The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

The man hesitated at so pure and innocent a declaration.

“Come to me, now,” Oba and the voice commanded with deadly authority.

As Oba listened, the key in the far lock turned. The heavy door rasped open. A guard stepped into the space between the doors. The shadow of the other guard filled the outer doorway. The guard edged closer to the small slit where Oba waited on the other side. Wide eyes peered in.

“What do you want?” the man asked in a hesitant voice.

“We wish to leave, now,” Oba and the voice said. “Open the door. It is time for us to go from here.”

The man bent forward and worked at the lock until the bolt snapped back with a metallic clang that echoed in the darkness. The door pulled back, squeaking on rusty hinges. The other man stepped up behind him, looking in with the same lifeless expression.

“What would you like us to do?” the guard asked, his eyes unblinking as he stared into Oba’s eyes.

“We must leave,” Oba and the voice said. “You two will guide us out of here.”

Both guards nodded and turned to lead Oba away from the dark pen. He would never again be locked in confining little places. He had the voice to help him. He was invincible. He was glad that he had remembered that.

Althea had been wrong about the voice; she was just jealous, like all the others. He was alive, and the voice had helped him. She was just dead. He wondered how she liked that.

Oba told the two guards to lock the doors of his empty cell. That would make it more likely that it would be a while before he was discovered missing. He would have a small head start to escape Lord Rahl’s greedy grasp.

The guards led Oba through a labyrinth of narrow, dark passageways. The men moved with unerring steps, avoiding those halls where Oba could hear men talking in the distance. He didn’t want them to know he was leaving. Better if he simply slipped away without a confrontation.

“I need my money back,” Oba said. “Do you know where it is?”

“Yes,” one of the guards said in a dead voice.

They went through iron doors and onward through passageways lined with coarse stone blocks. They turned down a passageway where there were men in cells to each side, coughing, snickering, cursing through the openings in the doors. When they approached the row of doors, filthy arms reached out, clawing the air.

As the somber guards, carrying lamps, led the way down the center of the wide hall, men grabbed for them, or spat at them, or cursed them. As Oba passed, the men all fell silent. The arms drew back in through the openings. Shadows trailed behind Oba like a dark cape.

The three of them, Oba and his escort of two guards, reached a small room at the bottom of narrow twisting stairs. One guard led Oba up the stairs while the other followed. At the top, they took him into a locked room, and then through another locked door.

The lamps the guards carried in cast angular shadows through the rows of shelves heaped with things; clothing, weapons, and various personal possessions, everything from canes to flutes to puppets. Oba scanned the shelves crammed with odd things, stooping to look low, stretching up on his tiptoes to check the upper shelves. He guessed that all these things were taken from prisoners before they were locked away.

Near the end of one row, he spotted the handle of his knife. Behind the knife was a mound of the tattered clothes that he had taken from Althea’s house so that he could make it across the Azrith Plains. His boot knife was there, too. Piled in front were the cloth and leather pouches containing his considerable fortune.

He was relieved to have his money back. He was even more relieved to once again curl his fingers around the smooth wooden handle of his knife.

“You two will be my escorts,” Oba informed the guards.

“Where shall we escort you?” one asked.

Oba mulled over the question. “This is my first visit. I wish to see some of the palace.” He restrained himself from calling it his palace. That would come in time. For now, there were other matters that must come first.

He followed them up stone stairwells, through corridors and past intersections and myriad flights of stairs. Patrolling soldiers, off in the distance, saw his guards and paid little attention to the man between them.

When they came to an iron door, one of his guards unlocked it and they stepped through into a corridor beyond with a polished marble floor. Oba was taken by the splendor of the hall, the fluted columns to the sides, and the arched ceiling. The three of them marched onward, around several corners lit by dramatic silver lamps hung in the center of marble panels.

The hall turned again to open into a grand courtyard of such staggering beauty that it cast the hall they had been in, that had been the finest place Oba had ever seen, as little more than a pigsty by contrast. He stood motionless, his mouth hanging, as he stared out at pool of water open to the sky, with trees—trees—growing on the other side, as if it were a woodland pond. Except that this was indoors, and the pond was surrounded by a low benchlike enclosure of polished rust-colored marble, and the pond was lined with blue glazed tiles. There were orange fish gliding through the pond. Real fish. Real orange fish. Indoors.

In his whole life Oba had never been so struck dumb by the grandeur, the beauty, the sheer majesty of a place.

“This is the palace?” he asked his escorts.

“Only a tiny part of it,” one answered.

“Only a tiny part,” Oba repeated in astonishment. “Is the rest as nice as this?”

“No. Most places are much more grand, with soaring ceilings, arches, and massive columns between balconies.”

“Balconies? Inside?”

“Yes. People on different levels can look down on lower levels, down on grand courtyards and quadrangles.”

“On some levels vendors sell their w

ares,” the other man said. “Some areas are public areas. Some places are quarters for soldiers, or staff. There are some places where visitors may rent rooms.”

Oba took this all in as he stared at the well-dressed people moving through the place, at the glass, marble, and polished wood.

“After I’ve seen some more of the palace,” he announced to his two big, uniformed D’Haran escorts, “I will want a quiet and very private room—luxurious, mind you, but someplace out of the way where I won’t be noticed. I will first want to purchase some decent clothes and some supplies. You two will stand watch and make sure that no one knows I’m here while I have a bath and get a good night’s rest.”

“How long will we be watching you?” the other man asked. “We will be missed if we’re away for too long. If we’re gone even longer, they will search for us and find your cell empty. Then they will come looking for you. They will soon know you are here.”

Oba considered. “Hopefully, I can leave tomorrow. Will you be missed by then?”

“No,” one of the two said, his eyes empty of everything but the desire to do Oba’s bidding. “We were just leaving at the end of our guard watch. We shouldn’t be missed before tomorrow.”

Oba smiled. The voice had chosen the right men. “By then, I’ll be on my way. But until then, I should enjoy my visit and see some of the palace.”

Oba’s fingers glided over the handle of his knife. “Maybe tonight, I might even like the company of a woman at dinner. A discreet woman.”

Both men bowed. Before he left, Oba would leave the two as nothing more than a stain of ashes on the floor of a lonely passageway. They would never tell anyone why his cell was empty.

And then…well, it was nearly spring, and in spring, who could tell where his fancy might turn?

One thing for sure, he was going to have to find Jennsen.

Chapter 44

Jennsen’s astonishment was wearing off. She was becoming numb to the sight of the endless expanse of men, like some dark flood of humanity across the bottomland. The vast army had churned the broad plain between the rolling hills to a drab brown. Inestimable numbers of tents, wagons, and horses were crowded in among the soldiers. The drone of the horde, cut through with yelling, hoots, calls, whistles, the rattle of gear, the clatter of hooves, the rumble of wagons, the ringing rhythm of hammers on steel, the squeals of horses, and even occasional odd cries and screams of what almost sounded to Jennsen like women, could be heard for miles.