“How is that possible?” Magda asked. “How can they be dead, but not dead?”
Isidore showed the slightest hint of a smile. “That is the question that has led me to be down here, among the husks of the dead.”
The smile melted away, as if she were again lost in the vision of the memory.
“I saw tormented spirits, evil itself, lost in the black sorrow of eternal darkness. I dared not let my attention linger too long on such entities, lest they pull me into everlasting night with them and tear my soul apart.
“I saw the glory of the good spirits. I saw them at peace in gentle light. I didn’t want to disturb them, but I had to find the people who were missing. I had to ask them to help me, to tell me what they knew.
“One turned toward me, then, and I saw that it was Sophia’s spirit looking back at me through the soft golden glow. She said that I had already learned the truth. She said that there was nothing more to learn there.”
Magda’s brow drew together. “Sophia’s spirit? How could Sophia’s spirit turn and speak to you in the world of the dead?”
Isidore licked her lips. “Because she was dead.”
“What?”
Isidore cleared her throat. “It was her final journey to the spirit world. I knew then that she would not be returning back through the veil with me. She had given me the answer, and it was as simple as could be.”
Magda was shaken to realize that Sophia, a woman she didn’t know except through Isidore’s story, had died on the quest.
“What do you mean, the answer was as simple as could be?”
Isidore gently laid her hand on Magda’s arm. “It wasn’t complicated at all. I had learned it the very first thing. They weren’t there. The spirits of those people weren’t in the underworld. That was the simple truth.”
“If the simple truth is that they aren’t there, in the underworld, then that would have to mean that their spirits are still here, in this world, that they haven’t yet crossed over.”
Isidore’s only answer was a hint of a smile.
Chapter 32
Magda couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Is that what you’re saying? That the spirits of all those people are still here in this world? I mean, if they really aren’t there in the world of the dead, then they could only be here, still in this world, still with us.” She caught herself glancing around the room, half expecting to see spirits hovering around her. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Isidore pressed her lips together for a moment, but then finally answered. “I’m afraid so. The truth is, though those people died, their spirits, their souls, have not yet been able to cross over to where they belong.”
Magda didn’t know how that was even possible, or if it really was possible. It occurred to her that maybe they had crossed over to where they belonged, but then they had somehow been pulled back.
But why?
She wiped a weary hand across her face. She feared to imagine the reasons for such a thing. She couldn’t begin to imagine the implications, the consequences. Her mind spun with a confusing tangle of thoughts. Isidore went on without Magda needing to prompt her.
“Sophia’s spirit swept in closer, then. Her arms spread open like a falcon swooping in to stop right before me. Even though I knew Sophia, I was terrified and felt as if I were frozen in place, unable to move. The spirit’s eyes—Sophia’s eyes—blazed with the same light that enveloped her.
“She stared out at me from the underworld and said, ‘You have the truth you came to find.’ I didn’t know what to do. As if to answer, her spirit came closer yet, right up to my face, and said, ‘Find them!’
“In that terrible instant, I had the answer I had come to find, the answer to everything I needed to know. I knew, then, what I had to do.
“I returned, having learned the truth I had journeyed to find. I returned a spiritist, but I returned without the spirit of the woman who had taught me. I returned in her place, taking her place.
“Sophia lay dead beside me in the center of the Grace, her hand clutching the blindfold she had used when she had taught me to be a spiritist.”
Magda could tell how much Isidore had come to like Sophia. She could see the grief etched in Isidore’s sightless face. Magda felt terrible for Isidore that the search for answers had cost Sophia’s life.
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
Isidore smiled distantly. “Yes, she ended up being a good friend in many ways. She helped me learn what it was that I needed to do to help my people.”
Magda cocked her head. “Are you saying that in making this discovery, that you thought it had become your duty to, to, what? Somehow escort missing ghosts to the world beyond?”
“I am saying that I knew then that the battle wasn’t over just because I had gone to the underworld and found part of the truth. The war that had started with the murder of the people of my town had only just begun. I realized then that I am a warrior in this struggle.”
“But you—”
“The same as you are here because you, too, have become a warrior.”
“Me?”
Isidore turned to Magda, almost as if she were able to look right into her eyes, the way Magda imagined that the spirit of Sophia had looked into Isidore’s eyes.
“You were wife to Baraccus, but since he died, you, too, have been searching for answers to troubling questions. You, too, came here, to a spiritist, because you need to learn the truth. You, too, want answers from beyond the grave, not unlike your husband had done. You do these things because you have the spirit of a warrior.
“Though you are not gifted, you have knowledge, abilities, and heart that make you a uniquely capable individual. You may think that anyone would do the things you do, such as confronting the council, but in fact they wouldn’t, they couldn’t. Only you could do the things that you have done, and you may be the only one now able to uncover the terrible truth. Make no mistake, Magda Searus, the enemy fears you, and with good reason, even if you don’t know it.”
