The Pillars of Creation (9 page)

The bottle slipped from her hand, thumped on the table, and rolled to the floor, where it shattered.

Oba. Surrender. Surrender your will
.

This was new. The voice had never before said that.

“You wanted Mama to kill me, didn’t you, Lathea?”

He took another step toward the table.

Lathea stiffened. “Stay where you are, Oba.”

There was fear in her eyes. Little rat eyes. This was definitely new. He was learning new things almost faster than he could note them all.

He saw her hands, the weapons of a sorceress, lifting. Oba paused. He stood cautiously, at attention.

Surrender, Oba, and you will be invincible
.

This was not merely new, it was startling.

“I think you want to kill me with your ‘cures,’ don’t you, Lathea? You want me dead.”

“No. No, Oba. That isn’t true. I swear it isn’t.”

He took another step, testing what the voice promised.

Her hands rose, a glow of light coming to life around her clawed fingers. The sorceress was conjuring magic.

“Oba”—her voice was more forceful, more sure—“stay where you are, now.”

Surrender, Oba, and you will be invincible
.

Oba felt his thighs bump the table as he advanced. The jars rattled and clanked together. One of them wobbled. Lathea watched it teeter and almost right itself, only to topple and spill its thick red liquid.

Lathea’s face abruptly twisted with hatred, with rage, with effort. She cast her clawed hands forward, toward him, cast the full force of her power at him.

With a thunderous clap, light ignited, the flash making everything in the room go white for an instant.

He saw a flare of a yellow-white light knife through the air toward him—deadly lightning sent to kill.

Oba felt nothing.

Behind him, the light blasted a man-sized hole through the wooden wall, scattering flaming splinters out into the night. All the fire fizzled out in the snow.

Oba touched his chest where the full force of her power had been directed. No blood. No torn flesh. He was unharmed.

He thought that Lathea was even more surprised about it than he. Her mouth hung open in astonishment. Her wide eyes stared.

All his life he had feared this scarecrow.

Lathea quickly recovered, and again her face twisted with effort as she drew her hands up. This time an eerie blue hiss of light formed. The air smelled like burning hair. Lathea turned her palms up, sending forth her deadly magic, sending him death. Power no person could withstand shrieked toward him.

The blue light scorched the walls behind, but again he felt nothing. Oba grinned.

Again, Lathea wheeled her arms, but this time she also whispered a chant of clipped words he could not understand—rattling off a menace of magic. A column of light bloomed, undulating in the air before him, a viper of extraordinary might. Beyond doubt, it was meant to kill.

Oba lifted his hands to feel the snaking rope of crackling death she had spawned. He ran his fingers through it, but could feel nothing. It was like looking at something in a different world. There, but not.

It was as if he were…invincible.

With a howl of outrage, her hands came up again.

Quick as thought, Oba seized her by the throat.

“Oba!” she screeched. “Oba, no! Please!”

This was new. He had never before heard Lathea say please.

With her neck in his meaty grip, he dragged her across the table toward him. Bottles scattered, tumbling to the floor. Some thudded and rolled, some broke like eggs.

Oba closed a fist on Lathea’s stringy hair. She clawed at him, desperately calling upon her talents. She spoke words that had to be a mystical entreaty to magic, to her gift, to her sorceress power. While he didn’t recognize the words, he understood their lethal intent.

Oba had surrendered, though, and he had become invincible.

He had watched her unleash her rage; now he unleashed his.

He slammed her up against her cabinet. Her mouth grew wide with a silent scream.

“Why did you want Mama to get rid of me?”

Her eyes, big and round, were fixed on the object of her terror: Oba. All his life, she had delighted in terrifying others. Now all that terror had returned to haunt her.

“Why did you want Mama to get rid of me?”

A series of small panting cries were her only answer.

“Why! Why!”

Oba ripped her dress from her body. Coins spilled from the pocket, raining across the floor.

“Why!”

He clutched the white shift she wore underneath the dress.

“Why!”

