A small, tightly rolled scroll sticking out of a shelf had a variety of small clay figures collected all around the end of it. As far as she could tell, they were all floating around the end of the scroll with nothing holding them up. It was an inexplicable and disorienting sight.
There were also profoundly beautiful statues standing in random places around the room, not as if they had been placed to be admired, but simply, it appeared, put wherever there had been an empty spot at the time. There was a soldier about to unsheathe a sword carved from a gray stone, there were several smaller statues of men in robes carved from pale butternut wood, and, carved from pure white marble, there were several statues of the most graceful women Magda had ever seen.
Draped over the table beyond the overturned chair was a large square of red velvet. The tabletop was the only place in the entire room that wasn’t cluttered. A single gleaming sword sat in the middle on a raised portion of the red velvet.
Magda noticed an ornate gold and silver scabbard attached to a baldric lying on the floor. The scabbard was so striking that it could only belong with the sword.
Merritt righted the chair, then hung the baldric and its scabbard over the back before he hurriedly removed books from the wicker couch. “Sorry for the mess. I don’t ordinarily live in such clutter. It’s just that this place isn’t as roomy as my place at the Keep. Please, Lady Searus, won’t you have a seat?” He looked around. “Tea. I should make tea.”
“No, none for me, thank you,” she said as she made her way to the wicker couch.
He looked relieved. Magda wondered why he no longer lived at the Keep, but didn’t ask; she had more important matters to get to first. She waited until he turned around to her again.
“I need to talk with you, Wizard Merritt.”
“So talk.” He gestured to the couch. “What about Isidore?”
Magda wasn’t ready to sit. “What about the oath?”
He put both hands in his back pocket as his posture relaxed a little. He grinned boyishly. “You mean the devotion to the Lord Rahl? Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. That oath?”
“Yes. You’re familiar with its purpose, then?”
He was smiling as if it was a private joke. Magda didn’t think it was funny. She could feel her own face heating to red.
“Actually, you see, Alric is an acquaintance of mine.”
“You know, then, that he’s a good man, and that he means the devotion to protect us from dream walkers?”
He still had a hint of a crooked smile as he kept her locked in his gaze. “Yes. Their side creates a weapon, we have to work to counter it. That’s why I helped him in creating the power contained within its bond.”
Magda blinked in surprise. “Are you saying that you helped him create the magic that protects people from the dream walkers? That power? You helped him with that?”
Merritt nodded. “To a certain small extent. I don’t know exactly how he crafted magic that could do such a thing, but I do know that he’s as smart as he is determined. He was stuck at a point that was keeping the bond from taking hold and igniting in others, at their end. It worked for him, but he wanted it to work to protect other people as well, and it wouldn’t go to root in them, I guess you could say. He knew that I happen to be familiar with unusual calculations for spell couplings, so he asked for my help.”
Magda tilted her head toward him. “You helped Alric Rahl create the magic of the bond.”
He nodded again, looking quite earnest. “I provided the authentication routines for the verification web, from inside of it, in order to complete the validation process. That was what initiated the unification of the spell components he was trying to combine so that the bond would activate in the proper sequence.
“Once it ignited, locking down the series reductions, I was the first one to speak the devotion. When I did, I did it from inside the completed web. I wanted to test it first to ensure that it wouldn’t inadvertently harm people when they gave the devotion to invoke the bond.”
Magda couldn’t help staring openly at him. She touched her fingers to her forehead, trying to take it all in. “You mean that you were the one who made it work?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “No, not really. Alric did most of the work. He came to me because he knew that I would be able to understand what he was trying to do. There aren’t many people who understand such complex combination routines well enough to discuss it with him. He thought I might be able to see why the verification web wasn’t functioning exactly the way he intended and hoped that I would know what was needed.”
“So it wouldn’t have worked without what you did,” she said.
“Alric Rahl created something masterful. I guess you could say that I just added a little seasoning to his stew.”
