The pillars of creation

Trembling uncontrollably, unable to answer him, Jennsen turned away and fell to her knees beside Emperor Jagang. She imagined he had to be in frightening pain, but he hardly seemed to notice the gaping wound, except that he knew his leg wouldn't work. He held the two sides of the wound closed as best he could with one hand, but he was still losing a lot of blood. With his other hand, he had managed to drag himself to the side, where he leaned against the wall. Jennsen was no healer, and didn't really know what to do, but she did realize the urgent need to do something to stop the gushing blood.

His face streaked with sweat and soot, Jagang pointed with his sword down a side hall. "Sebastian, it's her! She was just right here. I almost had her. Don't let her get away!"

Another Sister, wearing a dusty brown wool dress, came clambering over the rubble, stumbling toward them in the darkness, passing all the groaning soldiers. "Excellency! I heard you! I'm here. I'm here. I can help."

Jagang nodded his acknowledgment, one hand resting on his heaving chest. " Sebastian-don't let her get away. Move!"

"Yes, Excellency." Sebastian took note of the Sister climbing awkwardly over a broken side table, then pressed a hand to Jennsen's shoulder. "Stay here with them. She'll protect you and the emperor. I'll be back."

Jennsen snatched for his sleeve, but he had already dashed away, collecting all the remaining men on his way past. He led them off down the hall, disappearing into the darkness. Jennsen was suddenly alone with the wounded emperor, a Sister of the Light, and the voice.

She snatched up the end of a strip of a sheer curtain and pulled it out from under the rubble. "You're losing a lot of blood. I need to close this as best I can." She looked up into Emperor Jagang's nightmare eyes. "Can you help hold it closed while I wrap it?"

He grinned. Sweat coursed down his face, leaving streaks through the dusty grime. "It doesn't hurt, girl. Do it. I've had worse than this. Be quick about it."

Jennsen started threading the filthy curtain under his leg, wrapping it around and under again as Jagang held the gaping wound closed as best he could. The fine fabric almost immediately turned from white to red with all the thick blood flowing across it. The sister put a hand to Jennsen's shoulder as she knelt down to help. As Jennsen continued wrapping, the Sister laid her hands flat on each side of the massive gash in the meat of his thigh.

Jagang cried out in pain.

"I'm sorry, Excellency," the Sister said. "I have to stop the bleeding or you'll bleed to death."

"Do it, then, you stupid bitch! Don't talk me to death!"

The Sister nodded tearfully, clearly terrified by what she was doing, yet knowing she had no choice but to do it. She closed her eyes and once more pressed trembling hands to Jagang's hairy, blood-soaked leg. Jennsen pulled back to give her room to work, watching in the dim light as the woman apparently wove magic into the emperor's wound.

There was nothing to see, at first. Jagang gritted his teeth, grunting in pain as the Sister's magic began to do its work. Jennsen watched, spellbound, as the gift was actually being used to help someone, instead of cause suffering. She wondered briefly if the Imperial Order believed that even this magic, used to save the life of the emperor, was evil. In the murky light, Jennsen saw the blood pumping copiously from the wound abruptly slow to an oozing trickle.

Jennsen leaned closer, frowning, trying to see in the shadows, as the Sister, now that the bleeding was nearly stopped, moved her hands, probably to start the work of closing the emperor's terrible wound. Leaning close as she watched, Jennsen heard Jagang suddenly whisper.

"There he is." Jennsen looked up. He was staring off down the hall. "Richard Rahl. Jennsen-there he is. It's him."

Jennsen followed Emperor Jagang's gaze, her knife gripped in her fist. It was dark in the hallway, but there was smoky light down at the far end, silhouetting the figure standing in the distance, watching them.

He lifted his arms. Between his outstretched hands, fire sprang to life. It wasn't fire like real fire, like the fire in a hearth, but fire like that out of a dream. It was there, but somehow not there; real, but at the same time unreal. Jennsen felt as if she were standing in a borderland between two worlds, the world that existed, and the world of the fantastic.

Yet, the lethal danger that the wavering flame represented was all too clear.

Frozen in dread, squatted down beside Emperor Jagang, Jennsen could only stare as the figure at the end of the hall lifted his hands, lifted the slowly turning ball of blue and yellow flame. Between those steady hands, the rotating flame expanded, to look frighteningly purposeful. Jennsen knew that she was seeing the manifestation of deadly intent.

And then he cast that implacable inferno out toward them.