“Of course,” he said, as if it were a trivial matter.
This was one of the reasons people feared makers. They didn’t think in terms of the impossible, only in terms of how something might be done. What Merritt was describing was unconventional thinking that, to most people, bordered on madness.
“But you could change the person you turned into a Confessor back, right? I mean, if—”
“Change them back?” He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “Once I altered them, the power would become an integral part of the person, inseparable from who they become. Once altered in this way, they would forever be a Confessor. There could be no going back. Once done, it can’t be undone.”
Magda was feeling sick to her stomach. “So how would this power you would invest in a person actually work?”
“When a Confessor unleashes their power into someone, the Subtractive side of it would destroy who the person was.”
“It would kill them?”
“No, not really, not in the conventional sense.”
Magda leaned in with a frown. “What does that mean?”
“I mean, no, it wouldn’t kill them.” He gestured, seemingly reluctant to explain, but finally he did. “The way I’ve created the web, it’s narrowly targeted. Fine threads of Subtractive Magic would burn through the target person’s mind like lightning crashing through a tree, all the way down through its roots, to obliterate their identity.
“So, in that sense, who they once were would be dead. They can never regain what is eliminated with the Subtractive side of the Confessor’s power. They are alive, but who they were no longer exists. What it means to be that person is gone.”
“So what would exist for them?”
“In place of who they were, in place of what the Subtractive Magic destroys, the Additive Magic would at the same time flow in behind, filling the void to create in them total, complete, blind devotion to the Confessor. The Confessor would become the center of the person’s universe, the only thing that matters to them. The Confessor would become their identity, or the object of it, to be more precise.
“In that realm of total commitment and absolute compliance, they would feel the overpowering need for the object of their fidelity—the Confessor—to give them direction. That would be the only purpose of their life. It would be a terrifying emptiness in their existence to be without the direction of the Confessor who touched them with this power.
“The Confessor could at that point command anything and the person would be compelled to comply, no matter what the command was. If it is physically possible, they would without hesitation carry it out even at the cost of their own life. Even if it wasn’t possible, they’d still try with every fiber of their being until told by the Confessor to stop, or until they died. The only purpose to their new existence would be to do as the Confessor commanded.
“So, as you can imagine, the Confessor would have but to ask and the person would, without hesitation, confess the truth.
“They would be utterly incapable of lying. That part of them, the desire, the need, the ability to lie, would have been destroyed and forever gone. Who they were is irretrievable. When the Confessor asks for the truth, telling the truth becomes the only thing that matters to the person touched by the power.”
Magda was horrified. “How could you give that much power to anyone?”
Forearms resting on his thighs, fingers intertwined, he leaned toward her. “We give swords to soldiers, don’t we? The gifted have children who through birthright inherit deadly abilities. The men chosen to serve as soldiers are at least subjected to some degree of scrutiny. The child is gifted with powers without qualification and in fact may grow up to use those powers to cause great harm. Look at what Emperor Sulachan’s followers do with their abilities, abilities granted to them through no precondition except birth. They use their power to destroy innocent people.
“On the other hand, the person chosen to be a Confessor and invested with such power would have to be the right person, a rational person, a rare person who could be entrusted with such responsibility, as would the person entrusted to possess the key to the repositories of power. For the right person, either would be a tool. For the wrong person, either could be a weapon of evil. It is the mind behind that tool that matters.”
She was beginning to understand why the council had originally refused his request. “I heard that the attempt to create this Confessor is dangerous and that it could even be fatal. You could very possibly kill a good person in the attempt to create a Confessor out of them.”
He didn’t look in the least bit daunted by the charge. If anything, he looked resolute.
“Yes, that’s true. It’s profoundly dangerous magic we’re talking about here. I believe I can do it, but I can’t be absolutely positive it will all work the way I think it will. Such a thing has never been attempted before. Dear spirits, as far as I know, such a thing has never been envisioned before. If I don’t have every last little bit of it right, it could all go terribly wrong in a heartbeat and the person could be killed. There is that risk.”
He leaned toward her again, searching her eyes. “But what is the danger of not trying? Despite all the efforts of our forces, towns and cities everywhere are being overrun. We are losing men by the thousands in battles. Yet the horde from the South continues to pour north, coming to destroy us all.
“You yourself said that there is something going on in the Keep, that you are searching for answers, that we are all in danger, that traitors are among us and very possibly plotting our destruction. We need to find those responsible. Do you think that the death of all our people is preferable to the risk to the person chosen to become a Confessor?”
Magda searched the depths of his hazel eyes, looking for some indication that he was misguided, or deluded, or even mad. She saw none.