“Then you are bonded to him?” Magda asked. “You are protected from the dream walkers?”
His smiled vanished. “Oh yes, I am protected. He tested me with the dream walker he held captive. That’s how Alric knew that the bond he created finally worked in others. I was the first one protected by the bond. So, you see, there is no chance that a dream walker is hiding in the shadows of my mind, listening and watching, if that’s what you’re worried about.
“Now, what is it you wanted to tell me about my friend Isidore?”
Magda’s heart sank.
“I’m afraid that I got Isidore killed.”
Chapter 45
Merritt’s face took on the look of chiseled stone, much like his statues. The aspect of the gift she saw in his eyes had a decidedly dangerous cast to it.
“What do you mean, you got Isidore killed?”
In that calm yet emotionally charged question, she could see that this was a man with more than a simple temper. It was a refined sort of bottled fury that had the potential to be devastatingly violent, and yet at the same time he was also a man able to control it.
That meant that he could focus it.
“It takes a bit of explanation.”
While at first a bit shy, once the subject became somber he turned all business.
“So explain.”
Magda rearranged the bundle under her arm as she finally sat on the wicker couch. It gave her the excuse to look away from his intense expression.
“I was at first in shock over my husband’s death,” she began. “I couldn’t understand why he would take his own life, couldn’t understand why he would leave me like that, leave all of us. People said that his journey to the Temple of the Winds in the world of the dead must have crushed his spirit and sapped his will to live.
“Everyone accepted that story. They believed it was a straightforward suicide. And while it may have made grim sense to them, it didn’t make sense to me. As I thought about it, I kept coming back to the core truth that Baraccus was not the kind of man to be so despondent that he would kill himself.
“Besides, I was there when he came back from the Temple of the Winds, and while there was no doubt that he was troubled and distracted, I wouldn’t characterize him as depressed.
“He had too much to live for, too many things that mattered to him, too many people he cared about, too much important work yet unfinished. He wouldn’t kill himself to end any kind of personal despair. He cared about us all too much to do such a thing. With all of the New World in danger he had every reason to want to fight for us.”
“Then why would he do it?” Merritt asked as he went to the table to gaze down at the sword.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Baraccus knew that I wouldn’t believe that he had simply wanted to end his life. He was counting on me to realize that something about it didn’t make sense.
“He knew that I would recognize that he would only have done such a thing if it was to somehow protect all of us. That’s the way he was. That was his mission in life. That was why he was First Wizard. He was a war wizard, after all. He took that mission very seriously.
“War wizards don’t give up. They find a way around any obstacle, even if that way results in their own death. He called the way of a war wizard the dance with death.
“Shortly after his death, I found a note he’d left for me, telling me to seek truth. Somehow, for some reason, he couldn’t do that himself. Baraccus, not merely as my husband, but as First Wizard, charged me with finding truth.
“This is about something bigger than Baraccus. It involves all our lives. Even before I found the note, I knew that I had to find answers, not only for Baraccus, not only for myself, but because all our lives are at stake. For reasons I can’t yet fathom, he left the task to me.
“His note said, ‘Your destiny is to find truth.’”
Merritt, standing over the table, looking down at the sword as he listened, turned with a frown. “You mean the note said, ‘Your destiny is to find the truth.’”
Magda’s brow furrowed as she tried to recollect the exact words. She didn’t have the note with her. She had hidden it back at the Keep in a secret compartment in his workbench.
She didn’t know why the exact wording mattered to Merritt. It seemed an insignificant point. She knew, though, that wizards saw the world differently. Things that might seem insignificant to anyone else were often centrally important to them.
“Now that you mention it, I guess I can’t recall, exactly. I suppose that what you say makes more sense. Find the truth.”
Merritt nodded as he turned his broad back to her once more. “What happened then?”
“Not long after I found that note, the same day in fact, Lord Rahl was waiting to see me. As I talked to him, a dream walker that had apparently been hiding in my mind all along nearly killed me before I could start looking for answers. In a way, that was the beginning of an answer.