She tried to hold the shift to herself, but he stripped it away, sending her tumbling across the floor, bony arms and legs sprawling. Her wasted breasts hung like shriveled udders. This powerful sorceress was now naked before him, and she was nothing.

Her cries, full and round, came to life at last. Teeth gritted, he snatched her by the hair and hauled her to her feet. Oba rammed her against the cabinet. Wood splintered. Bottles cascaded out. He seized a bottle as it rolled out and broke it against the cabinet.

“Why, Lathea?” He brought the neck of a broken bottle up against her body. “Why!” She shrieked all the louder. He twisted it against her soft middle. “Why?”

“Please…oh dear Creator…please, no.”

“Why, Lathea?”

“Because,” she wailed, “you are the bastard son of that monster, Darken Rahl.”

Oba hesitated. This was stunning news—if it was true.

“Mama was forced. She told me so. She said it was some man she didn’t know who fathered me.”

“Oh, she knew him she did. She worked at the palace when she was younger. Your mother had big breasts and bigger ideas, back then. Poorly conceived ideas. She wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was no more than a night’s diversion for a man with a limitless supply of women—those eager, like her, and those not.”

This was definitely something new. Darken Rahl had been the most powerful man in the world. Could that noble Rahl blood flow in his veins? The heady implications made his head swim.

If the sorceress was telling the truth.

“My mother would have stayed there at the People’s Palace if she carried Darken Rahl’s son.”

“You aren’t his gifted heir.”

“But still, if I was his son—”

Despite her pain, she managed to give him that smile that said he was but dirt to her. “You are not gifted. Your kind were vermin to him. He ruthlessly exterminated all he discovered. He would have tortured you and your mother to death if he knew of you. Once she learned this, your mother fled.”

Oba was overwhelmed with new things. They were beginning to become a jumble in his mind.

He pulled the sorceress close. “Darken Rahl was a powerful wizard. If what you say is true, he would have hunted us.” He slammed her against the cabinet again. “He would have hunted me!” He shook her to elicit an answer. “He would have!”

“He did, but he could not see the holes in the world.”

Her eyes were rolling. Her frail body was no match for Oba’s strength. Blood ran from her right ear.

“What?” Oba reasoned that Lathea was babbling nonsense now.

“Only Althea can…”

She had ceased to make sense. He wondered how much of what she had said was true.

Her head lolled to the side. “I should have…saved us all…when I had the chance. Althea was wrong…”

He shook her, trying to get her to say more. Red froth bubbled from her nose. Despite his yelling, his demanding, his shaking her, no more words came. He held her close, his heavy, hot breath lifting thin strands of her hair as he glared into her aimless eyes.

He had learned all he would from her.

He remembered all the burning powder he’d had to drink, the potions she had mixed for him, the days he’d spent in the pen. He remembered all the times he’d vomited his guts out and it still wouldn’t stop burning his insides.

Oba growled as he lifted the bony woman. With a roar of anger he slammed her against the wall. Her cries were fuel for the fire of his vengeance. He reveled in her helpless agony.

He smashed her down against the heavy trestle table, breaking it, and breaking her. With each crash, she became more limp, bloody, incoherent.

But Oba had only just begun to rage at her.

Jennsen didn’t want to go back to the inn, but it was dark and cold and she didn’t know what else to do. It was disheartening that Lathea wouldn’t answer their questions. Jennsen had pinned her hopes on the woman’s help.

“What shall we do tomorrow?” Sebastian asked.

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, do you still want me to help you leave D’Hara, as you and your mother asked of me?”

She hadn’t really thought it out. In view of what little Lathea had told her, Jennsen wasn’t sure what to do. She stared absently out into the empty night as they trudged across the crusted snow.

“If we went to the People’s Palace, I would have some answers,” she said, thinking out loud. “And, hopefully, Althea’s help.”

Going to the People’s Palace was by far the most dangerous alternative. But no matter where she ran, where she hid, Lord Rahl’s magic would haunt her. Althea might be able to help. Maybe, somehow, she would be able to conceal Jennsen from him so she could have her own life.

