The Pillars of Creation (27 page)

Jennsen shrugged. “Well, that’s just what he’s selling at the moment, of course. The three of them travel around, buying goods, bringing them back to sell.”

He laughed at that, and slapped her shoulder. “That sounds like he’d want it told. Small wonder he trusts you.”

Jennsen was completely confused and desperately didn’t want to be dragged any further into a dangerous discussion about Tom, or she could soon be found out. She didn’t really know much about Tom; this man apparently did.

“I guess I’d better see this fellow you have. If it is Sebastian, I need to kick his tail and get him on his way.”

“Right,” Captain Lerner said with a firm nod. “If he is your man, at least I’ll finally know his name.” He turned to the ironbound door as he rooted around in his pocket for a key. “If it is him, he’s lucky you came for him before one of them women in red showed up to ask him questions. He’d be spouting more than his name, then. He’d have saved himself and you a lot of trouble if he’d have told us what he was about in the first place.”

Jennsen felt giddy relief to hear that a Mord-Sith hadn’t tortured Sebastian. “When you’re doing Lord Rahl’s business, you keep your mouth shut,” she said. “Sebastian knows the price of our work.”

The captain grunted his agreement as he turned the key. The latch unlocked with a cavernous clang. “For this Lord Rahl, I’d keep my mouth shut—even if it was a Mord-Sith asking the questions. But you’d have to know the new Lord Rahl better than I, so I guess I don’t need to tell you.”

Jennsen didn’t understand, but didn’t ask anything, either. As the captain tugged on the door, it slowly swung open, revealing a long hallway lit by a few candles along the length of the corridor. To each side were doors with small, barred openings. As they passed some of those openings, as many as half a dozen arms stretched out, imploring, reaching, grabbing. From the darkness through others came the clamor of voices calling out vile curses and oaths. From the reaching hands and the collection of voices, she knew that each room beyond held groups of men.

Jennsen followed behind the captain, deeper into the fortress prison. When eyes peered out and saw it was a woman, the men called out obscenely to her. She was shocked by the lewd and vulgar things yelled at her, the jeering laughter. She hid her feelings, her fears, and wore a calm mask.

Captain Lerner kept to the center of the passageway, occasionally batting aside a reaching hand. “Watch yourself,” he cautioned.

Jennsen was about to ask why when someone threw something sloppy at her. It missed, splattering on the opposite wall. She was appalled to see that it was feces. Several more men joined in. Jennsen had to duck and dodge to miss it. The captain suddenly kicked a door of a man about to throw more. The bang of the kick echoed up and down the corridor, serving as warning enough to cause men to retreat back into the depths of their cells. Only when the glaring captain was sure his threat was understood did he start out once again.

Jennsen couldn’t help but to ask in a whisper, “What are all of these men accused of?”

The captain glanced back over his shoulder. “Various things. Murder, rape—things like that. A few are spies—the kind of men you’re hunting.”

The stench of the place gagged her. The raw hatred of the prisoners was understandable, she supposed, but no matter how much she sympathized with captives of Lord Rahl’s soldiers, men fighting against his brutal rule, their behavior only served to support any accusations of perversity. Jennsen stayed close to Captain Lerner’s heels as he turned down a side passageway.

From a shelf built into the stone, he collected a lamp, then lit it from a nearby candle. The light from the lamp only served to throw a little more light into a nightmare and make it all the more frightening. She had terrifying visions of being found out and ending up in this place. She couldn’t keep from imagining being locked in a room with men like these. She knew what they would do to her. Jennsen had to remind herself to slow her breathing.

Another door had to be unlocked, taking them beyond to a low passageway with doors spaced much closer. She guessed that they were cells holding a single man. A grasping hand, grimy and covered with open sores, shot out of an opening to catch her cloak. She shrugged the hand off her and kept moving.