“I was able to give the devotion to Lord Rahl in time to protect myself. But why would a dream walker be hiding in my mind in the first place? I’m not even gifted.”
“You just said that you believe Baraccus left an important mission to you,” Merritt said, “a mission that is somehow critical to all our survival.”
“That’s true,” Magda said, “but the thing is, how would a dream walker have known that in the first place? Why would he have been hiding in my mind to begin with?”
“I see your point,” he said as he clasped his hands behind his back while pacing off a few steps as he thought about it. “Maybe with Baraccus dead, the dream walker was simply trying to find out what you may have known about the First Wizard’s business, his plans for fighting the war, weapons we’re developing, things of that sort.”
“I guess it makes sense,” Magda said. “I don’t know how it could be possible for me to be important to the future of our people, but Baraccus believed it. The dream walkers obviously had to have thought I was important enough to be worth watching in the first place, and then certainly after I found that note. Once I saw what it said, they would have seen it, too.
“But before that, why would they care about the thoughts of a nobody?”
“You aren’t a nobody,” Merritt said in a surprisingly compassionate voice as he looked over at her. “They may have cut your hair after Baraccus’s death, but that doesn’t change you into a nobody. You are still Magda Searus, the same as before, with the same abilities, the same potential, the same mind, the same capacity to think for yourself.”
“I wasn’t born noble or gifted. That makes me a nobody in the minds of most people in the Midlands.”
Merritt stopped before the table and again stood gazing down at the gleaming sword lying on red velvet. “As long as their cutting your hair doesn’t make you a nobody in your own mind then it doesn’t make any difference what others think, now does it?”
Magda had to smile. “That’s always been my attitude. It frequently gets me into trouble, though. Before I met Baraccus, people often told me that I didn’t know my place. I’ve never much cared what most people thought about me, or what they thought my place should be. I always believed that I should think for myself and act accordingly. My status sometimes hinders me, but I don’t ever let it guide me.”
“Good.” He turned away from the sword and folded his arms as he leaned back against the table to face her. “So what did you do next?”
“I talked to a number of the people who had been closest to Baraccus, trying to find clues. That got me nowhere.
“So I went to the spiritist hoping that her unique abilities could help. Isidore told me that she was only the spiritist’s assistant and that the spiritist couldn’t see me.
“I was desperate, so I told her that I believed Baraccus had sacrificed his life in order to protect all of us and I was hoping that the spiritist could reach out to him for answers. I told her that I thought something important had happened when Baraccus had gone to the Temple of the Winds in the world of the dead. I needed her to contact him there, in the underworld, since this time he wasn’t coming back.
“I told her that all is not right in the Wizard’s Keep, and that I believe the enemy is already here, among us. After all, how would a dream walker know about me from all the way down in the Old World? I told her that the council wouldn’t believe me. I told her that if I was right, then the enemy would likely direct the dream walkers to the spiritist to prevent her from assisting the wizards in developing defenses.
“I finally got Isidore to admit that she was the spiritist. I convinced her that because of her importance, she was in great danger that the dream walkers would take her mind. That persuaded her to give the devotion to protect herself.
“After she did, she told me the story of the slaughter of the people of Grandengart and how she had learned that their spirits were not safely in the world of the dead, where they belonged. She told me, too, the story of how you had taken her eyes.”
Magda gestured uncomfortably. “I couldn’t understand how she could do such a terrible thing. I couldn’t understand how she could... well, how she could let a wizard so fundamentally alter her, change her into something other than she had been born.”
“If you think it’s upsetting, imagine how I felt,” Merritt said.
Magda looked up into his eyes. She had to look away from the shadow of pain she saw there.
“Through Isidore’s story, I did come to realize how reluctant you were to do such a thing, and how determined she was to go through with it. While I of course felt sorry for what she was giving up, I also felt sorry for you, for the awful burden she placed on you.
