The Pillars of Creation (50 page)

The howling sphere of roiling flame tumbled down the hall, wailing toward them, expanding as it came, illuminating the walls it passed, until the burning death spanned from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, leaving no place to hide.

Lord Rahl started away, leaving them to their fate, as death roared down on Jennsen and Emperor Jagang.

The sound was horrifying. The sight of it was paralyzing.

This was a weapon conjured for no reason but to kill. This was deadly magic. Lord Rahl’s magic.

This time, there was no Sister of the Light to intercept it.

Magic. Lord Rahl’s magic. There, but not.

In the last instant before it was on her, Jennsen knew what she had to do. She threw herself over Emperor Jagang. In that fraction of a second before the fire was upon her, she covered him with her body where he lay at the edge of the floor against the wall, protecting him as she would a child.

Even through her tightly closed eyes, she could see the brilliant light. She could hear the terrible wail of the tumbling flames howling around her.

But Jennsen felt nothing.

She heard it roaring past her, thundering off down the hall. She opened one eye to peek out. At the end of the corridor, the orb of living fire exploded through the wall, coming apart in a shower of liquid flame, sending a hail of blazing wood out onto the lawn far below.

With the wall gone, the hall was better lit. Jennsen pushed herself up.

“Emperor—are you alive?” she whispered.

“Thanks to you….” He sounded stunned. “What did you do? How could you not—”

“Hush,” she whispered urgently. “Stay down, or he’ll see you.”

There was no time to waste. It had to be ended. Jennsen sprang up and ran down the hall, knife in hand. She could now see the man standing there in the smoky light at the end of the hall. He had stopped and turned to stare back at her. As she raced toward him, she realized that it couldn’t be her half brother. This was an old man, a collection of bones in dark maroon and black robes with silver bands at the cuff of the sleeves. Wavy white hair stuck out in disarray, but did not diminish his air of authority.

Yet he stared in shock at seeing her racing toward him, as if hardly believing it, hardly believing she had survived his wizard’s fire. She was a hole in the world to him. She could see understanding flooding his hazel eyes.

Despite his kindly look, this was a man who had just killed countless people. This was a man doing Lord Rahl’s bidding. This was a man who would kill more people unless stopped. He was a wizard, a monster. She had to stop him.

Jennsen held her knife high. She was almost there. She heard herself screaming in rage, like the battle cries she had heard from the soldiers, as she plunged forward. She understood those battle cries, now. She wanted his blood.

“No…” the old man called to her. “Child, you don’t understand what you’re doing. We don’t have time—I don’t have a moment to spare! Stop! I can’t delay! Let me—”

His words were no more to her than those of the voice. She ran through the rubble littering the hall as fast as her legs would carry her, feeling the same sense of wild but deliberate fury she had in her house, when the men had attacked her mother, and then her—that same fierce commitment.

Jennsen knew what she had to do, and knew she was the one to do it.

She was invincible.

Before she reached him, he cast one hand out toward her, but lower than he had before. This time, no fire erupted. She didn’t care if it did. She would not be stopped. She could not be stopped. She was invincible.

Whatever he did caused the debris at her feet to suddenly shift, as if he’d given the whole lot of it a mighty shove. Before she could jump clear, one foot tangled in the debris, breaking through the jumble of broken plaster and lath. Rumpled carpeting and wreckage of furniture ensnared her ankle. With a surprised gasp, Jennsen pitched violently forward. Pieces of wood and plaster flipped dust and debris up in the air as she crashed to the floor. Her face hit hard, stunning her.

Small chunks and scraps rained down on her back. Dust slowly rolled away. Her face stung with dizzyingly intense pain.

Jennsen listened to the voice calling to her to get up, to keep moving. But her vision had narrowed down to a tiny spot, as if she were looking through a soft fuzzy tube. The world looked dreamlike through that tunnel of sight. She lay still, breathing the settling dust until it coated her throat, unable even to cough.

Groaning, Jennsen was at last able to push herself up. Her vision was rapidly returning. She began coughing, hacking, trying to clear her windpipe of the choking dust. Her leg was jammed down among the tangle of debris. She was finally able to pry a board to the side, giving her room to pull her foot free. Fortunately, her boot had prevented the splintered wood from slicing her leg.

