The Pillars of Creation (13 page)

“That’s right, Mama. Lathea was dead.” He found he liked saying that.

“Really, Oba? You couldn’t get the medicine? You wouldn’t lie to your mother, would you, Oba?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No, Mama.”

“Then what’s this?” She turned over her hand and held out the bottle of medicine Lathea had given him before he had dealt with her. “I found this in your jacket pocket, Oba.”

Oba stared at the cursed bottle, at the troublesome sorceress’s revenge. He should have killed the woman right off, before she gave him the telltale bottle of medicine. He had completely forgotten that he had put it in a pocket of his jacket, intending to toss it in the woods on his way home that night. What with all the important new things he had been learning, he had completely forgotten about the cursed bottle of medicine.

“Well, I think…I think it must be an old bottle—”

“And old bottle? It’s full!” Her razor-edged voice was back. “How did you manage to get a bottle of medicine from a woman who was dead—in her house that had already burned down? How, Oba? And how is it that you gave me back a different coin than the one I gave you to pay with? How!” She took a step closer. “How, Oba?”

Oba backed a step. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from the cursed cure. He couldn’t look up into his mother’s fierce eyes. If he did, he just knew she would wither him to tears under her deadly glare.

“Well, I…”

“Well I what, Oba? Well I what, you filthy bastard boy? You worthless lazy lying bastard boy. You wretched, scheming, vile bastard boy, Oba Schalk.”

Oba’s eyes turned up. He was right, she had him fixed in her deadly glare.

But he had become invincible.

“Oba Rahl,” he said.

She didn’t flinch. He realized then that she had been goading him into admitting he knew. It was all part of her scheme. That name, Rahl, screamed out how he had come to know it, betraying everything to his mother. Oba stood frozen, his mind in a wild state of turmoil, like a rat with a foot on his tail.

“The spirits curse me,” she said under her breath, “I should have done what Lathea always told me. I should have spared us all. You killed her. You loathsome bastard. You contemptible lying—”

Quick as a fox, Oba whipped the shovel around, putting all his weight and strength behind the swing. The steel shovel rang like a bell against her skull.

She dropped like a sack of grain pushed out of the loft—whump.

Oba rapidly retreated a step, fearful she might skitter toward him, spiderlike, and with her mean little mouth bite him on the ankle. He was positive that she was fully capable of it. The conniving bitch.

Lightning quick, he darted forward and whacked her again with the shovel, right on the same place on her broad forehead, then retreated out of range of her teeth, before she could bite him like a spider. He often thought of her as a spider. A black widow.

The ring of steel on skull hung in the otherwise still air of the barn, slowly, slowly, slowly dying away. Silence, like a heavy shroud, settled around him.

Oba stood poised, shovel cocked back over his shoulder, ready to swing again. He watched her carefully. Nearly clear, pinkish fluid leaked from both her ears, out across the frozen muck.

In a frenzy of fear and rage, he ran forward and swung the shovel at her head, over and over. The ringing blows of steel on bone echoed around the barn, creating one long clangorous din. The rats, watching with their little black rat eyes, scurried for their holes.

Oba staggered back, gasping for air after the violent effort of silencing her. He panted as he watched her still form sprawled atop the mound of frozen muck. Her arms were spread out wide to each side, as if asking for a hug. The sneaky bitch. She might be up to something. Trying to make amends, probably. Offering a hug, as if that could make up for the times he’d spent in the pen.

Her face looked different. She had an odd expression. He tiptoed closer for a look. Her skull was all misshapen, like a ripe melon broken on the ground.

This was so new that he couldn’t gather his thoughts.

Mama, her melon head, all broke open.

For good measure, he whacked her three more times, quick as he could, then retreated to a safe distance, shovel at the ready, should she suddenly spring up to start yelling at him. That would be just like her. Sneaky. The woman was a lunatic.

