“But—”
“Let’s go!” he called to his men.
As the emperor charged off, Jennsen seized Sebastian’s arm in exasperation, holding him back. “Do you really think it could be them? You’re a strategist—do you honestly think that any of this makes sense?”
He noted which way the emperor went, followed by a flood of men charging after him, then turned a heated glare on her.
“Jennsen, you wanted Lord Rahl. This may be your chance.”
“But I don’t see why—”
“Don’t argue with me! Who are you to think you know better!”
“Sebastian, I—”
“I don’t have all the answers! That’s why we’re in here!”
Jennsen swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I’m only worried for you, Sebastian, and Emperor Jagang. I don’t want your heads to end up on the end of a pike, too.”
“In war, you must act, not only by careful plan, but when you see an opening. This is what war is like—in war people sometimes do stupid or even seemingly crazy things. Maybe she and Lord Rahl have simply done something stupid. You have to take advantage of an enemy’s mistakes. In war, the winner is often the one who attacks no matter what and presses any advantage. There isn’t always time to figure everything out.”
Jennsen could only stare up into his eyes. Who was she, a nobody, to try to tell an emperor’s strategist how to fight a war?
“Sebastian, I was only—”
He snatched a fistful of her dress and yanked her close. His red face twisted in anger. “Are you really going to throw away what might turn out to be your only chance to avenge your mother’s murder? How would you feel if Richard Rahl really is crazy enough to be here?—Or if he has some plan we can’t even conceive of?—And you just stand here arguing about it!”
Jennsen was stunned. Could he be right? What if he was?
“There they are!” came a cry from far down the hall. It was Jagang’s voice. She saw him among a distant clot of his soldiers, pointing his sword as they all scrambled to turn a corner. “Get them! Get them!”
Sebastian seized her arm, spun her around, and shoved her on down the hall. Jennsen caught her footing and ran with wild abandon. She felt ashamed for arguing with people who knew what war was all about when she didn’t. Who did she think she was, anyway? She was a nobody. Great men had given her a chance, and she stood around on the doorstep of greatness, arguing about it. She felt a fool.
As they ran past tall windows—the very windows where the Mother Confessor and Lord Rahl had only moments before been seen—something outside caught her eye. A collective groan went up from beyond the panes of glass. Jennsen slid to a stop, her hands out, gathering up Sebastian to stop him, too.
“Look!”
Sebastian glanced impatiently toward the others racing away, then stepped closer to look out the window as she shook her hand, frantically pointing.
Tens of thousand of cavalry men had formed up into a huge battle line out across the palace grounds, stretching all the way down the hill, appearing to charge the enemy in a great battle. They all brandished swords, axes, and pikes as they rushed as a single mass, yelling bloodcurdling battle cries.
Jennsen watched in stunned silence, seeing nothing yet for them to fight. Still, the men, raising a great cry, ran forward with weapons raised. She expected to see them run down the hill toward something out beyond the wall. Perhaps they could see an enemy approaching that she could not from her angle up in the palace.
But then, in the middle of the grounds, with a mighty shock all along the line, there was a resounding crash as they met the wall of an enemy that was not there.
Jennsen couldn’t believe her eyes. Her mind groped to reconcile it, but the terrifying sight outside made no sense. She wouldn’t have believed what she was seeing, were it not for the shock of sudden carnage. Bodies, man and horse, were rent open. Horses reared. Others went down, tumbling over broken legs. Men’s heads and arms spun through the air, as if lopped off by sword and axe. All along the line, blood filled the air. Men were driven back by blows that exploded through their bodies. The dark and grimy force of Imperial Order cavalry was suddenly bright red in the muted daylight. The slaughter was so horrific that the green grass was left red in a swath down the hill.
Where there had been battle cries, now there were piercing screams of appalling suffering and pain as men, hacked to pieces, limbs severed, mortally wounded, tried to drag themselves to safety. Out in that field, there was no such place, there was only confusion and death.
