The First Confessor

  Was hers not just as important? Was her own life to be so carelessly, so foolishly, thrown away? Was she not going to fight for the right to her own life as she had fought for others?

  She remembered telling Tilly that every life was precious. This was her only life and, despite her crushing agony, her life was precious to her. In her grief, she had allowed herself to be blind to that.

  As if coming out of a fog, she realized, too, that there were things going on that didn’t make sense. There had to be more to everything that had happened than she was seeing. Why had Baraccus killed himself? What had been his purpose? Who was he protecting? For what had he traded his life?

  She suddenly regretted thinking that she wanted to die, regretted being up on that wall. In fact, it now seemed to her as if she had somehow arrived at that spot in a dream.

  As much as she hurt, she wanted to live.

  But she was already moving too fast to stop, already flying out toward empty space.

  Chapter 7

  Magda’s fingers clawed frantically at the stone to each side, but it wasn’t enough to halt her momentum. She swept out through the opening in the battlement toward the terrifying drop, with a scream caught in her throat.

  Just as she lost her footing going over the brink of the stone wall, a powerful gust of wind rising up the side of the mountain caught her body, lifting some of her weight as she snatched at the wall to each side and helping her get herself back to solid footing. The push from the wind coming up the mountain had been just the help she needed to stop herself from going over the edge.

  As she started to fall back toward the Keep, her left hand came up off the wall and she wheeled that arm in the air, trying to maintain her balance. As she toppled back, she grabbed at the wall to the right side and caught a joint of stone blocks. With the help of her grip on that joint, she was able to hold on tight enough to get her balance and keep herself from falling back off the wall. Finally solidly back on her feet, she let out a deep, frightened sigh. She knew that it would be a while before her galloping heart would slow.

  Her head was suddenly more clear than it had been all day.

  She was alive. She wanted to stay alive. She suddenly had a thousand questions and wanted the answers. She clutched at the stone block for support so that she wouldn’t accidentally fall, now that she knew she didn’t want to go over the side.

  That was when her fingers felt something odd in the joint between the blocks.

  It wasn’t rough like the stone. Rather, it had a smooth edge.

  In the fading light, Magda frowned as she looked over at the joint in the massive granite blocks. There, wedged between the dark, mottled stones, was a folded piece of paper.

  She couldn’t imagine what a folded piece of paper was doing, stuck there. It made no sense. Who would put a piece of paper there in the joint at the edge of the wall? And why?

  She leaned close, narrowing her eyes, trying to see better. The paper looked to be wedged tightly in place. She could only get ahold of the very edge of it with a finger and thumb. Being careful not to tear it, she gently wiggled the folded paper from side to side to loosen it from its hiding place.

  At last she was able to work it free.

  Careful not to let a gust of wind catch it and pull it from her fingers, she stepped down off the wall onto the deserted rampart as she unfolded the paper.

  There was something written on the paper. She immediately recognized her husband’s handwriting. With trembling fingers, she held the paper close in order to read it in the last light of the dying day.

  My time has passed, Magda. Yours has not. Your destiny is not here. Your destiny is to find truth. It will be difficult, but have the courage to take up that calling.

  Look out to the rise on the valley floor below, just outside the city to the left. There, on that rise, a palace will one day be built. There is your destiny, not here.

  Know that I believe in you. Know, too, that I will always love you. You are a rare, fierce flower, Magda. Be strong now, guard your mind, and live the life that only you can live.

  Magda blinked the tears away and again silently read it to herself. In her mind, she could hear her husband’s voice speaking the words to her.

  Magda brought the paper to her lips and kissed the words written there.

  She looked up from the paper, out through the opening in the stone wall, and below saw a beautiful green rise that overlooked the city of Aydindril. For the life of her, she could not fathom what Baraccus meant about a palace, or about her destiny there.

  Baraccus was a wizard. Part of his talent was prophecy. She swallowed past the lump in her throat, wondering for a moment if what he meant was that he wanted her to go on with her life and marry another.

  She didn’t want another man. She didn’t want to marry anyone else. She had married the man she had loved.

  And now he was gone.

  She read the words yet again. There was something more to them, she knew there was. There was something more important than a simple prophecy, or even the simple message asking her to embrace life.

  Wizards existed in a complex world all their own. They rarely if ever made anything simple to understand. Baraccus was no different.

  There was a purpose to these carefully chosen words, a hidden message, she knew there was. He meant for her to know something more.

  Your destiny is to find truth. It will be difficult, but have the courage to take up that calling.

  What could he possibly mean by that? What truth? What truth was he expecting her to find? What calling did he expect her to take up?

  Her head spun with thoughts scattering in every direction. She began to imagine all sorts of things he could have meant. Maybe he meant the truth of what he had done at the Temple of the Winds. Maybe the truth of why the moon had stayed red even though he had told her that he had gotten inside.

  Maybe the truth of why he had returned from the world of the dead only to end his life.

  It seemed to her, though, that there was more to the message than any of that. There was meaning hidden with the words. There was a reason he had not made the message clear.

