The First Confessor (10 page)

It did no good. He was stronger than she was. With a fearful sense of concern for his safety, she felt the pain’s grasp slipping from her. With that impediment lifted away, his gift was able to twist down through her inner being, going deeper into her core in order to heal her.

As she felt the last of that icy agony stripped away, she reveled in the mercy of being free of it and at last began to feel the warmth of his healing magic warming her.

She hung suspended in that glowing warmth, only distantly aware that anything else existed but that comforting support.

Magda lost all sense of time. She didn’t know how long she floated in that place of serenity. It could have been mere moments, or it could have been days. In that silent void, time lost all meaning. In that strange inner place, time ceased to exist.

Gently, she became aware that it had ended.

Her eyes at last opened and the room around her came into focus. She realized that she was lying on a couch. Lord Rahl stood over her, his brow beaded with sweat. He looked exhausted.

The candles on the iron stand nearby were burned down to nubs. She knew, then, that it had lasted most of the night.

Magda reached up and touched her ear, letting her fingers trail down along her jaw. It didn’t hurt anymore.

Her chest didn’t ache inside, either. She placed her hand on her ribs, testing. They were sound and no longer hurt.

But there was more. While she still missed Baraccus, still hurt that he was gone, it was different, now. The pain of losing him wasn’t so crushing as it had been. She still grieved, still felt the suffering of the loss, but she recognized that the sharpest edges of that misery were now softened just a bit.

She would always miss her husband, always love him, but she knew, now, that she was going to be able to go on. She had to go on.

“Thank you,” she whispered up at Lord Rahl.

He showed her a weary smile. “I would suggest that you rest, but I fear that we can’t afford the time right now.”

Magda sat up, wiping at her eyes, getting her bearings. “Is it still night?”

His smile widened. “It’s a new day, Magda. Has been for a while now.”

“Then we need to get to the council chambers. They will be in session. I need to convince them of the imminent danger. They must act.”

Lord Rahl glanced down at her clothes. “Maybe you had best get cleaned up, first.”

Magda stood, feeling remarkably steady. She had expected to at least still feel wobbly, but she didn’t. She felt alive. Really alive.

She looked down at her dress. Large areas of it were soaked with blood. He was right, she needed to change. She touched her hair and found that it, too, was matted with dried blood. She glanced over at her reflection in a small mirror on the wall. Blood stained the sides of her face and neck.

“I guess I do look a shocking mess. I had better clean up, first, before we go to see the council.”

Alric Rahl nodded as he gestured at his two big bodyguards. “We’ll wait outside while you change and wash up.”

Magda caught his arm as he started to turn toward the door.

“No.”

He frowned. “No?”

“No. I want the council to see me like this. They need to see the reality of the blood that will be shed by our people at the hands of the dream walkers if they refuse to listen.”

Lord Rahl smiled. “I don’t think that the council has yet ever really encountered the true resolve of Magda Searus.”

She returned a haunted smile. “They are about to.”

Magda kept her eyes straight ahead as she marched past towering, polished black marble columns to each side of the gallery leading toward the council chambers. Rounded moldings covered in gold atop the columns supported a thick architrave carved with robed figures meant to represent the members of the council.

A gridwork of golden squares overspread the long, vaulted ceiling. Each square held a bronze medallion with a scene of a different place in the Midlands. Supposedly, as council members passed through the gallery they were walking beneath a grand display of the diversity of the Midlands so that they would be reminded to be mindful of all the far-flung people they represented as they went about their official deliberations. In Magda’s experience, it took more than bronze medallions to remind the council to be mindful of all the far-flung places of the Midlands.

Magda passed beneath a line of long red silk banners hanging from the vaulted ceiling. They were meant to represent the blood that had been shed in defense of the people of the Midlands. The carpet she walked along, with the names of battles woven along the edges, was also red and meant to be a reminder of the struggles fought and the lives laid down so that others might live.

Magda usually found passing through the gallery to be a somber experience. On this day, it was more somber than usual.

The red banners and crimson carpet only served to help draw attention to the blood covering Magda. More than ever before, she felt a connection to those who had bled in defense of their motherland. If the council refused to listen to her, then a great deal more blood would be shed.

As she marched down the long carpet, men to the sides paused in midconversation to stare openly. Women moved back. The drone of talking withered to whispers and then people fell silent as she passed, leaving a hush in her wake.

As she entered the great rotunda not far from the council chambers, Magda saw small clusters of people all through the enormous room standing around talking, no doubt discussing matters waiting to be brought before the council. The conversation echoing around the room tapered off as people watched her advance through their midst, trailed by the Lord Rahl of the D’Haran Lands and his two huge bodyguards.

Overhead, the high windows around the lower border of the golden dome let in early-morning sunlight to bathe the towering reddish marble pillars around the edge of the room in harsh light. Between the columns, against the stone wall, stood imposing statues of past leaders.

Magda knew that one day a statue of Baraccus would take up a place of honor in this room leading to the Central Council.

It was a strange thought that touched her with pride, yet at the same time served to highlight how Baraccus was slipping inexorably into her past.

It wouldn’t be long before Baraccus became a figure left to history. People would no longer come to know him, they would only know bits and pieces about him. She wondered if the stories people in the future learned would bear any resemblance to the reality she had known with Baraccus. History, like memories themselves, tended to become distorted with the passing of time, or worse, corrupted with the agendas of those writing it.

As much as she wished it were otherwise, Magda could do nothing to alter the past or to bring Baraccus back. He was now in the hands of the good spirits. Meanwhile, life went on. He had wanted her to go on.