Horrified, Jennsen looked up into Sebastian’s baffled expression. Before either could say a word, the building shook as if struck by lightning. Following close on the heels of the thunderous boom, the hall filled with billowing smoke. Flames boiled toward them. Sebastian snatched her arm and dove with her into a side hall opposite the window.
The blast roared down the hall, driving chunks of wood, whole chairs, and flaming drapery before it. Fragments of glass and metal shrieked by, slicing through walls.
As soon as the smoke and flames had rolled past, Jennsen and Sebastian, both with weapons to hand, raced out into the hall, running in the direction Emperor Jagang had gone.
Whatever questions or objections she had were forgotten—such questions were suddenly irrelevant. It only mattered that—somehow—Richard Rahl was there. She had to stop him. This was finally her chance. The voice, too, urged her on. This time, she didn’t try to put the voice down. This time, she let it fan the flames of her burning lust for vengeance. This time, she let it fill her with the overwhelming need to kill.
They raced past tall doors lining the hall. Each of the deep-set windows that flashed by had a small window seat. The walls were faced with frame and panel wood painted a shade of white warmed with a bit of rose color to it. As they came to the intersection of corridors and rounded the corner, Jennsen didn’t really notice the elegant silver reflector lamps centered in each of those panels; she saw only the bloody handprints smeared along the walls, the long splashes of blood on the polished oak floor, the disorderly tangle of still bodies.
There were at least fifty of the burly assault soldiers scattered haphazardly down the hall, each burned, many ripped open by flying glass and splintered wood. Most of the faces weren’t even unrecognizable as such. Shattered rib bones protruded from blood-soaked chain mail or leather. Along with the weapons that lay scattered, the hall was awash with gore and loose intestines, making it look like someone had spilled baskets of bloody dead eels.
Among the bodies was a woman—one of the Sisters. She had been nearly torn in two, as had been a number of the men, her slashed face set in death with a fixed look of surprise.
Jennsen gagged on the stench of blood, hardly able to draw a breath, as she followed Sebastian, jumping from one clear space to another, trying not to slip and fall on the human viscera. The horror of what Jennsen was seeing was so profound that it didn’t register in her mind; at least, it didn’t register emotionally. She simply acted, as if in a dream, not really able to consider what she was seeing.
Once past the bodies, they followed a trail of blood down a maze of grand halls. The distant sound of men shouting drifted back to them. Jennsen was at least relieved to hear the emperor’s voice among them. They sounded like hounds locked on the scent of a fox, baying insistently, refusing to lose their prey.
“Sir!” a man called from far back through a doorway to the side. “Sir! This way!”
Sebastian paused to look at the man and his frantic hand signals, then pulled Jennsen into a resplendent room. Across a floor covered with an elegant carpet of gold and rust-colored diamond designs, past windows hung with gorgeous green draperies, a soldier stood at a doorway into another hall. There were couches like none Jennsen had ever seen, and tables and chairs with beautifully carved legs. While the room was elegant, it was not imposingly so, making it seem like a place where people might gather for casual conversations. She followed Sebastian as he
ran for the soldier at the door on the opposite side of the room.
“It’s her!” the man called to Sebastian. “Hurry! It’s her! I just saw her pass by!”
The hulking soldier, still trying to catch his breath, sword hanging in his fist, peeked out the doorway again. Just before they reached him, as he peered down the hall, Jennsen heard a dull thump. The soldier dropped his sword and clutched at his chest, his eyes going wide, his mouth opening. He fell dead at their feet, no sign of any wound.
Jennsen pushed Sebastian up against the wall before he could go through the doorway. She didn’t want him encountering whatever had just dropped the soldier.
Almost at the same time, from the way they had come, she heard the snapping hiss of something otherworldly. Jennsen dropped to the floor, stretching out over Sebastian, holding him against the edge of floor and wall, as if he were a child to be protected. She closed her eyes tight, crying out with fright at the thunderous blast behind her that shook the floor. A barrage of rubble shrieked through the room.
