The First Confessor (57 page)

Merritt’s expression turned unreadable. “What reason?”

Magda gathered her resolve.

“I want you to use me to create a Confessor.”

Merritt tilted his head toward her as his eyes narrowed. “You want me to alter you into a Confessor?”

“Yes,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time. We need to hurry.”

Merritt walked off a distance to stand beneath one of the enormous limbs spreading from an ancient oak. With his back to her, the moon cast cold light over his broad shoulders.

Looking grim, he finally turned back.

“Please don’t ask that of me, Magda.”

She stepped closer under the massive limbs of the oak. “I had always thought that changing a person’s nature with magic was a cold, calculating, callous thing to do for the sake of creating a weapon. I could never understand how people could allow wizards to alter them. I thought that it was a perversion of our existence.

“Isidore taught me that it isn’t always the case. She taught me that if it’s done for the right reasons it can actually be a chance to make the best of ourselves. Done in the right way, it is adding to who and what we already are and what we already believe. In that way it’s not altering a person’s nature, but adding to it. Such a purpose can be the moral thing to do.

“Even more, though, you’re not only a wizard. You’re Merritt. You may not see the difference in that, but I do. Though we haven’t known each other for long, it has been long enough for me to know you, to know your heart.”

“That’s reassuring to hear, but knowing me isn’t enough.”

“I realize that, but I’ve thought this through. You may not believe that, but I have. It’s not just that this is the only way, it’s that it’s the right thing. While creating weapons out of people can be a terrible deed, done in the right way by the right person and for the right reasons, it can be a wondrous thing.

“You envisioned the idea of a Confessor for the right reasons. Life is truth. Truth is life. You wanted a way to seek truth. Such a cause, in the promotion of life, is noble.

“Killing is a terrible thing, too. I hate killing. But killing isn’t necessarily wrong.” She gestured back down the trail. “Killing those men tonight was the right thing to do, for the right reasons. It was done for good. It was done to preserve innocent life. In this instance, not killing would have been immoral.

“You intend the Confessors to stop evil, just as my killing those men stopped them from doing evil. That makes both the right thing to do.

“Merritt, I want that person, that Confessor that you create, to be me. I understand the nobility of purpose in the creation of a Confessor. I know precisely what to do with that opportunity. Please, give me the chance to do what only I can do. Give me the means to help stop evil and preserve life. Don’t let me fail to do what only I can do.

“It’s my life. I want it to have this purpose.”

“There’s more to it, Magda. We need time to consider all the implications.”

“Ordinarily, that would be the right thing, but we have no time. It has to be now. It has to be tonight. I have to use that Confessor power to expose the truth. I wish it could wait, but it can’t. This is our only chance.

“Baraccus told me that my destiny is to find truth—”

Merritt threw an arm up, gesturing angrily. “Life is not about fulfilling a destiny. Your life has no destiny but what you make of it.”

“And this is what I want to make of it. Baraccus also told me to live the life that only I can live. He told me to have the courage to take up that calling. He was asking me to choose my destiny. Prophecy is not only about destiny, but the balance—free will. Becoming a Confessor is my calling. But it’s not preordained. It’s a chance, a fork in the road of my life. I have to have the courage to take it on of my own free will. In that way, the balance of prophecy and free will is the magic of the future.”

He looked to have calmed down considerably. “I have to admit, you have that much of it right.”

“Merritt, this is the life that only I can live. I’ve always been the person trying to uncover the truth of things.

“I found you for a reason. Destiny brought me to you so that the choice could be laid before me to make. I rejected any such choice for my life until I came to know you and to understand the real nature of what such a choice means. I found you because I need to make that choice for my life. Since then I’ve come to understand that I need this mission for my life.

“I am that person, Merritt. I’ve made the choice.

“I am your Confessor.”

Merritt looked down and turned away.

After a moment he cleared his throat. “Magda, you don’t know all that is involved, all that it means. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Then tell me, and tell me now, because we are rapidly running out of time.”

He turned to look her in the eye. “This would alter the nature of who you are. The Confessor power would become part of you, much as eyesight and hearing are part of your nature. You would be a Confessor in much the way I am a wizard.

“That means that just as any child you have would carry other traits from you, such as sight and hearing, they would also carry this trait. Any child you bear would be a Confessor. Their children would inherit the same power, and theirs, and so on. Once created, the power is part of you, it is you.”

Magda paced off a short distance, chewing a thumbnail, thinking. “It would be part of them by birth?”

“Yes. You would be deciding not only for you, but for them as well. In a way, you would be creating their destiny.”

She turned back. “No more than giving them the destiny of eyesight. I would be giving them a different kind of vision.”

“But if—”

“Merritt, if we don’t do this, I will have no chance to have any offspring because I will be dead. If I live, I will only be able to bring a child into a tortured existence of half people crafted to fit Emperor Sulachan’s deluded notions for the world of life. I may even be changed into one of those half people, giving birth to a soulless offspring. Is that better?

“Don’t you see? I’m not deciding their destiny, I am giving them the possibility of a life, a life worth living.”

Merritt squeezed his temples between the thumb and fingers of one hand. “Look, Magda, even if I wanted to do this, I can’t.”

Running out of patience, she folded her arms. “Why not?”

He took a deep breath before explaining. “The process is similar to what we did to invest power in the sword. The difference is that the sword has no life force of its own, so it needed to borrow a life force to help in its creation. You provided that with the Grace drawn in your blood.

“Creating the Confessor power is similar in purpose and in many ways in the methods involved, but there is a crucial difference. You have your own life force. You can’t be given someone else’s life force to turn you into a Confessor the way we turned the sword into the key. You need to use your own.”

Magda shrugged. “All right. I can draw another Grace with my own blood.”

