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Jennsen spun to Sebastian, her eyes wide with sudden understanding. “Emperor Jagang has that book.”
“Jenn, you’re just talking nonsense, now.”
“I saw it, Sebastian. The Pillars of Creation. I saw it in his tent. It’s an ancient book, in his old tongue. It’s one of his prized books. He knew what it says. You are one of his prized strategists. He told you. You knew all along what it said.”
“Jenn…I—”
“It was you,” she whispered.
“How can you doubt me? I love you.”
Then, over the terrible tumult of the voice, the whole thing began unravelling in her mind. The crushing pain of it all came crashing in on her. The true dimensions of the betrayal became horrifyingly clear.
“Dear spirits, it was you all along.”
Sebastian, his face going nearly as white as his white spikes of hair, turned deadly calm. “Jenn, that doesn’t change anything.”
“It was you,” she whispered, wide-eyed. “You took a single mountain fever rose—”
“What! I don’t even have any such thing.”
“I saw them in a tin in your pack. There was twine on top of them, hiding them. They spilled out.”
“Oh, those. I—I got them from the healer—the one we visited.”
“Liar! You had them all along. You took one to give yourself a fever.”
“Jenn, now you’re just acting crazy.”
Trembling, Jennsen pointed at him with her knife. “It was you, all along. That first night, you told me, ‘Where I come from, we believe in using what is closest to an enemy, or what comes from him, as a weapon against him.’ You wanted me to have this knife. You wanted me because I was closest to your enemy. You wanted to use me. How did you get it on that soldier?”
“Jenn—”
“You claim to love me. Prove it! Don’t lie to me! Tell me the truth!”
Sebastian stared a moment before finally holding his head up and answering. “I only wanted to gain your trust. I thought that if I had a fever you would take me in.”
“And the dead soldier I found?”
“He was one of my men. We captured the man who carried that knife. I gave it to one of my men, had him dress in a D’Haran uniform, then, after we saw you pass below, I pushed him over the cliff.”
“You killed your own man?”
“Sacrifice for the greater cause is sometimes necessary. Salvation comes through sacrifice,” he added in defiant defense.
“How did you know where I was?”
“Emperor Jagang is a dream walker. He learned about your kind through the book years ago. He used his ability to search for any who might know of your existence. Over time, he put together evidence in order to track you down.”
“And the note I found?”
“I planted it on him. Jagang found out through his ability that you once used that name.”
“The bond prevents the dream walker from entering a person’s mind,” Richard said. “He must have searched for a long time, looking for those who aren’t bonded to the Lord Rahl.”
Sebastian nodded with satisfaction. “That’s right. And we succeeded, too.”
Jennsen, burning with blinding anger, with the agony of such monumental betrayal, swallowed. “And the rest? My…mother? Was that one of your necessary sacrifices, too?”
Sebastian licked his lips. “Jenn, you don’t understand. I didn’t really know you then—”
“They were your own men. That’s why it was so easy for you to kill them. They weren’t expecting you to attack them—they thought you were there to fight alongside them. And that’s why you were confused when I told you about the quads, about how many more men I thought there were. They weren’t really quads. You had to kill some innocent people along the way in order to make me think it was the other member of a quad. All those times you went out at night to scout and came back saying they were right behind us, and we kept running through the night—you made it all up.”
“To a good cause,” Sebastian said, quietly.
Jennsen gasped in her tears, her fury. “A good cause! You killed my mother! It was you all along! Dear spirits…to think that I…oh, dear spirits, I slept with my mother’s murderer. You filthy—”
“Jenn, get ahold of yourself. It was necessary.” He pointed at Richard. “This is the cause of it all! We have him now! This was all necessary! Salvation only comes through selfless sacrifice. Your sacrifice—your mother’s sacrifice—has captured us Richard Rahl, the man who has hunted you your whole life.”
Tears of rage poured down her face. “I can’t believe you could have done such things to me and claimed to love me.”
“But I do, Jenn. I didn’t know you, then. I told you—I never intended to fall in love with you, but I did. It just happened. You are my life, now. I love you, now.”
She pressed her hands to the voice screaming in her head. “You are evil! I could never love you!”
