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Sebastian leaned back, nursing a mug of ale. “Don’t you want to wait for Brother Narev? Shouldn’t he be here to witness it, if this turns out to be the blow that ends it?”
With a thick finger, Jagang pushed an olive around in a little circle on the table. It was a time before he spoke quietly without looking up.
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“I’ve not heard from Brother Narev since Altur’Rang fell.”
Sebastian came up against the table. “What! Altur’Rang fell? What do you mean? How? When?”
Jennsen knew that Altur’Rang was the emperor’s homeland, the city he came from. Sebastian had told her that Brother Narev and the Fellowship of Order were there, in that great shining city of hope for mankind. A great palace would be built there in homage to the Creator and as a symbol to solidify the unity of the Old World.
“I received reports not long ago that enemy forces overran the city. Altur’Rang is very distant, and it was cut off. Partly because of winter, the reports were a very long time in reaching me. I await news.
“Given this inauspicious turn of fate, I don’t think it wise to wait for Brother Narev to make it up here. He will be busy throwing the invaders back. If the Mother Confessor and Richard Rahl are in Aydindril, we must not wait; we must strike back swiftly, and with withering force.”
Jennsen laid a sympathetic hand on Sebastian’s forearm. “That must have been what you told me about. When I first met you and you told me that Lord Rahl was invading your homeland, that must have been what he was after—Altur’Rang.”
Sebastian stared at her. “It may be that he isn’t in Aydindril. It may turn out that he’s still to the south, Jenn, in the Old World. You have to keep that in mind. I don’t want you to invest all your hopes only to have them dashed.”
“I hope he is here and it can finally be ended, but, as His Excellency said about moving on Aydindril, there is nothing to lose. I didn’t expect to find him here. If he isn’t in Aydindril, then I’ll still have the help for which you brought me here in the first place.”
“And what is the nature of that help?” Jagang asked.
Sebastian answered for her. “I told her that the Sisters might be able to help with a spell—so that she can get past all of Lord Rahl’s protection and get close enough to him to act.”
“One way or another, then. If he is in Aydindril, you shall have him.” Jagang plucked up the olive he had been rolling around and popped it in his mouth. “If not, then you shall have the sorceress at your disposal. Whatever help you need from the Sisters is yours. You have but to ask, and they will provide it—my word on that.”
His raven eyes were deadly serious.
Outside, thunder rumbled. The rain had picked up. Lightning flickered, lighting the tent from the outside with eerie light that made the candlelight seem all the darker when each flash of lightning ended, leaving them again in near darkness, waiting for the roll of thunder.
“I just need them to cast me a spell to divert those protecting him, so I can get close enough to him,” Jennsen said after the thunder had died out. She drew her knife from its sheath and held it up to look at the ornate letter “R” engraved in the silver handle. “Then I can put my knife through his evil heart. This knife—his own knife. Sebastian explained how important it is to use what is closest to an enemy to strike back at them.”
“Sebastian has spoken wisely. That is our way, and why, with the Creator’s guidance, we will prevail. Let us pray that we at last have them both and it can finally be ended, that the scourge of magic will finally be ended, and that mankind will at last be allowed to live in peace as the Creator intended.”
Jennsen and Sebastian both nodded at the invocation.
“If we catch them in Aydindril,” Jagang said, looking her in the eyes, “I promise that you will be the one to put your blade through his heart, so that your mother may finally rest in peace.”
“Thank you,” Jennsen whispered in gratitude.
He didn’t ask how she could accomplish such a task. Maybe the conviction in her voice had betrayed the fact that there was more to this than he knew—that she had some special advantage that would enable her to accomplish such a thing.
And there was more to this than he knew, or Sebastian knew.
Jennsen had been thinking long and hard about it, putting all the various elements together. Her whole life had been devoted to thinking about this problem. But in the past, her thoughts always revolved around how insoluble it was, how it was only a matter of time until Lord Rahl caught her and the nightmare began in earnest.
She had always been focused on the problem.
Now, since meeting Sebastian and the death of her mother, events had accelerated at a breathtaking pace, but those events had also added, bit by bit, to her understanding of the larger picture. Questions were beginning to have answers, answers that seemed so simple, now, looking back on them. She almost felt as if, deep down inside, she must have known all along.
Now, she was turning her focus away from the problem; she was beginning to think in terms of the solution.
