The pillars of creation

Standing outside the squat buildings made of sun-dried bricks, Jennsen idly surveyed the barren landscape broiling under a brutally blue sky. The rocks, the seemingly endless expanse of flat hardpan to her right, and the rugged range of mountains plummeting into the shimmering valley in the distance to her left, were all stained with variations of the same ruddy gray color as the sparse collection of square structures huddled nearby.

The bone-dry air was so hot that it reminded her of nothing so much as bending over a bonfire and trying to breathe. Blistering heat radiated from the rocks and buildings around her and rose from the ground beneath her feet as if there were a blast furnace below. Using bare hands to touch anything baking under the ruthless sun was a painful experience. Even the hilt of her knife, shaded by her body, was so warm that it felt feverish.

Jennsen leaned a hip wearily against a low wall, nearly numb from the long and difficult journey. She patted Rusty's neck and then stroked an ear when the horse neighed gently and put her head close. At least Jennsen was nearly at her journey's end. She felt as if she had lost sight of how it had all begun that day so long ago when she had found the dead soldier at the bottom of the ravine and Sebastian had happened by.

What a long and tortured journey fate would deal her, she could never have guessed that day. She hardly knew herself anymore. Back then, she could never have guessed how much her life would change, or how much she would change.

Sebastian, pulling Pete behind, reached out and gripped her arm. "You all right, Jenn?" Pete nudged Rusty's flanks, as if to ask the same question of the mare.

"Yes," Jennsen said. She smiled for him and then gestured to the knot of black-robed men in the doorway of a nearby building. "Any luck?"

"He's asking the others." Sebastian sighed in annoyance. "They're a strange people."

Despite being part of the Old World, and a part of the domain of the Imperial Order, the traders who traveled the vast deserted land, sometimes using the desolate trading outpost where Sebastian had found them, were an independent lot. Apparently, there were not enough of them to worry about, so the Order didn't bother.

Sebastian leaned against the wall beside her as he gazed out at the silent wasteland. He was weary, too, from the long journey back to his homeland of the Old World. But at least he was well, now, just as Sister Perdita had promised.

The journey, though, had been nothing like what Jennsen had thought it would be. She had imagined that she and Sebastian would be off on their own again, as they had been before traveling to the army of the Imperial Order. But behind them stretched a column of Imperial Order soldiers a thousand strong. A small escort, Sebastian had called them. She had told him that she wanted to go alone, but he said that there were more important considerations.

With a thumbnail, Jermsen idly picked at the leather reins while watching the figures in black. "The men are afraid of all the soldiers," she told Sebastian. "That's why they don't want to talk to us."

"What makes you think so?"

"I can just tell by the way they keep peeking out. They're trying to decide if telling us anything will somehow get them in trouble with all the soldiers."

She understood the way the small band of traders felt to be under the scrutiny of so many brutish men sitting up on their big cavalry horseshow it felt to be watched by such grim soldiers layered with leather and chain-mail armor and bristling with weapons. The black-robed men, with their pack mules, were traders, not soldiers, nor were they used to dealing with soldiers. They feared for their safety, feared that if they said something wrong these warriors might decide to slaughter them out here in this wasteland. At the same time, while vastly outnumbered, the traders seemed reluctant to be cowed, lest they set a precedent for how they were treated thereafter. They were debating, now, trying to figure out the balance where their safety lay.

Sebastian pushed away from the wall. "Maybe you're right. I'll go in and talk to them alone-in their building, instead of out here under the eyes of the army."

"I'll go with you," she said.

"What is it? What do you think?" Sister Perdita asked Sebastian as she marched up from behind.

With a casual flip of his hand, Sebastian dismissed her concern. "I think they just want to bargain. They're traders. That's what they dobargain. It might be counterproductive to try to force them."

"I will go in and change their minds," the Sister said with dark intent.

"No," Sebastian said. "Now is not the time to complicate a simple matter. We can always apply more pressure if we need to. Just let Jennsen and me go in and talk to them, first."