The pillars of creation

As Oba listened, the key in the far lock turned. The heavy door rasped open. A guard stepped into the space between the doors. The shadow of the other guard filled the outer doorway. The guard edged closer to the small slit where Oba waited on the other side. Wide eyes peered in.

"What do you want?" the man asked in a hesitant voice.

"We wish to leave, now," Oba and the voice said. "Open the door. It is time for us to go from here."

The man bent forward and worked at the lock until the bolt snapped back with a metallic clang that echoed in the darkness. The door pulled back, squeaking on rusty hinges. The other man stepped up behind him, looking in with the same lifeless expression.

"What would you like us to do?" the guard asked, his eyes unblinking as he stared into Oba's eyes.

"We must leave," Oba and the voice said. "You two will guide us out of here.»

Both guards nodded and turned to lead Oba away from the dark pen. He would never again be locked in confining little places. He had the voice to help him. He was invincible. He was glad that he had remembered that.

Althea had been wrong about the voice; she was just jealous, like all the others. He was alive, and the voice had helped him. She was just dead. He wondered how she liked that.

Oba told the two guards to lock the doors of his empty cell. That would make it more likely that it would be a while before he was discovered missing. He would have a small head start to escape Lord Rahl's greedy grasp.

The guards led Oba through a labyrinth of narrow, dark passageways. The men moved with unerring steps, avoiding those halls where Oba could hear men talking in the distance. He didn't want them to know he was leaving. Better if he simply slipped away without a confrontation.

"I need my money back," Oba said. "Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," one of the guards said in a dead voice.

They went through iron doors and onward through passageways lined with coarse stone blocks. They turned down a passageway where there were men in cells to each side, coughing, snickering, cursing through the openings in the doors. When they approached the row of doors, filthy arms reached out, clawing the air.

As the somber guards, carrying lamps, led the way down the center of the wide hall, men grabbed for them, or spat at them, or cursed them. As Oba passed, the men all fell silent. The arms drew back in through the openings. Shadows trailed behind Oba like a dark cape.

The three of them, Oba and his escort of two guards, reached a small room at the bottom of narrow twisting stairs. One guard led Oba up the stairs while the other followed. At the top, they took him into a locked room, and then through another locked door.

The lamps the guards carried in cast angular shadows through the rows of shelves heaped with things; clothing, weapons, and various personal possessions, everything from canes to flutes to puppets. Oba scanned the shelves crammed with odd things, stooping to look low, stretching up on his tiptoes to check the upper shelves. He guessed that all these things were taken from prisoners before they were locked away.

Near the end of one row, he spotted the handle of his knife. Behind the knife was a mound of the tattered clothes that he had taken from Althea's house so that he could make it across the Azrith Plains. His boot knife was there, too. Piled in front were the cloth and leather pouches containing his considerable fortune.

He was relieved to have his money back. He was even more relieved to once again curl his fingers around the smooth wooden handle of his knife.

"You two will be my escorts," Oba informed the guards.

"Where shall we escort you?" one asked.

Oba mulled over the question. "This is my first visit. I wish to see some of the palace." He restrained himself from calling it his palace. That would come in time. For now, there were other matters that must come first.

He followed them up stone stairwells, through corridors and past intersections and myriad flights of stairs. Patrolling soldiers, off in the distance, saw his guards and paid little attention to the man between them.

When they came to an iron door, one of his guards unlocked it and they stepped through into a corridor beyond with a polished marble floor. Oba was taken by the splendor of the hall, the fluted columns to the sides, and the arched ceiling. The three of them marched onward, around several comers lit by dramatic silver lamps hung in the center of marble panels.

The hall turned again to open into a grand courtyard of such staggering beauty that it cast the hall they had been in, that had been the finest place