“Fears me?”
“Yes. That is the mantle you have taken up. By coming here seeking a way to find the truth, you too have shown yourself to be a warrior. You have also shown yourself to be dangerous to them.”
Magda remembered all too well, then, how the dream walker had been there, lurking in her mind, and then had tried to kill her.
“I guess I have. I hadn’t thought of it in that way, but I guess I have. I’m not even gifted, but they for some reason don’t want me looking for the truth.”
“The journey to reveal the truth sometimes takes us to places we never expected to go,” Isidore said. “But it is vital that the right person walks that path because we are fighting against those who can enter our minds and steal our souls. Perhaps they see, somehow, that you are the right person, and so they fear you. Because they fear you, they will come after you.”
Magda couldn’t argue. From the day up on the outer Keep wall, when she decided that she wanted to live, she knew that she was seeking something essential.
Chapter 33
“So where did your journey to discover the truth take you after you returned and found Sophia dead?” Magda asked.
Isidore gently ran a hand along the silky back of the cat curled up between them. “After I buried Sophia, I stayed at her house for a time, making several more journeys to the spirit world. In doing so I came to realize that my battle was not there in the world of spirits, but here, in the world of the living. I knew that I had to find help where our fight is centered.”
“You came to see the council,” Magda guessed.
Isidore confirmed it with a nod. “I came to report what I had learned. I requested to speak before a session closed to the general public. I felt that my information, if spread among people who didn’t understand such things, might cause a panic. I wanted to speak only to other gifted, only to those who had some understanding of the work of a spiritist.
“I finally found myself in the counc
il chambers, standing in line in a closed session waiting my turn to speak. I had thought that such a closed session would be more private than it actually turned out to be. Even a closed session had a sizable crowd of important people. All of them, it seemed, were there with news, reports, or concerns about the war.
“A number of army officers started out with confidential reports on battles along with the details of intelligence that had been gathered. I could hear only bits and pieces, but I grasped the general nature of their reports. A number of wizards then brought forth information on what was being discovered about new weapons of magic we are up against. I could only hear bits of that as well, but what I could hear was frightening enough. Other gifted had proposals that needed approval, mostly for weapons of our own.
“Some of the officers and wizards, as they reported on enemy activity, leaned in and spoke in low voices as council members gathered in close, listening in stony silence to what I couldn’t hear at all. I didn’t have to hear what they were saying, though. I could read the worry on the faces of the council, worry that the war was not going well.
“After the war reports, an old wizard not far ahead of me in line limped up when it was his turn and spoke at length on the need to create another sliph so that we could quickly get information from place to place out ahead of the enemy.”
Magda recoiled at the very idea of them creating another. She was not at all fond of the sliph. As far as she was concerned the one they had was one too many. She forced her mind back to listening to Isidore’s story.
“The council elder was respectful, but told the man that it had been a great deal of effort to create the sliph, and it had ended up causing trouble that no one had anticipated. The wizard started to argue his case but the council elder cut him off, saying that when the war started, the enemy had found their way into the Keep through the sliph.”
Magda clearly recalled the ensuing carnage. Baraccus had ordered that one of the gifted guard the sliph at all times to prevent anyone from again slipping in to attack them.
She knew one of the wizards, Quinn, who was assigned the lonely task of standing watch over the sliph. He had grown up with Magda in Aydindril. It was a grim duty guarding the sliph, but Quinn didn’t seem to mind. He said it gave him time to write in his journals. He was fond of recording details about events at the Keep, information about people he knew, and his thoughts on the state of political intrigue. Magda had asked if she could one day read his journals. He promised that she could, but said she would likely be bored.
“The old wizard hadn’t known about this breach and fell to stunned silence,” Isidore said. “They thanked him but denied the request. They told him to instead create some additional journey books to help with his communications problems.
“As the old wizard bowed and departed, the next man in line right ahead of me impatiently stepped up. He was a tall, broad-shouldered wizard not much older than me. He wore a beautiful sword—a rare thing for a wizard to do. That’s why I noticed it. Nor did he wear the more common robes that most wizards wear.
“Since I was next in line behind him, I was able to hear the entire conversation. The faces of the council turned sour at the sight of the young man. One of the councilmen asked, ‘What is it this time, Merritt?’”
Magda remembered the name. The wizards that Tilly and she had encountered in the dark passageways earlier that day had told them that Merritt had just gotten some more men killed. They had been quite angry about Merritt’s refusal to help.
“Merritt told the council that he was now confident that his method to create a person who could elicit truth was achievable.” Isidore tilted her head toward Magda. “That caught my attention.”
It did Magda’s as well, but for a different reason. Magda had never liked the idea of altering people with magic.
“The council only listened briefly before interrupting him to say that they’d heard his proposal before and in their judgment his idea was beyond the ability of any wizard. Merritt insisted that since he had last talked with them he had studied every aspect of the process and then worked through an extensive series of verification webs to satisfy himself that he was right. He said that not only was it achievable, he believed he could do it. He told them that the purpose was critical enough that it needed to be pursued.
