The Pillars of Creation

Chapter 23

Jennsen made herself comfortable on the red and gold pillow on the floor in front of the sorceress.

“Many years ago,” Althea began, clasping her hands in her lap atop her black-and-white print dress, “more than you might believe, I traveled with my sister to the Old World, beyond the great barrier to the south.”

Jennsen decided that, for the time being, it might be best just to keep quiet and learn what she could, rather than bring up what she already knew—that the new Lord Rahl, bent on conquest, had destroyed the great barrier to the south in order to invade the Old World, and that Sebastian had come up from the Old World to try to find a way to help the emperor, Jagang the Just, stop the invading D’Harans. She thought that maybe if she understood it all a little better, herself, then she might be able to come up with a way of convincing Althea to help her.

“I went to the Old World to go to a place called the Palace of the Prophets,” Althea said. This, too, Jennsen had heard of from Sebastian. “I have a gift for a very primitive form of prophecy. I wanted to learn what I could about it, while my sister wished to learn about cures and such. I also wanted to learn things about people like you.”

“Me?” Jennsen said. “What do you mean?”

“The ancestors of Darken Rahl were no different than he. They all eliminated any ungifted offspring they discovered had been born. Lathea and I were young and full of fire to help those in need, and also those we felt were unjustly persecuted. We wanted to use our gift to help change the world for the better. While we each hoped to study different things, we both went for much the same reasons.”

Jennsen thought that seemed pretty close to how she felt and was just the kind of help she was talking about, but she also knew that right then was not the moment to say it. She asked, instead, “Why did you have to travel all the way to the Palace of the Prophets to learn these things?”

“The sorceresses there are renowned to have experience with many things, with wizards, and magic, and most of all, with matters to do with this world and with the worlds beyond.”

“Worlds beyond?” Jennsen gestured to the space outside the outer gilded ring on the Grace setting not far away. “You mean, the world of the dead?”

Althea leaned back as she reflected. “Well, yes, but not exactly. You understand the Grace?” Althea waited for Jennsen’s nod. “The sorceresses at the Palace of the Prophets have knowledge about the interactions of the gift, the veil between worlds, and their interdependent relationships—how it all fits together. They are called the Sisters of the Light.”

Jennsen recalled with a jolt that Sebastian had said that the Sisters of the Light were with Emperor Jagang, now. Sebastian had offered to take Jennsen to the Sisters of the Light. He’d said he thought they might be able to help her. It had to be that they had something to do with the Creator’s Light, and especially the gift, in the center of the Grace.

Another thought came to her. “This has something to do with what Lathea said? That you could see the . . . holes in the world, as she called it?”

Althea smiled with the pleasure of a teacher seeing a student flirting with discovery. “That’s the tip of the tooth. You see, the ungifted offspring of the Lord Rahl—of every Lord Rahl going back thousands of years—are different than anyone else. You are holes in the world to those of us with the gift.”

“What does that mean, exactly—holes in the world?”

“We are blind to you.”

“Blind? But you see me. Lathea could see me, too. I don’t understand.”

“Not blind with our eyes. Blind with our gift.” She swept an arm out toward Friedrich at the fire with an iron kettle, and then toward the window. “There are living things all around. You see them with your eyes—you see Friedrich and the trees and such—just as I do, just as everyone does.” She held up a finger to make her point. “But through my gift, I also see them.

“While our eyes may perceive you, those of us with the gift cannot see you with that aspect of ourselves. Darken Rahl could not see you any more than I can. Neither can the new Lord Rahl. To those of us with the gift, you are a hole in the world.”

“But, but,” Jennsen stammered in confusion, “that makes no sense. He’s been hunting me. He sent men after me—they had my name on a piece of paper.”

“They may hunt you, but only in the conventional sense. They cannot find you with magic. His gift is blind to you. He has to use spies, bribes, and threats to locate you, in addition to his wits and cunning. Were it not so, he might send some magic beast to reap your bones for him and be done with it, instead of sending out men with your name written down on a piece of paper.”

“You mean, I’m already invisible to him?”

“No. I know you. I remember your red hair. I recognized you because I remember your mother, and you look like her. I know you in those ways—the ways anybody knows and recognizes someone. Darken Rahl, were he alive, might recognize you if he remembered your mother. Others who knew him might well see some of him in you, as I do, in addition to your mother’s looks. He could know you in all those same ways common to one without the gift. He can find you by ordinary means. Of course, if he or one with the gift were to actually lay eyes on you, they would realize you are an ungifted offspring of a Rahl—because they could see you.

