He looked to have calmed down considerably. “I have to admit, you have that much of it right.”
“Merritt, this is the life that only I can live. I’ve always been the person trying to uncover the truth of things.
“I found you for a reason. Destiny brought me to you so that the choice could be laid before me to make. I rejected any such choice for my life until I came to know you and to understand the real nature of what such a choice means. I found you because I need to make that choice for my life. Since then I’ve come to understand that I need this mission for my life.
“I am that person, Merritt. I’ve made the choice.
“I am your Confessor.”
Merritt looked down and turned away.
After a moment he cleared his throat. “Magda, you don’t know all that is involved, all that it means. You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Then tell me, and tell me now, because we are rapidly running out of time.”
He turned to look her in the eye. “This would alter the nature of who you are. The Confessor power would become part of you, much as eyesight and hearing are part of your nature. You would be a Confessor in much the way I am a wizard.
“That means that just as any child you have would carry other traits from you, such as sight and hearing, they would also carry this trait. Any child you bear would be a Confessor. Their children would inherit the same power, and theirs, and so on. Once created, the power is part of you, it is you.”
Magda paced off a short distance, chewing a thumbnail, thinking. “It would be part of them by birth?”
“Yes. You would be deciding not only for you, but for them as well. In a way, you would be creating their destiny.”
She turned back. “No more than giving them the destiny of eyesight. I would be giving them a different kind of vision.”
“But if—”
“Merritt, if we don’t do this, I will have no chance to have any offspring because I will be dead. If I live, I will only be able to bring a child into a tortured existence of half people crafted to fit Emperor Sulachan’s deluded notions for the world of life. I may even be changed into one of those half people, giving birth to a soulless offspring. Is that better?
“Don’t you see? I’m not deciding their destiny, I am giving them the possibility of a life, a life worth living.”
Merritt squeezed his temples between the thumb and fingers of one hand. “Look, Magda, even if I wanted to do this, I can’t.”
Running out of patience, she folded her arms. “Why not?”
He took a deep breath before explaining. “The process is similar to what we did to invest power in the sword. The difference is that the sword has no life force of its own, so it needed to borrow a life force to help in its creation. You provided that with the Grace drawn in your blood.
“Creating the Confessor power is similar in purpose and in many ways in the methods involved, but there is a crucial difference. You have your own life force. You can’t be given someone else’s life force to turn you into a Confessor the way we turned the sword into the key. You need to use your own.”
Magda shrugged. “All right. I can draw another Grace with my own blood.”
He was shaking his head. “Ordinarily that would be the first step. But you have already given your strength to the sword. I don’t think that you understand the true depth of what you so willingly gave over to create the sword. Right now you don’t have enough strength to be able to do it for yourself.”
“I think I do. We can try. We have to try.”
“Do you think I’m guessing about this?” Merritt stepped close and leaned toward her in an effort to make sure she grasped his point. “It’s not simply that it wouldn’t work, Magda. It’s that the attempt would kill you.”
She let out a sigh. “Are you so sure, Merritt? I’m pretty strong. You just saw me fight those men.”
“This is a different kind of strength.” He gestured in frustration. “You saw the forces involved when we created the sword. Don’t you recall how violent it was? Don’t you understand how close you came to dying? And you came close to dying when you were well and in perfect shape.
“Trying to unleash such forces on you tonight would kill you. Not maybe. Not possibly. I’m not saying that I’m worried, or fear it might harm you. I know what I’m talking about. I’m telling you without a doubt that it would kill you. You can’t hope to help us if you’re dead.”
“What if we used another person to help, like I did with the sword? What if you were the one to lend me power? Or maybe we could get Quinn. He’d help us. We can trust him.”
Merritt laid a hand on her shoulder. “Unlike the sword, the unique ability of a Confessor’s power requires that the person to become a Confessor must be the one who provides the life force. Another person cannot be a part of that. Another person cannot loan their life to you in such a way. It must be you, and you alone who gives yourself, your life force, into becoming a Confessor. The process would alter you. Another person can’t do it for you.”
Magda walked off a ways, clasping her hands.
She felt her world, everything she cared about, slipping through her fingers. All because she was too weak.
She wanted to tell Merritt that he was wrong, that she was strong enough. But she knew that he was right. She could hardly stand, hardly pull each breath. She remembered how she nearly died in the ordeal to create the sword. At the moment, she had nothing left to give of herself.
Merritt was right. She wouldn’t survive the attempt.
“Isn’t there another way?” she asked without turning back to him.
“The wizards who wanted to create the sword died trying to do it without what was required. The process to create a Confessor requires a prodigious amount of your strength. You don’t have it to give right now. You gave that strength to the sword. Just as those wizards died, you would die trying it without the required strength.”
“I see.”
