The Pillars of Creation (57 page)

Standing outside the squat buildings made of sun-dried bricks, Jennsen idly surveyed the barren landscape broiling under a brutally blue sky. The rocks, the seemingly endless expanse of flat hardpan to her right, and the rugged range of mountains plummeting into the shimmering valley in the distance to her left, were all stained with variations of the same ruddy gray color as the sparse collection of square structures huddled nearby.

The bone-dry air was so hot that it reminded her of nothing so much as bending over a bonfire and trying to breathe. Blistering heat radiated from the rocks and buildings around her and rose from the ground beneath her feet as if there were a blast furnace below. Using bare hands to touch anything baking under the ruthless sun was a painful experience. Even the hilt of her knife, shaded by her body, was so warm that it felt feverish.

Jennsen leaned a hip wearily against a low wall, nearly numb from the long and difficult journey. She patted Rusty’s neck and then stroked an ear when the horse neighed gently and put her head close. At least Jennsen was nearly at her journey’s end. She felt as if she had lost sight of how it had all begun that day so long ago when she had found the dead soldier at the bottom of the ravine and Sebastian had happened by.

What a long and tortured journey fate would deal her, she could never have guessed that day. She hardly knew herself anymore. Back then, she could never have guessed how much her life would change, or how much she would change.

Sebastian, pulling Pete behind, reached out and gripped her arm. “You all right, Jenn?” Pete nudged Rusty’s flanks, as if to ask the same question of the mare.

“Yes,” Jennsen said. She smiled for him and then gestured to the knot of black-robed men in the doorway of a nearby building. “Any luck?”

“He’s asking the others.” Sebastian sighed in annoyance. “They’re a strange people.”

Despite being part of the Old World, and a part of the domain of the Imperial Order, the traders who traveled the vast deserted land, sometimes using the desolate trading outpost where Sebastian had found them, were an independent lot. Apparently, there were not enough of them to worry about, so the Order didn’t bother.

Sebastian leaned against the wall beside her as he gazed out at the silent wasteland. He was weary, too, from the long journey back to his homeland of the Old World. But at least he was well, now, just as Sister Perdita had promised.

The journey, though, had been nothing like what Jennsen had thought it would be. She had imagined that she and Sebastian would be off on their own again, as they had been before traveling to the army of the Imperial Order. But behind them stretched a column of Imperial Order soldiers a thousand strong. A small escort, Sebastian had called them. She had told him that she wanted to go alone, but he said that there were more important considerations.

With a thumbnail, Jennsen idly picked at the leather reins while watching the figures in black. “The men are afraid of all the soldiers,” she told Sebastian. “That’s why they don’t want to talk to us.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I can just tell by the way they keep peeking out. They’re trying to decide if telling us anything will somehow get them in trouble with all the soldiers.”

She understood the way the small band of traders felt to be under the scrutiny of so many brutish men sitting up on their big cavalry horses—how it felt to be watched by such grim soldiers layered with leather and chain-mail armor and bristling with weapons. The black-robed men, with their pack mules, were traders, not soldiers, nor were they used to dealing with soldiers. They feared for their safety, feared that if they said something wrong these warriors might decide to slaughter them out here in this wasteland. At the same time, while vastly outnumbered, the traders seemed reluctant to be cowed, lest they set a precedent for how they were treated thereafter. They were debating, now, trying to figure out the balance where their safety lay.

Sebastian pushed away from the wall. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll go in and talk to them alone—in their building, instead of out here under the eyes of the army.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

“What is it? What do you think?” Sister Perdita asked Sebastian as she marched up from behind.

With a casual flip of his hand, Sebastian dismissed her concern. “I think they just want to bargain. They’re traders. That’s what they do—bargain. It might be counterproductive to try to force them.”

“I will go in and change their minds,” the Sister said with dark intent.

“No,” Sebastian said. “Now is not the time to complicate a simple matter. We can always apply more pressure if we need to. Just let Jennsen and me go in and talk to them, first.”

