The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

Jennsen glanced around briefly, to signal to Sebastian, but she didn’t see him right off. “How does one get invited?”

“Most people ask Friedrich. I see them come here to talk to him and leave without even looking at his work. I guess he asks Althea if she will see them, and the next time he returns with his gilding, he invites them. Sometimes, people give him a letter to take to his wife.

“Some people travel out there and wait. I hear that sometimes he comes out of the swamp to meet those people and pass along Althea’s invitation. Some people return from the edge of the swamp without ever being invited in, their long wait for nothing. None dare venture in uninvited, though. Least, none that did ever came back to tell about it, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you saying I’ll have to go there and just wait? Wait until she or her husband comes to invite us in?”

“Guess so. But it won’t be Althea who comes out. She never comes out of her swamp, as I hear it. You could come back here each day until Friedrich finally returns to sell his gilding. He’s never been away for more than a month. I’d say he’ll be back to the palace within a few weeks, at most.”

Weeks. Jennsen couldn’t stay in one place, waiting weeks, while Lord Rahl’s men hunted her, closing in day by day. From as close as Sebastian said they were, she didn’t think she even had days, much less weeks, before they would have her.

“Thank you, then, for all your help. I guess I’ll come back another day to see if Friedrich has returned and ask him if I might go for a telling.”

The woman smiled as she sat back down and picked up her sewing. “That might be best.” She looked up. “Sorry to hear about your mother, dear. It’s hard, I know.”

She nodded, her eyes watery, fearing to test her voice just then. The vivid scene flashed through her mind. The men, the blood everywhere, the terror of them coming for her, seeing her mother slumped on the floor, stabbed, her arm severed. With effort, Jennsen pushed the memory away, lest it consume her in grief and anger.

She had immediate worries. They had made a long and difficult journey in winter to find Althea, to obtain her help. They couldn’t wait around, hoping to be invited to visit Althea—Lord Rahl’s men were close on their heels. The last time Jennsen had wavered in her determination she had missed her chance—and Lathea had been murdered. The same thing could happen again. She had to get to Althea before those men did, at least to tell her about her sister, to warn her, if nothing else.

Jennsen scanned the vast hallway, searching for Sebastian. He couldn’t have gone far. She saw him, then, his back to her, across the broad corridor, just turning away from a place that sold silver jewelry.

Before she took two steps, she saw soldiers swarm in and surround him. Jennsen froze in her tracks. Sebastian did, too. One of the soldiers used his sword to carefully lift back Sebastian’s cloak, uncovering his array of weapons. She was too frightened to move, to take another step.

Half a dozen gleaming razor-edged pikes lowered at Sebastian. Swords came out of sheaths. People nearby backed away, others turned to look. In the center of a ring of D’Haran soldiers towering over him, Sebastian held his arms out to the sides in surrender.

Surrender.

Just then a bell, the one back at the square, tolled.

Chapter 17

The single long peal of the bell calling people to the devotion echoed through the cavernous halls as two of the big men seized Sebastian by the arms and started bearing him away. Jennsen watched helplessly as the rest of the D’Haran soldiers surrounded him in a tight formation bristling with steel meant not only to keep their prisoner at bay, but to ward any possible attempt to extricate him. It was immediately clear to her that these guards were prepared for any eventuality and took no chances, not knowing if this one armed man might signify a force about to storm the palace.

Jennsen saw that there were other men, visitors to the palace like Sebastian, also carrying swords. Perhaps it was that Sebastian carried a variety of combat weapons, and they were all concealed, that so raised the soldiers’ suspicions. But he wasn’t doing anything. It was winter—of course he was wearing a cloak. He was causing no harm. Jennsen’s urge was to yell at the soldiers to leave him be, yet she feared that if she did they would take her, too.

The people who had spread back away from the potential trouble, along with everyone else strolling the halls, all began moving toward the square. People in the shops set down their work to join them. No one paid much attention to the soldiers’ business. In response to that single chime still hanging in the air, laughter and talking trailed off to respectful whispers.

