The Pillars of Creation (47 page)

Jagang nodded as he listened. “We still must untangle those wards so we can gain the Keep.”

Sister Perdita glanced over her shoulder at the dark stone Keep far up on the mountainside before she spoke. “Excellency, as I have often tried to explain, our degree of ability and aggregate power doesn’t mean we can untangle or defeat those wards. Such a thing is not directly relational. A bear, strong as he is, can’t open a lock on a strongbox. Strength isn’t necessarily the key to such things. I’m telling you that I don’t like this, that something is wrong.”

“You have told me only that you are afraid. Of all those with magic, the Sisters are exceptionally well armed. That is the reason you’re here.” Jagang leaned toward the woman, his patience appearing to be at an end. “I expect the Sisters to stop any threat from magic. Must I make it any more clear?”

Sister Perdita paled. “No, Excellency.” After a bow from her saddle, she pulled her horse around to rejoin her Sisters.

“Sister Perdita,” Jagang called after her. He waited until she turned back. “As I’ve told you before, we must gain the Wizard’s Keep. I don’t care how many of you it takes, only that it gets done.”

As she returned to her Sisters to discuss the matter, Jagang, along with everyone else, caught sight of a lone rider racing toward them from the city. Something about the look on the man’s face had everyone checking their weapons. They all waited in tense silence until his horse skidded to a stop before the emperor. The man was drenched in sweat and his narrow-set eyes were wide with excitement, but he kept his voice under control.

“Excellency, I saw no one—no one—in the city. But I smelled horses.”

Jennsen saw apprehension etched on the faces of the officers at this further confirmation of their disbelief of the preposterous notion that the city was deserted. The Order had driven the enemy forces to Aydindril as winter had descended, trapping not only the army but the people of the city as well. How a place this large could be evacuated—in the dead of winter—was beyond their imagination. Yet no one seemed willing to voice that conviction too strongly to the emperor as he stared out upon an empty city.

“Horses?” Jagang frowned. “Maybe it was a stable.”

“No, Excellency. I could not find them, nor hear them, but I could smell them. It was not the smell of a stable, but horses. There are horses there.”

“Then the enemy is here, just as we thought” one of the officers said to Jagang. “They’re hiding, but they’re here.”

Jagang said nothing as he waited for the man to go on.

“Excellency, there is more,” the burly soldier said, nearly bursting with excitement. “As I searched, I could not find the horses anywhere, so I decided to return for more men to help ferret out the cowardly enemy.

“As I was returning, I saw someone in a window of the palace.”

Jagang’s gaze abruptly turned to the man. “What?”

The soldier pointed. “In the white palace, Excellency. As I rode out from behind a wall at the edge of the city, before the palace grounds, I saw someone on the second floor move away from a window.”

With an angry yank on the reins, Jagang checked his stallion’s impatient sidesteps. “Are you sure?”

The man nodded vigorously. “Yes, Excellency. The windows there are tall. On my life, just as I came out from behind the wall and looked up, someone saw me and moved back from a window.”

The emperor peered intently up the road lined with maple trees, toward the palace, as he considered this new development.

“Man or woman?” Sebastian asked.

The rider paused to wipe sweat from his eyes and to swallow in an effort to catch his breath. “It was the briefest look, but I believe it was a woman.”

Jagang turned his dark glare on the man. “Was it her?”

The maple branches clattered together in the gusts as all eyes watched the man.

“Excellency, I could not tell for certain. It might have been a reflection of the light on the window, but in that brief look, I thought I saw that she was wearing a long white dress.”

The Mother Confessor wore a white dress. Jennsen thought it was pretty far-fetched to believe it could be a coincidence that there would be a reflection on the glass right as a person moved away from the window, a reflection that made it look like they were wearing the white dress of the Mother Confessor.

Yet, it made no sense to Jennsen, Why would the Mother Confessor be alone in her palace? Making a last stand was one thing. Making it alone was quite another. Could it be, as the man suggested, that the enemy was cowardly and hiding?

Sebastian idly tapped a finger against his thigh. “I wonder what they’re up to.”

Jagang drew his sword. “I guess we’ll find out.” He looked, then, at Jennsen. “Keep that knife of yours handy, girl. This may be the day you’ve been praying for.”

