The First Confessor (35 page)

“It’s as if they want us to be able to fly,” he finally said, “and so they command people to leap off a cliff, flap their arms, and fly, thinking that because they have commanded it to work, it will.

“But then when those people plummet to their death, I’m the one blamed because I’m the one who told them the truth that it wouldn’t work.”

“So you refused to lead them and they went ahead with the attempt anyway,” Magda said when he had been silent for a time. “Then what happened?”

“What do you think happened? A lot of good men died for nothing, that’s what happened.”

“I see.”

She remembered all too well the man down in the lower portion of the Keep, lying sprawled on the floor dead, with a large fragment of a blade jutting from his chest.

“Do you?” He shook his head without looking back. “You say that you think Baraccus died for something worthwhile, so you at least have that consolation. These men died for nothing. What consolation is there for those they leave behind?

“Do you know what it’s like to face the widows of such men? Men whose lives were wasted? Can you imagine the grief of those women, knowing that their husbands are dead, hearing that I’m responsible, hearing that I could have prevented it had I not been ‘selfish’ and instead helped them? Can you imagine what it’s like to hear their children, children I’ve given rides on my shoulders, crying for fathers they will never see again?

“Can you imagine what it’s like to have the widows, mothers, sisters, and daughters of men who died lie at your door all night, wailing inconsolably, blaming you for the death of their loved one?”

“No, I can’t imagine it,” Magda said into the stillness.

She felt shame for being one of those who had so easily thought him guilty of the charge merely because she had heard it made. She had formed an opinion of him without ever meeting him. She felt a fool for so willingly embracing lies.

“How could I convince people in such pain that I tried to prevent such needless deaths? They wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t hear it. They believed the council’s word that had I helped it wouldn’t have happened. It’s easier for the families to blame me than to try to grasp the complexities of the issue. They can’t understand that even if I had stayed and led the effort their men would be just as dead and me along with them. Easier for them to embrace lies than the truth.”

Magda could hear children running up the street, playing a game as their barking dog bounded after them. She could only imagine the anguish of children very much like them losing a father. When they finally receded into the distance, the pall of silence again settled over the small, cluttered home.

“That’s why you moved away from the Keep,” Magda said aloud as the realization came to her.

His back still to her, he nodded. “That’s why.”

She could see how much it hurt him to be put in such an impossible situation and so unfairly blamed. She understood why Baraccus had said that he wished he could have helped Merritt.

Magda rose and crossed the room to lay a comforting hand on the back of his broad shoulder. She finally understood the depth of the compassion Isidore saw in him.

“Thank you, Merritt, for explaining it to me. I understand, now. I’m greatly relieved that what people say isn’t true, but at the same time I’m ashamed that I blindly believed that you were to blame for those deaths.”

He nodded his appreciation as he lightly touched the blade of the sword. “A lot of good people have died for nothing. I’m afraid that a lot more good men are going to die before they finally give up the attempt as impossible.”

Standing beside him as he turned toward her, she saw then for the first time a full view of the magnificent sword lying on the red velvet. The fuller ran the length of a gleaming blade that flared beneath side notches near the top. An aggressive, down-swept cross guard tapered to sharp points. The hilt was covered in tightly wound, perfectly twisted, fine silver wire.

Gold wire woven through the silver spelled out the word
Truth
.

The beauty of the sword nearly took her breath.

Almost involuntarily, she reached out and touched the hilt, her fingers trailing over the word
Truth
standing out in gold. She’d never seen such a thing done before.

Merritt watched her for a moment; then, as he lifted the sword, her fingers finally, reluctantly, came off the word
Truth
. He laid the blade over his forearm and offered her the hilt.

Magda couldn’t resist letting her fingers close around it. As she gripped the hilt, lifting the weapon, she could feel the raised letters of the word
Truth
with her fingertips on one side, and the woven wire letters of the word
Truth
on the other side of the hilt pressing into her palm.

