“If we let some of these accounts slip into the wrong hands and they get back to Emperor Sulachan, he will be sent off chasing shadows, so to speak.”
Merritt pinched his lower lip in thought. “You could create some fake documents about recent events, with tantalizing bits of ancient knowledge talking about the key to the power of Orden, hinting at the book as the key, and then we could plant this documentation on a dead man dressed as a courier.” Merritt leaned close. “Then we could leave the body where General Kuno’s patrols would find it.”
“And if we hide The Book of Counted Shadows,” Quinn added, “it will convince the emperor that he is on the right track. The harder it is to find, the more they will all be convinced that the book is the key.”
“Meanwhile,” Merritt said, lifting the Sword of Truth partway from its scabbard, “no one will ever suspect the true key.”
“It all should work,” Quinn said. “After all, no one knows much of anything about the power of Orden’s origin. I’ll obscure what’s known about the star shift to better hide what is known. I won’t have to worry about altering a lot of material, or contradicting a great deal of evidence of actual history, so it should be easier to create a credible diversion out of history.”
“And look here.” Merritt opened the journal he had in his hand and tapped a place on the page. “You wrote in your journal, ‘The third attempt at forging the key failed today. The wives and children of the five men who died roam the halls, wailing in inconsolable anguish. How many men will die before we succeed, or until we abandon the attempt as impossible? The goal may be worthy, but the price is becoming terrible to bear.’”
“I see what you mean. That’s the kind of thing that’s too obvious in pointing people to the sword as the key. I know,” Quinn said as he swiped a finger across the first words, making them disappear, “I’ll change this part so that it says, ‘The third attempt at forging a Sword of Truth failed today.’ How’s that sound? That way it disassociates the key from the sword and makes the sword look like a special object of its own.”
Merritt smiled. “Perfect. That adds credibility to the sword being something other than the key.”
“I’ll add some real magic to the book,” Quinn said, “so that it seems even more real. Some occult spells and spell-forms will make for a sinister book.”
“You are a devious man, Quinn,” Magda said with a grin.
Quinn arched an eyebrow. “If you think so now, wait until you see The Book of Counted Shadows.”
Chapter 101
Magda rushed into the sliph’s room. Merritt followed close behind her.
Lord Rahl, leaning back against the low wall of the well, looked up when he heard them come through the doorway, and swept his long blond hair back off his face. He looked rather disoriented and euphoric after his journey in the sliph. It had that effect on a lot of people. Magda had to admit that it had had the same effect on her. Despite that, she still didn’t like the sliph.
“I came as fast as I could.” Lord Rahl gestured to Quinn. “Quinn filled me in on everything. Sounds like quite an eventful ordeal.” He grinned at Magda. “Confessor, eh? Seems to fit.” His gaze traveled the length of her white dress and back up again. “I must say, so does that dress. Quite well, in fact.”
“Thank you,” she said, not knowing exactly what to say.
“When I first got the message, I was pretty worried that for some crazy reason you were actually going to marry that pig of a prosecutor. I should have known better. Good job, Magda. Good job. You indeed did have a reason to stay at the Keep, as you told me the last time I saw you.”
Merritt nodded his agreement. “Even though Magda uncovered the plot and brought Lothain’s treason to light, I’m afraid that we still have a lot of work to do, and a difficult war ahead of us. Did Quinn tell you about the half people as well?”
Alric Rahl sighed as he nodded. “And these walking dead people things.”
“We wanted you to know what your soldiers were facing,” Merritt said. “They’re going to be hard to fight. I haven’t worked out a method, yet, to keep them away from us. I would suggest that you do something about any places the dead are buried, like the catacombs.”
“I always worried about men with a weapon in their hand, or a gifted conjuring magic. I never thought I’d have to worry about the dead people.”
“I can assure you, it’s not a thought I like either,” Quinn said from his writing desk.
A thought tickled at the back of Magda’s mind, but she couldn’t quite bring it forward.
“Say,” Lord Rahl said, stretching his neck to look out the door to make sure no one was near. “I have to bring up something rather important. But it has to be kept a secret among just us in this room.”
