The Pillars of Creation tsot-7 Read online

  “What shall we do tomorrow?” Sebastian asked.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Well, do you still want me to help you leave D’Hara, as you and your mother asked of me?”

  She hadn’t really thought it out. In view of what little Lathea had told her, Jennsen wasn’t sure what to do. She stared absently out into the empty night as they trudged across the crusted snow.

  “If we went to the People’s Palace, I would have some answers,” she said, thinking out loud. “And, hopefully, Althea’s help.”

  Going to the People’s Palace was by far the most dangerous alternative. But no matter where she ran, where she hid, Lord Rahl’s magic would haunt her. Althea might be able to help. Maybe, somehow, she would be able to conceal Jennsen from him so she could have her own life.

  He seemed to give her words serious thought, a long cloud of his breath trailing away in the wind. “We’ll go to the People’s Palace, then. Find this Althea woman.”

  She felt somehow uneasy when she realized that he wasn’t offering any argument, or trying to talk her out of it. “The People’s Palace is the heart of D’Hara. It’s not just the heart of D’Hara, but the home of the Lord Rahl.”

  “Then he wouldn’t be likely to expect you to go there, would he?”

  Expected or not, they would still be walking into the enemy’s lair. No predator long neglected to notice the prey in his midst. They would be naked before his fangs.

  Jennsen glanced over at the shadowed shape walking beside her. “Sebastian, what are you doing in D’Hara? You seem to have no love for the place. Why would you travel to a place you don’t like?”

  Beneath his hood, she saw his smile. “Am I that obvious?”

  Jennsen shrugged. “I’ve met travelers before. They talk about places they’ve been, sights they’ve seen. Wonders. Beautiful valleys. Breathtaking mountains. Fascinating cities. You don’t speak of anywhere you’ve been, or anything you’ve seen.”

  “You want the truth?” he asked, his expression now serious.

  Jennsen looked away. She suddenly felt awkward, nosy—especially in light of what she wasn’t telling him.

  “I’m sorry. I have no right to ask such a thing. Forget I mentioned it.”

  “I don’t mind.” He looked over at her with a wry smile. “I don’t think you would be one to report me to D’Haran soldiers.”

  She was appalled at the very idea. “Of course not.”

  “Lord Rahl and his D’Haran Empire wish to rule the world. I’m trying to help prevent that. I’m from south of D’Hara, as I told you before. I was sent by our leader, the emperor of the Old World, Jagang the Just. I am Emperor Jagang’s strategist.”

  “Then you’re someone of high authority,” she whispered in astonishment. “A man of high rank.” The astonishment quickly transformed to tingling intimidation. She feared to guess at his importance, his rank. In her mind it rose by the moment, notch by notch. “How am I to address one such as you?”

  “As Sebastian.”

  “But, you’re an important man. I’m a nobody.”

  “Oh, you’re somebody, Jennsen Daggett. The Lord Rahl himself does not hunt nobodies.”

  Jennsen felt an odd and unexpected sense of uneasiness. She harbored no love for D’Hara, of course, but she still felt somewhat uncomfortable to know that Sebastian was there to help bring about the defeat of her land.

  The twinge of loyalty confused her. After all, the Lord Rahl had sent the men who had murdered her mother. The Lord Rahl hunted Jennsen, wanted her dead.

  But it was the Lord Rahl who wanted her dead, not necessarily the people of her land. The mountains, the rivers, the vast plains, the trees and plant life had always all sheltered and nurtured her. She’d never really thought it through in that way before—that she could love her homeland, yet hate those who ruled it.

  If this Jagang the Just succeeded, though, she would be freed from her pursuer. If D’Hara was defeated, Lord Rahl would be defeated—the rule of evil men would be ended. She would at last be free to live her own life.

  In light of how open he was with her, she also felt foolish, even ashamed, for not telling Sebastian who she was and why Lord Rahl hunted her. She didn’t know it all, herself, but she knew enough to know that Sebastian would share the same fate as she if they caught him with her.