She knew a thing or two about using a sword, but she was by no means expert with one, as she was with knives. This sword felt magical in her hand. Its weight and balance were extraordinary. It felt light, swift, and remarkably right.

It also stirred something deep within her, called something forth in a way that she hadn’t expected and didn’t quite understand.

The only way she could interpret it was that it felt rather like righteous anger boiling just beneath the surface of her awareness, wanting release.

“This is meant to be the key,” she whispered half to herself.

He was still watching her eyes. “Indeed it is, but as I’ve explained, I can’t complete it.”

“It all makes sense, now,” she said, still speaking to herself as much as to him. “I understand what you meant about the magic of the key serving truth and at the same time protecting the power.”

“The power needs truth to work. Truth is reality, the laws of nature. They’re inseparable. That relationship is represented by the word woven into the hilt. That makes this a sword meant to serve more than just the power. It is also meant to serve truth.”

She at last looked up into his eyes as the realization came to her.

“This is the Sword of Truth.”

A warm smile softened his expression. “That’s a good name for it. In fact, it’s perfect. I don’t know why I never thought of it myself. More than you realize, this sword serves truth on many levels and in many ways. I’ve always meant for the one who wields this sword to be a seeker of truth.

“Thank you, Magda, for the clarity.” He gestured to the sword in her hand. “From now on, it will always be known as the Sword of Truth.”

Magda lifted the blade upright, letting her eyes take in its graceful lines. Its fuller added not only lightness, which made it faster, but at the same time added strength to the blade. It was at once exquisite and deadly. Below the cross guard, the wire-wound hilt felt at home in her hand.

“Where did you ever get something this magnificent?”

His smile widened. “I made it.”

She again lifted the sword in astonishment, watching the light flare along the length of the blade.

“You made this?”

Merritt nodded. “While any would serve the purpose, this is the sword I made with the intent that it be the key. It has always been the sword I intended to invest with the power.”

“I feel . . . something. I can feel something stirring as I hold it.”

By his reaction, he was not at all surprised. “Like I explained before, we are all born with a spark of the gift. Though you are not gifted, as such, you still respond to magic. This sword is invested with magic. That is what you feel.”

Magda frowned. “What sort of magic?”

“In addition to preparing it to become the key, I also gave it abilities to help in its service to protect the power as well as to serve truth. Those are the elements you feel.” His smile ghosted away. “But that was before I knew that what I needed to complete it isn’t in this world any longer. I won’t let others use this sword to try to make the key because such a fruitless attempt would destroy it. At least the power is safe.”

Magda finally handed Merritt the sword. As his fist closed around the hilt, around the words
Truth
on either side, she closed both her hands around his, holding them tightly.

They were close as she searched his eyes.

“Answer a question for me?”

He shrugged, making no attempt to take the sword and his hand from under hers. “What do you want to know?”

“How many chests contain the power, the power that the Sword of Truth you hold is meant to protect?”

He seemed reluctant, but finally answered.

“Three.”

Magda felt a tear well up and run down her cheek.

“The three boxes of Orden.”

Something more than the gift alone shone in his eyes. “That’s what the power was called before the star shift. How is it that you know that name? The name Orden is only used in the most ancient of sources. How is it that you know it?”

How could she tell him?

How could she not?

“Merritt, I have to tell you something.”

Concern creased his features. “What is it?”

Magda cleared her throat, hoping that her voice wouldn’t fail her.

“When Baraccus returned from the Temple of the Winds, returned from the underworld, I was there in the First Wizard’s enclave waiting for him. I was of course happy to see him, and he was happy to return safely to me. But he was strangely quiet. I asked him what it was that so troubled him.

“Baraccus told me that a great power, a very dangerous power, was no longer in the Temple of the Winds where it belonged. He said that it was supposed to be there, but it was gone. I asked him what he was talking about. He said that the three boxes of Orden were missing.”

