The Pillars of Creation tsot-7 Read online

  Unable to contain her fear, Jennsen sprinted down the stairs two at a time and ran down the hall, past small stands selling food, brooches, and finely decorated daggers, past visitors sitting on stone benches set before the marble balustrade, on toward the next flight of stairs, until she realized that people were staring at her. She stopped running and fell casually into walking, trying to flounce to make it look as if she had just been dashing from youthful vivacity. The tactic worked. She saw the people who had been eyeing her seem to chalk it up as nothing more than a spirited girl dashing along. They turned back to their own business. Since it worked, Jennsen intermittently used the same trick and was able to make better time.

  Breathing hard from the long descent, she finally made it to the cavelike entrance with the hissing torches. Since there were so many soldiers at the portal into the great plateau, she slowed and walked close behind an older couple to make it look as if she might be a daughter with her parents. The couple was engaged in a spirited debate of a friend’s chances of making a go of it with his new shop selling wigs up in the palace. The woman thought it a good business. The man thought his friend would run out of willing sellers of their hair and would end up spending too much of his time looking for more.

  Jennsen could imagine no more foolish conversation when a man had been taken prisoner and was about to be tortured and probably put to death. To Jennsen, the D’Haran palace was nothing more than a vile death trap. She had to get Sebastian out of there. She would get him out.

  Neither one of the couple noticed Jennsen close behind, head bowed, matching their slow pace. The gaze of guards skimmed over the three of them. At the mouth of the opening, cold wind swept in to take the breath from Jennsen’s lungs. After being in the lamplit darkness for so long, she had to squint at the expanse of bright daylight. As soon as they were in the open-air market, she turned down one of the makeshift streets, hurrying to find Irma, the sausage lady.

  Stretching her neck, she looked about for the red scarf as she rushed down the rows of stalls. The places that before had seemed so splendid now looked shabby after she had been in the palace. In the whole of her life, Jennsen had never seen anything like the People’s Palace. She could not imagine how a place of such beauty could hold such ugliness as the House of Rahl.

  A hawker pushed in close. “Charms, for the lady? Good luck for sure.” Jennsen kept walking. His breath stank. “Special charms with magic. Can’t go wrong for a silver penny.”

  “No, thank you.”

  He walked sideways, right close in front of her but off to the side a bit. “Just a silver penny, my lady.”

  She thought she would trip over the man’s feet. “No, thank you. Please leave me be, now.”

  “A copper penny, then.”

  “No.” Jennsen shoved him each time he bumped into her as he pushed in close, yammering about his charms. He kept putting his face in front of hers, looking back up at her as he stooped and shuffled along, grinning at her.

  “Good charms, they are, my lady.” He kept bumping her as she tried to walk, as she craned her neck, looking for the red scarf. “Good luck for you.”

  “No, I said.” Almost stumbling over the man, she gave him a stiff shove. “Please, leave me be!”

  Jennsen sighed in relief as an older man came past going in the opposite direction and the hawker turned to him. She could hear his voice fade behind, trying to sell the man a magic charm for a silver penny. She thought about the irony that here this man was offering magic, and she turned it down because she was in a hurry to be off to try to get magic from someone else.

  Past an empty space, before a table with wine casks, Jennsen halted abruptly. She looked up and saw the three brothers. One was pouring wine into a leather goblet for a customer while the other two were lifting a full cask from the back of their wagon.

  Jennsen turned and stared at the empty place. That was where Irma had been. Her heart felt as if it came up in her throat. Irma had their horses. Irma had Betty.

  In a panic, she seized the arm of the man behind the table as the customer departed.

  “Please, could you tell me where Irma is?”

  He looked up, squinting in the sunlight. “The sausage lady?”

  Jennsen nodded. “Yes. Where is she? She couldn’t be gone already. She had her sausages to sell.”

  The man grinned. “She said that being beside us, selling our wine, had helped sell her sausages faster than she ever sold them before.”

  Jennsen could only stare. “She’s gone?”

  “Too bad, too. Having sausages for sale next to us really helped sell wine. People ate those spicy goat sausages of hers and had to have some of our wine.”

  “Her what?” Jennsen whispered.

  The man’s smile flagged. “Her sausages. What’s wrong, ma’am? You look as if a spirit from the underworld just tapped you on the shoulder.”

  “What did you say she sells? . . . Goat sausages?”

  He nodded, looking concerned. “Among others. I tried them all, but I liked the spicy goat sausages best.” He lifted a thumb over his shoulder, indicating his two brothers. “Joe liked her beef sausages best, and Clayton, well he liked the pork, but I favored her goat sausages.”

  Jennsen was shivering and it wasn’t the cold. “Where is she? I have to find her!”

  The man scratched his head of disheveled blond hair. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. She comes here to sell sausages. Most folks around here have seen her before. She’s a nice lady, always a smile and a good word.”

  Jennsen felt freezing tears run down her cheeks. “But where is she? Where does she live? I have to find her.”

  The man grasped Jennsen’s arm, as if fearing she might fall. “Sorry, ma’am, but I don’t know. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “She has my animals. My horses. And Betty.”

  “Betty?”

