Pillars of Creation

by Terry Goodkind

  "You mean, you're a sorceress, but you can't do magic?"

  As distant thunder rumbled through the swamp, she gestured to a place on the floor. While Oba sat down before her, she dragged over the board with the gilded symbol and placed it between them.

  "I was left with only a partial ability to foretell things," she said. "Nothing else. If you wished to, you could strangle me with one hand while finishing your tea with the other. I could do nothing to stop you."

  Oba thought that might take some of the fun out of it. Struggle was part of any genuinely satisfying encounter. How much could a crippled old woman struggle? At least there was still the terror, the agony, and witnessing death's arrival to look forward to.

  "But, you can still do prophecy? That was how you knew I was coming?"

  "In a way." She sighed heavily, as if the effort of pulling herself to her

  red and gold pillow had left her exhausted. As she turned her attention to the board before her, she seemed to shrug off her weariness.

  "I want to show you something." She was speaking now like a confidant. "It may finally explain some things for you."

  He leaned forward expectantly, pleased that she had at last wisely decided to reveal secrets. Oba liked to learn new things.

  He watched as she sorted through her little pile of stones. She inspected several carefully before she found the one she wanted. She set the others to the side, apparently in some order she understood, though he thought they all looked the same.

  She turned back to him and lifted the single stone up before his eyes. "You," she said.

  "Me? What do you mean?"

  "This stone represents you."

  "Why?"

  "It chose to."

  "You mean that you decided it would represent me."

  "No. I mean that the stone decided to represent you-or, rather, that which controls the stones decided."

  "What controls the stones?"

  He was surprised to see a smile spread on Althea's face. It grew to a dangerous grin. Not even Lathea had ever managed a look as chillingly malevolent.

  "Magic decides," she hissed.

  Oba had to remind himself that he was invincible. He gestured, trying to look unconcerned.

  "What about the others? Who are they, then?"

  "I thought you wanted to learn about yourself, not others." She leaned toward him with a countenance of supreme self-confidence. "Other people don't really matter to you, now do they?"

  Oba glared at her private smile. "I guess not."

  She rattled the single stone in her loose fist. Without looking away from his eyes, she cast the stone down at the board. Lightning flickered. The stone tumbled across the board, rolling to a stop out beyond the outer gilded circle. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  "So," he asked, "what does it mean?"

  Rather than answer, and without looking down, she scooped up the stone. Her gaze didn't move off his face as she rattled his stone again. Again, and without a word, she cast it at the board. Lightning flashed. Amazingly, the

  stone came to rest in the same place as it had the first time-not just close to the same place, but in the exact same place. Rain drummed against the roof as a stutter of thunder crackled through the swamp.

  Althea quickly swept up the stone and cast it a third time, again accompanied by a flash of lightning, only this time the lightning was closer. Oba licked his lips as he waited for the fall of the stone that represented him.

  Goose bumps ran up his arms as he saw the dark little stone roll to a stop in the same place on the board as it had the two previous times. The instant it had halted, thunder boomed.

  Oba put his hands on his knees and leaned back. "Some trick."

  "Not a trick," she said. "Magic."

  "I thought you couldn't do magic."

  "I can't."

  "Then how are you doing that?"

  "I told you, I'm not doing it. The stones are doing it themselves."

  "Well, then, what's it supposed to mean about me when it stops, there, in that place?"

  He realized that somewhere during the stone-rolling, her smile had gone away. One graceful finger, lit by the firelight, pointed down to where his stone lay.

  "That place represents the underworld," she said in a grim voice. "The world of the dead."

  Oba tried to look only mildly interested. "What does that have to do with me?"

  Her big dark eyes wouldn't stop boring into his soul. "That's where the voice comes from, Oba."

  Goose bumps flitted up his arms. "How do you know my name?"

  She cocked her head, casting half her face in deep shadow. "I made a mistake, once, long ago."

  "What mistake?"

  "I helped save your life. Helped your mother get you away from the palace before Darken Rahl could find out that you existed and kill you. "

  "Liar!" Oba snatched up the stone from the board. "I'm his son! Why would he want to kill me!"

  She hadn't taken her penetrating gaze from him. "Maybe because he knew you would listen to the voices, Oba."

  Oba wanted to cut out her terrible eyes. He would cut them out. He

  thought it best, though, if he found out more, first, if he gathered his courage, first.

  "You were a friend of my mother?"

  "No. I didn't really know her. Lathea knew her better. Your mother was but one young woman among several who were in trouble and a great deal of danger. I helped them, that's all. For that, Darken Rahl crippled me. If you choose not to believe the truth about his intentions toward you, then I leave it to you to please yourself with a different answer of your own devising."

  Oba considered her words, checking them for any connection they might have to anything on his lists. He didn't find any links right off.

  "You and Lathea helped the children of Darken Rahl?"

  "My sister Lathea and I were at one time very close. We were both committed, each in our own way, to helping those in need. But she came to resent those like you, offspring of Lord Rahl, because of the agony it caused me to have tried to help. She could not bring herself to witness my punishment and pain. She left.

