The First Confessor (33 page)

Her only hope was if the new First Wizard was named soon. The new First Wizard would need to know what she knew. He would know what to do.

“After a great deal of research and work, I finally have every aspect of my theory worked out and in place,” Merritt was saying. “I’m convinced that I know how to create this unique power for the key if only I could get my hands on the rift calculations and breach formulas. If I could, I could then make a key that would function as it should.

“This magic I would create with the help of the formulas, would at the same time function for something else of great importance that I came up with along the way.”

That caught her attention.

He lifted an arm in a gesture of frustration, then sighed as it dropped back to rest on his leg. “But without all the parts, the magic can’t be formatted and thus initiated.”

“Are there no substitutes that would work well enough?”

“No. It needs the correct parts, and all the parts, simple as that.”

Magda steered him back to the thing that had caught her attention. “So is this unique magic also what would allow you to create in a person the ability to pull truth from lies? Is that the other thing of great importance you wanted to create?”

He looked surprised. “Yes, as a matter of fact it is.”

“So then the key these people want that you know how to make and the person you described to the council that you wanted to alter to be able to pull truth from lies, are linked with common elements and share some base form of this magic?”

“That’s right—at inception, anyway. They differ as they develop, and in the end of course, but they do need to have certain base elements from the rift calculations in common.”

“You mean they both need yeast to make the dough rise?”

Merritt frowned suspiciously. “For someone ungifted, you seem to have a knack for grasping the inherent logic in the nature of magic. And for someone who described herself as a nobody, you also seem to know a great deal about some of the most secret projects in the Keep.”

Magda tilted her head, peering at him from under her brow. “You may think that they’re secret, but Isidore knew about the person you want to alter with this magic. If she knew, then the dream walkers know. If the dream walkers know, that means Emperor Sulachan knows. If they know about the person, then they very well may know about the key you’re trying to make. If they know about the key, they know what it is meant to unlock.”

Merritt let out a troubled sigh. “I suppose that’s all possible, but it can’t do them any good. It would be impossible for them to reconstruct my work, and without those occulted calculations that are locked away in the Temple of the Winds, the magic that I was working on can’t be completed.

“Besides, the key would do them no good because the power itself is sealed away and inaccessible.”

Magda had to force herself to hold her tongue. She instead asked a question. “Why would these repositories containing this great power not have a key in the first place? What would be the purpose of creating something without a way to make it work?”

“Good question. Unfortunately I don’t have a good answer. People take history at face value and assume it’s accurate, but often it really isn’t. Accounts of past events differ. You don’t know the honesty or the motives of the person who wrote the chronicle. Accounts from antiquity may have been lost over time, leaving critical gaps that would change the picture. Some of what we do have may actually have been rumor or even false charges that over time were wrongly assumed to be true. Some historical accounts are biased or distorted viewpoints, while others were embellished along the way. It’s a mistake to indiscriminately assume historical accounts are true.

“All that is meant to say that I don’t know the truth about an original key. The repositories holding this power were a relatively recent creation intended to safeguard the power in its resting state. The key doesn’t actually open them, it’s actually meant to unlock the ancient power contained within them. For all I know, it may be that when the power was created it had a key. All I know for sure is that the power itself still survives today and there is no known key for it.

“That creates a problem because while the key doesn’t exist, the power does and even without the key this power is still profoundly dangerous.

“That’s one reason I’ve been working so hard to complete the key. Everyone else thinks the key is supposed to simply unlock the power, but from bits of surviving books and scrolls from before the star shift, I’ve come to believe that the key was an object intended to protect the power, not merely unlock it.”

The word “protect” stuck out to her. He said it with a kind of natural ease. She remembered what the men down in the lower reaches of the Keep had been working on when they were killed.

Her gaze went to the object on the table.

“Protect. Like a sword,” she said.

“Yes,” he finally admitted. “The existing references and formulas we still have led people to believe that the key must be made in the form of a sword. So, those trying to make the key try to make it in the form of a sword.

“They don’t know why, and they don’t really care. They simply try to make the key in the form of a sword as is implied in the reference material in order that it might work to unlock the power.”

“And you think,” she guessed, “that there is meaning to the prescription that the key take the form of a sword.”

“I do. That the magic is supposed to be invested in a sword implies its purpose, does it not? Besides working to unlock what it protects, I believe it was intended to have the power to prevent the wrong person from meddling with the power.”

“So, if there’s no key, and the power is that incredibly dangerous, that’s why the chests containing the power were shut away in the Temple of the Winds in the first place?”

“Very likely so,” he said. “The problem is, if anything should go wrong, the key would be the only chance to bring us all back from the brink of annihilation.”

He leaned in and lowered his voice, even though there was no one who could possibly overhear him. “You see, the key I would create isn’t simply coded to the power, it’s coded to work with the person using it. It has to be the right person, for the right reasons, or it won’t work. The magic can read not only the key, but the intentions of the one holding the key.”

Magda knew from Baraccus that dangerous magic often had multiple layers of protection. Books of magic usually had wards and safeguards to protect them. According to Isidore, Merritt made just such bindings for books of magic. He was apparently employing that principle in his design for the key to the power.

“But all of this is only theoretical, since you can’t make the key and prove your theories.”

“Well, yes, I suppose that’s true. The problem is,” he said, “there are those here in the Keep—”

“You mean the council.”

His mouth twisted as he finally gave in. “Good guess.”

She was getting tired of dancing with shadows. “Not all that difficult.”

