The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

Jennsen felt a kind of tingling dread working its way up her legs. Something was wrong. Gripping the knife, she gathered her courage of purpose as the voice filled her head, until there was no room for anything else.

“The Lord Rahl has been trying to murder me my whole life. When you killed your father, you took his place. You sent men after me. You’ve hounded me just like your father. You sent the quads after us. You bastard, you sent those men who murdered my mother!”

Richard listened without argument, and then spoke in a calm, deliberate voice. “Don’t lay a cloak of guilt around my shoulders because others are evil.”

Jennsen was jolted, realizing that was very close to the words her mother had used the night before she died. “Don’t you ever wear a cloak of guilt because they are evil.”

The muscles in his jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. “What have you done with Kahlan?”

“She’s my queen, now!” came a voice echoing through the columns.

Jennsen vaguely recognized the voice. As she looked around, she didn’t see Sister Perdita anywhere.

Richard passed her, already moving toward the voice, like a shadow moving by, and then he was suddenly gone. She had missed her chance to stab him. She couldn’t believe that he had been standing right in front of her, and she had missed her chance.

“Jenn!” Sebastian called, pulling at her arm. “What’s the matter with you? Come on! You can still get him!”

She didn’t know what was wrong. Something was. She pressed her hands to her head, trying to stop the drone of the voice. She no longer could. She had made a bargain, and the voice was mercilessly demanding that she hold to it, crushing her mind with pain unlike any she had ever suffered.

When Jennsen heard laughter echoing through the forest of stone pillars, she moved swiftly, the heat and her exhaustion forgotten. She and Sebastian ran toward the sound, weaving their way among the disorder of towering rock. She no longer knew where she was, which way was which. She raced through stone passageways that opened up to others, along their twisting course, under archways of rock, among columns, and through shadows and light. It was like moving through a strange and confusing combination of corridors and woods, except that these walls were stone, not plaster, and the trees were rock.

As they came around an immense pillar, there, among others standing like sentinels, was an open area of undulating smooth rock in a jumble of curves, with smaller stone columns as thick around as ancient pines.

A woman was tied to one of the columns.

There was no doubt in Jennsen’s mind that this was Richard’s wife, Kahlan, the Mother Confessor.

Off in another direction came the echoing laughter, teasing, leading Richard away from what he sought.

The Mother Confessor didn’t look like the monster Jennsen had pictured. She looked in bad shape, limp in the ropes around the pillar. She was not bound securely, but simply, with rope around her middle, as a child might tie a playmate to a tree.

She was apparently unconscious, some of her long mass of hair pendent around her hanging head, her arms swinging free. She wore simple traveling clothes, though neither they nor the partial veil of hair hid what a beautiful woman she was. She looked only a few years older than Jennsen. She didn’t look like she would live to be any older.

Sister Perdita appeared suddenly beside the woman, lifting the Mother Confessor’s head by her hair, taking a look, then letting her head drop again.

Sebastian ran up, pointing. “That’s her. Come on.”

As Jennsen followed, she didn’t need the voice in her head to tell her that this was the bait that had been provided in order to draw Richard Rahl in for the killing. The voice had done its part.

Girding her resolve, gripping her knife tightly, Jennsen ran over beside the Sister. She turned her back to the unconscious woman, not wanting to think about her, or to have to look at her, putting her mind instead to the task at hand. This was her chance to finish it.

The laughing man suddenly popped out from behind a pillar not far away, no doubt to help draw in the prey. Jennsen recognized his awful grin. It was the man she had seen the night the sorceress Lathea had been murdered. It was the man that had so frightened Betty, her goat. The man Jennsen thought she recognized from her nightmares.

“I see you have found my queen,” the nightmare man said.

“What?” Sebastian asked.

“My queen,” the man said, still with that terrible grin. “I am King Oba Rahl. She shall be my queen.”

Jennsen recognized, then, that there was a small resemblance in the eyes to Nathan Rahl, to Richard, to her. He didn’t have the strong likeness that Jennsen saw of herself in Richard’s eyes, but she saw enough to know that he was telling the truth—he, too, was the son of Darken Rahl.

“Here he comes,” he said, turning, holding out an introductory arm, “my brother, the old Lord Rahl.”

Richard strode out of the shadows.

“Don’t be afraid, Jenn,” Sebastian whispered in her ear, “he can’t hurt you. You can get him, now.”

Now was her chance; she would not again waste it.

Off to the side, through the thicket of columns, she caught glimpses of a wagon rolling up. She thought she recognized the horses—both gray with black manes and tails. They were horses as big as any she’d ever seen. From the corner of her eye, she saw that the driver was big and blond-headed.

Jennsen turned, staring in disbelief at the wagon when she heard Betty’s familiar bleat. The goat stood and put its front hooves up on the seat beside the driver. The big blond man gave her ears a quick affectionate rub. It looked like Tom.

“Jennsen,” Richard said, “step away from Ka

hlan.”

“Don’t do it, sis!” Oba yelled. He roared with laughter.

Knife in hand, Jennsen backed closer to the unconscious woman hanging from the pillar rising up behind. Richard would try to come through her to get at Kahlan; then Jennsen would have him.

“Jennsen,” Richard said, “why would you side with a Sister of the Dark?”

She shot a brief puzzled frown at Sister Perdita. “Sister of the Light,” she corrected.

Richard slowly shook his head as his gaze went beyond to Sister Perdita. “No. She is a Sister of the Dark. Jagang has Sisters of the Light, but he also has the others as well. They are both slaves to the dream walker; that’s why they have that ring through their lower lip.”

Jennsen had heard that name before—dream walker. She frantically tried to remember where. She recalled, too, what the Sisters had invoked that night in the woods. Everything was tumbling through her mind in a frantic rush. It wasn’t helping that the voice was there, incessantly urging her on. She was screaming inside with the need to kill this man, but something was keeping her from moving. She knew it couldn’t be his magic.

“You will have to come through Jennsen if you want to save Kahlan,” Sister Perdita said in her cool, disdainful voice. “You have run out of time, and options, Lord Rahl. You had better at least save your wife, before her time is up, as well.”

Off in the distance to the side, Jennsen caught sight of the brown goat bounding through the forest of stone, outpacing Tom by a wide margin.

“Betty?” Jennsen whispered through choking tears as she unwrapped the black veil from her head so the goat would recognize her.

The goat bleated at the sound of her name, her little upright tail wagging in a blur as she ran. Something else, smaller, was coming from behind, back by Tom. Before the goat could reach her, it reached Oba. Spotting him as it came around the pillar, Betty let out a plaintive cry and sidestepped away. Jennsen knew well Betty’s cry of distress and terror, her plea for help and comfort.