When it finally went still and she opened her eyes, dust drifted through the destruction. The wall around them was peppered with holes. Somehow, she and Sebastian were not hurt. It only served to confirm what she already believed.
“It was him!” Sebastian’s arm shot out from under her to point across the room. “It was him!”
Jennsen turned but saw no one. “What?”
Sebastian pointed again. “It was Lord Rahl. I saw him. As he ran past the door he cast in a spell of some kind—a pinch of sparkling dust—just as you pushed me against the wall. Then it exploded. I don’t know how we survived in a room filled with such flying debris.”
“I guess it all missed us,” Jennsen said.
The room had been turned inside out. The draperies were shredded, the walls holed. The furniture that only moments before had been so beautiful was now a wreck of splinters and ripped upholstery. The rumpled carpet was covered in white dust, pieces of plaster, and splintered wood.
A hanging chunk of plaster broke away and crashed to the floor, raising yet more dust as Jennsen made her way through the wreckage of the room, toward the door they had come through, the door where Sebastian had pointed, the door where only moments before Lord Rahl had been. Sebastian retrieved his sword and quickly followed her out.
The hall, its woodwork so tastefully painted, was now smeared with blood. The body of another Sister lay crumpled not far away. When they reached her, they saw her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling in surprise.
“What in the name of Creation is going on?” Sebastian whispered to himself. Jennsen thought, by the look on the dead Sister’s face, that she must have wondered the same thing in the last instant of her life.
A glance out the window showed a killing ground littered with thousands of bodies.
“You have to get the emperor out of here,” Jennsen said. “This isn’t the simple thing it appeared.”
“I’d say it was a trap of some kind. But we might still be able to carry out our objective. That would make it a success—make it worth it.”
Whatever was happening was outside her experience and beyond her ability to comprehend. Jennsen only knew that she intended to carry out her objective. As they raced down halls, chasing the sounds and following the trail of bodies, they worked their way deeper into the mysterious Confessors’ Palace, away from any outside windows to where the air was hushed and gloomy. The deep shadows in the halls and rooms, where little light penetrated, added a frightening new dimension to the terrifying events.
Jennsen was well past shock, horror, or even fear. She felt as if she were watching herself act. Even her own voice sounded remote to her. In some distant way, she marveled at the things she did, at her ability to carry on.
As they cautiously rounded an intersection, they encountered a few dozen soldiers hunched in the shadows just inside a small room—bloodied, but alive. Four Sisters were there, too. Jennsen spotted Emperor Jagang leaning against a wall as he panted, his sword gripped tightly in a bloody fist. As she rushed up, he met her gaze, his black eyes filled not with the fear or sorrow she expected but with rage and determination.
“We’re close, girl. Keep that knife out and you’ll get your chance.”
Sebastian moved off to check other doorways, securing the immediate area, several men moving at his direction when he gave them silent hand signals.
She could hardly believe what she was hearing, or seeing. “Emperor, you have to get out of here.”
He frowned at her. “Are you out of your mind?”
“We’re being cut to pieces! There are dead soldiers everywhere. I saw Sisters back there, ripped open by something—”
“Magic,” he said with a wicked grin.
She blinked at that grin. “Excellency, you have to get out of here before they have you, too.”
His grin vanished, replaced by red-faced anger. “This is a war! What do you think war is? War is killing. They’ve been doing it, and I intend to do it back twice over! If you don’t have the guts to use that knife, then put your tail between your legs and run for the hills! But don’t ever ask me to help you again.”
Jennsen stood her ground. “I’ll not run. I’m here for a reason. I only wanted you out of here so the Order would not lose you, too, after they’ve already lost Brother Narev.”
He huffed in disgust. “Touching.” He turned to his men, checking that they were paying attention. “Half take the room on the right, just ahead. The rest stay with me. I want them flushed out into the open.” He swept his sword before the faces of the four Sisters. “Two with them, two with me. Don’t disappoint me, now.”
