The First Confessor (65 page)

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.

“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.