The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

The woman, for the first time, began to weep. “I don’t know. I had hoped to make it by tonight, but it will be dark before long. I fear it’s farther than I can manage. Please, help me?”

Jennsen rocked the sleeping boy in her arms as she smiled at the woman. “Of course we’ll help you.”

The woman’s fingers clutched Jennsen’s arm. “I’m sorry to trouble you.”

“Hush, now. A ride is no trouble.”

“We can’t leave you out here with a sick child,” Sebastian agreed. “We’ll take you to the healers.”

“Let me get up on my horse, and then hand your boy up to me,” Jennsen said as she returned the child to his mother’s arms.

Once mounted, Jennsen stretched her arms down. The woman hesitated, fearing to part with her child, but then quickly handed him up. Jennsen settled the sleeping boy in her lap, making sure he was well balanced and secure, as Sebastian clasped arms with the woman and helped lift her up behind him. As they started out, the woman held Sebastian tight around the waist, but her eyes were on Jennsen and the boy.

Jennsen took the lead to give the woman the assurance of being able to see the stranger who now held her baby, and her hopes. She urged Rusty ahead through the deep snow, worried that the child was not really sleeping, but unconscious with fever.

The wind billowed snow around them as they raced along the road in the fading light. Concern for the boy, wanting to get him to help, made the road seemed endless. Each rise revealed only more forest ahead, each curve in the road yet another sweep of empty woods. Jennsen was concerned, too, that their horses couldn’t be pushed so hard through deep snow without a rest or they would drop. Sooner or later, despite the fading light, they would have to slow to give the struggling horses a rest.

Jennsen looked back over her shoulder when Sebastian whistled.

“That way,” the woman called, gesturing toward a cutoff to a smaller trail.

Jennsen urged Rusty to the right, up the trail. It rose abruptly, switching back and forth to ascend the sharp rise. The trees on the mountainside were huge, with trunks as big around as her horse, rising to a great height before branches spread overhead to close off the leaden sky. The snow was unbroken by anyone before them, but the lay of the trail, the dish in the surface of the snow, the undulating but smooth line it took up through the forest, among rocks and snow-crusted brush, and the way it followed beneath steep overhangs of rock wall and along ledges made it easy enough to follow.

Jennsen checked the boy asleep at her lap and found him the same. She watched the forest around them for any sign of people, but saw none. After being at the palace, in Althea’s swamp, and out on the Azrith Plains, it was comforting to again be in the forest. Sebastian didn’t especially like the woods. He didn’t like the snow, either, but she found it peaceful the way the snow lent the woods a sacred silence.

The smell of woodsmoke hanging in the air told her that they were close. A look over her shoulder at the mother’s face told her the same. Breaking over the top of a ridge revealed several small wooden buildings along a gently rising wooded slope. In a clearing behind was a small barn with a fenced paddock. A horse at the fence rail, its ears alert, watched them approaching. The horse lifted its head, tossing a whinny their way. Rusty and Pete both snorted a brief greeting in return.

Jennsen put two fingers between her teeth and whistled as Rusty plowed through the drifts toward the small cabin at the upper end, the only one with smoke rising from the chimney.

The door opened as she reached the building. A man threw on a flaxen cloak on his way out to greet them. He wasn’t old. He could be the right age. He pulled up the cloak’s broad hood against the cold before she could get a good look at his face.

“We have a sick boy,” Jennsen said as the man took hold of Rusty’s reins. “Are you one of the healers known as the Raug’Moss?”

The man nodded. “Bring him inside.”

The mother had already slid down off Sebastian’s horse and was standing beside Jennsen to receive her boy into her waiting arms. “Thank the Creator you’re here, today.”

The healer, laying a reassuring hand on the woman’s back, urging her toward the door, tilted his head in gesture to Sebastian. “You’re welcome to put your horses in the back with mine and then come inside.”

