The pillars of creation

Oba felt his thighs bump the table as he advanced. The jars rattled and clanked together. One of them wobbled. Lathea watched it teeter and almost right itself, only to topple and spill its thick red liquid.

Lathea's face abruptly twisted with hatred, with rage, with effort. She cast her clawed hands forward, toward him, cast the full force of her power at him.

With a thunderous clap, light ignited, the flash making everything in the room go white for an instant.

He saw a flare of a yellow-white light knife through the air toward him-deadly lightning sent to kill.

Oba felt nothing.

Behind him, the light blasted a man-sized hole through the wooden wall, scattering flaming splinters out into the night. All the fire fizzled out in the snow.

Oba touched his chest where the full force of her power had been directed. No blood. No torn flesh. He was unharmed.

He thought that Lathea was even more surprised about it than he. Her mouth hung open in astonishment. Her wide eyes stared.

All his life he had feared this scarecrow.

Lathea quickly recovered, and again her face twisted with effort as she drew her hands up. This time an eerie blue hiss of light formed. The air smelled like burning hair. Lathea turned her palms up, sending forth her deadly magic, sending him death. Power no person could withstand shrieked toward him.

The blue light scorched the walls behind, but again he felt nothing. Oba grinned.

Again, Lathea wheeled her arms, but this time she also whispered a chant of clipped words he could not understand-rattling off a menace of magic. A column of light bloomed, undulating in the air before him, a viper of extraordinary might. Beyond doubt, it was meant to kill, Oba lifted his hands to feel the snaking rope of crackling death she had spawned. He ran his fingers through it, but could feel nothing. It was like looking at something in a different world. There, but not.

It was as if he were… invincible.

With a howl of outrage, her hands came up again.

Quick as thought, Oba seized her by the throat.

"Oba!" she screeched. "Oba, no! Please!"

This was new. He had never before heard Lathea say please.

With her neck in his meaty grip, he dragged her across the table toward him. Bottles scattered, tumbling to the floor. Some thudded and rolled, some broke like eggs.

Oba closed a fist on Lathea's stringy hair. She clawed at him, desperately calling upon her talents. She spoke words that had to be a mystical entreaty to magic, to her gift, to her sorceress power. While he didn't recognize the words, he understood their lethal intent.

Oba had surrendered, thouah, and he had become invincible.

He had watched her unleash her rage; now he unleashed his.

He slammed her up against her cabinet. Her mouth grew wide with a silent scream.

"Why did you want Mama to get rid of me?"

Her eyes, big and round, were fixed on the object of her terror: Oba. All his life, she had delighted in terrifying others. Now all that terror had returned to haunt her.

"Why did you want Mama to get rid of me?"

A series of small panting cries were her only answer.

"Why! Why!"

Oba ripped her dress from her body. Coins spilled from the pocket, raining across the floor.

"Why!

He clutched the white shift she wore underneath the dress.

"Why!

She tried to hold the shift to herself, but he stripped it away, sending her tumbling across the floor, bony arms and legs sprawling. Her wasted breasts hung like shriveled udders. This powerful sorceress was now naked before him, and she was nothing.

Her cries, full and round, came to life at last. Teeth gritted, he snatched her by the hair and hauled her to her feet. Oba rammed her against the cabinet. Wood splintered. Bottles cascaded out. He seized a bottle as it rolled out and broke it against the cabinet.

"Why, Lathea?" He brought the neck of a broken bottle up against her body. "Why!" She shrieked all the louder. He twisted it against her soft middle. "Why?"

"Please… A dear Creator… please, no."

"Why, Lathea?"

"Because," she wailed, "you are the bastard son of that monster, Darken RAU'

Oba hesitated. This was stunning news-if it was true.

"Mama was forced. She told me so. She said it was some man she didn't know who fathered me."

"Oh, she knew him she did. She worked at the palace when she was younger. Your mother had big breasts and bigger ideas, back then. Poorly conceived ideas. She wasn't smart enough to realize that she was no more than a night's diversion for a man with a limitless supply of womenthose eager, like her, and those not."

This was definitely something new. Darken Rahl had been the most powerful man in the world. Could that noble Rahl blood flow in his veins? The heady implications made his head swim.

If the sorceress was telling the truth.

"My mother would have stayed there at the People's Palace if she carried Darken Rahl's son."

"You aren't his gifted heir."

"But still, if I was his son-"