He flashed a brief smile before turning serious again. “The council wants it done anyway. They want the key to be made.”

Magda had to take another drink of water to compose her voice. “Why? If everyone knows that the power is locked in the Temple, why would the council want the key made?”

“They’ve given me a long list of reasons, none of which make a lot of sense to me, but they’re very insistent. They wish it to be done, period. Ultimately, they don’t need to explain themselves. They wish it to be done so they command that it be done. But wishing and commanding doesn’t mean that it can be done and they won’t listen to reason.”

“I’m well aware of how inflexible the council can be.”

“They certainly are in this case.”

Magda’s mind was racing. “Which councilmen want it done?”

“All of them, but Weston and Guymer seem to be the ones forcing the issue most of the time.”

“Weston and Guymer. It would be them,” Magda murmured to herself. She looked up again. “I thought the council didn’t want you to use this same basic conjuring to create this, this person who could pull truth from lies.”

His hazel eyes again locked on her.

“The Confessor,” he said.

“Confessor?” Magda asked.

“That’s right.”

She leaned forward, puzzled by the name. “Confessor?”

“Yes, that’s what I call the person I would create because with the power I would invest in them, they could make anyone—anyone—confess the truth, no matter how abhorrent the truth may be, no matter how desperately they previously may have wanted to conceal it, no matter the lies they’ve told or hidden behind. The touch of a Confessor’s power would change all that.”

“So, the council wants you to make the key, for which there would be no use, but not this Confessor for which there could possibly be great use?”

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

“To say the least.” She wondered if something more than irony was involved. “I still don’t understand why both the key and this Confessor could require the same base elements.”

“Because at their core they both serve the cause of truth.”

“How can the key serve the cause of truth? I get the Confessor, but not the key.”

“At their root, the key and the Confessor both authenticate truth. The Confessor’s power would force the subject to reveal the truth, while all of the coded alignments of the key involve proofing it against reality. Reality is truth. Therefore, both the Confessor and the key need the same formulas to initiate their ultimate function.

“In much the same way that a verification web authenticates a spell, the base elements of this new form of magic I’m trying to create gauges, or measures, matters at hand against reality. In the case of the Confessor, the subject is left unable to speak anything other than the truth.

“The key, as well, follows a verification sequence. By building in authentication routines, it prevents a person from using it, for example, if they are lying about their reason for unlocking the power.”

“Maybe the council doesn’t want you to create the Confessor because they fear the truth,” Magda said.

“You may have just arrived at the heart of it.”

“But they still want the key.”

“Right,” he said. “They want a simple key to make the power work, but I didn’t think I could trust anyone with a key to that much power, even the council, so I intended to make the more complex key. That has been a great deal harder to devise, but if I ever get the chance to finally ignite the web, it will be worth the years of extra work.

“Yet neither the one I envision nor the simple one the council wants can be created because they both would need the information that is out of reach in the Temple of the Winds. Without those formulas, I can’t make the key, or the Confessor. At least it doesn’t matter about the key because the power, like the formulas, is safely out of reach.”

Magda thought she might be sick. She gulped a drink of water. She wondered why the council would fear the truth. But more immediate questions sprang to mind as she stalled for time to think it through.

“How would this person, this Confessor, be able to force someone to speak only the truth?”

He looked uncomfortable as he searched for the words. “You have to understand, Magda, that a Confessor would be a last resort to get at the truth. For example, to get a killer to confess to murders he committed so that we would know the extent of his victims, know beyond a doubt his guilt. Or imagine if a man had snatched a child for ransom, or worse. A Confessor could pull the truth from his lies and deception.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Or a traitor could be made to give a true confession?”

“Without question or hesitation.”

Magda touched her fingers to her forehead, trying to grasp the enormity of what he was telling her.

“But how would this Confessor actually get the person to confess?”

“Basically,” he said, “the magic I would invest in them, much like the key, would contain elements of both Subtractive and Additive Magic.”

“So you would need a gifted person to create a Confessor.”

“Actually, no, not at all. The person would be the vessel into which I would place this ability, this unique form of power.”

“But if they aren’t gifted—”

“Everyone has at least a small spark of the gift. It’s part of our life force. Magic is merely a matter of degree. You are said to be ungifted, but that’s not technically accurate.

“Life connects us all to magic, as illustrated through the design of the Grace. So, for a Confessor, I don’t need a gifted person, just a living one.”

Having spent a lot of time around Baraccus and a number of talented wizards, Magda was somewhat familiar with their world and what they considered to be within the working realm of possibility. She might not have fully understood what they did or how they did it, but she did have a general sense of the sphere of their capabilities. This was outside that sphere.

Her eyes widened with sudden understanding. She looked up at him. “You would alter a Grace.”

“Of course,” he said, as if it were a trivial matter.

This was one of the reasons people feared makers. They didn’t think in terms of the impossible, only in terms of how something might be done. What Merritt was describing was unconventional thinking that, to most people, bordered on madness.

“But you could change the person you turned into a Confessor back, right? I mean, if—”

“Change them back?” He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “Once I altered them, the power would become an integral part of the person, inseparable from who they become. Once altered in this way, they would forever be a Confessor. There could be no going back. Once done, it can’t be undone.”

Magda was feeling sick to her stomach. “So how would this power you would invest in a person actually work?”

“When a Confessor unleashes their power into someone, the Subtractive side of it would destroy who the person was.”

“It would kill them?”

“No, not really, not in the conventional sense.”