The Pillars of Creation tsot-7 Read online

  She had immediate worries. They had made a long and difficult journey in winter to find Althea, to obtain her help. They couldn’t wait around, hoping to be invited to visit Althea—Lord Rahl’s men were close on their heels. The last time Jennsen had wavered in her determination she had missed her chance—and Lathea had been murdered. The same thing could happen again. She had to get to Althea before those men did, at least to tell her about her sister, to warn her, if nothing else.

  Jennsen scanned the vast hallway, searching for Sebastian. He couldn’t have gone far. She saw him, then, his back to her, across the broad corridor, just turning away from a place that sold silver jewelry.

  Before she took two steps, she saw soldiers swarm in and surround him. Jennsen froze in her tracks. Sebastian did, too. One of the soldiers used his sword to carefully lift back Sebastian’s cloak, uncovering his array of weapons. She was too frightened to move, to take another step.

  Half a dozen gleaming razor-edged pikes lowered at Sebastian. Swords came out of sheaths. People nearby backed away, others turned to look. In the center of a ring of D’Haran soldiers towering over him, Sebastian held his arms out to the sides in surrender.

  Surrender.

  Just then a bell, the one back at the square, tolled.

  Chapter 17

  The single long peal of the bell calling people to the devotion echoed through the cavernous halls as two of the big men seized Sebastian by the arms and started bearing him away. Jennsen watched helplessly as the rest of the D’Haran soldiers surrounded him in a tight formation bristling with steel meant not only to keep their prisoner at bay, but to ward any possible attempt to extricate him. It was immediately clear to her that these guards were prepared for any eventuality and took no chances, not knowing if this one armed man might signify a force about to storrn the palace.

  Jennsen saw that there were other men, visitors to the palace like Sebastian, also carrying swords. Perhaps it was that Sebastian carried a variety of combat weapons, and they were all concealed, that so raised the soldiers’ suspicions. But he wasn’t doing anything. It was winter—of course he was wearing a cloak. He was causing no harm. Jennsen’s urge was to yell at the soldiers to leave him be, yet she feared that if she did they would take her, too.

  The people who had spread back away from the potential trouble, along with everyone else strolling the halls, all began moving toward the square. People in the shops set down their work to join them. No one paid much attention to the soldiers’ business. In response to that single chime still hanging in the air, laughter and talking trailed off to respectful whispers.

  Panic clawed at Jennsen as she saw the soldiers muscling Sebastian down a hall to the side. She could see his white hair amid the dark armor. She didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They only came to find a gilder. She wanted to scream for the soldiers to stop. She dared not, though.

  Jennsen.

  Jennsen stood her ground against the current of bodies, trying to keep Sebastian and his captors in sight. The Lord Rahl was after her, and now they had Sebastian. Her mother had been murdered, and now they were taking Sebastian. It wasn’t fair.

  As she watched, afraid to do anything to stop the soldiers, her own fear shamed her. Sebastian had done so much for her. He had made so many sacrifices for her. He had risked his life to save hers.

  Jennsen’s breath came in ragged pulls. But what could she do?

  Surrender.

  It wasn’t fair what they were doing to Sebastian, to her, to innocent people. Anger welled up through her fear.

  Tu vash misht.

  He was only there because of her. She had asked him to come.

  Tu vask misht.

  Now, he was in trouble.

  Grushdeva du kalt misht.

  The words sounded so right. They flared through her, carried on flames of igniting rage.

  People pushed against her. She growled through gritted teeth as she squeezed her way among the crush of people, trying to follow the soldiers who had Sebastian. It wasn’t fair. She wanted them to stop. Just stop. Stop.

  Her helplessness frustrated her. She was sick of it. When they wouldn’t stop, when they kept going, it only further enraged her.

  Surrender.

  Jennsen’s hand slid inside her cloak. The touch of cold steel welcomed her. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her knife. She could feel the worked metal of the symbol of the House of Rahl pressing into the flesh of her palm.

  A soldier gently pushed her, turning her in the direction of the rest of the crowd. “The devotion square is that way, ma’am.”

  It was spoken as a suggestion, but wrapped around the core of command.

  Through the rage, she looked up into his hooded eyes. She saw the dead man’s eyes. She saw the soldiers at her house—men on the floor dead, men coming for her, men grabbing her. She saw flashes of movement through a crimson sheen of blood.

  As she and the soldier stared into each other’s eyes, she felt the blade at her waist coming out of its sheath.

  A hand under her arm tugged at her. “This way, dear. I’ll show you where it is.”

  Jennsen blinked. It was the lady who had given her directions to Althea’s place. The woman who sat in the palace of the murdering bastard Lord Rahl and sewed the peaceful scenes of the mountains and brooks.

  Jennsen stared at the woman, at her inexplicable smile, trying to make sense of her. Jennsen found everything around her strangely incomprehensible. She only knew that her hand was on the hilt of her knife and she longed for the blade to be free.

  But, for some reason, the knife stubbornly remained where it was.

  Jennsen, at first convinced that some malevolent magic had seized her, saw then that the woman had a tight, motherly arm around her. Without realizing it, the woman was keeping Jennsen’s blade in its sheath. Jennsen locked her knees, resisting being pulled along.

