The Pillars of Creation (16 page)

“What do we say if they question us?” she asked.

“It’s best not to say anything unless you have to.”

“But if you have to, then what?”

“Tell them that we live on a farm to the south. Farmers are isolated and don’t know much about anything but life on their farm, so it wouldn’t sound suspicious if we say we don’t know about anything else. We came to see the palace and perhaps buy a few small things—herbs and such.”

Jennsen had met farmers, and didn’t think they were as ignorant of things as Sebastian seemed to think. “Farmers grow or collect their own herbs,” she said. “I don’t think they would need to come to the palace to buy them.”

“Well, then…we came to buy some nice cloth so you could make clothes for the baby.”

“Baby? What baby?”

“Your baby. You are my wife and only recently found yourself pregnant. You are with child.”

Jennsen felt her face flush to red. She couldn’t say she was pregnant—that would only lead to more questions.

“All right. We’re farmers, here to buy a few small things—herbs and such. Rare herbs we don’t grow ourselves.”

His only answer was a sideways glance and a smile. His arm returned to her waist, as if to banish her embarrassment.

Beyond another intersection of wide passageways, following the directions they’d been given, they turned down another hall to the right. It, too, was lined with vendors. Jennsen immediately spotted the booth with a gilded star hanging before it. She didn’t know if it was intentional or not, but the gilded star had eight points, like the star in a Grace. She had drawn the Grace often enough to know.

With Sebastian at her side, she rushed over to the booth. Her heart sank when they found the place occupied only by an empty chair, but it was still morning, and she reasoned that maybe he hadn’t come in yet. The closest businesses weren’t yet open, either.

She stopped several stalls down at a place selling leather mugs. “Do you know if the gilder is here today?” she asked the man working behind the bench.

“Sorry, don’t know,” he said without looking up from his work at cutting decorations with a fine gouge. “I just started here.”

She hurried down to the next occupied booth, a place that sold hangings with colorful scenes sewn on them. She turned to say something to Sebastian, but saw him inquiring at another booth not far away.

The woman behind the short counter was sewing a blue brook through mountains stitched on a stretched square of coarsely woven cloth. Some of the scenes were made up into pillows displayed on a rack to the back.

“Mistress, would you know if the gilder is here, today?”

The woman smiled up at her. “Sorry, but far as I know, he won’t be in today.”

“Oh, I see.” Thwarted by the disappointing news, Jennsen hesitated, not knowing what to do next. “Would you know when he will return, at least?”

The woman pushed her needle through, making a blue stitch of water. “No, can’t say as I do. Last time I saw him, over a week ago, he said he may not be back for a while.”

“Why is that? Do you know?”

“Can’t say as I do.” She pulled the long thread of the water out taut. “Sometimes he stays away for a spell, working at his gilding, doing up enough to make it worth his time to travel to the palace.”

“Would you happen to know where he lives?”

The woman glanced up from under a crinkled brow. “Why do you wish to know?”

Jennsen’s mind raced. She said the only thing she could think of—what she had learned from Irma, the sausage lady watching Betty for her. “I wish to go for a telling.”

“Ah,” The woman said, her suspicion fading as she pulled another stitch through. “It’s Althea, then, that you really want to see.”

Jennsen nodded. “My mother took me to Althea when I was young. Since my mother…passed away, I’d like to visit Althea again. I thought it might be a comfort if I went for a telling.”

“Sorry about your mother, dear. I know what you mean. When I lost my mother, it was a hard time for me, too.”

“Could you tell me how to find Althea’s place?”

She set her sewing down and came to the low wall at the front of her booth. “It’s a goodly ways to Althea’s place—to the west, through a desolate land.”

“The Azrith Plains.”

“That’s right. Going west, the land turns rugged, with mountains. Around the other side of the largest snowcapped mountain due west of here, if you turn north, staying just the other side of the cliffs you will find, following the low land down lower yet, you will come into a nasty place. A swampy place. Althea and Friedrich live there.”

“In a swamp? But not in the winter.”

The woman leaned close and lowered her voice. “Yes, even in the winter, people say. Althea’s swamp. A vile place it is, too. Some say it isn’t a natural place, if you know what I mean.”

“Her…magic, you mean?”