The barn remained silent. He saw his breath puffing out in the cold air. No breath came from his mother. Her chest was still. The crimson pool around her head oozed down the muck mound. Some of the holes he’d chopped filled with the runny contents of her curious melon head all broken open on the ground.

Oba began to feel more confident, then, that his mother was not going to say hateful things to him anymore. His mother, not being too smart, had probably gone along with Lathea’s nagging, and had been talked into hating him, her only son. The two women had ruled his life. He had been nothing but the helpless servant of the two harpies.

Fortunately, he had finally become invincible and had rescued himself from them both.

“Do you want to know who I serve, Mama? I serve the voice that made me invincible. The voice that rid me of you!”

His mother had nothing more to say. At long last, she had nothing more to say.

Then, Oba grinned.

He pulled out his knife. He was a new man. A man who pursued intellectual interests when they arose. He thought he should have a look at what other odd and curious things might be found inside his lunatic mother.

Oba liked to learn new things.

Oba was eating a nice lunch of eggs cooked in the hearth he had started to build for himself, when he heard a wagon rumbling into the yard. It had been over a week since his sneaky mother had opened her mean little mouth for the last time.

Oba went to the door, opened it a crack, and stood eating his eggs as he peered out to see the rear of a wagon pulled up close by. A man climbed down.

It was Mr. Tuchmann, who regularly brought wool. Oba’s mother was a spinster who made thread for Mr. Tuchmann. He used the thread on his loom. With so many new things demanding his attention lately, Oba had forgotten all about Mr. Tuchmann. Oba glanced over to the corner to see how much thread his mother had ready. Not much. Bales of wool sat to the side, waiting to be spun into thread. The least his mother could have done would be to attend to her work before she started in causing trouble.

Oba didn’t know what to do. When he looked back to the doorway, Mr. Tuchmann was standing right there, looking in. He was a tall man, thin, with a big nose and ears. His hair was graying and as curly as the wool he dealt in. He was recently widowed. Oba knew that his mother liked Mr. Tuchmann. Maybe he could have leached some of the venom from her fangs. Softened her a bit. It was an interesting theory to contemplate.

“Afternoon, Oba.” His eyes, eyes that Oba had always found curiously liquid, were peering in the crack, searching the house. “Is your mother about?”

Oba, feeling a little violated by the man’s roving eyes, stood holding the plate of eggs, trying to think what to do, what to say. Mr. Tuchmann’s gaze settled on the fireplace.

Oba, standing ill at ease behind the door, reminded himself that he was a new man. An important man. Important men weren’t unsure of themselves. Important men seized the moment, and created their own greatness.

“Mama?” Oba set down his plate as he glanced to the fireplace. “Oh, she’s about, somewhere.”

Wool-headed Mr. Tuchmann stared stone-faced at Oba’s grin for a time.

“You heard about Lathea? What they found at her place?”

Oba thought the man had a mouth kind of like his mother had. Mean. Sneaky.

“Lathea?” Oba sucked at a piece of egg stuck between his teeth. “She’s dead. What could they find?”

“More precisely, what they didn’t find, I guess you could say. Money. Lathea had money, everyone knew that. But they found none in her house.”

Oba shrugged. “Must have burned up. Melted.”

Mr. Tuchmann grunted his skepticism. “Maybe. Maybe not. Some folks say maybe it was gone before the fire started.”

Oba felt indignant that people just couldn’t let a thing go. Didn’t they have their own business to mind? Why couldn’t they leave well enough alone? They should rejoice that the sorceress was out of their lives and leave it at that. They had to keep picking at it, though. Peck, peck, peck, like a gaggle of geese at the grain. Busybodies, that’s what they were.

“I’ll tell Mama you were here.”

“I need the thread she’s spun. I have another load of wool for her. I need to be on my way. Got other people waiting.”

The man had a whole bevy of women who spun wool for him. Didn’t he ever give his poor spinsters a chance to catch their breath?

