The First Confessor

  “I told him that I needed to be invested with a singular ability, the ability to see what no one else could.”

  Magda arched an eyebrow. “I would imagine that by then, with him being a maker, you had his full attention.”

  “I did indeed,” Isidore confirmed. “He began to realize that I was not asking him to blind me so much as I was asking him to take my vision so that he could replace it with a new kind of sight, a better kind of sight. The kind of sight that no one had ever conceived of before.

  “I told him that in my mind, my vision had already been taken by the enemy. They had blinded me to spirits so that I could not fight against them.

  “This was about getting the vision I needed so that I could fight back.

  “I told Merritt that I needed him to create in me the ability to be able to hunt spirits in this world.”

  Chapter 36

  Magda watched Isidore silently rubbing a thumb on the side of her knee for a moment, gathering her thoughts before she went on. Magda could not imagine what it must have been like for this woman, all alone, haunted by her calling of working with the spirit world and by the spirits that were missing from it. Despite how thin and frail she looked, this was a woman of enormous determination.

  “I remember the last day I had normal sight,” Isidore finally said.

  Seeing the woman’s courage flag as her jaw trembled for just a moment, Magda placed a reassuring hand on Isidore’s back, but said nothing.

  Isidore spoke softly as she picked up the story. “After giving him the details he would need, all the things I knew as a spiritist that he would likely be unaware of, I’d let Merritt work on the problem. I had told him that it was in his hands and asked him to come to me when he was ready.

  “He worked for weeks. Not once did I go to see him. I let him create what he would in his own way.

  “Merritt hated the thought of taking my eyes, he truly did, but he understood that I wasn’t really asking to be blind. I was actually asking for something far greater than the sight we are all born with.

  “I was asking for wizard-created sight.”

  Magda stared at the candle flames wavering slowing as they burned, trying to imagine such a thing, trying to imagine what she would feel like, knowing that she was about to be changed forever by a wizard’s power. She knew from Baraccus that when a wizard changed a person in such a way, there could be no going back. Such changes could not be reversed.

  “One day a messenger delivered a note. It was from Merritt, saying that he was ready and would arrive shortly. It asked that I be ready.” Isidore took a deep breath, letting it out with a sigh. “I remember how my heart started hammering when he knocked on my door that day. My heart was pounding against my ribs and I could hear each beat whooshing in my ears. I had to stop for a moment, hold on to the back of a chair, and make myself slow my breathing before I went to the door.

  “I had made preparations for the day when he would finally arrive. I had gone over everything countless times as I waited. The waiting had been agony, but I knew that the last thing I wanted was to rush him. I needed him to get it right.

  “I remember frantically looking at everything on my way to the door, trying to take it all in, trying to remember what everything looked like. I tried to remember the shape of the pottery bowl on the table, the simple design of the chair, the grain of the wooden table.

  “It was a small place, but I had arranged the few pieces of furniture in it so that once I could no longer see I would be able to get around and find things fairly easily. I had tried to anticipate every aspect of being blind, tried to set things out that I would need to find, move things that might trip me, ready everything I could think of.

  “Still, despite my preparations, I was terrified.

  “I had several scarves laid out in a line on my small sleeping mat. I’d selected them because they were each a different color. For some reason, color seemed more important to me, more dear to me, than anything else.

  “I desperately wanted to remember color.

  “I had tied knots in the ends of each scarf, a different number of knots for each different color. One knot meant that it was a red scarf, two knots was brown, three green, and so on. I don’t really know why I thought that was so important, considering that it could make no difference if I couldn’t actually see the color, but I remember being panicked that I might forget what color looked like, what flowers looked like, what sunlight looked like, what a child’s smile looked like.

  “I guess that those scarves with the knots in the ends were my connection to all those things. They were my talisman to recall what color looked like . . . and so much more.”

  Magda felt tears running down her cheeks and dripping off her jaw. She tried to imagine eyes in the sunken hollows Isidore was left with. She must have been a beautiful woman, with big beautiful eyes looking out from a beautiful soul.

  “I plucked up those scarves on the way to the door. I held them in a death grip, as if I could somehow hold on to color itself.”

  Isidore cocked her head, as if recalling the scene. “When I opened the door, I was surprised to see that Merritt’s eyes were red. To this day, that, and not the scarf with one knot, is my memory of red.

  “He told me in a quiet voice that he had figured out how to do what it was I wanted. He asked if I was sure, if I still wanted to go through with it. In answer, I took up his hand, kissed it, and held it to my cheek for a moment as I thanked him for what he was about to do. He nodded without saying anything.

  “I was joyous for the lost souls that I hoped to be able to find. Merritt was miserable.

  “He had a roll of papers he’d brought along with him. He unfurled them on the table and I saw then that each one had some kind of drawings all over it. He arranged them just so, putting various pieces where they belonged so that together they became parts of a larger drawing. When it was all arranged, I could see that he had drawn what looked to be a complex maze with odd symbols at various places.”

  “A maze?” Magda managed to ask without the tears surfacing in her voice.