  Baraccus had told her in the past that foreknowledge could taint prophecy and cause dire, unintended consequences. Knowing a prophecy could alter how one behaved, so it was sometimes necessary to withhold information in order for free will to be able to let life play itself out.

  Even without understanding the meaning of the note, she knew that Baraccus was telling her as much as he could without tainting it with what more he knew.

  Magda knew that Baraccus had given her a message that involved life and death. She grasped just how important the message had been to him. From that, she knew that it was perhaps even more important to her.

  Magda gazed out again over a landscape growing more dark by the moment.

  She had to know what Baraccus had been trying to tell her with his last words. She couldn’t let his effort, his sacrifice, be in vain. She had to find out what he had really wanted her to know.

  Her life suddenly had a purpose.

  Your destiny is to find truth.

  She had to find out what he had meant by that.

  Baraccus had reached out from the world of the dead and given her a reason to live.

  He believed in her.

  She kissed his words again as she slumped to the ground and wept at all that was lost to her, at all that she had just gained. She wept with grief for her loss, and with the relief of being alive.

  Chapter 8

  Near her rooms, in a quiet corridor softly lit by reflector lamps hung at regular intervals on the dark wood panels to each side, men-at-arms blocked her way. A lot of men. They weren’t regular soldiers, nor were they the elite Home Guard. At first, from a distance, Magda had found herself worrying that they might be troops from the prosecutor’s office.

  As head prosecutor, Lothain had his own private army, men who took orders from and were loyal to him and him alone. It was a
privilege of his high office that no other in the Keep enjoyed. It was argued that to be independent and remain above outside influence, the prosecutor’s office had to have its own guard to protect the office from coercion and threats, and to enforce decrees against those who would otherwise resist.

  These men, though, were not dressed in the dark green tunics of the prosecutor’s office. These were hulking men, towering men, with bull necks, powerful shoulders, beefy arms, and massive chests. Under their leather armor they wore chain mail that was well used, scuffed, and discolored by tarnish. She could smell the oil they used to help keep rust from their mail and weapons. The whiff of slightly rancid oil mixed disagreeably with the smell of stale sweat.

  There was no mistaking that the armor these men wore was not meant for show. The weapons they carried—swords, knives, maces, and scarred battle-axes—likewise had the single-minded purpose of life and death.

  These grim-faced men were not the kind who marched on a field of review or a polished patrol.

  These were men who had looked death in the eye and grinned.

  Magda stood frozen, unable to reach the door to her rooms, not knowing quite what to do. They in turn stood silently watching her like a curiosity come into their midst, but made no attempt to advance on her.

  Before she could ask the men what they were doing there or tell them to move out of the way, another man, long locks of blond hair to his shoulders and dressed in layers of dark traveling clothes and leather, stepped out from behind the wall of men. He was just as big as the men all around him and likewise heavily armed, but he was a bit older, perhaps just entering his forties. Character creases had begun to take a permanent set.

  As he moved forward through the armored soldiers he pulled off long gauntlets and tucked them behind a broad leather weapons belt. Two men, larger even than him or the soldiers, stayed close behind him but a little off to each side. Like all the others, they, too, had blond hair. Magda saw that above their elbows the two men wore metal bands with wicked blades jutting out, weapons for brutal, close-quarters combat. Instead of mail, the two wore elaborately fitted leather armor sculpted to the contours of their prodigious muscles. On the center of their powerful chests a stylized letter “R” was engraved into the leather breastplates.

  The man with the long hair and the cutting, raptor gaze dipped his head in a quick bow.

  “Lady Searus?”

  Magda glanced to the blue eyes of the guards behind his shoulders, then back to the man who had spoken.

  “That’s right.”

  “I am Alric Rahl,” he said before she had a chance to ask.

  “From D’Hara?”

  He confirmed it with a quick nod.

  “My husband has spoken highly of you.”

  His cutting gaze remained fixed on her eyes. “Baraccus was more than merely a good man. He is the one man here at the Keep that I trusted. I am deeply grieved to hear that we’ve lost him.”

  “Not as grieved as I am.”

  His lips pressed tightly together with what looked to be heartfelt sorrow as he nodded again and then gestured to her door, off behind him.

  “Would it be possible to speak with you privately?”

  Magda glanced toward her door as the wall of men parted to provide a corridor lined with muscle and chain mail.

  Magda dipped her head. “Of course, Lord Rahl.”

  While she had never met the man before, Baraccus had spoken of him from time to time. From what she had gathered from the things Baraccus had told others, this was not a man to be trifled with. He looked the part of the stories she’d heard of him. She knew from comments made by members of the council that many didn’t think much of Alric Rahl, but Baraccus had. He had told her that, despite his audacity, he was a man to be trusted.

  As Magda made her way toward the doors to her room, the grim soldiers spread out to take up stations up and down the hall.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “Are you expecting trouble, here, in the Keep, Lord Rahl?”

  “From what I’ve seen,” he said cryptically, “the Keep is no safer than anywhere else these days.”