It seemed to Magda like a day of secrets. “What is it?”
Lord Rahl scratched his jaw as he searched for words. “We found something, something quite important.”
“You ‘found’ it?” Merritt asked suspiciously. “Where did you ‘find’ this important something?”
Lord Rahl heaved a sigh. “It was on a man we killed. Well, actually, we killed a whole bunch of men until we finally killed this particular one. By how well he was being protected, we knew that he had to be an important person, or have something mighty important on him. It turned out to be the latter.”
“So, what was it?” Magda asked.
Lord Rahl put his hands on the short stone wall of the sliph’s well and leaned back to look up at them with blue eyes.
“It was covered in jewels.”
Merritt was still looking suspicious. “You’re telling us that you found important treasure?”
“You might say so. These jewels were covering a box.” He gave them each a meaningful look.
“A box,” Merritt repeated carefully. “What sort of box?”
Alric Rahl arched an eyebrow as he folded his arms. “A box as black as the Keeper’s heart, and containing great power, if you catch my drift.”
Magda glanced at Merritt before looking back at Lord Rahl. “And what makes you think that this box contains great power? Did you try to open it?”
He frowned indignantly. “Do you take me for a fool?”
“No,” Magda said. “But you said that it contained great power. What do you know about this box?”
He shot her a look. “Are you forgetting that Baraccus and I were good friends? He told me about how the power of Orden was contained in three inky black boxes covered in jewels. The thing is, he said that the boxes had been sent away to the Temple of the Winds.” He looked from Magda to Merritt and back again. “So if they’re in the Temple of the Winds, what is one of them doing in this world in the possession of a dead man?”
“We’d better tell him,” Merritt whispered to her.
Magda nodded as she let out a long sigh. “The boxes were stolen from the Temple of the Winds.”
“Obviously. But who took them?”
Merritt shrugged. “I’d say Sulachan’s people if I had to venture a guess.”
“What about the other two?” Magda asked.
Lord Rahl, arms still folded, sighed unhappily. “Don’t know. I only have the one. And you would have a hard time believing how many men we had to kill to get this one.”
“I can only imagine,” Merritt said. “But if it was Sulachan who had it, you had better believe that a lot more men than that are going to come to get it back.”
“No doubt,” Lord Rahl said.
“We have to hide it,” Magda said to Merritt. “Trying to protect it is too risky. It must be hidden.”
“That sounds well and good, but where?” Merritt asked. “I don’t know a place safe enough that Emperor Sulachan couldn’t get to it. After all, it was hidden—in the Temple of the Winds in the underworld—and he managed to get to it.”
“Well,” she said, “if he didn’t know where to look he—”
Magda went silent as the thought tickling at the back of her mind suddenly became clear. She blinked. She wondered if it could work. She wondered if it was even possible.
She seized Merritt’s shirtsleeve. “A gravity spell?”
Lord Rahl’s face scrunched up into a frown. “A what?”
“A gravity spell,” Merritt said, ignoring Lord Rahl, his attention focused on Magda because he realized from the look in her eyes that she was on to something important. “What about a gravity spell?”
“That little gravity spell you created and gave to me draws those little clay figures to it.”
“Right,” he said in a drawl as it started to dawn on him.
“What if you created a bigger gravity spell that would draw the dead that Sulachan’s forces have animated, and draw the half people to it as well? Naja helped create them. She knows how they function and how their spirits have been manipulated, so maybe she could give you information on the spells involved and then you could create a gravity spell specifically designed to draw them both in, right?”
“For someone born without the gift,” Merritt said with a smile, “you sure have some pretty interesting ideas of how to use it. You make a pretty good maker’s match.”
Lord Rahl was looking from one face to the other and back again. “Draw them into where?”
Merritt ran his hand back over his neck. “That’s the problem. It needs to be someplace where we could trap them. Once we draw them in, we would also have to keep them there.”
Magda snapped her fingers. “Isidore’s symbols.”