“Well, I’m afraid that Mama hasn’t had time to…”

Mr. Tuchmann was staring at the fireplace again, only more intently, this time. The look on his face was more than curious; it bordered on anger. The man, accustomed to ordering people around and always more bold than Oba felt comfortable around, stepped through the door and into the house, to the center of the room, still staring at the fireplace. His arm rose, pointing.

“What’s…what’s that? Dear Creator…”

Oba looked where he was pointing—at the new fireplace being built against the stone wall that separated the house from the barn. Oba thought his work was quite well done—sturdy and straight. He had studied other fireplaces and learned how they were done. Even though the chimney wasn’t built all the way up yet, he was using it. He had put it to good advantage.

Oba saw then, what Mr. Tuchmann was really pointing at.

Mama’s jawbone.

Well, wasn’t this just something. Oba hadn’t expected visitors, especially snoopy visitors. What gave this man the right to poke his nose into other people’s houses, just because they spun wool for him?

Mr. Tuchmann started backing toward the door. Oba knew that Mr. Tuchmann would talk about what he’d seen. The man was a gossip, already flapping his tongue to anyone who would listen about Lathea’s missing money—which, after all, was really Oba’s, when you considered the lifetime of trouble he had endured to earn it. Who were all these people coming out of the woodwork to stick up for the troublesome sorceress?

When Mr. Tuchmann started blabbing about what he saw in the fireplace, there were sure to be questions. Everyone would have to stick their noses in it and want to know whose it was. They would probably start fretting over his mother, now, just like they were doing over the sorceress.

Oba, a new man, a man of action, could hardly let that happen. Oba was an important man, he’d learned. Rahl blood coursed through his veins, after all. Important men acted—handled problems as they arose. Quickly. Efficiently. Decisively.

Oba seized Mr. Tuchmann by the back of his neck, halting his retreat. The man struggled fiercely. He was tall and wiry, but he was no match for Oba’s strength or speed.

With a grunt of effort, Oba plunged his knife up into Mr. Tuchmann’s middle. The man’s mouth opened wide. His eyes, always so liquid, always so curious, went wide as well, filled now with a look of terror.

Oba followed the obnoxious Mr. Tuchmann to the ground. They had work to do. Oba was never afraid of hard work. First, there was the struggling wool-headed snoop to deal with. Then, there was the matter of his wagon. People would probably come looking for him. Oba’s life was getting complicated.

Mr. Tuchmann called for help. Oba rammed his knife up into the soft part under Mr. Tuchmann’s chin. Oba leaned over him, watched the man struggle, knowing he was going to die.

Oba had nothing against Mr. Tuchmann, really—even though the man was impertinent and bossy. This was all that troublesome sorceress’s fault. She was still making Oba’s life difficult. She had probably sent some message to his mother and then to Mr. Tuchmann from beyond in the underworld. The bitch. Then, his mother had to get all sneaky and suspicious. And now this irksome pest, Mr. Tuchmann. They were like a swarm of locusts, come from nowhere to plague him.

It was because he was important, he knew.

It was probably time for changes. Oba couldn’t stay around and keep having people who knew him pestering him with questions. He was too important to be in this little nothing of a place, anyway.

Mr. Tuchmann grunted in his futile effort to escape. It was time for the unhappy widower to join Oba’s lunatic mother and the troublesome sorceress with the Keeper of the underworld, the world of the dead.

And then, the time had come for Oba to take up his important life as a new man and to move on to better places.

Just as the realization struck him that he would never again have to go in the barn and see the mound of frozen muck that he hadn’t been able to dislodge with the scoop shovel, despite the ranting insistence of his lunatic mother, it occurred to him that if he had used the pickaxe, that would have made quick work of it.

Well, wasn’t that just something.

With an easy but flawlessly precise turn of his wrist, Friedrich Gilder lifted a leaf of gold on the fine hairs of his brush and laid it over. The gold, light enough to float on the gentlest breath of air, drew down onto the wet gesso as if by magic. Leaning over his workbench in concentration, Friedrich used a sheep’s-wool pad to carefully rub the freshly gilded surface of the small stylized carving of a bird, checking for any flaws.

