The First Confessor (58 page)

“If we don’t get all those who are helping him they will still be able to work from inside the Keep to undo our cause, still activate the dead to assassinate key people. If we kill the man at the head of it, we’ll never know who the rest are until it’s too late.

“But if I can get a confession out of Lothain, a true confession, and we can expose the extent of the subversion within our ranks, then we might have real a chance to counter it. We would have a chance to save the Keep.

“Think of what is going to happen to us and our people if we don’t stop the enemy wizards among us. They will breach the Grace. We won’t merely die. Our souls will be kept from crossing over into the underworld.

“We’ll be like those people of Isidore’s town of Grandengart. Our bodies will be used by the wizards from the Old World while our spirits are trapped between worlds. Our spirits will wander, lost, in this world. How many innocent people will be doomed to such a fate?

“So, are you trying to tell me that you think such a grim fate would somehow be better than the danger of trying, even if it means I die in the attempt? How? How is that better?

“Isn’t this the very purpose for which you developed the concept of a Confessor? Isn’t this the reason you believed so strongly in it that you argued before the council to be allowed to create a Confessor? Wasn’t it you who said that the risks were so great that we had to try?”

He stared at her from under a lowered brow without answering.

“Please, Merritt, don’t condemn me to a brief life of watching all that is good end because we lack the courage to try. Please don’t do that to me. Please don’t condemn us and our friends and our people to the horrific fate that Emperor Sulachan has chosen for us all.”

His gaze finally fell away. “Magda, you don’t know what you’re asking me to do. I just can’t.”

Tears trailed down her face. “Then it is you who has chosen our destiny, and that destiny is endless suffering, all because you are afraid of harming me. But the safety you want for me is an illusion. In trying to protect me, you are only bringing me to even greater harm.”

Gritting her teeth, she seized his shirt in her fists. “Well I’d rather die trying for life than endure the destiny you want to condemn me to. If you won’t help me then at least give me the Sword of Truth so that I can kill the bastard. Give me the sword and let me die fighting for what I believe in.”

His big hands closed around her wrists as he looked into her eyes for a long moment.

“All right,” he said at last. “All right, I’ll try. I’d rather die, too, than see you have to be a helpless witness to the end of all we hold dear. I’ll try, Magda.”

She threw her arms around him in gratitude.

After too brief a time, he pushed away, looking into her eyes again. She had never seen him looking so grim.

“Don’t be so eager to thank me. Doing it this way is nothing like the process when we created the sword. What I have to do is something very different from what I would have done to create a Confessor. We can’t do it through that process. You can’t really help me this time. You have to leave it to me to do.”

The sobering look in his eyes gave her pause. “What do you mean? What do you have to do?”

“You have to put your trust in me. No questions. You will have to put your life in my hands and let me do as I must.”

Magda swallowed back her rising sense of alarm and nodded.

“We really have no choice. We’re running out of time. Do it.”

He touched her cheek. “I wish there were another way, Magda, but if we’re to do this now, there is no other way.”

With a hand on her shoulder, Merritt gently eased her back against the trunk of the massive oak. Dark, crooked arms of branches stretched out overhead like some great monster about to embrace her in its clutches. The moon cast a cold, eerie light across the angular features of Merritt’s handsome face.

Magda heard a rustling sound and looked up to one of the great branches of the ancient oak. There, perched in a crook on the limb, a raven ruffled its feathers.

She looked into the raven’s black eyes as it sat quietly watching her. The last time she had seen a raven had been down in the maze when the dead man had been chasing her.

Merritt slowly drew the sword. The sound of the blade rang through the night, drawing her gaze back to him.

Magda wet her lips. “What are you going to do?”

“Use the Sword of Truth to help you be reborn a Confessor.”

Magda’s concern was growing by the second. “Reborn? How? What are you going to do with it?”

He almost seemed to be looking out at her from a distant world. “Do you trust me?”

She wished he wouldn’t keep asking her that. “I told you that I do.”

“Then please, Magda, don’t ask.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. Tell me what you need me to do.”

With one hand, Merritt pressed her shoulders back against the tree. “I need you to let me do what I must.”

With the sword in his other hand, he placed the tip of the blade in the center of her chest.

She could see so much more in his hazel eyes than merely the glow of his gift. His eyes were gentle, yet at the same time they were charged with fierce intensity. More than that, though, she could see wisdom, integrity, competence, and the sort of rage she’d never seen before. Some of that, she knew, was coming from the Sword of Truth. Some, though, was all his.

She had seen the hint of that rage when she had first met him and told him that Isidore was dead. His was a temper that had the potential to be devastatingly violent, and yet at the same time he was also a man able to control it and focus it.

He was focusing it now.

Combined with the rage from the sword, such fury was frightening to behold.

Magda glanced down and saw the blade glowing white.

“Merritt . . .”

The blade turned from a white glow to an inky black that was like looking into the depths of the underworld. The air around her crackled with threads of light, both the pure white light of Additive Magic, and the sinister void of Subtractive. They wrapped her in a cocoon of magic that dimmed the world.

Magda couldn’t seem to stop herself from trembling.

“Merritt . . .”

“Are you sure about this, Magda? Are you certain?”

Behind the shadow of quiet sorrow, she could see love in his eyes.

“Yes. With all my heart and soul. Who I was, who I will be, is in your hands.”

“Tonight, Magda Searus, you are reborn a Confessor.” A tear ran down his cheek. “If I fail, may the good spirits take me, for I would not want to live in a world without you.”

She blinked in surprise at his words.

Glowing white light and inky black darkness rolled up the length of the blade in dizzying, undulating waves.

“Now you must trust me,” he said with finality.

Magda wet the roof of her mouth with her tongue. “I do, Merritt. I trust you with my life.”