“But, he could not find you with magic. That he cannot do. To those of us with the gift, you are in many ways like everyone else, except that you are a hole in the world.”

Jennsen was frowning. She only realized it when Althea tapped her thumbs together, thinking, in response to that face.

“When I was at the Palace of the Prophets,” Althea finally said, “I knew a woman there, a sorceress, like me, named Adie. She had traveled alone to the Old World from a far-off land in order to learn what she could. But Adie was blind.”

“Blind? She could travel alone when she was blind?”

Althea smiled at the memory of the woman. “Oh yes. With the use of her gift, rather than her eyes. All sorceress—all people with the gift—have unique abilities. On top of that, in some the gift is stronger, like people who have big muscles are stronger than me. Like Friedrich. He is stronger in muscles. You have hair like other people, but yours is red. Some have blond, or black, or brown. Despite what things people have in common, each person has different attributes.

“It’s like that with the gift. It’s not only different in its aspects, but the power of those aspects differ. With some, it’s very strong, with some, weak. Each of us is an individual. We’re all unique in our ability, our gift, the same as you are unique in other ways.”

“And what about your friend, Adie?”

“Ah, well, Adie’s eyes were completely white—blind—but she had learned the trick of seeing with her gift. The gift told her more about the world around her than my eyes told me. Adle could see people better with her gift than I could with my eyes. Much like when people who don’t have the gift go blind, they depend more on their hearing, so they learn to hear more than you or I.

“Adie did that with her gift. She saw by sensing that infinitesimal spark of the Creator’s gift that everything has—life itself, and more: Creation.

“The point is that, to me, to Darken Rahl, to Adie, you do not exist. You are a hole in the world.”

For reasons Jennsen could not at first comprehend, terror washed through her. And then the sense of her terror began to take shape. She could feel her eyes filling with tears.

“The Creator didn’t give me life, like everyone else? I came to exist in some other way? I’m some kind of . . . monster? My father wanted to have me killed because I’m some monstrosity of nature?”

“No, no, child,” Althea said as she leaned forward and stroked a comforting hand down Jennsen’s hair, “that is not at all what I mean.”

Jennsen tried mightily to contain the new shape of dread. Through watery vision, she saw Althea’s concerned face gazing down at her. “I’m not even part of Creation. That’s why the gift can’t sense me. The Lord Rahl only wanted to rid the world of an error of nature, an evil thing.”

“Jennsen, don’t put words where I have not. Listen to me, now.”

Jennsen nodded as she wiped under her eyes. “I’m listening.”

“Just because you’re different, that doesn’t make you evil.”

“Just what am I, then, if not a monster untouched by Creation?”

“My dear child, you are a pillar of Creation.”

“But you said—”

“I said that those with the gift cannot see you with it. I did not say that you don’t exist, or that you are not as the rest of us, a part of Creation.”

“Then why am I one of those . . . things? One of those holes in the world?”

Althea shook her head. “I don’t know, child. But our lack of knowledge does not prove something evil. An owl can see at night. Does it make you evil because people can’t see you while the owl can? One person’s limitations don’t confer wickedness on another. It shows only one thing: the existence of limitations.”

“But all the offspring of the Lord Rahl are like this?”

She considered carefully before answering. “The genuinely ungifted ones, yes. Those who are born with at least some tiny aspect of the gift are not. That aspect can be so infinitesimal and unusable that it would not even be recognized to exist by anyone in any other way aside from this one. For all practical purposes, those offspring would be thought of as ungifted, except that they would have this quality that would keep them from being like you—holes in the world. It also makes them vulnerable. This kind of offspring can be found with magic and thus eliminated.”

“Could it be that most of the offspring of Lord Rahl are like that, and those like me, holes in the world, are actually the ones who are more rare?”

“Yes,” Althea admitted quietly.

Jennsen sensed an undercurrent of tension in the single word answer. “Are you suggesting that there is something more to all of this than just that we are holes in the world to the gifted?”

“Yes. That was one of the reasons I went to study with the Sisters of the Light. I wanted to better understand the interrelationship of the gift with life as we know it—with Creation.”

“Did you discover anything? Were the Sisters of the Light able to help you?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Althea gazed off in reflection. “Few if any would agree with me, but I have come to suspect that all people, with the single exception of those like you—offspring of a Lord Rahl born wholly without the gift—have this imperceptible spark of magic that, while intangible in every other way, connects them to the gifted, and thus to the greater world of Creation.”

