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Jennsen could only stare at her.
“Who is that?” Sebastian asked as he watched the lone man reach the rim of the valley of the Pillars of Creation and start down without pause. “Do you have any ideas?”
“It isn’t important.” Sister Perdita turned back to the trail. “We have a mission.”
“Then we had better hurry,” Sebastian said in a worried tone as he stared back at the distant figure advancing down the trail at a swift, measured, relentless pace.
Chapter 59
Jennsen and Sebastian rushed to follow after Sister Perdita, who had disappeared over the top of the ridge. As they reached the edge, they saw her, already far below them. Jennsen looked back, in the direction of the trailhead, but didn’t see the lone man. She did see, though, that a bank of dark clouds had rolled in over the expanse of barren plains.
“Hurry!” Sister Perdita called back up to them.
With Sebastian’s hand at the small of her back, urging her on, Jennsen dashed down the steep trail. The Sister moved as swiftly as the wind, the black robes flying out behind her as she raced along a trail cut into the slope of steep rock. Jennsen had never worked so hard to keep up with anyone. She suspected that the woman was using magic to aid her.
Whenever Jennsen started to lose her footing on the loose scree and reached out for support, the rough rock rasped the skin on her fingers and the palms of her hands. The trail was as arduous as any she had ever climbed down. Loose rock atop layers of solid ledge constantly slipped and gave way underfoot, and she knew that if she grabbed the wrong handhold, the rock, in many places as sharp as shattered glass, would slice her hands open.
Jennsen was soon panting and trying to catch her breath, as well as the distant Sister. Sebastian, right behind, sounded just as winded. He, too, lost his footing a number of times and, once, Jennsen cried out and grabbed his arm just before he went over the edge of a precipitous drop of thousands of feet.
The look in his eyes expressed the relief that he was too winded to voice.
Finding herself closer to the bottom, after a seemingly unending, arduous descent, Jennsen was at least relieved to note that the walls and towers were blocking the broiling sunlight. She glanced up at the sky, something she hadn’t had the luxury to do for quite a while, and realized that it wasn’t just the shadows cast by rock darkening the day. The sky, that only hours before had been so clear and bright blue, was now roofed with churning gray clouds, as if the entire valley of the Pillars of Creation were being sealed off from the rest of the world.
She forged onward, rushing to keep up with Sister Perdita. There was no time to worry about clouds. As exhausted as Jennsen was, she knew that when the time came, she would find the strength to plunge her knife into Richard Rahl. That time was almost at hand. She knew that her mother, with the good spirits, would inspire her and thus help give her the strength. She knew, too, that other strength had been promised.
Rather than filling her with dread, knowing that the end of her life was so close left Jennsen with an odd, numb sense of calm. It seemed almost sweet, that promise of the end of struggle, the end of fear, the end of needing to care about anything. Soon, there would be no exhaustion, no insufferable heat, no pain, no sorrow, no anguish.
At the same time, when, for only an instant here or a moment there, she actually comprehended the staggering reality that she was about to die, her mind blanked out with overwhelming terror. It was her life, her only precious life, that was inexorably dwindling away, that would soon end with the cold embrace of death itself.
Flickering lightning skipped across a darkening sky, traveling under the clouds. Distant, intense flashes came again, lacing though the heavy clouds, lighting them from within with spectacular green light. Distant thunder boomed, rumbling out across the vast deserted valley. The hesitant rolling sound of the thunder seemed to match the way the landscape wavered in the heat.
As they descended, the towering rock columns became larger, at first growing up from splits along the ridges, until down at the bottom they seemed rooted in the floor of the valley itself. Now, as the three of them moved at last ever farther away from the cliffs and out into the valley, those columns rose up like an ancient stone forest. Jennsen felt like an ant moving among them.
As their footsteps echoed among the rock walls, chambers, and tiers, she couldn’t help marveling at the smooth, rippled sides of the pillars, that looked as if the rock had been worn smooth, like stones in a river. Different layers within the vertical rock appeared to be of varying density, making them wear at different rates, leaving the stone towers rippled up along their entire length. In places, huge sections of the columns perched atop narrow necks.
All the while, the heat felt like a great weight pressing down on her as her feet dragged through the jagged gravel at the bottom. The light among the columns cast eerie shadows, leaving dark places lurking farther back in among the towers. In other places, light seemed to come from behind the stone. As she looked up, it was like looking up from the depths of the world, seeing the rock itself, lit green at times by the flickering lightning within the clouds, reach up as if beseeching salvation.