Captain Lerner unlocked another door at the end and they entered a space smaller yet, hardly wider than his shoulders. The twisting, cramped opening, like a fissure in the rock, made Jennsen’s skin crawl. No hands reached out of the door openings in this place. The captain stopped and held up the lamp to look through the small hole in the door to the right. Satisfied with what he saw, he handed her the lamp and then unlocked the door.

“We put special prisoners in this section,” he explained.

He had to use both hands and all his weight to pull on the door. It moved with grating protest. Inside, Jennsen was surprised to see it was only a tiny, empty room with a second door. That was why there were no hands reaching in this hall. The cells had double doors, to make escape even more improbable. After unlocking the second door, he took back the lamp.

The captain ducked through the short doorway, pushing the light in before him, his bulk in the door momentarily throwing her into the darkness. Once through, he extended a hand out to help her so she wouldn’t trip over the high sill. Jennsen held the man’s big hand and stepped into the cell. It was larger than she expected, looking to be carved out of the solid stone of the plateau. Tooled gouges in the rock walls testified to how difficult the work had been. No prisoner was going to dig his way out of such a secure place.

On a bench carved in the opposite wall sat Sebastian. His blue eyes were on her from the instant she entered. In those eyes she thought she could see how much he wanted out. Nevertheless, he showed no emotion and said nothing. From outward appearances, no one would even know that he knew her.

He had neatly folded his cloak and used it as a cushion on the cold stone. Nearby sat a water cup. His clothes were orderly, showing no evidence that they abused him.

It was so good to see his face, his eyes, his spikes of white hair again. He licked his lips, his beautiful lips that so often had smiled at her. Now, though, he dared not smile. Jennsen had been right. She did want to fall on him, to throw her arms around him, to wail with her relief at seeing him alive and unhurt.

The captain gestured with his lamp. “This him?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Sebastian’s eyes were fixed on her as she stepped forward. She had to pause to be sure she had her voice under control. “It’s all right, Sebastian. Captain Lerner, here, knows you’re one of my team.” She patted the handle of her knife. “You can trust him to keep your identity confidential.”

Captain Lerner extended a hand. “Glad to meet you, Sebastian. Sorry about the mix-up. We didn’t know who you were. Jennsen explained your mission. I used to serve, so I understand the need for secrecy.”

Sebastian rose to his feet and clasped hands with the man. “No harm done, Captain. I can’t fault our men for doing their job.”

Sebastian didn’t know her plan. He appeared to be waiting for her lead. She gestured impatiently and asked a question she knew he wouldn’t be able to answer and, in that way, let him know what it was she intended him to say.

“Did you make contact with any of the infiltrators before you were stopped by the guards? Did you find out who any of them are and gain their confidence? Did you at least get any names?”

Sebastian took her lead and sighed convincingly. “I’m sorry, no. I’d only just arrived and didn’t have a chance before the guards…” His gaze drifted to the floor. “Sorry.”

Captain Lerner’s eyes shifted between the two of them.

Jennsen assumed a tone of forbearance. “Well, I can’t blame guards for not taking chances in the palace. We need to be on our way, though. I made some headway in our search and uncovered some important new contacts. It can’t wait. These men are wary and I need you to approach them. They aren’t likely to let a woman buy them drinks—they’d get the wrong idea—so I’m going to leave it to you. I’ve got other snares to set.”

Sebastian was nodding as if he were entirely familiar with the imaginary work. “All right.”

The captain held an arm out. “Let’s get you both on your way, then.”

Sebastian, following Jennsen out, glanced back. “I’ll need my weapons, Captain. And all the coins that were in the purse. That’s Lord Rahl’s money, and I need it to do his bidding.”

“I have it all. Nothing is missing—my word on that.”

Outside, in the confining passageway, Captain Lerner pulled the cell door shut. He had the light, so Jennsen and Sebastian waited on him. As she started out, the captain gently reached past Sebastian to grasp her arm, stopping her.