Magda felt as if her heart was breaking. She’d thought it through and had it all figured out. She’d made the decision. It was already done as far as she’d been concerned. She needed only the formality of the magic to complete it.
In her mind, she’d gone over what she would do once she was a Confessor. She’d gone over it at least a hundred times. She had envisioned every detail until it was almost real.
And now it was ashes.
“I wish there was something I could do, Magda,” he said in quiet sorrow. “If there was one person in the world I could choose to invest with the power of a Confessor, it would be you, I swear.”
Magda nodded, turning away to hide her tears.
“Thank you, Merritt. I know you mean that.”
“I do.”
Not only was her world ending, the world of life was going to end. She had lost her chance. She had no way to fight Lothain and those helping him. He was too powerful.
She had given her strength over to the making of the Sword of Truth.
And now they were all going to die.
Chapter 88
Magda turned back suddenly. “Merritt, when I used the sword, I felt the power of it surging through me. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”
He nodded. “I know. I’m the one who created the thing, remember? It holds immense power, in part because of what you gave it during its creation. As long as you live, you will always share a connection with the sword. I guess you could say that as long as it exists it carries some of you.”
Magda stepped close to him. “So investing my life force into it made its creation possible.”
Merritt shrugged at the obvious connection. “That’s right.”
She watched his face lit by the moonlight. “What if we used the sword, had it loan some of that power back to me, in turn giving me the strength I need to get through the ordeal of becoming a Confessor? It’s my life force, after all. You said that it couldn’t be from someone else. Coming from the sword it wouldn’t
be.”
Merritt’s gaze searched her eyes but he didn’t answer.
“I’d just be borrowing some of my own life force,” she added.
He had that odd frown again. “I already thought of that.”
“And?”
“And it’s too dangerous. Creating a Confessor is dangerous enough in and of itself. It’s a process that has never been attempted before and very well could be lethal, and that’s if there weren’t any other complications involved. Trying to do it the way you’re suggesting is theoretically possible, but it would be an order of magnitude more perilous.”
“Are you saying you don’t have the skill, or that it’s dangerous for me.”
“My skill has nothing to do with it. It’s too dangerous for you for a variety—”
“We don’t have a choice. We have to try.”
He shook his head. “Magda, please don’t ask me to do that. You have no idea at all what you’re asking.”
She leaned toward him in the moonlight. “Merritt, I know exactly what I’m asking. I’m asking for a chance at life. Without trying, I’m going to die, you’re going to die, our people are going to die.
“You heard Naja. Those in power in the Old World seek to end the world of life. Even if their ideas are crazy, even if their plans are completely unworkable and impossible and they fail at accomplishing their ultimate aim, they are still slaughtering our people just the same. They still intend to rule the world of life one way or another. Untold thousands of innocent people will die in their attempts, and even more will die if they succeed in winning the war. If they win, at the very best, the people of the New World will be enslaved.
“And what if they really can succeed at what Sulachan wants to accomplish? What if he has the boxes of Orden and he uses them to end the world of life as we know it?
“The war is going badly. I believe it’s because the Keep is infected with spies and traitors helping the enemy. That’s what Baraccus wanted me to uncover. I now know who is at the center of it, anyway. It’s Lothain. He’s been hiding right under our noses, posing as our champion, prosecuting traitors.
“But if we kill him, his secrets die with him. If we capture him instead and he gives other names under torture, how would we ever know if they are really his accomplices? He might hold back the names of important spies, or accuse innocent people. How could we be sure? With something this important, how could we be sure that we have rooted out the entire nest of traitors and spies?
“If we don’t get all those who are helping him they will still be able to work from inside the Keep to undo our cause, still activate the dead to assassinate key people. If we kill the man at the head of it, we’ll never know who the rest are until it’s too late.
“But if I can get a confession out of Lothain, a true confession, and we can expose the extent of the subversion within our ranks, then we might have real a chance to counter it. We would have a chance to save the Keep.
“Think of what is going to happen to us and our people if we don’t stop the enemy wizards among us. They will breach the Grace. We won’t merely die. Our souls will be kept from crossing over into the underworld.
“We’ll be like those people of Isidore’s town of Grandengart. Our bodies will be used by the wizards from the Old World while our spirits are trapped between worlds. Our spirits will wander, lost, in this world. How many innocent people will be doomed to such a fate?
“So, are you trying to tell me that you think such a grim fate would somehow be better than the danger of trying, even if it means I die in the attempt? How? How is that better?
“Isn’t this the very purpose for which you developed the concept of a Confessor? Isn’t this the reason you believed so strongly in it that you argued before the council to be allowed to create a Confessor? Wasn’t it you who said that the risks were so great that we had to try?”
He stared at her from under a lowered brow without answering.
