Terry Goodkind - The Pillars of Creation

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.