Magda ruffled her short hair, ridding it of the bits of stone and dust that had rained down from the joints in the ceiling. “If you don’t think it’s the dream walkers, have you heard any suggestion of who else might be responsible?”
Tilly checked the darkness ahead and behind. “Not who, Mistress, what.”
Magda’s frown deepened. “What does that mean?”
“From what I hear, no one knows much about the killings and no evidence has been discovered. I have heard it said, though, that such as was done to the poor souls they found dead does not appear to have been done by people. At least, not people who could be in their right mind. Considering what I saw, I am inclined to agree.”
“Dream walkers can rip a person apart, or make them attack someone else as savagely as any animal.”
Tilly straightened. “Maybe so. Please promise me that you will be careful when you are down here? You are ungifted. Promise me that you will be on guard at all times?”
Magda nodded. “You’ve no need to worry about that. As soon as I’m done with what I came to do, I’ll be headed back up. I have no desire to stay down here any longer than necessary.”
She followed after as Tilly started out again, moving quickly enough to reveal the slight hitch in her gait. Magda heard the screams several more times before they finally died down to a brief murmur of weeping and then even that mercifully ended. She hoped it was wizard’s work that had injured someone and not something else. If wizards were involved, then help would at least be at hand for the person in pain.
If dream walkers were involved, there would be no help at hand.
Magda was well aware that Tilly could go just about anywhere in the Keep and few people ever paid much attention. Most people didn’t even seem to notice her, almost as if she were invisible. She was just a lowly worker, one of many, going about her work. People rarely gave her a second look.
Magda had been worried that dream walkers might see the significance of that as well, see an opportunity in such anonymity, and take Tilly in order to use her for their ends. To protect her, Magda had convinced Tilly to take on the protection of the bond to Lord Rahl by giving the devotion. Though Tilly was now protected from dream walkers, she still feared what else might be on loose in the Keep. Magda didn’t entirely dismiss those fears.
The old woman stopped and moved to the side, pressing her back to the stone-block wall to make room for three men who suddenly appeared, approaching from the darkness ahead. The three, dressed in simple robes, were in a hurry. Magda pulled the cowl of her cloak forward to hide her face as she backed up against the wall beside Tilly.
“Tilly,” the first of the men said in greeting as he dipped his head. While most people didn’t even know Tilly’s name, there were apparently at least a few people, like Magda, who did notice her and know her name.
“Do you know who screamed?” Tilly asked.
The man had to turn sideways a little in order to shuffle past. “Yes,” he said, anger charging his tone. “Merritt just got another two men killed. A third was injured. That’s who you heard screaming.”
Magda thought that she recognized the name. Baraccus must have mentioned it before. She spoke before she thought.
“How did this Merritt get the men killed?”
The first man looked up at her, indignation clearly evident in his eyes. Magda held her lantern off to the side, making it look as if she were trying to stay out of the way, but in doing so it put her face in shadow and lit his.
“Merritt refused to help us any longer in crafting a critical weapon. Five brave wizards went to their death as a result.” The muscles in his jaw flexed when he clenched his teeth. “Now two more have just died trying to accomplish the task Merritt abandoned instead of leading. The third man, at least, will recover, though he may be blinded. I don’t know how many more we will lose until, the Creator be willing, we are successful.”
“I’m sorry,” Magda said in a sympathetic tone.
“Merritt should have been there,” the second man in line said.
The first man grunted his agreement as he moved on past Magda. She noticed that he smelled of smoke and burned flesh. As he passed close, she saw specks of blood splattered across his robes.
Magda lowered her head so that the second two men, holding glowing spheres that cast cold, greenish light up across their heated expressions, wouldn’t recognize her. All three swiftly disappeared back into the darkness.
Chapter 19
Once the men were out of earshot, Tilly leaned closer. “Wizards,” she confided before starting out once again.
Magda had suspected that they were wizards by their simple robes. She had known they were when she had looked into their eyes.
While she had no gift for magic, she did have the rare knack of being able to see the gift in the eyes of those who possessed it. She’d always thought of it as merely a form of intuition. Baraccus had said that it was more. He had told her that, while she was ungifted in the overt sense, she had latent abilities that set her apart in at least some small ways from others who were ungifted.
He’d said that the spark of life was stronger in her than in most people. That, he said, was what he saw in her eyes, that she was not merely beautiful but intelligent, unusual, rare. He had sometimes looked into her eyes and whispered to himself how bewitching she was, as if she weren’t there hearing him, as if he were all alone looking upon some exceptional specimen rather than his wife.
Magda never thought of herself as exceptional, but she did feel lucky that he thought so.
