The Pillars of Creation (49 page)

Almost at the same time, from the way they had come, she heard the snapping hiss of something otherworldly. Jennsen dropped to the floor, stretching out over Sebastian, holding him against the edge of floor and wall, as if he were a child to be protected. She closed her eyes tight, crying out with fright at the thunderous blast behind her that shook the floor. A barrage of rubble shrieked through the room.

When it finally went still and she opened her eyes, dust drifted through the destruction. The wall around them was peppered with holes. Somehow, she and Sebastian were not hurt. It only served to confirm what she already believed.

“It was him!” Sebastian’s arm shot out from under her to point across the room. “It was him!”

Jennsen turned but saw no one. “What?”

Sebastian pointed again. “It was Lord Rahl. I saw him. As he ran past the door he cast in a spell of some kind—a pinch of sparkling dust—just as you pushed me against the wall. Then it exploded. I don’t know how we survived in a room filled with such flying debris.”

“I guess it all missed us,” Jennsen said.

The room had been turned inside out. The draperies were shredded, the walls holed. The furniture that only moments before had been so beautiful was now a wreck of splinters and ripped upholstery. The rumpled carpet was covered in white dust, pieces of plaster, and splintered wood.

A hanging chunk of plaster broke away and crashed to the floor, raising yet more dust as Jennsen made her way through the wreckage of the room, toward the door they had come through, the door where Sebastian had pointed, the door where only moments before Lord Rahl had been. Sebastian retrieved his sword and quickly followed her out.

The hall, its woodwork so tastefully painted, was now smeared with blood. The body of another Sister lay crumpled not far away. When they reached her, they saw her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling in surprise.

“What in the name of Creation is going on?” Sebastian whispered to himself. Jennsen thought, by the look on the dead Sister’s face, that she must have wondered the same thing in the last instant of her life.

A glance out the window showed a killing ground littered with thousands of bodies.

“You have to get the emperor out of here,” Jennsen said. “This isn’t the simple thing it appeared.”

“I’d say it was a trap of some kind. But we might still be able to carry out our objective. That would make it a success—make it worth it.”

Whatever was happening was outside her experience and beyond her ability to comprehend. Jennsen only knew that she intended to carry out her objective. As they raced down halls, chasing the sounds and following the trail of bodies, they worked their way deeper into the mysterious Confessors’ Palace, away from any outside windows to where the air was hushed and gloomy. The deep shadows in the halls and rooms, where little light penetrated, added a frightening new dimension to the terrifying events.

Jennsen was well past shock, horror, or even fear. She felt as if she were watching herself act. Even her own voice sounded remote to her. In some distant way, she marveled at the things she did, at her ability to carry on.

As they cautiously rounded an intersection, they encountered a few dozen soldiers hunched in the shadows just inside a small room—bloodied, but alive. Four Sisters were there, too. Jennsen spotted Emperor Jagang leaning against a wall as he panted, his sword gripped tightly in a bloody fist. As she rushed up, he met her gaze, his black eyes filled not with the fear or sorrow she expected but with rage and determination.

“We’re close, girl. Keep that knife out and you’ll get your chance.”

Sebastian moved off to check other doorways, securing the immediate area, several men moving at his direction when he gave them silent hand signals.

She could hardly believe what she was hearing, or seeing. “Emperor, you have to get out of here.”

He frowned at her. “Are you out of your mind?”

“We’re being cut to pieces! There are dead soldiers everywhere. I saw Sisters back there, ripped open by something—”

“Magic,” he said with a wicked grin.

She blinked at that grin. “Excellency, you have to get out of here before they have you, too.”

His grin vanished, replaced by red-faced anger. “This is a war! What do you think war is? War is killing. They’ve been doing it, and I intend to do it back twice over! If you don’t have the guts to use that knife, then put your tail between your legs and run for the hills! But don’t ever ask me to help you again.”

Jennsen stood her ground. “I’ll not run. I’m here for a reason. I only wanted you out of here so the Order would not lose you, too, after they’ve already lost Brother Narev.”

He huffed in disgust. “Touching.” He turned to his men, checking that they were paying attention. “Half take the room on the right, just ahead. The rest stay with me. I want them flushed out into the open.” He swept his sword before the faces of the four Sisters. “Two with them, two with me. Don’t disappoint me, now.”