Merritt was already nodding. “We could use Isidore’s keeper spells to make a barrier to help prevent them from escaping.”
Lord Rahl still had the serious scowl. “You mean that you think you could create a spell that would draw Sulachan’s walking dead people and his half-dead people to it?” When Merritt smiled and nodded, Alric Rahl went on. “And then you would place a barrier spell to ensure that they were trapped?”
“That’s exactly right,” Merritt said. “If we could draw them in and trap them, then our forces wouldn’t ever have to fight them. I was racking my brain trying to think of weapons and ways for us to fight these things, but if we trapped them somewhere instead, we wouldn’t ever need to fight them. If we never had to fight an army of the dead and half dead, it could save the lives of untold numbers of our soldiers, to say nothing of the innocent people in places Sulachan invades.”
“All we need is a place to put them,” Magda said. “It has to be someplace remote that would provide physical barriers as well as the barrier spells, just to be sure. Maybe a blind canyon or something like that.”
Lord Rahl’s scowl was gone. His arms came unfolded as he stood. He looked suddenly intent and serious.
“The Dark Lands.”
“The Dark Lands?” Merritt asked. “What are the Dark Lands?”
“A remote and inhospitable area in D’Hara. There is a place there, to the north in the Dark Lands, surrounded by mountains. There is only one way in and out. All around are impassable mountains. If you could draw them in with this spell of yours, you might be able to trap them in there. No one goes to that remote area in the Dark Lands. It’s a dangerous place. Everyone already considers it demon ground.”
“That’s perfect,” Magda said. She turned to Merritt. “As soon as you can come up with a gravity spell that works on Sulachan’s dead and his half people, we can go there, set the spell, and draw them in.”
“The barrier spells that I could make from what Isidore came up with wouldn’t weaken for thousands of years.
“And,” Merritt added with a smile as he leaned toward her with a sparkle in his eyes, “we could leave the box of Orden there as well. Then it, too, would be trapped there. After all, who is going to go on demon ground filled with the walking dead and with half people who want to rip you open and eat you alive?”
Magda put a hand to her chest and heaved a big sigh of relief. “We’ve just solved two problems with the same solution. As soon as you can create the spells, we can travel to the Dark Lands and set the trap.”
“We?” He shook his head. “You’re not going. The thing about a gravity spell is that it’s distance-sensitive. If you were to take those little clay figures I gave you some distance away from the gravity spell, it wouldn’t have enough power to draw them to it.
“So, I’m going to have to create this spell and then travel near the enemy forces so it has enough power to draw the dead out. When I get them all coming after me, I’ll be able to lead them to the Dark Lands and into this remote place. I’ll set the spell and as soon as they’re all drawn in, I’ll place the barrier spell to keep them in. Having them follow me in isn’t what I would prefer, but it’s the only way.
“It’s too dangerous for you to come with me.”
“Too dangerous?” Magda planted her fists on her hips. “Who is it that saved your hide by cutting down all those soldiers and setting you free?”
Lord Rahl lifted a hand. “Ah, is this a story I ought to know about? You cutting men down? What are you talking about?”
Merritt waved a hand irritably. “She had the sword.”
“Ah, she had a sword. That explains it.”
“Just because she killed a wizard and eight or ten of Lothain’s soldiers all by herself, now she thinks she’s qualified for such a fight.”
Lord Rahl clasped his hands as he arched an eyebrow. “Sounds to me like maybe she is.”
Merritt’s mouth twisted, and then he gave in to a smile. “I suppose it does. It will take a little while to create the spells, but once they’re ready, we can set the trap.”
He smiled at Magda in a special, very private way. It made her grin.
Chapter 102
“I’ve found him,” Naja said. Her voice sounded like it was coming from that far-distant world. She squeezed Magda’s hand. “I’ve found him.”
Magda swallowed. “Are you sure it’s him?”
Naja, her eyes closed, slowly nodded. “I’ve found him. It’s beautiful. His spirit is beautiful. I knew it would be.”
A tear rolled down Magda’s cheek. “Can we... talk to him?”