She shrugged. “Some say.”

Jennsen nodded in thanks and repeated the directions. “Other side of the largest snowcapped peak west of here, stay below the cliffs and go north. Down in a swampy place.”

“A nasty, dangerous, swampy place.” The woman used a long fingernail to scratch her scalp. “But you don’t want to be going there unless you’re invited.”

Jennsen glanced around briefly, to signal to Sebastian, but she didn’t see him right off. “How does one get invited?”

“Most people ask Friedrich. I see them come here to talk to him and leave without even looking at his work. I guess he asks Althea if she will see them, and the next time he returns with his gilding, he invites them. Sometimes, people give him a letter to take to his wife.

“Some people travel out there and wait. I hear that sometimes he comes out of the swamp to meet those people and pass along Althea’s invitation. Some people return from the edge of the swamp without ever being invited in, their long wait for nothing. None dare venture in uninvited, though. Least, none that did ever came back to tell about it, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you saying I’ll have to go there and just wait? Wait until she or her husband comes to invite us in?”

“Guess so. But it won’t be Althea who comes out. She never comes out of her swamp, as I hear it. You could come back here each day until Friedrich finally returns to sell his gilding. He’s never been away for more than a month. I’d say he’ll be back to the palace within a few weeks, at most.”

Weeks. Jennsen couldn’t stay in one place, waiting weeks, while Lord Rahl’s men hunted her, closing in day by day. From as close as Sebastian said they were, she didn’t think she even had days, much less weeks, before they would have her.

“Thank you, then, for all your help. I guess I’ll come back another day to see if Friedrich has returned and ask him if I might go for a telling.”

The woman smiled as she sat back down and picked up her sewing. “That might be best.” She looked up. “Sorry to hear about your mother, dear. It’s hard, I know.”

She nodded, her eyes watery, fearing to test her voice just then. The vivid scene flashed through her mind. The men, the blood everywhere, the terror of them coming for her, seeing her mother slumped on the floor, stabbed, her arm severed. With effort, Jennsen pushed the memory away, lest it consume her in grief and anger.

She had immediate worries. They had made a long and difficult journey in winter to find Althea, to obtain her help. They couldn’t wait around, hoping to be invited to visit Althea—Lord Rahl’s men were close on their heels. The last time Jennsen had wavered in her determination she had missed her chance—and Lathea had been murdered. The same thing could happen again. She had to get to Althea before those men did, at least to tell her about her sister, to warn her, if nothing else.

Jennsen scanned the vast hallway, searching for Sebastian. He couldn’t have gone far. She saw him, then, his back to her, across the broad corridor, just turning away from a place that sold silver jewelry.

Before she took two steps, she saw soldiers swarm in and surround him. Jennsen froze in her tracks. Sebastian did, too. One of the soldiers used his sword to carefully lift back Sebastian’s cloak, uncovering his array of weapons. She was too frightened to move, to take another step.

Half a dozen gleaming razor-edged pikes lowered at Sebastian. Swords came out of sheaths. People nearby backed away, others turned to look. In the center of a ring of D’Haran soldiers towering over him, Sebastian held his arms out to the sides in surrender.

Surrender
.

Just then a bell, the one back at the square, tolled.

The single long peal of the bell calling people to the devotion echoed through the cavernous halls as two of the big men seized Sebastian by the arms and started bearing him away. Jennsen watched helplessly as the rest of the D’Haran soldiers surrounded him in a tight formation bristling with steel meant not only to keep their prisoner at bay, but to ward any possible attempt to extricate him. It was immediately clear to her that these guards were prepared for any eventuality and took no chances, not knowing if this one armed man might signify a force about to storm the palace.

Jennsen saw that there were other men, visitors to the palace like Sebastian, also carrying swords. Perhaps it was that Sebastian carried a variety of combat weapons, and they were all concealed, that so raised the soldiers’ suspicions. But he wasn’t doing anything. It was winter—of course he was wearing a cloak. He was causing no harm. Jennsen’s urge was to yell at the soldiers to leave him be, yet she feared that if she did they would take her, too.

The people who had spread back away from the potential trouble, along with everyone else strolling the halls, all began moving toward the square. People in the shops set down their work to join them. No one paid much attention to the soldiers’ business. In response to that single chime still hanging in the air, laughter and talking trailed off to respectful whispers.