  As she thought about it, it began to make sense why he might not object to going to the People’s Palace, why he might be willing to risk such a dangerous journey. As a strategist for the emperor Jagang, perhaps Sebastian would like nothing better than to sneak a look into the enemy’s lair.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  She looked up and saw the white clapboard face of the inn. A metal mug hanging from a bracket overhead squeaked as it swung to and fro in the wind. The sounds of singing and dancing spilled out onto the snowcovered silence of the night. With an arm around her shoulders, Sebastian sheltered her as they made their way through the great room, shielded her from the prying eyes, and led her to the stairs at the far side. If possible, the place was even more crowded and noisy than before.

  Without pause, the two of them quickly ascended the stairs. Partway down the dim hall, he unlocked a door to the right. Inside, Sebastian turned the wick up on the oil lamp sitting on a small table. Alongside the lamp was a pitcher and washbasin and near the table a bench. Looming to the side of the room sat a high bed covered crookedly with a dark brown blanket.

  The room was better than the home she had left, but Jennsen didn’t like it. One wall was overlaid with drab, painted linen. The plastered walls were stained and flyblown. Since the room was on the second floor, the only way down was back through the inn. She hated the stink of the room—a sour mixture of pipe smoke and urine. The chamber pot beneath the bed hadn’t been emptied.

  As Jennsen pulled a few things from her pack and went to the table to wash her face, Sebastian left her to it and went back downstairs. By the time she had finished washing and had brushed her hair, he returned with two bowls of lamb stew. He had brown bread, too, and mugs of ale. They ate sitting close together on the short bench, hunched over the table, close to the wavering light of the oil lamp.

  The stew didn’t taste as good as it looked. She picked out the chunks of meat but left the colorless, tasteless, soft vegetables. She sopped up some of the juice with the hard bread. She gave her ale to Sebastian and drank water instead. She wasn’t used to drinking ale. To her the ale smelled as unpleasant as the lamp oil. Sebastian seemed to like it.

  When she had finished eating, Jennsen paced in the confining room the way Betty paced in her pen. Sebastian threw a leg to each side of the bench and leaned back against the wall. His blue eyes followed her from the bed to the wall hung with linen and back again, as she began wearing a path in the plank floor.

  “Why don’t you lie down and get some sleep,” he said in a soft voice. “I’ll watch over you.”

  She felt like a trapped animal. She watched him take a long draft of ale from his mug. “And what will we do tomorrow?”

  It wasn’t only her dislike of the inn, of the room. Her conscience was eating at her. She didn’t let him answer.

  “Sebastian, I have to tell you who I am. You were honest with me. I can’t stay with you and endanger your mission. I don’t know anything about the important things you do, but being with me will only put you at great risk. You’ve already helped me more than I could have hoped, more than I ever could have asked.”

  “Jennsen, I’m already at risk being here. I am in the land of my enemy.”

  “And you’re someone of high rank. An important man.” She rubbed her hands together, trying to bring some warmth to her icy fingers. “If they captured you because you were with me . . . well, I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I took the risk of coming here.”

  “But I haven’t been honest with you—I haven’t lied to you, but I haven’t told you what I should have long ago. You’re too important a man to chance being with me when y
ou don’t even know why I’m hunted, or what that attack back at my house was about.” She swallowed at the painful lump in her throat. “Why my mother lost her life.”

  He said nothing, but simply gave her the time to gather herself and tell him in her own way. From the first moment she had met him, and he hadn’t come close when she had been afraid, he always gave her the room she needed in order to feel safe. He deserved more than she gave him in return.

  Jennsen finally brought a halt to her pacing and looked down at him, at his blue eyes, blue eyes like hers, like her father’s.

  “Sebastian, Lord Rahl—the last Lord Rahl, Darken Rahl—was my father.”

  He took the news without any outward reaction. She couldn’t know what he was thinking. As he gazed up at her, as calmly as he did when she wasn’t telling him terrible news, she felt safe in his company.