She glanced to the graceful women he had carved from white marble. This was not a man who did anything without fully appreciating every angle of it.
“I admit that you may have a point,” she finally said.
Magda had never liked the idea of magic altering a person. This was no different. It sounded horrific.
She changed the subject back to what she had wanted to know in the beginning.
“What about the other wizards who have died? The ones people say died because of you. You haven’t finished that part of the story.”
The impassioned animation that had been so evident in his eyes when he had been talking about the key and the Confessor extinguished like a campfire in a downpour. He looked miserable to have to return to the subject.
Magda felt bad for bringing him back to something that was so obviously painful for him.
But all their lives were at stake. She needed to be able to find the truth.
Chapter 51
“Well, the thing is, as I’ve explained and as I hope you can appreciate, without the required formulas that are locked away in the Temple of the Winds, trying to make this kind of magic function for even the simplest form of the key, much less to create a Confessor, is impossible. More than that, though, we’re talking about very dangerous things, here, things that are not to be taken lightly. Without the needed components, the attempt is guaranteed to fail and very well might be fatal.”
“I can grasp why it wouldn’t work without all the parts you say it needs, but why is even trying to make the key so risky?”
With a grim expression, Merritt lifted his fist so that she could see the signet ring he wore.
On its raised center was a Grace.
The design of the Grace was deeply engraved into the ring so that it could be used to make an impression in sealing wax. Magda remembered seeing that particular design of the Grace left in the sealing wax of documents Baraccus had received.
“Even as an ungifted person, you must be aware of the power involved in the Grace when it is used by the gifted.”
She was. The Grace represented the world of life, the world of the dead, and the way magic and Creation linked them.
The outer circle of the design represented the beginning of the infinite world of the dead. Inside that outer circle was a square, its points just touching the outer circle. Inside the square was another circle, just touching the insides of the square. The area between those two circles with the square represented the world of life. The inside circle was life’s beginning while the outer circle its end where souls crossed through the veil into the eternity of the underworld.
An eight-pointed star inside the smaller circle was the Light of Creation. Lines from that star’s points radiated out across the inner circle, the square, and across the outer circle that also symbolized the veil to the world of the dead. The lines radiating outward from the Light represented the spark of the gift that journeyed with everyone from birth, through life, and on into death.
Magda imagined that those rays, those conduits of the gift, were what enabled Isidore, the living, gifted spiritist, to be able to connect with the spirit world beyond the veil.
The gifted drew the Grace when conjuring powerful spells in order to invoke specific forces. It added elements that nothing else could, but at the same time it was a dangerous tool and had to be treated with great respect.
A Grace was properly drawn from the outside toward the center—circle, square, circle, star—and then the rays back out across those elements. Everything inward and then back out. Drawing it improperly or in an improper sequence, when it counted, could cause magic to fail or even go terribly wrong.
Drawn in blood, a Grace could invoke alchemy of consequence.
It was said that a person with enough knowledge and power could alter the Grace and thus alter elements of it.
Though a Grace was a commonly used tool of the gifted, Baraccus had often said that, despite its seeming simplicity, it was rarely mastered.
Not many people would dare to wear a Grace. That alone said something important about his abilities.
Merritt stared down at his ring, burnishing the design of the Grace with the thumb of his other hand. He seemed lost in thought.
Magda touched his wrist, making him look up.
“You were saying?”
His eyes focused again on her face. “I was saying that the spell-forms in play to create a key are dangerously unstable in such combinations without the links from the rift calculations. You need those links to make the structure rigid. Only in that way can the various parts then fuse in the proper sequence. The council wanted us to try anyway. They wanted the key completed.”
“What happens if you don’t have those elements? What happens if you try it without them?”
“Without those rift and breach connectors you can’t stabilize the verification web and hold the spell-form together. Without them, there is nothing to brace the various elements against, and those particular elements happen to involve both Additive and Subtractive Magic. As you can imagine, letting the two touch in the wrong way, much less combine, is highly reactive.
“Almost as soon as you bring the structure up in a verification web, with those opposing elements both so openly contained within the formation, and before you can begin to activate the generation process, it begins to collapse in on itself. The Additive and Subtractive components attract each other as it implodes, accelerating the reaction. Anyone nearby trying to hold it together in order to bind and fuse the components into the key would be seriously injured or killed.
“It doesn’t matter how you try to construct the web, or what different routines or sequence you use. Without all the parts needed to complete it, there is no chance that it might work. None. As far as I’m concerned, it’s insanity for anyone to think that you can put those particular Additive and the Subtractive components together in that way without the necessary bridging elements and expect them to coexist. The attempt is not merely pointless, it’s suicide.”
