The pillars of creation

Kahlan smiled and sat down, leaning back against the pillar where she had been tied, watching Richard, listening, stroking the ears of Betty's twin kids.

Betty watched her two young ones, then, seeing them safe, peered hopefully up at Jennsen. Her little tail started wagging in a blur.

"Betty?"

Betty happily jumped up on her, eager for a reunion. Jennsen tearfully hugged the goat before standing to face her brother.

"But why would you not do as your ancestors? Why? How can you risk everything in that book?"

Richard hooked his thumbs behind his belt and took a deep breath. "Life is the future, not the past. The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew. As rational, thinking beings, we must use our intellect, not a blind devotion to what has come before, to make rational choices."

"Life is the future, not the past," Jennsen whispered to herself, considering all that life now held for her. "Where did you ever hear such a thing?"

Richard grinned. "It's the Wizard's Seventh Rule."

Jennsen gazed up at him through her tears. "You have given me a future, a life. Thank you."

He embraced her, then, and Jennsen suddenly didn't feel alone in the world. She felt whole again. It felt so good to be held as she wept with tears for her mother, and tears for the future, for the joy that there was life, and a future.

Kahlan rubbed Jennsen's back. "Welcome to the family."

When Jennsen wiped her eyes, and laughed at everything and nothing while she used her other hand to scratch Betty's ears, she saw, then, Tom standing nearby.

Jennsen ran to him and fell into his arms. "Oh, Tom. You can't know how glad I am to see you! Thank you for bringing me Betty."

"That's me. Goat delivery, as promised. Turns out that Irma, the sausage lady, only wanted your goat to get herself a kid. She has a billy and wanted a young one. She kept one and let you have the other two."

"Betty had three?"

Tom nodded. "I'm afraid that I've become very fond of Betty and her two little ones."

"I can't believe that you did that for me. Tom, you're wonderful."

"My mother always said so, too. Don't forget, you promised to tell Lord Rahl."

Jennsen laughed in delight. "I promise! But, how in the world did you ever find me?"

Tom smiled and pulled a knife from behind his back. Jennsen was astonished to see that it was identical to the one she had.

"You see," he explained, "I carry the knife in service to Lord Rahl."

"You do?" Richard asked. "I've never even met you."

"Oh," the Mord-Sith said, "Tom, here, is all right, Lord Rahl. I can vouch for him."

"Why, thank you, Cara," Tom said with a twinkle in his eye.

"And you knew all along, then," Jennsen asked, "that I was making it all up?"

Tom shrugged. "I wouldn't be a proper protector to Lord Rahl if I let such a suspicious person as you roam around, trying to do harm, without doing my best to find out what you were up to. I've kept tabs on you, followed you a goodly part of your j ourneying.»

Jennsen swatted his shoulder. "You've been spying on me!"

"As a protector to Lord Rahl, I had to see what you were up to, and to make sure you didn't harm Lord Rahl."

"Well," she said, "I don't think you were doing a very good job of it then.»

"What do you mean?" Tom asked with exaggerated indignation.

"I could have really stabbed him. You just stood way over there the whole time, too far away to do anything about it."

Tom smiled that boyish grin of his, but this time it was a little more mischievous than usual.

"Oh, I'd not have let you hurt Lord Rahl."

Tom turned and heaved his knife. With blinding speed such as she had never seen, the blade flew across the valley, embedding itself with a thunk in one of the faraway fallen stone pillars. Jennsen squinted and saw that it had been driven through something dark.

She followed Tom, Richard, Kahlan, and the Mord-Sith between towering columns and stone rubble to where the knife was stuck. To Jennsen's astonishment, it had impaled a leather pouch-right through the centerbeing held up by a hand coming from beneath the huge section of fallen stone.

"Please," came a muffled voice from under the rock, "please let me out. I'll pay you. I can pay. I have my own money."

It was Oba. The rock had fallen on him when he ran. It had landed on boulders that kept the main section of stone, big enough that twenty men couldn't have joined hands around it, from collapsing to the ground, leaving a tiny space, trapping the man alive under the tons of rock.

Tom pulled his knife from the soft stone and retrieved the leather pouch. He waved it in the air.

"Friedrich!" he called toward the wagon. A man sat up. "Friedrich! Is this yours?"