The Pillars of Creation

Chapter 40

In a somber daze, Friedrich used the shovel to steady himself as he sank to his knees. Sitting back on his heels, he let the shovel topple to the cold ground. The chill wind ruffled his hair as well as the long grasses around the freshly turned soil.

His world was ashes.

Dazed with grief, his mind wouldn’t focus on any other thought.

A sob overwhelmed him. He worried that he might not have done the right thing. It was cold, here. He worried that Althea would be cold. Friedrich didn’t want her to be cold.

But it was sunny, too. Althea loved sunlight. She always said that she liked the feel of the sun on her face. Despite the heat in the swamp, the sunlight rarely made it down to the ground, at least anywhere near where she could see it from her confinement.

To Friedrich, though, her hair was golden sunlight. She would always scoff at such sentiment, but occasionally, if he hadn’t mentioned it in a while, she would innocently ask if he thought her hair was brushed enough and looked all right for visitors due for a telling. She always could keep her face blameless when she was angling for what she wanted. Then, he would tell her that her hair looked like sunshine. She would blush like an adolescent girl and say, “Oh, Friedrich.”

Now, the sun would never shine for him again.

He had considered what to do, and had decided this would be better for her—to be up here, in the meadow, out of the swamp. If he could never take her out of that place in life, at least he could take her out now. The sunny meadow was a better place to lay her to rest than in her former prison.

He would have given anything to have taken her out before, to show her beautiful places again, to see her smile, carefree, in the sunlight. But she could not leave. For everyone else, including him, only the path in the front could be safely traversed. There was no other way past the dark things created of her power. For her, there was not even that safe passage.

Friedrich knew that the dire consequences for anyone who ventured anywhere else in the swamp were not imaginary. Several times over the years, the unwary or the foolhardy had wandered off the path, or tried to make it through the back way, where not even he dared go. It had been torturous for Althea, knowing that her power had ended innocent lives. How Jennsen had made it in the back way unharmed, not even Althea knew.

For her last journey, Friedrich had carried Althea out that back way as a symbol of her freedom reclaimed.

Her monsters were gone. She was with the good spirits, now.

Now, he was alone.

Friedrich bent forward in agony, sobbing over her fresh grave. The world was suddenly an empty, lonely, dead place. His fingers clutched at the cold ground covering his love. He felt crushing guilt that he had not been there to protect her. He was sure that if he had been there, she would still be alive. That was all he wanted. Althea alive. Althea back. Althea with him.

He had always delighted in returning home, such as it was, to tell her about any little thing he had seen—a bird skimming over a field, a tree with its leaves shimmering in the sunlight, a road lying like a ribbon over rolling hills, anything that would have brought a little of the world home to her in her prison.

In the beginning, he hadn’t talked about the world beyond. He thought that if he told her about the things he had seen outside her swamp, about what was suddenly out of her reach, she would only feel more confined, more isolated, more heartsick. Althea smiled that special smile of hers and said that she wanted to hear every detail of what he saw, because in that way she could deny Darken Rahl his wish to confine her. She said that Friedrich was her eyes, and through them, she could escape her prison. With the descriptions Friedrich brought her, Althea’s mind soared up and away from her confinement. In that way, Friedrich helped her deny that vile man his wish that she should never again see the world.

To that extent, Friedrich could feel good about leaving the swamp when she had to remain behind. He wasn’t sure who was giving who the gift. Althea was like that—making him think he was doing something for her, when it was she who was really helping him live his life in the best way he could.

Now, Friedrich didn’t know what he would do. His life seemed suspended. He had no life without Althea. She was a presence that had given him life, given him himself, made him whole. Without her in his life, life was pointless.

How her life had ended, Friedrich didn’t know for sure. The things he’d found made little sense to him. She hadn’t been touched, but the house had been ransacked. The strangest things had been taken; their entire lifetime of savings, along with food, a few odd supplies, and old clothing of little worth. Yet, other valuable items were left—gilded carvings, gold leaf, and tools. Try as he might, Friedrich could make no sense or order out of it.