He seemed to give her words serious thought, a long cloud of his breath trailing away in the wind. “We’ll go to the People’s Palace, then. Find this Althea woman.”

She felt somehow uneasy when she realized that he wasn’t offering any argument, or trying to talk her out of it. “The People’s Palace is the heart of D’Hara. It’s not just the heart of D’Hara, but the home of the Lord Rahl.”

“Then he wouldn’t be likely to expect you to go there, would he?”

Expected or not, they would still be walking into the enemy’s lair. No predator long neglected to notice the prey in his midst. They would be naked before his fangs.

Jennsen glanced over at the shadowed shape walking beside her. “Sebastian, what are you doing in D’Hara? You seem to have no love for the place. Why would you travel to a place you don’t like?”

Beneath his hood, she saw his smile. “Am I that obvious?”

Jennsen shrugged. “I’ve met travelers before. They talk about places they’ve been, sights they’ve seen. Wonders. Beautiful valleys. Breathtaking mountains. Fascinating cities. You don’t speak of anywhere you’ve been, or anything you’ve seen.”

“You want the truth?” he asked, his expression now serious.

Jennsen looked away. She suddenly felt awkward, nosy—especially in light of what she wasn’t telling him.

“I’m sorry. I have no right to ask such a thing. Forget I mentioned it.”

“I don’t mind.” He looked over at her with a wry smile. “I don’t think you would be one to report me to D’Haran soldiers.”

She was appalled at the very idea. “Of course not.”

“Lord Rahl and his D’Haran Empire wish to rule the world. I’m trying to help prevent that. I’m from south of D’Hara, as I told you before. I was sent by our leader, the emperor of the Old World, Jagang the Just. I am Emperor Jagang’s strategist.”

“Then you’re someone of high authority,” she whispered in astonishment. “A man of high rank.” The astonishment quickly transformed to tingling intimidation. She feared to guess at his importance, his rank. In her mind it rose by the moment, notch by notch. “How am I to address one such as you?”

“As Sebastian.”

“But, you’re an important man. I’m a nobody.”

“Oh, you’re somebody, Jennsen Daggett. The Lord Rahl himself does not hunt nobodies.”

Jennsen felt an odd and unexpected sense of uneasiness. She harbored no love for D’Hara, of course, but she still felt somewhat uncomfortable to know that Sebastian was there to help bring about the defeat of her land.

The twinge of loyalty confused her. After all, the Lord Rahl had sent the men who had murdered her mother. The Lord Rahl hunted Jennsen, wanted her dead.

But it was the Lord Rahl who wanted her dead, not necessarily the people of her land. The mountains, the rivers, the vast plains, the trees and plant life had always all sheltered and nurtured her. She’d never really thought it through in that way before—that she could love her homeland, yet hate those who ruled it.

If this Jagang the Just succeeded, though, she would be freed from her pursuer. If D’Hara was defeated, Lord Rahl would be defeated—the rule of evil men would be ended. She would at last be free to live her own life.

In light of how open he was with her, she also felt foolish, even ashamed, for not telling Sebastian who she was and why Lord Rahl hunted her. She didn’t know it all, herself, but she knew enough to know that Sebastian would share the same fate as she if they caught him with her.

As she thought about it, it began to make sense why he might not object to going to the People’s Palace, why he might be willing to risk such a dangerous journey. As a strategist for the emperor Jagang, perhaps Sebastian would like nothing better than to sneak a look into the enemy’s lair.

“Here we are,” he said.

She looked up and saw the white clapboard face of the inn. A metal mug hanging from a bracket overhead squeaked as it swung to and fro in the wind. The sounds of singing and dancing spilled out onto the snow-covered silence of the night. With an arm around her shoulders, Sebastian sheltered her as they made their way through the great room, shielded her from the prying eyes, and led her to the stairs at the far side. If possible, the place was even more crowded and noisy than before.