Naja’s smooth brow twitched slightly. “In a way. Like I told you before, if he permits it, in a way.”
They were alone, the two of them. And yet, in a manner of speaking, they were among a whole underworld of spirits.
The room was dark except near them where it was lit by a dozen candles set all around them on the floor. It was the dead of the night and dead quiet. There was no light to leak in around the shutters. Magda and Naja were alone in the storage room of the First Wizard’s apartment. It seemed the fitting place because Baraccus had spent so much time at his workbench there.
Both Naja and Magda sat cross-legged on a plush, round carpet set before Baraccus’s workbench lined with candles. Beyond the candlelight, the rest of the room might as well have been the void of the underworld itself.
Magda wondered briefly if perhaps it was.
She hadn’t told Merritt what she was going to try to do. She didn’t know what he would think of the idea. She supposed that he would support whatever she wanted to do, but she didn’t want to worry him. He was always incredibly respectful of Baraccus as her husband, and Magda’s feelings about him.
But Baraccus was gone.
Magda was alone, now. She had people who cared about her, but she felt alone without Baraccus. It was a terrible feeling to miss him, and at the same time realize that he was gone and that he never could be in her life again. She didn’t know how to find peace.
She thought that maybe if she knew why he had killed himself, that would help.
Merritt understood. As much as it stood unspoken between them, he understood. She wasn’t sure that she did. Merritt, though, gave her respectful distance because of Baraccus.
In a way, she wished he wouldn’t. But she didn’t know how to get beyond what was lost.
It wasn’t fair to Merritt, of course, but she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t help her feelings.
She felt like one of the spirits of the half people, lost between worlds, not knowing where she belonged.
Naja had understood. She’d said that it was a common problem. Letting go, she’d said, was often hard. She said that people came to her because they had difficulty letting go. Naja seemed to understand Magda’s conflicting emotions better than Magda did, and offered to help with a spirit reading so that her heart could find peace.
Shadow meowed softly as she materialized out of the darkness to rub against Naja’s side. After letting her tail drag across the spirit woman, the cat carefully stepped into Magda’s lap and curled up in a ball, where she promptly started her soft, steady purring.
The black cat seemed at peace among spirits.
“Can you ask him if he is at peace?”
Eyes still closed, Naja smiled. “I don’t need to ask him that. I can feel that he is.”
“He is? How is that possible? I mean, he’s gone, he’s alone... he’s without me...”
“It’s not that way for the spirits,” Naja said. “The concerns of our world, the concerns of our hearts, are not the same as the concerns of the underworld.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“As I told you before, in a way, and through me, if he will allow it. Ask.”
Magda swallowed. “Baraccus, I miss you so much.”
“He knows, Magda. He knows.”
Magda felt funny trying to talk about such deep, personal feelings through someone other than Baraccus. She knew that she had to try, though, if she wanted to ask him why he would have killed himself. This was her one chance.
“But... even though I miss you, it’s not the same anymore. You aren’t here, alive, so I can’t hold on to you in the way I want to.”
“He knows that, too, Magda,” Naja said in her gentle, soft voice.
“But I—”
“I know your heart Magda,” Naja said in a suddenly strange, distant voice.
Magda looked, trying to see, but it seemed to have grown too dark to see the spiritist’s lips moving. Shadows seemed to move in the blackness around them.
“I know your loyalty to me,” the strange voice said. “But who I was, who you loved, no longer exists. I have passed on. In your world, only my memory can exist. Your loyalty to me because of that memory is a part of life, but it can become disloyalty to yourself if you hold it so closely that it crowds out the rest of life.”
“Why did you leave me,” she asked in a halting voice as a tear rolled down her cheek. “I thought you loved me more than anything. Why would you leave me all alone?”
The candles hissed for a time as she waited, not knowing if he would answer. Finally, the strange voice returned.
“I had to do as I did because I love the world of life.”
Magda sucked back a sob. “Please, Baraccus, I don’t understand.”