The one thing he did understand was that Althea had poisoned herself. And, there had been another cup. She had tried to poison someone else. Maybe someone who had come for a telling, someone who hadn’t been invited.

Friedrich realized, though, that Althea must have been expecting whoever it was and had kept that knowledge from him, encouraging him to make a trip to the palace to sell his gilded carvings. She had seemed somewhat insistent, and he had thought that, since she had invited no visitors, she must have wanted to be alone for a while, which wasn’t entirely unusual, or perhaps she was just impatient for him to take a little journey out into the world and see some sights since he hadn’t done so in a while. She had held his face in her hands as she kissed him that last time, savoring the feel of him.

Now he knew the truth. That long kiss had been her farewell. She had wanted him safely out of the way.

Friedrich reached in a pocket and pulled out the note she had left him. She sometimes wrote notes for him—things she thought of while he was away, things she wanted to remember to tell him. He had checked in the gilded cup he had carved for her, which she kept down on the floor under her chair behind the pillow she sat on, and was surprised to find a letter to him. He carefully unfolded it and read it again, even though he had read it so many times that he knew every word by heart.

Friedrich wiped the tears from his cheeks and then read Althea’s words again. When he read, he could hear her voice in his head, speaking to him, almost as if she were right there beside him. He feared to let go of that voice, but at last, he carefully folded the note and returned it to his pocket. When he looked up, a tall man was standing before him. “I was an acquaintance of Althea’s.” His powerful voice was solemn and earnest. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss. I came to pay my respects and to offer my sympathy.” Friedrich slowly rose to his feet, watching the older man’s dark azure eyes. “How could you know? How do you know what happened?” Friedrich’s anger rose, too. “What part have you played in this?”

“The part of a sad witness to that which I cannot change.” The man, much older but vigorous-looking, laid a hand on Friedrich’s shoulder, squeezing in a gentle manner. “I knew Althea from long ago, when she came to study at the Palace of the Prophets.”

“You didn’t answer my question. How did you know?”

“I am Nathan, the prophet.”

“Nathan, the prophet . . . Nathan Rahl? Wizard Rahl?”

The man nodded as he took his hand away, letting his arm slip back under the edge of his open, dark brown cape. Friedrich dipped his head out of deference, but couldn’t muster the concern to do more, to bow, even if he was in the presence of a wizard, even if this wizard was a Rahl.

The man wore brown wool trousers and high boots, not the robes of a wizard. For the most part, he didn’t look like what Friedrich expected of a wizard, and he looked not at all like a man Althea had said was close to a thousand years old. His strong jaw was clean-shaven. His straight white hair was long enough to touch his broad shoulders. He was not stooped with age, but had the fluid posture of a swordsman, though he wore no sword, and the effortless bearing of authority.

His eyes, though, so piercing from under his hawkish brow, were what Friedrich would expect of such a man. They were the eyes of a Rahl.

Friedrich felt a twinge of jealousy. This man knew Althea long before Friedrich had met her, back when she was young and exquisitely beautiful, a sorceress at the prime of her power and ability, a woman sought after, a woman courted by many a great man. A woman who knew what she wanted and went after it with fierce passion. Friedrich wasn’t so naive as to believe he was the first man in her life.

“I spoke with her briefly a few times,” Nathan said, as if in answer to questions unspoken, making Friedrich wonder if a man of this ability could also read minds. “She had an exceedingly talented gift for prophecy—at least for a sorceress. Compared, though, to a true prophet, she was but a child trying to play at adult games.” The wizard softened his words with a kindly smile. “That is not to discount at all her heart or intellect, but merely to put it into perspective.”

Friedrich looked away from the man’s eyes, back to the grave. “Do you know what happened?” When no answer came, he gazed back up at the tall man watching him. “And if you knew, could you have stopped her?”

Nathan considered the question for a moment. “Did you ever know Althea to be able to alter that which she saw when she cast her stones?”

“I guess not,” Friedrich admitted.

A few times, he had held her as she wept with the sorrow of wishing she could change something she saw. She had often told him when he asked about it, or asked what could be done, that such things were not as simple as they seemed to those without the gift. While Friedrich couldn’t understand many of the complexities of her ability, he did know that at times the burden of prophecy nearly crushed her with anguish.