“I don’t understand what this would mean for me, or for anyone else.”

Althea slowly shook her head. “There is more to this, Jennsen, than I know. I suspect there is something far more important involved.”

Jennsen couldn’t imagine what that could be. “How many offspring are born entirely without the gift?”

“As far as I’ve learned, it’s exceedingly rare for more than one offspring of each Lord Rahl to be born with the gift, as we think of it—his seed conceives but one true heir.” Althea held up a finger as she leaned forward. “But it is possible that, while the others are ungifted in the conventional sense, many have this otherwise invisible and sterile spark of the gift so that they are detected and destroyed before others, like me, know of them.

“It is entirely possible that those like you are the ones who are truly rare, as is the single formally gifted heir, and that’s why you survived for those like me to notice, thus slanting our idea of which kind is rare, and which common. As I said, I think there is far more to this than I know or can understand. But of those truly like you, devoid of even this otherwise imperceptible glimmer of the gift, all are—”

“Pillars of Creation,” Jennsen said, sarcastically.

Althea chuckled. “Perhaps that sounds better.”

“But to the gifted, we are holes in the world.”

Althea’s smile withered. “It is so. Were Adie here, blind as she is with her eyes and seeing only with her gift, were you to stand before her she would see everything but you. She would be blind to you. To Adie, able to see with the gift only, you would truly be a hole in the world.”

“That doesn’t make me feel very good about myself.”

Althea’s smile returned. “Don’t you see, child? It proves only the limitation. To one who is blind, everyone is a hole in the world.”

Jennsen thought it over. “Then, it’s only a matter of perception. Some people are simply lacking the ability to perceive me in one narrow way.”

Althea gave her a single nod. “That’s right. But because those with the gift often use their ability without conscious thought, like you use your vision, it’s very disturbing to those with the gift to encounter one such as you.”

“Disturbing? Why is it disturbing?”

“It’s troubling when your senses do not agree.”

“But they can still see me, so why do I trouble them?”

“Well, imagine if you heard a voice but you could see no source for it.”

Jennsen didn’t have to imagine that. She understood quite well how troubling that was.

“Or imagine,” the sorceress said, “if you could see me, but when you reached out to touch me, your hand passed through me as if I wasn’t here. Wouldn’t that trouble you?”

“I suppose,” Jennsen conceded. “Is there anything else about us that’s different? Other than that we are holes in the world to those with the gift?”

“I don’t know. It’s exceedingly rare to come across one such as you who is still alive. While it’s possible that others exist, and I once heard a rumor that one lived with the healers called the Raug’Moss, I only know of you for certain.”

When Jennsen had been very young, she had visited the healers, the Raug’Moss, with her mother. “Do you know the name?”

“Drefan was the name whispered, but I don’t know if it’s true. Even if it is, the likelihood of him still being alive would be remote. The Lord Rahl is the Lord Rahl. He is his own law. Darken Rahl, like most of his ancestors, probably fathered many children. Hiding the knowledge of such a child’s paternity is dangerous. Few would risk it, so most of your kind were known and immediately put to death. The rest are eventually found.”

Thinking out loud, Jennsen asked, “Could it be that we’re like this as a form of protection? There are animals that have special traits when they’re born that help them survive. Fawns, for example, have spots to hide them, to make them invisible to predators—make them holes in the world.”

Althea smiled at the notion. “I suppose that could be as good an explanation as any. Knowing magic, though, I would expect the reason to be more complex. Everything seeks balance. The deer and the wolves strike a balance—the fawns’ spots help them survive, but that threatens the existence of wolves who need food. Such things go back and forth. If the wolves ate all the fawns, then the deer would die out and the wolves, if they had no other source of food, would also die out because they had altered the balance between them and the deer. They coexist in a balance that allows both species to survive, but at the cost of some individuals.

“With magic, balance is critical. What on the surface may seem simple often turns out to have much more complex causes. I suspect that, with those like you, an elaborate form of balance is being struck, and that being a hole in the world is merely an ancillary indication.”

“And maybe some of the balance is that, like some fawns are caught despite their spots, some with the gift are able to see me? Your sister said you could see the holes in the world.”

“No, I can’t really. I simply learned a few tricks with the gift, in much the same way Adie did.” Jennsen frowned, feeling bewildered again, so Althea asked, “Can you see a bird on a moonless night?”

“No. If there’s not even a moon, it’s impossible.”

“Impossible? No, not entirely.” Althea pointed skyward, moving her hand as if suggesting something passing overhead. “You will see the stars go dark where the bird passes. If you watch the holes in the sky, you will in a way be seeing the birds.”