Jennsen walked away from a scowling Sister Perdita, sticking close to Sebastian’s side, pulling Rusty along behind. The other thing about the journey that had been unexpected—in addition to the escort of the thousand troops—had been that Sister Perdita had decided to come along. She said that it was necessary, in case Jennsen needed any more help in getting close to Lord Rahl.

Jennsen just wanted to plunge her knife into that murderous bastard son of Darken Rahl and be done with it all. She had long since given up any hope of it freeing her to have her own life. After that night in the woods with Sister Perdita and the seven other Sisters, everything had changed. Jennsen had made a bargain that she knew would mean she would have no life after she finally killed Richard Rahl. But at least everyone else would have their lives back. The world would at last be free of her half brother and his evil rule.

And she would have vengeance. Her mother, who had been denied even a proper burial, could at last rest in peace knowing that her murderer had finally been visited with justice. That was all Jennsen could do for her mother.

Jennsen and Sebastian led Rusty and Pete to where the Sister’s horse was waiting, in a small side paddock. Rusty and Pete welcomed the shade and the water trough.

After closing the small rickety gate to the paddock, Jennsen followed Sebastian into the shadow of the doorway of the squat building. The jabbering voices of the men echoing inside the single room fell silent. All the men were swathed in the traditional black robes of the nomadic traders who lived in this part of the world.

“Leave us, then,” the lead man said, waving his fellows out at seeing Sebastian and Jennsen enter.

The men, their eyes peering out at her from gaps in the black cloth they were pulling back up across their mouths and noses, nodded as they filed by. By their crinkled exposed eyes, the men seemed to be smiling congenially at her from beneath the masks, but she couldn’t be sure. Just in case, and considering what was at stake, she smiled back as she returned a bow of her head.

The stagnant air inside the room was sweltering, but at least the shade was a relief. The one man remaining inside hadn’t pulled the loose wraps of black cloth back up, so they sagged around his neck, away from his smiling, weathered, leathery face.

“Please,” he said to Jennsen, “come in. You look fiery.”

“Fiery?” she asked.

“Hot,” he said. “You are not dressed for this place.” He shuffled over to the rough plank shelves at the side and returned with one of the black bundles stored there. “Please to wear this.” He lifted it toward her several times, urging her to take it. “It will make you better. It will cover you from the sun and hold in your sweat so you don’t dry like rock.”

Jennsen again bowed her head toward the small wiry man and smiled her appreciation. “Thank you.”

“Well?” Sebastian asked when the man turned away from Jennsen. Sebastian wearily pulled his pack off his back. “Any luck finding out anything from those other men?”

The black-robed figure hesitated, clearing his throat. “Well, they say that maybe…”

Sebastian impatiently rolled his eyes when he caught the man’s veiled meaning, and then fished around in his pocket until he came up with a silver coin. “Please accept this gesture of my appreciation for the efforts of your men.”

The man took it respectfully, but it was clear the silver coin was not the price he was hoping for. He seemed hesitant, though, to say that he found the amount inadequate. Jennsen couldn’t believe that Sebastian was quibbling about money at a time like this. She pulled a heavy gold coin from her pocket and, without bothering to ask Sebastian if it was all right, simply flipped it to the man. The man caught the gold in midair, then opened his fist just enough for a peek of confirmation. He grinned his appreciation at her. Sebastian shot her a look of displeasure.

It was Lord Rahl’s blood money, the money he had given the men sent to kill her and her mother. She could think of no better use for it.

“I don’t need it,” she said before he could lecture her. “Besides, aren’t you the one who said it was your way to use what was close to the enemy to get back at him?”

Sebastian withheld any comment and turned to the man. “What about it?”

“Late yesterday,” the man said, finally more forthcoming, “some of our men spotted two people going down into the Pillars of Creation.” He went to a small, uncovered window beside shelves stocked with simple supplies along with more of the black outfits. He pointed. “Down that way. There is a trail of sorts.”

“Did your men talk to them?” Jennsen asked, stepping forward impatiently. “Do your men know who it was?”