She recalled quite clearly the first time she had looked into Baraccus’s eyes. She remembered feeling momentarily lost for words as she gazed in those gentle, knowing eyes. Looking into his eyes had made her feel safe. She had known that he was gifted, of course, but she’d also seen a handsome older man behind those abilities that she was inexplicably drawn to. Who knew the ways of love?
Besides being aware of the presence of the gift in the eyes of all three men, Magda was pretty sure that she recognized the first two. She didn’t know their names, but she thought that she had seen both of them before. Magda had occasionally gone with Baraccus on some of his frequent visits down into the lower Keep to see his wizards. She thought that she must have seen the men one of those times because she didn’t recall them ever coming to see Baraccus in their apartments.
She also thought that she recalled the name Merritt. Baraccus met with a lot of gifted people and he didn’t always introduce her. She knew when he preferred that she remain in the background or even out of sight, such as when people came to discuss confidential matters or to report trouble. There had been times, after such visitors left, that he would stand at a window, stoically staring out at the city of Aydindril below.
Sometimes, though, when visitors left he would tell her their names and what it had been about. On occasion he talked to her about people he’d met with down in the lower Keep. The name Merritt sounded familiar, though she couldn’t place a face with the name. It could be that she’d never seen him, merely heard Baraccus mention him.
Magda would rather not be returning to the lower reaches of the Keep. It was an unnerving place in the best of times, to say nothing of some of the things she had heard from Baraccus, but it was even more so, now, in light of Tilly’s warnings, yet Magda didn’t know what else to do. She had run out of ideas and needed to find answers.
After Lord Rahl had left, she’d spent weeks making discreet inquiries, all to no avail. She had spoken to every wizard and sorceress she knew, at least the ones she felt comfortable enough to approach. Most were sympathetic, but no one knew anything that was in the least bit useful to her.
Magda knew that Baraccus confided little in others, even the gifted, except for specific things they needed to know. Her questions had only confirmed it. Others knew only small bits of the picture. Magda had been a bit surprised to come to the realization that she knew a great deal more about Baraccus and his activities than did anyone else, even the people he regularly worked with.
Through Baraccus, Magda had seen more of the larger picture of the war, complex alliances, and covert activities than any of them, even if she didn’t know some of the finer details. Other people saw the details of small segments, while she in many cases glimpsed the overview of all the things with which Baraccus dealt. She had a deeper insight into how all the parts that various people knew about were connected.
Even Lord Rahl, one of the men Baraccus trusted most, was not a great deal different. Baraccus might have trusted him with more vital missions than he entrusted to others, but he hadn’t trusted him with everything. Even with as many details as Alric Rahl knew about the dream walkers, he didn’t know as much as Magda about the larger picture.
Her husband had been a man who closely guarded not only his secrets, but his activities and the reasons behind most of the things he did. He’d often said that keeping things to himself was a matter of survival.
Yet even with as much as she knew, Magda still didn’t know nearly enough about the various matters he had been involved in. She still didn’t know why he had killed himself.
A number of those she had spoken with had been more interested in talking to her, than about Baraccus. They wanted to know about the dream walkers, and if what they had heard from people who had been at the council meeting the day she had gone before them, covered in blood, was true. When Magda had confirmed that it was, they asked about the devotion that was said to be able to protect people’s minds. She had given her counsel to anyone who had wanted it. Some of those people had listened with open minds and had been grateful. Some weren’t interested in being allied with Alric Rahl.
A few of the gifted, she learned, had already met with Lord Rahl and had already taken up the bond to him.
At first, after Lord Rahl had left the Keep, Magda had been worried about the bond working once he was gone. To her surprise, she had discovered that she could sense him through that bond. It was the strangest feeling, but through that link she could feel her connection to him, tell the direction he was in, and sense the distance. It was a reassuring connection that let her know she was safe from the dream walkers.
Now, with the summer wearing on and the secrets behind Baraccus’s death haunting her at every turn, the only thing left was to try Tilly’s original suggestion. She still didn’t like the idea, especially in light of the new dangers down in the Keep, but Magda had reached a dead end in her search for answers. In the back of her mind, she also feared to lose the chance should the dream walker get to the woman first.
Despite her misgivings, Tilly seemed to understand Magda’s need to find answers as to why Baraccus had killed himself. Tilly thought that if she went to see the woman, it would at least help bring peace to Magda’s heart. Magda was looking for more than peace. She wanted answers.
The passageway finally emptied them out into a vast, narrow chamber that rose up like an enormous split inside the mountain. Fine-grained granite blocks lined the soaring walls. The chamber was perhaps half a dozen stories high, yet only as wide as the public corridors up in the Keep where merchants sometimes sold their wares from small carts or stands.
