The pillars of creation

They moved out of the quieter side route into a main road thick with milling throngs. There were a number of attractive women about. Some of them looked Oba's way, the invitation and longing clear in their eyes. They met his gaze, hungry for him. Oba gave them smiles, a token suggesting the possibility of more, later. He could see that even that much thrilled them.

It occurred to him, though, that these women roaming the market were probably lowly peasants. Up in the palace were likely to be the kind of women Oba wanted to meet: women of station. He deserved no less. After all, he was a Rahl, practically a prince, or something comparable. Maybe even something more than that.

"What's you name, anyway?" Oba asked. "Seeing as we'll be traveling together.»

"Clovis."

Oba didn't offer his name. He liked being called " sir. " It was, after all, only fitting.

"With all the people," Oba said as his gaze swept the crowds, "how is it that your charms aren't selling? Why is it that you're having hard times?"

The man sighed in apparent misery. "It's a sad tale, but it's not your burden, sir."

"Simple enough question, I think."

"I suppose it is." He shielded his eyes from the sunlight with a hand, partly covered in a knitted fingerless glove, as he peered up at Oba. "Well, sir, a time ago, back in the thick of winter, I met a beautiful young woman."

Oba looked over at the hunched, wrinkled, disheveled man shuffling along beside him. "Met her?"

"Well, sir, truth be told, I was offering her a charm. . Clovis's brow twisted curiously-as if he'd suddenly come across something quite unexpected. "It was her eyes that seized you. Big blue eyes. Blue like you rarely see. ." Clovis ogled up at Oba. "The thing is, sir, her eyes looked very much like yours."

It was Oba's turn to frown. "Like mine?"

Clovis nodded earnestly. "They did, sir. She had eyes like yours. Imagine that. Something about her-about you as well-that looks… somehow, familiar. Can't say as I know what it is, though."

"What does this have to do with your hard times? Did you give her all your money and fail to get between her legs?"

Clovis seemed shocked by the very notion. "No sir, nothing like that. I tried to sell her a charm-so she would have good fortune. Instead, she stole all my money."

Oba grunted skeptically. "I'd bet she was batting her eyelashes and smiling at you while she had her arm in your pocket to her elbow, and you were too eager to suspect what she was really doing."

"Nothing like that, sir. Nothing like that at all." His voice turned bitter. "She set a man upon me and he took it all for her. He did it, but it was at her word-I'm sure of it. The two of them stole all my money. Robbed me of everything I had earned all year."

Something tickled Oba's memory. He scanned his mental lists of odd and unrelated things. Some of those things began to come together.

"What did this woman with the blue eyes look like?"

"Oh. she was beautiful, sir, with thick ringlets of red hair." Even if this woman had robbed the man of his savings, the distant look in his eye told Oba that he was still clearly taken by her. "Her face was like a vision of a good spirit, it was, and her figure was enough to take your breath away. But I should have known, by that bewitchingly evil red hair, that there was something more devious to her than her beauty."

Oba halted and seized the man by the arm. "Was her name Jennsen?"

Clovis offered only a regretful shrug. " Soff y, sir. She never gave me her name. But I don't imagine there are many women that look like her. Not with those blue eyes, her exquisite looks, and those ringlets of red hair.»

Oba didn't think so, either. The description fit Jennsen perfectly.

Well, wasn't that just something.

Clovis pointed. "There, sir. Down there is the man who can sell us horses.

CHAPTER 36

Oba squinted into the gloom under the thick vegetation. It was hard to believe how dark it was in under the towering trees, down at the bottom of the crooked spine of rock, when it had been such a bright sunny morning up in the meadow above. It looked wet ahead, too.

He turned from the way leading in under the vines and hanging trailers of moss, to look back up the steep rocky incline, toward where he had left Clovis by a warm fire, watching their horses and gear. Oba was glad to finally be free of the jumpy little man. He was wearing, like a pesky fly buzzing around all the time. All the way across the Azrith Plains, the man jabbered on and on at length about everything and nothing. Oba would have rather been rid of the hawker and gone alone, but the man had been right about how difficult it would have been to have found this place down into the back of Althea's swamp.