The pillars of creation

Holding Clovis down on the ground, with a knee pressed to the man's chest, Oba at last let the full and rightful rage of vengeance free. He didn't feel the blows any more than he felt the aches and pains he had come down with. He cursed the murderous little thief as he dealt out justice, turning Clovis to a bloody pulp.

Copious sweat poured down Oba's face. He gasped for air as he slugged away. His arms felt like lead. As he became worn out, he felt his head pounding as hard as his fists. He had trouble focusing on the target of his anger.

The ground was soaked with blood. What had been Clovis was no longer remotely recognizable. His jaw was shattered and hung completely unhinged to the side. One eye socket had been altogether caved in. Oba's knee had broken the man's sternum and crushed his chest. It was glorious.

Oba felt hands snatching his clothes and arms, pulling him back. He didn't have the strength left to try to stand. As he was dragged backward from between the wagons, he saw a crowd of people formed in a half circle-all stricken with horror. Oba was pleased by that, because it meant that Clovis had gotten what he deserved. Proper punishment for crimes should horrify people so as to serve as an example. That's what his father would have said.

Oba looked up, closer, at the men hauling him out from between the wagons. A wall of leather armor, chain mail, and steel had poured in to surround him. Pikes and swords and axes glinted in the sunlight. They were all pointing at him. He could only blink, too drained to lift a hand to wave them away.

Exhausted, out of breath, and soaked in sweat, Oba couldn't hold his head up. As he started to sag in the arms of the men holding him, blackness enveloped him.

CHAPTER 40

in a somber daze, Friedrich used the shovel to steady himself as he sank to his knees. Sitting back on his heels, he let the shovel topple to the cold ground. The chill wind ruffled his hair as well as the long grasses around the freshly turned soil.

His world was ashes.

Dazed with grief, his mind wouldn't focus on any other thought.

A sob overwhelmed him. He worried that he might not have done the right thing. It was cold, here. He worried that Althea would be cold. Friedrich didn't want her to be cold.

But it was sunny, too. Althea loved sunlight. She always said that she liked the feel of the sun on her face. Despite the heat in the swamp, the sunlight rarely made it down to the ground, at least anywhere near where she could see it from her confinement.

To Friedrich, though, her hair was golden sunlight. She would always scoff at such sentiment, but occasionally, if he hadn't mentioned it in a while, she would innocently ask if he thought her hair was brushed enough and looked all right for visitors due for a telling. She always could keep her face blameless when she was angling for what she wanted. Then, he would tell her that her hair looked like sunshine. She would blush like an adolescent girl and say, "Oh, Friedrich."

Now, the sun would never shine for him again.

He had considered what to do, and had decided this would be better for her-to be up here, in the meadow, out of the swamp. If he could never take her out of that place in life, at least he could take her out now. The sunny meadow was a better place to lay her to rest than in her former prison.

He would have given anything to have taken her out before, to show her beautiful places again, to see her smile, carefree, in the sunlight. But she could not leave. For everyone else, including him, only the path in the front could be safely traversed. There was no other way past the dark things created of her power. For her, there was not even that safe passage.

Friedrich knew that the dire consequences for anyone who ventured anywhere else in the swamp were not imaginary. Several times over the years, the unwary or the foolhardy had wandered off the path, or tried to make it through the back way, where not even he dared go. It had been torturous for Althea, knowing that her power had ended innocent lives. How Jennsen had made it in the back way unharmed, not even Althea knew.

For her last journey, Friedrich had carried Althea out that back way as a symbol of her freedom reclaimed.

Her monsters were gone. She was with the good spirits, now.

Now, he was alone.

Friedrich bent forward in agony, sobbing over her fresh grave. The world was suddenly an empty, lonely, dead place. His fingers clutched at the cold ground covering his love. He felt crushing guilt that he had not been there to protect her. He was sure that if he had been there, she would still be alive. That was all he wanted. Althea alive. Althea back. Althea with him.

He had always delighted in returning home, such as it was, to tell her about any little thing he had seen-a bird skimming over a field, a tree with its leaves shimmering in the sunlight, a road lying like a ribbon over rolling hills, anything that would have brought a little of the world home to her in her prison.