“But Excellency, how could it possibly—”

The emperor stood in his stirrups and flashed a wicked grin back to his cavalry. He circled his sword high in the air.

The coiled spring was unleashed.

With a deafening roar, forty thousand men loosed a pent-up battle cry as they charged away. Jennsen gasped and held on to Rusty for dear life as the horse leaped into a gallop ahead of the cavalry racing toward the palace.

Nearly out of breath, Jennsen bent forward over Rusty, stretching her arms out to each side of the horse’s neck to give her all the reins she needed as they charged at a full gallop out of the fringes of the countryside toward the sprawling city of Aydindril. The roar of forty thousand men yelling battle cries along with the thundering hooves was as frightening as it was deafening.

Yet, the rush of it all, the heart-pounding sensation of wild abandon, was also intoxicating. Not that she didn’t grasp the enormity, the horror, of what was happening, but some small part of her couldn’t help being swept up with the intense emotion of being a part of it all.

Fierce men with blood lust in their eyes fanned out to the sides as they raced ahead. The air seemed alive with light flashing off all the swords and axes held high, the sharpened points of lances and pikes piercing the muted morning air. The scintillating sights, the swell of sounds, the swirling passions, all filled Jennsen with the hunger to draw her knife, but she didn’t; she knew the time would come.

Sebastian rode near her, making sure she was safe and didn’t become lost in the crazy, headlong, willful stampede. The voice rode with her, too, and would not remain silent, despite how she tried to ignore it, or begged in her mind for it to leave her be. She needed to focus on what was happening, on what might soon happen. She couldn’t afford the distraction. Not now.

As it called her name, called for her to surrender her will, to surrender her flesh, called to her in mysterious but strangely seductive words, the surrounding roar of masking sound gave Jennsen the anonymity to finally scream at the top of her lungs “Let me be! Leave me alone!” without anyone noticing. It was a heady purification to be able to banish the voice with such unrestrained force and authority.

In what seemed an instant, they suddenly plunged into the city, leaping over fences, skirting poles, and flying past buildings with bewildering speed. With the way they had been in the open and then abruptly had to deal with all the things around them, it reminded her of racing into a stand of woods.

The wild charge was not what she had imagined it would be—an ordered marshaled run across open ground—but instead was a mad dash through a great city; along wide thoroughfares lined with magnificent buildings; then veering suddenly down dark canyonlike alleys made of tall stone walls that in some places bridged the narrow slice of open sky overhead; and then abruptly impetuous dashes through warrens of narrow twisting side streets among ancient, windowless buildings laid out to no design. There was no slowing for deliberation or decision, but, rather, it was one long, reckless, relentless rush.

It was made all the more surreal because there were no people anywhere. There should have been crowds scattering in wild panic, diving out of the way, screaming. In her mind’s eye, she overlaid scenes she had seen in cities before: peddlers pushing carts with everything from fish to fine linen; shopkeepers outside their businesses tending tables of bread, cheese, meat, wine; craftsmen displaying shoes, clothes, wigs, and leather goods; windows filled with wares.

Now, all those windows were strangely empty—some boarded up, some just left as if the owner would be opening any minute. All the windows lining their route stood empty. Streets, benches, parks, were mute witness to the onslaught of cavalry.

It was frightening to charge at full speed through the convoluted maze of streets, cutting around buildings and obstacles, dashing down dirt alleyways, flying at full speed along curving cobblestone roads, cresting rises only to plummet down the far side, like some bizarre, headlong, out-of-control snow sled ride plunging down an icy hill through the trees, and just as dangerous. Sometimes, as they galloped half a dozen abreast, the way suddenly narrowed with a wall or a corner of a building that stuck out. More than one rider went down with calamitous results. Buildings, colors, fences, poles, and intersecting streets flashed by in dizzying array.

Without the resistance of an enemy force, the unbridled rush felt to Jennsen like it was out of all control, yet she knew that these were the elite cavalry, so a wanton charge was their specialty. Besides, Emperor Jagang looked in complete control atop his magnificent stallion.

