The First Confessor (34 page)

Magda leaned in with a frown. “What does that mean?”

“I mean, no, it wouldn’t kill them.” He gestured, seemingly reluctant to explain, but finally he did. “The way I’ve created the web, it’s narrowly targeted. Fine threads of Subtractive Magic would burn through the target person’s mind like lightning crashing through a tree, all the way down through its roots, to obliterate their identity.

“So, in that sense, who they once were would be dead. They can never regain what is eliminated with the Subtractive side of the Confessor’s power. They are alive, but who they were no longer exists. What it means to be that person is gone.”

“So what would exist for them?”

“In place of who they were, in place of what the Subtractive Magic destroys, the Additive Magic would at the same time flow in behind, filling the void to create in them total, complete, blind devotion to the Confessor. The Confessor would become the center of the person’s universe, the only thing that matters to them. The Confessor would become their identity, or the object of it, to be more precise.

“In that realm of total commitment and absolute compliance, they would feel the overpowering need for the object of their fidelity—the Confessor—to give them direction. That would be the only purpose of their life. It would be a terrifying emptiness in their existence to be without the direction of the Confessor who touched them with this power.

“The Confessor could at that point command anything and the person would be compelled to comply, no matter what the command was. If it is physically possible, they would without hesitation carry it out even at the cost of their own life. Even if it wasn’t possible, they’d still try with every fiber of their being until told by the Confessor to stop, or until they died. The only purpose to their new existence would be to do as the Confessor commanded.

“So, as you can imagine, the Confessor would have but to ask and the person would, without hesitation, confess the truth.

“They would be utterly incapable of lying. That part of them, the desire, the need, the ability to lie, would have been destroyed and forever gone. Who they were is irretrievable. When the Confessor asks for the truth, telling the truth becomes the only thing that matters to the person touched by the power.”

Magda was horrified. “How could you give that much power to anyone?”

Forearms resting on his thighs, fingers intertwined, he leaned toward her. “We give swords to soldiers, don’t we? The gifted have children who through birthright inherit deadly abilities. The men chosen to serve as soldiers are at least subjected to some degree of scrutiny. The child is gifted with powers without qualification and in fact may grow up to use those powers to cause great harm. Look at what Emperor Sulachan’s followers do with their abilities, abilities granted to them through no precondition except birth. They use their power to destroy innocent people.

“On the other hand, the person chosen to be a Confessor and invested with such power would have to be the right person, a rational person, a rare person who could be entrusted with such responsibility, as would the person entrusted to possess the key to the repositories of power. For the right person, either would be a tool. For the wrong person, either could be a weapon of evil. It is the mind behind that tool that matters.”

She was beginning to understand why the council had originally refused his request. “I heard that the attempt to create this Confessor is dangerous and that it could even be fatal. You could very possibly kill a good person in the attempt to create a Confessor out of them.”

He didn’t look in the least bit daunted by the charge. If anything, he looked resolute.

“Yes, that’s true. It’s profoundly dangerous magic we’re talking about here. I believe I can do it, but I can’t be absolutely positive it will all work the way I think it will. Such a thing has never been attempted before. Dear spirits, as far as I know, such a thing has never been envisioned before. If I don’t have every last little bit of it right, it could all go terribly wrong in a heartbeat and the person could be killed. There is that risk.”

He leaned toward her again, searching her eyes. “But what is the danger of not trying? Despite all the efforts of our forces, towns and cities everywhere are being overrun. We are losing men by the thousands in battles. Yet the horde from the South continues to pour north, coming to destroy us all.

“You yourself said that there is something going on in the Keep, that you are searching for answers, that we are all in danger, that traitors are among us and very possibly plotting our destruction. We need to find those responsible. Do you think that the death of all our people is preferable to the risk to the person chosen to become a Confessor?”

Magda searched the depths of his hazel eyes, looking for some indication that he was misguided, or deluded, or even mad. She saw none.

She glanced to the graceful women he had carved from white marble. This was not a man who did anything without fully appreciating every angle of it.

“I admit that you may have a point,” she finally said.

Magda had never liked the idea of magic altering a person. This was no different. It sounded horrific.

She changed the subject back to what she had wanted to know in the beginning.

“What about the other wizards who have died? The ones people say died because of you. You haven’t finished that part of the story.”

The impassioned animation that had been so evident in his eyes when he had been talking about the key and the Confessor extinguished like a campfire in a downpour. He looked miserable to have to return to the subject.

Magda felt bad for bringing him back to something that was so obviously painful for him.

But all their lives were at stake. She needed to be able to find the truth.

“Well, the thing is, as I’ve explained and as I hope you can appreciate, without the required formulas that are locked away in the Temple of the Winds, trying to make this kind of magic function for even the simplest form of the key, much less to create a Confessor, is impossible. More than that, though, we’re talking about very dangerous things, here, things that are not to be taken lightly. Without the needed components, the attempt is guaranteed to fail and very well might be fatal.”

“I can grasp why it wouldn’t work without all the parts you say it needs, but why is even trying to make the key so risky?”

With a grim expression, Merritt lifted his fist so that she could see the signet ring he wore.

On its raised center was a Grace.

The design of the Grace was deeply engraved into the ring so that it could be used to make an impression in sealing wax. Magda remembered seeing that particular design of the Grace left in the sealing wax of documents Baraccus had received.

“Even as an ungifted person, you must be aware of the power involved in the Grace when it is used by the gifted.”

She was. The Grace represented the world of life, the world of the dead, and the way magic and Creation linked them.