“Wouldn’t others realize that?”
“Some do, but when people want something bad enough they tend to fixate on the prize and ignore the dangers. The first attempt went as I had predicted and men died. Some people saw the risk as the price of the prize and wanted to be the one to prove themselves better than anyone else. They think they will gain glory being the one to make it work. Yet more men died in subsequent attempts.”
“But you do that same kind of thing,” she said. “You’re a maker. You don’t accept that something can’t be done. You figure out how to do things that are said to be impossible. So how can you fault them for wanting to make their attempts?”
“The things I do that have never been done before are different. I study the problem and rationally analyze if it is really possible. Then and only then I work on how to do it. I develop a plan based on facts, not wishes. I know each step, each element’s nature, and I know where the lines are. To an outside observer it may seem that I’m attempting impossible things, but that’s not the case.”
He gestured across the room toward a statue. “It’s like carving. Before you make a cut you know why, you know what to cut away. That’s not what they’re doing in this case. They are trying to carve, as it were, by hacking away without knowing what they’re doing. They’re substituting wishing for knowing.
“Some of the men, I know, understood the dangers involved and were worried about attempting to make this key. But the council insisted. Even in the face of deaths, they insisted that the effort to craft this sword continue. They’ve put all their hopes into wishing it to work. I refused to be a part of it.”
Magda frowned. “I don’t understand something. Is it a secret that the chests containing this power are locked away in the Temple of the Winds and no one can get to them?”
“No. Everyone involved in the attempt to make the key knows it. The chests were listed on the Temple team’s manifest.”
“Then why is the council so insistent that the key be made when they know that there is no use for it?”
Merritt lifted his hands in a gesture of frustration. “Exactly. I made the same argument. They didn’t want to hear it. Elder Cadell offered that it was a safety measure should the power ever be returned to the world of life. He said that we couldn’t wait for something to go wrong and only then find out that we are unprepared to deal with it.”
“Elder Cadell said that?”
“That’s right. The council wanted me to lead the team that was to make the key. I agree with their motive, but that doesn’t mean it can be done. When I told them that it was impossible and would only get people killed, they became angry. They questioned my loyalty to the cause of the Midlands.
“They said that if I refused to help them and anyone was killed, it would be my fault. They thought that by putting me into such a position I would have to go along, and if I went along, then I would somehow find a way to make it work.”
“They apparently have a great deal of faith in your ability as a maker,” Magda said.
Merritt could sit no longer. He went to the table again, where he leaned on his hands as he stared down at the sword lying on red velvet. As Magda watched him, waiting for him to go on, his fingers lightly tracked the length of the blade’s fuller.
“It’s as if they want us to be able to fly,” he finally said, “and so they command people to leap off a cliff, flap their arms, and fly, thinking that because they have commanded it to work, it will.
“But then when those people plummet to their death, I’m the one blamed because I’m the one who told them the truth that it wouldn’t work.”
Chapter 52
“So you refused to lead them and they went ahead with the attempt anyway,” Magda said when he had been silent for a time. “Then what happened?”
“What do you think happened? A lot of good men died for nothing, that’s what happened.”
“I see.”
She remembered all too well the man down in the lower portion of the Keep, lying sprawled on the floor dead, with a large fragment of a blade jutting from his chest.
“Do you?” He shook his head without looking back. “You say that you think Baraccus died for something worthwhile, so you at least have that consolation. These men died for nothing. What consolation is there for those they leave behind?
“Do you know what it’s like to face the widows of such men? Men whose lives were wasted? Can you imagine the grief of those women, knowing that their husbands are dead, hearing that I’m responsible, hearing that I could have prevented it had I not been ‘selfish’ and instead helped them? Can you imagine what it’s like to hear their children, children I’ve given rides on my shoulders, crying for fathers they will never see again?
“Can you imagine what it’s like to have the widows, mothers, sisters, and daughters of men who died lie at your door all night, wailing inconsolably, blaming you for the death of their loved one?”
“No, I can’t imagine it,” Magda said into the stillness.
She felt shame for being one of those who had so easily thought him guilty of the charge merely because she had heard it made. She had formed an opinion of him without ever meeting him. She felt a fool for so willingly embracing lies.
“How could I convince people in such pain that I tried to prevent such needless deaths? They wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t hear it. They believed the council’s word that had I helped it wouldn’t have happened. It’s easier for the families to blame me than to try to grasp the complexities of the issue. They can’t understand that even if I had stayed and led the effort their men would be just as dead and me along with them. Easier for them to embrace lies than the truth.”
