The First Confessor (63 page)

“The Keep will soon be as close to completely sealed off from penetration by dream walkers as we can make it. Anyone wanting to enter will be stopped at the portcullis and not allowed in until they go to their knees and give the devotion. Of course, while we think this will end the threat, we can’t be absolutely certain. People entering could be deceitful about the devotion they give. I suppose that’s why we have a Home Guard. But the dream walkers will no longer be able to use innocent people to secretly penetrate the Keep and sabotage our efforts.”

Quinn shook his head in wonder. “Frightening. At least we’ve now halted it all and we can move forward to begin to rebuild all of our efforts on a solid footing rather than the rotted foundation created by traitors and spies. Unfortunately, in the meantime, the enemy has gotten way ahead of us.”

“We have a lot of catching up to do,” Merritt agreed. “The wizards working down in the catacomb areas are being moved as we speak. Then we can go to work on sealing off the entire area. I’ve already prepared some spell-forms for them to use.”

“How is Naja doing?” Magda asked.

“She is already hard at work helping the gifted.” Quinn let out a troubled sigh. “After some of the things she talked about with me, they are going to have a lot of work to do. She’s incredibly intelligent, though, and she’s going to be an invaluable help. She understands things that I don’t think one in ten of our gifted entirely grasp.”

As Quinn was talking to Magda, Merritt selected a journal from the row standing on the desk. “Do you mind?” he asked.

Quinn looked back and then gestured. “No, please, go ahead. I’ve always intended my journals to one day be read by others. I’m hoping that it will give people in the future an insight to these troubled, historic times, much the way I’ve gotten insights and knowledge from old books I’ve read.”

Merritt, already engrossed in reading through one of the journals, made a sound deep in his throat in answer.

Quinn returned to what he had been telling Magda. “As a sorceress and a spiritist, Naja has remarkable talents and abilities. She can more than fill in for the work that Isidore was doing helping the gifted. Isidore was only working at the fringes of a lot of things, trying to understand them. Naja was at the center of them. In some cases, she helped originate what Isidore was only starting to investigate.

“It’s possible that she will be able to unravel the mysteries of the spirits trapped between worlds. She’s hoping that maybe she can find a way to guide them through the veil.

“We’re more than fortunate that Naja came over to our side. It will accelerate our understanding of how to catch up with what those in the Old World are doing to defend against us, and losing her specialized assistance will be a blow to the efforts of Sulachan’s gifted.” Quinn lifted his brow as he tilted his head toward her. “But more than that, I would hate to have to fight against that woman. Having grown up in such a strange and exotic place, she is, well, she is unlike anyone I’ve ever met.”

“I know what you mean,” Magda said. “From the first moment I saw her, I knew this is not a woman to underestimate.” Magda glanced toward the sliph. “Have you heard from Lord Rahl, yet?”

“A couple days back, when we thought Lothain was going to be named First Wizard, I sent an urgent message to him through a journey book.” Quinn gestured to the well. “He should be on his way.”

“Quinn,” Magda said, gathering her thoughts to move on to their reason for coming down to the sliph’s room in the first place, “Merritt and I need to tell you about some important matters.”

“Very important,” Merritt said, lowering the journal he was reading. “But the things we have to tell you about must be held in strictest confidence. Once we tell you, only the three of us will know about it, and it has to stay that way. Forever.”

“Of course,” Quinn said as he nodded with an earnest, if worried, look. “You both know that you can trust me. What is it? Has something else happened?”

“Yes,” Merritt said on his way back from the table, “and we need your help.”

“My help?” Quinn shrugged. “Of course. What is it? What’s happened?”

“We need you to know that I completed the key,” Merritt told him.

Quinn blinked. “What?”

“The magic used to complete the key has a great deal in common with the magic I used to create the Confessor power.”

“But you always told me that you had to have the seventh-level-breach calculations to complete the key.”

“Baraccus left the formulas for Merritt to find,” Magda told him. “With the calculations he needed, Merritt was able to complete the key.”

