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Cara folded her arms. “It’s starting to sound like that oracle in a box giving us printed discs for answers.”
Richard ignored her as well. “Why are you doing this? Why are you speaking through these strips?”
When a strip came out, Richard read it aloud. “‘I am fulfilling my purpose, doing as I must.’”
“What is your purpose?” Richard asked immediately.
After the strip had passed through the machine and dropped in the bin, Richard noted that it was still cool. He looked at the symbols and then read the message aloud. “‘To fulfill my purpose.’”
Cara rolled her eyes. “No doubt about it, we have printed discs on our hands. Ask it if Ben really likes me. I’d like to hear what the spirits have to say.”
Richard ignored her taunt and tried a different line of questioning. “Who created you?”
The strip took a bit longer to pass under the light as the language of Creation burned a longer, more complex message into it. Finally, it dropped into the slot.
Richard held it up in the light to read it. “‘I was created by others. I had no choice in it.’”
Richard put a hand on the machine and leaned in toward it. “Why did these others create you?”
When the strip came out, Richard read it silently, then sighed in frustration before translating it for the others. “‘I was created to fulfill my purpose.’”
He tossed the strip on top of the machine. “Why does your purpose need to be fulfilled? Why is it important?”
The machine slowed to a stop.
In the silence, they all shared looks.
Richard thought that the conversation had ended, but then the gears started turning again, slowly at first, until it eventually built up to full speed. A tab on the wheel under the strips popped up and pushed out one from the stack of blanks, where it was grabbed by pincers on another wheel and pulled through the mechanism. Richard looked in through the window and saw the strip moving over the light to be inscribed. When it dropped into the slot he pulled the cool strip out and held it up in the light of the proximity spheres.
“‘Because prophecy cannot always be trusted.’”
“That’s true enough,” Zedd muttered unhappily.
Richard glanced at Zedd, then asked another question. “What do you mean, prophecy can’t be trusted? Why not?”
The machine pulled another strip from the stack. When it made its way through and dropped into the slot, Richard was waiting for it. He read it to the others.
“‘Prophecy grows old and corrupted over time.’”
Richard’s arm lowered. “But you are the one giving prophecy.”
Another strip ran through the machine and dropped into the slot.
“‘I am fulfilling my purpose, doing as I must. You must fulfill your purpose.’” Richard frowned at the machine. “My purpose? What is my purpose in all this?”
Everyone gathered closer as they waited for the next strip. Richard snatched it up when it finally dropped in the slot.
“It says, ‘To fulfill my purpose.’” Richard raked his fingers back through his hair as he walked a short distance away. “My purpose is to fulfill your purpose, which is to fulfill your purpose? That makes no sense. This is pointless. We’re just going around in circles.”
The machine slowly spun down.
“Tell me something I can use!” Richard yelled as he turned back to Regula. “Tell me how to protect Kahlan from the hounds that you said will take her from me!”
The machine did not answer.
After a long, dragging silence, Nicci laid a comforting hand on the back of his shoulder. “We all need to get some rest, Richard. This is getting us nowhere. We can revisit it later. You should get back up to Kahlan. That’s the best way to make sure that the prophecy doesn’t come true.”
Richard heaved a sigh of frustration. “You’re right.”
He didn’t know if the machine’s real purpose was to give prophecy, or if it had been created to do something else. They still had no idea who had created it, why it had been buried and forgotten, or even why it had so abruptly awakened from its dreams. He wasn’t even sure if he was convinced that someone could actually direct it. As confusing as the things it said were, he was beginning to wonder if darkness had really taken it over in the first place. He was beginning to think that it was just the machine being perverse. No wonder they had buried it. It was useless.
Zedd patted Richard on the back. “You’re the Seeker. I’m sure you will think of something, my boy.”
Richard turned away from the machine. “We’re not going to find the answers we need tonight. Like Nicci says, we all need to get some rest.”
Richard wasn’t through asking questions of the machine, but it was late, and he wanted to get back to Kahlan. He knew that after he’d slept on it, he would have more questions. Maybe if he could ask them in the right way he would be able to begin to understand why the machine had been created in the first place and what its real purpose was. But those questions would have to wait.
As they all headed for the stairs, the machine began to rumble into activity again. As they turned back and stared, it gradually came up to full speed. A strip was pulled off the bottom of the stack and through the inner workings.
Richard watched it drop into the slot. He was reluctant to bother to pick this one up and read it. He was tired of the game. He didn’t want to play along anymore. He thought that maybe he should leave the strip sitting in the machine until morning.
Before Richard could leave, Zedd pulled the metal strip out, glanced at the symbols, and then handed it to Richard. “It’s cool. What does it say?”
Richard reluctantly took the strip from Zedd and held it up in the light to read the circular symbols.
“‘Your only chance is to let the truth escape.’”
“What in the world could that mean?” Cara asked.
Richard clenched the strip in his fist. “It’s some kind of riddle. I hate riddles.”
CHAPTER 73
Kahlan woke, confused at feeling
herself rocking. She winced as she pressed a hand over the stunning pain at the top of her head. Her hair felt wet. She pulled her hand away to look at it, but it was too dark to see much other than wetness glistening in the moonlight.
She suspected that she knew all too well what it was. As she struggled up onto her knees she touched her tongue to her hand.
She was right; it was blood.
When she swallowed, her throat was so sore that it made her wince. She ached all over and was shivering with chills even though she was sweating profusely.
Her mind raced, trying to put the fragments of memories together, trying to recall exactly what had happened. Images and impressions flashed in sickening snatches. At the same time the whole world felt like it was moving.
When she was jolted and then bounced, she lost her balance and fell forward. She had to put a hand down to keep from falling over on her face. She felt rough wood. Looking around she realized that she was in a small open space in the back of a wagon. Both the pain throbbing inside her head and the sharp stinging pain at the top of her head made her woozy. She fought back the urge to be sick.
Suddenly, a big dog bounded up out of the darkness, slamming into the side of the wagon, startling her. It dropped back, unable to make it all the way into the wagon, but it hooked its front legs over the side and held on. The dog scrambled, stretching its neck to get its massive head inside, trying to get enough of its weight into the wagon to have the leverage to get all the way in.
Strings of frothy drool whipped from side to side as the animal, even while trying to climb into the wagon, growled and snapped at her.
Kahlan immediately kicked one of the dog’s legs off the edge of the wagon. The dog struggled but couldn’t hold on with one paw and fell off into the darkness.
The whole nightmare of what had happened up in the bedroom was starting to come back to her— fragments of it, anyway. She remembered, too, what had happened to Queen Catherine, what a pack of dogs had done to her. Kahlan also remembered the prophecy given by the woman Kahlan had taken with her power, the woman who had killed her own children to supposedly spare them a worse death. That woman had told Kahlan that she would suffer a grim fate. When Kahlan had asked what she was talking about, the woman had said, “Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won’t be able to escape them.”
