The pillars of creation

Panting and drained from the effort, Oba finally halted. He let the bloody mass slip to the ground. Despondent, he decided he would have to dive back into the water and search for his missing money. Before he did, he made one last despairing check of his pocket. Looking closer, he saw, then, that leather thong he kept tied to his belt loop was still there. It hadn't come undone, after all. He pulled the short length of leather out in his fingers.

It had been cut.

Oba turned, looking back the way he had come. Clovis.

Clovis was always pushing up close, yammering away, like a pesky fly buzzing around him. When Oba had bought the horses, Clovis had seen the money purse.

With a growl, Oba glared back through the swamp. A light rain had begun to fall, making but a whisper against the living canopy of leaves. The drops felt cool on his heated face.

He would kill the little thief. Slowly.

Clovis would no doubt feign innocence. He would beg to be searched to prove he didn't have the missing money purse. Oba figured the man would likely have buried the money somewhere, intending to come back later and retrieve it.

Oba would make him confess. There was no doubt in his mind about that. Clovis thought he was clever, but he had not met the likes of Oba Rahl before.

Striking out back though the swamp to wring the hawker's neck, Oba didn't get far before he stopped. No. It had taken him a good long time to get this far. He had to be close to Althea's by now. He couldn't let his anger rule him. He had to think. He was smart. Smarter than his mother, smarter than Lathea the sorceress, and smarter than a scrawny little thief. He would act out of deliberate intent, not out of blind anger.

He could deal with Clovis when he was finished with Althea.

In a dark mood, Oba started out again toward the sorceress.

CHAPTER 37

Wching from a distance through the slow fall of rain, Oba didn't see anyone outside the cedar log house that lay beyond the tangled undergrowth and trees. There had been tracks-the boot prints of a manaround the shore of a small lake. The tracks weren't fresh, but they had led Oba up a path to the house. Smoke from the chimney curled lazily in the stagnant humid air.

The house up ahead, almost hidden under trailers of moss and vines, had to be the home of the sorceress. No one else would be fool enough to live in such a miserable place.

Oba crept lightly on the balls of his feet, up the back steps, up onto the narrow porch. Around in front, columns made of thick logs supported a low, overhanging roof. Out beyond the wide front steps lay a broad path-no doubt the way visitors timidly approached the sorceress for a telling.

In the grip of rage, and well beyond any pretense of being polite enough to knock, Oba threw open the door. A small fire burned in the hearth. With only the fire and two little windows, the place was rather dimly lit. The walls were covered with fussy carvings, mostly of animals, some plain, some painted, and some gilded. It was hardly the way Oba chose to carve animals. The furnishings were better than any he had ever grown up with, but not nearly as nice as he had become accustomed to.

Near the hearth, a woman with big dark eyes sat in an elaborately carved chair-the finest of the furnishings-like a queen on her throne, quietly watching him over the rim of a cup as she sipped. Even though her long golden hair was different and she didn't have that hauntingly austere cast to her face, Oba still recognized her features. Looking into those eyes, there could be no doubt. It was Lathea's sister.

Eyes. That was something on one of the mental lists he kept.

"I am Althea," she said, taking a cup away from her lips. Her voice wasn't at all like her sister's. It conveyed a sense of authority, as did Lathea's voice, yet it didn't have the haughty ring that went with it. She didn't rise. "I'm afraid you've arrived much sooner than I expected."

Seeking to quickly nullify any potential threat, Oba ignored her and hurried to the rooms at the rear, checking first the room where he saw a workbench. Clovis had told him that Althea had a husband, Friedrich, and, of course, there had been a man's boot prints outside. Chisels, knives, and mallets were laid out in an orderly fashion. Each could be a deadly weapon in the right hands. The place had the tidy look of work put up for a time.

"My husband is gone to the palace," she called from her chair by the fire. "We're alone."

He checked for himself anyway, looking in the bedroom, and found it empty. She was telling the truth. But for the rain on the roof, the place was quiet. The two of them were indeed alone.

Finally confident that they would not be disturbed, he returned to the main room. Without a smile, without a frown, without worry, she watched him coming toward her. Oba thought that if she had any brains, she should at least be worried. If anything, she looked resigned, or maybe sleepy. A swamp, with its heavy humid air, could certainly make a person drowsy.