With that, the men and Sisters split up and quickly moved off, half through the room at the right, half charging after the emperor. Sebastian gestured urgently for her. Jennsen joined him, running at his side, as they raced out into the smoky hall after the emperor.

“There he is!” she heard Jagang call from up ahead. “Here! This way! Here!”

And then there was a thunderous blast so violent it took Jennsen’s feet from under her, sending her sprawling. The hall was suddenly filled with fire and fragments of every sort rebounding off the walls as it all came flying toward them. Snatching her arm, Sebastian yanked her up and into a recessed doorway just in time to miss the bulk of the flying objects that came careening past.

Men up the hall let out screams of mortal pain. Such unbridled wails sent shivers up Jennsen’s spine. Following Sebastian, Jennsen ran through thick smoke, toward the screams. The dark, in addition to the smoke, made it difficult to see very far, but they soon encountered bodies. Beyond the dead, there were still some men alive, but it was clear by the ghastly nature of their wounds that they would not live long. The last moments of their lives were to be spent in horrifying agony. Jennsen and Sebastian scrambled past the dying, through the carnage and rubble piled knee-deep from wall to wall, looking for Emperor Jagang.

There, among the splintered wood, leaning boards, overturned chairs and tables, glass shards, and fallen plaster, they spotted him. Jagang’s thigh was laid open to the bone. A Sister stood beside him, her back pressed to the wall. A huge, splintered oak board had been driven through her just below her breastbone, pinning her to the wall. She was still alive, but it was evident that there was nothing to be done for her.

“Dear Creator forgive me. Dear Creator forgive me,” she whispered over and over through quivering lips. Her eyes turned to watch them approach. “Please,” she whispered, blood frothing from her nose, “please, help me.”

She had been close to the emperor. She had probably shielded him with her gift, deflecting whatever power had been unleashed, and saved his life. Now she was shivering in mortal agony.

Sebastian lifted something from under his cloak, behind his back. With a mighty swing, he brought his axe around. The blade slammed into the wall with resounding thunk, and stuck. The Sister’s head tumbled down, bouncing through the dusty rubble.

Sebastian yanked once, freeing his axe. As he replaced it in the hanger at the small of his back, he turned and came face-to-face with Jennsen. She could only stare in horror into his icy blue eyes.

“If it were you,” he said, “would you want me to let you endure such suffering?”

Trembling uncontrollably, unable to answer him, Jennsen turned away and fell to her knees beside Emperor Jagang. She imagined he had to be in frightening pain, but he hardly seemed to notice the gaping wound, except that he knew his leg wouldn’t work. He held the two sides of the wound closed as best he could with one hand, but he was still losing a lot of blood. With his other hand, he had managed to drag himself to the side, where he leaned against the wall. Jennsen was no healer, and didn’t really know what to do, but she did realize the urgent need to do something to stop the gushing blood.

His face streaked with sweat and soot, Jagang pointed with his sword down a side hall. “Sebastian, it’s her! She was just right here. I almost had her. Don’t let her get away!”

Another Sister, wearing a dusty brown wool dress, came clambering over the rubble, stumbling toward them in the darkness, passing all the groaning soldiers. “Excellency! I heard you! I’m here. I’m here. I can help.”

Jagang nodded his acknowledgment, one hand resting on his heaving chest. “Sebastian—don’t let her get away. Move!”

“Yes, Excellency.” Sebastian took note of the Sister climbing awkwardly over a broken side table, then pressed a hand to Jennsen’s shoulder. “Stay here with them. She’ll protect you and the emperor. I’ll be back.”

Jennsen snatched for his sleeve, but he had already dashed away, collecting all the remaining men on his way past. He led them off down the hall, disappearing into the darkness. Jennsen was suddenly alone with the wounded emperor, a Sister of the Light, and the voice.

She snatched up the end of a strip of a sheer curtain and pulled it out from under the rubble. “You’re losing a lot of blood. I need to close this as best I can.” She looked up into Emperor Jagang’s nightmare eyes. “Can you help hold it closed while I wrap it?”

He grinned. Sweat coursed down his face, leaving streaks through the dusty grime. “It doesn’t hurt, girl. Do it. I’ve had worse than this. Be quick about it.”