Jennsen froze, fearing to breathe. She felt Sebastian’s hand slip around her waist to the handle of her knife.

“Is it true what people say?” the captain asked.

Jennsen looked back into his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, about Lord Rahl. About how he’s…I don’t know, different. I’ve heard men talk—men who have met him, fought with him. They talk about how he handles that sword of his, how he fights and all, but more than that, they talk about him as a man. Is it true what they say?”

Jennsen didn’t know what he meant. She feared to move, to say anything, not knowing how to answer such a question. She didn’t know what people, especially D’Haran soldiers, said about the new Lord Rahl.

She knew that she and Sebastian could kill this man, here, now. They would have the element of surprise. Sebastian, with his hand on her knife, was surely thinking that very thing.

But they would still have to make it out of the palace. If they killed him, it was likely that the body would soon be discovered. The D’Haran soldiers were anything but lax. Even if they hid the dead captain of the prison guards, a check of the prisoners would soon reveal that Sebastian was missing. Their chances of escaping, then, became remote.

Worse, though, she didn’t think she could kill this man. Despite the fact that he was a D’Haran officer, she held no ill feeling for him. He seemed a decent sort, not a monster. Tom liked him, and the captain respected Tom. Stabbing a man who was trying to kill them was one thing. This would be entirely different. She couldn’t do this.

“We would lay down our lives for the man,” Sebastian said in an earnest voice. “I’d have let you torture and kill me before I would have said a word, for fear it would endanger Lord Rahl.”

“I, too,” Jennsen added in a soft voice, “think of little else but Lord Rahl. I even dream about him.”

She had spoken the truth, but a truth calculated to deceive. The captain smiled, staring off with an inner satisfaction as his fingers released her arm.

Jennsen felt Sebastian’s hand slip away from her knife.

“I guess that tells it plain,” the captain said in the near darkness. “I’ve served a long time. I had lost hope of daring to dream such a thing.” He hesitated, then spoke again. “And his wife? Is she really a Confessor, like they say? I’ve heard tales about the Confessors, from back before the boundaries, but I never knew if it was really true.”

Wife? Jennsen didn’t know anything about Lord Rahl having a wife. Jennsen couldn’t picture him with a wife, or imagine what such a woman would be like. Jennsen couldn’t even conceive of why the Lord Rahl, a man who could possess any woman he wanted and then discard her at will, would bother to take a wife.

And what a “Confessor” could be was a complete mystery to Jennsen, but the very title “Confessor” certainly sounded ominous.

“Sorry,” Jennsen said. “I’ve not met her.”

“Nor I,” Sebastian said. “But I’ve heard much the same about her as you have.”

The captain smiled distantly. “I’m glad I’ve lived to see a Lord Rahl like this finally come to command D’Hara as it should be commanded.”

Jennsen started out again, troubled by the man’s words, troubled that he was pleased this new Lord Rahl was going to conquer and rule the whole world in the name of D’Hara.

Jennsen was eager to get out of the prison and out of the palace. The three of them moved quickly back through the narrow passageways, back through iron doors and past the reaching prisoners. The captain’s growled warning silenced them, this time.

When they rushed through the last ironbound door before the stairs, they all came to an abrupt halt. A tall, attractive woman, with a single long blond braid, stood waiting for them, blocking their escape route. The look on her face was lightning waiting to strike.

She was wearing red leather.

It could be nothing other than a Mord-Sith.

The woman’s hands were clasped casually behind her back. Her expression was anything but casual. Boot strikes echoed off the stone walls as she stepped forward, a dark thundercloud approaching, a thundercloud that didn’t know fear.

A wave of gooseflesh tingled up Jennsen’s body from her knees to the nape of her neck where downy hair stiffened.

In a steady, measured pace, the woman strode one full turn around them, looking them up and down, a hawk circling, inspecting mice. Jennsen saw an Agiel, the weapon of a Mord-Sith, hanging from a fine chain at the woman’s right wrist. Lethal as Jennsen knew such a weapon could be, it looked like nothing more than a thin leather rod not a foot in length.