  “My mother worked at the People’s Palace. She was part of the palace staff. Darken Rahl . . . he noticed her. It is the Lord Rahl’s prerogative to have any woman he wants.”

  “Jennsen, you don’t—”

  She lifted a hand, silencing him. She wanted the whole thing out before she lost her nerve. Having always been with her mother, she feared being alone now. She feared he would abandon her, but she had to tell him what she knew.

  “She was fourteen,” Jennsen said, beginning the story as calmly as she could. “Too young to really understand about the ways of the world, of men. You saw how beautiful she was. At that young age, she was already pretty as could be, growing into a woman sooner than many her age. She had a bright smile and an innocent exuberance for life.

  “She was a nobody, though, and to an extent excited to be noticed—desired—by a man of such power, a man who could have any woman he wanted. That was foolish, of course, but at her age and station it was flattering, and, in her innocence, I suppose it might have even seemed glamorous.

  “She was bathed and pampered by older women on the palace staff. Her hair done up like a real lady. She was dressed in a beautiful gown for her meeting with the great man himself. When she was brought to him, he bowed and gently kissed the back of her hand—her, a servant in his great palace, and he kissed her hand. From all accounts, he was so handsome that he shamed the finest marble statues.

  “She had dinner with him, in a great hall, and ate rare and exotic food she had never tasted before. Just the two of them at a long dining table with people serving her for the first time in her life.

  “He was charming. He complemented her on her beauty, her grace. He poured wine for her—the Lord Rahl himself.

  “When she was at last alone with him, she was confronted with the reality of why she was there. She was too frightened to resist. Of course, had she not meekly submitted, he would have done what he wished anyway. Darken Rahl was a powerful wizard. He was easily as cruel as he was charming. He could have handled any woman without the slightest difficulty. He had but to command it, and those who resisted his will were tortured to death.

  “But she never gave any thought to resisting. For a brief time, despite her apprehension, that world, at the center of such splendor, such power, had probably seemed exciting. When it turned to terror for her, she bore it silently.

  “It wasn’t rape in the meaning of being taken against her will, with a knife held to her throat, but it was a crime nonetheless. A savage crime.”

  Jennsen looked away from Sebastian’s blue eyes. “He took my mother to his bed for a period of time before he tired of her and moved on to other women. There were as many women as he could want. Even at that age, my mother didn’t hold any foolish illusion that she meant something to him. She knew he was simply taking what he wanted, for as long as he wanted, and that when he was finished with her she would soon be forgotten. She was doing as a servant did. A flattered servant, perhaps, but still a frightened, innocent young servant who knew better than to resist a man above any law but his own.”

  She couldn’t bear to look at Sebastian. In a small voice, she added the last bit to the tale.

  “I was the result of that brief ordeal in her life, and the beginning of a far greater one.”

  Jennsen had never before told anyone the awful story, the terrible truth. She felt cold and dirty. She felt sick. Most of all, she felt deep anguish for what her mother must have gone through, for her young life spoiled.

  Her mother never told the story all out as Jennsen had just done. Jennsen had pieced snippets and snatches of it together over her whole life, until it was finally a whole picture in her mind. She wasn’t telling Sebastian all the snippets, either—the true extent of the horror of the way her mother had been treated by Darken Rahl. Jennsen felt burning shame that she had to be born to remind her mother every day of that terrible memory she could never tell in whole.

  When Jennsen looked up through tears, Sebastian was standing close before her. His fingertips gently touched the side of her face. It was as tender a thing as she had ever felt.

  Jennsen wiped the tears from under her eyes. “The women and their children mean nothing to him. The Lord Rahl eliminates all those offspring who are not gifted. Since he takes many women, children of these couplings are not uncommon. He covets only one, his heir, the single child born of his seed who carries the gift.”

  “Richard Rahl,” Sebastian said.

  “Richard Rahl,” she confirmed. “My half brother.”