  Magda frowned. “And what have you seen, if I may ask?”

  “Three of my men have died since we recently arrived.”

  Magda halted and turned back to take in his grim expression. “Died? Here in the Keep? How?”

  He hooked a thumb behind his weapons belt. “One was found in a corridor, dead from over a hundred stab wounds. Another died in his sleep for no reason we could find. The third suffered a mysterious fall from a high wall.”

  Magda had almost had such a fall. She still felt strangely disoriented, as if she were only now escaping the grip of a terrifying, otherworldly nightmare, rather than simply a grief-stricken moment of weakness.

  “Perhaps the man who was stabbed had gotten into a fight with the wrong people over something?” she suggested.

  “All three can be explained away if you try hard enough,” he said, making it obvious that he didn’t buy the easy explanations.

  Magda worked to gather her composure as she started out once more, making her way past the looming, silent soldiers watching her. She didn’t like to think of the Keep as a place where danger lurked. Yet Baraccus, too, had been troubled by what he had thought to be suspicious deaths at the Keep.

  Besides that, the Keep was, after all, the place where her husband had died as well. The silent Keep had almost watched her follow him to a grisly death on the rocks below.

  She was beginning to grasp that there was more to her husband’s death than it had at first appeared. It no longer seemed a simple suicide. The note in her pocket, his last message to her, certainly made it clear enough that there was something more going on beneath the surface.

  With all the people living and working at the Keep, and with the war going on, to say nothing of the gifted working with profoundly dangerous magic in an effort to create weapons they could use to turn back the horde from the Old World, it wasn’t exactly surprising that people at the Keep would die. Lord Rahl’s three men were not the only unexplained deaths she’d heard about. But still, even healthy infants died unexpectedly from time to time.

  Such deaths didn’t prove that something evil was going on within the walls of the Keep, though she knew that there were those who believed as much. Death, though, was a part of life. There could not be life without death always shadowing it.

  Magda unlocked the heavy doors and spread them wide in invitation as she entered. The two big guards followed Lord Rahl into the room, then closed the doors and took up stations to either side, feet spread, hands clasped behind their backs.

  Magda gestured toward the two men. “I thought you said that you wanted to speak privately.”

  Alric Rahl glanced back at the men and caught her meaning. “We are speaking privately. These are my personal bodyguards.”

  “A wizard who needs muscle?”

  “Magic does not ensure safety, Lady Searus. Surely your husband must have told you as much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In a land of blind men, sight is an advantage. But when everyone can see, your eyesight offers no special benefit. Among the gifted, the ability to bend magic to your will is not a weapon that makes you exceptional, much less invincible. Magic can be countered by the magic others possess, so having the gift does not in itself make one all-powerful, or necessarily safe.”

  Alric Rahl turned and cast a hand out, bringing flame to the wicks of several lamps on nearby tables and half a dozen candles in an iron stand. “Not to say that it doesn’t have its uses.”

  With the added light to aid him, he strolled deeper into the quiet room, scanning the collection of books in carved walnut bookcases standing against the wall to the right. He rested his palm on the silver handle of a knife at his belt as he moved down the line of shelves, pausing to gaze in at volumes behind glass doors. He squinted a bit as he read the titles.

  “What’s more,” he added as h
e finally straightened his broad shoulders, “we are all flesh and blood, and a simple knife will cut my throat the same as it would cut yours, and it takes no magic at all to do that.”

  “I see your point. Baraccus never put it in exactly those terms, but I have heard him say similar things. He once told me that the gift was coveted by those who didn’t have it because they wrongly believed that it would protect them, or that with it they could win in battle, but what they didn’t realize was that it offered only a fluid, ever-escalating form of checkmate. I guess I never realized his full meaning until I heard you explain it.”

  Alric Rahl nodded, still looking at the books. “That is the whole issue in a nutshell: the balance of power. Even as we speak, wizards of great skill here and in the Old World work to come up with new forms of magic that will offer an advantage in the war. Both sides seek ever more deadly weapons crafted by the gift, hoping to find one that will have no counter from the other side.

  “If we succeed, we will turn the tide of war and survive. If they succeed, we will be enslaved if not annihilated.”

  A vague sense of apprehension settling into her, Magda gazed off at her empty quarters. “Being the wife of the First Wizard, I have often heard such worries.”

  Finished perusing the books, Lord Rahl returned to stand before her.

  “That’s why I’m here. That balance of power has shifted. We now stand at the brink of annihilation.”

  Chapter 9

  “That is frightening news.” Disheartened, Magda slowly shook her head. “But I’m afraid that there’s not much I can do to help you. I’m not gifted.”

  Alric Rahl paced off a few strides, seeming to consider how to proceed. “Baraccus and I were working on something together,” he finally said. “I’ve been dealing with my part of it while he was working on a separate issue. I need to know if he was able to accomplish his objective, but I didn’t get here in time to speak with him.” He turned back. “Absent Baraccus, I’m hoping you can help me with what needs to be done, now.”