The great mahogany doors to the council chambers stood open, as they usually did. The doors were three times her height and as thick as her thigh, both sides carved in intricate designs meant to represent spells, although they were not actually spells. As Baraccus had often told her, drawing out real spells was dangerous. The intention was to remind all that it was the gift that guided them in everything.

The open doors were meant to convey a sense of the council’s openness, but Magda knew that it was an illusion of receptivity. Where the council was concerned, nothing was as simple as it seemed.

At the great doors, the guards posted to either side, their pikes standing perfectly upright, saw that she didn’t intend to stop. Their pikes tilted as they hesitantly stepped away from their positions onto the great seal set into the stone before the doors.

One of the guards lifted a hand out, thinking she needed assistance. “Lady Searus, you’re hurt. Let me get someone to help you.”

“Thank you, but the members of the council are the only ones who can help any of us.”

“I’m afraid that they’re in session,” he warned.

“Good,” she said as she pushed his pike up out of her way.

“Lady Searus,” the other guard said, “I’m afraid that the agenda is full for today and they are not taking up any new business.”

“They are now,” she said on her way past.

The guards weren’t sure what they should do. They knew her quite well as the wife of the First Wizard who often spoke to the council. But even though they knew her, they were not accustomed to women with short hair walking in to speak to the council. More importantly, though, she was covered in blood and they didn’t know why. If the Keep was under attack, they clearly needed to know about it, but then, so did the council.

Other guards inside the council chambers started to close in to slow her until they could find out what was going on. They took in Lord Rahl and his two men behind her. Confused by the sight of the First Wizard’s wife covered with blood, to say nothing of the leader of the D’Haran Lands accompanying her, they finally parted, apparently thinking that stopping her could potentially be more trouble than letting her through. Not only was Lord Rahl a dignitary, but it was the council, after all, that decided who would speak.

Magda was glad that she had told Lord Rahl to leave his small army waiting in the corridors farther back and out of sight. Having a force of armed men try to enter the council chambers would only have complicated matters.

Once inside the big doors and past the knot of guards, she turned back to Alric Rahl. She put her hand on his chest to urge him to a halt.

“Why don’t you wait back here? Your presence beside me will only make them think that I ask this on your behalf.”

His brow creased with displeasure as he stared off at the council on the dais in the distance at the far end of the room. He shifted his weight and hooked his thumbs on his belt.

His blue eyes finally turned down to her. “As you wish.”

Magda offered him a brief smile before she turned her attention to the room she had visited many times. A runner of blue and gold carpet leading off toward the council split the grand room. Fluted mahogany columns supported soaring arches to the sides. Leaded windows high up in the arches let in muted streamers of sunlight. Below the windows, balcony galleries held seating for observers. The seats were packed, which told her that the council was not dealing in restricted military matters.

The open floor beneath the balconies had no windows, making it a rather dark and gloomy place. The windows up high were meant to represent the light of the Creator, while the darker regions down below were a reminder of the eternal darkness of the afterlife in the underworld. It was a subtle reminder of the forces of nature, life and death being the most notable, that always had to be held in balance.

Groups of people who had come for an audience with the council crowded the floor farther off to each side, beneath the shadows of the balconies. As was often the case, there were military men in dress uniforms with clusters of staff around them, officials in dignified robes with color-coded bands to denote rank and position, wizards and sorceresses in simple robes, and aides accompanying well-dressed, important women. As in most places in the Keep, there were even children here and there with their parents.

The sunlight slanting in through the windows high to the right revealed a slight haze from men smoking pipes as well as the dust that the constant traffic carried into the vast room. As she marched down the blue and gold carpet and through isolated patches of sunlight from windows that had been designed to let the light penetrate down to the center runner, no one could miss Magda’s blood-soaked dress. She knew from seeing herself in mirrors that her face and hair were quite a sight as well.

Despite the relatively hushed quiet of the room, out in the world a war raged. Baraccus had confided that the fighting was horrific. Men died by the thousands in desperate battles, their bodies torn apart in the mad rush to attack or defend. The fury, the panic, the blood, the noise, the desperation were said to be beyond imagining.

In contrast, the vast room where the council went about its stately work was an ordered and dignified place where business was conducted at a measured pace. Panic, blood, and naked desperation seemed very far away.

Magda knew that it was an illusion. While everyone worked very hard to preserve the appearance that this place was the balance to the madness of the war, that war was on every mind.

As in the outer halls, people quietly discussing business fell silent as they spotted Magda marching resolutely along the long ribbon of carpeting through the center of the chamber. Most of these people knew her. Most of them had seen her standing before the flames that had consumed her husband and their beloved leader. Many had come to her to offer their condolences.

Atop the dais, the council sat at a long, ornate desk that curved around in a half circle. Staff and assistants sat at the desk beside them. Even more sat behind. People stood in the center of the dais, with that desk curving halfway around them and the audience at their back, to be heard by the council.

Magda recognized the woman standing in that spot, speaking passionately to the council. Her words trailed off as she looked over her shoulder to see Magda step up behind her.

The woman first quickly took in the length of Magda’s hair and then scowled down at her bloody clothes. “I don’t appreciate being interrupted when I am addressing the council.”

“I’m talking to them now, Vivian,” Magda said as she showed the woman a very brief smile. “You can speak to them later.”

Vivian pulled a long lock of hair forward over her shoulder. “What makes you think that you can—”

“Leave,” Magda said in a voice so calm, so quiet, so deadly that Vivian flinched.

When the woman made no move to leave, Magda leaned even closer and spoke in a confidential tone that no one else could hear.

“Either you walk out now, Vivian, or you will have to be carried out. I think you know that I’m not bluffing.”

At seeing the look in Magda’s eyes, Vivian turned and dipped a quick bow to the council before hurrying away.