Outside, the rain occasionally tink-tink-tinked against the window. Though midday, when the prowling clouds passed bearing fits of rain, it darkened as if to dusk.

From the back room where he worked, Friedrich glanced up, looking out through the doorway into the main room, watching the familiar movements of his wife casting her stones over the Grace. Many years ago he had gilded the lines of her Grace, the eight-sided star within a circle within a square within another circle—after she had properly drawn it all out, of course. The Grace would have been useless had he drawn it. A Grace, to be real, had to be drawn by one with the gift.

He enjoyed doing whatever he could to make the things in her life a little more beautiful. She was what made his life beautiful. He thought that her smile had been gilded by the Creator Himself.

Friedrich saw, too, the woman who had ventured to their home for a telling lean forward expectantly, absorbed in watching the fall of her fate. If they could really see such things, people would not come to Althea for a telling, yet they always watched intently as the stones rolled from his wife’s long slender fingers and out across the board upon which was drawn the Grace.

This woman, middle-aged and widowed, was a pleasant sort, and had been to see Althea twice before, but that had been several years back. As he had concentrated on his own work, he’d absently heard her tell Althea about her several grown children who were married and lived close to her, and that her first grandchild was on the way. Now, though, it was the drop of stones, not a child, that held the woman’s interest.

“Again?” she asked. It was not a question so much as astonishment. “They did it again.”

Althea said nothing. Friedrich burnished the freshly laid gold as he listened to the familiar sounds of his wife gathering up her stones from the board.

“Do they do that, often?” the woman asked, her wide eyes turning from the Grace to Althea’s face. Althea didn’t answer. The woman rubbed her knuckles so hard that Friedrich thought the skin might come off. “What does it mean?”

“Hush,” Althea murmured as she rattled the stones.

Friedrich had never heard his wife be so uncommunicative with a customer. The stones clacking in Althea’s loose fist seemed to have an urgency to their bony knock. The woman rubbed her knuckles, awaiting her destiny.

Again, the seven stones rolled out across the board, come to divulge the holy secrets of the fates.

From where he sat, Friedrich couldn’t see the stones fall, but he could hear the familiar sound of their uneven shapes rolling across the board. After all these years, he rarely watched Althea practice her profession, that is, watched the stones themselves. He did, though, despite the years, savor watching Althea. As he looked out, seeing the side of her strong jaw, her hair still mostly a golden sweep down past her jaw, falling like sunlight over her shoulder, he smiled.

The woman gasped. “Again!” As if to make the woman’s point, thunder in the distance rolled over the house. “Mistress Althea, what could it mean?” Her voice carried the unmistakable timbre of apprehension.

Althea, on her pillow on the floor, leaning on one arm, her withered legs out to the side, used the arm against the floor to straighten herself. She finally looked at the woman.

“It means, Margery, that you are a woman of strong spirit—”

“That’s one of those two stones? Me? A strong spirit?”

“That’s right,” Althea confirmed with a nod.

“And the other, then? It can’t be good. Not there. It can only mean the worst.”

“I was about to tell you, that the other stone, which follows with each throw, is also a strong spirit. A man of strong spirit.”

Margery peered again at the stones on the board. She rubbed her knuckles. “But, but they both…” She gestured. “They both keep going…out there. To beyond the outer circle. To the underworld.” Her troubled eyes searched Althea’s face.

Althea pulled on her knees, drawing her legs before herself to cross them. Though her legs were withered and nearly useless, crossing them before her pillow on the floor helped her sit up straight.

“No, no, my dear. Not at all. Don’t you see? This is good. Both strong spirits going through life together, and together ever after. It’s the best possible outcome of a telling.”

Margery cast another worried look at the board. “Really? Really, Mistress Althea? You think it’s good, then, that they keep…doing that?”

