Pillars of Creation

by Terry Goodkind

  "No. Without a campfire and not moving, they'd never find us out in this great dark expanse. I think it would be better to get some sleep so we can make good time tomorrow."

  With the horses picketed, she used her saddle for a seat. As she unfurled her bedroll, Jennsen found two white cloth bundles inside. She knew she hadn't put any such things in her bedroll. She undid the knot at the top of one bundle and discovered a meat pie inside. She saw, then, Sebastian making the same discovery.

  "Looks like the Creator has provided for us," he said.

  Jennsen smiled as she stared down at the meat pie in her lap. "Tom left these. "

  Sebastian didn't ask how she knew. "The Creator has provided for us through Tom. Brother Narev says that even when we think someone has provided for us, it is actually the Creator working through them. We in the Old World believe that when we give to someone in need, we are really doing the Creator's good works. That's why the welfare of others is our sacred duty."

  Jennsen said nothing, fearing that if she did, he might think she was criticizing Brother Narev, or even the Creator. She couldn't dispute the word of a great man like Brother Narev. She had never done any good works like Brother Narev had. She had never even left anyone meat pies or done anything else helpful. It seemed to her that she brought only trouble and suffering to people-her mother, Lathea, Althea, Friedrich, and who knew how many others. If any force worked through her, it certainly wasn't the Creator.

  Sebastian, perhaps seeing something of her thoughts in her expression, spoke softly. "That's why I'm helping you-I believe it's what the Cre-

  ator would want me to do. That's how I know Brother Narev and Emperor Jagang would approve of me helping you. This is the very thing we're fighting for-to have people care about others by sharing their burdens."

  She smiled not just her appreciation, but also at the notion of such noble intentions. Noble intentions, though, which, for reasons she didn't even fully understand, felt to her like a knife in the back.

  Jermsen looked up from the meat pie in her lap. "So, that's why you're helping me, then." Her smile was forced. "Because it's your duty."

  Sebastian looked almost as if he'd been slapped. "No." He came closer, going down on one knee. "No. I ... in the beginning, of course, but . . . it's not j u st duty."

  "You make it sound like I'm a leper you think you have to-"

  "No-that's not it at all." As he searched for words, that radiant smile of his came to his face, that smile that made her heart ache. "I've never met anyone like you, Jermsen. I swear, I've never laid my eyes on a woman as beautiful as you, or as smart. You make me feel like I'm ... like I'm a nobody. But then when you smile at me, I feel like I'm someone important. I've never met anyone who made me feel this way. At first it was duty, but now, I swear. . . "

  Jermsen sat in shock at hearing him say such things, at hearing the tender sincerity, the earnest pleading, in his voice.

  "I never knew."

  "I should never have kissed you. I know it was wrong. I'm a soldier in the army against oppression. My life is devoted to the cause of helping my people-all people. I don't have anything to offer a woman like you."

  She couldn't imagine why he would think he had to offer her something. He had saved her life. "Then, why did you kiss me?"

  He gazed into her eyes, looking as if he had to pull words up from some great painful depth. "I couldn't help myself. I'm sorry. I tried not to. I knew it was wrong, but when we were that close, and I was looking into your beautiful eyes, and your arms were holding me, and I was holding you . . . I'd never wanted anything so much in my life . . . I just couldn't help myself. I had to. I'm sorry. "

  Jennsen's gaze fell away. She stared down at the meat pie. Sebastian pulled the familiar mask of composure around himself and sat back down on his saddle.

  "Don't feel sorry," she whispered without looking up. "I liked the kiss."

  He sat forward expectantly. "You did?"

  Jennsen nodded. "I'm glad to hear that it wasn't done out of duty."

  That made him smile and eased the tension.

  "No duty ever felt that good," he said.

  Together, they laughed-something she couldn't even remember doing. It felt good to laugh.

  As Jennsen devoured one of the meat pies, relishing the flavorful spices and savory chunks of meat, she felt good again. She hoped she hadn't been too hard on Tom for forgetting about Betty. She had let her frustrations, fear, and anger come out at him. He was a good man. He had helped her when she needed it most.