  The woman’s eyes, now, were set with warning. “No one misses a devotion, dear. No one. Let me show you where it is.”

  The soldier, his expression grim, watched as Jennsen yielded, allowing herself to be guided by the woman. Jennsen and the woman, swept into the current of people moving toward the square, left the soldier behind. She looked up into the woman’s smiling face. The whole world seemed to Jennsen to be swimming in a strange light. The voices around her were a smear of sound that in her mind was pierced by the echoes of screams from her house.

  Jennsen.

  Through the murmuring around her, the voice, sharp and distinct, caught her attention. Jennsen listened, alert to what it might tell her.

  Surrender your will, Jennsen.

  It made sense, in a visceral way.

  Surrender your flesh.

  Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Nothing she had tried in her whole life had brought her salvation, or safety, or peace. To the contrary, everything seemed lost. There seemed nothing else to lose.

  “Here we are, dear,” the woman said.

  Jennsen looked around. “What?”

  “Here we are.”

  Jennsen felt her knees touch the tiled floor as the woman urged her down. People were all around. Before them was the square with the pool of quiet water at its center. She wanted only the voice.

  Jennsen. Surrender.

  The voice had grown harsh, commanding. It fanned the flames of her anger, her rage, her wrath.

  Jennsen bent forward, trembling, in the grip of rage. Somewhere, in the far corners of her mind, screamed a distant terror. Despite that remote sense of foreboding, it was rage that was carrying her will away.

  Surrender!

  She saw strings of her saliva hanging, dripping, as she panted through parted lips. Tears dropped to the tiles close beneath her face. Her nose ran. Her breath came in gasps. Her eyes were opened so wide it hurt. She shook all over, as if alone in the coldest darkest winter night. She couldn’t make herself stop.

  People bowed forward deeply, hands pressed to the tiles. She wante
d her knife out.

  Jennsen lusted for the voice.

  “Master Rahl guide us.”

  It was not the voice. It was the people all around, in one voice, chanting the devotion. As they began, they all bowed farther forward until their foreheads touched the tile floor. A soldier moved past close behind, patrolling, watching as she knelt, bent over, hands to the floor, quaking uncontrollably.

  Inch by halting inch, as she gasped, panted, shook, Jennsen’s head lowered until her forehead touched the floor.

  “Master Rahl teach us.”

  That was not what she wanted to hear.

  She wanted the voice. She raged for it. She wanted her knife. She wanted blood.

  “Master Rahl protect us,” the people all chanted in unison.

  Jennsen, pulling ragged jerking breaths, consumed with loathing, wanted only the voice, and her blade free. But her palms were flat on the tiles.

  She listened for the voice, but heard only the chant of the devotion.

  “In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

  At first, Jennsen only vaguely remembered it from her youth, from when she had lived at the palace. Hearing it now, that memory came flooding back. She had known the words. She had chanted them when she was little. When they fled the palace, running from Lord Rahl, she had banished the words of the devotion to the man who was trying to kill her and her mother.

  Now, hungering for the voice that wanted her to surrender, almost unbeknownst to her, almost as if it were someone else doing it, her trembling lips began moving with the words.

  “Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

  The cadence of those murmured words filled the great hall, many people but one voice resounding powerfully off the walls. She listened with all her strength for the voice that had been her companion for nearly as long as she could remember, but it wasn’t there.

  Now, Jennsen was helplessly carried along with all the others. She clearly heard herself speaking the words.

  “Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

  Over and over Jennsen softly spoke the words of the devotion along with everyone else. Over and over, without pause but for breath. Over and over, yet without haste.

  The chant filled her mind. It beckoned to her, spoke to her. It was all that filled her thoughts as she chanted it over and over and over. It filled her so completely that it left no room for anything else.

  Somehow, it calmed her.

  Time slipped by, incidental, inconspicuous, unimportant.

  Somehow, the soft chant brought her a sense of peace. It reminded her of how Betty calmed when having her ears smoothed. Jennsen’s rage was being smoothed. She fought against it, but, bit by bit, she was pulled into the chant, into its promise, smoothed and gentled.

  She understood, then, why it was called a devotion.

  Despite everything, it drained her, and then filled her with a profound calm, a serene sense of belonging.

  She no longer fought the words. She allowed herself to whisper them, letting them lift away the shards of pain. For that time, as she knelt, her head to the tiles, with nothing to do but say the words, she was free of anything and everything.

  As she chanted along with everyone else, the shadow cast on the floor from the mullions of the leaded glass overhead moved past her, leaving her in the glow of the full sun. It felt warm and protective. It felt like her mother’s warm embrace. Her body felt light. The soft radiance all around reminded Jennsen of how she pictured the good spirits.

  An instant in time later, the hours of chanting were ended.

  Jennsen uncurled, slowly pushing away from the floor, to sit up with the others. Without warning, a sob poured forth.

  “Anything wrong, here?”

  There was a soldier towering over her.

  The woman to the side put an arm around Jennsen’s shoulders.