Jennsen realized her hands were empty. Her knife was gone. On her hands and knees, she rummaged madly through the wreckage of wood, plaster, and tangled fabric of draperies, throwing things aside, searching for her knife. She thrust her arm under a nearby overturned table, groping blindly.

With the tips of her fingers, she felt something smooth. She groped along it until she touched the ornately engraved letter “R.” Grunting with the effort, she shouldered the leg of the overturned table until the whole mess grated as it moved a little. At last, she was able to reach in far enough to pull her knife free.

When Jennsen was finally able to scramble to her feet, the man was long gone. She went after him anyway. When she reached the intersection of passageways, a quick look revealed only empty halls. She ran down the corridor she thought he had taken, looking in rooms, searching alcoves, making her way ever deeper into the murky palace.

She could hear people in the distance, soldiers, yelling for others to follow them. She listened for Sebastian’s voice, but didn’t hear him. She heard, too, the sound of magic being unleashed, like the crack of lightning, only indoors. It sometimes shook the entire palace. Sometimes, too, the screams of dying men could be heard.

Jennsen chased after the sounds, trying to find the man who had loosed the wizard’s fire, but found only more empty rooms and passageways. Some places were littered with dead soldiers. She couldn’t tell if they had been there from the first, or had been left in the wake of the fleeing wizard.

Jennsen heard the sound of running soldiers, their boots rumbling through corridors. And then, she heard Sebastian’s voice call out, “That way! It’s her!”

Jennsen raced for an intersection and turned down a hall running off in the direction she had heard Sebastian’s voice. Her footfalls were muted by a long green carpet with gold fringe running the length of a grand corridor. It was all the more startlingly beautiful after coming out of ruined areas. A window overhead lit the variegated brown-and-white marble columns that supported arches to each side, like silent sentinels watching her race by.

The palace was a maze of corridors and exquisite chambers. Some of the rooms Jennsen cut through were lavishly furnished in muted tones, while yet others were decorated with carpets, chairs, and draperies in a riot of colors. She dimly noted that the grand sights were astoundingly beautiful as she concentrated on not getting lost. She imagined the place as a vast forest, and noted landmarks along the way so as to find her way back. She had to help get Emperor Jagang to safety.

Racing down the wide passageway lined with granite recesses in the walls to each side, each holding a delicate object of one kind or another, Jennsen burst through double gold-bound doors into an enormous chamber. The sound of the doors rebounding echoed back from the room beyond. The size of place, the splendor of the sight, caught her up short. Overhead, rich paintings of figures in robes swept across the inside of the huge dome. Below the majestic figures a ring of round windows let in ample light. A semicircular dais sat off to the side, along with chairs behind an imposing carved desk. Arched openings around the room covered stairways up to curving balconies edged with sinuous, polished mahogany railings.

Jennsen knew by the imposing architecture that this must be the place from where the Mother Confessor ruled the Midlands. All the seating up in the balconies must have provided visitors or dignitaries a view of the proceedings.

Jennsen saw someone making their way among the columns on the other side of the chamber. Just then, Sebastian burst through another door not far to Jennsen’s right. A company of soldiers funneled through the doors after him.

Sebastian lifted his sword, pointing. “There she is!” He was nearly out of breath. Rage flashed in his blue eyes.

“Sebastian!” Jennsen ran to his side. “We have to get out of here. We need to get the emperor to safety. A wizard came and the Sister was killed. He’s alone. Hurry.”

The men were fanning out, a jangling dark mass clad in chain mail and armor and gleaming weapons spreading around the edge of the vast chamber like wolves stalking a fawn.

Sebastian heatedly pointed his sword across the room. “Not until I have her. Jagang will at last have the Mother Confessor.”

Jennsen peered off to where he pointed and saw, then, the tall woman across the room. She wore simple, coarsely woven flaxen robes decorated at the neck with a bit of red and yellow. Her black and gray hair was parted in the middle and cut square with her strong jaw.

“The Mother Confessor,” Sebastian whispered, transfixed by the sight of her.

Jennsen frowned back at him. “Mother Confessor…?” Jennsen couldn’t envision the Lord Rahl wedding a woman as old as his greatgrandmother. “Sebastian, what do you see?”

He flashed a smug look. “The Mother Confessor.”