“She was just starting to tell me that it wasn’t so terrible, like I thought, and what a wonderful new vision you had given her. But before she could finish explaining and then contact the spirit world for me, we were attacked by some kind of monster and—”
Merritt lifted a hand to stop her story. “What do you mean, a monster?”
Magda shrugged. “It appeared to be a man, close to as big as you. He was impossibly strong. At first I thought that he had to be gifted and that he was using magic.
“When I stabbed him, though, he didn’t bleed. When I got a good look at him, he looked like a dead man. He smelled like something dead, too.”
Merritt’s frown deepened the creases on his brow. “A dead man? What do you mean he looked like a dead man?”
“He was blackened, his flesh shriveled, and it even looked decayed and pulled apart in places. He looked like a corpse.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “That does indeed sound like a dead man. But was it dark? Are you sure you saw him clearly enough?”
“It was pretty dark,” Magda admitted. “But I still had a lantern. I got a good enough look.
“I stabbed him a number of times, hard and deep. The blade, deep as it went, didn’t seem to harm him at all. Isidore used her powers as well, but that didn’t stop him either. We tried.... We tried.”
Magda swallowed and had to look down at the floor away from Wizard Merritt’s gaze before she could go on. “He... he ripped Isidore apart. It all happened so fast. He killed her before we could stop him, before we had a chance to run.
“I realized later that a dream walker had to have been secretly lurking in her mind all along, listening. When I told her that I needed information from the spirit world, I never thought that a dream walker might already be there, in her mind. I had thought that I needed her to give the devotion in case a dream walker ever tried to take her. I should have realized that he might already be there.
“The dream walker had invaded my mind and spied on my thoughts without me being aware of him, but then he had failed to kill me because I was able to give the devotion and banish him from my mind in time.
“He must have then been spying on me and Isidore from the shadows of her mind, but he didn’t want to spoil his second chance by trying what had failed before. He wanted us both. So he didn’t reveal himself, didn’t try to kill her before she could give the devotion, as had happened with me.
“He instead let us believe we were safe. He probably slipped away, then, as she started to give the devotion. He probably wanted to lull us into feeling secure in order to make it easier for him to send the man who attacked us.
“I should have realized that he might already be there watching Isidore because she was important. I was just a lucky additional catch who happened along. I foolishly revealed too much before having her give the devotion.
“If I’d made Isidore give the devotion first, he would not have heard how important I thought she was to uncovering the answers Baraccus wanted me to find. He would not have realized that he needed to kill her before she could help me.”
Against her will, the vivid memory of that awful slaughter returned to fill her mind’s eye.
“That’s why you asked me to give the oath before you would talk to me,” he said, half to himself.
Magda nodded as she watched tears dripping onto the floor at her feet. “If I had thought it through, first, and had her give the devotion from the beginning, she would still be alive. She would have freed her mind from the dream walker before he overheard what I needed, and how much she mattered in my search for the truth.”
“But a dream walker didn’t kill her,” Merritt said.
Magda swiped the tears from her cheeks. She knew how much Merritt meant to Isidore. She knew how reluctant he had been to help the woman. Magda knew, too, that even though Merritt had taken Isidore’s sight and altered her with magic, he had come to consider her a friend.
Magda sucked back a sob. She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him.
“No, the dream walker didn’t kill her. He must have gone to his contact in the Keep, and they sent that monster to slaughter her before she could have the chance to help me.
“It’s my fault. If I hadn’t gone to her she would still be alive. Or if I’d had the presence of mind to realize how deeply the Keep has been penetrated by dream walkers and traitors, and had her take the protection of the bond right at first, she would be alive.
“It’s my fault she was murdered.”
Chapter 46
Merritt crossed the room and sat beside her. “I see now why you think you’re to blame, but it wasn’t your fault, Lady Searus. You didn’t know that a dream walker was listening to the things you told Isidore.”
