Terry Goodkind - The Pillars of Creation

The people who had spread back away from the potential trouble, along with everyone else strolling the halls, all began moving toward the square. People in the shops set down their work to join them. No one paid much attention to the soldiers’ business. In response to that single chime still hanging in the air, laughter and talking trailed off to respectful whispers.

Panic clawed at Jennsen as she saw the soldiers muscling Sebastian down a hall to the side. She could see his white hair amid the dark armor. She didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They only came to find a gilder. She wanted to scream for the soldiers to stop. She dared not, though.

Jennsen.

Jennsen stood her ground against the current of bodies, trying to keep Sebastian and his captors in sight. The Lord Rahl was after her, and now they had Sebastian. Her mother had been murdered, and now they were taking Sebastian. It wasn’t fair.

As she watched, afraid to do anything to stop the soldiers, her own fear shamed her. Sebastian had done so much for her. He had made so many sacrifices for her. He had risked his life to save hers.

Jennsen’s breath came in ragged pulls. But what could she do?

Surrender.

It wasn’t fair what they were doing to Sebastian, to her, to innocent people. Anger welled up through her fear.

Tu vash misht.

He was only there because of her. She had asked him to come.

Tu vask misht.

Now, he was in trouble.

Grushdeva du kalt misht.

The words sounded so right. They flared through her, carried on flames of igniting rage.

People pushed against her. She growled through gritted teeth as she squeezed her way among the crush of people, trying to follow the soldiers who had Sebastian. It wasn’t fair. She wanted them to stop. Just stop. Stop.

Her helplessness frustrated her. She was sick of it. When they wouldn’t stop, when they kept going, it only further enraged her.

Surrender.

Jennsen’s hand slid inside her cloak. The touch of cold steel welcomed her. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her knife. She could feel the worked metal of the symbol of the House of Rahl pressing into the flesh of her palm.

A soldier gently pushed her, turning her in the direction of the rest of the crowd. “The devotion square is that way, ma’am.”

It was spoken as a suggestion, but wrapped around the core of command.

Through the rage, she looked up into his hooded eyes. She saw the dead man’s eyes. She saw the soldiers at her house—men on the floor dead, men coming for her, men grabbing her. She saw flashes of movement through a crimson sheen of blood.

As she and the soldier stared into each other’s eyes, she felt the blade at her waist coming out of its sheath.

A hand under her arm tugged at her. “This way, dear. I’ll show you where it is.”

Jennsen blinked. It was the lady who had given her directions to Althea’s place. The woman who sat in the palace of the murdering bastard Lord Rahl and sewed the peaceful scenes of the mountains and brooks.

Jennsen stared at the woman, at her inexplicable smile, trying to make sense of her. Jennsen found everything around her strangely incomprehensible. She only knew that her hand was on the hilt of her knife and she longed for the blade to be free.

But, for some reason, the knife stubbornly remained where it was.

Jennsen, at first convinced that some malevolent magic had seized her, saw then that the woman had a tight, motherly arm around her. Without realizing it, the woman was keeping Jennsen’s blade in its sheath. Jennsen locked her knees, resisting being pulled along.

The woman’s eyes, now, were set with warning. “No one misses a devotion, dear. No one. Let me show you where it is.”

The soldier, his expression grim, watched as Jennsen yielded, allowing herself to be guided by the woman. Jennsen and the woman, swept into the current of people moving toward the square, left the soldier behind. She looked up into the woman’s smiling face. The whole world seemed to Jennsen to be swimming in a strange light. The voices around her were a smear of sound that in her mind was pierced by the echoes of screams from her house.

Jennsen.

Through the murmuring around her, the voice, sharp and distinct, caught her attention. Jennsen listened, alert to what it might tell her.

Surrender your will, Jennsen.

It made sense, in a visceral way.

Surrender your flesh.

Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Nothing she had tried in her whole life had brought her salvation, or safety, or peace. To the contrary, everything seemed lost. There seemed nothing else to lose.

“Here we are, dear,” the woman said.

Jennsen looked around. “What?”

“Here we are.”

Jennsen felt her knees touch the tiled floor as the woman urged her down. People were all around. Before them was the square with the pool of quiet water at its center. She wanted only the voice.

Jennsen. Surrender.

The voice had grown harsh, commanding. It fanned the flames of her anger, her rage, her wrath.

Jennsen bent forward, trembling, in the grip of rage. Somewhere, in the far corners of her mind, screamed a distant terror. Despite that remote sense of foreboding, it was rage that was carrying her will away.

Surrender!

She saw strings of her saliva hanging, dripping, as she panted through parted lips. Tears dropped to the tiles close beneath her face. Her nose ran. Her breath came in gasps. Her eyes were opened so wide it hurt. She shook all over, as if alone in the coldest darkest winter night. She couldn’t make herself stop.

People bowed forward deeply, hands pressed to the tiles. She wanted her knife out.

Jennsen lusted for the voice.

“Master Rahl guide us.”

It was not the voice. It was the people all around, in one voice, chanting the devotion. As they began, they all bowed farther forward until their foreheads touched the tile floor. A soldier moved past close behind, patrolling, watching as she knelt, bent over, hands to the floor, quaking uncontrollably.

Inch by halting inch, as she gasped, panted, shook, Jennsen’s head lowered until her forehead touched the floor.

“Master Rahl teach us.”

That was not what she wanted to hear.

She wanted the voice. She raged for it. She wanted her knife. She wanted blood.

“Master Rahl protect us,” the people all chanted in unison.

Jennsen, pulling ragged jerking breaths, consumed with loathing, wanted only the voice, and her blade free. But her palms were flat on the tiles.

She listened for the voice, but heard only the chant of the devotion.

“In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

At first, Jennsen only vaguely remembered it from her youth, from when she had lived at the palace. Hearing it now, that memory came flooding back. She had known the words. She had chanted them when she was little. When they fled the palace, running from Lord Rahl, she had banished the words of the devotion to the man who was trying to kill her and her mother.

Now, hungering for the voice that wanted her to surrender, almost unbeknownst to her, almost as if it were someone else doing it, her trembling lips began moving with the words.

“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

The cadence of those murmured words filled the great hall, many people but one voice resounding powerfully off the walls. She listened with all her strength for the voice that had been her companion for nearly as long as she could remember, but it wasn’t there.