Magda could hear children running up the street, playing a game as their barking dog bounded after them. She could only imagine the anguish of children very much like them losing a father. When they finally receded into the distance, the pall of silence again settled over the small, cluttered home.
“That’s why you moved away from the Keep,” Magda said aloud as the realization came to her.
His back still to her, he nodded. “That’s why.”
She could see how much it hurt him to be put in such an impossible situation and so unfairly blamed. She understood why Baraccus had said that he wished he could have helped Merritt.
Magda rose and crossed the room to lay a comforting hand on the back of his broad shoulder. She finally understood the depth of the compassion Isidore saw in him.
“Thank you, Merritt, for explaining it to me. I understand, now. I’m greatly relieved that what people say isn’t true, but at the same time I’m ashamed that I blindly believed that you were to blame for those deaths.”
He nodded his appreciation as he lightly touched the blade of the sword. “A lot of good people have died for nothing. I’m afraid that a lot more good men are going to die before they finally give up the attempt as impossible.”
Standing beside him as he turned toward her, she saw then for the first time a full view of the magnificent sword lying on the red velvet. The fuller ran the length of a gleaming blade that flared beneath side notches near the top. An aggressive, down-swept cross guard tapered to sharp points. The hilt was covered in tightly wound, perfectly twisted, fine silver wire.
Gold wire woven through the silver spelled out the word Truth.
The beauty of the sword nearly took her breath.
Almost involuntarily, she reached out and touched the hilt, her fingers trailing over the word Truth standing out in gold. She’d never seen such a thing done before.
Merritt watched her for a moment; then, as he lifted the sword, her fingers finally, reluctantly, came off the word Truth. He laid the blade over his forearm and offered her the hilt.
Magda couldn’t resist letting her fingers close around it. As she gripped the hilt, lifting the weapon, she could feel the raised letters of the word Truth with her fingertips on one side, and the woven wire letters of the word Truth on the other side of the hilt pressing into her palm.
She knew a thing or two about using a sword, but she was by no means expert with one, as she was with knives. This sword felt magical in her hand. Its weight and balance were extraordinary. It felt light, swift, and remarkably right.
It also stirred something deep within her, called something forth in a way that she hadn’t expected and didn’t quite understand.
The only way she could interpret it was that it felt rather like righteous anger boiling just beneath the surface of her awareness, wanting release.
“This is meant to be the key,” she whispered half to herself.
He was still watching her eyes. “Indeed it is, but as I’ve explained, I can’t complete it.”
“It all makes sense, now,” she said, still speaking to herself as much as to him. “I understand what you meant about the magic of the key serving truth and at the same time protecting the power.”
“The power needs truth to work. Truth is reality, the laws of nature. They’re inseparable. That relationship is represented by the word woven into the hilt. That makes this a sword meant to serve more than just the power. It is also meant to serve truth.”
She at last looked up into his eyes as the realization came to her.
“This is the Sword of Truth.”
A warm smile softened his expression. “That’s a good name for it. In fact, it’s perfect. I don’t know why I never thought of it myself. More than you realize, this sword serves truth on many levels and in many ways. I’ve always meant for the one who wields this sword to be a seeker of truth.
“Thank you, Magda, for the clarity.” He gestured to the sword in her hand. “From now on, it will always be known as the Sword of Truth.”
Magda lifted the blade upright, letting her eyes take in its graceful lines. Its fuller added not only lightness, which made it faster, but at the same time added strength to the blade. It was at once exquisite and deadly. Below the cross guard, the wire-wound hilt felt at home in her hand.
“Where did you ever get something this magnificent?”
His smile widened. “I made it.”
She again lifted the sword in astonishment, watching the light flare along the length of the blade.
“You made this?”
Merritt nodded. “While any would serve the purpose, this is the sword I made with the intent that it be the key. It has always been the sword I intended to invest with the power.”
“I feel... something. I can feel something stirring as I hold it.”
By his reaction, he was not at all surprised. “Like I explained before, we are all born with a spark of the gift. Though you are not gifted, as such, you still respond to magic. This sword is invested with magic. That is what you feel.”
Magda frowned. “What sort of magic?”
“In addition to preparing it to become the key, I also gave it abilities to help in its service to protect the power as well as to serve truth. Those are the elements you feel.” His smile ghosted away. “But that was before I knew that what I needed to complete it isn’t in this world any longer. I won’t let others use this sword to try to make the key because such a fruitless attempt would destroy it. At least the power is safe.”
Magda finally handed Merritt the sword. As his fist closed around the hilt, around the words Truth on either side, she closed both her hands around his, holding them tightly.
