The pillars of creation

Beyond another intersection of wide passageways, following the directions they'd been given, they turned down another hall to the right. It, too, was lined with vendors. Jennsen immediately spotted the booth with a gilded star hanging before it. She didn't know if it was intentional or not, but the gilded star had eight points, like the star in a Grace. She had drawn the Grace often enough to know.

With Sebastian at her side, she rushed over to the booth. Her heart sank when they found the place occupied only by an empty chair, but it was still morning, and she reasoned that maybe he hadn't come in yet. The closest businesses weren't yet open, either.

She stopped several stalls down at a place selling leather mugs. "Do you know if the gilder is here today?" she asked the man working behind the bench.

"Sorry, don't know," he said without looking up from his work at cutting decorations with a fine gouge. "I just started here."

She hurried down to the next occupied booth, a place that sold hangings with colorful scenes sewn on them. She turned to say something to Sebastian, but saw him inquiring at another booth not far away.

The woman behind the short counter was sewing a blue brook through mountains stitched on a stretched square of coarsely woven cloth. Some of the scenes were made up into pillows displayed on a rack to the back.

"Mistress, would you know if the gilder is here, today?"

The woman smiled up at her. "Sorry, but far as I know, he won't be in today.»

"Oh, I see." Thwarted by the disappointing news, Jennsen hesitated, not knowing what to do next. "Would you know when he will return, at least?"

The woman pushed her needle through, making a blue stitch of water. "No, can't say as I do. Last time I saw him, over a week ago, he said he may not be back for a while."

"Why is that? Do you know?"

"Can't say as I do." She pulled the long thread of the water out taut. "Sometimes he stays away for a spell, working at his gilding, doing up enough to make it worth his time to travel to the palace."

"Would you happen to know where he lives?"

The woman glanced up from under a crinkled brow. "Why do you wish to know?"

Jennsen's mind raced. She said the only thing she could think of-what she had learned from Irma, the sausage lady watching Betty for her. "I wish to go for a telling."

"Ah," The woman said, her suspicion fading as she pulled another stitch through. "It's Althea, then, that you really want to see."

Jennsen nodded. "My mother took me to Althea when I was young. Since my mother… passed away, I'd like to visit Althea again. I thought it might be a comfort if I went for a telling."

"Sorry about your mother, dear. I know what you mean. When I lost my mother, it was a hard time for me, too."

"Could you tell me how to find Althea's place?"

She set her sewing down and came to the low wall at the front of her booth. "It's a goodly ways to Althea's place-to the west, through a desolate land."

"The Azrith Plains."

"That's right. Going west, the land turns rugged, with mountains. Around the other side of the largest snowcapped mountain due west of here, if you turn north, staying just the other side of the cliffs you will find, following the low land down lower yet, you will come into a nasty place. A swampy place. Althea and Friedrich live there."

"In a swamp? But not in the winter."

The woman leaned close and lowered her voice. "Yes, even in the winter, people say. Althea's swamp. A vile place it is, too. Some say it isn't a natural place, if you know what I mean."

"Her… magic, you mean?"

She shrugged. "Some say."

Jennsen nodded in thanks and repeated the directions. "Other side of the largest snowcapped peak west of here, stay below the cliffs and go north. Down in a swampy place."

"A nasty, dangerous, swampy place." The woman used a long fingernail to scratch her scalp. "But you don't want to be going there unless you're invited."

Jennsen glanced around briefly, to signal to Sebastian, but she didn't see him right off. "How does one get invited?"

"Most people ask Friedrich. I see them come here to talk to him and leave without even looking at his work. I guess he asks Althea if she will see them, and the next time he returns with his gilding, he invites them. Sometimes, people give him a letter to take to his wife.

"Some people travel out there and wait. I hear that sometimes he comes out of the swamp to meet those people and pass along Althea's invitation.

Some people return from the edge of the swamp without ever being invited in, their long wait for nothing. None dare venture in uninvited, though. Least, none that did ever came back to tell about it, if you know what I mean."

"Are you saying I'll have to go there and just wait? Wait until she or her husband comes to invite us in?"