“Of course, Margery. Good it is. Two strong spirits joining.”

Margery touched a finger to her lower lip as she peered up at Althea. “Who is it then? Who is this mystery man I’m to meet?”

Althea shrugged. “Too soon to tell. But the stones say you will meet a man”—she made a show of putting her first and second fingers tight together—“and you two will be fast with each other. Congratulations, Margery. It looks as if you are close to finding the happiness you seek.”

“When? How soon?”

Again, Althea shrugged. “Too soon to tell. The stones only say ‘will,’ not ‘when.’ Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year. But the important thing is that you are near to meeting a man who will be good with you, Margery. You must now keep your eyes open. Don’t hide yourself away in your house, or you will miss him.”

“But if the stones say—”

“The stones say he is strong and he is open to you, but they don’t fix it sure. That’s up to you and the man. Keep yourself open to him when he comes into your life, or he may pass without seeing you.”

“I will, Mistress Althea.” The conviction in her voice strengthened. “I will. I’ll stay prepared so when he happens into my life, I’ll see him, and he’ll see me, just as the stones foretell.”

“Good.”

The woman fished around in the leather purse hanging from her belt until she found a coin. She handed it over eagerly, pleased with the outcome of her telling.

Friedrich had watched Althea give tellings for nearly four decades. In all that time, he had never before seen her lie to someone.

The woman stood, holding out her hand. “May I help you, Mistress Althea?”

“Thank you, my dear, but Friedrich will help me, later. I want to stay with my board for now.”

The woman smiled, perhaps daydreaming of the new life waiting for her. “Well, then, I’d best be on my way before it gets any later in the day…before nightfall. And then it’s a long ride back.” She leaned to the side and waved through the doorway. “Good day, Master Friedrich.”

The rain rattled against the window in earnest. The sky, he noticed, had darkened, casting a gray gloom over their place in the swamp. Rising from his bench, Friedrich waved. “Let me see you to the door, Margery. You do have someone waiting to take you back, don’t you?”

“My son-in-law is up at the rim of the canyon, where the path starts down in, waiting with our horses.” She paused in the doorway and gestured to his work on the bench. “That’s a fine piece you’ve made.”

Friedrich smiled. “I hope to find a customer at the palace who thinks so, too.”

“You will, you will. You do fine work. Everyone says so. Those who own a piece of your work count themselves as lucky.”

Margery curtsied happily to Althea, thanking her again, before retrieving her lamb’s-skin cloak from the hook by the door. She smiled out at the angry sky and donned the cloak, drawing its hood over her head, eager to be on her way to find her new man. It would be a long journey back. Before closing the door, Friedrich warned Margery to be absolutely certain to stay on the path and to watch her step up out of the canyon. She said she remembered the instructions and promised to follow them with care.

He watched her hurry off, disappearing into the shadows and mist, before closing the door tight against the foul weather. Silence settled once more inside the house. Outside, thunder rumbled in a deep voice, as if in discontent.

Friedrich shuffled up behind his wife. “Here, let me help you to your chair.”

Althea had gathered up her stones. Once again, they rattled in her hand like the bones of spirits. As considerate as she always was, it was unlike her not to acknowledge him when he spoke. It was even more unlike her to cast her stones again after a customer left. Casting her stones for a telling called upon her gift in ways he could not fully understand, but he did understand how it fatigued her. Casting her stones for a telling drew down her strength so that it left her detached from the world and wanting anything but to cast them again for a while.

Now, though, she was in the spell of some tacit need.

She turned her wrist and opened her hand, casting the stones at her board as easily, as gracefully, as he handled his ethereal leaves of gold. Smooth, dark, irregular-shaped stones rolled forth, bouncing on the board, tumbling across the gilded Grace.

In their life together, Friedrich had seen her cast her stones tens of thousands of times. There were times when, much like her customers, he had tried to discern a pattern in the fall of the stones. He never could.

Althea always did.

