The First Confessor (12 page)

“We have a solution and we are working on it,” Elder Cadell said in his typically calm tone of authority. “That is all that matters here.”

Shocked, Magda paused only briefly. “Do you mean to say that you’ve actually gone ahead with the plan? You began implementing it without Baraccus’s knowledge?”

“The First Wizard had his own responsibilities; this was under our jurisdiction.” Elder Cadell gestured, glossing over the question. “Once completed, the towers will not only protect us from the dream walkers, they will seal away the Old World and protect us from anything that the enemy gifted might create and send to destroy us. The towers are not a partial solution such as Lord Rahl proposes. They are a complete solution that will not only protect us from all manner of onslaughts, they will seal us off from the Old World and end the war.”

She knew that he was making a statement for public consumption. In so doing, he was only revealing the virtuous aspects of a monstrous idea.

“If it’s even possible to complete them,” she said.

“They will be completed,” a glowering Councilman Guymer said, dismissing the concern.

Magda was horrified. She looked back at Elder Cadell. “But the towers would mean the death of untold numbers of our wizards.”

“It is a price that must be paid,” he said. “It will end the war.”

Magda was incredulous. “At what cost? How many thousands of our best and brightest will you condemn to death to create your towers?”

Looking down at the desktop, Cadell scratched an eyebrow. “They will be volunteers.”

“Volunteers?”

“Yes.” The elder frowned as he looked into her eyes. “Your husband in his capacity as First Wizard did much the same thing, did he not? Didn’t he choose volunteers from among the most talented of the gifted to go to the Temple of the Winds in the underworld? When each failed to return, he sent another, and then another. Baraccus knew that he was likely sending those men to their death. The men knew it as well. It was a risk that was judged to be necessary, and a price that was paid willingly. This is no different, here. It is a sacrifice that our people, including those you often advocate for, might survive.”

Magda took a step back. “And even if the price is willingly paid by those thousands, it will take time before the towers can be completed. The dream walkers are coming. We can’t afford to wait.”

Elder Cadell’s frown began to show anger. “Do you suppose that the towers are the only solution we pursue? Do you think we are foolish old men, leaving the matter to languish while our people are in jeopardy? We have gifted who as we speak work feverishly to find a way to shield us from the dream walkers.”

“I’m not saying that you are foolish, Elder Cadell,” Magda said with a bow of her head. “But the dream walkers are here now. What if the gifted can’t create a shield? What if the dream walkers cut through the ranks of those gifted who are working on the problem in order to prevent them from coming up with a solution? We have a solution through Lord Rahl that works, and it will work immediately.”

“You claim,” Lothain said. “The question for us here remains, do you say this because you have been duped into believing it, or because you are a willing participant, a traitor plotting against the Midlands?”

The prosecutor cocked his head, as if inviting a confession.

“Plotting against . . . ?” Magda’s surprise darkened into a murderous glare. “I say it because it is the truth.”

“So you say. It remains to be determined what Baraccus may have been up to. For all we know, you, too, could be part of a conspiracy. After all, you were the wife to the First Wizard, yet you advocate surrendering our sovereignty to Alric Rahl. And no wonder, since you now tell us that Baraccus himself, a man who was supposedly our noble leader, confided in you his trust in the Lord Rahl of the D’Haran Lands over the council of the Midlands. That does not strike me as the kind of thing that would be said by a woman who has always claimed to be an advocate for those of the Midlands. It sounds to me like a woman who advocates for D’Haran interests over ours.”

The crowd broke into a drone of whispering. Magda thrust a finger toward the prosecutor.

“Your twisted accusations could very well cost uncounted thousands their lives!”

As the echo of her voice still rang around the room, the whispering behind her died out.

“You are avoiding the true issue before us,” Lothain said.

“The true issue? The true issue is that you see conspiracies lurking in every shadow, spies hiding around every corner, traitors behind every door. You care only about chasing inventions of your imagination in order to advance your own personal fame and power!”

The crowd gasped.

Magda spread her arms before him. “In your fixation on coming up with conspiracies designed to elevate your own status, you deliberately ignore the bloody truth standing before you.”

Apparently so surprised that anyone would dare to speak to him in such a tone, much less publicly accuse him of inventing conspiracy theories for personal gain, Lothain was for the moment struck speechless.

Before he could recover and say anything, Magda wheeled around to the crowd watching in rapt attention.

“The dream walkers are among us,” she said loud enough for all to hear. “These men on the council choose to be blind to the bloody truth before their eyes while the clever head prosecutor chases phantoms only he sees. If you follow the lead of the council or Lothain’s self-serving gossip about conspiracies, then you risk what I suffered. Know that without protection you very well could die in unspeakable agony.

“As well-intentioned as the council’s choice may be, you are the ones who will pay the bloody price for their mistake.”

The crowd again buzzed with anxious chatter. Some people shouted out over the racket, wanting to know what they could do. Magda held up her hands, calling for order so she could answer.

“Let the council do as they will,” she told them. “But if you wish to live, then to save your own life go to your knees, bow forward, place your forehead to the ground, and speak the following devotion to the Lord Rahl:

“
Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.

“Repeat the devotion three times to ensure that you invoke the link to Lord Rahl’s magic so that your mind will be shielded from the dream walkers.

“Do it in secret if you don’t want to have to explain to these men your reasons or if you fear reprisal. Realize that it does not make you a traitor to the Midlands to swear your allegiance to the Lord Rahl; rather it makes you loyal to your own life.

“Lord Rahl is not an enemy of the Midlands, he is a fighter for all of those in the New World. We are all one. We are all fighting for the right to live, the right to be free from bloody tyranny.