“Do you know why she would have done this?” Friedrich asked, hopeful for some explanation that might make the pain more bearable. “Or who it was that brought her to it?”

“She made the choice of how she would die,” Nathan said in simple summation. “You must trust that she made that choice of her own free will and for sound reasons. You must understand that what she did was not only done because it was the best for her, and for you, but for others as well.”

“Others? What do you mean?”

“You both know what love brings to life. By her choice, she was doing what she could so that others might have their chance to know life and love.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Nathan gazed off distantly as he slowly shook his head. “I know only bits of what is happening, Friedrich. In this, I feel blind in a way I have never felt before.”

“You mean, this has to do with Jennsen?”

Nathan’s brow twitched as his eyes focused abruptly and intently on Friedrich. “Jennsen?” His voice was laced with suspicion.

“One of the holes in the world. Althea said that Jennsen is a daughter of Darken Rahl.”

The wizard drew back his cape and propped a hand on his hip. “So, that was her name. Jennsen.” His mouth turned up with a private smile. “I’ve never heard that term, hole in the world, but I can see how apt it would seem to a sorceress’s restricted gift.” He shook his head. “Despite her talent, Althea couldn’t begin to comprehend what is involved with those like Jennsen. The inability of the gifted to recognize aspects of their existence, and so referring to them as a hole in the world, is but the tail of the bull. The tail is the least important part. ‘Hole’ is not even really accurate. I should think ‘void’ would be better.”

“I’m not so sure you’re right about her not comprehending. Althea was involved with those like Jennsen for a long time. She may have been more aware than you realize. She explained to Jennsen and me that she didn’t know any more, but that the most important part was that the gifted were blind to them.”

Nathan grunted a short chuckle of respect for the woman buried before them. “Oh, Althea knew more, much more. This hole-in-the-world business was but window dressing for what Althea knew.”

Friedrich dared not contradict the wizard, for he knew how sorceresses kept secrets, never revealing the true extent of what they knew. Althea did this, too. Even to Friedrich. He knew that it wasn’t a lack of respect, or love, but just the way sorceresses were. He couldn’t be offended by what was simply her nature.

“So, there is more about those like Jennsen, then?”

“Oh, yes. This bull has horns, not just a tail.” Nathan sighed. “But despite the fact that I understand much of what Althea did not, even I don’t begin to know enough to claim to grasp all of what is truly involved in the events beginning to unfold. This part of prophecy is obscured. I know enough, though, to know that this can alter the very nature of existence.”

“You’re a Rahl. How could you not know of such things?”

“At a very young age I was taken away to the Old World by the Sisters of the Light and imprisoned there in the Palace of the Prophets. I am a Rahl, but in many ways I know little of my ancestral homeland of D’Hara. Much of what I know, I learned through books of prophecy.

“Prophecy is silent about those like Jennsen. I only recently have begun to discover why, and the dire consequences.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “So, this girl, Jennsen, came to see Althea? How did she know of Althea?”

“Yes. Jennsen was the cause of . . .” Friedrich’s gaze fell away from the man watching him, not knowing how he would feel about his kinsman, but then he decided to say it, even if it brought the man’s wrath. “When Jennsen was young, Althea tried to help protect her from Darken Rahl. Darken Rahl crippled Althea for it, and imprisoned her in the swamp. He stripped her of her power, except for that of prophecy.”

“I know,” Nathan whispered, clearly in sorrow. “Although I never knew the causes behind it, I saw some of it foretold.”

Friedrich took a step forward. “Then why would you not help her?”

This time, it was Nathan’s gaze that broke away. “Oh, but I did. I was imprisoned there at the Palace of the Prophets when she came to see me—”

“Imprisoned for what?”

“Imprisoned for the unjust fears of others. I am a rarity, a prophet. I am feared as an oddity, as a madman, as a savior, as a destroyer. All because I see things others don’t. There are times when I cannot help but to try to change what I see.”

“If it’s prophecy, how can it be changed? If you changed it, it would be untrue. Then it wouldn’t be prophecy.”

