The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

“Things of magic,” Althea said in a grim tone.

“I’m sorry, but all I can tell you is that I got through, and I never saw anything but the snake.” She frowned toward the ceiling as she thought again. “Although, I did see things in the water—dark things under the water.”

“Fish,” Friedrich scoffed.

&nbsp

; “And in the bushes—I saw things in the bushes. Well, I didn’t see them, exactly, but I saw the bushes move and I know something was in there. They remained hidden, though.”

“These things,” Althea said, “do not hide in bushes. They fear nothing. They hide from nothing. They would have come out and torn you apart.”

“I don’t know why they didn’t,” Jennsen said. Her gaze darted out through the window at the side to the stagnant expanses of murky water beneath a shadowy tangle of vines, feeling a pang of worry about her return journey. With Sebastian’s life at stake, she felt frustration at the sorceress’s pointless talk about what was in the swamp. After all, she had made it through, so it wasn’t as impossible as the two of them wished her to believe. “Why do you live out here, anyway? I mean, if you’re so wise and all, then why do you live out here in a swamp with snakes?”

Althea lifted an eyebrow. “I prefer my snakes without arms and legs.”

Jennsen took a breath and started again. “Althea, I came because I’m in desperate need of your help.”

Althea shook her head as if she didn’t want to hear it. “I can’t help you.”

Jennsen was stunned to have her request dismissed so out of hand. “But, you must.”

“Really.”

“Please, you helped me before. I need that help again. Lord Rahl is getting closer all the time. I’ve only just escaped with my life on more than one occasion. I’m at my wits’ end and don’t know what else to do. I don’t even really know why my father wanted to kill me in the first place.”

“Because you are an ungifted offspring.”

“There. You’ve just spoken the very reason why it makes no sense: I’m ungifted. So, what possible threat could I represent? If he was a powerful wizard, what harm could I cause him? What threat could I possibly represent? Why did he want so badly to kill me?”

“The Lord Rahl destroys any offspring he discovers who are not gifted.”

“But why? That he does is the result, not a reason. There must be a reason. If I at least knew that much of it, I might be able to figure out how to do something about it.”

She shook her head again. “I don’t know. It isn’t like the Lord Rahl came to discuss his business with me.”

“After I saw your sister and she wouldn’t help me, I went back to ask her about that very thing, but she had been murdered by the same men who are after me. They must have feared she could tell me something, so they murdered her.” Jennsen smoothed her hair back over her head. “I’m sorry about your sister, I really am. But don’t you see? You’re in danger, too, for what you know about it.”

“I can’t imagine why they would harm her.” Frowning, Althea stared off as she considered. “What you’re saying, that she might know something, makes no sense. She was never involved in any of it. Lathea knew less than I. She wouldn’t have known anything of why Darken Rahl would have wanted to rid the world of you. She could have told you nothing.”

“Well, even if he thought those of us born without the gift were inferior and just plain worthless—if he wanted to exterminate the runts of the litter, so to speak—why would his son, my half brother, want just as badly to kill me? I couldn’t harm my father, and I can’t harm his son, yet Richard, too, sends quads to hunt me.”

Althea still didn’t looked convinced. “Are you sure they are Lord Rahl’s men doing this? I just don’t see in the stones—”

“They came into my house. They killed my mother. I saw them—I fought them. They were D’Haran soldiers.” She drew the knife from its sheath at her belt and held the handle up for the woman to see. “One was wearing this.”

Althea’s gaze took it in with care, the way one would look upon anything deadly, but she said nothing.

“Why would Lord Rahl kill my mother? Why does the House of Rahl want me dead?”

“I don’t know the answer.” Althea lifted her hands and let them fall back to her lap. “I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.”

Jennsen went to her knees before the woman. “Althea, please, even if you don’t know why, I still need your help. Your sister wouldn’t help, she said only you could. She said that only you can see the holes in the world. I don’t know what that means, but I know it has something to do with all this, with magic. Please, I need help.”

The sorceress appeared puzzled. “And what is it you wish me to do?”

“Hide me. Like you did when I was little. Cast a spell over me so that they won’t know who I am or where to find me—so they can’t follow me. I just want to be left alone. I need the spell that will hide me from Lord Rahl.

“But it’s not just for me. I need it to help a friend, too. I need the spell to hide my true identity so that I can go back into the People’s Palace and get him out.”

“Get him out? What do you mean? Who is this friend?”

