The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

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.

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.

Chapter 49

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 fie

rce commitment.