Panic clawed at Jennsen as she saw the soldiers muscling Sebastian down a hall to the side. She could see his white hair amid the dark armor. She didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They only came to find a gilder. She wanted to scream for the soldiers to stop. She dared not, though.

Jennsen.

Jennsen stood her ground against the current of bodies, trying to keep Sebastian and his captors in sight. The Lord Rahl was after her, and now they had Sebastian. Her mother had been murdered, and now they were taking Sebastian. It wasn’t fair.

As she watched, afraid to do anything to stop the soldiers, her own fear shamed her. Sebastian had done so much for her. He had made so many sacrifices for her. He had risked his life to save hers.

Jennsen’s breath came in ragged pulls. But what could she do?

Surrender.

It wasn’t fair what they were doing to Sebastian, to her, to innocent people. Anger welled up through her fear.

Tu vash misht.

He was only there because of her. She had asked him to come.

Tu vask misht.

Now, he was in trouble.

Grushdeva du kalt misht.

The words sounded so right. They flared through her, carried on flames of igniting rage.

People pushed against her. She growled through gritted teeth as she squeezed her way among the crush of people, trying to follow the soldiers who had Sebastian. It wasn’t fair. She wanted them to stop. Just stop. Stop.

Her helplessness frustrated her. She was sick of it. When they wouldn’t stop, when they kept going, it only further enraged her.

Surrender.

Jennsen’s hand slid inside her cloak. The touch of cold steel welcomed her. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her knife. She could feel the worked metal of the symbol of the House of Rahl pressing into the flesh of her palm.

A soldier gently pushed her, turning her in the direction of the rest of the crowd. “The devotion square is that way, ma’am.”

It was spoken as a suggestion, but wrapped around the core of command.

Through the rage, she looked up into his hooded eyes. She saw the dead man’s eyes. She saw the soldiers at her house—men on the floor dead, men coming for her, men grabbing her. She saw flashes of movement through a crimson sheen of blood.

As she and the soldier stared into each other’s eyes, she felt the blade at her waist coming out of its sheath.

A hand under her arm tugged at her. “This way, dear. I’ll show you where it is.”

Jennsen blinked. It was the lady who had given her directions to Althea’s place. The woman who sat in the palace of the murdering bastard Lord Rahl and sewed the peaceful scenes of the mountains and brooks.

Jennsen stared at the woman, at her inexplicable smile, trying to make sense of her. Jennsen found everything around her strangely incomprehensible. She only knew that her hand was on the hilt of her knife and she longed for the blade to be free.

But, for some reason, the knife stubbornly remained where it was.

Jennsen, at first convinced that some malevolent magic had seized her, saw then that the woman had a tight, motherly arm around her. Without realizing it, the woman was keeping Jennsen’s blade in its sheath. Jennsen locked her knees, resisting being pulled along.

The woman’s eyes, now, were set with warning. “No one misses a devotio

n, dear. No one. Let me show you where it is.”

The soldier, his expression grim, watched as Jennsen yielded, allowing herself to be guided by the woman. Jennsen and the woman, swept into the current of people moving toward the square, left the soldier behind. She looked up into the woman’s smiling face. The whole world seemed to Jennsen to be swimming in a strange light. The voices around her were a smear of sound that in her mind was pierced by the echoes of screams from her house.

Jennsen.

Through the murmuring around her, the voice, sharp and distinct, caught her attention. Jennsen listened, alert to what it might tell her.

Surrender your will, Jennsen.

It made sense, in a visceral way.

Surrender your flesh.

Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Nothing she had tried in her whole life had brought her salvation, or safety, or peace. To the contrary, everything seemed lost. There seemed nothing else to lose.

“Here we are, dear,” the woman said.

Jennsen looked around. “What?”

“Here we are.”

Jennsen felt her knees touch the tiled floor as the woman urged her down. People were all around. Before them was the square with the pool of quiet water at its center. She wanted only the voice.