“A very agitated official came to see me,” the Mord-Sith said in a quiet, silken voice. Her deadly glare moved very deliberately from Sebastian to Jennsen. “He thought I needed to come down here and see what was going on. He mentioned a woman with red hair. He seemed to think she might be trouble of some sort. What do you think he was so worried about?”

The captain, who was behind Jennsen, stepped out to the side. “There’s nothing going on that you need concern yourself—”

With a flick of her wrist, the Agiel spun up into her fist and was pointing at the captain’s face. “I didn’t ask you. I asked this young woman.”

The glare turned back to Jennsen. “Why do you suppose he would say that I needed to come down here? Hmm?”

Jennsen
.

“Because,” Jennsen said, unable to look away from the cold blue eyes, “he’s a pompous dolt and he didn’t like it that I wouldn’t pretend he wasn’t, just because he wore white robes.”

The Mord-Sith smiled. It was not humor, but grim respect for the veracity of what Jennsen had said.

The smile evaporated as she glanced at Sebastian. When her gaze returned to Jennsen, it looked as if it could cut steel. “Pompous or not, that doesn’t change the fact that there is a prisoner being released for no more cause than your word.”

Jennsen
.

“My word is sufficient.” Jennsen irritably lifted the knife at her belt and flashed the handle at the woman. “This backs my word.”

“That,” the Mord-Sith said in her silken hiss, “means nothing.”

Jennsen could feel her face going red. “It means—”

“Do you think we’re stupid?” The Mord-Sith’s skintight red leather creaked as she leaned closer. “That if you come in here and merely wave that knife handle in our faces, that our faculty of reason will evaporate?”

The tight leather outfit revealed a body as shapely as it was powerful. Jennsen felt small and ugly before this flawless creature. Worse, she felt totally inadequate faking a story before a woman as confident as this woman was, a woman who seemed able to see right through their invented tale, but Jennsen knew that if she dared to waver now, she and Sebastian were as good as dead.

Jennsen put as much of an edge to her voice as she could manage. “I carry this knife for Lord Rahl, in his name, and you will yield to it.”

“Really. Why?”

“Because this knife shows the trust Lord Rahl has placed in me.”

“Ah. So just because you happen to carry it, we’re supposed to believe that Lord Rahl gave it to you? That he trusts you? How are we to know you didn’t find the knife? Hmm?”

“Find it? Are you out of your—”

“Or perhaps you and this prisoner, here, ambushed the knife’s true owner—murdered him—for no reason but to get your hands on a coveted object, hoping it would give you credibility.”

“I don’t know how you can possibly believe such a—”

“Or maybe you’re a coward and murdered the knife’s owner in his sleep? Or maybe you didn’t even have that much courage, and you bought if from cutthroats who murdered him. Is that what you did? Simply got it from the real murderer?”

“Of course not!”

The Mord-Sith leaned closer yet, until Jennsen could feel the woman’s breath on her own face. “Maybe you enticed the man it belong to into lying between your sweet legs while your partner, here, stole it. Or maybe you’re just a whore and it was the gift of a murderous thief in exchange for your womanly favors?”

Jennsen backed away. “I—I wouldn’t—”

“Showing us such a weapon proves nothing. The fact is, we don’t know who the knife belongs to.”

Surrender
.

“It’s mine!” Jennsen insisted.

The Mord-Sith straightened and lifted an eyebrow. “Really.”

The captain folded his arms. Sebastian, standing to Jennsen’s side, didn’t move. Jennsen fought to contain tears of panic trying to surface. She endeavored to show a defiant face, instead.

Jennsen. Surrender
.

“I have important business on behalf of Lord Rahl,” Jennsen said through gritted teeth. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Ah,” the Mord-Sith mocked, “business on behalf of Lord Rahl. Well, that does sound important.” She folded her arms. “What business?”