The narrow hall was so long that Magda couldn’t make out faces of people at the far end. In some cases she couldn’t even make out their gender. She was able to make out the dots of various colors of robes, denoting rank and duties.
Magda found herself somewhat relieved to see people again, relieved not to be alone in the dark passageways. The screams she had heard, and learning that men had just died, made her own loss fresh again.
Up near the lofty top of one of the long walls, slits were open to the night sky. Bats up high darted about, chasing bugs.
One of the Keep’s young cats sat on its haunches, peeking around the corner, its big green eyes watching the bats. It was obviously hungry. Feeling sorry for the scrawny black cat, Magda pulled a small bundle of chicken strips from her waist pouch. She unwrapped the meal she had brought along and tossed a small piece down to the hungry cat. As long as she had it out, Magda handed Tilly a strip and took one for herself before replacing the bundle in her waist pouch. The cat pounced and devoured the unexpected prize as Magda and Tilly went on their way, each nibbling at her own snack.
Magda had been to the enormous room several times, though by a more agreeable route, so she knew that it was a central hub leading to a number of important areas of the lower Keep. The first time she had been to the place, Baraccus had told her that the slits along the top of one of the walls helped the chamber serve as a ventilation chimney, drawing air through the lower Keep in order to provide a bit of fresh air.
The open slits were also one of the ways that birds sometimes found their way into the Keep. It wasn’t uncommon to find a small bird lost in the halls. Sometimes grackles found their way into dining halls, where they hopped around on the ground looking for crumbs, or even boldly stole food right off people’s plates.
Magda could see several sparrows that had obviously found their way in via the high slits, roosting on supports near the tops of the wall. She even spotted a raven perched on a beam, its feathers fluffed up, its black eyes watching the people down below.
With it being hotter outside than in, the ventilation openings seemed to be working in reverse this night, letting muggy air sink into the room and leaving the place feeling clammy. A haze of smoke coming from work areas had stratified throughout the room.
Stone stairs built tight against the wall to the right led to long, narrow balconies with widely spaced openings. Some had doors, while most were passageways to different areas.
Many of the people in the room seemed in a hurry, but Magda was used to seeing people in the Keep in a hurry. As large as the place was, it wasn’t uncommon for a journey between areas to take hours. Delaying for any reason, such as to chat, could in certain cases cause an errand to end up taking the better part of the day. That was probably why Tilly preferred the mostly deserted secondary passageways.
When Tilly saw Magda staring at carts piled high with bloody bandages parked haphazardly along one wall, she leaned closer and whispered, “Down here, in the matters these people deal in, errors are costly. Even worse, they are frequently punished by death.”
Magda didn’t have to ask what Tilly was talking about. She had escorted Baraccus to the place several times when he needed to speak with some of his wizards working on weapons for the war effort.
They were entering the area of the Keep where some of those weapons were created out of people.
While she understood the need, she was still appalled by the very idea of using magic to alter a person’s nature, to change who they were—in some cases to something no longer even human. She found the practice of changing people in such ways to be beyond abhorrent.
Chapter 20
“Over there.” Tilly gestured to an entryway, set back into the shadows, some distance down on the far side of the vast chamber. “We must go down that way.”
Magda nodded. She knew of the place, of course, though she had never had reason to go down there before. She pressed a hand against the pang of anxiety tightening in her stomach.
As they made their way along and diagonally across the chamber, she tried as best she could to keep her face concealed by the cowl of her cloak. She wasn’t going to go out of her way to prevent people from recognizing her, but she wasn’t going to deliberately let people know she was there if she didn’t have to. The echo of her every footstep, though, whispered through the cavernous room, as if to betray her.
Glancing out from the edge of the hood of her cloak, Magda saw gifted people she recognized. Even though she was doing nothing wrong, she didn’t want to stop to talk with them or have to explain her purpose. It was nobody’s business. She kept the hood pulled forward.
Baraccus had often told her that if she was doing something important, she shouldn’t tell people anything they didn’t need to know. He lived his life by that rule. In fact, he often wouldn’t even tell Magda about things he thought she didn’t need to know.
Like why he had killed himself.
She was certain that what Baraccus had done was not the simple suicide it had appeared to be to those who didn’t know him as well as she did. Magda knew that it was more complicated than that. Suicide was simply not consistent with his character, so she knew that there must be more to it, that there must be a larger purpose to it. She also knew that for Baraccus to sacrifice his life, that purpose had to have been vitally important.
She also suspected that this time it was different in that he really did want her to find the reason behind it. His last words, in the note he had left for her, seemed to say as much. His voice still rang in her head with his words from the note.
