The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

“But I need it.”

He fell silent. She looked back behind, searching for the hawker selling charms. It all flashed back through her mind. He had bumped into her, jostled her. He was really cutting her purse. She couldn’t even recall what he looked like—just that he was scruffy and ill kept. She hadn’t wanted to look at his face, meet his eyes. She couldn’t seem to get her breath as she frantically looked this way and that, trying to find the man who had stolen her money.

“No…” she whined, too overcome to know what to say. “No, oh please no.” She sank down, sitting on the ground beside the table. “I need a horse. Dear spirits, I need a horse.”

The man hurriedly poured wine in a cup and squatted down beside her as she sobbed. “Here, drink this.”

“I have no money,” she managed to get out as she wept.

“No charge,” he said, giving her a sympathetic, lopsided smile of straight white teeth. “It’ll help. Drink it down.”

The other two blond-headed brothers, Joe and Clayton, stood behind the table, hands in their pockets, heads lowered with regret for the woman their brother was tending to.

The man tipped the cup up, trying to get her to drink as she cried. Some spilled down her chin, some went in her mouth and she had to swallow it.

“Why do you need a horse?” the man asked.

“I have to get to Althea’s place.”

“Althea? The old sorceress?”

Jennsen nodded as she wiped wine from her chin and tears from her cheeks.

“Have you been invited out there?”

“No,” Jennsen admitted. “But I have to go.”

“Why?”

“It’s a matter of life or death. I need Althea’s help or a man could die.”

Crouching beside her, still holding the cup he’d used to give her a drink, his eyes turned from looking into hers to take in her ringlets of red hair under her hood.

The big man put his hands on his knees and stood, going back to his brothers to let her be as she tried but failed to halt her desperate tears. Jennsen wept with worry for Betty, too. Betty was Jennsen’s friend and companion, and a connection to her mother. The poor goat probably felt abandoned and unloved. Jennsen would give anything, just then, to see Betty’s little upright tail wagging.

She told herself that she couldn’t just sit there acting like a child. It would accomplish nothing. She had to do something. There could be no help in the shadow of Lord Rahl’s palace, and she had no money to help her. She couldn’t depend on anyone—except Sebastian, and he had no hope of help but from her. Now his life depended on her actions alone. She couldn’t sit there feeling sorry for herself. If her mother had taught her anything, she had taught Jennsen better than this.

She had no idea what to do to rescue Betty, but she at least knew what she had to attempt in order to help Sebastian. That was what was most important, and what she had to do. She was wasting precious time.

Jennsen stood, angrily wiping the tears from her face, and then put a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the sun. She had been in the palace a long time, so it was hard to judge, but she figured it to be late afternoon. Taking into account the sun’s position in the sky at the time of year, she judged which way was west. If only she had Rusty, she could make better time. If only she had her money, she could rent or buy another horse.

No sense yearning for what was gone and couldn’t be recovered. She would have to walk.

“Thank you for the wine,” Jennsen said to the blond-headed man standing there fidgeting as he watched her.

“Not at all,” he said as he cast his gaze downward.

As she started away, he seemed to gather his courage. He stepped out into the dusty road and grabbed her by the arm. “Hold on there, ma’am. What are you thinking of doing?”

“A man’s life depends on my getting out to Althea’s place. I’ve no choice. I have to walk.”

“What man? What’s going on that his life would hinge on you seeing Althea?”

Jennsen, looking up into the man’s sky blue eyes, gently pulled her arm away. Big and blond, with his strong jaw and muscular build, he reminded her of the men who had murdered her mother.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t say.”

Jennsen held the hood of her cloak tight against a bitter gust of wind as she struck out again. Before she had taken a dozen steps, he took several long strides and gently grasped her under her upper arm again to drag her to a halt.

“Look,” he said in a quiet voice when she scowled at him, “do you even have any supplies?”

Jennsen’s scowl withered and she had to fight back the tears of frustration. “Everything is with our horses. The sausage lady, Irma, has everything. Except my money—the cutpurse has that.”

“So, you have nothing.” It wasn’t a question so much as scorn for so simpleminded a plan.

“I have myself and I know what I must do.”

“And you intend to strike out for Althea’s, in the winter, on foot, without any supplies?”

“I’ve lived in the woods my whole life. I can get by.”

She pulled, but his big hand held her arm securely. “Maybe so, but the Azrith Plains aren’t the woods. There’s nothing to help you make a shelter. Not a stick of wood to make a fire. After the sun sets it’ll get as cold as the Keeper’s heart. You don’t have any supplies or anything. What are you going to eat?”

This time she more forcefully jerked her arm away and succeeded in freeing it. “I don’t have any other choice. You may not understand that, but there are some things that you have to do, even if it means risking your own life, or else life means nothing and isn’t worth living.”

Before he could stop her again, Jennsen ran into the river of people moving along the makeshift streets. She pushed her way through the crowds, past people selling food and drink she could not buy. It all served to remind her that she had not eaten since the sausage that morning. The knowledge that Sebastian might not live to have another meal gave urgency to her steps.

She turned down the first road going west. With the southern winter sun on the left side of her face, she thought about the sunlight in the palace when she had been at the devotion, and how much it felt like her mother’s embrace.

Chapter 19

Jennsen wove her way among the people below the plateau, making her way down the haphazard streets, imagining she was stepping among trees, moving through the forests where she felt most at home. That was where she wished she were, in a quiet forest, sheltered among the trees, with her mother, the both of them watching Betty nibble on tender shoots. Some of the people pausing at stalls, or the merchants behind tables, or those strolling along, cast a gaze in Jennsen’s direction, but she kept her head bowed and conti

nued along at a brisk pace.

She was worried sick about Betty. The sausage lady, Irma, sold goat meat. That was no doubt why she wanted to buy Betty in the first place. The poor goat was probably heartsick and terrified at being taken away by a stranger. As sick as Jennsen was over Betty, though, and as much as she ached to go find her and have her back, she couldn’t put that desire ahead of Sebastian’s life.

Passing stands selling food only served to remind her of how hungry she was, especially after the effort of climbing all the stairs up to the palace. She hadn’t eaten since that morning and wished she could buy something to eat, now, but there was no hope of that. People cooked over open fires made with wood they no doubt had brought with them. Pans sizzled with butter, garlic, and spices. Smoke from roasting meats drifted past. The aromas were intoxicating and made her hunger nearly unbearable.

When her mind wandered to her hunger, Jennsen thought about Sebastian. Every moment she delayed could mean another lash of a whip for him, another cut, another twist to a limb, another broken bone. Another moment of agony. The thought of it made bile rise in the back of her throat. No wonder he was here to help in the struggle to defeat D’Hara.

A thought even more terrifying abruptly jolted her: Mord-Sith. Wherever Jennsen had traveled with her mother throughout D’Hara, no one feared anything or anyone more than they feared the Mord-Sith. Their ability to inflict pain and suffering was legend. It was said that this side of the Keeper’s hand, a Mord-Sith existed without peer.

What if the D’Harans used one of those women to torture Sebastian? Even though he had no magic, that wouldn’t matter. With that Agiel of theirs—and who knew what else—the Mord-Sith could hurt anyone. They simply had the added ability to capture a person with magic. A person without magic, like Sebastian, would be nothing but a brief blood sport to a Mord-Sith.