  Isidore nodded. “I asked him what he thought he was doing. I told him that drawings for a maze had nothing to do with the new kind of sight that I needed.

  “He straightened then—he is an imposing man—and asked what I thought I was going to do. Walk all over the New World looking for ghosts? Look in dark corners and under beds? He said that it wasn’t enough to be able to see such spirits as I was hunting. He said that I needed something more to help me find them.

  “He said that he had not merely thought of a way to create a new kind of sight so that I could see them, but a way that might attract them, draw them to me.

  “I was stunned. It was brilliant. I hadn’t thought it through, thought about how I would actually search, but Merritt had. He had considered the entirety of the problem and he’d come up with a way for me not only to see spirits, but to draw the dead to me.”

  Magda glanced around the circular room, imagining what was out beyond, remembering the way she had come in through the maze to find Isidore’s place.

  “You mean to say that Merritt designed this maze down here? That maze out there, that confusing place with all the dead ends, all the twists and turns, all the confusing passageways, all the hanging cloth, and the empty rooms?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t understand. How can it help you? Why the passageways to nowhere that dead-end? The hanging panels of cloth? The empty rooms? What’s the purpose?”

  “To make them feel safe,” Isidore said.

  Magda blinked in surprise. “To make the . . . spirits feel safe?”

  “That’s right. The dead ends make them feel a sense of safety, feel that others can’t sneak up on them. The cloth gives them the comforting sense of being shrouded. Did you notice that the cloth panels have protection spells either painted on them or woven into the fabric? Most of it is very faint, but spirits can see them, or maybe they are awar
e of the spells in their own way.”

  “I guess I hadn’t noticed,” Magda said.

  “Some of those spells on the hanging fabric are my own creation, born of my work as a spiritist. They’re powerful and significant.” Isidore leaned toward Magda a bit. “The dead must heed them.”

  “And the empty rooms?”

  “The rooms are refuges that give the dead a sense of place. It has to be hard for them, not knowing where they belong. The rooms are empty so that the spirits don’t feel like they are intruding into someone else’s place. You see, the whole maze is a sanctuary for the spirits who find themselves trapped in this world.

  “That day in my room, standing over the papers, Merritt said that he knew the right place to build such a sanctuary. He said that it would be down in the lower reaches of the Keep, below the crypts, where there were countless dead laid to rest. The crypts, he said, were a place of such specific energy that spirits trapped in this world would already tend to haunt that area. He said that the refuge he would build below would then draw them in to me.

  “He said, then, that he would personally oversee the construction.” Isidore swallowed. “I knew what he meant. He meant that it was time for him to first take my sight.”

  “I don’t see how you could allow a wizard to alter you in such a way,” Magda said, unable to contain her emotion any longer.

  “Sometimes, it is necessary to step beyond what you have known and to reach for something more.”

  Magda had intended not to bring her own views into the conversation—after all, what was done was done—but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m sorry, Isidore, but I can’t see how you could allow it. How could you stand to give up so much? How could you allow a wizard to alter you from the way you were born?”

  Isidore smiled then. “It’s not that way at all, Magda. You were born unable to speak a language. Without people changing you from that natural, unaltered state, you would to this day not understand the spoken word, or be able to communicate.”

  “That’s different,” Magda said. “A person is born with that potential.”

  “A person is born with the potential to change, to learn, to grow. It’s not always an easy step to take. You were changed by being taught to read and write. Reading and writing aren’t natural abilities. They were instilled in you. Aren’t you happy that people cared enough to change you so that you would be better than you were born and thus have a better life? Aren’t you better for it? Didn’t the struggle make you stronger?”

  Magda swiped back her short hair. “But Isidore, he took your sight. How could you stand to lose—”

  “No,” Isidore said, holding up a finger to cut Magda off. “It’s not that way at all. Yes, I lost something, but I gained something truly remarkable. I gained far more than I lost. Do you know that I’ve never again bothered to hold those scarves with the knots?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t need them. That memory is the past. I can see so much more now.”

  Magda frowned. “What do you mean? See what?”

  Isidore lifted an arm, slowly sweeping it around the room. “Well, I can see . . .”

  The cat hissed as she suddenly jumped to her feet and rose up onto her toes.

  Isidore’s arm halted in place.

  The cat arched her back high. Her black hair stood on end as her mouth opened wide. Her muzzle drew back, exposing her teeth as she hissed.

  Magda blinked at the cat. “Shadow . . . what’s the matter with you?”

  “You should run,” Isidore whispered.

  Magda looked up. “What?”

  “Run.”

  Chapter 37

  Magda sprang to her feet, following Isidore up. Shadow’s black fur stood out straight, making her look bigger than she really was. Her tail puffed out to twice as fat as normal. Hissing with her fangs bared, she looked ferocious.

  Isidore swept her arm out, pushing Magda behind her. “It’s too late to run. It’s in the hallway.”

  Magda thought that her own hair might stand on end along with the cat’s.

  “What’s in the hall?”

  A gust of wind swept in low along the floor and then up through the room, swirling around the wall, extinguishing all the candles. The air turned icy, as if someone had opened the door into the dead of winter.