“What does she look like? What’s she wearing?”

“She’s wearing that white dress of hers.” His heated expression was back. “How can you miss her?”

“She’s a beautiful bitch,” a soldier on the other side of Sebastian said with a grin, unable to take his eyes from the woman across the room. “But the emperor will be the one to have her.”

The rest of the men, too, started across the room with that same disturbing, lecherous look. Jennsen seized Sebastian by the arm and yanked him around.

“No!” she whispered harshly. “Sebastian, it’s not her.”

“Are you out of your mind?” he asked as he glared at her. “Do you think I don’t know what the Mother Confessor looks like?”

“I’ve seen her before,” the soldier beside him said. “That’s her all right.”

“No, it’s not,” Jennsen whispered insistently, all the while tugging at Sebastian’s arm, trying to get him to pull back. “It must be a spell or something. Sebastian, it’s an old woman. This whole thing is going terribly wrong. We have to get out—”

The soldier on the other side of Sebastian grunted. His sword clattered to the marble floor as he clutched his chest. He toppled, like a tree that had been felled, and crashed to the floor. Another soldier, then another, then another fell. Thump, thump, thump they hit the floor. Jennsen put herself in front of Sebastian, throwing her arms around him to protect him.

The room exploded with a blinding flash of lightning. The sizzling arc twisted through the air, yet it unfailingly found its mark, raking down the line of men running out around the edge of the room, cutting them down in an instant. Jennsen looked over her shoulder and saw the old woman cast a hand out to the other side, toward men, and a Sister, charging across the room straight toward her. The soldiers, struck down by an invisible power, dropped in their tracks, one at a time. Their heavy crumpled bodies slid across the slick floor a short distance when they collapsed in midstride.

The Sister cast out her hands, Jennsen assumed to protect herself with magic of some kind, although she could see nothing of it. But when the Sister again thrust out an arm, Jennsen not only saw but could hear light forming at the tips of her fingers.

With all the soldiers down—all but Sebastian dead—the old sorceress turned her full attention on the attacking Sister. With weathered hands, the old woman warded the attack, sending the thrumming light back on the Sister.

“You know you have but to swear allegiance, Sister,” the old woman said in a raspy voice, “and you will be free of the dream walker.”

Jennsen didn’t understand, but the Sister surely did. “It won’t work! I’ll not risk such agony! May the Creator forgive me, but it will be easier for us all if I kill you.”

“If that be your choice,” the old woman rasped, “then so be it.”

The younger woman started to cast her magic again, but fell to the floor with a sudden cry. She clawed at the smooth marble, trying to whisper prayers between grunts of terrible agony. She left a smear of blood on the marble, but before getting far, she stilled. Her head sank to the floor as she expelled one long last rattling breath.

Knife in hand, Jennsen ran for the murderous old woman. Sebastian followed, but had taken only a few steps when the woman wheeled and cast a shimmering light at him just as Jennsen stepped into her line of sight. Only that prevented the streak of glimmering light from hitting him square. The light glanced off his side in a shower of sparks. Sebastian fell with a cry.

“No! Sebastian!” Jennsen started for him. He pressed his hands to the side of his ribs, clearly in pain. If hurt, at least he was alive.

Jennsen swung back to the old woman. She stood immobile, her head cocked, listening. There was confusion in her manner, and a curious kind of awkward helplessness.

The sorceress wasn’t looking at her, but instead had an ear turned to her. Being a little closer, now, Jennsen noticed for the first time that the old woman had completely white eyes. Jennsen stared, at first from surprise, and then with sudden recognition.

“Adie?” she breathed, not having intended to say it aloud.

Startled, the woman cocked her head the other way, listening with her other ear. “Who be there?” the raspy voice demanded. “Who be there?”

Jennsen didn’t answer, for fear of giving away her exact location. The room had gone silent. Worry wore heavily on the old sorceress’s weathered face. But determination, too, set her jaw as her hand lifted.

Jennsen gripped her knife in her fist, not knowing what to do. If this really was Adie, the woman Althea had told her about, then, according to Althea, she would be completely blind to Jennsen. But she was not blind to Sebastian. Jennsen crept a step closer.

The old woman’s head turned to the sound. “Child? Do you be a sister of Richard? Why would you be with the Order?”