The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

“Hide you?”

“From Lord Rahl.”

There was an awful silence from the house.

“Do you remember? My name is Jennsen. I was very little at the time.” Jennsen pushed her hood back so the woman could see her ringlets of red hair lit in the wedge of light coming through the door.

“Jennsen. Don’t recall the name, but the hair I remember. It’s not often one sees hair like yours.”

Jennsen’s spirits buoyed with relief. “It has been a while. I’m so glad to hear that—”

“I don’t deal in your kind,” the woman said. “Never have. I cast no spell for you.”

Jennsen was stunned speechless. She didn’t know what to say. She was sure the woman had once cast a spell to help her.

“Now, be gone. The both of you.” The door started to close.

“Wait! Please—I can pay.”

Jennsen reached into a pocket and hurriedly brought out a coin. Only after she passed it through the door did she see that it had been gold.

The woman inspected the gold mark for a time, perhaps considering if it was worth becoming involved again in what was sure to be a high crime, even for what amounted to a small fortune.

“Now do you remember?” Sebastian asked.

The woman’s eyes turned to him. “And who are you?”

“Just a friend.”

“Lathea, I need your help again. My mother…” Jennsen couldn’t bring herself to say it, and started over in a different direction. “I remember my mother telling me about you, and how you helped us, once. I was very little at the time, but I remember having the spell cast over me. It wore off years ago. I need that help again.”

“Well, you have the wrong person.”

Jennsen’s fists tightened on her wool cloak. She had no other ideas. This was the only thing she could think of.

“Lathea, please, I’m at my wits’ end. I need help.”

“She’s given you a goodly sum,” Sebastian put in. “If you say that we have the wrong person, and you don’t want to help, then I guess we should save the gold for the right person.”

Lathea gave him a sly smile. “Oh, I said she had the wrong person, but I didn’t say I couldn’t earn the payment tendered.”

“I don’t understand,” Jennsen said, holding her cloak closed at her throat as she shivered with cold.

Lathea gazed out at her for a moment, as if waiting to be sure they were paying close attention. “You are looking for my sister, Althea. I am La-thea. She is Al-thea. She is the one who helped you, not I. Your mother probably got our names mixed up, or you recalled it wrong. It used to be a common mistake, back when we were together. Althea and I have different talents with the gift. It was she who helped you and your mother, not I.”

Jennsen was dumbfounded and disappointed, but at least not defeated. There was still a thread of hope. “Please, Lathea, could you help me this time? In your sister’s place?”

“No. I can do nothing for you. I am blind to your kind. Only Althea can see the holes in the world. I cannot.”

Jennsen didn’t know what that meant—holes in the world. “Blind…to my kind?”

“Yes. I have told you what I can. Now, go away.”

The woman started pulling back from the door.

“Wait! Please! Can you at least tell me where your sister lives, then?”

She looked back at Jennsen’s expectant face. “This is dangerous business—”

“It’s business,” Sebastian said, his voice as cold as the night. “A gold mark’s worth. For that price we should at the least have the place where we can find your sister.”

Lathea considered his words, then in a voice as cold as his had been said to Jennsen, “I don’t want nothing to do with your kind. Understand? Nothing. If Althea does, that’s her business. Inquire at the People’s Palace.”

Jennsen seemed to remember traveling to a woman not terribly far from the palace. She had thought it was Lathea, but it must have been her sister, Althea. “But can’t you tell me more than that? Where she lives, how I can find her?”

“Last time I saw her she lived near there with her husband. You can inquire there for the sorceress Althea. People will know her—if she still lives.”

Sebastian put his hand against the door before the woman could shut it. “That’s a pretty thin bit of information. We should have more than that for the price offered.”

“For what I have told you the price is paltry. I gave you the information you need. If my sister wants to tempt her doom, that’s up to her. What I don’t need, for any price, is trouble.”

“We mean no trouble,” Jennsen said. “We only need the help of a spell. If you can’t help with that, then we thank you for your sister’s name. We will seek her out. But there are some important things I need to know. If you could tell me—”

“If you had any decency, you’d leave Althea alone. Your kind will only bring us harm. Now go from my door before I set a nightmare upon you.”

Jennsen stared at the face in the shadows.

“Someone already has,” she said as she turned away.

Chapter 9

Oba, feeling fashionable in his cap and brown wool jacket, walked down the sides of the narrow streets, humming a tune he had heard played on a pipe at an inn he’d passed. He had to wait for a rider to go by before he turned down Lathea’s road. The horse’s ears swiveled toward him as it passed. Oba had had a horse, once, and liked to ride, but his mother had decided that they couldn’t afford to keep a horse. Oxen were more useful and did more work, but they weren’t as companionable.

As he walked down the dark road, his boots crunching on the crust of snow, a couple came past from the opposite direction, from the direction of Lathea’s place. He wondered if they had gone to the sorceress for a cure. The woman cast a wary look his way. On a dark road, such a reaction was not undue, and, too, Oba knew that his size frightened some women. She sidestepped clear of him. The man with her met Oba’s gaze—many men didn’t.

The way they stared reminded Oba of the rat. He grinned at that memory, at learning new things. Both the man and the woman thought he was grinning

at them. Oba tipped his cap to the lady. She returned a weak smile. It was the kind of empty smile Oba had often seen from women. It made him feel a buffoon. The couple melted into the dark streets.

Oba stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and turned back toward Lathea’s place. He hated going there in the dark. The sorceress was fearsome enough without the walk down her dark path. He let out a troubled sigh into the brisk winter air.

He wasn’t afraid to confront the strength of men, but he knew he was helpless against the mysteries of magic. He knew how much misery her potions inflicted upon him. They burned him going in and coming out. They not only hurt, they made him lose control of himself, making him seem like he was just an animal. It was humiliating.

He had heard tell of others, though, who had angered the sorceress and suffered worse fates—fevers, blindness, a slow lingering death. One man had gone mad and run off naked into a swamp. People said he must have crossed the sorceress, somehow. They found him snakebit and dead, all puffed up and purple, floating among the slimy weed. Oba couldn’t imagine what the man had done to earn such a fate from the sorceress. He should have known better and been more cautious with the old shrew.

Sometimes, Oba had nightmares about what she might do to him with her magic. He imagined Lathea’s powers could lance him with a thousand cuts, or even strip the flesh from his bones. Boil his eyes in his head. Or make his tongue swell until he gagged and choked in a slow, agonizing death.

He hurried along the path. The sooner started, the sooner finished. Oba had learned that.

When he reached the house he knocked. “It’s Oba Schalk. My mother sent me for her medicine.”