She saw meaning no mere mortal could see. She saw in the random fall of the stones some obscure omen only a sorceress could decipher. Patterns of magic.

There was no pattern expressed through the act of the throw; it was the fall of the stones that was touched by powers he dared not consider, powers that spoke only to the sorceress through her gift. In that random motif of disorder, she could read the flow of powers through the world of life, and even, he feared, the world of the dead, although she never spoke of it. Despite how close they were in body and soul, this was one thing they could not share in their life together.

This time, as the stones rolled and wobbled across the board, one stopped in the exact center. Two stopped on opposite corners of the square where it touched the outer circle. Two ended up at opposite points where the square and the inner circle touched. The final two stones came to rest beyond the outer circle, which represented the underworld.

Lightning flashed, and seconds later thunder clapped.

Friedrich stared in disbelief. He wondered what the odds were of the stones coming to the end of their tumble at these specific points on the Grace. He had never before seen them end in any discernible pattern.

Althea, too, was staring at her board.

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” she said under her breath as she raked the stones up with her graceful fingers.

“Really?” He was sure he would have recalled such an unlikely event, such a startling orderliness. “When was that?”

She rattled the stones in her loose fist. “The four previous throws. That casting made five, all the same, each individual stone coming to rest in the identical place it had before.”

Again, she cast the stones at the board. At the same time, the sky seemed to open, letting rain roar down on the roof. The noise reverberated through the house. Involuntarily, he glanced toward the ceiling briefly before watching along with Althea as the stones rolled and bounced across the board.

The first stone rolled to a halt in the exact center of the Grace. Lightning flashed. The other stones, rolling in what looked to be a completely natural manner, came to rest in what appeared a perfectly normal way, except that they stopped in the exact same places they had before.

“Six,” Althea said under her breath. Thunder boomed.

Friedrich didn’t know if she was speaking to him, or to herself.

“But the first four throws were for that woman, Margery. You were casting them for her. This is for her telling.”

Even to himself, it sounded more like a plea than reason.

“Margery came for a telling,” Althea said. “That does not mean the stones chose to give her one. The stones have decided that this telling is for me.”

“What does it mean, then?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Not yet, anyway. At this point it is only potential—a thunderhead on the horizon. The stones may yet say this storm is to pass us by.”

Watching as she gathered up her stones, he was overcome with a sense of dread. “Enough of this—you need to rest. Why don’t you let me help you up, now, Althea? I’ll make you something to eat.” He watched her pluck the last stone, the one in the center, off the board. “Leave your stones for now. I’ll make you some nice hot tea.”

He never before thought of the stones as anything sinister. Now he felt as if they were somehow inviting menace into their lives.

He didn’t want her to cast the stones again.

He sank down beside her. “Althea—”

“Hush, Friedrich.” She spoke the words in a flat tone, not in anger or reproach, but simple necessity. The rain drummed against the roof with rabid intensity. Water cascading off the eaves roared. Darkness out the windows faltered in fits of lightning.

He listened to the stones rattle, like the bones of the dead speaking to her. For the first time in their life together, he felt a kind of defensive hatred for the seven stones she held, as if they were some lover come to steal her away from him.

From her seat atop her gold and red pillow on the floor, Althea cast the stones down onto the Grace.

As they tumbled across the board, he watched with resignation as they came to rest, natural as could be, in the exact same places. He would have been surprised only if they had fallen differently.

“Seven,” she whispered. “Seven times seven stones.”

Thunder rumbled in a deep resonant tone, like the voice of discontent of spirits in the underworld.

Friedrich rested a hand on his wife’s shoulder. A presence had come into their home—invaded their lives. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. He felt a great weariness, as if all his years had come at once to weigh him down, making him feel very old. He wondered if this was in some small way what she felt all the time when she became so weary from casting a telling. He shuddered to contemplate always swimming in such emotionally turbulent waters. His world, his work of gilding, seemed so simple, so blissful, in its ignorance of the swirl of tempestuous forces all around.