  “Her mother passed away recently,” the woman quietly explained.

  The soldier shifted his weight, looking ill at ease.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. My heartfelt sympathy to you and your family.”

  Jennsen saw in his blue eyes that he meant every word.

  Stunned speechless, she watched as he turned, huge and muscular, layered in leather, Lord Rahl’s killer continuing on his patrol. Empathy in armor. If he knew who she was, he would deliver her into the hands of those who would see to it that she suffered a long and lingering death.

  Jennsen buried her face in the stranger’s shoulder and wept for her mother, whose embrace had felt so good.

  She missed her mother beyond endurance. And now, she was terrified for Sebastian.

  Jennsen thanked the woman who sewed country scenes and gave directions. Only after Jennsen had started down the hall did she realize that she didn’t even know the woman’s name. It didn’t really matter. They both had mothers. Both understood and shared the same feelings.

  Now that the devotion was over, the noise of all the people in the palace rose again to resound off marble walls and columns. Laughter could be heard ringing out across the hall. People had gone back to their own concerns, buying, trading, discussing their wants and needs. Guards patrolled, and palace staff, most in light-colored robes, went about their business, carrying messages, seeing to matters Jennsen could only guess at. In one place, workers were at the task of repairing the hinges on a huge oak double door to a side passageway.

  The cleaning staff was back, too, busy at dusting, mopping, polishing. Jennsen’s mother had once been one of those women, seeing to the work in the sections of the palace closed off to the public, official rooms where matters of governance were conducted, the sections that housed the officials and palace staff, and, of course, Lord Rahl’s rooms.

  After chanting the devotion for hours, Jennsen’s mind was as clear as if she had had a long and needed rest. In that calm but refreshed and wide-awake state, a solution had come to her. She knew what she had to do.

  She moved quickly, back the way she had come. There was no time to lose. On balconies above, people who lived at the People’s Palace gazed down on the hall as they went about their work, watching those who had come to marvel at the great place. Jennsen focused on keeping her wits about her as she moved through the throngs.

  Sebastian had warned her not to run and cause people to wonder if there was something wrong. He had cautioned her to act normal, lest she give people reason to take note. Yet, so acute was the danger of being at the palace, that he had been captured despite knowing how to act. If she raised suspicion, then soldiers would surely stop her. If the soldiers got ahold of her, and found out who she was . . .

  Jennsen ached to have Sebastian back. Her fear for him urged her down the hall. She had to get him away from the D’Haran soldiers before they did something terrible to him. She knew that every minute they had him, he was in mortal danger.

  If they tortured him, he might not be able to hold out. If he confessed to who he was, they would put him to death. The thought of Sebastian being executed almost made her knees give out. Under torture, people would confess to anything, whether true or not. If they decided to torture him to make him confess to something, he was doomed. The mental image of Sebastian being tortured made her sick and dizzy.

  She had to rescue him.

  But to do that, she had to have the sorceress’s help. If Althea would help her, cast Jennsen a protective spell, then she could try to get Sebastian back. Althea had to help her. Jennsen would convince her. Sebastian’s life hung in the balance.

  She reached the stairs where they had come up. People were still emptying up into the hall, some sweating and buffing with the eff
ort of the climb. Few were going down, yet. Standing at the edge, hand on the marble rail, she took a careful look around, making sure she wasn’t being followed or observed. Despite her urge to run, she made herself look around casualty. Some people looked at her, but no more than they looked at anyone. Patrolling soldiers were a good distance off. Jennsen started down.

  She went as quickly as possible without looking like she was running for her life—for Sebastian’s life. But she was. If not for Jennsen, he would not be in this trouble.

  She thought that going down would be easy, but after hundreds of steps she found that going down was tiring on the legs. Her legs burned with the effort. She told herself that if she couldn’t run, she could at least not stop but keep going and in that way make better time.

  On the landings, she cut the corners, saving steps. When no one was looking, she took the stairs two at a time. When she had to traverse passageways, she tried to screen herself behind clumps of people as she went past watchful guards. People sitting on benches, eating bread and meat pies, drinking ale, talking with friends, casually noted her along with everyone else who passed, just another visitor going by.

  Lord Rahl’s half sister among them.

  On the steps again, she went quickly, her legs trembling from the nonstop effort. Her muscles burned with the need of a rest, but she gave them none. Instead, she pushed faster when she had the chance. On an empty flight of stairs between two landings screened from sight because they turned from different directions, Jennsen raced recklessly down. She slowed again when a couple, arm in arm, their heads close together as they giggled over whispered words, reached the landing below and headed up.

  The air grew colder as she descended. On one level, with guards thick as flies in a barn in spring, one of the soldiers looked right into her eyes and smiled. Stunned to a stop for an instant, she realized that he was smiling at her as a man smiled at a woman, not as a killer smiled at his victim. She returned the smile, polite, warm, but not so much as to give the impression that she was encouraging him. Jennsen pulled her cloak tight and turned down the next flight of stairs. When she glanced over her shoulder as she turned the corner on a landing, he stood above, one hand on the rail, watching her. He smiled again and waved a farewell before turning back to his duties.