The pillars of creation

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?"

"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."