“It’s my affair, not yours.”

The cool smile returned. “Magic business? That it? Magic?”

“It’s not any of your concern. I’m doing Lord Rahl’s bidding and you would do well to remember that. He’d not be pleased to know you were meddling.”

The eyebrow lifted again. “Meddling? My dear young lady, it is impossible for a Mord-Sith to meddle. If you were who you say you are, you would know that much, at least. Mord-Sith exist only to protect Lord Rahl. It would be a dereliction of my duty, don’t you think, were I to ignore such curious goings-on?”

“No—I told you—”

“And if Lord Rahl finds himself bleeding his life away, and asks me what happened, before he dies I can tell him that a girl with a pretty knife danced in here and demanded to have a very suspicious and tight-lipped prisoner released, and, well, we were so dazzled by the knife and by her big blue eyes that we all just thought we ought to let her have her way. That about it?”

“Of course you have to—”

“Do some magic for me.” The Mord-Sith reached out and tested some of Jennsen’s red hair between a finger and thumb. “Hmm? A bit of magic to prove yourself. A spell, a charm, a dazzling show of your craft. Call some lightning down, if you will. If not that, maybe then just a simple flame fluttering in midair?”

“I don’t—”

“Do some magic, witch.” Her voice was a deadly command.

Surrender
.

Angry at the voice, but more so at the Mord-Sith, Jennsen slapped the hand away from her hair. “Stop it!”

Faster than seemed possible, Sebastian went for the woman. Faster yet, her Agiel spun into her hand. She rammed the tip against Sebastian’s shoulder as he was still flying at her.

Sebastian cried out as the weapon stopped him cold. The woman calmly pressed the Agiel against his shoulder, driving him to the ground. Sebastian screamed as he lay crumpled on the floor.

Jennsen rushed toward the Mord-Sith. In one swift movement, the woman stood and had the Agiel before Jennsen’s face, halting her. At their feet, Sebastian writhed in agony.

Thinking only of Sebastian, only of getting to him, only of helping him, Jennsen grabbed the Agiel, pushing it and the woman’s hand away. She went to one knee beside Sebastian. He had rolled to his side, holding himself, trembling, as if he’d been struck by lightning.

He calmed under her gentle touch as she told him to lie still. As he recovered somewhat and tried to sit up, Jennsen put an arm behind his shoulders and helped him. He leaned against her, panting, clearly suffering the lingering effect of the pain of the weapon. He blinked, trying to clear his watering eyes, struggling to focus his vision. Jennsen, horrified by what the touch of the Agiel could do, stroked a hand down Sebastian’s face. She lifted his chin, trying to see if he recognized her, if he was all right. He could hardly sit up on his own, but he gave her a little nod.

“Stand up.” The Mord-Sith towered over them. “Both of you.”

Sebastian couldn’t, yet. Jennsen shot to her feet, defiantly facing the woman. “I’ll not tolerate this! When I tell Lord Rahl about this, he’ll have you horsewhipped!”

The woman was frowning. She held the Agiel out. “Touch it.”

Again, Jennsen seized the weapon and shoved it aside. “Stop it!”

“It works,” the Mord-Sith muttered to herself, “I know it does—I can feel it.”

She turned and experimentally pressed the awful thing to the captain’s arm. He cried out and went to his knees.

“Stop it!” Jennsen caught hold of the red rod, pulling it back away from the captain.

The Mord-Sith stared. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Touch it without being hurt? No one is immune to the touch of an Agiel—not even Lord Rahl himself.”

Jennsen realized then that something unprecedented had happened. She didn’t understand it, but she knew that while the situation was confused, she had to seize the opportunity.

“You wanted to see magic—you saw it.”

“But how—”

“Do you think that Lord Rahl would allow me to carry the knife if I wasn’t competent?”

“But an Agiel—”

The captain was coming to his feet. “What’s the matter with you? I fight for the same cause as you.”

