”

“We know all that.” Zedd arched an eyebrow. “Is there a point?”

Richard nodded. “Look at the way everyone’s interest in prophecy has escalated. The prophecies that this machine puts forth have been conveniently repeated through others all over the palace. That insures that everyone knows them, which gets everyone stirred up about the importance of prophecy. Rumor and then gossip about the existence of an ‘omen machine’ have been on every tongue. People think we’re keeping prophecy from them, that we don’t want them to be safe from harm.”

Zedd was paying closer attention. “What’s your theory?”

“It seems to me that someone is planting these seeds.” Richard leaned in a bit toward his grandfather. “What has made people believe all the more in prophecy?” With a finger, he tapped the machine. “The prophecies that have come from the machine which shortly all come true, happening exactly as they are foretold in the prophecy. That’s where it all started. It has become a ghoulish game— like that children’s game you describe but with bloody consequences.

“The prophecies always come true, so people believe in their importance all the more and they’re even more eager to know the next one. Because this machine fits their belief that prophecy knows their future, they demand from us to know what prophecy says. And as you told us, back in Aydindril, and I would bet everywhere else, prophecy is on everyone’s mind. You said that there is a brisk trade in the prophecy business. Doesn’t that strike you as rather strange?”

“It has from the first,” Zedd confirmed.

“Back here, the machine’s prophecies have convinced the representatives of all those people preoccupied with prophecy that we’re wrong, that prophecy really is as easy to understand as it sounds. They therefore can’t understand why we wouldn’t want to reveal the danger to their lives that is so easy to see in the prophecies they’ve heard. The prophecies from this machine have helped whip everyone into a frenzy of belief.”

“What would you expect? They’ve come true,” Zedd said.

“Have they? Have you ever known prophecy to be so clear-cut and easy to understand, so plainspoken and straightforward? Or to turn out just the way it says, and soon after it says it?”

Zedd looked away as he considered the question. “Actually, I can’t say that I have. Prophecy, in all my experience, is ambiguous at best. What’s more, it can often take centuries to come to pass. But these all happen soon after they are given.”

“That’s another reason why I’m so worried about the prophecy that says ‘The hounds will take her from you.’ The only thing I don’t understand is that the strip that said it wasn’t like the other dire predictions— it came on a cool strip of metal, not a hot one.”

Zedd met his gaze. “Perhaps that means it isn’t like the others. Perhaps this is a real prophecy that has a hidden meaning.”

Richard cast a sidelong glance at the machine. “Or it was a warning the machine wanted me to have. On top of that, it just said that darkness had found it, and it will find me as well, like it was warning me. The machine seems to have some kind of connection with me.”

Zedd nodded. “That part is certainly clear enough.”

“For the prophecies that come out on the hot strips, at least, we know there is no balance. They are all dire.”

Zedd frowned back at Richard. “So you’re saying that you don’t believe that those are legitimate prophecy?”

“You tell me. Now that everyone is caught up in this prophecy frenzy, who have they all turned to for what they want? Who have they sworn loyalty to in exchange for prophecy?”

“Hannis Arc,” Cara said.

Richard nodded. “And it just happens to be Abbot Dreier, from Fajin Province, who has told us and everyone else how Hannis Arc believes in using prophecy to help guide his rule, the same as all the representatives want to do. I think Hannis Arc, not real prophecy, could somehow be at the center of this.”

“Like you say, though, he’s off in Fajin Province.” Cara gestured at the machine. “How could he be doing all of these things?”

“I don’t know,” Richard admitted. “But Abbot Dreier is here. Maybe he’s involved, somehow.”

Cara circled a finger skyward. “I thought that this place around the machine, the Garden of Life lying protectively over us, was a containment field. The whole point of a containment field is to prevent outside tampering with the dangerous magic inside. On top of that, the whole palace is made in the shape of a spell-form that weakens the gift of all gifted people in here except a Rahl.”

Zedd planted his fists on his hips and turned a look on Cara. “Now Mord-Sith have become experts in magic. What next?”

“A talking machine,” Nicci said.

Richard picked up a stack of metal strips from the tens of thousands piled against the wall and loaded it into the machine.

“So let’s let it talk.”