  “My goat. She has them. We paid her to watch them until we got back.”

  “Oh.” He looked gloomy to have no better news for her. “Sorry. Her sausages pretty much sold steady till they were gone. It usually takes her all day long to sell what she cooks up, but sometimes it just goes better, I guess. After her sausages were gone, she sat around and talked to us for a long spell. Finally, she let out a sigh, and said she had to get home.”

  Jennsen’s mind raced. The world felt as if it were spinning around her. She didn’t know what to do. She felt dazed, confused. Jennsen had never felt so alone.

  “Please,” she said, her voice choked with tears, “please, could I rent one of your horses?”

  “Our horses? Then how would we get our wagon home? Besides, they’re draft horses. We don’t have any saddle or tack for riding or any—”

  “Please! I have gold.” Jennsen groped at her belt. “I can pay.”

  Feeling around at her waist, she couldn’t find her small leather pouch with her gold and silver coins. Jennsen threw back her cloak, searching. There, on her belt, beside her knife, she found only a small piece of a leather thong, parted cleanly.

  “My purse . . . my purse is gone.” She couldn’t get her breath. “My money . . .”

  The man’s face sagged with sorrow as he watched her pull the remnant of the drawstring from her belt. “There are wicked people prowling around, looking to steal—”

  “But I need it.”

  He fell silent. She looked back behind, searching for the hawker selling charms. It all flashed back through her mind. He had bumped into her, jostled her. He was really cutting her purse. She couldn’t even recall what he looked like—just that he was scruffy and ill kept. She hadn’t wanted to look at his face, meet his eyes. She couldn’t seem to get her breath as she frantically looked this way and that, trying to find the man who had stolen her money.

  “No . . .” she whined, too overcome to know what to say. “No, oh please no.” She sank down, sitting on the ground beside the table. “I need a horse. Dear spirits, I need a horse.”

  The man hurriedly poured wine in a
cup and squatted down beside her as she sobbed. “Here, drink this.”

  “I have no money,” she managed to get out as she wept.

  “No charge,” he said, giving her a sympathetic, lopsided smile of straight white teeth. “It’ll help. Drink it down.”

  The other two blond-headed brothers, Joe and Clayton, stood behind the table, hands in their pockets, heads lowered with regret for the woman their brother was tending to.

  The man tipped the cup up, trying to get her to drink as she cried. Some spilled down her chin, some went in her mouth and she had to swallow it.

  “Why do you need a horse?” the man asked.

  “I have to get to Althea’s place.”

  “Althea? The old sorceress?”

  Jennsen nodded as she wiped wine from her chin and tears from her cheeks.

  “Have you been invited out there?”

  “No,” Jennsen admitted. “But I have to go.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a matter of life or death. I need Althea’s help or a man could die.”

  Crouching beside her, still holding the cup he’d used to give her a drink, his eyes turned from looking into hers to take in her ringlets of red hair under her hood.

  The big man put his hands on his knees and stood, going back to his brothers to let her be as she tried but failed to halt her desperate tears. Jennsen wept with worry for Betty, too. Betty was Jennsen’s friend and companion, and a connection to her mother. The poor goat probably felt abandoned and unloved. Jennsen would give anything, just then, to see Betty’s little upright tail wagging.

  She told herself that she couldn’t just sit there acting like a child. It would accomplish nothing. She had to do something. There could be no help in the shadow of Lord Rahl’s palace, and she had no money to help her. She couldn’t depend on anyone—except Sebastian, and he had no hope of help but from her. Now his life depended on her actions alone. She couldn’t sit there feeling sorry for herself. If her mother had taught her anything, she had taught Jennsen better than this.

  She had no idea what to do to rescue Betty, but she at least knew what she had to attempt in order to help Sebastian. That was what was most important, and what she had to do. She was wasting precious time.

  Jennsen stood, angrily wiping the tears from her face, and then put a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the sun. She had been in the palace a long time, so it was hard to judge, but she figured it to be late afternoon. Taking into account the sun’s position in the sky at the time of year, she judged which way was west. If only she had Rusty, she could make better time. If only she had her money, she could rent or buy another horse.

  No sense yearning for what was gone and couldn’t be recovered. She would have to walk.

  “Thank you for the wine,” Jennsen said to the blond-headed man standing there fidgeting as he watched her.

  “Not at all,” he said as he cast his gaze downward.

  As she started away, he seemed to gather his courage. He stepped out into the dusty road and grabbed her by the arm. “Hold on there, ma’am. What are you thinking of doing?”

  “A man’s life depends on my getting out to Althea’s place. I’ve no choice. I have to walk.”

  “What man? What’s going on that his life would hinge on you seeing Althea?”

  Jennsen, looking up into the man’s sky blue eyes, gently pulled her arm away. Big and blond, with his strong jaw and muscular build, he reminded her of the men who had murdered her mother.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t say.”

  Jennsen held the hood of her cloak tight against a bitter gust of wind as she struck out again. Before she had taken a dozen steps, he took several long strides and gently grasped her under her upper arm again to drag her to a halt.

  “Look,” he said in a quiet voice when she scowled at him, “do you even have any supplies?”