  Her thoughts lingered on Tom, on how good she had felt when she was around him. He made her feel important, feel confident in herself, whereas Sebastian often made her feel humble. Tom had a handsome smile-a different kind of handsome than Sebastian's smile. Tom had a hearty smile. Sebastian had an inscrutable smile. Tom's smile made her feel secure and strong. Sebastian's smile made her feel defenseless and weak.

  After she had eaten every crumb of the meat pie, Jennsen wrapped herself in blankets over the top of her cloak. Still shivering, she remembered how Betty had kept them warm at night. In the silence, her sense of gloom returned to haunt her, refusing to allow her to fall asleep, despite her exhaustion from everything she had been through the last couple of days.

  She didn't look forward to the forlorn prospect of what the future might hold for her. She could foresee only an endless hunt until Lord Rahl's men finally caught her. She felt empty without her mother, without Betty. She realized that she didn't have any idea where she would go, now, other than to keep running. She had been intent on Althea's help, but even that had proved to be an empty dream. In some distant comer of her mind, Jennsen had held out a spark of irrational hope that going to her childhood home of the People's Palace might somehow hold a favorable resolution.

  She shivered not only with the cold, but with the bleak prospect of what the future held.

  Sebastian inched his back up close to her, protecting her from the wind. The idea of it being more than duty to him was a comfort. She thought about what it felt like to have his body pressed against the length of her. She thought about the intoxicating feel of his mouth against hers.

  His words that had so surprised her, "I've never laid my eyes on a

  woman as beautiful as you," still echoed around in her head. She wasn't sure that she believed him. Maybe she was afraid to believe him.

  The first day she had met him he made several complimentary remarks, the first about how people might say the dead soldier saw a beautiful young woman strutting along and thus tripped and fell to his death, and then "Sebastian's rule," as he called it, giving her the dead soldier's ornate knife, saying beauty belonged with beauty. She had never trusted words offered so effortlessly.

  She thought again about the sincerity in his eyes, this time, and how surprisingly tongue-tied and awkward he'd seemed. Insincerity was often smoothly delivered, but matters of the heart were more difficult to express because so much was at stake.

  It surprised her to hear that her smile made him feel important. She hadn't suspected that he might feel the same kinds of emotions she felt. She hadn't suspected how good it would feel to have a man like Sebastian, a man of the world, an important man, think she was beautiful. Jennsen always felt graceless and plain compared with her mother. She liked knowing that someone thought she was beautiful.

  She wondered what it would be like if he rolled over, right there, and embraced her again, kissed her again, this time with no one around. She could feel her heart pounding at the very prospect.

  "I'm sorry about your goat," he whispered in the silence, his back still to her.

  "I know."

  "But with Wizard Rahl after us and still this close, the goat would only slow us down."

  As much as she loved Betty, Jennsen knew she had to put other things first. Still, she would give almost anything to hear that singular bleat of Betty's voice, or see her little upright tail wagging in a blur as her whole body wiggled with the excitement of Je
nnsen's greeting. Jennsen could feel the lumps of carrots under her head in the pack she was using as a pillow.

  She knew they couldn't stay and search for Betty, but that didn't make it any easier to know they were leaving her for good. It broke her heart.

  Jennsen looked back over her shoulder in the darkness. "Did they hurt you? I was so worried that they would hurt you."

  "That Mord-Sith would have. You came just in time."

  "What did it feel like when she touched you with the Agiel?"

  Sebastian thought a moment. "Like being hit by lightning, I suppose."

  288

  THE PILLARS OF CREATION

  Jennsen laid her head back down on the pack. She wondered why she had felt nothing from the power of Mord-Sith's weapon. He had to be wondering that same thing, but if he was, he didn't ask. She would have had no answer for him, anyway. Nyda had been astonished, too, and said that her Agiel worked on everyone. Nyda was wrong. For some reason, Jennsen found that strangely worrisome.

  chapter 31

  Stiff and sore from the cold night on the ground, Jennsen woke just as the sky was beginning to take on a faint pink glow. The western sky still displayed a sweep of stars. She hadn't slept much, and wished she could sleep more, but they could not afford to linger. It could be fatal to be caught out in the open like they were, where they could be spotted from miles away.