  The cat growled in a way that Magda had never before heard a cat growl. It was a ferocious, feral sound.

  The frigid, whirling breeze died away, leaving the room to settle into murky stillness. Fortunately, the shield door on Magda’s lantern had been closed. The flame hadn’t been blown out by the strange gust of wind, so it was still providing some light. But sitting off to the side as it was, and with the shield door closed, it wasn’t much help at lighting the uncomfortably dark room.

  Magda squinted, trying her best to see in the dim light, looking for any sign of movement, something out of place, something that didn’t belong. She didn’t see anything that would have Isidore and the cat in such a state of alarm, but it was so difficult to see in the near darkness that she couldn’t be sure there wasn’t something she might be missing.

  Using an outstretched arm, Isidore began backing Magda through the room, following the curve of the circular wall. The blind woman was obviously able to tell quite well where she was in the darkness. Now it was Magda who was at the disadvantage.

  Magda pulled her knife. With her other hand she clutched Isidore’s arm so if she had to she could pull the spiritist back out of harm’s way. Even though Magda knew how to use the weapon to defend herself, with the unseen nature of the threat the knife offered less comfort than she would have hoped.

  Not seeing anything, Magda leaned close and whispered, “Maybe we should go into the back room.”

  Isidore had both arms out, crouched a bit, as if she, too, was readying herself to fight the invisible opponent.

  “No,” Isidore said. “If we go back there we’ll be even farther from the way out. We would be trapped.”

  “Trapped by what?” Magda asked, holding her knife out as she scanned the room to both sides. “I don’t see anything.”

  Isidore came to a slow, fluid stop as she crossed her lips with a finger, urging silence.

  Slowly, quietly, each step taken with care, Isidore began ushering Magda closer to the side of the room, all the while facing the entrance.

  For the first time, Magda heard something coming from the entry hall. The strange sound sent goose bumps tingling up her arms. It sounded like fingernails dragging along stone.

  The cat, facing the black maw of the entrance hall, hissed and growled even louder. Magda didn’t know if Shadow intended on making an escape or attacking whatever it was that she and Isidore had first sensed in the entry.

  With a sudden roar that made Magda gasp, a dark shape burst out of the blackness of the hall and into the room. In the dim light, Magda could see that it was a man. As Magda brought her knife up, Isidore ignited a bolt of power between her palms that lit the room in blinding flash of light.

  In that flash, Magda saw that the man didn’t look the way she had expected. The folds of skin on his face seemed dry and stretched. It was difficult to see clearly in the crackling flashes of light, so she couldn’t be sure exactly what she had seen. His scraps of clothes were dark and clung tightly, as if stuck to him.

  Isidore flicked her hands, casting the sizzling point of light toward the intruder. The cat screeched and sprang for his face.

  A dark arm caught the cat in midair and flung it aside. At the same time the bolt of power that Isidore sent flying at the man seemed to glance uselessly off the dark figure as he advanced through the room. Stone shattered where the flickering light of Isidore’s power hit the wall, sending shards flying and dust boiling up.

  Isidore didn’t waste any time. Another bolt of powerful light ignited. This time, Magda had to turn her face away from the searing heat that slammed into the advancing figure. The shimmering heat turned to white vapor as h
e pushed through it without slowing.

  “Try to get around him and run,” Isidore said.

  “I’m not leaving without you,” Magda told her as she tried to think of a way they could get past the hulking man.

  “Forget about me—I am already lost!” Isidore yelled as she pushed Magda back.

  “You’re not lost!” Magda regained her footing and seized Isidore’s arm. “We both have to get out of here!”

  “We can’t both get away.”

  “Yes we can. Hold my arm. When I cut him that will give us an opening. Stay with me.”

  “You will only have one chance,” Isidore said, ignoring Magda’s command and shaking her arm free. “When that chance comes, take it! Don’t lose your life in here, Magda. You have to get away! You are more important than I am.”

  Magda had no intention of leaving a blind woman to her fate with whoever, or whatever, was in the room with them. She grabbed Isidore’s arm again and yanked her back just in time from what the woman couldn’t see. A powerful arm swept past them both.

  Magda used the opening to duck under Isidore’s outstretched arm and to slam her knife up into the ribs just under the man’s extended arm as it swung past them. It was a solid strike. She pulled back in time to miss the elbow that cocked back, trying to get her. The arm swept around again, inches from her face. She tried to slash the arm but missed. Magda saw that the fingers were like shriveled, blackened claws.

  Isidore pushed both hands out, using all her strength to send a concentrated, focused fist of air at the center of the figure. It bent him only a little. He staggered back a half step but then kept coming forward again as Magda and Isidore kept circling away from him.

  The cat leaped out of nowhere up onto the man’s back. He twisted and threw it off. The cat hit the wall hard.

  With an angry roar and sudden, ferocious speed, the man lunged toward them. Magda snatched for the blind woman’s arm to yank her back out of the way, but she caught only air as Isidore leaned in and again tried to force a focused wall of air at the attacker.