“And that cause is protecting Lord Rahl,” the woman snapped. She held her Agiel up. “This is my means of protecting him. I have to know what’s wrong lest I fail him.”

Jennsen reached up and curled her fingers around the weapon, holding it tight as she met the Mord-Sith’s gaze. She told herself that she had to remember who she was supposed to be and to maintain the pretense. She tried to think of what she would do if she really were one of Lord Rahl’s elite.

“I understand your concern,” Jennsen said with resolve, determined not to miss her unexpected chance, even if she didn’t fully understand it herself. “I know you want to protect Lord Rahl. We share that devotion and sacred duty. Our lives are his. I have vital business doing the same as you—protecting Lord Rahl. You don’t know all that’s involved in this and I don’t have the time to even begin to explain it to you.

“I’ve had enough of this. Lord Rahl’s life is in danger. I have no more time to spare. If you don’t let me do my job of protecting him, then you are imperiling him and I will remove you as I would any threat to his life.”

The Mord-Sith considered Jennsen’s words. What she could be thinking, Jennsen had no idea, but that very notion—thought—was one Jennsen had never ascribed to the Mord-Sith. She had always considered them to be mindless killers. In this woman’s eyes, Jennsen could see cognition.

Finally, the Mord-Sith reached down and with a hand under Sebastian’s arm, helped him to his feet. When he was standing steadily, she turned back to Jennsen.

“I’d gladly suffer the horsewhipping—and far worse—if it would help protect this Lord Rahl. Get going—and be quick about it.” She gave Jennsen a small but warm smile and then a firm clap on the side of the shoulder. “May the good spirits be with you.” She hesitated. “But, I need to know how it is that you don’t feel the power of an Agiel. Such a thing is simply not possible.”

Jennsen was taken aback that a person this evil dared to invoke the name of the good spirits. Jennsen’s mother was a good spirit, now. “I’m sorry, but that’s part of what I have no time to begin to tell you, and besides, Lord Rahl’s safety hinges on me keeping it secret.”

The woman stared long and hard. “I am Nyda,” she said at last. “Swear to me, personally, that you will do as you say, and protect him.”

“I swear, Nyda. Now, I have to go. I can’t spare any more time—not for anything.”

Before Jennsen could move, the Mord-Sith seized a fistful of her dress and cloak at her shoulder. “This is one Lord Rahl we cannot afford to lose, or we all lose everything. If I ever find out you’re lying to me, I promise you two things. First, there will never be a hole deep enough for you to hide in that I won’t find you, and, second, your death will be beyond anyone’s worst nightmare. Do I make myself clear?”

Jennsen could only nod dumbly at the look of fierce resolve in Nyda’s eyes.

The woman turned and started up the steps. “Get going, then.”

“Are you all right?” the captain asked Sebastian.

Sebastian brushed dirt off his knees as he headed for the steps. “I’d have rather had the horsewhipping than that, but I guess I’ll live.”

The captain grimaced his sympathy as he comforted his own arm. “I have your things up there, locked away. Your weapons and your money.”

“Lord Rahl’s money,” Sebastian corrected.

Jennsen wanted nothing so much as to be out of the palace. She hurried up the steps, forcing herself not to break into a dead run.

“Oh,” the Mord-Sith called back down the steps. She had paused, her hand on the rusty rail as they rushed up after her. “I forgot to tell you.”

“Forgot to tell us what?” Jennsen asked. “We’re in a hurry.”

“That official who came to get me? The one in white robes?”

“Yes?” Jennsen asked as she reached the woman.

“After he came for me, he was going to go looking for Wizard Rahl, to bring him down to see you, too.”

Jennsen felt the blood drain from her face.

“Lord Rahl is far to the south,” the captain scoffed as he came up the stairs behind them.

“Not Lord Rahl,” Nyda said. “Wizard Rahl. Wizard Nathan Rahl.”