Jennsen had learned a great deal from Althea—as it turned out, more, even, than the sorceress knew she was revealing. A sorceress of Althea’s power would not be trapped there all those years unless what she said about the beasts in the swamp were true. The snake was different. Friedrich had said that the snake was just a snake.
But the beasts were magic.
Those beasts kept even a sorceress of Althea’s power locked in her prison. Friedrich said that no one, not even he, could come in by the back way. Tom had also said that he had never heard of anyone going in the back way and returning to tell about it. No one used the meadow, either, because of the things that came out of that swamp. The things in the swamp were real and they were deadly. All the facts but one were consistent in supporting that.
Jennsen had gone in and come out again without ever being approached, much less attacked or harmed. She had seen nothing of any beasts created from the very substance of the gift. That was the one piece that hadn’t fit, at the time. It did, now.
There had been other indications, too, such as in the People’s Palace, when Jennsen had touched Nyda’s Agiel without it harming her. It had certainly harmed both Sebastian and Captain Lerner. Nyda had been dumbstruck. She said that not even Lord Rahl was immune to the touch of an Agiel. Jennsen was.
And, Jennsen had been able to bend Nyda’s will to helping, rather than what, by all rights, she should have done, which was to stop this stranger who couldn’t be touched with the power of an Agiel, stopped a woman who raised so many unanswered questions, until it all could be sorted out and confirmed. Even when Nathan Rahl tried to stop her, Jennsen had been able to get Nyda to help protect her—from a gifted Rahl. Jennsen knew now that it was more than just a good bluff. A bluff might have been the kernel, but there was much more wrapped around it.
All of those things and more, over the course of the long and difficult journey to Aydindril, had at last come together, so that Jennsen finally saw the true extent of her unique status and why she was the one to kill Richard Rahl.
Jennsen had come to understand that she was the only one able to do this—that she was born to do this—because, in a central, critical, cardinal way…she was invincible.
She knew, now, that she had always been invincible.
Chapter 46
From atop Rusty, the chill, gusty breeze ruffling her hair, Jennsen gazed off at the splendor of the Confessors’ Palace crowning a distance rise. Sebastian sat beside her on a nervous Pete. Emperor Jagang, his magnificent dappled gray stallion pawing the road, waited on the other side of Sebastian, a cadre of officers and advisors huddled close, but silent. Jagang’s forbidding scowl was fixed on the palace. Dark, menacing shapes, like a gathering storm, drifted across the surface of his black eyes.
The advance into Aydindril had, so far, been unlike anything anyone had expected, leaving everyone tense and on edge.
Arrayed behind was a contingent of Sisters of the Light who kept to themselves, apparently concentrating on matters of magic. Although none of the Sisters, as of yet, had had the chance to speak to Jennsen, they were all acutely aware of her, and kept a close eye on her. Yet more of them had ridden off in various directions as the emperor had led the detachment of Imperial Order cavalry, like some dark f
loodwater, across farms, roads, and hills, around buildings and barns, ever onward up roads and then in around buildings, to seep into the outermost fringes of Aydindril. The great city now lay spread out before them, silent and still.
The night before, Sebastian had slept fitfully. Jennsen knew, because, on the eve of such a momentous battle, she had slept hardly at all. Yet, with the thought of finally being able to use the knife sheathed at her belt, she was wide awake.
Behind the Sisters, more than forty thousand of the Imperial Order’s elite cavalry waited, some with pikes and lances poised at the ready, some with swords or axes in hand. Each wore a ring through his left nostril. While most wore beards, and some had long, dark, greasy hair, with good luck charms tied in, there were quite a few with shaved heads, apparently out of open fealty to Emperor Jagang. They were all a tightly coiled spring, destroyers, poised to storm into the city.
Besides being elite members of the cavalry, trusted officers, or Sisters of the Light, every person there, except Jennsen and Sebastian, had one essential thing in common: they knew the Mother Confessor by sight. From what Jennsen was able to gather, the Mother Confessor had led raids on the Order’s camp and had been at battles where she had been seen by a number of the men, as well as the Sisters. All those chosen to ride into Aydindril with the emperor had to know the Mother Confessor by sight. Jagang didn’t want her slipping out of their snare by hiding in crowds of people, or escaping by pretending to be a lowly washwoman. Such a worry had evaporated in the light of what they had so far found.
Chilled not only by the breeze, but by the lust for battle gleaming in the soldiers’ eyes, Jennsen gripped the horn of her saddle tight in an attempt to make her hands stop trembling.