“Brother Narev teaches that all of mankind is evil. We can have no moral existence because mankind is a taint on the world of life. At least Brother Narev is at last in a better place. He’s with the Creator, now.”
“You mean to say that even Brother Narev is evil, then? Because he is part of mankind? Even your precious, sacred Brother Narev was evil?”
Sebastian glared at her. “The one who is truly evil is standing right there”—he pointed—“Richard Rahl, for killing a great man. Richard Rahl must be put to death for his crimes.”
“If mankind is evil, and if Brother Narev is in a better place—with the Creator—then Richard has done a kindness by killing Brother Narev, by sending him into the Creator’s arms, hasn’t he? And if mankind is evil, then how could Richard Rahl be evil for killing men of the Order?”
Sebastian’s face had gone red. “We are all evil, but some are more evil than others! As least we have the humility before the Creator to recognize our own wickedness, and to glorify only the Creator.” He paused and cooled visibly. “I know it’s a sign of weakness, but I love you.” He gave her a smile. “You have become my only reason for being, Jenn.”
She could only stare at him. “You don’t love me, Sebastian. You don’t have any idea what love really is. You can’t love anyone or anything until you love your own existence, first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life. When you love yourself, your own existence, then you love someone who can enhance your existence, share it with you, and make it more pleasurable. When you hate yourself and believe your existence is evil, then you can only hate, you can only experience the shell of love, that longing for something good, but you have nothing to base it in but hatred. You taint the very concept of love, Sebastian, with your corrupted longing for it. You want me only to justify your hatred, to be your partner in self-loathing.
“To truly love someone, Sebastian, you must revel in their existence because they make life all the more wonderful. If you think existence is corrupt, then you are sealed off from the fruition of such a relationship, from what love really is.”
“You’re wrong! You just don’t understand!”
“I understand all too well. I only wish I had sooner.”
“But I do love you, Jenn. You’re wrong. I do love you!”
“You can only wish you did. They are the empty words of a barren shell of a man. There is nothing there for me to love—nothing worth loving. You are so empty of humanity that it’s even difficult for me to hate you, Sebastian, except in the sense of the way one would hate an open sewer.”
Lightning crashed down on the pillars all around. The voice in Jennsen’s head felt as if it would tear her apart.
“Jenn—you don’t mean any of that. You can’t. I can’t live without you.”
Jennsen turned her cold fury on him. “The only thing in the whole world that you could do that would please me, Sebastian, would be to die!”
r /> “I’ve listened to this touching lovers’ spat long enough,” Sister Perdita growled. “Sebastian, be a man and shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you. Your life means just as little as anyone else’s. Richard, you have a choice. Jennsen or the Mother Confessor.”
“You don’t have to serve the Keeper, Sister,” Richard said. “You don’t have to serve the dream walker, either. You have a choice.”
Sister Perdita pointed at him. “You have a choice! I make you this offer, once! Your time is up! Kahlan’s time is up! Jennsen or Kahlan—choose!”
“I don’t like your rules,” Richard said. “I choose neither.”
“Then I choose for you! Your precious wife dies!”
Even as Jennsen dove at her to stop her, Sister Perdita seized Kahlan by the hair and lifted her head. The Mother Confessor’s face was blank of all expression.
Jennsen caught Sister Perdita’s arm, swinging the knife with the ornate letter “R” as fast as she could, with as much power as she could apply, hoping against hope that she was fast enough to save Kahlan’s life, yet knowing even as she made the attempt that she was already too late.
There was a crystal-clear instant when the world seemed to stop, to freeze in place.
And then, there was a violent concussion to the air, thunder without sound.
The terrible shock drove a ring of dust and rock away from the Mother Confessor in an ever-expanding circle. The shock to the columns so close all around shook the towering pillars. Some, that were so precariously balanced, toppled. As they fell, they hit others, bringing them down as well. It seemed to take forever for the huge sections of rock to plunge through the sweltering air, trailing dust as they disintegrated, plummeting down like thunder made of stone. As the rock came crashing to ground it seemed the entire valley shook under the tremendous blows. Blinding dust swirled up into the air.
The world went black, as if all light had been taken away, and in that terrifying instant, in the total blackness, it seemed that there was no world, no anything.
