The Sword of the Truth, Book 12 - The Omen Machine (40 page)

I
n 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.

I
f he lives,” Cara said, “I’m going to kill him.”

Nicci smiled, but the thought of Richard dying sent a renewed spike of panic through her. It was too terrifying a thought to contemplate.

She laid a hand to his chest as somber soldiers gently laid his unconscious form beside Kahlan in the back of the wagon.

Blood seeped through the blankets Richard and Kahlan were both wrapped in. But Nicci could feel his heart beating, feel the breath of life in his lungs. Kahlan, thankfully, was alive as well. For now, the two of them were alive and that was what mattered most.

“He will live,” Nicci said. “Both of them will, if I have anything to say about it.”

By the looks of what had happened in the room where they had found them, it was perhaps surprising that they were both alive, much less in one piece. It had been frightening to have to pull them both out of the prison of thorn branches and vines they had been encased in.

“What’s this?” Zedd asked with a frown.

Nicci came out of her thoughts and took the little object from him. It looked to be a rolled-up wad of cloth.

“I don’t know. Where did you find it?”

“In his ear.” Zedd sounded astonished. He waved a finger, pointing. “Look, there’s another in his other ear.” He pulled it out and held it up to show her.

Nicci bent over the side of the wagon and checked Kahlan. She had them, too. Nicci pulled a little plug out of each of Kahlan’s ears and held them up to look at them.

She smiled, then, as she closed them in her fist.

“No wonder they’re alive.”

“What are you talking about?” Zedd asked.

“How much do you know about Hedge Maids?”

Zedd shrugged. “I may have heard of them when I was a boy, but I didn’t hear much. I also heard Richard ask the abbot about them, but I don’t really know anything about them. Why?”

Cara looked like she wanted to kill someone and she wasn’t all that particular about who it was going to be. “I’d like to know that myself.”

Nicci gestured back down the slope to the dense swamp where the structure had been that the boy, Henrik, had told them about. They might never have found it in time to save Richard and Kahlan had it not been for the boy. He had led them to where Richard and Kahlan were imprisoned.

Zedd had used wizard’s fire to destroy the place, along with all its contents, including the unidentifiable, bloody remains of the Hedge Maid. There wasn’t so much as a stick left.

“It is said that the sound made by a Hedge Maid, were she allowed to open her mouth all the way, is the sound of the Keeper himself and that it will pull the person making the sound and anyone who hears it into the underworld. The full scream of a Hedge Maid is death, even to herself, so at a young age Hedge Maids have their lips sewn shut by their mothers, before they can fully develop a voice.”

“And the father just lets the mother sew their child’s mouth shut?” Cara asked.

Nicci glanced up. “Hedge Maids, like some spiders, subdue and then suck the blood out of the male after they’ve mated.”

“Lovely,” Cara said under her breath.

“How do you know all this?” Zedd asked.

Nicci arched an eyebrow at the wizard. “I was once a Sister of the Dark, remember? Sisters of the Dark serve the Keeper of the underworld. We know a lot about the world of the dead and those who are devoted to it.”

Zedd scratched his jaw and changed the subject. “So, you think that Richard and Kahlan are alive because they stuffed those wads of cloth in their ears?”

Nicci leaned in the low wagon and touched two fingers to Kahlan’s head. “Here, see for yourself.”

Zedd added his first two fingers to Kahlan’s forehead.

“What do you feel?” Nicci asked as she watched his eyes.

Zedd was frowning. “I don’t know. Some kind of … darkness.” He suddenly looked up at her. “It’s the same thing I felt the last time I tried to heal her.”

Nicci nodded. She was pleased that the wizard recognized it. It would make what they had to do easier.

“That’s the touch of death that a Hedge Maid carries.”

Cara looked suddenly more than alarmed. “You mean to say that they have death in them— that they’re going to die?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Nicci said. “They were touched not only by the Hedge Maid’s occult conjuring, but more importantly by her scream, touched by death itself.”

“But you can heal them,” Cara said.

It was not a question, but Nicci treated it as such. “I’m pretty sure that I can, now that the Hedge Maid is dead and has no connection to them.” She took a deep breath. “Richard must have cut the leather strips sewing the Hedge Maid’s mouth shut. Fortunately, he was smart enough to plug his and Kahlan’s ears, first. It didn’t stop the sound from getting in, death from getting in, but it blunted it.”

