The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

Lathea had died, too, but it had been a whole new experience.

Lathea had made him grin like he had never grinned before.

Oba unscrewed the top of the lamp, pulled out the woven wick, and dribbled lamp oil across the floor, over the broken pieces of the trestle table, around Lathea’s medicine cabinet lying facedown in the center of the room.

As much as he knew he would enjoy it, he couldn’t just leave her there to be discovered. There would be questions, if she was found like this. He glanced over at her. Especially if she was found like this.

That idea did hold a certain fascination. He would enjoy listening to all the hysterical talk. He would love to hear people tell him all the macabre details of the monstrous death Lathea had suffered. The very idea of a man who could have taken the powerful sorceress out in such a grisly fashion would cause a sensation. People would want to know who had done it. To some folk, he would be an avenging hero. People everywhere would be abuzz. As word spread about Lathea’s ordeal and gruesome end, the gossip would heat to a fever pitch. That would be fun.

As he emptied the last of the lamp oil, he saw his knife, where he’d left it, beside the overturned cabinet. He tossed the empty lamp on the heap of ruin and bent to retrieve his knife. It was a mess. Couldn’t have an omelet without breaking eggs, his mother always said. She said it a lot. In this case, Oba thought her tired old saw fit.

With one hand, he took Lathea’s favorite chair and tossed it into the center of the room, then began carefully cleaning his blade on the quilted throw from the chair. His knife was a valuable tool, and he kept it razor sharp. He was relieved to see the shine returning when the blood and slop was wiped off. He’d heard that magic could be troublesome in untold ways. Oba had briefly worried that the sorceress might be made up of some kind of dreadful acid sorceress-blood that once spilled would eat through steel.

He looked around. No, just regular blood. Lots of it.

Yes, the sensation this would create would be exciting.

But, he didn’t like the idea of soldiers coming around to ask questions. They were a suspicious lot, soldiers. They would poke their noses into it, sure as cows gave milk. They would spoil everything with their suspicion and questions. He didn’t think that soldiers appreciated omelets.

No, best if Lathea’s house burned down. That wouldn’t provide nearly the enjoyment that all the conversation and scandal would, but it also wouldn’t be so suspicious. People’s houses burned down all the time—especially in winter. Logs rolled out of fireplaces, spilling flaming coals; sparks shot into curtains and set homes ablaze; candles melted down and fell, catching things on fire. Happened all the time. Not really suspicious, a fire in the dead of winter. With all the lightning and sparks the sorceress sent flying willy-nilly, it was a wonder the place hadn’t already burned down. The woman was a menace.

Of course, someone might notice the blaze way down at the end of the road, but by then it would be too late. By then the fire would be too hot for anyone to be able to come near the place. Tomorrow, if no one found the place ablaze, there would be nothing but ashes.

He let out a sad sigh for the stillborn gossip, for what might have been, if not for the tragic fire that would be blamed for Lathea’s end.

Oba knew about fires. Over the years, several of his homes had burned down. Their animals had been burned alive. That was back when they had lived in other towns, before they moved to the place where they lived now.

Oba liked to watch a place burn, liked to hear the animals scream. He liked it when people came running, all in a panic. They always seemed puny in the face of what he created. People were afraid when there was a fire. The uproar caused by a burning building always swelled him with a sense of power.

Sometimes, as they yelled for more help, men would throw buckets of water on the fire or beat at the roaring flames with blankets, but that never stopped a fire Oba had started. He wasn’t slipshod. He always did good work. He knew what he was doing.

Finally finished cleaning and polishing his knife, he threw the bloody quilted throw on the oil-soaked wood beside the overturned cabinet.

What was left of Lathea was nailed to the back of the cabinet that lay facedown on the floor. She stared at the ceiling.

Oba grinned. Soon, there would be no ceiling for her to stare up at. His grin widened. And no eyes to stare with.