“Just a different way of seeing.” Jennsen smiled at such a clever notion. “So, that’s how you see those like me?”

“That comparison is the easiest way I can explain it to you. Both, though, have limitations. It only works to see the bird at night if they’re flying against a background of stars, if there are no clouds, and so on. With those like you, it’s much the same. I simply learned a trick to help me see those like you, but it’s very limited.”

“When you went to the Palace of the Prophets, did you learn about your ability for prophecy? Maybe that could somehow help with what I need to do?”

“Nothing in relation to prophecy would be of any use to you.”

“But why not?”

Althea tilted her head forward, as if to question whether or not Jennsen had been paying attention. “Where does prophecy come from?”

“Prophets.”

“And prophets are strongly gifted with that ability. Prophecy is one form of magic. But the gifted cannot see you with their gift, remember? To them, you are a hole in the world. Therefore, prophecy, since it comes through prophets, cannot see you, either.

“I have a wisp of ability for prophecy, but I am no prophet. When I was with the Sisters of the Light, since such things were one of my fields of interest, I spent decades in their vaults studying prophecy. They had been written down by great prophets throughout the ages. I can tell you both from personal experience, and from all that I read, that the prophecies are as blind to you as would be Adie. As far as the prophecies are concerned, your kind never existed, do not exist now, and never will exist.”

Jennsen sat back on her heels. “Hole in the world, indeed.”

“At the Palace of the Prophets, I met a prophet, Nathan, and, while I learned nothing about those like you, I learned some about my talent. Mostly, I only learned how limited it is. Eventually, the things I learned there came to haunt me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Palace of the Prophets was created many thousands of years ago and is like no other place that I know of. A unique spell surrounds the entire palace and grounds. It distorts the way in which those under the spell age.”

“It changed you, then, in some way?”

“Oh, yes. It changes everyone. Aging is slowed for those living under the spell of the Palace of the Prophets. While those outside the palace went about their lives and aged roughly ten to fifteen years, those of us in the palace aged only one year.”

Jennsen made a skeptical face. “How could such a thing be?”

“Nothing ever stays the same. The world is always changing. The world back in the great war three thousand years ago was much different. The world has changed since then. When the great barrier to the south of D’Hara was put up, wizards were different. They had vast power, back then.”

“Darken Rahl had vast power.”

“No. Darken Rahl, as powerful as he was, was nothing compared to the wizards of that time. They could control powers Darken Rahl only dreamed of.”

“So, wizards like that, with that kind of vast power, all died out? There have been no wizards like them born since?”

Althea stared off as she answered in a grave tone. “Not since that great war has there been one like that born. Even wizards themselves have come to be born less and less often. But for the first time in three thousand years, one has again been born. Your half brother, Richard, is such a man.”

It turned out her pursuer was far more fearsome than Jennsen had given him credit for, even in her all too vivid imagination. Small wonder that her mother had been murdered and Lord Rahl’s men were so close on Jennsen’s heels. This Lord Rahl was altogether more powerful and dangerous than had been their father.

“Because this was such an epochal event, some of those at the Palace of the Prophets knew of Richard long before he was born. There was much anticipation over this one, this war wizard.”

“War wizard?” Jennsen didn’t like the sound of that.

“Yes. There was much controversy as to the meaning of the prophecy of his birth—even to the meaning of the term ‘war wizard.’ While at the palace, I had a chance on two brief occasions to meet the prophet I mentioned, Nathan. Nathan Rahl.”

Jennsen’s mouth fell open. “Nathan Rahl? You mean, a real Rahl?”

Althea smiled not only at the memory, but at Jennsen’s surprise. “Oh yes, a real Rahl. Commanding, powerful, clever, charming, and inconceivably dangerous. They kept him locked away behind impenetrable shields of magic, where he could cause no harm, yet he sometimes managed it. Yes, a real Rahl. Over nine hundred years old, he was, too.”

“That’s impossible,” Jennsen insisted before she had time to think better of it.

Friedrich, standing over her, harrumphed. He handed a steaming cup of tea to his wife and then passed one down to Jennsen. With the question in her eyes, Jennsen looked back at Althea.

“I am close to two hundred years old,” Althea said.

Jennsen just stared. Althea looked old, but not that old.

“In part, this business with my age and how the spell slowed my aging is how I came to have dealings with you and your mother when you were young.” Althea sighed heavily and took a sip of tea. “Which brings me back to the story at hand, to what you wanted to know—why I cannot help you with magic.”