“So they were touched by death from the Hedge Maid,” Zedd said. “And that’s what I’m feeling in her?”

Nicci finally nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“But you can heal them,” Zedd said, sounding a lot like Cara had.

“I think so,” she said. “I was a Sister of the Dark. This is the kind of thing I know about. But I can’t do it here. I need to do it in a containment field.”

“The Garden of Life,” Cara said at once. “That’s a containment field.”

Nicci smiled at Cara and then signaled to Benjamin. The wagon started moving with a jolt. “That’s why I want to get them back there as soon as possible. Zedd and I can keep them alive for a while, and heal their wounds, but we need to get them back to the Garden of Life to fully heal them, to get the touch of death out of them.” She gestured up at Henrik, on the seat by the soldier driving the wagon. “He was touched by the Hedge Maid’s powers and will need to be healed as well, but it’s not as serious with him. He did not hear death’s call.”

The line of cavalry brought their horses in protectively around the wagon as it rolled through the gloom among the towering trees. The steel gray clouds were so low they stole through the treetops, as if escorting the intruders away from the Dark Lands.

Having thought it over, Cara still didn’t look satisfied. “Why can’t you heal them now,” she wanted to know. “Why do you have to wait until you get back to the Garden of Life?”

“They have been touched by death. We need a containment field to shield them while we do what we need to do. We need to heal them, but to do so we must also remove that touch of death that is lodged within them. If we try to do that here, that touch of death will call the Keeper of the dead to them, and they will die. So, we must wait until we can do it in a containment field, in the Garden of Life.”

“Oh,” Cara said. “I guess that makes sense.”

“The omen machine is in that containment field as well,” Zedd reminded her.

“Do you have a better idea?” Nicci asked him.

“I guess not,” Zedd grumbled unhappily.

“That machine saved their lives,” Nicci said. “Remember the last thing it said to Richard? ‘Your only chance is to let the truth escape.’ The machine told Richard how to destroy a Hedge Maid. I didn’t even know to do that. Richard figured it out.”

Zedd’s bushy brows drew down. “You really think so?”

Nicci smiled down at the two of them lying unconscious in the wagon. “Why do you think he plugged their ears?”

A slow smile overcame the old man. “The boy got it right.” His frown returned in a rush. “Why do you suppose the machine told him that— saved his life?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Nicci asked.

“Obvious?”

As they walked along on each side of the wagon, Nicci gave the wizard a sidelong glance. “The machine needs him.”

“Needs him,” Zedd repeated unhappily.

“To fulfill its purpose,” Nicci said.

“I remember,” he grumbled again. “What ever its purpose is,” he added under his breath.

Nicci laid a hand on Richard’s chest as she walked along beside the wagon, releasing a comforting trickle of sustaining Additive Magic into him, letting him know that he was not alone with the whisper of death inside him. On the other side of the wagon, Zedd did the same for Kahlan.

Nicci felt Richard take a deeper breath. He knew she was there. Even if he couldn’t answer, somewhere deep down inside, he knew.

Nicci dared to allow herself to let go of her panic. They were both finally safe. It had been a frightening journey. Knowing where Richard had been headed, Nicci hadn’t expected to ever see him alive again. At least for now, they were in good hands, and they would recover once they were back at the palace and she and Zedd and Nathan could heal them properly.

Nicci was so relieved that she had no words to fully express it. She was also angry at Richard for going after a Hedge Maid. She had warned him. She had told him how dangerous they were. She had told him to stay away from Hedge Maids. But he had gone anyway.

Nicci supposed that he had no choice. He had to go after Kahlan. Who else but Richard would walk into a Hedge Maid’s lair to save the woman he loved.

Who else but Richard.

“They look cute lying there together,” Cara said as she gazed down at them over the edge of the wagon.

The Mord-Sith’s face suddenly went red. “You won’t tell them I said that.” Again, it was not a question.

Nicci smiled; for the first time in many days, she really smiled.

“Not a word of it,” she said.

“Good,” Cara muttered. She looked up toward the head of the line of soldiers. “General, would you get this column moving a bit faster. We have to get them back to the palace!”

Benjamin looked back over his shoulder with a smile and gave his wife a salute of a fist to his heart; then he urged his horse to pick up the pace.

END