And then, as he held her shoulders back against the tree, he pushed the sword straight through her heart.

Thunder without sound silently shook the world around her.

Oak leaves and pine needles rained down in the forest all around as dust rose in a rapidly expanding ring spreading away into the night.

Magda’s eyes went wide in shock at what he had just done.

She let out a last scream as she died.

People had gathered in great numbers. They crowded around the towering, polished black marble columns to each side of the gallery leading toward the council chambers and gathered beside the statues of robed figures, leaning around the people in front of them, rising up on tiptoes, all trying to see.

The soft rumble of their collective voices echoed from the vaulted ceiling hung with a procession of long, red silk banners meant to represent the blood that had been shed in defense of the people of the Midlands. The carpet, with the names of battles woven along the edges, was also red, meant to be a reminder of the struggles fought and the lives laid down so that others might live.

This day was no less a battle for the survival of the Midlands, a battle for the survival of all innocent lives in peril. Before the day was done, there was a good chance that more blood would be shed in that seemingly endless battle for survival.

Magda wore a blank expression, showing no emotion as she strode in a measured pace past the gathered throngs.

The drone of voices and light laughter withered to whispers before falling silent as she passed, leaving a hush in her wake.

People gawked as she marched past them, stone-faced, her eyes fixed ahead, looking neither left nor right. None of the people staring could have imagined the charge of power seething somewhere deep inside her.

It had at first been an alien power, a terrifying monster within. At first, when she had again become aware after that terrible, timeless voyage through darkness, she hadn’t known what to expect and didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Since she was ungifted, she had never experienced any power at her control, at her beck and call, much less a power like this.

Somewhere, at some point, that inner force had ceased to be a stranger to her.

Somewhere in the night, it had become a part of her, as if it had always been there and she had merely become aware of it.

It was no longer an alien force within her. It now
was
her.

She was also aware from the first that it was a power that sought release. It required her to master it continually, to restrain it. Merritt had assured her that as time went on it would become easier and feel natural, like breathing. But at that moment it had ached to be set free and she’d had to keep a tight rein on it. As he had promised, that need had eased.

She had never felt such a thing before, and had no idea what to expect when she eventually did release it. Merritt had offered some advice based on some of the component elements, but to a large extent he didn’t know either.

As she entered the great rotunda not far from the council chambers, Magda saw spectators crowded all through the enormous room, all hoping to get a glimpse of the grand event, a look at the arrival of the future wife of the future First Wizard.

Afternoon sunlight flooded in through the high windows around the lower border of the golden dome, making the towering reddish marble pillars around the edge of the room glow. Between the columns, against the stone wall, along with the throngs of people, the imposing statues of past leaders watched her pass.

The great mahogany doors to the council chambers stood open, flanked by rows of the Home Guard in spotless uniforms and polished armor, all standing at attention. Through the open door Magda could see even more people crowded into the vast council chambers. Bluish shafts of hazy sunlight slanting into the room gave the inner chamber a kind of reverent glow, an anticipation, to the impending ceremony.

Magda marched alone through slanting streamers of sunlight and down the runner of blue and gold carpet leading off toward her waiting betrothed and the council.

With her thumb, she turned the ring Merritt had given her, feeling the raised ridges of the design, a symbol of strength and a reminder of what was at stake.

The balconies below the windows were packed full with observers, all dressed in their finery. The open floor beneath the shadow of the balconies was likewise packed with important people as well as military men in dress uniforms accompanied by clusters of staff, officials in dignified robes with color-coded bands to denote rank and position, wizards and sorceresses in simple robes, and aids accompanying well-dressed, important women. A beaming General Grundwall stood at the head of his officers. Commanders Rendall and Morgan were there as well.

Troops in green tunics, the soldiers under the authority of the prosecutor’s office, stood at attention at regular intervals around the room. It was unusual that there were no Home Guard standing guard in the council chambers, as there had been all throughout the gallery and the great rotunda.

Magda, her face expressionless, marched onward through the room, down the long blue and gold carpet and through isolated patches of sunlight. Quinn stood near the front of the room watching her approach. Magda spotted Naja, partly hidden behind Quinn, wearing a hooded cloak that did a good job of shadowing her face and concealing her black hair. Councilman Sadler was closer to the front. He smiled and gave Magda a meaningful look when he saw her. Though she saw both out of the corner of her eye, she returned neither. Her face was a mask that showed nothing.

Emotion did not play a part in truth, only reality did.

A Confessor was about truth, not emotion.

In the distance, atop the dais, the council sat at the long, curved, ornate desk. Staff and assistants sat close by. Even more people stood behind. As Magda approached, she could see Elder Cadell sitting in the tallest chair in the center, as well as the rest of the council, minus Councilman Sadler.

Merritt was nowhere to be seen. Since the troops from the prosecutor’s office had arrested him, the sight of him in the council chambers was likely to spark a battle, so he was remaining hidden. But Merritt hadn’t wanted to be too far away.

She saw the glint of steel in the deep shadows between the pillars behind the council. Magda expected that it was the Sword of Truth she was seeing. At least, she hoped it was.

Lothain, in his elaborate, silk brocade ceremonial robes of office, stood in the center of the dais where everyone could see him. The desk of the council framed him in its half circle. His black eyes watched her approach.

As Lothain stepped to the left side of the dais, several officials in gold robes intercepted Magda. She was surprised to be stopped by them. Not knowing what was going on, she let them guide her to the right side of the dais, where they directed her to turn to face Lothain. One of them whispered to her that she was to stand there for the ceremony.

This wasn’t what she had expected. She needed to be closer to Lothain. She had expected to be standing at his side. She needed to be close. She needed to be able to touch him.