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, then 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?”
“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.”
Jennsen 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.”
The words chilled Jennsen to the bone, as if the hand of death itself had touched her. It would be just like a sorceress to practice sly wiles with words. Jennsen’s mother had warned her that sorceresses never told what they knew, but often held back important things.
What had been Althea’s true intent when she had so casually named Jennsen one of “the pillars of Creation”? Although Jennsen didn’t understand it, it now seemed all too clear that Althea might have had some hidden motive for planting the seed of that name in Jennsen’s mind.
“So, what happened with Althea? Why couldn’t she help you?”
Jennsen was startled out of her thoughts by his voice. She turned the sticks with the salt pork, seeing that it still needed more cooking, as she considered how to answer the question simply.
“She told me that she tried to help me, once, when I was little. Darken Rahl found out and crippled her for it. He twisted her gift, too, so she can’t use her own magic. Now, she couldn’t cast me a spell even if she had wanted to.”
“Maybe, without even knowing it, Darken Rahl was doing the Creator’s work.”
Jennsen frowned in astonishment. “What do you mean?”
“The Imperial Order wants to eliminate magic from the world. Brother Narev says it’s the Creator’s work we do, because magic is evil.”
“And what do you think? Do you really think the gift of the Creator could be evil?”
“How is magic used?” His hooded gaze fixed on her, anger clearly evident in his eyes. “Is it used to help people? Help the Creator’s children in this life? No. It’s used for selfish reasons. You have only to look at the House of Rahl. They’ve used the gift, for thousands of years, to rule D’Hara. And what has that rule been? Has it been to the help or benefit the people? Or has it been one of torture and death.”
The last of it was not a question, but a statement, and one Jennsen could not argue.
“Maybe,” Sebastian added, “the Creator was working through Darken Rahl to lift the taint of magic from Althea—to mercifully free her from it.”
Jennsen rested her chin on her knees as she watched the meat sizzling. Althea said that she was left with only the gift of prophecy, complaining that it was torturous to her.
Jennsen’s mother had taught her to draw a Grace and told her that the gift was given by the Creator. In the proper hands, a Grace
was
magic. Even though Jennsen had no magic, that magical symbol had on several occasions protected her. While she knew that people could do evil, Jennsen didn’t like the idea of thinking that the gift was evil. Even though she couldn’t do magic, she knew that it could be a wondrous thing.
She gently sought to try a different approach. “You said that Emperor Jagang has sorceresses with him, the Sisters of the Light, who might be able to help me. They use magic. If magic is evil—”
“They use magic in our cause, so that magic might one day be eliminated from the world.”
“How can that make sense? If you truly believe magic to be evil, then how could you think to ally yourselves with what you profess to be evil?”
Sebastian checked the salt pork when she held one of the sticks out to him, then pulled a piece off on the point of his knife. He held up the knife and waggled it for her to see.
“People kill other people with knives and swords. If we wanted to eliminate knives and swords so that the killing would stop, we could hardly do so with words alone. We would have to take away people’s knives and swords by force in order to stop the madness of violence for the good of everyone. People cling to evil. We would have to use knives and swords in that fight to rid the world of those evil things. Then the world would be at peace. Without the means of murder, people’s passions would cool and the Keeper would flee their hearts.”
Jennsen carved off a chunk of sizzling meat and blew on it to cool it a little. “And so you use magic in that way?”
“That’s right.” Sebastian chewed, giving a moan of approval to the taste before he swallowed and went on. “We want to eliminate the evil of magic, but to do so we have to use magic in the fight, or else evil would win.”
Jennsen took a juicy bite of the pork, moaning her agreement with his opinion of the taste. It was wonderful having something hot to eat.
“And do Brother Narev and the Emperor Jagang think that knives and swords are evil, too?”
“Of course, because their sole purpose is to maim and kill—naturally we don’t mean tools like bread knives, but weapons, certainly, are evil things. People will eventually be free of their scourge, though, and then the plague of murder and death will be a thing of the past.”
“You mean to say that even soldiers won’t have weapons?”
“No, soldiers will always have to be armed in order to defend a free and peaceful people.”
“But, then how can people protect themselves?”
“From what? Only the soldiers will carry deadly weapons.”