The word “protect” stuck out to her. He said it with a kind of natural ease. She remembered what the men down in the lower reaches of the Keep had been working on when they were killed.
Her gaze went to the object on the table.
“Protect. Like a sword,” she said.
“Yes,” he finally admitted. “The existing references and formulas we still have led people to believe that the key must be made in the form of a sword. So, those trying to make the key try to make it in the form of a sword.
“They don’t know why, and they don’t really care. They simply try to make the key in the form of a sword as is implied in the reference material in order that it might work to unlock the power.”
“And you think,” she guessed, “that there is meaning to the prescription that the key take the form of a sword.”
“I do. That the magic is supposed to be invested in a sword implies its purpose, does it not? Besides working to unlock what it protects, I believe it was intended to have the power to prevent the wrong person from meddling with the power.”
“So, if there’s no key, and the power is that incredibly dangerous, that’s why the chests containing the power were shut away in the Temple of the Winds in the first place?”
“Very likely so,” he said. “The problem is, if anything should go wrong, the key would be the only chance to bring us all back from the brink of annihilation.”
He leaned in and lowered his voice, even though there was no one who could possibly overhear him. “You see, the key I would create isn’t simply coded to the power, it’s coded to work with the person using it. It has to be the right person, for the right reasons, or it won’t work. The magic can read not only the key, but the intentions of the one holding the key.”
Magda knew from Baraccus that dangerous magic often had multiple layers of protection. Books of magic usually had wards and safeguards to protect them. According to Isidore, Merritt made just such bindings for books of magic. He was apparently employing that principle in his design for the key to the power.
“But all of this is only theoretical, since you can’t make the key and prove your theories.”
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s true. The problem is,” he said, “there are those here in the Keep—”
“You mean the council.”
His mouth twisted as he finally gave in. “Good guess.”
She was getting tired of dancing with shadows. “Not all that difficult.”
He flashed a brief smile before turning serious again. “The council wants it done anyway. They want the key to be made.”
Magda had to take another drink of water to compose her voice. “Why? If everyone knows that the power is locked in the Temple, why would the council want the key made?”
“They’ve given me a long list of reasons, none of which make a lot of sense to me, but they’re very insistent. They wish it to be done, period. Ultimately, they don’t need to explain themselves. They wish it to be done so they command that it be done. But wishing and commanding doesn’t mean that it can be done and they won’t listen to reason.”
“I’m well aware of how inflexible the council can be.”
“They certainly are in this case.”
Magda’s mind was racing. “Which councilmen want it done?”
“All of them, but Weston and Guymer seem to be the ones forcing the issue most of the time.”
“Weston and Guymer. It would be them,” Magda murmured to herself. She looked up again. “I thought the council didn’t want you to use this same basic conjuring to create this, this person who could pull truth from lies.”
His hazel eyes again locked on her.
“The Confessor,” he said.
Chapter 50
“Confessor?” Magda asked.
“That’s right.”
She leaned forward, puzzled by the name. “Confessor?”
“Yes, that’s what I call the person I would create because with the power I would invest in them, they could make anyone—anyone—confess the truth, no matter how abhorrent the truth may be, no matter how desperately they previously may have wanted to conceal it, no matter the lies they’ve told or hidden behind. The touch of a Confessor’s power would change all that.”
“So, the council wants you to make the key, for which there would be no use, but not this Confessor for which there could possibly be great use?”
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
“To say the least.” She wondered if something more than irony was involved. “I still don’t understand why both the key and this Confessor could require the same base elements.”
“Because at their core they both serve the cause of truth.”
“How can the key serve the cause of truth? I get the Confessor, but not the key.”
“At their root, the key and the Confessor both authenticate truth. The Confessor’s power would force the subject to reveal the truth, while all of the coded alignments of the key involve proofing it against reality. Reality is truth. Therefore, both the Confessor and the key need the same formulas to initiate their ultimate function.
“In much the same way that a verification web authenticates a spell, the base elements of this new form of magic I’m trying to create gauges, or measures, matters at hand against reality. In the case of the Confessor, the subject is left unable to speak anything other than the truth.
“The key, as well, follows a verification sequence. By building in authentication routines, it prevents a person from using it, for example, if they are lying about their reason for unlocking the power.”
“Maybe the council doesn’t want you to create the Confessor because they fear the truth,” Magda said.
“You may have just arrived at the heart of it.”
“But they still want the key.”
“Right,” he said. “They want a simple key to make the power work, but I didn’t think I could trust anyone with a key to that much power, even the council, so I intended to make the more complex key. That has been a great deal harder to devise, but if I ever get the chance to finally ignite the web, it will be worth the years of extra work.
“Yet neither the one I envision nor the simple one the council wants can be created because they both would need the information that is out of reach in the Temple of the Winds. Without those formulas, I can’t make the key, or the Confessor. At least it doesn’t matter about the key because the power, like the formulas, is safely out of reach.”
Magda thought she might be sick. She gulped a drink of water. She wondered why the council would fear the truth. But more immediate questions sprang to mind as she stalled for time to think it through.
“How would this person, this Confessor, be able to force someone to speak only the truth?”
He looked uncomfortable as he searched for the words. “You have to understand, Magda, that a Confessor would be a last resort to get at the truth. For example, to get a killer to confess to murders he committed so that we would know the extent of his victims, know beyond a doubt his guilt. Or imagine if a man had snatched a child for ransom, or worse. A Confessor could pull the truth from his lies and deception.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Or a traitor could be made to give a true confession?”
“Without question or hesitation.”
Magda touched her fingers to her forehead, trying to grasp the enormity of what he was telling her.
“But how would this Confessor actually get the person to confess?”
“Basically,” he said, “the magic I would invest in them, much like the key, would contain elements of both Subtractive and Additive Magic.”
“So you would need a gifted person to create a Confessor.”
“Actually, no, not at all. The person would be the vessel into which I would place this ability, this unique form of power.”
“But if they aren’t gifted—”
“Everyone has at least a small spark of the gift. It’s part of our life force. Magic is merely a ma
tter of degree. You are said to be ungifted, but that’s not technically accurate.
“Life connects us all to magic, as illustrated through the design of the Grace. So, for a Confessor, I don’t need a gifted person, just a living one.”
Having spent a lot of time around Baraccus and a number of talented wizards, Magda was somewhat familiar with their world and what they considered to be within the working realm of possibility. She might not have fully understood what they did or how they did it, but she did have a general sense of the sphere of their capabilities. This was outside that sphere.
Her eyes widened with sudden understanding. She looked up at him. “You would alter a Grace.”
“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.