Without pause, the two of them quickly ascended the stairs. Partway down the dim hall, he unlocked a door to the right. Inside, Sebastian turned the wick up on the oil lamp sitting on a small table. Alongside the lamp was a pitcher and washbasin and near the table a bench. Looming to the side of the room sat a high bed covered crookedly with a dark brown blanket.

The room was better than the home she had left, but Jennsen didn’t like it. One wall was overlaid with drab, painted linen. The plastered walls were stained and flyblown. Since the room was on the second floor, the only way down was back through the inn. She hated the stink of the room—a sour mixture of pipe smoke and urine. The chamber pot beneath the bed hadn’t been emptied.

As Jennsen pulled a few things from her pack and went to the table to wash her face, Sebastian left her to it and went back downstairs. By the time she had finished washing and had brushed her hair, he returned with two bowls of lamb stew. He had brown bread, too, and mugs of ale. They ate sitting close together on the short bench, hunched over the table, close to the wavering light of the oil lamp.

The stew didn’t taste as good as it looked. She picked out the chunks of meat but left the colorless, tasteless, soft vegetables. She sopped up some of the juice with the hard bread. She gave her ale to Sebastian and drank water instead. She wasn’t used to drinking ale. To her the ale smelled as unpleasant as the lamp oil. Sebastian seemed to like it.

When she had finished eating, Jennsen paced in the confining room the way Betty paced in her pen. Sebastian threw a leg to each side of the bench and leaned back against the wall. His blue eyes followed her from the bed to the wall hung with linen and back again, as she began wearing a path in the plank floor.

“Why don’t you lie down and get some sleep,” he said in a soft voice. “I’ll watch over you.”

She felt like a trapped animal. She watched him take a long draft of ale from his mug. “And what will we do tomorrow?”

It wasn’t only her dislike of the inn, of the room. Her conscience was eating at her. She didn’t let him answer.

“Sebastian, I have to tell you who I am. You were honest with me. I can’t stay with you and endanger your mission. I don’t know anything about the important things you do, but being with me will only put you at great risk. You’ve already helped me more than I could have hoped, more than I ever could have asked.”

“Jennsen, I’m already at risk being here. I am in the land of my enemy.”

“And you’re someone of high rank. An important man.” She rubbed her hands together, trying to bring some warmth to her icy fingers. “If they captured you because you were with me…well, I couldn’t bear it.”

“I took the risk of coming here.”

“But I haven’t been honest with you—I haven’t lied to you, but I haven’t told you what I should have long ago. You’re too important a man to chance being with me when you don’t even know why I’m hunted, or what that attack back at my house was about.” She swallowed at the painful lump in her throat. “Why my mother lost her life.”

He said nothing, but simply gave her the time to gather herself and tell him in her own way. From the first moment she had met him, and he hadn’t come close when she had been afraid, he always gave her the room she needed in order to feel safe. He deserved more than she gave him in return.

Jennsen finally brought a halt to her pacing and looked down at him, at his blue eyes, blue eyes like hers, like her father’s.

“Sebastian, Lord Rahl—the last Lord Rahl, Darken Rahl—was my father.”

He took the news without any outward reaction. She couldn’t know what he was thinking. As he gazed up at her, as calmly as he did when she wasn’t telling him terrible news, she felt safe in his company.

“My mother worked at the People’s Palace. She was part of the palace staff. Darken Rahl…he noticed her. It is the Lord Rahl’s prerogative to have any woman he wants.”

“Jennsen, you don’t—”

She lifted a hand, silencing him. She wanted the whole thing out before she lost her nerve. Having always been with her mother, she feared being alone now. She feared he would abandon her, but she had to tell him what she knew.

“She was fourteen,” Jennsen said, beginning the story as calmly as she could. “Too young to really understand about the ways of the world, of men. You saw how beautiful she was. At that young age, she was already pretty as could be, growing into a woman sooner than many her age. She had a bright smile and an innocent exuberance for life.

