The pillars of creation

They passed the shadows of the towering columns and swept on through the doorway; the dozen soldiers still trailed in her wake, their weapons, belts, and mail jangling. The sound of their boots on the polished marble floor echoed off the walls of a grand entry lined with fluted pillars.

Deeper into the palace, people going about their business, or standing in twos and threes talking, or strolling the balconies, paused to watch the unusual procession, paused to see the officials in their white and silver robes and a dozen guards at a respectful distance escorting a woman with red hair. By her outfit, especially in comparison to the neat clean dress of the others, it was obvious that she had just traveled in. Rather than being embarrassed by her clothes, Jennsen was pleased that they added to the sense of urgent mystery. The reaction of the people, too, was bound to infect her escort.

After the man in white whispered to the two in silver robes, they nodded and ran on ahead, vanishing around a comer. The guards followed at her measured distance.

The procession wound through a maze of small passageways and funneled down narrow service stairs. Jennsen and her escorts made a number of turns through intersecting halls, along dim corridors to doors opening onto wide halls, and intermittently descended a variety of stairs, until she could no longer keep track of their route. By the dusty condition of some of the dingy stairs and musty-smelling, apparently little-used halls, she realized that the man in white robes was taking her on a shortcut through the palace in order to get her to where she wanted to go as swiftly as possible.

This, too, was reassuring, because it meant they took her seriously. That helped her confidence in playing the part. She told herself that she was important, she was a personal representative of Lord Rahl himself, and she was not going to be deterred by anyone. They were here for no other purpose but to assist her. It was their job. Their duty.

Since it was hopeless trying to keep track of all the turns and twists they took, she put her mind instead to the matter at hand, to what she would do and say, going over it all in her head.

Jennsen reminded herself that no matter what condition Sebastian was in, she had to keep to her plan. Acting surprised, bursting into tears, falling on him, wailing, would do neither of them any good. She hoped that when she saw him she could remember all that.

The man in white checked his charge before turning down a stone stairwell. Dull red rust showed through chipped paint on the iron railing. The uncomfortably steep flight of stairs twisted downward, finally ending in a lower passageway lit by the eerie wavering light from torches in short floor stands, rather than by lamps and reflectors that were used to light the way above.

The two men in silver robes who had gone on ahead were waiting for them at the bottom. Hazy smoke hung near the low beams of the ceiling, leaving the place reeking of burning pitch. She could see her breath in the cold air. Jennsen felt, viscerally, how deep they were in the People's Palace. She had a brief, unpleasant memory of what it felt like sinking down beneath the dark, bottomless water of the swamp. She felt a similar pressure on her chest in the depths of the palace as she imagined the inconceivable weight overhead.

Down the murky stone corridor to the right she thought she could see evenly spaced doors. In some of the doors, it looked like there might be fingers gripping the edge of small openings. From down that hall, in the darkness, came a dry, echoing cough. As she looked off toward the unseen source of the sound, she had the feeling that this was a place where men were sent not for punishment, but to die.

Before an ironbound door sealing off the corridor to the left stood a power-fully built man, feet spread, hands clasped behind his back, chin held high. His bearing, his size, the way his cut-stone gaze locked on her, made Jermsen's breath falter.

She wanted to run. Why did she think she could do this? After all, who was she? Just a nobody.

Althea said that wasn't true unless she made it so herself. Jennsen wished she had as much faith in her own abilities as Althea seemed to have in her.

Looking Jennsen in the eye, the man in white robes held a hand out in introduction. "Captain Lerner. As you requested." He turned to the captain and held his other hand out toward Jennsen. "A personal envoy of Lord Rahl. So she says."

The captain gave the man in white a grim smile.

"Thank you," she said to the men who had escorted her. "That will be all.»

The man in white opened his mouth to speak, then, as he met the look in her eyes, thought better of it and bowed. With his arms held out like a hen herding chicks, he ushered the other two in silver and then the soldiers away with him.

"I'm looking for a man I heard was taken prisoner," she told the big man standing before the door.

"For what reason?"