Jennsen started threading the filthy curtain under his leg, wrapping it around and under again as Jagang held the gaping wound closed as best he could. The fine fabric almost immediately turned from white to red with all the thick blood flowing across it. The sister put a hand to Jennsen’s shoulder as she knelt down to help. As Jennsen continued wrapping, the Sister laid her hands flat on each side of the massive gash in the meat of his thigh.

Jagang cried out in pain.

“I’m sorry, Excellency,” the Sister said. “I have to stop the bleeding or you’ll bleed to death.”

“Do it, then, you stupid bitch! Don’t talk me to death!”

The Sister nodded tearfully, clearly terrified by what she was doing, yet knowing she had no choice but to do it. She closed her eyes and once more pressed trembling hands to Jagang’s hairy, blood-soaked leg. Jennsen pulled back to give her room to work, watching in the dim light as the woman apparently wove magic into the emperor’s wound.

There was nothing to see, at first. Jagang gritted his teeth, grunting in pain as the Sister’s magic began to do its work. Jennsen watched, spellbound, as the gift was actually being used to help someone, instead of cause suffering. She wondered briefly if the Imperial Order believed that even this magic, used to save the life of the emperor, was evil. In the murky light, Jennsen saw the blood pumping copiously from the wound abruptly slow to an oozing trickle.

Jennsen leaned closer, frowning, trying to see in the shadows, as the Sister, now that the bleeding was nearly stopped, moved her hands, probably to start the work of closing the emperor’s terrible wound. Leaning close as she watched, Jennsen heard Jagang suddenly whisper.

“There he is.” Jennsen looked up. He was staring off down the hall. “Richard Rahl. Jennsen—there he is. It’s him.”

Jennsen followed Emperor Jagang’s gaze, her knife gripped in her fist. It was dark in the hallway, but there was smoky light down at the far end, silhouetting the figure standing in the distance, watching them.

He lifted his arms. Between his outstretched hands, fire sprang to life. It wasn’t fire like real fire, like the fire in a hearth, but fire like that out of a dream. It was there, but somehow not there; real, but at the same time unreal. Jennsen felt as if she were standing in a borderland between two worlds, the world that existed, and the world of the fantastic.

Yet, the lethal danger that the wavering flame represented was all too clear.

Frozen in dread, squatted down beside Emperor Jagang, Jennsen could only stare as the figure at the end of the hall lifted his hands, lifted the slowly turning ball of blue and yellow flame. Between those steady hands, the rotating flame expanded, to look frighteningly purposeful. Jennsen knew that she was seeing the manifestation of deadly intent.

And then he cast that implacable inferno out toward them.

Jagang had said that it was Richard Rahl down at the end of the hall. She could see only a silhouetted figure casting out from his hands that awful fire. Oddly enough, even though the flame illuminated the walls, it left its creator in shadow.

The sphere of seething flame expanded as it flew toward them with ever-gathering speed. The liquid blue and yellow flame looked as if it burned with living intent.

Yet, it was, in some strange way, nothing, too.

“Wizard’s fire!” the Sister shrieked as she sprang up. “Dear Creator! No!”

The Sister ran down the dark hall, toward the approaching flame. With wild abandon, she threw her arms up, palms toward the approaching fire, as if she were casting some magic shield to protect them, yet Jennsen could see nothing.

The fire grew as it shot toward them, illuminating the walls, ceiling, and debris as it wailed past. The Sister cast out her hands again.

The fire struck the woman with a jarring thud, silhouetting her against a flare of intense yellow light so bright that Jennsen threw an arm up before her face. In a heartbeat, the flame enveloped the woman, smothering her scream, consuming her in a blinding instant. Blue heat wavered as the fire swirled a moment in midair, then winked out, leaving behind only a wisp of smoke to hang in the hall, along with the smell of burnt flesh.

Jennsen stared, thunderstruck by what she had just seen, by a life so cruelly snuffed out.

Off down at the end of the hall, Lord Rahl again conjured a ball of the terrible wizard’s fire, nursing it between his hands, urging it to grow and expand. Again he cast it outward from lifted arms.

Jennsen didn’t know what to do. Her legs wouldn’t move. She knew she couldn’t outrun such a thing.