Magda reflexively reached to pull her hair back over her shoulder, but her hair barely brushed her shoulders, now, so there was nothing to pull back. She let the hand drop.
“I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but with Baraccus lost to us I don’t know what help I can be.”
“You know people in the inner circles of power here at the Keep. You know who would listen. You can talk to the council. You could help convince them to take seriously my warnings. That would be a good start.”
“Talk to the council? The council won’t listen to me.”
“Of course they will. You’re the closest thing they have to the word of Baraccus himself.”
“The word of Baraccus?” Magda shook her head. “I am no longer the wife of the First Wizard, so I no longer have standing with the council, or anywhere else for that matter.” She held out a short strand of hair for him to see. “The men of the council are the ones who cut my hair to make that clearly evident to everyone.”
“Who cares about your hair? Baraccus may be dead, but you’re still the wife to the First Wizard. His passing does not change the fact that you knew him better than anyone, or that you were the one he trusted. He confided in you, I know he did—he told me so himself. He said that because you weren’t gifted you were often the best sounding board he had.”
“Baraccus is dead.” Magda looked away from the man’s blue eyes. “The council will soon replace him. Without Baraccus alive, I no longer have any status. That’s why they cut my hair.
“It’s an age-old custom among the people of the Midlands. The length of a woman’s hair shows the world her standing. It matters for everything here in the Midlands and especially in the Keep. This is the seat of power for the Midlands, so such issues of rank, influence, and power always matter.”
He gestured impatiently. “I know about the custom. It’s absurd. I can understand petty people paying attention to such trivialities when deciding the seating arrangement at a banquet, but beyond that it ceases to be useful. This is a serious issue. What does the length of your hair have to do with matters of life and death?”
“It has everything to do with it, here in the Midlands. I’m no longer worthy of recognition because I was not born noble and my husband, who when he was alive gave me standing, is dead. That means that I’m back to where I was before I was married to him. This isn’t by my choice, it’s just the way it is.”
Lord Rahl closed the distance back to her. “How do you think you came to be the wife of First Wizard Baraccus? Do you think that Baraccus sought out a weak, unimportant wife?”
“Well, I—”
“You became wife to First Wizard Baraccus because you were the only woman who was worthy of being his wife. Are you suggesting that Baraccus, the First Wizard, a war wizard, would want to marry a woman who was weak? He married you because you were a woman of strength.”
“That’s very flattering, Lord Rahl, but I’m afraid that it’s simply not true. I was a nobody when he met me, and with him gone I am once again a nobody.”
He looked genuinely disappointed by her words. The fire seemed to go out of his eyes. His expression sagged.
“You were his wife, so I guess you would know him better than anyone.” He shook his head with great sadness. “I admit to finding myself disillusioned to learn that Baraccus was not the man I had thought him to be, that he was instead nothing more than a rather common fool, like so many other ordinary men.”
“A common fool? What are you talking about?”
He lifted an arm and then let it drop to his side. “He had the wool pulled over my eyes all along. You’ve made me see the unpleasant truth. I always thought him intelligent and strong, but it turns out that Baraccus was simply an ordinary, weak-minded man who like so many would marry even a lowly woman of no standing and no worth simply because she batted her eyes at him.
“You apparently came along in one of his weak moments, stroked his male pride with a bit of feminine flattery, and just that easy, you had yourself a man of standing. It’s clear now that he must have been too insecure to think that a woman of standing would be interested in him, so he was willing to trade the standing you lacked in return for your affections. I guess he wasn’t the man of character I thought he was.
“I can see now that by marrying you he was hiding his lack of confidence with women. It’s clear now that he was ready to settle on the first shapely woman, no matter her standing, who swayed her becoming ass before his weak-minded gaze.”
In a blink, Magda had the point of her knife poised motionless a hairsbreadth from his throat.
“I will not stand here and listen to you insult a righteous man who is not here to defend himself,” she growled.
“Apparently, my old friend Baraccus taught his nobody wife a thing or two about using a weapon.”
“A thing or two,” she confirmed. “Tell those two that if they take another step you will be breathing through something other than that foul mouth of yours.”
She in fact knew far more than a thing or two about using weapons. Baraccus had actually used his gift to aid in teaching her a great deal about weapons. He said that as wife to the First Wizard, she would always be a target. He wanted her to be able to protect herself when he wasn’t around.
“I can’t believe that he ever considered you a friend. I think it’s high time that you were on your way back to your D’Haran Lands. I want you and your little army gone first thing in the morning. Do you understand me?”