Sebastian thanked him and led the horses away while Jennsen followed the other two toward the door. In the failing light, she still hadn’t been able to get a good look at the man’s face.

It was too much to hope, she knew, but at the very least, this man was a Raug’Moss and could answer her question.

Chapter 33

Inside the cabin, a large hearth made of rounded rocks took up most of the wall to the right. Crude burlap curtains hung to the sides of the two doorways to rear rooms. A rough-hewn mantel held a lamp, as did the plank tabletop, neither lamp lit. Oak logs crackled and popped in the hearth, lending the room a smoky but inviting aroma, as well as the soft flicker of firelight. An iron arm, black with soot, held a lidded kettle off to the side of the fire. After so long out in the weather, Jennsen felt it was almost too hot inside.

The healer laid the boy on one of several pallets along the wall opposite the hearth. The mother knelt on one knee, watching as he drew back the folds of the blanket. Jennsen left them to examine the child as she casually checked the place, making sure there were no surprises lurking. There hadn’t been any chimney smoke coming from the other cabins, and she hadn’t seen any tracks through the fresh snow, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be people in those other cabins.

Jennsen moved across the room, past the trestle table in the center, to warm her hands at the hearth. It gave her the chance to cast a glance into the two rooms at the rear. Each was tiny, with a sleeping pallet and a few items of clothing hanging on pegs. There was no one else in the place. Between the doorways stood simple pine cabinets.

As Jennsen held her hands up before the heat of the fire and the boy’s mother sang him soft songs, the healer hurried to the cabinet and pulled out a number of clay jars.

“Bring a flame for the lamp, please?” he asked as he set his armload of items on the table.

Jennsen pried a long splinter from one of the logs stacked to the side, then held it in the wavering flames until it caught. While she lit the lamp and then replaced the tall glass chimney, he took pinches of fine powders from several of the jars and added them to a white cup.

“How is the boy?” she asked in a whisper.

He glanced across the room. “Not good.”

“What can I do to help?” Jennsen asked after she had adjusted the wick.

He wiggled the stopper from a jar. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind, bring over the mortar and pestle from the center cupboard.”

Jennsen retrieved the heavy gray stone mortar and pestle for him and set it on the table beside the lamp. He was adding a mustard-colored powder to the cup. So intent was he on his task that he hadn’t removed his c

loak, but when he pushed the hood back out of his way she could finally get a good look at him.

His face didn’t rivet her, the way Wizard Rahl’s so unexpectedly had. She saw nothing in this man’s round eyes, straight brow, or the pleasant enough line of his mouth that looked at all familiar to her. He gestured to a bottle made of wavy green glass.

“If you would, could you please grind one of those for me?”

While he hurried to the corner to lift a brown crockery pot down from a high shelf, Jennsen unfastened the wire hold-down and removed the glass lid from the jar. She was astonished to see the strangest little things inside. It was the shape that so surprised her. She turned one over with a finger. It was dark, flat, and round. She could see by the light of the lamp that it was something that had been dried. She jiggled the jar. They all looked the same—like a jar full of little Graces.

Just like the magical symbol, these things had an outer circle, parts that suggested a square inside that, and a smaller circle inside the square. Overlaying it all, tying it together, was another structure rather like a fat star. While not exactly a Grace, the way she had always seen it drawn, it bore a remarkable resemblance.

“What is this?” she asked.

The healer cast off his cloak and pushed up the sleeves of his simple robes. “Part of a flower—the dried base of the filament from a mountain fever rose. Pretty little things, they are. I’m sure you must have seen them before. They come in a variety of colors, depending on where they grow, but they’re best known for the common blush color. Hasn’t your husband ever brought you a nosegay of mountain fever roses?”

Jennsen felt her face flush. “He’s not—we’re just traveling together. We’re friends, is all.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding neither surprised nor curious. He pointed. “See there? The petals are attached to it here, and here. When the petals and stamen are removed and this selected part of the head is dried, they end up looking like this.”