Oba saw a glint of light on the floor beside the cabinet. He bent and recovered the small object. It was a gold coin. Oba had never seen a gold mark before that night. It must have fallen from the pocket of Lathea’s dress, along with the others. He slipped the gold coin into his own pocket, where he’d put the rest he had collected from the floor. He’d also found a fat purse under her sleeping pallet.

Lathea had made him rich. Who knew that the sorceress had been so wealthy? Some of that money, earned by his mother from her spinning and used for his hated cures, had at last returned to Oba. Justice, finally done.

As Oba started for the fireplace, he heard the soft but unmistakable crunch of footsteps in the snow outside. He froze in midstride.

The footsteps were coming closer. They were approaching the door to Lathea’s house.

Who would be coming to Lathea’s place this late at night? That was just plain inconsiderate. Couldn’t they wait until morning for their cures? Couldn’t they let the poor woman get her rest? Some people only thought of themselves.

Oba snatched up the poker leaning against the fireplace and quickly spilled the burning oak logs out of the hearth and across the oil-soaked floor. The oil, the splintered wood, the bedsheets, and the quilted throw caught flame with a woosh. Dense white smoke swirled up around Lathea’s pyre.

Quick as a fox, Oba scurried out the hole that the troublesome sorceress had conveniently blown through the back wall when she had tried to kill him with her magic.

She didn’t know that he had become invincible.

Jennsen was pulled up short when Sebastian caught her by the arm. She turned to see his face in the dim light coming from the only window. That orange glow danced in his eyes. She knew immediately by his serious expression that she should remain silent.

Sebastian noiselessly drew his sword as he slipped past her on his way to the door. In that smooth, practiced movement, she saw a professional, a man familiar with such business.

He leaned to the side, trying for a look through the window without having to step into the deep snow below it. He turned back and whispered.

“Fire!”

Jennsen rushed to him. “Hurry. She might be asleep. We have to warn her.”

Sebastian considered for only an instant, then burst through the door. Jennsen was right on his heels. She had difficulty making sense of what she saw inside. The place was washed in whirling orange light that cast monstrous shadows up the walls. In that wavering light, everything seemed surreal, out of scale, and out of place.

When she spotted the debris in the center of the room, it became only too real. Sh

e saw a woman’s open hand sticking out beyond the top of what looked to be a tall wooden cabinet that had fallen. Jennsen drew a choking gasp of smoke and the smell of lamp oil. Thinking that maybe the cabinet had toppled and hurt the old sorceress, Jennsen rushed to help.

As she raced around the foot of the splintered chest, she caught the full view of what was left of Lathea.

The shock of it stiffened her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t blink her wide eyes. She gagged on the sickly stench of butchery and blood. As Jennsen stared, her anguished cry was lost in the leaping roar of flames and crackle of burning wood.

Sebastian briefly took in the remains of Lathea nailed to the back of the cabinet, only one detail of many as his gaze scanned the room. By his calculated movements, she surmised that he had seen such things enough that the human element no longer arrested his attention as it did hers.

Jennsen.

Jennsen’s fingers tightened around the hilt of her knife. She could feel the ornately worked ridges of metal pressing against her palm, the worked metal peaks and whorls that made up the letter “R.” As she gasped her breath past the nausea welling up inside, she pulled the blade free.

Surrender.

“They’ve been here,” she whispered. “The D’Haran soldiers have been here.”

What she detected in his eyes was more like surprise, or confusion, than anything else.

He frowned as he glanced around again. “Do you really think so?”

Jennsen.

She ignored the echo of the dead voice in her head and thought back to the man they had met out on the road after they had come to see the sorceress the first time. He was big, blond, and good-looking, like most D’Haran soldiers. She hadn’t thought at the time that he was a soldier. Could he have been one, though?

No, if anything, he had seemed more intimidated by them than they were of him. Soldiers didn’t behave the way that man had.

“Who else? We didn’t see all of them, before. It had to be the rest of the quad from back at my house. When we escaped out the back way, they must have somehow followed us.”