A sly smile overcame the man at the point of her knife as he signaled the two men near the doors to stand down. Magda was surprised by his smile, but her anger kept her focused, and kept her knife where it was.
“What’s this? A nobody, a woman not born noble, a woman with short hair, a woman of no standing, who has the nerve to tell me, the Lord Rahl, what I will and will not do? What gives you the right to speak this way to the leader of D’Hara, a man who commands the army outside your room, and guards inside it? How dare you think that you can speak to me in such a manner? Where do you, a woman of no status, a nobody, get the gall to think you have such a right?”
“Such a right?” Magda raged in fury.
But then she saw the twinkle in his eye and realized what he was doing. Her fury faltered. She suddenly felt foolish. She couldn’t keep a shamed smile from overcoming her.
Magda bowed her head in a gesture of exaggerated respect.
“It would seem that the Lord Rahl is not so stupid as some on the council say.”
His grin widened. “Magda, I knew Baraccus long before you met him. I’ve fought beside the man. I knew his character. He would never be attracted to a weak woman. He never cared about the length of your hair or standing when he met you, did he?”
Magda shook her head, remembering the first time she met him. He didn’t even look at her hair. He looked into her eyes and asked her name.
“He cared about your character. He cared who you were. Baraccus was a man of power. He was only attracted to strength and temperament that could complement his. He could have had any woman he wanted—I know because many sought him out and he always turned them away. Yet he chose you. He chose you not because you were weak and common, but because you were rare, and his equal in every way that mattered.”
She smiled again, but this time in appreciation. “Thank you for the kindest words about my husband—and me—that I have ever heard.”
“They are true words, Magda. He chose you because you were worthy of him. He was lucky to have you. I’ll not have you selling my friend’s wife short.”
Her smile turned downhearted. “I don’t think I could begin to tell you how much I miss him, how lost I am without him.”
“I understand. Now, let’s put this nonsense aside; we have urgent matters that must be addressed. With Baraccus gone, you are the only one I can turn to for answers. This is a time for courage and honesty if we are to have a chance.”
Magda finally lifted her chin. “What can I do to help you, Lord Rah
l?”
Chapter 10
“You must speak to the council and let them know of the threat, make them understand how serious it is,” Alric Rahl told her. “With Baraccus dead, it’s up to us, and we’re running out of time.”
“What threat?”
A bit surprised, he cast her a suspicious look from under a lowered brow. “Surely, Baraccus must have told you about the dream walkers.”
Magda stilled. She wanted to help the man, but she didn’t like the idea of talking about anything Baraccus had told her in confidence. The two of them had always had an understanding that, because of his position, the things he discussed with her were meant to remain strictly confidential. She never spoke about such matters without her husband explicitly telling her that it was all right.
She remembered, then, the note in her pocket, the note Baraccus had left for her up on the battlement. Those were his last words to her.
Your destiny is to find truth. It will be difficult, but have the courage to take up that calling.
It seemed clear that Baraccus meant for her to act. His note didn’t ask her to keep silent, or to stay out of things. He said that she must have the courage to act.
Magda realized that with Baraccus gone she needed to trust someone. While she knew a number of the people her husband had worked with and trusted, she never heard him speak about his trust in anyone the way he spoke of his trust of Alric Rahl.
“He did,” she said at last.
“Good. Tell me what you know about them, anything Baraccus said.”
Magda took a deep breath to gather her thoughts. “Well, when enemy gifted in the Old World not long ago created dream walkers, Baraccus told me that such weapons, made out of people, could mean the end of us all. He said that there was only a small window of opportunity to act. In secret, he worked tirelessly on the problem. In the course of that work he discovered that the dream walkers were created through the use of a constructed spell.”
Lord Rahl nodded. “He told me that much of it when he traveled through the sliph to warn me about the dream walkers.”
Magda bristled at the mention of the sliph. She hated that creature made from a woman. The sliph took Baraccus away from her to travel great distances in a short time. Yet one more of the abominations created by wizards out of human beings.
Magda reminded herself not to be so harsh. Had not wizards created some of the things they did, all of them would be dead by now, or worse. There were wizards who created weapons, such as the dream walkers, to cause harm, but there were many wizards who used their ability to create things that saved a great many lives. The sliph, as much as Magda didn’t like her, was one of those things.
“Baraccus and I discussed the situation and made plans as to how we could deal with the dream walkers,” Lord Rahl said, “but I’ve not heard what happened since. I don’t know what Baraccus was able to accomplish, if anything. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here.”