Quinn stared at her. “The key to the power of Or— Or—” he stammered.

“Orden,” Merritt finished.

Quinn squinted at him. “You completed the key? It’s done?”

Looking him in the eye, Merritt lifted the sword a few inches and let it drop back into its scabbard.

Quinn wiped a hand across his face as he sighed. “The teams will be relieved.”

“You can’t tell them,” Magda said. “You can’t tell another soul. You can’t tell anyone.”

“What?” Quinn was clearly perplexed. “Why not?”

Magda gripped his arm. “Quinn, listen to me. There’s more to it. There are complications. What we have to tell you requires the utmost secrecy.”

“All right.” He took a breath to compose himself. “What else?”

“When Baraccus came back from the Temple of the Winds, he told me that the boxes of Orden were gone. Someone took them.”

Quinn’s eyes widened as his face went white. “Dear spirits. Do you have any idea what—”

“I know about the power they contain,” she said. “Baraccus didn’t tell anyone but me for a reason. I’ve only told Merritt and now you know. No one else can know about this.”

“This is important, Quinn,” Merritt added in a grave tone, holding the journal closed with a finger marking his place. “We don’t know who stole the boxes of Orden. We don’t believe that Baraccus did either. He was obviously very worried about the boxes being gone. We think that’s why he brought the rift calculations back. He hid the formulas. We think he wanted me to find them and complete the key.”

“Why would he hide them? The key is the safeguard for the power. The key may be the only thing that could control a release. Why wouldn’t he want the teams trying to create the key to have the necessary formulas?”

“Think about it,” Magda said. “Think of how the Keep has been compromised by traitors, spies, and dream walkers. If anyone had access to the formulas necessary to complete the key, then whoever has the boxes would be able to get hold of those formulas and complete the key themselves and unlock the power.”

Quinn gazed off in thought. “That’s true . . .”

“When Baraccus brought those valuable seventh-level-breach formulas back,” Merritt said, “he knew how important they were. He hid the calculations so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“Where were they hidden? How did you discover them?”

“He wrote down the calculations in his notebooks that he left on his workbench. Right there in plain sight the whole time. People who saw those books didn’t even know what was in them, because they were not the right people. When Magda gave me his tools, I discovered the formulas in his notebooks.

“He didn’t tell anyone but Magda about the boxes being gone. I think he left a trail that took her to me. I think he wanted me to find the rift calculations because he knew that I was working on the sword alone. I was the right person. He didn’t want anyone else to know about the existence of the formulas to keep whoever has the boxes from making a key.

“That completed key is now the most important object in the world, other than the boxes themselves, because the key can access the power. If whoever has the boxes knew that the key is complete, they would come after it, so we can’t let a word of this get out.”

“Of course,” Quinn said, waving a hand as if to dismiss any concern that he failed to grasp the gravity of the situation. “No one even knows the true purpose of the power of Orden. We know some of its potential, some of its dangers, but we don’t even know for sure its original purpose. Not much is known about the time before the star shift.

“But one thing is certain. If Emperor Sulachan is the one who managed to obtain the boxes of Orden, he would do anything to get his hands on the key.”

“Exactly,” Merritt said. “That’s why we need to hide it.”

“Hide it?” Quinn shook a finger at the sword on Merritt’s hip. “Bags, Merritt! You’re wearing the thing in plain sight!”

Merritt leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Sometimes, the best way to hide something important is to hide it in plain sight. Baraccus wanted to show us that with how he hid the formulas.”

Quinn threw his hands up in frustration. “But there are lots of people who have worked on creating the key out of a sword. A sword is the first thing someone searching for the key would suspect, the first thing they would look for.”

“Not necessarily,” Magda said.

Quinn’s gaze shifted between the two of them. “I’m listening.”

“They only think the key needs to be a sword because that was the theory gleaned from ancient books. I’m the one who came up with it, remember? I’m the one who told people it needed to be a sword.”

“Well there you go. That’s what I mean. Everyone believes it has to be a sword.”