Still, Magda couldn’t look him in the eye. “No, but I should have realized that it was a strong likelihood. I should have thought it through. Had I taken the precaution of having her swear loyalty to Lord Rahl first—”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
Magda finally looked up at him through her watery vision. “How can you know that?”
“The dream walkers know that you’re looking for answers, right?”
Magda swallowed past the lump in her throat. “That’s right.”
“Then if they know that much, they would know that you would sooner or later go to see the spiritist to try to find those answers. After all, with Baraccus dead, the spiritist would be the next logical place for you to go looking for answers—answers, after all, that they want as well. In fact, they were already there in her mind, secretly listening in on our other activities of the Keep’s business as they waited for you.”
“So if I had first had her swear loyalty—”
“It would have made no difference. Don’t you see? We have to assume that they already learned everything they could by covertly searching through her mind, so they were probably hiding in the hopes of hearing any new bit of information that you or anyone else might happen to divulge to Isidore. They were there to spy, to collect information. Information is the coin of war. When she agreed to swear the oath, they knew that was the end of them being able to learn any more from her, so they killed her before she could help you discover anything.”
“But had I thought to—”
“Had you thought to have her give the oath right at first, they would have killed her just the same. Talking to her first only delayed her murder for a brief time while they eavesdropped.
“They would have wanted Isidore dead for reasons beyond you. She was seeking vital answers in her work, answers about what the emperor’s wizards are up to. She was trying to discover why the enemy is harvesting the dead and what they’re doing with both the bodies and the souls of those dead. The dream walkers wouldn’t want her to help us understand what they’re doing, or why the souls of those dead aren’t with the spirits in the underworld, where they belong.”
“Then they know everything Isidore knew,” Magda said. Her gaze flicked around as if driven by her racing thoughts. “Everything Isidore knew has been compromised. They know it all.”
Merritt nodded. “It would appear so, and because of that we have even bigger trouble than we realized. Because of what Isidore knew, and what she was working on, she was already marked. By talking to her, you likely actually delayed her death. The important thing now is to find out what she knew, and therefore what the dream walkers learned by spying on her mind.”
Magda wiped a hand back across her face to dry her tears as she considered the implications. Her search for answers, for the truth, had just become even more critical.
“It sounds like you may be right that my failure to have her give the oath at first made no real difference in the outcome.”
“You aren’t to blame,” he agreed. “You could just as easily say that it’s my fault she’s dead. After all, I’m the one who gave her abilities that made her a threat to the enemy. Had I refused, she very likely would still be alive, doing nothing more dangerous than helping to advise those in mourning about the souls of their dead relatives.
“But in the end, we can’t live our lives by ‘what if’ and ‘if only.’ We can only do the best we can to the best of our ability based on what we know. That’s why the truth is so important.
“Sometimes, as in Isidore’s case, it’s our skills that bring the attention of evil. Evil abhors those with ability. Emperor Sulachan wants to destroy just about everyone with the gift in order to make everyone helpless before him. He has already made significant strides in purging the Old World of magic. He can’t afford to let it flourish here.
“In the process, he is willing to lay waste to the gift itself, strip it from mankind, all to be able to consolidate power for himself and rule through brute force. The gift—our abilities—stand in his way and mark us as targets.”
“That’s true,” Magda said. “Baraccus told me once that Sulachan would rather annihilate us than allow us to live in peace, because that would mean the risk that his people would want the same freedom to live their lives that we have.”
Merritt nodded his agreement. “People like Isidore, like you, are not going to stand aside and do nothing as he slaughters people. Isidore was fighting for us all. She was well aware that she might lose her life in this struggle. In fact, I told her as much. That didn’t stop her.
“She was a warrior in our cause. So are you, or you wouldn’t be seeking the truth at the risk to your own life. If you were any less, you would give up your search and move away to somewhere safe. Yet you stay in the Keep, right in the midst of the danger.”
