The pillars of creation

Those beasts kept even a sorceress of Althea's power locked in her prison. Friedrich said that no one, not even he, could come in by the back way. Tom had also said that he had never heard of anyone going in the back way and returning to tell about it. No one used the meadow, either, because of the things that came out of that swamp. The things in the swamp were real and they were deadly. All the facts but one were consistent in supporting that.

Jennsen had gone in and come out again without ever being approached, much less attacked or harmed. She had seen nothing of any beasts created from the very substance of the gift. That was the one piece that hadn't fit, at the time. It did, now.

There had been other indications, too, such as in the People's Palace, when Jennsen had touched Nyda's Agiel without it harming her. It had certainly harmed both Sebastian and Captain Lerner. Nyda had been dumbstruck. She said that not even Lord Rahl was immune to the touch of an Agiel. Jennsen was.

And, Jennsen had been able to bend Nyda's will to helping, rather than what, by all rights, she should have done, which was to stop this stranger who couldn't be touched with the power of an Agiel, stopped a woman who raised so many unanswered questions, until it all could be sorted out and confirmed. Even when Nathan Rahl tried to stop her, Jennsen had been able to get Nyda to help protect her-from a gifted Rahl. Jennsen knew now that it was more than just a good bluff. A bluff might have been the kernel, but there was much more wrapped around it.

All of those things and more, over the course of the long and difficult journey to Aydindril, had at last come together, so that Jennsen finally saw the true extent of her unique status and why she was the one to kill Richard Rahl.

Jennsen had come to understand that she was the only one able to do this-that she was born to do this-because, in a central, critical, cardinal way… she was invincible.

She knew, now, that she had always been invincible.

CHAPTER 46

Fromatop Rusty, the chill, gusty breeze ruffling her hair, Jennsen gazed off at the splendor of the Confessors' Palace crowning a distance rise. Sebastian sat beside her on a nervous Pete. Emperor Jagang, his magnificent dappled gray stallion pawing the road, waited on the other side of Sebastian, a cadre of officers and advisors huddled close, but silent. Jagang's forbidding scowl was fixed on the palace. Dark, menacing shapes, like a gathering storm, drifted across the surface of his black eyes.

The advance into Aydindril had, so far, been unlike anything anyone had expected, leaving everyone tense and on edge.

Arrayed behind was a contingent of Sisters of the Light who kept to themselves, apparently concentrating on matters of magic. Although none of the Sisters, as of yet, had had the chance to speak to Jennsen, they were all acutely aware of her, and kept a close eye on her. Yet more of them had ridden off in various directions as the emperor had led the detachment of Imperial Order cavalry, like some dark floodwater, across farms, roads, and hills, around buildings and barns, ever onward up roads and then in around buildings, to seep into the outermost fringes of Aydindril. The great city now lay spread out before them, silent and still.

The night before, Sebastian had slept fitfully. Jennsen knew, because, on the eve of such a momentous battle, she had slept hardly at all. Yet, with the thought of finally being able to use the knife sheathed at her belt, she was wide awake.

Behind the Sisters, more than forty thousand of the Imperial Order's elite cavalry waited, some with pikes and lances poised at the ready, some with swords or axes in hand. Each wore a ring through his left nostril. While most wore beards, and some had long, dark, greasy hair, with good luck charms tied in, there were quite a few with shaved heads, apparently out of open fealty to Emperor Jagang. They were all a tightly coiled spring, destroyers, poised to storm into the city.

Besides being elite members of the cavalry, trusted officers, or Sisters of the Light, every person there, except Jennsen and Sebastian, had one essential thing in common: they knew the Mother Confessor by sight. From what Jennsen was able to gather, the Mother Confessor had led raids on the Order's camp and had been at battles where she had been seen by a number of the men, as well as the Sisters. All those chosen to ride into Aydindril with the emperor had to know the Mother Confessor by sight. Jagang didn't want her slipping out of their snare by hiding in crowds of people, or escaping by pretending to be a lowly washwoman. Such a worry had evaporated in the light of what they had so far found.

Chilled not only by the breeze, but by the lust for battle gleaming in the soldiers' eyes, Jennsen gripped the horn of her saddle tight in an attempt to make her hands stop trembling.

Jennsen.