“They agreed about the theoretical value of the objective, but asked, if he thought it was possible, why hadn’t he done it? Why hadn’t he already succeeded in accomplishing such a thing?
“Merritt said that he would first need some arcane celestial calculations to complete the process, and then a willing subject. They asked what celestial calculations he needed. I couldn’t hear his answer, but several members of the council laughed. Another smacked a hand on the table in anger and told Merritt that he was out of his mind.
“Merritt was not cowed when they told him that the existence of such templates were only speculation. In a clear, quiet voice he told them that he knew what he was doing. He said that he had been able to learn through his research that such occulted calculations would have to exist. He said that he was sure that the formulas from before the star shift had survived. He said that at the least there had to be charts for a seventh-level breach from which he could plot his own templates.
“Merritt assured them that if he could get the rest of what he needed, he could create a weapon, a person, who could infallibly pull truth from any lie.
“All the councilmen started talking at once. The elder interrupted them and told Merritt that, based on what he had heard and what he knew, the attempt to create such a weapon would likely result in the death of the subject. He said that the enemy took such risks with lives, but we did not.
“Merritt didn’t answer. He stood with his back straight and let the other councilmen similarly denounce his ideas. By the things they were saying, I’m not sure that the council even understood Merritt’s concepts. The things he was talking about were well over my head, yet I was able to grasp sparks of his brilliance in the things he said. But I don’t know enough to judge the accuracy of Merritt’s claims. The council certainly didn’t seem to think highly of them.
“The elder asked if he was correct about the danger to the subject. Merritt was silent for a time and then quietly said that while he was confident that he could do it, he had always been honest about the lethal risks involved. But, he asked them, how many would die without his weapon. They sat back in their chairs, unable, or unwilling, to say.
“The elder finally leaned forward again and said that there was nothing they could do to help him because they didn’t know if such seventh-level rift calculations even existed, but if they did, the council didn’t possess them. Merritt then said that since the council wasn’t able to provide him with the zenith formulas he needed, he would have go to the First Wizard himself. Several councilmen laughed and said that he could try.”
Magda now knew why she had recalled the name Merritt when she had heard it back in the passages on the way to see the spiritist. She remembered Baraccus coming home after a private meeting that had unsettled him. Magda had asked what troubled him. He had stood at the window looking out at the moon for a long time before he finally said that a brilliant wizard had come to him seeking some valuable and rare rift calculations for creating a seventh-level breach. Magda hadn’t known what that meant, but there was no doubt in her mind as to the seriousness of the issue. She asked if Baraccus had given the man what he needed.
Baraccus had said, “I couldn’t give Merritt the formulas he needs. I wish I could, but all the breach calculations are locked away in the Temple of the Winds, out of reach in the underworld.”
Magda knew, in Isidore’s story, that Merritt was not destined to get what he needed by visiting the First Wizard.
“Finally,” Isidore went on, “the elder suggested to Merritt that he go back to work on lesser tasks until he could come up with something worthwhile, something not outside the realm of possibility.
“When M
erritt passed me on his way out, I could see that his jaw was set and his teeth were clenched. His fist was tightly gripped around the wire-wound hilt of his sword. I felt sorry for him because I heard something in his voice that I liked.”
Magda came out of her thoughts and glanced over at the woman. “What do you mean?”
Isidore shrugged. “I don’t know. Sincerity. Competence. I could tell that he knew what he was talking about even though the council wasn’t taking him seriously.
“And his eyes . . .”
“What about his eyes?”
Isidore shrugged self-consciously. “I don’t know. They were an unusual color for one thing—on the green side of hazel. But it was what I could see in his eyes that caught me up.
“When he looked at me, I was stopped dead by his gaze. It was like he could look right into my soul. Even though he was quietly angry at the council’s rejection of his request, there was still something gentle about his eyes. Through the anger in them, I could also see his compassion.”
Even in the soft candlelight, Magda could see that Isidore was blushing. “He made you feel safe,” she guessed.
Isidore nodded. “And I felt bad for him. I thought they were failing to recognize his true ability, his potential. I guess that because I’m a young sorceress I know what it feels like to have people not take you seriously when you really do know what you’re talking about. Sophia had taken me seriously, but few others ever did.”
“What about your meeting with the council?” Magda asked. “Did they agree to help you?”
Isidore let out a deep sigh. “When my turn came, the council sympathized with my story, but said that there was nothing they could do about the tragedy.
“I suspected that they didn’t entirely believe me. I can’t say that I blamed them. Most people, even most wizards, don’t really know much about the underworld, so the council couldn’t grasp the significance, the danger, of the things I was telling them any more than they could grasp the insights Merritt had brought them. My father would have, but these men hadn’t spent a lifetime studying the underworld the way he had.