Panic clawed at Jennsen as she saw the soldiers muscling Sebastian down a hall to the side. She could see his white hair amid the dark armor. She didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They only came to find a gilder. She wanted to scream for the soldiers to stop. She dared not, though.

Jennsen
.

Jennsen stood her ground against the current of bodies, trying to keep Sebastian and his captors in sight. The Lord Rahl was after her, and now they had Sebastian. Her mother had been murdered, and now they were taking Sebastian. It wasn’t fair.

As she watched, afraid to do anything to stop the soldiers, her own fear shamed her. Sebastian had done so much for her. He had made so many sacrifices for her. He had risked his life to save hers.

Jennsen’s breath came in ragged pulls. But what could she do?

Surrender
.

It wasn’t fair what they were doing to Sebastian, to her, to innocent people. Anger welled up through her fear.

Tu vash misht
.

He was only there because of her. She had asked him to come.

Tu vask misht
.

Now, he was in trouble.

Grushdeva du kalt misht
.

The words sounded so right. They flared through her, carried on flames of igniting rage.

People pushed against her. She growled through gritted teeth as she squeezed her way among the crush of people, trying to follow the soldiers who had Sebastian. It wasn’t fair. She wanted them to stop. Just stop. Stop.

Her helplessness frustrated her. She was sick of it. When they wouldn’t stop, when they kept going, it only further enraged her.

Surrender
.

Jennsen’s hand slid inside her cloak. The touch of cold steel welcomed her. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her knife. She could feel the worked metal of the symbol of the House of Rahl pressing into the flesh of her palm.

A soldier gently pushed her, turning her in the direction of the rest of the crowd. “The devotion square is that way, ma’am.”

It was spoken as a suggestion, but wrapped around the core of command.

Through the rage, she looked up into his hooded eyes. She saw the dead man’s eyes. She saw the soldiers at her house—men on the floor dead, men coming for her, men grabbing her. She saw flashes of movement through a crimson sheen of blood.

As she and the soldier stared into each other’s eyes, she felt the blade at her waist coming out of its sheath.

A hand under her arm tugged at her. “This way, dear. I’ll show you where it is.”

Jennsen blinked. It was the lady who had given her directions to Althea’s place. The woman who sat in the palace of the murdering bastard Lord Rahl and sewed the peaceful scenes of the mountains and brooks.

Jennsen stared at the woman, at her inexplicable smile, trying to make sense of her. Jennsen found everything around her strangely incomprehensible. She only knew that her hand was on the hilt of her knife and she longed for the blade to be free.

But, for some reason, the knife stubbornly remained where it was.

Jennsen, at first convinced that some malevolent magic had seized her, saw then that the woman had a tight, motherly arm around her. Without realizing it, the woman was keeping Jennsen’s blade in its sheath. Jennsen locked her knees, resisting being pulled along.

The woman’s eyes, now, were set with warning. “No one misses a devotion, dear. No one. Let me show you where it is.”

The soldier, his expression grim, watched as Jennsen yielded, allowing herself to be guided by the woman. Jennsen and the woman, swept into the current of people moving toward the square, left the soldier behind. She looked up into the woman’s smiling face. The whole world seemed to Jennsen to be swimming in a strange light. The voices around her were a smear of sound that in her mind was pierced by the echoes of screams from her house.

Jennsen
.

Through the murmuring around her, the voice, sharp and distinct, caught her attention. Jennsen listened, alert to what it might tell her.

Surrender your will, Jennsen
.

It made sense, in a visceral way.

Surrender your flesh
.

Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Nothing she had tried in her whole life had brought her salvation, or safety, or peace. To the contrary, everything seemed lost. There seemed nothing else to lose.

“Here we are, dear,” the woman said.

Jennsen looked around. “What?”

“Here we are.”

Jennsen felt her knees touch the tiled floor as the woman urged her down. People were all around. Before them was the square with the pool of quiet water at its center. She wanted only the voice.

Jennsen. Surrender
.

The voice had grown harsh, commanding. It fanned the flames of her anger, her rage, her wrath.