The outer circle of the design represented the beginning of the infinite world of the dead. Inside that outer circle was a square, its points just touching the outer circle. Inside the square was another circle, just touching the insides of the square. The area between those two circles with the square represented the world of life. The inside circle was life’s beginning while the outer circle its end where souls crossed through the veil into the eternity of the underworld.

An eight-pointed star inside the smaller circle was the Light of Creation. Lines from that star’s points radiated out across the inner circle, the square, and across the outer circle that also symbolized the veil to the world of the dead. The lines radiating outward from the Light represented the spark of the gift that journeyed with everyone from birth, through life, and on into death.

Magda imagined that those rays, those conduits of the gift, were what enabled Isidore, the living, gifted spiritist, to be able to connect with the spirit world beyond the veil.

The gifted drew the Grace when conjuring powerful spells in order to invoke specific forces. It added elements that nothing else could, but at the same time it was a dangerous tool and had to be treated with great respect.

A Grace was properly drawn from the outside toward the center—circle, square, circle, star—and then the rays back out across those elements. Everything inward and then back out. Drawing it improperly or in an improper sequence, when it counted, could cause magic to fail or even go terribly wrong.

Drawn in blood, a Grace could invoke alchemy of consequence.

It was said that a person with enough knowledge and power could alter the Grace and thus alter elements of it.

Though a Grace was a commonly used tool of the gifted, Baraccus had often said that, despite its seeming simplicity, it was rarely mastered.

Not many people would dare to wear a Grace. That alone said something important about his abilities.

Merritt stared down at his ring, burnishing the design of the Grace with the thumb of his other hand. He seemed lost in thought.

Magda touched his wrist, making him look up.

“You were saying?”

His eyes focused again on her face. “I was saying that the spell-forms in play to create a key are dangerously unstable in such combinations without the links from the rift calculations. You need those links to make the structure rigid. Only in that way can the various parts then fuse in the proper sequence. The council wanted us to try anyway. They wanted the key completed.”

“What happens if you don’t have those elements? What happens if you try it without them?”

“Without those rift and breach connectors you can’t stabilize the verification web and hold the spell-form together. Without them, there is nothing to brace the various elements against, and those particular elements happen to involve both Additive and Subtractive Magic. As you can imagine, letting the two touch in the wrong way, much less combine, is highly reactive.

“Almost as soon as you bring the structure up in a verification web, with those opposing elements both so openly contained within the formation, and before you can begin to activate the generation process, it begins to collapse in on itself. The Additive and Subtractive components attract each other as it implodes, accelerating the reaction. Anyone nearby trying to hold it together in order to bind and fuse the components into the key would be seriously injured or killed.

“It doesn’t matter how you try to construct the web, or what different routines or sequence you use. Without all the parts needed to complete it, there is no chance that it might work. None. As far as I’m concerned, it’s insanity for anyone to think that you can put those particular Additive and the Subtractive components together in that way without the necessary bridging elements and expect them to coexist. The attempt is not merely pointless, it’s suicide.”

“Wouldn’t others realize that?”

“Some do, but when people want something bad enough they tend to fixate on the prize and ignore the dangers. The first attempt went as I had predicted and men died. Some people saw the risk as the price of the prize and wanted to be the one to prove themselves better than anyone else. They think they will gain glory being the one to make it work. Yet more men died in subsequent attempts.”

“But you do that same kind of thing,” she said. “You’re a maker. You don’t accept that something can’t be done. You figure out how to do things that are said to be impossible. So how can you fault them for wanting to make their attempts?”

“The things I do that have never been done before are different. I study the problem and rationally analyze if it is really possible. Then and only then I work on how to do it. I develop a plan based on facts, not wishes. I know each step, each element’s nature, and I know where the lines are. To an outside observer it may seem that I’m attempting impossible things, but that’s not the case.”

He gestured across the room toward a statue. “It’s like carving. Before you make a cut you know why, you know what to cut away. That’s not what they’re doing in this case. They are trying to carve, as it were, by hacking away without knowing what they’re doing. They’re substituting wishing for knowing.

“Some of the men, I know, understood the dangers involved and were worried about attempting to make this key. But the council insisted. Even in the face of deaths, they insisted that the effort to craft this sword continue. They’ve put all their hopes into wishing it to work. I refused to be a part of it.”

Magda frowned. “I don’t understand something. Is it a secret that the chests containing this power are locked away in the Temple of the Winds and no one can get to them?”

“No. Everyone involved in the attempt to make the key knows it. The chests were listed on the Temple team’s manifest.”

“Then why is the council so insistent that the key be made when they know that there is no use for it?”

Merritt lifted his hands in a gesture of frustration. “Exactly. I made the same argument. They didn’t want to hear it. Elder Cadell offered that it was a safety measure should the power ever be returned to the world of life. He said that we couldn’t wait for something to go wrong and only then find out that we are unprepared to deal with it.”

“Elder Cadell said that?”

“That’s right. The council wanted me to lead the team that was to make the key. I agree with their motive, but that doesn’t mean it can be done. When I told them that it was impossible and would only get people killed, they became angry. They questioned my loyalty to the cause of the Midlands.

“They said that if I refused to help them and anyone was killed, it would be my fault. They thought that by putting me into such a position I would have to go along, and if I went along, then I would somehow find a way to make it work.”

“They apparently have a great deal of faith in your ability as a maker,” Magda said.

Merritt could sit no longer. He went to the table again, where he leaned on his hands as he stared down at the sword lying on red velvet. As Magda watched him, waiting for him to go on, his fingers lightly tracked the length of the blade’s fuller.