Nathan stared off at the cold sky, the wind lifting his long hair back away from his face. “I could never explain it adequately to one such as you, one ungifted, but I can explain a small part of it in this way. There are books of prophecy going back thousands of years. Those books contain events that have not yet happened. In order for free will to exist, there must be questions left open. This is done partly through forked prophecies.”

“Forked prophecies? You mean that events could go one of two ways?”

Nathan nodded. “At the least—often many ways. Key events, anyway. The books will often contain a line of prophecy for several outcomes that could result from free will. When a particular fork proves to be the one that actually takes place, one line of prophecy will be true while others, at that moment, become invalid. Up until then, they were all viable. Had another choice been made, that fork would have turned out to be the valid prophecy. Instead, that branch of prophecy withers and dies, even though the book with that line of prophecy remains. Prophecy is thus tangled with the deadwood of ages past, with all the choices not made, the things that never came to be.”

Friedrich’s anger rose again. “And so you knew what would happen to Althea? You mean you could have warned her?”

“When she came to me, I told her of a fork. I didn’t know when she would reach it, but I knew that death waited down both paths. With the information I gave her, she would be able to know when the time was at hand. I had hoped that, somehow, she could find a way around what I saw. Sometimes there are shrouded forks that we are unaware of. I was hoping that was the case this time and she might find it, if it existed.”

Friedrich was incredulous. “You could have done something! You might have prevented what happened!”

Nathan lifted a hand toward the grave. “This is the result of trying to change what will be. It does not work.”

“But maybe if—”

Nathan’s hawklike glare rose in warning. “For your own peace of mind, I will tell you this, but no more. Down the other path was a murder so torturous, so bloody, so painful, so violent, that when you discovered what was left of her, you would have ended your own life rather than continue to live with what you had seen. Be thankful that did not happen. It did not happen—not because she feared that death more, but in part because she loved you and didn’t want you to suffer that.” Nathan gestured to the grave again. “She chose this path.”

“This was that fork you told her of, then?”

Nathan’s glare softened. “Not exactly. The fork she took was that she would die. She chose how.”

“You mean . . . she might have chosen another fork, a path in which she would live?”

Nathan nodded. “For a time. But had she chosen that path, we would all soon be in the Keeper’s clutches. Because of those involved, I know only that down that path everything ended. The choice she made was that there would still be a chance.”

“A chance? A chance for what?”

Nathan sighed. Friedrich suspected that the sigh reflected things more grave, more sweeping, than anything Althea had ever seen.

“Althea bought us all time that others might make the right choices when the time comes for them to act of their free will. This knot of forks in prophecy is obscured unlike any other, but most of the threads lead to nothing.”

“To nothing? I don’t understand. What could that mean?”

“Existence is at stake.” Nathan’s eyebrow lifted. “Most of those prophecies end in a void, in the world of the dead—for everything.”

“But you can see the way though?”

“The tangle ahead is a mystery to me. In this, I feel helpless. In this, I know what it feels like to be ungifted and blind. In this, I might as well be. I can’t even see all of those who are making the critical choices.”

“It must be Jennsen. Maybe if you found her . . . but Althea said the gifted are blind to the ungifted offspring of Darken Rahl.”

“Of any Rahl. The gift is of no use in locating such truly ungifted offspring. There is no telling where they are. Unless you could gather all the people in the entire world and parade them before the gifted, there would be no practical way to detect them with the gift. Physical proximity is the only means for the gift to tell you who they are—because your eyes and your gift don’t agree—like when I saw Jennsen by accident.”

“You think, then, that Jennsen is somehow involved in this?”

Nathan threw his cape closed against the bitter wind. “As far as the prophecies are concerned, those like Jennsen don’t even exist. I have no way of telling if there are others, and if there are, how many there might be. I have no idea what part any of them play in this. I know only that they somehow play a pivotal role.

“I know some of what is involved, and some of those who will stand at critical forks in prophecy. As I said, though many of those forks in prophecy are obscured.”

“But you’re a prophet—a true prophet, according to Althea; how could you not know what prophecy says if the prophecy exists?”