Jennsen bent forward, trembling, in the grip of rage. Somewhere, in the far corners of her mind, screamed a distant terror. Despite that remote sense of foreboding, it was rage that was carrying her will away.

Surrender!

She saw strings of her saliva hanging, dripping, as she panted through parted lips. Tears dropped to the tiles close beneath her face. Her nose ran. Her breath came in gasps. Her eyes were opened so wide it hurt. She shook all over, as if alone in the coldest darkest winter night. She couldn’t make herself stop.

People bowed forward deeply, hands pressed to the tiles. She wanted her knife out.

Jennsen lusted for the voice.

“Master Rahl guide us.”

It was not the voice. It was the people all around, in one voice, chanting the devotion. As they began, they all bowed farther forward until their foreheads touched the tile floor. A soldier moved past close behind, patrolling, watching as she knelt, bent over, hands to the floor, quaking uncontrollably.

Inch by halting inch, as she gasped, panted, shook, Jennsen’s head lowered until her forehead touched the floor.

“Master Rahl teach us.”

That was not what she wanted to hear.

She wanted the voice. She raged for it. She wanted her knife. She wanted blood.

“
Master Rahl protect us
,” the people all chanted in unison.

Jennsen, pulling ragged jerking breaths, consumed with loathing, wanted only the voice, and her blade free. But her palms were flat on the tiles.

She listened for the voice, but heard only the chant of the devotion.

“In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

At first, Jennsen only vaguely remembered it from her youth, from when she had lived at the palace. Hearing it now, that memory came flooding back. She had known the words. She had chanted them when she was little. When they fled the palace, running from Lord Rahl, she had banished the words of the devotion to the man who was trying to kill her and her mother.

Now, hungering for the voice that wanted her to surrender, almost unbeknownst to her, almost as if it were someone else doing it, her trembling lips began moving with the words.

“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

The cadence of those murmured words filled the great hall, many people but one voice resounding powerfully off the walls. She listened with all her strength for the voice that had been her companion for nearly as long as she could remember, but it wasn’t there.

Now, Jennsen was helplessly carried along with all the others. She clearly heard herself speaking the words.

“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

Over and over Jennsen softly spoke the words of the devotion along with everyone else. Over and over, without pause but for breath. Over and over, yet without haste.

The chant filled her mind. It beckoned to her, spoke to her. It was all that filled her thoughts as she chanted it over and over and over. It filled her so completely that it left no room for anything else.

Somehow, it calmed her.

Time slipped by, incidental, inconspicuous, unimportant.

Somehow, the soft chant brought her a sense of peace. It reminded her of how Betty calmed when having her ears smoothed. Jennsen’s rage was being smoothed. She fought against it, but, bit by bit, she was pulled into the chant, into its promise, smoothed and gentled.

She understood, then, why it was called a devotion.

Despite everything, it drained her, and then filled her with a profound calm, a serene sense of belonging.

She no longer fought the words. She allowed herself to whisper them, letting them lift away the shards of pain. For that time, as she knelt, her head to the tiles, with nothing to do but say the words, she was free of anything and everything.

As she chanted along with everyone else, the shadow cast on the floor from the mullions of the leaded glass overhead moved past her, leaving her in the glow of the full sun. It felt warm and protective. It felt like her mother’s warm embrace. Her body felt light. The soft radiance all around reminded Jennsen of how she pictured the good spirits.

An instant in time later, the hours of chanting were ended.

Jennsen uncurled, slowly pushing away from the floor, to sit up with the others. Without warning, a sob poured forth.

“Anything wrong, here?”

There was a soldier towering over her.

The woman to the side put an arm around Jennsen’s shoulders.

“Her mother passed away recently,” the woman quietly explained.

The soldier shifted his weight, looking ill at ease.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. My heartfelt sympathy to you and your family.”

Jennsen saw in his blue eyes that he meant every word.

Stunned speechless, she watched as he turned, huge and muscular, layered in leather, Lord Rahl’s killer continuing on his patrol. Empathy in armor. If he knew who she was, he would deliver her into the hands of those who would see to it that she suffered a long and lingering death.

Jennsen buried her face in the stranger’s shoulder and wept for her mother, whose embrace had felt so good.

She missed her mother beyond endurance. And now, she was terrified for Sebastian.