  Stretching her arms over her head, the first thing Jennsen laid her eyes upon was the black shape of the plateau against the faint blush of the eastern sky. As she watched, the People's Palace atop it took on a glow around the edges as the first golden rays of the morning sun, still beyond the horizon, touched it from behind. Standing there, looking at the palace, Jennsen felt a peculiar longing. This was her homeland. She wanted so much to have some sense of her place in the world. But her homeland harbored only terror and death for her.

  Fearing how near they yet were to the palace and Wizard Rahl, they quickly gathered their belongings and saddled the horses. Climbing up onto a frigid saddle was a miserable experience. Jennsen spread a blanket across her lap so that Rusty's heat would help warm her. She patted and rubbed her horse's neck, both out of affection and to warm her fingers. Rusty's body heat would keep her second meat pie, wrapped in her bedroll tied to the back of the saddle, from freezing.

  They rode hard, walking at times to give the horses a rest, but their effort rewarded them, when, later in the day, the country began to bear evidence that they were reaching the edges of the Azrith Plains. Their goal was to escape into the wall of mountains rimming the western horizon. Their clear view back across the plains revealed no pursuers, so far, anyway.

  By late in the afternoon they rode into an area of low hills, ravines, scraggly vegetation, and stunted trees. It was as if the unbroken hardpan of the Azrith Plains could no longer keep itself flat and out of boredom had to finally roll and heave into a featured terrain.

  The hungry horses tore at the shrubs and thick clumps of dry grasses on the way past. Even though the horses had bits in their mouth, Jennsen didn't have the heart to deny them a bite to eat. She was hungry, too. The meat pies had provided them a good breakfast but were long ago finished off.

  Before dark, they reached foothills leading up into more rugged country, where they made camp in the lee of a rock outcropping. At the base of a cut of rock Jennsen found a place that would provide them shelter from the wind and, for the horses, at last enough grasses to graze on. As soon as the horses were unsaddled, they eagerly began browsing on the clumps of tough stalks.

  Jennsen pulled out some of their gear and supplies while Sebastian hunted around, coming up with remnants of some of the stunted little trees, long dead and dried to a silver gray. He used his battle-axe to cut down the dry wood and built a small fire up close to the cut of rock, where it wouldn't easily be seen. While she waited for the fire to get hot, he gently laid a blanket around her shoulders. Sitting before the fire, with Sebastian close at her side, Jennsen worked salt pork onto sticks and rested them across rocks so the pork could cook over the fire.

  "Was it hard to get to Althea's place?" he asked at last.

  She realized that, being preoccupied with everything that had happened, she hadn't told him much at all about what had taken place while he was being held prisoner.

  "I had to go through a swamp, but I made it."

  She didn't really want to complain about her difficulties, her fears, her battle with the snake, or nearly drowning. That was past. She had survived. Sebastian had all the while been sitting in a prison, knowing that at any moment they might put him to death, or torture him. Althea was forever a prisoner in the swamp. Others had it worse than she.

  "The swamp sounds wonderful. It had to be better than this wretched cold. I've never seen anything like it in all my life."

  "You mean it isn't cold where you come from? In the Old World?"

  "No. Winters have cold spells-nothing like this, of course-and sometimes it's rainy, too, but we never have that dreadful snow and it's not like this miserable cold of the New World. I don't know why anyone would want to live here."

  She was startled at the idea of a winter without snow and cold. She had trouble even imagining it.

  "Where else could we live? We have no choice."

  "I guess," he admitted with a sigh.

  "Winter is wearing on. Spring will arrive before you know it. You'll see. "

  "I hope so. I'd even rather be in that place you mentioned before, the Keeper's Furnace, than in this frozen wasteland."