Nathan gauged him from behind intent azure eyes. “Try to understand what I will tell you. It’s a concept that few people can grasp. Perhaps it can help you in your grief, for it is the point at which Althea found herself.”

Friedrich nodded. “Tell me, then.”

“Prophecy and free will exist in tension. They exist in opposition. Yet, they interact. Prophecy is magic, and all magic needs balance. The balance to prophecy, the balance that allows prophecy to exist, is free will.”

“That makes no sense. They would cancel each other.”

“Ah, but they don’t,” the prophet said with a sly, knowing smile. “They are interdependent and yet they are antithetical. Just as Additive and Subtractive Magic are opposite forces, they both exist. They each serve to balance the other. Creation and destruction, life and death. Magic must have balance to function. Prophecy functions by the presence of its counter: free will.”

“You’re a prophet, and you’re telling me that free will exists, making prophecy invalid?”

“Does death invalidate life? No, it defines it, and in so doing creates its value.”

In the silence, none of it seemed to matter. It was too hard for Friedrich to fathom just then. Besides, it changed nothing for him. Death had come to take Althea’s precious life. Her life was all the value he had had. His anguish poured back in to flood everything else. For Friedrich, it had already all ended. There was nothing ahead but blackness.

“I came for another reason,” Wizard Rahl said in a quiet voice. “I must call upon you to help in this struggle.”

Too tired to stand anymore, too grief-stricken to care, Friedrich sank back to the ground beside Althea’s grave. “You have come to the wrong person.”

“Do you know where Lord Rahl is?”

Friedrich looked up, squinting against the bright sky. “Lord Rahl?”

“Yes, Lord Rahl. You are D’Haran. You should know.”

“I guess I can feel the bond.” Friedrich gestured off to the south. “He’s that way. But it’s weak. He must be a great distance. Greater than I’ve ever felt of a Lord Rahl in all my life.”

“That’s right,” Nathan said. “He’s in the Old World. You must go to him.”

Friedrich grunted. “I’ve no money for a journey.” It seemed the easiest reason.

Nathan tossed down a leather pouch. It hit the ground before Friedrich with a heavy muffled clunk. “I know. I’m a prophet, remember? This is more than was taken from you.”

Friedrich tested the weight of the bag. It was indeed heavy. “Where did all this come from?”

“The palace. This is official business, so D’Hara will supply you with the money you will need.”

Friedrich shook his head. “I thank you for coming and offering your sympathy. But I’m the wrong man. Send another.”

“You are the man who is to go. Althea would have known it. She would have left you a letter, telling you that you are needed in this struggle. She would have asked you to accept when called upon. Lord Rahl needs you. I am calling upon you.”

“You know of the letter?” Friedrich asked as he rose to his feet once more.

“It’s one of the precious few things I know about in this matter. From prophecy, I know you are the one to go. But you must do so of your own free will. I am calling upon you to do so.”

Friedrich shook his head, this time with more conviction. “I’m not the one to do this. You don’t understand. I’m afraid that I just don’t care anymore.”

Nathan drew something out from under his cloak. He held it out. Friedrich saw then that it was a small book.

“Take it,” the wizard commanded, his voice suddenly full and rich with authority.

Friedrich did so, letting his fingers roam the ancient leather cover as he inspected words embossed with gold leaf. There were four words on the cover, but Friedrich had never seen the language before.

“This book is from the time of a great war, thousands of years ago,” Nathan said. “I only just discovered it in the People’s Palace after a frantic search among the thousands of tomes there. As soon as I located it, I rushed here. I haven’t had time to translate it, so I don’t even know what’s written in it.”

“It’s all written in a different language.”

Nathan nodded. “High D’Haran, a language I helped teach Richard. It’s vitally important he get this book.”

“Richard?”

“Lord Rahl.”

The way he said those two words gave Friedrich a chill. “If you’ve not read it, how do you know it’s the right book?”

“By the title, there, on the front.”

Friedrich ran his fingers lightly over the mysterious words. The gilding was still good after all this time. “May I ask the book’s title?”

“The Pillars of Creation.”