“Please, Merritt, don’t condemn me to a brief life of watching all that is good end because we lack the courage to try. Please don’t do that to me. Please don’t condemn us and our friends and our people to the horrific fate that Emperor Sulachan has chosen for us all.”
His gaze finally fell away. “Magda, you don’t know what you’re asking me to do. I just can’t.”
Tears trailed down her face. “Then it is you who has chosen our destiny, and that destiny is endless suffering, all because you are afraid of harming me. But the safety you want for me is an illusion. In trying to protect me, you are only bringing me to even greater harm.”
Gritting her teeth, she seized his shirt in her fists. “Well I’d rather die trying for life than endure the destiny you want to condemn me to. If you won’t help me then at least give me the Sword of Truth so that I can kill the bastard. Give me the sword and let me die fighting for what I believe in.”
His big hands closed around her wrists as he looked into her eyes for a long moment.
“All right,” he said at last. “All right, I’ll try. I’d rather die, too, than see you have to be a helpless witness to the end of all we hold dear. I’ll try, Magda.”
She threw her arms around him in gratitude.
After too brief a time, he pushed away, looking into her eyes again. She had never seen him looking so grim.
“Don’t be so eager to thank me. Doing it this way is nothing like the process when we created the sword. What I have to do is something very different from what I would have done to create a Confessor. We can’t do it through that process. You can’t really help me this time. You have to leave it to me to do.”
The sobering look in his eyes gave her pause. “What do you mean? What do you have to do?”
“You have to put your trust in me. No questions. You will have to put your life in my hands and let me do as I must.”
Magda swallowed back her rising sense of alarm and nodded.
“We really have no choice. We’re running out of time. Do it.”
He touched her cheek. “I wish there were another way, Magda, but if we’re to do this now, there is no other way.”
With a hand on her shoulder, Merritt gently eased her back against the trunk of the massive oak. Dark, crooked arms of branches stretched out overhead like some great monster about to embrace her in its clutches. The moon cast a cold, eerie light across the angular features of Merritt’s handsome face.
Magda heard a rustling sound and looked up to one of the great branches of the ancient oak. There, perched in a crook on the limb, a raven ruffled its feathers.
She looked into the raven’s black eyes as it sat quietly watching her. The last time she had seen a raven had been down in the maze when the dead man had been chasing her.
Merritt slowly drew the sword. The sound of the blade rang through the night, drawing her gaze back to him.
Magda wet her lips. “What are you going to do?”
“Use the Sword of Truth to help you be reborn a Confessor.”
Magda’s concern was growing by the second. “Reborn? How? What are you going to do with it?”
He almost seemed to be looking out at her from a distant world. “Do you trust me?”
She wished he wouldn’t keep asking her that. “I told you that I do.”
“Then please, Magda, don’t ask.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. Tell me what you need me to do.”
With one hand, Merritt pressed her shoulders back against the tree. “I need you to let me do what I must.”
With the sword in his other hand, he placed the tip of the blade in the center of her chest.
She could see so much more in his hazel eyes than merely the glow of his gift. His eyes were gentle, yet at the same time they were charged with fierce intensity. More than that, though, she could see wisdom, integrity, competence, and the sort of rage she’d never seen before. Some of that, she knew, was coming from the Sword of Truth. Some, though, was all his.
She had seen the hint of that rage when
she had first met him and told him that Isidore was dead. His was a temper that had the potential to be devastatingly violent, and yet at the same time he was also a man able to control it and focus it.
He was focusing it now.
Combined with the rage from the sword, such fury was frightening to behold.
Magda glanced down and saw the blade glowing white.
“Merritt . . .”
The blade turned from a white glow to an inky black that was like looking into the depths of the underworld. The air around her crackled with threads of light, both the pure white light of Additive Magic, and the sinister void of Subtractive. They wrapped her in a cocoon of magic that dimmed the world.
Magda couldn’t seem to stop herself from trembling.
“Merritt . . .”
“Are you sure about this, Magda? Are you certain?”
Behind the shadow of quiet sorrow, she could see love in his eyes.
“Yes. With all my heart and soul. Who I was, who I will be, is in your hands.”
“Tonight, Magda Searus, you are reborn a Confessor.” A tear ran down his cheek. “If I fail, may the good spirits take me, for I would not want to live in a world without you.”
She blinked in surprise at his words.
Glowing white light and inky black darkness rolled up the length of the blade in dizzying, undulating waves.
“Now you must trust me,” he said with finality.
Magda wet the roof of her mouth with her tongue. “I do, Merritt. I trust you with my life.”
And then, as he held her shoulders back against the tree, he pushed the sword straight through her heart.
Thunder without sound silently shook the world around her.
Oak leaves and pine needles rained down in the forest all around as dust rose in a rapidly expanding ring spreading away into the night.
Magda’s eyes went wide in shock at what he had just done.