  "It was a weakness on her part, but I knew she could not help having such feelings. I loved her, so I would not beg her to visit me, here, like this, despite how terribly I missed her. I never saw her again. It was the only kindness I could do her-let her run away. I would imagine she did not look kindly upon you. She had her reasons, even if they were misdirected."

  Oba was not about to be talked into any sympathy for that hateful woman. He inspected the dark stone for a time and then gave it back to Althea.

  "Those three were just luck. Do it again."

  "You wouldn't believe me if I did it a hundred times." She handed the stone back. "You do it. Cast it yourself."

  Oba defiantly rattled the stone in his loose fist, as he had seen her do. She leaned back against her chair as she watched him. Her eyes were getting droopy.

  Oba threw the stone down at the board with enough force to be certain that it would roll well beyond the board and prove her wrong. As the stone left his hand, lightning flashed so hard that he flinched and looked up, fearing it was blasting through the roof. Thunder crashed on its heels, shaking the house. The strike felt like it rattled his bones. But then it was over and the only sound was the rain drumming against the undamaged roof and windows.

  Oba grinned in relief and looked down, only to see the cursed stone sitting in the exact same place it had come to rest the three times before.

  He jumped up as if he'd been bitten by a snake. He rubbed his sweating palms against his thighs.

  "A trick," he said. "It's just a trick. You're a sorceress and you're just doing magic tricks."

  "You are the one who has done the trick, Oba. You are the one who invited his darkness into your soul."

  "And what if I have!"

  She smiled at his admission. "You may listen to the voice, Oba, but you are not the one. You are merely his servant, no more. He m
ust choose another if he is to bring darkness upon the world."

  "You don't know what you're talking about!"

  "Oh, but I do. You may be a hole in the world, but you are missing a necessary ingredient."

  "And what would that be?"

  "Grushdeva. "

  Oba felt the hair at the back of his neck stiffen. While he didn't recognize the specific word, the source was indisputable. The idiosyncratic nature of the word belonged solely to the voice.

  "A senseless word. It means nothing."

  She regarded him for a time with a look that he feared because it seemed to hold a world of forbidden knowledge. By the cast of iron resolve in her eyes, he knew that no mere blade would gain that knowledge for him.

  "A long time ago, in a faraway place," she said in her quiet voice,

  another sorceress revealed to me a bit of the Keeper's tongue. That is one of his words, in his primordial language. You would not have heard it unless you were the right one. Grushdeva. It means 'vengeance.' You are not the one he has chosen."

  Oba thought she might be taunting him. "You don't know what words I've heard or anything about it. I'm the son of Darken Rahl. A rightful heir. You don't know anything about what I hear. I will have power you can only imagine."

  "Free will is forfeit when dealing with the Keeper. You have sold what is yours alone and priceless ... for nothing but ashes.

  "You have sold yourself into the worst kind of slavery, Oba, in return for nothing more than the illusion of self-worth. You have no say in what

  is to be. You are not the one. It is another." She wiped the sweat from her brow. "And, that much of it is yet to be decided."

  "Now you presume to think you can alter the course of what I have wrought? Dictate what shall be?" Oba's own words surprised him. They'd seemed to come out before he thought to say them.

  "Such things are not amenable to the likes of me," she admitted. "I learned at the Palace of the Prophets not to meddle in that which is above me and ungovernable. The grand scheme of life and death are the rightful province of the Creator and the Keeper." She seemed contented behind a sly expression. "But I am not above exercising my free will."

  He'd heard enough. She was only trying to stall, to confuse him. For some reason, he couldn't make his racing heart slow.

  "What are holes in the world?"

  "They are the end of the likes of me," she said. "They are the end of everything I know."

  It was just like a sorceress to answer with a senseless riddle. "Who are the other stones?" he demanded.

  At last, she turned her formidable eyes from him to look down at the other stones. Her movements seemed oddly jerky. Her slender fingers selected one of the stones. As she lifted it, she paused to put her other hand across her middle. Oba realized that she was in pain. She was trying her best to cover it, but she couldn't cover it now. The sweat beading her brow was from pain. The agony came out in a low moan. Oba watched with fascination.

  Then, it seemed to ebb some. With great effort she straightened her posture and returned her attention to what she had been doing. She held out her hand, palm up, with the stone sitting in the center.

  "This one," she said, her breathing labored, now, "is me."

  "You? That stone is you?"

  She nodded as she cast it at the board without even looking. The stone tumbled to a stop, this time, without the accompaniment of lightning and thunder. Oba felt relieved, even a little foolish, that he had been so rattled by that before. He smiled, now. It was just a silly board game, and he was invincible.

  The stone had come to rest at one comer of the square that lay within the two circles.

  He gestured. "So, what does that mean?"

  "Protector," she managed through a shallow pant.

  Her trembling fingers gathered up the stone. She lifted her hand up

  before him and opened her slender fingers. The stone, her stone, rested in the center of her palm. Her eyes were fixed on his.

  As Oba watched, the stone crumbled to ash in her palm.

  "Why did it do that?" he whispered, his eyes going wide.

  Althea didn't answer. Instead, she slumped and then toppled over. Her arms sprawled out before her, her legs to the side. The ash that had been a stone scattered in a dark smear across the floor.