Your destiny is to find truth.
One way or another, Magda intended to discover the truth behind his death.
As they made their way through the immense room, she saw that the series of arched recessed areas in the wall to the left served as workstations. People stood over the workbenches filing, hammering, cutting, and shaping metal, but in some cases wood. Back beyond some of those arched work areas were large rooms, most with big rolling doors pushed open to each side, probably to provide fresh air.
Reddish light from the fires of a forge deep in one of the dimly lit rooms revealed feverish activity that drew Magda and Tilly’s attention. Men yelled instructions as they urgently worked to contain the damage from what appeared to be a serious accident.
Through the broad opening Magda could see that the room was a shambles. The forge had been partially torn open. Broken brick and burning embers lay scattered across the floor. The metal hood that belonged over the forge, along with its chimney, was nowhere in sight. Acrid-smelling smoke and glowing ash still rising from the remnants of the fire rolled across the ceiling and out the open doors. Iron bars set into the brick around the forge were twisted and bent outward, as if there had been a violent explosion.
Ominous flashes of lightning still flickered around the damaged forge, sparked through the dimly lit room, and arced off through the smoke hugging the ceiling. The twisting strands of lightning crackling through the room all seemed anchored at the forge, evidence of the magic that had been involved in the labor, and probably the source of the catastrophe.
The shuddering lightning lit the lines of men in spasms of bluish light as they rushed in carrying buckets, heaving water on the fire. Hot coals hissed and steamed. Other men rushed in with glowing spheres to provide more light.
Magda spotted the body of a man slumped on the floor against a far wall and another sprawled nearby. Both men were torn and bloody. It was obvious they were dead. One of the men’s blackened robes still smoldered.
A long, gleaming section from a shattered sword was embedded in his chest. Magda could see that he was missing an arm at his shoulder. She could see by how still the piece of blade jutting from his chest was that he wasn’t breathing. Coals still glowing red lay strewn among the abandoned bodies, along with polished fragments of the broken blade. One piece stuck in a far wall shined out from the shadows.
A small clutch of people surrounded an injured man on the floor. The circle of kneeling men, all seeming to be working together, were clustered together, bent over the moaning man, tending to his injuries. One of the man’s legs bent at the knee, then straightened, then the other, back and forth as if he were in great agony. Some of the men held him down while others appeared to be using their gift to try to help him.
Magda knew that this had to be the source of the screams she had heard. She felt an urge to go help the man, but the gifted were already doing that.
From what the three men they had met in the corridors had said, none of it would have happened if the wizard Merritt hadn’t abandoned these men. She couldn’t imagine why he would leave people who needed his help. Now men were dead because of it.
She also couldn’t imagine how a sword could have exploded to do so much damage.
Magda and Tilly kept moving through the busy room. There was nothing they could do to help.
Other rooms, dark but for the intense glow from forges and furnaces, were beehives of activity. Despite the accident that had happened close by, work continued unabated. Furnaces and molten metal could not be left untended. Teams of men lifted heavy containers and pushed them into furnaces with the aid of long poles. In other areas, men lugged blazing crucibles from the furnaces to pour luminescent, liquid metal into molds.
In other rooms, men rushed with glowing steel from the forges to massive anvils where other men with hammers waited. As the hot metal was held in place, the hammers worked in unison. The steady beat of cold steel against hot metal at various stations rang through the large chamber as the men shaped the malleable metal. The ringing of hammers mixed with the roar of fires being fed by bellows, shouting, conversation, and the dull background rasp of files.
Magda could smell molten metal, smoke from fires, and steam from salt water and oil used to quench the glowing steel. The haze of smoke and steam that hung motionless the length of the enormous room was in places tinted yellowish orange by the blush of light from forges and furnaces off under archways and rooms to the side.
Despite the accident, work looked to have hardly paused. The war raged on. Every day the enemy drew closer. These people knew that they could not slow their efforts.
The threat overhanging them all was almost palpable.
Chapter 21
When they reached the far side of the long chamber, Magda glanced around, checking to make sure that the people were going about their own business and not paying any attention to her. Satisfied, she and Tilly slipped into a sheltering entryway.
Though its style mimicked many of the grand places in the Keep, the recessed entry was, in contrast to most other areas, rather small and intimate. Fluted limestone columns lined either side of the gloomy alcove. The small pillars, not much taller than Magda, were topped with long entablatures that provided support for arches elaborately decorated with complex, carved stone moldings framing tiles laid out in dark, geometric patterns. Benches to each side had been intricately embellished to match the forbidding architectural details of the rest of the entry.
