The pillars of creation

"Even all that, though, was not enough for Darken Rahl. His displeasure at what I had done to hide you had only begun. He banished me here, to this sunken, foul place of hot springs and sickening vapors. He imprisoned me here, filling in about me a swamp with monstrosities created by the very power he had stripped from me. He wanted me close, you see. Several times he visited, just to behold me in my prison.

"I'm at the mercy of those things out there that are given life by my own gift, a gift to which I no longer have access. I could never drag myself out by my arms alone, but even if I were to try, or if I had the help of another, those beasts, created from my own power, would rip me apart. I can't call them back even to save myself.

"He left a path, in the front, so that provisions and supplies could be brought in, so I would be sure to have the things I needed. Friedrich had to build a home for us, here, because I cannot ever leave. Darken Rahl wished me a long life-a life I could spend suffering for displeasing him."

Jennsen trembled as she listened, unable to say anything. Althea lifted a hand to point with one long graceful finger toward the back room.

"That man, who loves me, had to witness it all. Friedrich was thus condemned to a life of tending to a crippled wife he loved, who could no longer be a wife to him in ways of the flesh."

She ran a hand over her bony limbs, tenderly, as if seeing them as they they once were. "I have never again had the joy of being with my husband as a woman is with a man. My husband never again was able to share and enjoy the intimate charms of the woman he loves."

She paused to regain her composure before going on. "As part of my punishment, Darken Rahl left me with the power to use my gift in the one way which would haunt me every day: prophecy."

Jennsen could not help herself from asking, thinking that this must be one thread of possible comfort left to the woman. "It's part of your giftcan't it bring you some joy?"

Dark eyes fixed on her again. "Did you enjoy the last day with your mother-the day before she died?"

"Yes," Jennsen finally said.

"Did you laugh and talk with her?"

"Yes., "What if you had known that the next day she was to be murdered? What if you saw it all, long before it happened? Days, weeks, or even years before? Knew what was to happen, when, every ghastly detail? Saw, by the power of your magic, the horrifying sight of it, the blood, the agony, the dying. Would that please you? Would you still have experienced that joy, that laughter?"

Jennsen answered in a small voice. "No."

"So you see, Jennsen Rahl, I cannot help you, not because I am selfish, as you put it, but because even if I were willing, I have no power left to cast you a spell. You must find within yourself the ability to help yourself, the free will to accomplish what you must. Only in that way can you truly succeed in life.

"I cannot give you a spell to solve your problems. I have spent a good deal of my life suffering for the last spell I cast for you. Were it only me, I would endure it willingly, for I was doing what I believe in; this is the fault of an evil man, not the fault of an innocent child. Yet I suffer each day because it was not just my life forfeit, but Friedrich' s, too. He might have-"

"I might have nothing." He had come up behind Jennsen. "I have considered each day of my life a privilege because you are in it. Your smile is the sun, gilded by the Creator Himself, and brightens my small existence. If this is the price for all of that I have gained, then I paid it willingly. Don't devaluate the quality of my joy, Althea, by minimizing it or trivializing it."

Althea looked back down at Jennsen. "You see? This is my daily torture: knowing what I have not been able to be, to do, for this man."

Jennsen withered, sobbing, at the woman's feet.

"Magic," Althea whispered from above, "is trouble you don't need."

CHAPTER 24

Jermsen's thoughts were lost in a forlorn fog. The swamp was only there because it was beneath her feet, around her, above her, but her mind was in a more confused and tangled jumble than all the twisted things around her. So much of what she believed had turned out to be wrong. That meant that not only were many of her hopes lost, but her solutions, too.

Worse yet, Jennsen had come face-to-face with the misery, hardship, and heartbreak her existence had ended up causing others who had tried to help her.

Through the tears she could hardly see her way. She moved almost blindly through the mire.

She stumbled at times, crawled when she fell, sobbing in racking agony when she paused, supported by the limb of an old, gnarled tree. It was like the day of her mother's murder all over again-the anguish, the confusion, the insanity of it all, the bitter despair-but this time for Althea's tortured life.