Jennsen sipped, then glanced up at Friedrich, who looked about as old as Althea. “Are you that age, too?”

“No,” he gibed, “Althea robbed the cradle for me.”

Jennsen saw the looks that passed between them, the kind of intimate glances between two people who were close. Jennsen could see in the eyes of these two that they could read each other’s slightest expression. She and her mother had been like that, able to see thoughts in the slightest movement of the eyes of the other. It was the kind of communication she thought was facilitated not only through familiarity, but through love and respect.

“I met Friedrich when I returned from the Old World. I had aged only about the same as Friedrich. I had lived a much longer time, of course, but my body had not aged to show it because I had been under the spell of the Palace of the Prophets.

“When I came back, I became involved in a number of things, and one of them was how I might help those such as you.”

Jennsen hung on every word. “That’s when you met my mother?”

“Yes. You see, the spell at the palace, the spell that altered time, sparked an idea of how I might help those like you. I knew that regular means of casting webs—magic—around your kind never seemed to work out. Others had tried but failed; the offspring were killed. I struck on the idea, instead, to cast the web, not on you, but on those who came into contact with you and your mother.”

Jennsen leaned forward expectantly, feeling sure that she was finally getting to the core of what might prove to be the help she sought. “What did you do? What sort of magic?”

“I used magic to alter people’s perception of time itself.”

“I don’t understand. What did that do?”

“Well, the only way Darken Rahl could search for you was as I’ve explained—by using regular means. I tinkered with those regular means. I made it so that those who knew of you perceive time differently.”

“I still don’t understand. How—what—did you make them perceive? Time is time.”

Althea leaned forward with a cunning smile. “I made them think you were just born.”

“When?”

“All the time. Whenever they found out some thread of news about you, as a child fathered by Darken Rahl, they perceived you, and reported you, as newborn. When you were two months, ten months, four years, five years, six years old, they were all still looking for a newborn, despite how long they had known of you. The spell slowed their perception of time, in relation to you alone, so that they were always looking for a newborn baby, rather than a girl growing up.

“In this way, until you were six, I hid you right under their noses. That threw everyone’s calculations off by six years. To this day, anyone who suspected your existence would believe you to be around fourteen or so, when you are actually more than twenty, because they thought you were newborn when the spell ended, when you were six. That’s when they began to mark your age.”

Jennsen rose up onto her knees. “But that could work. You must only do it again. If you were to cast a spell like that for me now, like you did when I was little, it would work the same, wouldn’t it? Then they wouldn’t know I was grown up. They wouldn’t be hunting me. They would be looking for a newborn. Please, Althea, just do that again. Do what you did once before.”

From the corner of her eye, Jennsen saw Friedrich, now sitting at his bench in a back room, turn away. By the look on Althea’s face, Jennsen knew that she had somehow said the wrong thing, and precisely what the sorceress had planned on her saying. Jennsen realized that this had been a trap of sorts, and she had just talked herself right into it.

“I was young and masterful in my skill with magic,” Althea said. In her dark eyes glimmered the spark of recollection of that grand time in her life. “In thousands of years, few had been through the great barrier and back. I had, I had studied with the Sisters of the Light, had audiences with their Prelate, and with the great prophet. I had accomplished such things as few others had. I was well over a hundred years old and still young, with a handsome and charming new husband who believed I could walk to the moon and back if the fancy struck me.

“I was well over a hundred years of age, yet still youthful, with a full life ahead of me; wise with age, yet still young. I was clever, oh so clever, and powerful in my gift. I was experienced, knowledgeable, and attractive, with many friends and a circle of people who hung on my every worldly pronouncement.”

With long graceful fingers, Althea pulled up the hem of her skirt, uncovering her legs.

Jennsen drew back at the sight.

She saw, then, why Althea had not stood before; her legs were withered, deformed, shriveled bones covered with a dry veneer of pallid flesh, as if they had died years ago, but never been buried because the rest of her was still living. Jennsen didn’t know how the woman could keep from screaming in constant anguish.

“You were six,” the sorceress said in a terribly calm and quiet voice, “when Darken Rahl finally discovered what I had done. He was a very ingenious man. Much more shrewd, as it turned out, than a young sorceress of a hundred-odd years in age.

“I only had time to tell my sister to warn your mother, before he caught me.”

Jennsen remembered running. When she was little, she and her mother had fled the palace. It had been night. It had been shortly after a visitor had come to their door. In the dark hall, there had been whispering. And then they had fled.