The horses kicked up a shower of sod as they suddenly broke past a wide opening in a wall to find themselves charging up the expansive lawns of the Confessors’ Palace. The fury of yelling riders spread out to each side, their horses tearing up the picturesque setting, the crude and filthy bloodthirsty invaders defiling the deceptively serene beauty of the grounds. Jennsen rode beside Sebastian, not far behind the emperor and several of his officers, between wide-spread flanks of howling men, straight up the wide promenade lined with mature maple trees, their bare branches, heavy with buds, laced together overhead.

Despite everything she had learned, everything she knew, everything she held dear, Jennsen couldn’t understand why she felt such a sense of being a participant in a profane violation.

The impression melted away as she focused her attention instead on something she spotted ahead. It stood not far from the wide marble steps leading up to the grand entrance of the Confessors’ Palace. It looked like a lone pole with something atop it. A long red cloth tied near the top of the shaft of the pole flew and flapped in the breeze, as if waving to them, calling for their attention, giving them all, at last, a destination. Emperor Jagang led the charge directly toward that pole with its red flag flying.

As they raced across the lawns, she concentrated on the heat of Rusty’s obedient and powerful muscles flexing beneath her, finding reassurance in her horse’s familiar movements. Jennsen couldn’t help gazing up at the white marble columns towering above them. It was a majestic entrance, imposing, yet elegant and welcoming. This day, the Imperial Order was at last to own the place where evil had, for so long, ruled unopposed.

Emperor Jagang held his sword high, signaling the cavalry to halt. The cheering, yelling, screaming battle cries died out as tens of thousands of men, all at once, brought their excited horses down from a charge to a stop. It amazed her, what with so many men with weapons out, that it all happened in seconds and without carnage.

Jennsen patted the sweaty side of Rusty’s neck before sliding down off her horse. She hit the ground among a confusion of men, mostly officers and advisors, but regular cavalry, too, all swarming in to protect the emperor. She had never been this close in among the regular soldiers before. They were intimidating as they eyed her in their midst. They all seemed impatient for an enemy to fight. The men were a filthy, grimy lot, and smelled worse than their horses. For some reason, it was that suffocating, sweaty, foul stink that frightened her the most.

Sebastian’s hand seized her arm and pulled her close. “Are you all right?”

Jennsen nodded, trying to see the emperor and what had stopped him. Sebastian, trying to see as well, pulled her along with him as he stepped through a screen of burly officers. Seeing it was him, they made way.

She and Sebastian halted when they saw the emperor standing several paces ahead, alone, his back to them, his shoulders slumped, his sword hanging from his fist at his side. It appeared that all his men were afraid to approach him.

Jennsen, with Sebastian quickly moving to catch up, closed the distance to reach emperor Jagang. He stood frozen before the spear planted butt end in the ground. He stared with those completely black eyes as if seeing an apparition. Tied beneath the long, barbed, razor-sharp metal point of the spear, the long red cloth flapped in the otherwise complete silence.

Atop the spear was a man’s head.

Jennsen winced at the arresting sight. The gaunt head, severed cleanly at mid-neck, looked almost alive. The dark eyes, beneath a deeply hooded brow, were fixed in an unblinking stare. A dark, creased cap rested halfway down the forehead. Somehow, the austere cap pressed down on the head seemed to match the severe countenance of the man. Wisps of wiry hair curled out from above his ears to ruffle in the wind. It seemed as if the thin lips, at any moment, might give them a forbidding smile from the world of the dead. The face looked as if the man, in life, had been as grim as death itself.

The way Emperor Jagang stood stupefied, staring at the head right before him impaled on the point of the spear, and the way not one of the thousands of men so much as coughed, had Jennsen’s heart hammering faster than when she had been riding Rusty at a reckless gallop.

Jennsen cautiously peered over at Sebastian. He, too, stood stunned. Her fingers tightened on his arm in sympathy for the look in his wide, tearful eyes. He finally leaned closer to her in order to whisper in a choked voice.

“Brother Narev.”

The shock of those two barely audible words hit Jennsen like a slap. It was the great man himself, the spiritual leader of the entire Old World, Emperor Jagang’s friend and closest personal advisor—a man who Sebastian believed was closer to the Creator than any man who had ever been born, a man whose teachings Sebastian religiously lived by, dead, his head impaled on a spear.