“There are others who can do what I could do. There are others who can fight in the ways that I could fight. There are others who can serve our cause as I served it. In that way, as remarkable as you may have believed me to be, I wasn’t. I was not essential.
“But you are unique, my rare flower. There has never been anyone exactly like you before, and there can never be anyone exactly like you again. We are each that way. Because of the exact way you are, there are no others who could have done the things you have done, when you did them, in the way you did them. There are no others who have had the particular experiences you’ve had that led you to the choices you made. What you did, and what you have become, no other could have done in your place.
“You were, and you continue to be, on a unique path.
“There were so many paths that would have taken the world into eternal darkness, but there was only one to take it safely through this perilous time. You took the world on that path when it was needed.
“Had I lived, you would not have made the choices that took you down that path.
“At the Temple of the Winds I saw the future. Not merely one future, but many futures. I saw the future as it would be had I returned and lived. I saw the future without you. I saw the future in a thousand different ways, and then another thousand, and then another. I saw all the layers of possibilities and variation, all the choices, all branches and forks in prophecy.
“But I saw one future above all others that gave the world of life the best chance in the face of the approaching dark age. In that future I saw that if I let you go on to walk your own path, you would be what was needed.
“If I had lived, you would have been at my side. You would have had no reason to do more, to be more. The forks in prophecy would not have presented themselves in the same way. Doorways would have remained closed. Without you seeking out truth as you have done, our cause would have been lost because you would have never become a Confessor.
“There is so much more that I saw when I was there that brought me to my choice. Lothain lied. He did get into the Temple. He lied to hide his treason. Once in the Temple, he reinforced the damage done by his traitors on the Temple team, altered important things there, and damaged important elements flowing toward the world of life.
“Lothain choked off the gift from the world of life so that fewer and fewer will be born gifted, and since the Temple is in the world of the dead, he was especially successful at choking off Subtractive Magic. That was why the moon turned red. It turned red in warning because of the damage caused by Lothain.”
Magda was not merely astonished to hear this, she was horrified. “You mean Lothain managed to break the Grace and end magic in this world?”
“Not entirely,” Naja answered in the strange voice. “He tried, and while he did not succeed completely, he managed to do vast damage. He has doomed the world to begin down the path that Emperor Sulachan envisions, the path toward a world without magic. While he set the world on that path, I was at least able to keep it from being a certainty.
“That was my greatest purpose, what I could do that no other would have been able to do. But I was only able to do so much. I was able to get enough of the gift to flow along the lines of the Grace to ensure that, even as the gift in mankind dwindles, one day a pebble in the pond will be born with what is required to complete the restoration of the world of life, if he, too, makes the right choices at the right times.
“You remember the book I brought back and the mission I sent you on upon my return?”
Magda nodded. “Yes, you asked me to take the book, through the sliph, to your secret, private library. When I was gone, you killed yourself. How could I forget such a thing?”
“That journey you undertook was a portion of the part I was able to play in setting the future on a course that gives the world of life a chance in that future that you have now made possible because you took your path. Had you not undertaken that task for me, the world would have been doomed. Now, if the right choices are made by the right people for the right reasons at the right time, then mankind still has a chance to escape the fate that Sulachan and Lothain tried to impose.
“But until those others can be born, I had to let you save what we have. I could see that the only part I could play if I lived would be to keep you from blossoming. I saw that I had to die in order for you to undertake the journey you took to search for answers, fight the dream walkers, take up the oath, seek me in the underworld through a spiritist so that you could discover that the dead down in the catacombs were serving evil, then choose to find Merritt, help him find what he needed to create the key, and in the end come to understand why you would choose on your own to be altered to become a Confessor who was able to unmask the corruption in a way that all could see it.
“Had I lived, none of that would have happened. I had to let you take the path that would save the world for now. That allows you and others to live to fight another day.
“My death gave you the drive to find out why I sacrificed my life, which in turn opened your own truth. In that search for truth, you would expose what I could not, in a way I could not, to accomplish what I could not.
