The Pillars of Creation Read Online Free PDF

without further question, she embraced Jennsen in protective arms. After such a frightening day, Jennsen openly welcomed the balm of her mother’s hug. Finally, with a comforting arm encircling Jennsen’s shoulders, her mother urged her toward the door.
    “Come inside and get yourself dry. I see you have quite the catch. We’ll have a good dinner and you can tell me…”
    Jennsen was dragging her feet. “Mother, I have someone with me.”
    Her mother halted, suddenly searching her daughter’s face for any outward sign of the nature and depth of the trouble. “What do you mean? Who would you have with you?”
    Jennsen flicked a hand back toward the path. “He’s waiting down there. I told him to wait. I told him I’d ask you if he could sleep in the cave with the animals—”
    “What? Stay here? Jenn, what were you thinking? We can’t—”
    “Mother, please;, listen to me. Something terrible happened today. Sebastian—”
    “Sebastian?”
    Jennsen nodded. “The man I brought with me. Sebastian helped me. I came across a soldier who fell from the path—the high trail around the lake.”
    Her mother’s face went ashen. She said nothing.
    Jennsen took a calming breath and started again. “I found a D’Haran soldier dead in the gorge below the high trail. There were no other tracks—I looked. He was an extraordinarily big soldier, and he was heavily armed. Battle-axe, sword at his hip, sword strapped over his shoulder.”
    Her mother canted her head with an admonishing expression. “What aren’t you telling me, Jenn?”
    Jennsen wanted to hold it back until she explained Sebastian, first, but her mother could read it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. The terrible threat of that piece of paper with the two words on it seemed almost to be screaming its presence from her pocket.
    “Mother, please, let me tell it my way?”
    Her mother cupped a hand to the side of Jennsen’s face. “Tell me, then. Your way, if you must.”
    “I was searching the soldier, looking for anything important. And I found something. But then, this man, a traveler, came upon me. I’m sorry, Mother, I was frightened by the soldier being there and by what I found and I wasn’t paying attention as I should have. I know I behaved foolishly.”
    Her mother smiled. “No, baby, we all have lapses. None of us can be perfect. We all sometimes make mistakes. That doesn’t make you foolish. Don’t say that about yourself.”
    “Well I felt foolish when he said something and I turned around and there he was. I had my knife out, though.” Her mother was nodding with a smile of approval. “He saw then that the man had fallen to his death. He—Sebastian, that’s his name—he said that if we just left him there, then, more likely than not, other soldiers would find him and start questioning us all and maybe blame us for their fellow soldier being dead.”
    “This man, Sebastian, sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.”
    “I thought so, too. I had intended to cover the dead soldier, to try to hide him, but he was big—I could never have dragged him over to a cranny by myself. Sebastian offered to help me bury the body. Together we were able to drag him over and roll him into a deep split in the rock. We covered him over good. Sebastian put some heavy rocks atop the gravel I scooped in. No one will find him.”
    Her mother looked more relieved. “That was wise.”
    “Before we buried him, Sebastian thought we should take anything valuable, rather than let it go to waste in the ground.”
    One eyebrow arched. “Did he, now?”
    Jennsen nodded. She pulled the money from her pocket, the pocket that didn’t have the piece of paper in it. She dumped all the money in her mother’s hand.
    “Sebastian insisted that I take it all. There’s gold marks there. He didn’t want any for himself.”
    Her mother took in the fortune in her hand, then glanced briefly to the trail where Sebastian waited. She leaned closer.
    “Jenn, if