The benches seemed to suggest that visitors sit and reconsider before going any farther. Or maybe that they pause in their weary grief and rest to steady themselves before continuing on.
Surrounding the pitch black opening at the rear, larger-than-life stone figures in grim, contorted, distraught poses clearly conveyed a sense of desolation and tragedy for what lay beyond.
For good reason. The brooding figures surrounding the doorway were meant to tell all that this was not a region to be entered lightly.
This was the threshold to the place of the dead.
Without pausing to reconsider or to rest, Tilly vanished into the dark maw. Magda followed swiftly behind. Their lanterns, along with more hung at intervals, revealed stone steps descending down into blackness. The stairs were wide enough that the two of them could walk side by side.
“Do you come down here often?” Magda asked.
“No, Mistress. Only when a wizard or sorceress asks that I come down to clean a specific area for them. Some like their rooms kept tidy. Most don’t like anyone coming into the places where they do their work. Other members of the staff are assigned to the common areas down here, the same as up above.”
Magda glanced at the meticulously maintained and polished stone balustrade. She supposed that it was a sign of respect for the dead that the place be kept presentable for visitors.
In contrast to the marble staircase that gave the descent a sense of grandeur, the walls and ceiling were nothing more than a broad shaft hollowed out of rock. Flight after flight of stairs, each ending at a landing from which the next run turned, were all part of a massive staircase that spiraled ever downward. There were no rooms or side corridors along the way, nor areas set aside to sit and rest.
It surprised Magda how far down they had to go before they finally reached a spacious cavern at the bottom. The chamber had been carved out of the rock, much as the tunneling descent had, with tool marks and drill holes from the excavation still in evidence on the rough stone walls. Only the floor was finished off, in a circular pattern of light and dark stone tiles. A table veneered in burl walnut sitting alone in the center of the room held a simple white vase filled with white lilies.
At intervals around the room, openings cut into the stone led off into darkness. Each looked like a cave. None of the nine passageways were trimmed or decorated, except for a symbol that had been carved into the stone above each opening.
Without delay, Tilly entered the ninth opening, a number that she knew from Baraccus had great meaning in things having to do with magic.
The walls of the passageway were the same roughly hewn stone as the chamber had been. Almost immediately, they started down yet more steps, except that these, rather than being built, were carved directly from the stone itself. The treads were rugged and uneven, so Magda had to be careful lest she fall.
It was another long descent down the twisting tunnel before the stone abruptly changed. As the tunnel leveled out, they found themselves within a vein of softer sandstone. Unlit corridors branched off in every direction but Tilly led them on through the largest, main hallway. Before long, rooms carved out of the sandstone began to appear on both sides.
Almost immediately, Magda began seeing the dead.
As they passed by room after room, their lantern light revealed niches carved right into the stone walls of the rooms. Each cavity looked to hold at least one body; most held more. Some of the hollowed-out chambers seemed to have entire families laid out beside one another.
Magda slowed to take a better look into a larger area off to the right. She saw that in places the resting chambers were half a dozen high, the uppermost niches reachable only with a ladder. Most of the bodies laid to rest in the honeycombs of cavities were wrapped in shrouds that were so old and dirty that they looked to have been carved out of the same tan sandstone as the rooms themselves. A number of the recesses held coffins, all of them stone, most with carved decorations, all of them layered in dust and partially encased within masses of cobwebs.
As they went on, they encountered rooms of niches that held massive numbers of bones. Each recess was filled to the top with neatly stacked bones, sorted by type, covered in dust. Several of the chambers held only skulls. Many of the resting places looked untouched for decades, if not centuries. Very few looked tended.
“These are the oldest tombs,” Tilly said. “As more space was needed, the oldest bones were brought together and stacked here to make room. As time went on, catacombs had to be extended deeper and deeper in order to make new places to bury the recently deceased. The excavation goes on to this day. Many of those living up above will one day end up down here.”
Above many of the hollowed-out resting places could still be seen a family name in faded paint, or a name and a title of the deceased. Some were decorated around the edges with crudely carved decorations, probably done by family members.
Many people preferred to inter their family members so that they could come to visit them. Other people, especially the relatives of more famous people, preferred to let fire consume their loved one, rather than allow their bodies to become an attraction, or provide rivals a corpse to spit upon.
Magda had chosen to have the shell that had contained Baraccus’s spirit to be consumed by fire as that was also said by some to purify the spirit of its worldly trappings for its journey to the underworld. Some couldn’t stand the thought of a loved one being reduced to ashes. Magda didn’t see that empty vessel as her loved one. Her loved one was gone to be among the good spirits. The choice being forced upon her, she chose to have his vessel reduced to ash rather than to rot.
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