Sister Perdita glided among the maze of rock, like a spirit of the dead, her black robes billowing out behind. Even Sebastian’s presence behind was not a comfort for Jennsen among such silent sentinels to the power of Creation itself.
Lightning arced across above their heads, above the tops of towering rock, as if searching the forest of stone. Thunder shook the valley with violent shudders that brought crumbling rock down on them so that they had to run or dodge to the side to avoid being stoned. Jennsen saw, here and there, where some of the enormous pillars had previously come crashing down. They lay toppled, now, like fallen giants. In places they had to pass beneath the monumental stone lying across the path, walking through passages left where the colossal pieces spanned weathered gaps. She hoped the lightning that was streaking all across the sky didn’t decide to hit a stone pillar right above them and send unimaginable weight crashing down on them.
Just when Jennsen thought that they would be forever lost in among the tight spaces among soaring rock, she saw an opening between the towers that revealed the expanse of the rest of the valley floor. Winding their way along the bottom, among the crowded stone columns, they began to wend their way out into more open ground, where the pillars stood as individual monuments rather than being tightly crammed together.
Down at the bottom, the valley, that had looked so flat from above, was a jumble of rolling low rock and scree, cut through with jagged rock formations and lifted slabs of smooth stone that ran for miles. Out from the fingers of tapering ridges coming in from the sides stood lofty pillars both separated, and in small clusters.
The thunder was becoming unnerving as it boomed and shuddered and rumbled almost continually through the forest of stone. The sky had lowered until the boiling clouds brushed along the surrounding walls of rock. Off at the far end of the valley, the darkest clouds threw out almost constant flickers and flashes, some startlingly bright, spawning jarring thunderclaps.
Coming past a broad stone spire, Jennsen was startled to see a wagon in the distance making its way across the valley floor.
Jennsen turned to tell Sebastian about the wagon, and there, behind them, towered the stranger.
Her gaze took in his black shirt, his black, open-sided tunic decorated with ancient symbols snaking along a wide gold band running all the way around its squared edges. The tunic was cinched at his waist with a wide, multilayered leather belt with leather pouches attached along each side. The small, gold-worked leather compartments on the belt bore silver emblems of linked rings, matching those on wide, leather-padded silver bands at each wrist. His trousers and boots were black. In contrast, his broad shoulders bore a cape that appeared to be made of spun gold.
He had no weapon but a belt knife, but he needed none to be the embodiment of threat itself.
Looking into his gray eyes, Jenn
sen knew instantly and unequivocally that she was staring into the raptor gaze of Richard Rahl.
It felt as if a fist of fear seized her heart, and squeezed. Jennsen pulled her knife free. She clutched it so tightly that her knuckles were white around the silver hilt. She could feel the ornately engraved letter “R,” for the House of Rahl, biting into her palm and fingers as the Lord Rahl himself stood right there before her.
Sebastian spun around and saw him, then moved around behind her.
Her emotions in a jumble, Jennsen stood paralyzed before her brother.
“Jenn,” Sebastian whispered from behind, “don’t worry. You can do this. Your mother is watching. Don’t let her down.”
Richard Rahl scrutinized her, not seeming to notice Sebastian, or even Sister Perdita, farther back. Jennsen stared at her brother, equally oblivious of the other two.
“Where is Kahlan?” Richard said.
His voice was not what she expected. It was commanding, to be sure, but it was so much more, so full of emotion, everything from cold fury, to unwavering resolve, to desperation. His gray eyes, too, reflected the same sincere and terrible determination.
Jennsen could not take her eyes from him. “Who is Kahlan?”
“The Mother Confessor. My wife.”
Jennsen could not move, so conflicted was she in what she was seeing, in what she was hearing. This was not a man looking for a monster cohort, a brutal Confessor who ruled the Midlands with an iron will and an evil hand. This was a man motivated by love for this woman. Jennsen could clearly see that little else mattered to him. If they did not get out of his way, he would go through them like he went through those thousand men. It was as simple as that.
Except, unlike those thousand men, Jennsen was invincible.
“Where is Kahlan?” Richard repeated, his patience at an end.
“You killed my mother,” Jennsen said, almost defensively.
His brow twitched. He seemed truly puzzled. “I only just learned that I have a sister. Friedrich Gilder just told me, and that your name is Jennsen.”
Jennsen realized she was nodding, unable to take her eyes off his, seeing her own eyes in his.
“Kill him, Jenn!” Sebastian whispered urgently in her ear. “Kill him! You can do it. His magic can’t hurt you! Do it.”