With that, the men and Sisters split up and quickly moved off, half through the room at the right, half charging after the emperor. Sebastian gestured urgently for her. Jennsen joined him, running at his side, as they raced out into the smoky hall after the emperor.
“There he is!” she heard Jagang call from up ahead. “Here! This way! Here!”
And then there was a thunderous blast so violent it took Jennsen’s feet from under her, sending her sprawling. The hall was suddenly filled with fire and fragments of every sort rebounding off the walls as it all came flying toward them. Snatching her arm, Sebastian yanked her up and into a recessed doorway just in time to miss the bulk of the flying objects that came careening past.
Men up the hall let out screams of mortal pain. Such unbridled wails sent shivers up Jennsen’s spine. Following Sebastian, Jennsen ran through thick smoke, toward the screams. The dark, in addition to the smoke, made it difficult to see very far, but they soon encountered bodies. Beyond the dead, there were still some men alive, but it was clear by the ghastly nature of their wounds that they would not live long. The last moments of their lives were to be spent in horrifying agony. Jennsen and Sebastian scrambled past the dying, through the carnage and rubble piled knee-deep from wall to wall, looking for Emperor Jagang.
There, among the splintered wood, leaning boards, overturned chairs and tables, glass shards, and fallen plaster, they spotted him. Jagang’s thigh was laid open to the bone. A Sister stood beside him, her back pressed to the wall. A huge, splintered oak board had been driven through her just below her breastbone, pinning her to the wall. She was still alive, but it was evident that there was nothing to be done for her.
“Dear Creator forgive me. Dear Creator forgive me,” she whispered over and over through quivering lips. Her eyes turned to watch them approach. “Please,” she whispered, blood frothing from her nose, “please, help me.”
She had been close to the emperor. She had probably shielded him with her gift, deflecting whatever power had been unleashed, and saved his life. Now she was shivering in mortal agony.
Sebastian lifted something from under his cloak, behind his back. With a mighty swing, he brought his axe around. The blade slammed into the wall with resounding thunk, and stuck. The Sister’s head tumbled down, bouncing through the dusty rubble.
Sebastian y
anked once, freeing his axe. As he replaced it in the hanger at the small of his back, he turned and came face-to-face with Jennsen. She could only stare in horror into his icy blue eyes.
“If it were you,” he said, “would you want me to let you endure such suffering?”
Trembling uncontrollably, unable to answer him, Jennsen turned away and fell to her knees beside Emperor Jagang. She imagined he had to be in frightening pain, but he hardly seemed to notice the gaping wound, except that he knew his leg wouldn’t work. He held the two sides of the wound closed as best he could with one hand, but he was still losing a lot of blood. With his other hand, he had managed to drag himself to the side, where he leaned against the wall. Jennsen was no healer, and didn’t really know what to do, but she did realize the urgent need to do something to stop the gushing blood.
His face streaked with sweat and soot, Jagang pointed with his sword down a side hall. “Sebastian, it’s her! She was just right here. I almost had her. Don’t let her get away!”
Another Sister, wearing a dusty brown wool dress, came clambering over the rubble, stumbling toward them in the darkness, passing all the groaning soldiers. “Excellency! I heard you! I’m here. I’m here. I can help.”
Jagang nodded his acknowledgment, one hand resting on his heaving chest. “Sebastian—don’t let her get away. Move!”
“Yes, Excellency.” Sebastian took note of the Sister climbing awkwardly over a broken side table, then pressed a hand to Jennsen’s shoulder. “Stay here with them. She’ll protect you and the emperor. I’ll be back.”
Jennsen snatched for his sleeve, but he had already dashed away, collecting all the remaining men on his way past. He led them off down the hall, disappearing into the darkness. Jennsen was suddenly alone with the wounded emperor, a Sister of the Light, and the voice.
She snatched up the end of a strip of a sheer curtain and pulled it out from under the rubble. “You’re losing a lot of blood. I need to close this as best I can.” She looked up into Emperor Jagang’s nightmare eyes. “Can you help hold it closed while I wrap it?”
The Pillars of Creation Page 52