  Richard Rahl, her half brother, who hunted her as his father before him had hunted her. Richard Rahl, her half brother, who sent the quads to kill her. Richard Rahl, her half brother, who had sent the quads that had murdered her mother.

  But why? She could have been no threat to Darken Rahl, and even less of a threat to the new Lord Rahl. He was a powerful wizard who commanded armies, legions of the gifted, and countless other loyal supporters. And she? She was nothing but one lone woman who knew few people and wanted only to live her own simple life in peace. She was hardly a threat to his rule.

  Even the truth of her story would not so much as raise an eyebrow. Everyone knew that any Lord Rahl lived by his own laws. No one was even remotely likely to disbelieve her story, but no one would really care, either. At most, they might wink or give one another a knowing elbow at the lives of powerful men, and Darken Rahl had been the most powerful man alive.

  Jennsen’s whole life seemed suddenly to come down to that central question: Why would her father, a man she never knew, have wanted so desperately to kill her? And why would his son, Richard Rahl, her own half brother and now the Lord Rahl, also be so intent on killing her? It made no sense.

  What could she possibly do that could harm either of them? What threat could she possibly constitute to such power?

  Jennsen checked that the knife at her belt—her knife displaying the emblem of the House of Rahl—was secure. She lifted the blade to be sure it was free in its scabbard. The steel made a pleasing metallic click as she pushed it home. She scooped her cloak off the bed and threw it around her shoulders.

  Sebastian swiped a hand back across his white spikes of hair as he watched her quickly tie the cloak shut. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’ll be back in a while. I’m going out.”

  He reached for his weapons and cloak. “All right, I’ll—”

  “No. Leave me to it, Sebastian. You’ve put yourself at risk enough on my behalf. I wish to go alone. I’ll be back when I’ve finished.”

  “Finished what?”

  She hurried to the door. “What I have to do.”

  He stood in the center of the room, fists at his sides, apparently hesitant to go against her explicit wishes. Jennsen quickly pulled the door shut tight behind herself, closing off her view of him. She took the steps two at a time, intent on being quickly out of the inn and gone before he changed his mind and followed.

  The crowd downstairs was as rowdy as they had been before. She ignored the men, their gambling, their dancing, their laughter, and headed for the door. Before she made it, though, a bearded man hooke
d his arm around her middle and jerked her back into the press of people. She let out a small cry that was lost in the gale of revelry. Her left arm was pinned against her waist. He swung her around, catching her right hand, dancing her across the floor.

  Jennsen tried to reach up to pull back her hood, to free her red hair in order to give him a scare, but she couldn’t liberate her arm. He held her other hand in an iron grip. Not only could she not free her hair, she couldn’t reach her knife to defend herself. Her breath came in a frightened pant.

  The man laughed with his fellows, and swirled her to the music, holding her tight lest he lose his dance with her. His eyes shown with merriment, not menace, but she knew that was only because she had not yet forcefully resisted. She knew that when he discovered that she was unwilling, his pleasant demeanor was sure to change.

  He released her waist and spun her around. With only one hand still entrapped in his callused fingers, she hoped yet to break the hold. With her left hand, she fumbled for her knife, but it was under her cloak, and not handy to her off hand. The crowd clapped in time with the tune of the pipes and drums. As she turned and stepped away, another man caught her up around the waist, bumping against her hard enough to knock the wind from her in a grunt. He captured her hand away from the first fellow. She had wasted her chance to pull back her hood by trying for her knife instead.

  She found herself adrift in a sea of men. The few other women, serving girls mostly, were either willing or laughed and were able to alight briefly, and then move away, like bugs that were able to walk on water. Jennsen didn’t know how they performed the trick; she was in danger of drowning among waves of men who passed her along from one to another.

  When she caught sight of the door, she yanked away suddenly, breaking the hold of the latest man to have her in his grip. He hadn’t been expecting her to suddenly break free. The men all laughed at the fellow who had lost hold of her. His merriment, as she had expected, died. The rest of the men were more good-natured about it than she had expected, and sent up a cheer for her escape.