  Jennsen’s scowl withered and she had to fight back the tears of frustration. “Everything is with our horses. The sausage lady, Irma, has everything. Except my money—the cutpurse has that.”

  “So, you have nothing.” It wasn’t a question so much as scorn for so simpleminded a plan.

  “I have myself and I know what I must do.”

  “And you intend to strike out for Althea’s, in the winter, on foot, without any supplies?”

  “I’ve lived in the woods my whole life. I can get by.”

  She pulled, but his big hand held her ann securely. “Maybe so, but the Azrith Plains aren’t the woods. There’s nothing to help you make a shelter. Not a stick of wood to make a fire. After the sun sets it’ll get as cold as the Keeper’s heart. You don’t have any supplies or anything. What are you going to eat?”

  This time she more forcefully jerked her arm away and succeeded in freeing it. “I don’t have any other choice. You may not understand that, but there are some things that you have to do, even if it means risking your own life, or else life means nothing and isn’t worth living.”

  Before he could stop her again, Jennsen ran into the river of people moving along the makeshift streets. She pushed her way through the crowds, past people selling food and drink she could not buy. It all served to remind her that she had not eaten since the sausage that morning. The knowledge that Sebastian might not live to have another meal gave urgency to her steps.

  She turned down the first road going west. With the southern winter sun on the left side of her face, she thought about the sunlight in the palace when she had been at the devotion, and how much it felt like her mother’s embrace.

  Chapter 19

  Jennsen wove her way among the people below the plateau, making her way down the haphazard streets, imagining she was stepping among trees, moving through the forests where she felt most at home. That was where she wished she were, in a quiet forest, sheltered among the trees, with her mother, the both of them watching Betty nibble on tender shoots. Some of the people pausing at stalls, or the merchants behind tables, or those strolling along, cast a gaze in Jennsen’s direction, but she kept her head bowed and continued along at a brisk pace.

  She was worried sick about Betty. The sausage lady, Irma, sold goat meat. That was no doubt why she wanted to buy Betty in the first place. The poor goat was probably heartsick and terrified at being taken away by a stranger. As sick as Jennsen was over Betty, though, and as much as she ached to go find her and have her back, she couldn’t put that desire ahead of Sebastian’s life.

  Passing stands selling food only served to remind her of how hungry she was, especially after the effort of climbing all the stairs up to the palace. She hadn’t eaten since that morning and wished she could buy something to eat, now, but there was no hope of that. People cooked over open fires made with wood they no doubt had brought with them. Pans sizzled with butter, garlic, and spices. Smoke from roasting meats drifted past. The aromas were intoxicating and made her hunger nearly unbearable.

  When her mind wandered to her hunger, Jennsen thought about Sebastian. Every moment she delayed could mean another lash of a whip for him, another cut, another twist to a limb, another broken bone. Another moment of agony. The thought of it made bile rise in the back of her throat. No wonder he was here to help in the struggle to defeat D’Hara.

  A thought even more terrifying abruptly jotted her: Mord-Sith. Wherever Jennsen had traveled with her mother throughout D’Hara, no one feared anything or anyone more than they feared the Mord-Sith. Their ability to inflict pain and suffering was legend. It was said that this side of the Keeper’s hand, a Mord-Sith existed without peer.

  What if the D’Harans used one of those women to torture Sebastian? Even though he had no magic, that wouldn’t matter. With that Agiel of theirs—and who knew what else—the Mord-Sith could hurt anyone. They simply had the added ability to capture a person with magic. A person without magic, like Sebastian, would be nothing but a brief blood sport to a Mord-Sith.

  The crowds thinned as she reached the edge of the open-air market. The temporary lane she
was on dwindled to nothing as it reached the last stall, occupied by a lanky man selling leather tack and piles of used wagon fittings. There was nothing beyond his heavily loaded wagon full of pieces and parts but desolate open land. An endless file of people moved along the road going south. She could see a haze of dust in the air marking the more distant sections of the road south, along with others branching off to the southwest and southeast. No road went west.

  A few people at the fringe of the marketplace glanced her way as she struck out, alone, toward the lowering sun. While some people might have looked her way, none followed into the wasteland that was the Azrith Plains. Jennsen was relieved to be alone. Being around people had proven as dangerous as she had always feared. The market scene was quickly left behind as she marched west.

  Jennsen slid her hand in under her cloak, feeling the reassuring presence of her knife. Lying against her body, it was warm to the touch, as if it were a living thing, rather than silver and steel.

  At least the thief had taken her money and not her knife. Given a choice of the two, she would rather have the knife. She had lived her whole life without much money, her and her mother providing for themselves. But a knife was vital to that means of survival. If you lived in a palace, you needed money. If you lived out-of-doors, you needed a knife, and she had never seen a better knife than this one, despite its provenience.

  Her fingers idly traced the ornate letter “R” on the silver handle. Some people needed a knife even if they lived in a palace, she guessed.

  She turned back to look, and was relieved to see that no one followed her. The plateau had shrunk in the distance, until all the people below it looked like slow little ants moving about. It was good to be away from the place, but she knew she would have to return, after seeing Althea, if she was to rescue Sebastian.