  Oba leaped to his feet. His goose bumps were back. He had seen enough people die to know that Althea was dead.

  Rending slashes of thunderous lightning ignited, lacing the sky with violent flashes of light that lanced in through the windows, throwing blinding white light across the dead sorceress. Sweat trickled down his temple and over his cheek.

  Oba stood staring at the body for a long moment.

  And then he ran.

  CHAPTER 38

  Rting and nearly spent from the effort, Oba stumbled out of the thick vegetation into the meadow. He squinted around in the sudden bright light. He was spooked, hungry, thirsty, weary, and in a mood to tear the little thief limb from limb.

  The meadow was empty.

  "Clovis!" His roar came back to him in an empty echo. "Clovis! Where are you!"

  Only the moan of the wind between the towering rock walls answered. Oba wondered if the thief might be nervous, might be reluctant to come out, worried that Oba might have discovered his fortune missing and suspect the truth of what happened.

  "Clovis, come here! We need to leave! I must get back to the palace at once! Clovis!"

  Oba waited, his chest heaving, listening for an answer. With fists at his sides, he again bellowed the little thief's name into the cold afternoon air.

  When no answer came, he fell to his knees beside the fire Clovis had started that morning. He thrust his fingers into the powdery gray ash. It hadn't rained up in the meadow, but the ashes were ice cold.

  Oba stood, staring up the narrow defile through which they had ridden in early that morning. The cold breeze blowing across the empty meadow

  ruffled his hair. With both hands, Oba ran his fingers back through his hair, almost as if to keep his head from bursting as the awful truth settled in.

  He realized that Clovis had not buried the money purse he'd stolen. That had never been his plan. He'd taken the money and run as soon as Oba had gone down into the swamp. He'd run with Oba's fortune, not buried it.

  With a sick, empty, sinking feeling, Oba understood, then, the full extent of what had really happened. No one ever went in the swamp by this back way. Clovis had talked him into it and guided him there because he believed Oba would perish in the treacherous swamp. Clovis had been confident that Oba would become lost and the swamp would swallow him, if the monsters supposedly guarding Althea's back didn't snare him first.

  Clovis had felt no need to bury the money-he figured Oba was dead. Clovis was gone, and he had Oba's fortune.

  But Oba was invincible. He had survived the swamp. He had bested the snake. No monsters had dared come out to challenge him after that.

  Clovis had probably thought that even if the swamp didn't finish his benefactor, there were two other mortal dangers he could count on, Althea hadn't invited Oba in; Clovis had probably figured that she would not take kindly to uninvited guests-sorceresses rarely did. And, they had deadly reputations.

  But Clovis had not anticipated Oba being invincible.

  That left the thief only one safeguard against Oba's wrath, and that one was a problem-the Azrith Plains. Oba was stranded in a desolate place. He had no food, Water was nearby, but he had no means to take it with him. He had no horse. He had even left his wool jacket, unnecessary in a swamp, with the underhanded little hawker. Walking out of this place, without supplies, exposed to winter's weather, would finish anyone who had somehow managed to survive the swamp and Althea.

  Oba couldn't make his feet move. He knew that, given his situation, if he struck out and tried to walk back, he would die. Despite the cold, he could feel sweat running down his neck. His head was pounding.

  Oba turned and stared back down into the swamp. T
here would be things back at Althea's house-food, clothing, and surely something in which he could carry water. Oba had spent his life making do. He could make a pack, at least a pack good enough to get him back to the palace. He could put together a supply of food from the sorceress's house. She wouldn't be there alone and crippled without food on hand. Her husband would be back, but maybe not for days. He would have left food.

  Oba could wear layers of clothes to keep himself warm enough to make the trek across the bitterly cold plains. Althea said her husband went to the palace. He would have warm clothes to cross the Azrith Plains, and might have left extra clothes at the house. Even if they didn't fit, Oba could make do. There would be blankets he could take in a pack and wear as a cloak.

  There was always the possibility, though, that the husband might come back sooner. By the lack of a trail on this side, he would most likely come in the wide path from the other side of the swamp. He could already be there and have discovered his wife's body. Oba wasn't really concerned about that, though. He could deal with the nuisance of a grieving husband. Maybe the man would even be pleased to be out from under the obligation of having to care for a petulant crippled wife. What good was she, anyway? The man should be glad to be rid of her. He might offer Oba a drink to help him celebrate his liberation.

  Oba didn't feel like celebrating, though. Althea had pulled some evil trick and denied him the pleasure he had so looked forward to-the pleasure he deserved after his long and difficult journey. Oba sighed at how trying sorceresses could be. At least she could provide him with what he needed in order to get back to his ancestral home.

  But when he got back to the People's Palace, he would have no money, unless he could find Clovis. Oba knew that was a thin hope. Clovis had Oba's hard-earned fortune, now, and might well have decided to travel to fine places, wantonly spending his ill-gotten gain. The little thief was likely to be long gone.

  Oba didn't have a copper penny. How was he to survive? He couldn't go back to that pauper's life, a life like the one he had had with his mother, not now, not after he had discovered that he was a Rahl-almost royalty.