“She was a nobody, though, and to an extent excited to be noticed—desired—by a man of such power, a man who could have any woman he wanted. That was foolish, of course, but at her age and station it was flattering, and, in her innocence, I suppose it might have even seemed glamorous.

“She was bathed and pampered by older women on the palace staff. Her hair done up like a real lady. She was dressed in a beautiful gown for her meeting with the great man himself. When she was brought to him, he bowed and gently kissed the back of her hand—her, a servant in his great palace, and he kissed her hand. From all accounts, he was so handsome that he shamed the finest marble statues.

“She had dinner with him, in a great hall, and ate rare and exotic foods she had never tasted before. Just the two of them at a long dining table with people serving her for the first time in her life.

“He was charming. He complemented her on her beauty, her grace. He poured wine for her—the Lord Rahl himself.

“When she was at last alone with him, she was confronted with the reality of why she was there. She was too frightened to resist. Of course, had she not meekly submitted, he would have done what he wished anyway. Darken Rahl was a powerful wizard. He was easily as cruel as he was charming. He could have handled any woman without the slightest difficulty. He had but to command it, and those who resisted his will were tortured to death.

“But she never gave any thought to resisting. For a brief time, despite her apprehension, that world, at the center of such splendor, such power, had probably seemed exciting. When it turned to terror for her, she bore it silently.

“It wasn’t rape in the meaning of being taken against her will, with a knife held to her throat, but it was a crime nonetheless. A savage crime.”

Jennsen looked away from Sebastian’s blue eyes. “He took my mother to his bed for a period of time before he tired of her and moved on to other women. There were as many women as he could want. Even at that age, my mother didn’t hold any foolish illusion that she meant something to him. She knew he was simply taking what he wanted, for as long as he wanted, and that when he was finished with her she would soon be forgotten. She was doing as a servant did. A flattered servant, perhaps, but still a frightened, innocent young servant who knew better than to resist a man above any law but his own.”

She couldn’t bear to look at Sebastian. In a small voice, she added the last bit to the tale.

“I was the result of that brief ordeal in her life, and the beginning of a far greater one.”

Jennsen had never before told anyone the awful story, the terrible truth. She felt cold and dirty. She felt sick. Most of all, she felt deep anguish for what her mother must have gone through, for her young life spoiled.

Her mother never told the story all out as Jennsen had just done. Jennsen had pieced snippets and snatches of it together over her whole life, until it was finally a whole picture in her mind. She wasn’t telling Sebastian all the snippets, either—the true extent of the horror of the way her mother had been treated by Darken Rahl. Jennsen felt burning shame that she had to be born to remind her mother every day of that terrible memory she could never tell in whole.

When Jennsen looked up through tears, Sebastian was standing close before her. His fingertips gently touched the side of her face. It was as tender a thing as she had ever felt.

Jennsen wiped the tears from under her eyes. “The women and their children mean nothing to him. The Lord Rahl eliminates all those offspring who are not gifted. Since he takes many women, children of these couplings are not uncommon. He covets only one, his heir, the single child born of his seed who carries the gift.”

“Richard Rahl,” Sebastian said.

“Richard Rahl,” she confirmed. “My half brother.”

Richard Rahl, her half brother, who hunted her as his father before him had hunted her. Richard Rahl, her half brother, who sent the quads to kill her. Richard Rahl, her half brother, who had sent the quads that had murdered her mother.

But why? She could have been no threat to Darken Rahl, and even less of a threat to the new Lord Rahl. He was a powerful wizard who commanded armies, legions of the gifted, and countless other loyal supporters. And she? She was nothing but one lone woman who knew few people and wanted only to live her own simple life in peace. She was hardly a threat to his rule.

Even the truth of her story would not so much as raise an eyebrow. Everyone knew that any Lord Rahl lived by his own laws. No one was even remotely likely to disbelieve her story, but no one would really care, either. At most, they might wink or give one another a knowing elbow at the lives of powerful men, and Darken Rahl had been the most powerful man alive.