The pillars of creation

"I love you… that's why you must run, baby. I don't want you to throw your life away over what is no longer me. Your life is too precious. Leave this empty vessel. Run, Jenn. Or he'll get you. Run." Her eyes turned toward Sebastian. "Help her?"

Sebastian, right there, nodded. "I swear I will."

She looked back at Jennsen and smiled her sweet love. "I'll always be in your heart, baby. Always. Love you, always,"

"Oh Mama, you know I love you. Always."

Her mother smiled as she watched her daughter. Jennsen's fingers caressed her mother's beautiful face. For a fleeting eternity her mother watched her.

Until Jennsen realized that her mother was no longer seeing anything in this world.

Jennsen fell against her mother, dissolving in tears and terror. Choking in sobs. Everything had ended. The crazy senseless world had ended.

Her arms stretched out toward her mother as she was pulled away.

"Jennsen." His mouth was close to her ear. "We have to do what she wanted.»

"No! Please oh please no," she wailed.

He gently pulled. "Jennsen, do as she asked. We must."

Jermsen pounded her fists against the blood-slicked floor. "No!" The world had ended. " Oh please no. No, it can't be."

"Jenn, we have to go."

"You go," she sobbed. "I don't care. I give up."

"No, Jenn, you don't. You can't."

His arm around her middle lifted her, set her on her wobbly legs. Numb, Jennsen couldn't move. Nothing was real. Everything was a dream. The world was crumbling to ash.

Holding her by her upper arms, he shook her. "Jennsen, we have to get out of here."

She turned her head and looked at her mother on the floor. "We have to do something. Please. We have to do something."

"Yes, we do. We have to leave before more men show up."

His face was dripping. She wondered if it was rain. As if she were watching herself from some great disconnected distance, her own thoughts seemed crazy to her.

"Jennsen, listen to me." Her mother had said that. It was important. "Listen to me. We have to get out of here. Your mother was right. We have to go."

He turned to the pack beside the lamp on the table at the side of the room. Jennsen slumped to the floor. Her knees hit with a thump. She was empty of everything but the hot coals of agony from which she could not pull away. Why did everything have to be so wrong?

Jennsen crawled toward her sleeping mother. She couldn't die. She couldn't. Jennsen loved her too much for her to die.

"Jennsen! Grieve later! We have to get out of here!"

Out the open door, the rain poured down.

"I won't leave her!"

"Your mother made a sacrifice for you-so you would have a life. Don't throw away her final act of courage."

He was stuffing whatever he could find in a pack. "You have to do as she said. She loves you and wants you to live. She told you to run. I swore I'd help you. We have to leave before they catch us here."

She stared at the door. It had been closed. She remembered crashing into it. Now it stood open. Maybe the latch broke…

A huge shadow materialized out of the rain, melting through the doorway into the house.

The brawny man's eyes fixed on her. Feral fright surged through her. He moved toward her. Faster and faster.

Jennsen saw the knife with the omate «R» sticking from the side of a dead man's neck. The knife her mother told her to take. It wasn't far. Her mother had lost her arm-her life-to kill him.

The man, seemingly oblivious of Sebastian, dove for Jennsen. She dove for the knife. Her fingers, greasy with blood, seized the handle. The worked metal gave good grip. Art, with purpose. Deadly art. With teeth gritted, she yanked the blade free and rolled.

Before the man reached her, Sebastian growled with the effort of burying his axe in the back of the man's head. The soldier crashed to the floor beside her, his meaty arm falling across her middle.

Jennsen, crying out, wriggled out from under the arm as blood grew in a dark pool beneath his head. Sebastian pulled her up.

"Get whatever you want to take," he ordered.

She moved through the room, walking in a dream. The world had gone mad. Perhaps it was she who had finally gone mad.

The voice in her head whispered to her, in its strange language. She found herself listening, almost comforted by it.

Tu vash misht. Tu vask misht. Grushdeva du kalt misht.

"We have to go," Sebastian said. "Get what you want to take."

She couldn't think. She didn't know what to do. She blocked the voice and told herself to do as her mother said to do.

She went to the cupboard and rapidly began picking out things that they always took when they traveled-things always at the ready. Traveling clothes were kept in her pack, ready to leave at a moment's notice. She threw herbs, spices, and dried food in on top of them. She pulled other clothes, a brush, a small mirror, from a simple chest of woven branches.