“You think of me as a great man, Magda. In your eyes I may be, but I was just a man. I had faults, I had weaknesses, I had limits. I couldn’t do everything. But I like to think I had a noble mind, and with that reasoning mind what I saw when I was at the Temple was that what needed to be done, I could not do.
“But I also saw that you could.
“Merritt is similar to you in that he has a unique chance. There is no one else who has the knowledge, creativity, and skills that he has. No other ever envisioned what he first envisioned. No other ever would have. Only Merritt could have envisioned and created the Sword of Truth, and only Merritt could have envisioned and created a Confessor.
“The world needed you to be there to be that Confessor at that moment, and in moments to come.
“I know, Magda, your heart, and your loyalty to your love for me. But don’t let that be the end of your ability to love. That love wouldn’t harm me, or diminish me, or change what we had. It can only add to you and who you are. You need to embrace the reality of what is, not what was.
“What you and Merritt have is different from what you and I had. It can be more.
“You share more with Merritt than I could ever share with you. You share an understanding, a partnership of souls, in a way that you and I never could. You share the Sword of Truth with him, and you share the new beginning of becoming a Confessor with him. You have been reborn into that new life. Merritt made that possible.
“You did not see what I saw when Merritt pushed that sword through your heart. He did that not because he wanted to make you a Confessor, but because you wanted it. It was the choice you made. It was killing him inside, but he did it anyway.
“It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, and though it was killing him, though it was breaking his own heart, he did it because you wanted it. He wanted to give you what you wanted, no matter how much it hurt him.”
Magda swallowed back her sobs. She tried to bring her voice forth, but she couldn’t form words.
“Don’t let what we had limit the even greater experience you can have with Merritt. Don’t let a misguided loyalty to me limit your heart and what you can have in greater abundance for yourself.
“To love another, you must first love yourself. Love yourself, Magda, so that you can love him. Love yourself enough to let your memories of me ease away from closing your heart.
“Love yourself enough to know that you deserve happiness.
“Know that I have nothing but love for Merritt, as I have for you. You have walked the path that has taken you to the possibility of something wonderful. Don’t lose sight of that path because you are looking back at a memory of me.
“I am no more. Let me go, Magda. I am at peace now, let me go deeper beyond the veil.”
Tears ran down Magda’s face as she sobbed.
“Thank you, Baraccus. You’ve given me so much. Thank you for my life. I won’t waste it, I swear.”
“I know you won’t, Magda. I know you won’t.”
Chapter 103
Magda stood in the center of the dais, before the half circle of the council’s desk, before the council, in her white Confessor’s dress. There were only three councilmen there, Sadler, Clay, and Hambrook, but they would soon add to those numbers so that they could do their work.
The center chair sat empty.
That center chair was hers, now.
She presided over the council, now.
She balanced the council, now, with a Confessor’s voice.
Behind her, in the great council chambers, there were a limited number of people. It was not a council session opened to the general public. It was invited guests only.
General Grundwall was there, much chagrined that he had ever expressed faith in Lothain to her just because he thought that Magda had agreed to marry him. He had apologized countless times. Magda had to finally order him to never apologize to her about that again.
Tilly was there as well, healed, in good health, and in good cheer. She beamed with pride at seeing Magda in her white Confessor’s dress, at seeing Magda having the important place at the Keep that Tilly always thought she should have.
Quinn, likewise all smiles, was there as well, as was Naja. Magda missed Baraccus and Isidore and all those like them who were no longer with them and were now with the good spirits, but she was thankful for the friends they did have with them.
Merritt stood beside her, looking as handsome as she had ever seen him look. The Sword of Truth, in its ornately worked gold and silver scabbard, gleamed against his dark outfit. Since she was to his left, she could see the word Truth standing out in gold letters on the hilt.
Councilman Sadler beamed with pride as he addressed them.
“Magda, Merritt, we at the Keep all owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude.”
Magda’s hand found Merritt’s.
“Now,” he said, “we must call upon you both to help the people not only of the Keep, but of the Midlands, D’Hara, and in fact all of the New World to stand against the threats we face.
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