He was shaking his head. “Ordinarily that would be the first step. But you have already given your strength to the sword. I don’t think that you understand the true depth of what you so willingly gave over to create the sword. Right now you don’t have enough strength to be able to do it for yourself.”

“I think I do. We can try. We have to try.”

“Do you think I’m guessing about this?” Merritt stepped close and leaned toward her in an effort to make sure she grasped his point. “It’s not simply that it wouldn’t work, Magda. It’s that the attempt would kill you.”

She let out a sigh. “Are you so sure, Merritt? I’m pretty strong. You just saw me fight those men.”

“This is a different kind of strength.” He gestured in frustration. “You saw the forces involved when we created the sword. Don’t you recall how violent it was? Don’t you understand how close you came to dying? And you came close to dying when you were well and in perfect shape.

“Trying to unleash such forces on you tonight would kill you. Not maybe. Not possibly. I’m not saying that I’m worried, or fear it might harm you. I know what I’m talking about. I’m telling you without a doubt that it would kill you. You can’t hope to help us if you’re dead.”

“What if we used another person to help, like I did with the sword? What if you were the one to lend me power? Or maybe we could get Quinn. He’d help us. We can trust him.”

Merritt laid a hand on her shoulder. “Unlike the sword, the unique ability of a Confessor’s power requires that the person to become a Confessor must be the one who provides the life force. Another person cannot be a part of that. Another person cannot loan their life to you in such a way. It must be you, and you alone who gives yourself, your life force, into becoming a Confessor. The process would alter you. Another person can’t do it for you.”

Magda walked off a ways, clasping her hands.

She felt her world, everything she cared about, slipping through her fingers. All because she was too weak.

She wanted to tell Merritt that he was wrong, that she was strong enough. But she knew that he was right. She could hardly stand, hardly pull each breath. She remembered how she nearly died in the ordeal to create the sword. At the moment, she had nothing left to give of herself.

Merritt was right. She wouldn’t survive the attempt.

“Isn’t there another way?” she asked without turning back to him.

“The wizards who wanted to create the sword died trying to do it without what was required. The process to create a Confessor requires a prodigious amount of your strength. You don’t have it to give right now. You gave that strength to the sword. Just as those wizards died, you would die trying it without the required strength.”

“I see.”

Magda felt as if her heart was breaking. She’d thought it through and had it all figured out. She’d made the decision. It was already done as far as she’d been concerned. She needed only the formality of the magic to complete it.

In her mind, she’d gone over what she would do once she was a Confessor. She’d gone over it at least a hundred times. She had envisioned every detail until it was almost real.

And now it was ashes.

“I wish there was something I could do, Magda,” he said in quiet sorrow. “If there was one person in the world I could choose to invest with the power of a Confessor, it would be you, I swear.”

Magda nodded, turning away to hide her tears.

“Thank you, Merritt. I know you mean that.”

“I do.”

Not only was her world ending, the world of life was going to end. She had lost her chance. She had no way to fight Lothain and those helping him. He was too powerful.

She had given her strength over to the making of the Sword of Truth.

And now they were all going to die.

Magda turned back suddenly. “Merritt, when I used the sword, I felt the power of it surging through me. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”

He nodded. “I know. I’m the one who created the thing, remember? It holds immense power, in part because of what you gave it during its creation. As long as you live, you will always share a connection with the sword. I guess you could say that as long as it exists it carries some of you.”

Magda stepped close to him. “So investing my life force into it made its creation possible.”

Merritt shrugged at the obvious connection. “That’s right.”

She watched his face lit by the moonlight. “What if we used the sword, had it loan some of that power back to me, in turn giving me the strength I need to get through the ordeal of becoming a Confessor? It’s my life force, after all. You said that it couldn’t be from someone else. Coming from the sword it wouldn’t be.”

Merritt’s gaze searched her eyes but he didn’t answer.

“I’d just be borrowing some of my own life force,” she added.

He had that odd frown again. “I already thought of that.”

“And?”

“And it’s too dangerous. Creating a Confessor is dangerous enough in and of itself. It’s a process that has never been attempted before and very well could be lethal, and that’s if there weren’t any other complications involved. Trying to do it the way you’re suggesting is theoretically possible, but it would be an order of magnitude more perilous.”

“Are you saying you don’t have the skill, or that it’s dangerous for me.”

“My skill has nothing to do with it. It’s too dangerous for you for a variety—”

“We don’t have a choice. We have to try.”

He shook his head. “Magda, please don’t ask me to do that. You have no idea at all what you’re asking.”

She leaned toward him in the moonlight. “Merritt, I know exactly what I’m asking. I’m asking for a chance at life. Without trying, I’m going to die, you’re going to die, our people are going to die.

“You heard Naja. Those in power in the Old World seek to end the world of life. Even if their ideas are crazy, even if their plans are completely unworkable and impossible and they fail at accomplishing their ultimate aim, they are still slaughtering our people just the same. They still intend to rule the world of life one way or another. Untold thousands of innocent people will die in their attempts, and even more will die if they succeed in winning the war. If they win, at the very best, the people of the New World will be enslaved.

“And what if they really can succeed at what Sulachan wants to accomplish? What if he has the boxes of Orden and he uses them to end the world of life as we know it?

“The war is going badly. I believe it’s because the Keep is infected with spies and traitors helping the enemy. That’s what Baraccus wanted me to uncover. I now know who is at the center of it, anyway. It’s Lothain. He’s been hiding right under our noses, posing as our champion, prosecuting traitors.

“But if we kill him, his secrets die with him. If we capture him instead and he gives other names under torture, how would we ever know if they are really his accomplices? He might hold back the names of important spies, or accuse innocent people. How could we be sure? With something this important, how could we be sure that we have rooted out the entire nest of traitors and spies?