They were close as she searched his eyes.
“Answer a question for me?”
He shrugged, making no attempt to take the sword and his hand from under hers. “What do you want to know?”
“How many chests contain the power, the power that the Sword of Truth you hold is meant to protect?”
He seemed reluctant, but finally answered.
“Three.”
Magda felt a tear well up and run down her cheek.
“The three boxes of Orden.”
Something more than the gift alone shone in his eyes. “That’s what the power was called before the star shift. How is it that you know that name? The name Orden is only used in the most ancient of sources. How is it that you know it?”
How could she tell him?
How could she not?
Chapter 53
“Merritt, I have to tell you something.”
Concern creased his features. “What is it?”
Magda cleared her throat, hoping that her voice wouldn’t fail her.
“When Baraccus returned from the Temple of the Winds, returned from the underworld, I was there in the First Wizard’s enclave waiting for him. I was of course happy to see him, and he was happy to return safely to me. But he was strangely quiet. I asked him what it was that so troubled him.
“Baraccus told me that a great power, a very dangerous power, was no longer in the Temple of the Winds where it belonged. He said that it was supposed to be there, but it was gone. I asked him what he was talking about. He said that the three boxes of Orden were missing.”
Merritt’s face went ashen. “Missing?”
“He said that much was not right in the Temple of the Winds. When I asked what he meant, he just stared off and was quiet for a time. He finally told me about the boxes of Orden, and how important they were. I asked if he was certain they were gone. He said that the Temple of the Winds was a big place, but there was no doubt that the boxes were no longer there.”
“Who else has he told about the boxes being gone?”
“He said that he could tell no one but me.”
“The council doesn’t know?”
“No. I’m the only one who knows. And now you. I was waiting for the new First Wizard to be named. I had planned to tell him once he is named.”
One of her hands came off his holding the sword so that she could grasp his muscular arm to urge his gaze back to her eyes.
“But I realize now that you are the one who needs to know, Merritt. You are the one I needed to tell.”
His face still hadn’t regained its color. His gaze again drifted away to focus into distant thoughts. She couldn’t imagine what he, having worked so long to create the protective key for the boxes of Orden, must be thinking.
“Thank you, Magda, for telling me. For trusting me.”
She nodded as her other hand finally slipped away from his on the sword.
His expression abruptly turned expectant. “Did Baraccus say anything about the rift calculations for creating a seventh-level breach? Maybe he brought them back with him.”
Magda shook her head. “I’m sorry, no. He didn’t say anything at all about that.”
His momentary eagerness faded, to be replaced by suspicion. “And the council doesn’t know about this? You’re certain they don’t know?”
“Yes, I’m certain. Baraccus said that he could tell no one but me. I don’t know why, but he was clear about it. He wouldn’t have said such a thing unless he meant it.”
“It makes no sense. How could the boxes of Orden not be in the Temple of the Winds?” Merritt stared off again. “I wonder if maybe someone else could go there to retrieve the formulas. I wonder if I could try it. I don’t know how, but if I could—”
“No,” Magda said with an emphatic shake of her head. “Baraccus told me that there was much wrong at the Temple. He said that it would be thousands of years before anyone again set foot there.”
“That sounds ominous. I wonder why he said that?”
“I don’t know, but if Baraccus said it he must have known what he was talking about. That means that you or anyone else wouldn’t be able to get in.”
Merritt thought for a moment. “The Temple was supposed to be brought back to this world after the war is over and it’s safe again here.”
Magda looked up at him from under her brow. “Baraccus was a war wizard. Part of that was his ability for prophecy. Maybe he meant that it wouldn’t be safe in this world for thousands of years, and so it will have to remain banished.”
“That’s a grim thought.”
“Maybe it’s because of the other thing he said, though, that there is something seriously wrong there. Maybe it’s not because of what’s happening here in this world that it can’t return, but because of the trouble there.”
“I suppose that could be,” Merritt said, deep in thought.
“That means that those things you need are never going to be within your reach.”
Merritt’s shoulders sagged in frustration.
“That still doesn’t explain anything about what happened to the boxes of Orden. If they aren’t there, then they have to be here, in this world.”
“It would seem so,” she agreed.
“The Temple team put the boxes there, in the Temple,” he said as he reasoned it through out loud. “Lothain tried to get into the Temple to fix what the Temple team had sabotaged, but he couldn’t get in. Then, when Lothain’s attempt to enter the Temple failed, Baraccus sent some of his best men to try to get in to find out what the Temple team had done. When none of them returned, he finally went there himself. He confirmed the trouble there.”
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