  Jennsen frowned. "The place I mentioned? I never mentioned any place called the Keeper's Furnace."

  "Sure you did." Sebastian used his sword to move the logs together so that the flames could build. Sparks swirled up into the darkness. "Back at the palace. Just before we kissed."

  Jennsen held her hands out, warming her fingers before the glorious heat. "I don't remember."

  "You said Althea had been there."

  "Where?"

  "The Pillars of Creation."

  Jennsen drew her hands back inside her cloak and stared over at him. "No, I never said that. She was talking about something else-not anywhere she'd been."

  "What was she talking about, then?"

  Jennsen dismissed his question with an impatient wave of her hand. "It was just idle talk. It's not important." She pulled a ringlet of red hair away from her face. "The Pillars of Creation is a place?"

  He nodded as he banked the white-hot coals together with his sword. "Like I said, the Keeper's Furnace."

  Frustrated, she folded her arms. "What does that mean?"

  He looked up, puzzled by her tone. "You know, hot. Like, when someone says, 'it's as hot today as the Keeper's furnace.' That's why people will occasionally refer to the place as the Keeper's Furnace, but its name is the Pillars of Creation."

  "And you've been there?"

  "Are you kidding? I don't even know of anyone who has gone there. People fear the place. Some think it really is the Keeper's province, and that only death exists there."

  "Where is it?"

  He gestured south with his sword. "In a desolate place down in the Old World. You know how it is-people are often superstitious about remote places. "

  Jennsen stared back into the flames, trying to reconcile it all in her head. There was something about it that wasn't exactly right. Something about it that alarmed her.

  "Why is it called that? The Pillars of Creation?"

  Sebastian shrugged, frowning again at her tone. "Like I said, it's a deserted place, hot as the Keeper's furnace, so that's why some people call it that, the heat of the place. As for the actual name, the place is said to be-"

  "If no one goes there, the how does anyone know all this?"

  "Over time there have been some people who had gone there, or rather, gone near there, and they've told others about it. Word spreads, knowledge is accumulated. It's in a place kind of like the plains here-"

  "The Azrith Plains?"

&nbs
p; "Yes, deserted like the Azrith Plains, but much bigger. And it's always hot there. Dry, and deathly hot. There are a few trade routes that cross the barren fringes. Without proper clothing to protect you from the broiling sun and blistering winds, you would bake alive in no time. Without enough water you won't last long."

  "And this place is called the Pillars of Creation?"

  "No, that's just the land you must go through, first. Near the center of this vast empty land, there is said to be a low place, a broad valley, that's even hotter yet-deadly hot, hot as the Keeper's furnace. That's the Pillars of Creation."

  "But why is it called the Pillars of Creation?"

  Sebastian mounded sand with his boot to contain the red-hot coals that dropped from the logs down into the wavering heat. "It's said that down the cliffs, down the surrounding rugged rock walls and slopes, down in that vast valley, there are towering rock columns. It's for those soaring rock formations that the place is named."

  Jermsen turned the sticks with the salt pork. "That would make sense. Rock pillars."

  "I've seen towers something like that before, in other places, where rock is stacked up like disorderly columns of coins on a table. These are said to be more extraordinary than any others, as if the world itself were reaching up in homage toward the Creator, so some consider it a sacred place. But it's a place of deadly heat, too, so while it is thought of by some as the Creator's Forge, it's also associated with the Keeper-so some call it the Keeper's Furnace. In addition to the heat, everyone has reason enough to fear going there. It remains for everyone a place of otherworldly conflict best left alone."

  "Creation and destruction-life and death-together?"

  The firelight danced in his eyes as he looked over at her. "That's what people say."

  "You mean, some think this is a place where death itself is trying to consume the world of life?"

  "Death is always stalking the living. Brother Narev teaches that man's own evil is what brings the Keeper's shadow to darken the world. If we give in to evil ways, that gives evil power in the world of life, then the Keeper will be able to topple the very Pillars of Creation, and the world will end."