“But, he . . . he didn’t kill you?” Jennsen swallowed. “He showed you mercy—he spared your life.”

Althea chuckled without humor. It was an empty laugh at encountering a profoundly naive notion.

“Darken Rahl did not always believe in simply killing those who displeased him. He preferred, instead, that they should live a good long time; death would have been a release, you see. If they were dead, how could they regret, how could they suffer, how could they serve as an example to others?

“You cannot imagine, and I could not begin to tell you, the terror of such a capture, of the long walk to be taken before him, of what it was like being in the grip of that man, of what it was like to look up into his calm face, his cold blue eyes, and know you were at the mercy of a man who had none. You cannot imagine what it was like to know in that single terrible instant, that everything you were, everything you had, everything you had hoped for in life, was about to forever change.

“The pain was what you might expect, I suppose. Perhaps my legs can partly attest to it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jennsen whispered through her tears, hands pressed over her heartache.

“But the pain was not the worst of it. Not the worst by far. He stripped me of everything I had, but took for granted. He did to my power, to my gift, worse than he did to my legs. You just cannot see it—you are blind to it. Every day, I see it. That hurt, I assure you, you cannot begin to imagine.

“Even all that, though, was not enough for Darken Rahl. His displeasure at what I had done to hide you had only begun. He banished me here, to this sunken, foul place of hot springs and sickening vapors. He imprisoned me here, filling in about me a swamp with monstrosities created by the very power he had stripped from me. He wanted me close, you see. Several times he visited, just to behold me in my prison.

“I’m at the mercy of those things out there that are given life by my own gift, a gift to which I no longer have access. I could never drag myself out by my arms alone, but even if I were to try, or if I had the help of another, those beasts, created from my own power, would rip me apart. I can’t call them back even to save myself.

“He left a path, in the front, so that provisions and supplies could be brought in, so I would be sure to have the things I needed. Friedrich had to build a home for us, here, because I cannot ever leave. Darken Rahl wished me a long life—a life I could spend suffering for displeasing him.”

Jennsen trembled as she listened, unable to say anything. Althea lifted a hand to point with one long graceful finger toward the back room.

“That man, who loves me, had to witness it all. Friedrich was thus condemned to a life of tending to a crippled wife he loved, who could no longer be a wife to him in ways of the flesh.”

She ran a hand over her bony limbs, tenderly, as if seeing them as they they once were. “I have never again had the joy of being with my husband as a woman is with a man. My husband never again was able to share and enjoy the intimate charms of the woman he loves.”

She paused to regain her composure before going on. “As part of my punishment, Darken Rahl left me with the power to use my gift in the one way which would haunt me every day: prophecy.”

Jennsen could not help herself from asking, thinking that this must be one thread of possible comfort left to the woman. “It’s part of your gift—can’t it bring you some joy?”

Dark eyes fixed on her again. “Did you enjoy the last day with your mother—the day before she died?”

“Yes,” Jennsen finally said.

“Did you laugh and talk with her?”

“Yes.”

“What if you had known that the next day she was to be murdered? What if you saw it all, long before it happened? Days, weeks, or even years before? Knew what was to happen, when, every ghastly detail? Saw, by the power of your magic, the horrifying sight of it, the blood, the agony, the dying. Would that please you? Would you still have experienced that joy, that laughter?”

Jennsen answered in a small voice. “No.”

“So you see, Jennsen Rahl, I cannot help you, not because I am selfish, as you put it, but because even if I were willing, I have no power left to cast you a spell. You must find within yourself the ability to help yourself, the free will to accomplish what you must. Only in that way can you truly succeed in life.

“I cannot give you a spell to solve your problems. I have spent a good deal of my life suffering for the last spell I cast for you. Were it only me, I would endure it willingly, for I was doing what I believe in; this is the fault of an evil man, not the fault of an innocent child. Yet I suffer each day because it was not just my life forfeit, but Friedrich’s, too. He might have—”

“I might have nothing.” He had come up behind Jennsen. “I have considered each day of my life a privilege because you are in it. Your smile is the sun, gilded by the Creator Himself, and brightens my small existence. If this is the price for all of that I have gained, then I paid it willingly. Don’t devaluate the quality of my joy, Althea, by minimizing it or trivializing it.”

Althea looked back down at Jennsen. “You see? This is my daily torture: knowing what I have not been able to be, to do, for this man.”

Jennsen withered, sobbing, at the woman’s feet.

“Magic,” Althea whispered from above, “is trouble you don’t need.”