The emperor reached out and pulled free a small, folded piece of paper that was stuck in the side of Brother Narev’s cap. As Jennsen watched Jagang’s thick fingers open the carefully folded small piece of paper, it reminded her unexpectedly of the way she had unfolded the paper she had found on the D’Haran soldier that fateful day she had discovered him lying dead at the bottom of the ravine, the day she had met Sebastian. The day before Lord Rahl’s men had finally located her and killed her mother.

Emperor Jagang lifted the paper out to silently read what it said. For a frightening long time, he just stared at the paper. At last, his arm lowered to his side. His chest heaved with a terrible, burgeoning wrath as he stared once more at Brother Narev’s head on the end of the spear. In a smoldering voice, bitter with indignation, Jagang repeated the words from the note just loud enough for those standing close to hear.

“Compliments of Richard Rahl.”

The stiff wind moaned through a stand of nearby trees. No one said a word as they all waited on Emperor Jagang for direction.

Jennsen’s nose wrinkled at a foul smell. She looked up to see the head, so perfect only moments before, beginning to putrefy before her very eyes. The flesh sagged heavily. The bottom eyelids drooped, revealing their red undersides. The jaw sank. The thin line of the mouth opened, almost looking as if the head were letting out a scream.

Jennsen, along with everyone else, including Emperor Jagang, took a step back as the flesh of the face decayed in sudden ghastly ruptures, revealing festering tissue beneath. The tongue swelled as the jaw dropped lower. The eyeballs sank forward out of their sockets as they shriveled. Reeking flesh fell away in clumps.

What would have been long months of decomposition took place in a matter of seconds, leaving the skull beneath that creased cap grinning at them through tattered bits of hanging flesh.

“It had a web of magic around it, Excellency,” Sister Perdita said, almost sounding as if she were answering a question unspoken. Jennsen hadn’t heard her come up behind them. “The spell preserved it in that condition until you pulled the note from the cap, triggering the dissolution of the magic preserving it. Once that magic was withdrawn, the…remains went through the decomposition that would ordinarily have taken place.”

Emperor Jagang was staring at her with cold dark eyes. What he might be thinking, Jennsen couldn’t be sure, but she could see the fury building within those nightmare eyes.

“It was a very complex and powerful ward that preserved it until the right person touched it—to pull the note free,” Sister Perdita said in a quiet voice. “The ward was likely keyed to your touch, Excellency.”

For a long, terrifying moment, Jennsen feared that Emperor Jagang might suddenly swing his sword with a wild cry and behead the woman.

To the side, an officer suddenly pointed up at the Confessors’ Palace.

“Look! It’s her!”

“Dear Creator,” Sebastian whispered as he, too, looked up and saw someone in the window.

Other men yelled that they saw her, too. Jennsen rose up on tiptoes, trying to see around the tall soldiers rushing forward, and the officers pointing, past the reflections on the glass, to the person she saw back within the dark interior. She shielded her eyes, trying to see better. Men whispered excitedly.

“There!” another officer on the other side of Jagang cried out. “Look! It’s Lord Rahl! There! It’s Lord Rahl!”

Jennsen froze from the jolt of those words. It didn’t seem real. She ran the man’s words through her mind again, so shocking were they to hear that she felt she had to check again if it really was what she thought she had heard.

“There!” another man yelled. “Moving down that way! It’s both of them!”

“I see them,” Jagang growled as he tracked the two fleeing figures in his black glare. “I’d recognize that bitch in the farthest reaches of the underworld. And there!—Lord Rahl is with her!”

Jennsen could catch only fleeting flashes of two figures racing away past windows.

Emperor Jagang sliced the air with his sword, signaling his men. “Surround the palace so they can’t escape!” He turned to his officers. “I want the assault company to come with me! And a dozen Sisters! Sister Perdita—stay with the Sisters out here. Don’t let anyone get by you!”

His gaze sought Sebastian and Jennsen. When he found them among those standing close he fixed Jennsen in his hot glare.

“If you want your chance, girl, then come with me!”

Jennsen realized, as she and Sebastian raced away after Emperor Jagang, that she had her knife clenched in her fist.