“That’s why we need you to create a more inviting belief,” Merritt said, “something more convincing, something that will cause people to shift their thinking to a better theory of what the key would have to be.”

“A better theory?” Quinn looked intrigued. “You mean send them off track so that they aren’t looking for a sword?”

“Exactly,” Merritt said. “The boxes of Orden were stolen from the safest place anyone could think of to put them. So why were they vulnerable?”

“Because people knew where they were,” Quinn answered. “If you know where something is, you can work on how to steal it no matter how difficult it may be to get to.”

“You’re getting the idea,” Magda said. “What makes the key, in the form of the sword, vulnerable, is that if people know it exists they will look for it. That’s why secrecy is so critical. People won’t look for something if they don’t know it exists.”

“So in place of the sword,” Merritt told him, “we have to give people something else more inviting to look for.”

Quinn lifted a finger. “A diversion.”

Merritt smiled in answer. “It needs to be something they will come to believe is the key to the boxes of Orden. Then we’ll hide it—to make it look all the more important—when in actuality it will be carefully planted, not hidden. Hiding it makes it all the more enticing. If people are all looking for the diversion, they won’t be looking for the real key.”

“In the meantime,” Magda told him, “we’ll have the real key.”

Merritt smiled. “Magda named it the Sword of Truth, so that’s what it will be—a tool, a weapon, in its own right, as its own end. It has powerful magic designed around truth in order to protect the power of Orden, not just unlock it, so it will have a purpose—seeking truth—that will give it a purpose, a life of its own, a reason to explain its existence.

“Since it is the Sword of Truth—a weapon created to fight for truth—people won’t have reason to expect that it could also actually be the key to the power of Orden.”

Quinn slapped his forehead. “I never knew that my two old friends were this devious.”

Merritt smiled with one side of his mouth. “In the meantime, with the sword at my side, I’ll search for the boxes of Orden. If I can find them, we’ll protect them. With no one knowing about the existence of the true key hiding in plain sight, then hopefully the rumors of our diversion key will entice whoever has the boxes to look for that fake key instead of trying to use the power without it.

“We have to understand, though, that the power of Orden has existed for longer than any of us knows. It’s ancient. We have to realize that this search, this struggle to protect such an ancient power, may be a struggle and a search that is part of mankind itself, and very well may stretch beyond our lives. It may go on for centuries, or even for thousands of years. This is something more important than the three of us. It is our struggle right now, but we have to keep in mind that we may in the end be passing this struggle on to future generations.

“If we never find the boxes, then in the future, as the Sword of Truth is passed on to the right sort of person who can protect it, that person will have his own mission—seeking truth. In that way, the true power, the true purpose of the sword as the key, will be hidden in plain sight until the right person eventually comes along.”

Quinn stared at Merritt. “This is a heavy responsibility we’re taking on.”

“It is,” Merritt agreed.

Quinn put his fingers to his forehead as he paced around the room, thinking it through. He came back to stand before Magda and Merritt.

“So you two want me to create a fake key of some sort?”

“Yes, as a diversion for the real key,” Magda said. “Then we’ll hide it. If it’s hidden well enough, but we leave hints to its location, then people will come to believe that your fake key has to be the true key.”

“This is getting awfully complicated,” Quinn said as he dry-washed his hands. “We have to get a long list of things right for all this to work.”

“That’s why we came to you,” Magda said. “You’re the only one who could pull it off.”

Merritt regarded him with a sobering look. “Quinn, you know how dangerous the power of Orden is. Used in the wrong way, it very well could breach the veil and destroy the world of life. We have to do everything in our power to see to it that such a thing never comes to pass.”

Deep in thought, Quinn flicked a hand. “Yes, of course you’re right. How will we hint at this diversion key?”

Merritt waggled the journal. “We’ll hint at it in books of magic, information, records, and history. That’s how I came to the belief that the key had to be a sword. You’re always recording history of the Keep. You need to create a false history, for the false key. Create a better idea of what the key should be, one that makes more sense to people, so that they believe in the diversion we create.”