The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

“But, but,” Jennsen stammered in confusion, “that makes no sense. He’s been hunting me. He sent men after me—they had my name on a piece of paper.”

“They may hunt you, but only in the conventional sense. They cannot find you with magic. His gift is blind to you. He has to use spies, bribes, and threats to locate you, in addition to his wits and cunning. Were it not so, he might send some magic beast to reap your bones for him and be done with it, instead of sending out men with your name written down on a piece of paper.”

“You mean, I’m already invisible to him?”

“No. I know you. I remember your red hair. I recognized you because I remember your mother, and you look like her. I know you in those ways—the ways anybody knows and recognizes someone. Darken Rahl, were he alive, might recognize you if he remembered your mother. Others who knew him might well see some of him in you, as I do, in addition to your mother’s looks. He could know you in all those same ways common to one without the gift. He can find you by ordinary means. Of course, if he or one with the gift were to actually lay eyes on you, they would realize you are an ungifted offspring of a Rahl—because they could see you.

“But, he could not find you with magic. That he cannot do. To those of us with the gift, you are in many ways like everyone else, except that you are a hole in the world.”

Jennsen was frowning. She only realized it when Althea tapped her thumbs together, thinking, in response to that face.

“When I was at the Palace of the Prophets,” Althea finally said, “I knew a woman there, a sorceress, like me, named Adie. She had traveled alone to the Old World from a far-off land in order to learn what she could. But Adie was blind.”

“Blind? She could travel alone when she was blind?”

Althea smiled at the memory of the woman. “Oh yes. With the use of her gift, rather than her eyes. All sorceress—all people with the gift—have unique abilities. On top of that, in some the gift is stronger, like people who have big muscles are stronger than me. Like Friedrich. He is stronger in muscles. You have hair like other people, but yours is red. Some have blond, or black, or brown. Despite what things people have in common, each person has different attributes.

“It’s like that with the gift. It’s not only different in its aspects, but the power of those aspects differ. With some, it’s very strong, with some, weak. Each of us is an individual. We’re all unique in our ability, our gift, the same as you are unique in other ways.”

“And what about your friend, Adie?”

“Ah, well, Adie’s eyes were completely white—blind—but she had learned the trick of seeing with her gift. The gift told her more about the world around her than my eyes told me. Adie could see people better with her gift than I could with my eyes. Much like when people who don’t have the gift go blind, they depend more on their hearing, so they learn to hear more than you or I.

“Adie did that with her gift. She saw by sensing that infinitesimal spark of the Creator’s gift that everything has—life itself, and more: Creation.

“The point is that, to me, to Darken Rahl, to Adie, you do not exist. You are a hole in the world.”

For reasons Jennsen could not at first comprehend, terror washed through her. And then the sense of her terror began to take shape. She could feel her eyes filling with tears.

“The Creator didn’t give me life, like everyone else? I came to exist in some other way? I’m some kind of…monster? My father wanted to have me killed because I’m some monstrosity of nature?”

“No, no, child,” Althea said as she leaned forward and stroked a comforting hand down Jennsen’s hair, “that is not at all what I mean.”

Jennsen tried mightily to contain the new shape of dread. Through watery vision, she saw Althea’s concerned face gazing down at her. “I’m not even part of Creation. That’s why the gift can’t sense me. The Lord Rahl only wanted to rid the world of an error of nature, an evil thing.”

“Jennsen, don’t put words where I have not. Listen to me, now.”

Jennsen nodded as she wiped under her eyes. “I’m listening.”

“Just because you’re different, that doesn’t make you evil.”

“Just what am I, then, if not a monster untouched by Creation?”

“My dear child, you are a pillar of Creation.”

“But you said—”

“I said that those with the gift cannot see you with it. I did not say that you don’t exist, or that you are not as the rest of us, a part of Creation.”

“Then why am I one of those…things? One of those holes in the world?”

Althea shook her head. “I don’t know, child. But our lack of knowledge does not prove something evil. An owl can see at night. Does it make you evil because people can’t see you while the owl can? One person’s limitations don’t confer wickedness on another. It shows only one thing: the existence of limitations.”

“But all the offspring of the Lord Rahl are like this?”

She considered carefully before answering. “The genuinely ungifted ones, yes. Those who are born with at least some tiny aspect of the gift are not. That aspect can be so infinitesimal and unusable that it would not even be recognized to exist by anyone in any other way aside from this one. For all practical purposes, those offspring would be thought of as ungifted, except that they would have this quality that would keep them from being like you—holes in the world. It also makes them vulnerable. This kind of offspring can be found with magic and thus eliminated.”

“Could it be that most of the offspring of Lord Rahl are like that, and those like me, holes in the world, are actually the ones who are more rare?”

“Yes,” Althea admitted quietly.

Jennsen sensed an undercurrent of tension in the single word answer. “Are you suggesting that there is something more to all of this than just that we are holes in the world to the gifted?”

“Yes. That was one of the reasons I went to study with the Sisters of the Light. I wanted to better understand the interrelationship of the gift with life as we know it—with Creation.”

“Did you discover anything? Were the Sisters of the Light able to help you?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Althea gazed off in reflection. “Few if any would agree with me, but I have come to suspect that all people, with the single exception of those like you—offspring of a Lord Rahl born wholly without the gift—have this imperceptible spark of magic that, while intangible in every other way, connects them to the gifted, and thus to the greater world of Creation.”

“I don’t understand what this would mean for me, or for anyone else.”

Althea slowly shook her head. “There is more to this, Jennsen, than I know. I suspect there is something far more important involved.”

Jennsen couldn’t imagine what that could be. “How many offspring are born entirely without the gift?”

“As far as I’ve learned, it’s exceedingly rare for more than one offspring of each Lord Rahl to be born with the gift, as we think of it—his seed conceives but one true heir.” Althea held up a finger as she leaned forward. “But it is possible that, while the others are ungifted in the conventional sense, many have this otherwise invisible and sterile spark of the gift

so that they are detected and destroyed before others, like me, know of them.

“It is entirely possible that those like you are the ones who are truly rare, as is the single formally gifted heir, and that’s why you survived for those like me to notice, thus slanting our idea of which kind is rare, and which common. As I said, I think there is far more to this than I know or can understand. But of those truly like you, devoid of even this otherwise imperceptible glimmer of the gift, all are—”

“Pillars of Creation,” Jennsen said, sarcastically.

Althea chuckled. “Perhaps that sounds better.”

“But to the gifted, we are holes in the world.”

Althea’s smile withered. “It is so. Were Adie here, blind as she is with her eyes and seeing only with her gift, were you to stand before her she would see everything but you. She would be blind to you. To Adie, able to see with the gift only, you would truly be a hole in the world.”

“That doesn’t make me feel very good about myself.”

Althea’s smile returned. “Don’t you see, child? It proves only the limitation. To one who is blind, everyone is a hole in the world.”

Jennsen thought it over. “Then, it’s only a matter of perception. Some people are simply lacking the ability to perceive me in one narrow way.”

Althea gave her a single nod. “That’s right. But because those with the gift often use their ability without conscious thought, like you use your vision, it’s very disturbing to those with the gift to encounter one such as you.”

“Disturbing? Why is it disturbing?”