“You cannot help the Midlands if you are dead.” Magda thrust an angry fist high. “Choose to live! Swear your loyalty to Lord Rahl and you will be protected from the dream walkers!”

Magda saw the council frantically signaling for the guards to lead her from the council chambers.

Before they could come to escort her out, she lifted her chin and marched toward the doors. The crowd parted, falling back out of her way as if she were someone of power and authority.

Some whispered their thanks as she passed.

Magda kept her eyes straight ahead and her expression blank, not showing her emotions as she made her way toward the great doors.

Magda spotted the stony Lord Rahl standing just outside the great doors watching her long march out of the council chambers. His two grim bodyguards waited not far behind him. Glancing back over her shoulder as she passed the massive, mahogany doors, Magda saw the council guard who had been following after her slow to a halt when they were sure that she was indeed leaving and looked to have no intention of returning.

Far off across the rotunda Magda saw Lord Rahl’s small army standing ready to draw weapons and defend him if there was trouble. She realized that they would not be in a good mood after word of all the angry charges and accusations that had been leveled against Lord Rahl reached them. As far as the soldiers were concerned, they must believe that they were in a potentially hostile place. What’s more, three of them had already died mysterious deaths since arriving at the Keep. At a signal from Lord Rahl, though, their hands eased off their weapons.

Back inside the council chambers, despite the calls for order, things were not returning to normal. The crowd didn’t want to go on with the agenda. They wanted answers to pointed questions about the threat from dream walkers.

Magda hoped that the council would think it over and see the wisdom in using Lord Rahl’s solution to shielding people from the threat. In her experience, it was often the case that upon further reflection the council saw that her suggestions made sense. She hoped that was the case this time.

“I must apologize, Lady Searus,” Alric Rahl said with a deep bow. “I was terribly wrong.”

“Wrong about what?” Magda asked, her own temper still burning hot as she started out once again.

As he fell in beside her, he gestured back through the door to the council chambers, where a near riot was taking place. People were shouting at the council, demanding to be heard, demanding to know if it was true that danger was really that close at hand.

“I must beg your forgiveness. I was wrong and you were right.” He leaned down toward her a little and arched an eyebrow. “I can see now that having shorter hair has indeed lowered your status to that of a nobody and that you are now completely defanged.”

Magda’s fury faded in the face of his satire. She couldn’t help but to smile. “Well, the truth is the truth, no matter your status.”

He glanced back briefly toward the council chambers. “Unfortunately, I think that speaking the truth has made you some enemies.”

Magda’s smile faded. “I almost died twice this day. The second time you brought me back as I was passing through the veil into the world of the dead. I was nearly in the embrace of the good spirits. I was dead but for you pulling me back to the world of life.

“Every moment I live now is a gift. All anyone can do is return me to that place where I should rightfully be. If I am to live, then I will live free of pretense.”

“You’re wrong that you should rightfully be dead, Magda. You chose life and you lived. That is the fact of the matter. We can’t live our lives according to what might have been. We have to live by what is. You’re alive and that is what’s important.”

To Magda, though, life without Baraccus seemed dismal and empty. Despite the pain she had been in, she had thought that she was about to be with him again. Despite wanting to live, she was in a way sorry to have been snatched back.

“You lived and you have given other people the gift of also being able to choose to protect themselves so they can also live,” one of Lord Rahl’s big bodyguards said.

Alric Rahl glanced back at the man and nodded. “The choice is now their own, not the council’s.”

He turned his attention back to Magda. “But by helping people make their own choice, you have put yourself in jeopardy. Perhaps you should come with me back to the People’s Palace. You will be safer there.”

With the world at war, Magda wondered if there was such a thing as a safe place. If one place fell, then the next would come under siege until it, too, fell. Eventually, there would be no safe place left to run to. Either the New World survived together, or all of it would fall under the swords of the invaders.

Though he didn’t return the stares, people watched Alric Rahl as he passed. Their eyes betrayed their fear of the imposing figure of Lord Rahl, a man that few in the Keep had ever seen. But they would have heard the stories of him.

As they passed through the great rotunda, she noticed others, back in the shadows, a collection of worried people who glanced her way as they talked quietly among themselves. She saw the silent dread in the eyes tracking her.

In that moment, she realized that while some feared Lord Rahl, most of the others were not watching him, they were watching her as she passed by. They were looking to her for something, for answers, or salvation, or maybe simply a reason to hold out hope. They weren’t seeing her short hair. They were seeing Magda Searus, a woman covered in blood who had declared that it didn’t have to be.

Magda finally shook her head. “I grew up in Aydindril. Since I married Baraccus I’ve lived in the Keep. This is my home. We are at war and my home is under threat. I have to stay and fight for it. These are my people. I have to stay and fight for them.

“People are accustomed to doing as the council says. I don’t know if any will choose to become bonded to you and your protection, but at least I’m shielded from the dream walkers. That means I will be better able to fight for these people. Maybe I can convince others to join in accepting the same protection.

“Besides, the dream walkers are not the only threat. There are things going on that don’t make sense to me. I know that Baraccus, too, always thought that there was something wrong here at the Keep.”

“Lothain’s conspiracies?”

Magda pursed her lips as she considered. “Knowing my husband I don’t think it’s that simple. There is something terribly wrong here, something much deeper.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, the Temple team was supposed to take the most dangerous things of magic away into the Temple for safekeeping. They betrayed us, supposedly to help protect mankind from the tyranny of magic.”

“But they’ve all been caught and put to death.”

Magda was beginning to think that whole story was too simple, too neat and tidy. She was beginning to wonder if they all really were traitors.

“But how could such men turn against us? How is mankind suffering under a tyranny of magic? Dear spirits, they were wizards, creatures of magic. They weren’t tyrants.