Terry Goodkind - The Pillars of Creation

She stopped several stalls down at a place selling leather mugs. “Do you know if the gilder is here today?” she asked the man working behind the bench.

“Sorry, don’t know,” he said without looking up from his work at cutting decorations with a fine gouge. “I just started here.”

She hurried down to the next occupied booth, a place that sold hangings with colorful scenes sewn on them. She turned to say something to Sebastian, but saw him inquiring at another booth not far away.

The woman behind the short counter was sewing a blue brook through mountains stitched on a stretched square of coarsely woven cloth. Some of the scenes were made up into pillows displayed on a rack to the back.

“Mistress, would you know if the gilder is here, today?”

The woman smiled up at her. “Sorry, but far as I know, he won’t be in today.”

“Oh, I see.” Thwarted by the disappointing news, Jennsen hesitated, not knowing what to do next. “Would you know when he will return, at least?”

The woman pushed her needle through, making a blue stitch of water. “No, can’t say as I do. Last time I saw him, over a week ago, he said he may not be back for a while.”

“Why is that? Do you know?”

“Can’t say as I do.” She pulled the long thread of the water out taut. “Sometimes he stays away for a spell, working at his gilding, doing up enough to make it worth his time to travel to the palace.”

“Would you happen to know where he lives?”

The woman glanced up from under a crinkled brow. “Why do you wish to know?”

Jennsen’s mind raced. She said the only thing she could think of—what she had learned from Irma, the sausage lady watching Betty for her. “I wish to go for a telling.”

“Ah,” The woman said, her suspicion fading as she pulled another stitch through. “It’s Althea, then, that you really want to see.”

Jennsen nodded. “My mother took me to Althea when I was young. Since my mother . . . passed away, I’d like to visit Althea again. I thought it might be a comfort if I went for a telling.”

“Sorry about your mother, dear. I know what you mean. When I lost my mother, it was a hard time for me, too.”

“Could you tell me how to find Althea’s place?”

She set her sewing down and came to the low wall at the front of her booth. “It’s a goodly ways to Althea’s place—to the west, through a desolate land.”

“The Azrith Plains.”

“That’s right. Going west, the land turns rugged, with mountains. Around the other side of the largest snowcapped mountain due west of here, if you turn north, staying just the other side of the cliffs you will find, following the low land down lower yet, you will come into a nasty place. A swampy place. Althea and Friedrich live there.”

“In a swamp? But not in the winter.”

The woman leaned close and lowered her voice. “Yes, even in the winter, people say. Althea’s swamp. A vile place it is, too. Some say it isn’t a natural place, if you know what I mean.”

“Her . . . magic, you mean?”

She shrugged. “Some say.”

Jennsen nodded in thanks and repeated the directions. “Other side of the largest snowcapped peak west of here, stay below the cliffs and go north. Down in a swampy place.”

“A nasty, dangerous, swampy place.” The woman used a long fingernail to scratch her scalp. “But you don’t want to be going there unless you’re invited.”

Jennsen glanced around briefly, to signal to Sebastian, but she didn’t see him right off. “How does one get invited?”

“Most people ask Friedrich. I see them come here to talk to him and leave without even looking at his work. I guess he asks Althea if she will see them, and the next time he returns with his gilding, he invites them. Sometimes, people give him a letter to take to his wife.

“Some people travel out there and wait. I hear that sometimes he comes out of the swamp to meet those people and pass along Althea’s invitation. Some people return from the edge of the swamp without ever being invited in, their long wait for nothing. None dare venture in uninvited, though. Least, none that did ever came back to tell about it, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you saying I’ll have to go there and just wait? Wait until she or her husband comes to invite us in?”

“Guess so. But it won’t be Althea who comes out. She never comes out of her swamp, as I hear it. You could come back here each day until Friedrich finally returns to sell his gilding. He’s never been away for more than a month. I’d say he’ll be back to the palace within a few weeks, at most.”

Weeks. Jennsen couldn’t stay in one place, waiting weeks, while Lord Rahl’s men hunted her, closing in day by day. From as close as Sebastian said they were, she didn’t think she even had days, much less weeks, before they would have her.

“Thank you, then, for all your help. I guess I’ll come back another day to see if Friedrich has returned and ask him if I might go for a telling.”

The woman smiled as she sat back down and picked up her sewing. “That might be best.” She looked up. “Sorry to hear about your mother, dear. It’s hard, I know.”

She nodded, her eyes watery, fearing to test her voice just then. The vivid scene flashed through her mind. The men, the blood everywhere, the terror of them coming for her, seeing her mother slumped on the floor, stabbed, her arm severed. With effort, Jennsen pushed the memory away, lest it consume her in grief and anger.

She had immediate worries. They had made a long and difficult journey in winter to find Althea, to obtain her help. They couldn’t wait around, hoping to be invited to visit Althea—Lord Rahl’s men were close on their heels. The last time Jennsen had wavered in her determination she had missed her chance—and Lathea had been murdered. The same thing could happen again. She had to get to Althea before those men did, at least to tell her about her sister, to warn her, if nothing else.

Jennsen scanned the vast hallway, searching for Sebastian. He couldn’t have gone far. She saw him, then, his back to her, across the broad corridor, just turning away from a place that sold silver jewelry.

Before she took two steps, she saw soldiers swarm in and surround him. Jennsen froze in her tracks. Sebastian did, too. One of the soldiers used his sword to carefully lift back Sebastian’s cloak, uncovering his array of weapons. She was too frightened to move, to take another step.

Half a dozen gleaming razor-edged pikes lowered at Sebastian. Swords came out of sheaths. People nearby backed away, others turned to look. In the center of a ring of D’Haran soldiers towering over him, Sebastian held his arms out to the sides in surrender.

Surrender.

Just then a bell, the one back at the square, tolled.

The single long peal of the bell calling people to the devotion echoed through the cavernous halls as two of the big men seized Sebastian by the arms and started bearing him away. Jennsen watched helplessly as the rest of the D’Haran soldiers surrounded him in a tight formation bristling with steel meant not only to keep their prisoner at bay, but to ward any possible attempt to extricate him. It was immediately clear to her that these guards were prepared for any eventuality and took no chances, not knowing if this one armed man might signify a force about to storrn the palace.

Jennsen saw that there were other men, visitors to the palace like Sebastian, also carrying swords. Perhaps it was that Sebastian carried a variety of combat weapons, and they were all concealed, that so raised the soldiers’ suspicions. But he wasn’t doing anything. It was winter—of course he was wearing a cloak. He was causing no harm. Jennsen’s urge was to yell at the soldiers to leave him be, yet she feared that if she did they would take her, too.