“There is no safe place, or at least there soon won’t be,” Magda said. “Safety is only an illusion when evil is on the hunt. I can’t stand by and watch. I have to act.”
“We all can be only who we are, no more, no less,” Merritt said.
“That’s a beautiful sentiment.” Magda smoothed a wrinkle in the skirt of her dress lying across her knee. “Is that why you gave in to her wishes when you could have said no?”
He stared off across the room for a long moment. “It was the path she chose. People have to live their own destiny.”
That sounded very much like what Baraccus had said in his note to Magda about her following her own destiny.
Magda wasn’t sure that Merritt was right, but it was an inviting notion to believe that she wasn’t responsible for Isidore being murdered.
“Thank you, Wizard Merritt, for helping me see it another way. I can see now that there is more to finding safety than me simply having Isidore give an oath. I must admit, though, that I do feel a bit ashamed for allowing myself to feel better. It isn’t easy to absolve one’s self of guilt.”
“Lady Searus, you were not the cause of her death. Evil likes to shift guilt to the victims. Don’t you let them.”
Magda nodded as she hooked some of her hair back behind an ear. “Please, I would feel better if you would call me Magda.”
His smile added a warmth that made his face all the more agreeable. “And I am just Merritt.”
Magda returned the smile, but it quickly faded.
“I’m afraid that I must ask some questions, Merritt, that you will not like me asking, but I need answers if I’m to get at the truth.”
He leaned back a little. “Really? And what do you need to know about?”
Chapter 47
“Why have you moved away from the Keep?”
He stood and strolled to the table with the sword. “I wanted to be alone to work in peace,” he said with his back to her. “I find the Keep to be... a distracting place.”
“Really? From the quantity and quality of what I can see in this room alone, to say nothing of what Isidore told me, I’d say you are a man of great focus and intensity. I think that you must have had more reason than that.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. “Well, besides that, it isn’t safe there.”
“I see. And why not?”
“You said yourself that the dead walk the dark passages of the Keep.”
“And you knew that before I told you about Isidore, did you?”
Magda wondered why he’d really left the Keep. It didn’t make sense to her that a wizard that Baraccus thought so highly of would leave what must have been important work at the Keep, where he would have been surrounded by a wealth of resources, everything from books, to tools, to an abundance of reference items invested with magic, as well as being able to draw on older, more experienced wizards for guidance.
Besides that, if it was a matter of safety, there were places at the Keep protected by guards as well as shields. She had seen no indications that his little home had any such shields to protect him as he worked.
But even so, that was really only a side issue. She was trying to find a way to ease into her relevant questions. He seemed to sense as much. He turned around, fixed her with a serious look, and again folded his muscular arms.
“Why don’t you tell me what it is that you really want to know, Magda?”
She lifted her chin. “All right, then.” She hated repeating hurtful words, but she didn’t know how else to get at the underlying truth without airing the charges so that he could at least have the chance to give his side.
“I hear it told that you are responsible for getting a number of wizards killed—good men who were important to our war effort. I’ve also heard it said that besides those deaths being on your hands, you have abandoned the men you led and refuse to help with important work for our defense. Some even say that you’re a traitor. Is any of that true?”
He stared down at her a moment. She had thought that the gift in his eyes might take on a dangerous appearance. Oddly enough, it didn’t. His expression was a strangely unreadable mask. In a way, that was worse because it hid his inner feelings. She felt like a traitor herself for asking him to answer such inflammatory charges, but too much was at stake and the charges were too serious for her to ignore.
“As long as we’re airing what ‘people say,’” he finally said in a chillingly calm voice, “I hear it told that you and Lord Rahl put on quite the show before the council to make it appear that dream walkers are in the Keep and invading people’s minds, all so that the two of you could frighten people into swearing loyalty to Lord Rahl.”
“But you know Alric Rahl.” Magda could feel her face going red. “You know why he created the oath.”
Дата добавления: 2015-10-21; просмотров: 28 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |