The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

“Magic decides,” she hissed.

Oba had to remind himself that he was invincible. He gestured, trying to look unconcerned.

“What about the others? Who are they, then?”

“I thought you wanted to learn about yourself, not others.” She leaned toward him with a countenance of supreme self-confidence. “Other people don’t really matter to you, now do they?”

Oba glared at her private smile. “I guess not.”

She rattled the single stone in her loose fist. Without looking away from his eyes, she cast the stone down at the board. Lightning flickered. The stone tumbled across the board, rolling to a stop out beyond the outer gilded circle. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“So,” he asked, “what does it mean?”

Rather than answer, and without looking down, she scooped up the stone. Her gaze didn’t move off his face as she rattled his stone again. Again, and without a word, she cast it at the board. Lightning flashed. Amazingly, the stone came to rest in the same place as it had the first time—not just close to the same place, but in the exact same place. Rain drummed against the roof as a stutter of thunder crackled through the swamp.

Althea quickly swept up the stone and cast it a third time, again accompanied by a flash of lightning, only this time the lightning was closer. Oba licked his lips as he waited for the fall of the stone that represented him.

Goose bumps ran up his arms as he saw the dark little stone roll to a stop in the same place on the board as it had the two previous times. The instant it had halted, thunder boomed.

Oba put his hands on his knees and leaned back. “Some trick.”

“Not a trick,” she said. “Magic.”

“I thought you couldn’t do magic.”

“I can’t.”

“Then how are you doing that?”

“I told you, I’m not doing it. The stones are doing it themselves.”

“Well, then, what’s it supposed to mean about me when it stops, there, in that place?”

He realized that somewhere during the stone-rolling, her smile had gone away. One graceful finger, lit by the firelight, pointed down to where his stone lay.

“That place represents the underworld,” she said in a grim voice. “The world of the dead.”

Oba tried to look only mildly interested. “What does that have to do with me?”

Her big dark eyes wouldn’t stop boring into his soul. “That’s where the voice comes from, Oba.”

Goose bumps flitted up his arms. “How do you know my name?”

She cocked her head, casting half her face in deep shadow. “I made a mistake, once, long ago.”

“What mistake?”

“I helped save your life. Helped your mother get you away from the palace before Darken Rahl could find out that you existed and kill you.”

“Liar!” Oba snatched up the stone from the board. “I’m his son! Why would he want to kill me!”

She hadn’t taken her penetrating gaze from him. “Maybe because he knew you would listen to the voices, Oba.”

Oba wanted to cut out her terrible eyes. He would cut them out. He thought it best, though, if he found out more, first, if he gathered his courage, first.

“You were a friend of my mother?”

“No. I didn’t really know her. Lathea knew her better. Your mother was but one young woman among several who were in trouble and a great deal of danger. I helped them, that’s all. For that, Darken Rahl crippled me. If you choose not to believe the truth about his intentions toward you, then I leave it to you to please yourself with a different answer of your own devising.”

Oba considered her words, checking them for any connection they might have to anything on his lists. He didn’t find any links right off.

“You and Lathea helped the children of Darken Rahl?”

“My sister Lathea and I were at one time very close. We were both committed, each in our own way, to helping those in need. But she came to resent those like you, offspring of Lord Rahl, because of the agony it caused me to have tried to help. She could not bring herself to witness my punishment and pain. She left.

“It was a weakness on her part, but I knew she could not help having such feelings. I loved her, so I would not beg her to visit me, here, like this, despite how terribly I missed her. I never saw her again. It was the only kindness I could do her—let her run away. I would imagine she did not look kindly upon you. She had her reasons, even if they were misdirected.”

Oba was not about to be talked into any sympathy for that hateful woman. He inspected the dark stone for a time and then gave it back to Althea.

“Those three were just luck. Do it again.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I did it a hundred times.” She handed the stone back. “You do it. Cast it yourself.”

Oba defiantly rattled the stone in his loose fist, as he had seen her do. She leaned back against her chair as she watched him. Her eyes were getting droopy.

Oba threw the stone down at the board with enough force to be certain that it would roll well beyond the board and prove her wrong. As the stone left his hand, lightning flashed so hard that he flinched and looked up, fearing it was blasting through the roof. Thunder crashed on its heels, shaking the house. The strike felt like it rattled his bones. But then it was over and the only sound was the rain drumming against the undamaged roof and windows.

Oba grinned in relief and looked down, only to see the cursed stone sitting in the exact same place it had come to rest the three times before.

He jumped up as if he’d been bitten by a snake. He rubbed his sweating palms against his thighs.

“A trick,” he said. “It’s just a trick. You’re a sorceress and you’re just doing magic tricks.”

“You are the one who has done the trick, Oba. You are the one who invited his darkness into your soul.”

“And what if I have!”

She smiled at his admission. “You may listen to the voice, Oba, but you are not the one. You are merely his servant, no more. He must choose another if he is to bring darkness upon the world.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, but I do. You may be a hole in the world, but you are missing a necessary ingredient.”

“And what would that be?”

“Grushdeva.”

Oba felt the hair at the back of his neck stiffen. While he didn’t recognize the specific word, the source was indisputable. The idiosyncratic nature of the word belonged solely to the voice.

“A senseless word. It means nothing.”

She regarded him for a time with a look that he feared because it seemed to hold a world of forbidden knowledge. By the cast of iron resolve in her eyes, he knew that no mere blade would gain that knowledge for him.

“A long time ago, in a faraway place,” she said in her quiet voice, “another sorceress revealed to me a bit of the Keeper’s tongue. That is one of his words, in his primordial language. You would not have heard it unless you were the right one. Grushdeva. It means ‘vengeance.’ You are not the one he has chosen.”

Oba thought she might be taunting him. “You don’t know what words I’ve heard or anything about it. I’m the son of Darken Rahl. A rightful heir. You don’t know anything about what I hear. I will have power you can only imagine.”

“Free will is forfeit when dealing with the Keeper. You have sold what is yours alone and priceless…for nothing but ashes.

“You have sold yourself into the worst kind of slavery, Oba, in return for nothing more than the illusion of self-worth. You have no say in what is to be. You are not the one. It is another.” She wiped the sweat from her brow. “And, that much of it is yet to be decided.”

“Now you presume to think you can alter the course of what I have wrought? Dictate what shall be?” Oba’s own words surprised him. They’d seemed to come out before he thought to say them.

“Such things are not amenable to the likes of me,” she admitted. “I learned at the Palace of the Prophets not to meddle in that which is above me and ungovernable. The grand scheme of life and death are the rightful province of the Creator and the Keeper.” She seemed contented behind a sly expression. “But I am not above exercising my free will.”

He’d heard enough. She was only trying to stall, to confuse him. For some reason, he couldn’t make his racing heart slow.

“What are holes in the world?”

“They are the end of the likes of me,” she said. “They are the end of everything I know.”

It was just like a sorceress to answer with a senseless riddle. “Who are the other stones?” he demanded.