The pillars of creation

Oba shook his head, feeling his confidence build as he thought about what he had done to Lathea, how he'd handled the troublesome sorceress.

"No, Mama. Her house burned down. She was killed in the fire."

"Her house burned. ." His mother's brow drew together. "How do you know she died? Lathea isn't likely to be caught unawares by a fire. The woman is a sorceress."

Oba shrugged. "Well, all I know is that when I went to town, I heard a ruckus. People were running toward her house. We all found the place ablaze. A big crowd gathered around, but the fire was so hot that there was no chance of saving the place."

That last part was, to a degree, true. He had started to leave town, headed home, because he figured that if no one had spotted the fire, maybe they wouldn't until morning. He didn't want to be the one to start yelling "fire." In light of history, that might look suspicious, especially to his mother. She was a suspicious woman-one of her many peevish traits. Oba had planned on simply telling his mother the story of what he knew was bound to happen anyway, the blazing ruins, the charred body found.

But as he had been walking home after his visit to the inn, not long after that Jennsen woman and the man with her, Sebastian, passed by leaving town on their journey to find Althea, he heard people yelling that there was a fire down at Lathea's place. Oba ran down the long dark road with the rest of the people, toward the orange glow off in the trees. He was just a bystander, same as everyone else. There was no reason to suspect him of anything.

"Maybe Lathea escaped the flames." His mother sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than him.

Oba shook his head. "I stayed, hoping the same as you, Mama. I knew you'd want me to help her if she was hurt. I stayed to do what I could. That's why I was so late."

That, too, was partly true; he had stayed, along with the crowd, watching the fire, listening to the talk. He had savored the crowd's anticipation. The gossip. The speculation.

"She's a sorceress. Fire isn't likely to catch such a woman."

His mother was starting to sound suspicious. Oba had figured on this. He leaned a little toward her.

"When the fire burned out enough, some of us men threw snow down so we could get in over the smoking rubble. Inside, we found Lathea's bones."

Oba pulled a blackened finger bone from his pocket. He held it out, offering it to his mother. She stared down at the grim evidence, but folded her arms without taking it. Pleased with the effect it had, Oba finally returned the treasure to his pocket.

"She was in the middle of the room, with one hand lifted above her head, like she had tried to make it to the door but was overcome by the smoke. The men said that a fire's smoke was what put folks down, and then the fire got at them. That must have been what happened to Lathea. The smoke got her. Then, laying there on the floor, reaching toward the door, the fire burned her to death."

His mother glared at him, her mean little mouth all pinched up, but silent. For once, she had no words. He found her glare, though, was just as bad. In the daggers of that glare, he could tell that she was thinking he was no good. Her bastard boy.

Darken Rahl's bastard son. Almost royalty.

Her arms slipped from their sullen knot as she turned away. "I have to get back to my spinning for Mr. Tuchmann. You get this mess scooped off the floor, you hear?"

"I will, Mama."

"And you had better get that stanchion fixed before I come back and see that you've been loafing away the day."

For several days Oba worked at the frozen muck on the floor, but made little headway. The weather had stayed bitterly cold, so the frozen mound, if anything, had only hardened. His efforts at wearing it down seemed interminable, like trying to chip away granite ledge. Or his mother's stony disposition.

He had his other chores, of course, and he couldn't let them go. He had fixed the stanchion and a broken hinge on the barn door. The animals had to be attended to, along with a hundred other small things.

In his head, as he worked, he planned the construction of their fireplace. He would use the back wall between the house and barn, since it was already existing. Mentally, he stacked stones against it, creating the shape of the firebox. He already had his eye on a long stone to use for the lintel. He would mortar everything all together properly. When Oba set his mind to doing something, he put his all into it. He didn't do any job he started just halfway.

In his mind's eye, he pictured how surprised and happy his mother would be when she saw what he'd built them. She would recognize his worth, then. She would finally acknowledge his value. But he had other work to do before he could begin to build a fireplace.