The man looked from her to Sebastian, hesitating, apparently not comfortable answering such direct questions from a woman, even if she had been the one who had paid his price. Sebastian gave her a look that said she should let him handle it. Jennsen stepped back toward the doorway, peering out, acting disinterested so that Sebastian could get the answers they needed.

Jennsen’s heart hammered as she pictured in her mind stabbing Lord Rahl. The shadow of the awful price of luring her brother to this place where she was to kill him loomed over the scene in her mind of the act itself.

Sebastian wiped sweat from his brow and tossed his heavy pack to the side of the floor. The pack hit with a hard clank and fell over. Some of the things spilled out. Annoyed, he made to pick it up, but Jennsen intercepted him.

“I’ll tend to this,” she whispered, waving him back to the questioning of the small fellow in black.

Sebastian leaned against the heavy, ancient-looking plank table and folded his arms. “So, did your men have a chance to talk to these two people?”

“No, sir. The men were not close enough, but stood at the rim and watched the horse pass below.”

Jennsen retrieved a cake of lye soap and replaced it in the pack. She folded the razor and put it back in, along with an extra waterskin that had tumbled out. She picked up small items—a flint, strips of dried meat wrapped in cloth, and a whetstone. A tin she had never seen before had rolled out of the pack and under a low shelf.

“What did these two people on horseback look like, then?” Sebastian was asking as he tapped a finger on the table.

As she reached under the shelf, Jennsen listened carefully, waiting to hear if this might be Richard Rahl. She couldn’t really imagine who else it could be. She didn’t believe such a thing could be coincidence.

“It was a man and a woman. But they came on only one horse.”

Jennsen thought that was strange, that both would be riding one horse. It sounded likely that it was what she expected, Lord Rahl and his wife, the Mother Confessor, but it was odd that they were on one horse. Something could have happened to the other horse. In this dangerous land such a thing wasn’t hard to imagine.

“The woman, she…” The man made a face, uncomfortable with what he had to say. “She was not upright, but lying flat”—he gestured as if draping something over the horse—“across the back. She was tied up with rope.”

As Jennsen pulled the tin out in a rush of surprise, the lid caught a jagged edge of the wooden shelf and popped off. The contents spilled out across the floor in front of her.

“What did the man look like?” Sebastian asked.

A short piece of wood wound with twine and fastened down with fishing hooks had fallen out of the top of the tin. Jennsen stared down at a dark pile of dried mountain fever roses that had spilled out after the twine. They looked like dozens of little Graces.

“The man was big, and young. He had a very grand sword, my men say, its shining scabbard held on with a baldric across his shoulder.

“That sounds like Richard Rahl,” Sister Perdita said from the doorway, startling Jennsen.

“Other men use a baldric for their sword,” Sebastian said.

While she couldn’t fathom a reason for him to have his wife tied across his horse, at the heady thought of Richard Rahl being spotted, Jennsen hurriedly scooped up the dried mountain fever roses in her trembling fingers and stuffed them back in the tin followed by the twine. She replaced the lid and quickly shoved the tin back into the pack along with the few remaining items that had fallen out.

She checked her knife in its sheath at her belt as she hastily stood next to Sebastian, waiting to hear what else the wiry man in black might have to say. Sister Perdita had stepped outside and was wrapping herself in the protective black clothes.

“Come on,” the Sister called. “We have to get down there.”

Jennsen wanted to follow after her, but Sebastian was still questioning the man. She didn’t want to leave Sebastian and go alone with Sister Perdita, but the woman was already heading off in the direction of the trail the man had pointed out.

From outside, on the other side of the buildings, came the sound of the traders jabbering excitedly. Jennsen peered around the side of the building and saw them pointing out across the flat, baked ground.

“What is it?” Sebastian asked as he followed the man out the door.

“Someone approaches,” the man said.

“Who could it be?” Jennsen whispered to Sebastian as he came up beside her.

“I don’t know. Could just be another trader arriving at the post.”

The wiry little man, having answered the questions, bowed and wanted to depart to be with his men where they huddled together in the shade beside another building. Sebastian made him wait as he went back in and pulled a black bundle off the shelf.