Merritt’s face went ashen. “Missing?”

“He said that much was not right in the Temple of the Winds. When I asked what he meant, he just stared off and was quiet for a time. He finally told me about the boxes of Orden, and how important they were. I asked if he was certain they were gone. He said that the Temple of the Winds was a big place, but there was no doubt that the boxes were no longer there.”

“Who else has he told about the boxes being gone?”

“He said that he could tell no one but me.”

“The council doesn’t know?”

“No. I’m the only one who knows. And now you. I was waiting for the new First Wizard to be named. I had planned to tell him once he is named.”

One of her hands came off his holding the sword so that she could grasp his muscular arm to urge his gaze back to her eyes.

“But I realize now that you are the one who needs to know, Merritt. You are the one I needed to tell.”

His face still hadn’t regained its color. His gaze again drifted away to focus into distant thoughts. She couldn’t imagine what he, having worked so long to create the protective key for the boxes of Orden, must be thinking.

“Thank you, Magda, for telling me. For trusting me.”

She nodded as her other hand finally slipped away from his on the sword.

His expression abruptly turned expectant. “Did Baraccus say anything about the rift calculations for creating a seventh-level breach? Maybe he brought them back with him.”

Magda shook her head. “I’m sorry, no. He didn’t say anything at all about that.”

His momentary eagerness faded, to be replaced by suspicion. “And the council doesn’t know about this? You’re certain they don’t know?”

“Yes, I’m certain. Baraccus said that he could tell no one but me. I don’t know why, but he was clear about it. He wouldn’t have said such a thing unless he meant it.”

“It makes no sense. How could the boxes of Orden not be in the Temple of the Winds?” Merritt stared off again. “I wonder if maybe someone else could go there to retrieve the formulas. I wonder if I could try it. I don’t know how, but if I could—”

“No,” Magda said with an emphatic shake of her head. “Baraccus told me that there was much wrong at the Temple. He said that it would be thousands of years before anyone again set foot there.”

“That sounds ominous. I wonder why he said that?”

“I don’t know, but if Baraccus said it he must have known what he was talking about. That means that you or anyone else wouldn’t be able to get in.”

Merritt thought for a moment. “The Temple was supposed to be brought back to this world after the war is over and it’s safe again here.”

Magda looked up at him from under her brow. “Baraccus was a war wizard. Part of that was his ability for prophecy. Maybe he meant that it wouldn’t be safe in this world for thousands of years, and so it will have to remain banished.”

“That’s a grim thought.”

“Maybe it’s because of the other thing he said, though, that there is something seriously wrong there. Maybe it’s not because of what’s happening here in this world that it can’t return, but because of the trouble there.”

“I suppose that could be,” Merritt said, deep in thought.

“That means that those things you need are never going to be within your reach.”

Merritt’s shoulders sagged in frustration.

“That still doesn’t explain anything about what happened to the boxes of Orden. If they aren’t there, then they have to be here, in this world.”

“It would seem so,” she agreed.

“The Temple team put the boxes there, in the Temple,” he said as he reasoned it through out loud. “Lothain tried to get into the Temple to fix what the Temple team had sabotaged, but he couldn’t get in. Then, when Lothain’s attempt to enter the Temple failed, Baraccus sent some of his best men to try to get in to find out what the Temple team had done. When none of them returned, he finally went there himself. He confirmed the trouble there.”

“That’s right,” Magda said.

He gestured with the sword. “That would seem to indicate that the boxes of Orden were never actually placed in the Temple in the first place. That must have been part of the team’s treachery.”

“There has to be more to it that that.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“If the boxes were never there, and no one else got in, then why did the Temple of the Winds turn the moon red in warning that something had gone terribly wrong there long after the Temple team had been tried and executed for treason? Something made the moon turn red in warning. Baraccus sent wizards who failed to return and then went himself to answer the Temple’s call for help and find out what was wrong. Something had to have happened that made the moon turn red.”