The pillars of creation

Some of the carvings were painted, some left plain, but the feathers, scales, and fur had been carved with such fine texture that they looked like animals magically turned to wood. Other carvings were more stylized and beautifully gilded. A mirror on one wall, down low, was framed with a starburst, each ray alternately gilded gold and silver.

Toward the fireplace, a large red and gold pillow sat on the floor. Jennsen's eye was drawn to a square board with a gilded Grace upon it sitting on the floor before the pillow. It was just like the Grace she often drew, but this one, she knew, was real. Small stones rested in a pile to the side.

In a beautifully made chair, with a high back and carved arms, sat a slight woman with big, dark eyes made all the more striking by golden hair flecked through with gray. The fall of hair surrounded her face and swept down to lie about her shoulders. Her wrists rested over the arms of the chair while her long slender fingers gracefully traced the curve of the spiral carved in the end.

" I am Althea. " Her voice was gentle, but carried a clear ring of authority. She didn't get up.

Jennsen curtsied. "Mistress, please forgive my bursting in uninvited and unexpected like this."

"Perhaps uninvited, but not unexpected, Jennsen."

"You know my name?" Jennsen realized too late how foolish the question sounded. The woman was a sorceress. There was no telling what her powers could discern.

Althea smiled, and a pleasant look it was on her. "I remember you. One does not forget meeting one like you."

Jennsen wasn't sure what that meant, but said "Thank you" anyway.

The smile on Althea's face widened, crinkling her eyes. "My, but you look just like your mother. Were it not for the red hair, I would think I had flown back in time to when I saw her last, when she was just the age you are now." She held a hand out level before her. "And you were only this big."

Jennsen felt her face going as red as her hair. Her mother had been beautiful, not just wise and loving. Jennsen didn't believe she could compare to such a attractive woman, or ever live up to the kind of example her mother set.

"And how is she?"

Jennsen swallowed. "My mother… my mother is gone." In anguish, Jennsen's gaze sank to the floor. "She was murdered."

"I'm so sorry," said Friedrich, standing behind her. He put a hand to her shoulder in sympathy. "I truly am. I knew her, some, from the palace. She was a good woman."

"How did it happen?" Althea asked.

"They finally caught up with us."

"Caught up with you?" Althea's brow twitched. "Who?"

"Why, the D'Haran soldiers. Lord Rahl's men." Jennsen drew her cloak back, showing them both the handle of the knife. "This came from one of them."

Althea's gaze took in the knife, then returned to Jennsen's face. "I'm so sorry, dear."

Jennsen nodded. "But I have to warn you. I went to see your sister, Lathea-"

"Did you see her before she died?"

Jennsen stared in surprise. "Yes, I did."

Althea shook her head with a sad smile. "Poor Lathea. How was she? I mean, did she have a good life?"

"I don't know. She had a nice house, but I only saw her briefly. I got the impression she lived alone. I went to her because I needed help. I recalled my mother mentioning the name of a sorceress who had helped us, but I guess I got the names wrong. I ended up at your sister's. She didn't even want to talk to me. She said she could do nothing, that it had been you who had helped me before. That's why I had to come here."

"How did you get in?" Friedrich asked as he gestured to the path out front. "You must have wandered off the path."

"Not that way. I came from the back way."

Now, even Althea frowned. "There is no back way."

"Well, there was no path, as such, but I made my way through."

"No one can come in from that side," Althea insisted. "There are things back there that ward that side."

"I know. I had a run-in with a huge snake-"

"You saw the snake?" Friedrich asked.

Jennsen nodded. "I stepped on it accidentally. I thought it was a root. We had a time of it and I had a swim."

They were both peering at her in a way that made Jennsen nervous.

"Yes, yes," Althea said, sounding unconcerned about the snake, waving a hand as if to brush away such petty news, "but, surely, you had to see the other things?"

Jennsen looked from Friedrich's wide eyes to Althea's frown. "I never saw anything but the snake."

"The snake is just a snake," Althea said, dismissing the fearsome beast with another impatient wave of her hand. "There are dangerous things back there. Things that would let no one through. No one. How in the name of Creation were you able to get past them?"

"What sort of things?"

"Things of magic," Althea said in a grim tone.

"I'm sorry, but all I can tell you is that I got through, and I never saw anything but the snake." She frowned toward the ceiling as she thought again. "Although, I did see things in the water-dark things under the water.»

"Fish," Friedrich scoffed.