“His name is Sebastian. He helped me when the men attacked and murdered my mother. He saved my life. He brought me here, to see you. Your sister said we should ask at the palace where we could find you. He traveled all that way with me, helped me get here, so I could come to see you to get the help I need. We went to the palace to find Friedrich so I could know where you lived, and while we were there the guards took Sebastian prisoner.

“Don’t you see? He helped me and, because of that, they have him. They will surely torture him. He was helping me—it’s my fault he’s in this trouble. Please, Althea, I need your help to get him out. I need a spell to hide me so I can go back in and rescue him.”

Incredulous, Althea stared. “Why do you think a spell could accomplish this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about how magic works. I just know that I need its help—that I need a spell to hide my true identity.”

The woman shook her head, as if she were dealing with a complete lunatic. “Jennsen, what you are envisioning is not how magic works. Do you think I can cast a web and you will then be able to walk into the palace and guards will somehow fall under this spell and start unlocking doors for you?”

“Well, I don’t know—”

“Of course you don’t. That is why I’m telling you that it doesn’t work that way. Magic is not a key that opens doors for you. Magic is not something that—poof—spontaneously solves problems. Magic would only compound the problems. If you have a bear in your tent, you don’t invite another in. Two bears will not be better than the one.”

“But Sebastian needs my help. I need the help of magic in order to get him that help.”

“Were you to go in there, as you think, and use some kind of”—she waved a hand around as if trying to think of a word to describe it—“I don’t know, magic dust or something, to open prison doors to get your friend out, what do you suppose would happen? That you two could then go off happily and that would be the end of it?”

“Well, I don’t know…exactly…”

Althea leaned forward on an elbow. “Don’t you suppose that the people who run the palace would want to know how this happened, so they could prevent it from happening again? Don’t you suppose that some perfectly innocent people whose job it is to guard doors there would be in a great deal of trouble for allowing a prisoner to escape and that they might suffer because of it? Don’t you suppose that the palace officials would want their escaped prisoner back? Don’t you suppose, since such measures were used to get him out, that whatever threat they feared this friend of yours might represent, after such an escape they would think that he must be even more dangerous than they originally believed? Don’t you suppose that some perfectly innocent people might be hurt during the extreme measures taken to apprehend such an escaped prisoner? Don’t you suppose they would send out an army and the gifted to comb the countryside before he could get far?

“Don’t you even suppose,” the sorceress finally said in the gravest of tones, “that a wizard as powerful as the Lord Rahl of all of D’Hara might have some decidedly nasty and painfully protracted fatal surprise in store for anyone daring to use a pitif

ul old sorceress’s spell against him—and within his very own palace walls on top of it?”

Jennsen stared at the dark eyes fixed on her. “I never thought of all that.”

“You are telling me something I already know.”

“But…how can I get Sebastian back? How can I help him?”

“I would suppose you must figure a way to get him out—if he can be gotten out in the first place—but it must be done in a way that takes all that I have said, and more, into account. Breaking a hole in the wall for him to step through to freedom would bring out the hounds, now wouldn’t it? It would bring you trouble much like magic would. You must instead think of a way that convinces them to turn him out on their own. Then they won’t be chasing you to have him back.”

That all made sense to her. “How can I accomplish such a thing?”

The sorceress shrugged. “If it can be done, I would wager that you can do it. After all, you have so far lived to grow into a fine young woman, escaped quads, found me, and got yourself in here, now didn’t you? You’ve accomplished much. You must only set your mind to it. But you don’t start out by picking up a stick and whacking a hornet’s nest.”

“But I can’t see how I can do it without the help of magic. I’m a nobody.”

“A nobody,” Althea scoffed as she leaned back. She was becoming a teacher impatient with a student doing poorly on a lesson. “You are somebody; you are Jennsen, a smart girl with a brain. You should not kneel before me and plead ignorance, telling me what you cannot do while asking instead for others to do for you.

“If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking for others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.”

“But, maybe, in this case, it’s different—”

“The sun rises in the east; there are no special exceptions, just because you wish it. I know of what I speak, and I am telling you, magic is not the answer. What do you think? If you had a spell that they didn’t know you were Darken Rahl’s daughter, then they would fall over themselves to open doors for you? They will open the door of your friend’s cell for no one unless they think it should be opened. It would make no difference if there were a spell to turn you into a six-legged rabbit—they would still not open the doors you want opened just because you were now a six-legged rabbit by the hand of magic.”