“Well, because Baraccus understood what the spell did, he was able to work in reverse from there to create a close replica, even though it was not entirely functional, of what he believed the constructed spell would have had to be like. From that approximation, he was able to ignite an artificial verification web. Once he had a functioning verification web, he back-traced the spell’s unique nodes and core elements to the men who would have created the real one.”
His brow had lifted in surprise as he listened. “That’s quite remarkable. I didn’t know that such a thing was possible.”
She confirmed that it was with a nod. “I saw it one night. It was a frightening thing made of glowing lines tracing their way through midair. Baraccus ignited the web around himself in order to trace the nodes. I was terrified for him while he floated motionless inside it.”
He eyed her as if seeing her in a new light. “For one not born with the gift, you certainly have a remarkable grasp of it. I doubt that one gifted person in a hundred would even understand what you have just told me.” Lord Rahl rolled his hand impatiently. “So what did Baraccus do then?”
“He had contacts with a shadowy group. I never saw them and I don’t know who they were, but I suspected that they might have been resistance fighters from the Old World. He met with them in secret and sent them on a covert mission to the Old World.”
Lord Rahl arched an eyebrow. “Did the council know about this?”
“No one knew. The replica spell, the artificial verification web, its ignition and node traces, the meetings in the dead of the night with those men, no one knew any of it. Baraccus said that with dream walkers now a reality, it would jeopardize everything if anyone knew about any aspect of it.
“Not long ago, he came home a few hours before dawn and told me that the men he’d sent had gotten in and killed the team of gifted in the Old World who had constructed the dream-walker spell. He could share his excitement with no one but me. He was nearly in tears with relief and said that it meant that in all likelihood such a constructed magic could never again be brought to reality.”
Lord Rahl let out a great sigh of relief. “That was the confirmation I’ve been hoping to hear. I can’t imagine how he managed to pull off such a feat, but all of mankind owes Baraccus an enormous debt of gratitude.” His frown returned. “What about the constructed spell itself?”
Magda leaned in close and lowered her voice. “When he came home that night, Baraccus told me that the men had not only succeeded in killing the team that had created the dream walkers, but they had also stolen the constructed spell and brought it back with them. They gave it to Baraccus.”
Lord Rahl looked truly shocked. “No.”
“Yes,” she said with a firm nod. “Baraccus showed me the small box made of bone, its sides and lid stitched together with cords made from strips of dried human flesh. Inside was something wrapped in buckskin. He held it out and laid back the folds of buckskin to show me that it held a round thing about the size of a hen’s egg. It was as black as a moonless night, like something forged in the darkest depths of the underworld, with shadowy shapes moving across its surface. It looked liked death itself brought into the world of life.” Magda pressed the flats of her hands to the tense knot in her stomach. “It seemed as if that evil thing might suck the very light from the room.”
Pulling herself away from the memory, she looked back up. “When Baraccus opened the spell with his gift, it ignited into a framework, taller than he was. It was a structure of thousands of glowing, colored lines of light all linked together in an intricate, circular gridwork, very similar to the verification web he had crafted before. It was both beautiful and terrible all at the same time. Baraccus said that when it was used for its intended purpose, it would have been opened around the person who was to become a dream walker.”
Magda took a few steps away to stare off into the dark end of the room. “I can’t imagine being one of the people who stepped inside that thing to become something other than they were born. I can’t imagine allowing yourself to become a weapon created by magic.”
Alric Rahl watched her in silence for a moment more before quietly urging her on to the rest of the story. “So then he was able to deactivate it?”
“Deactivate it?” She looked back over her shoulder at his grim gaze. “Unfortunately, no. He said that it was far too complex to safely dismantle such a thing. He said that he didn’t even know if it was possible to deactivate it.”
Lord Rahl rubbed his chin as he considered. “So it’s here, then?”
She shook her head. “He took the spell with him to the Temple of the Winds so that it could be safely locked away.”
“The Temple of the Winds!” Lord Rahl let out a deep sigh of relief. “That’s the best news I could have heard. And even better, with the team who created it dead, those in the Old World will not likely be making another.”
“It would appear so. Baraccus eliminated the threat, so maybe we don’t stand on the brink of annihilation after all.”
He rested his pa
lm on the hilt of his sword. “Did he say if he was able to terminate the power that had already been unleashed here, in the world of life? Was he able to eliminate those dream walkers that had already been brought into being?”
Magda tapped a finger on a small side table inlaid with silver leaves as she recalled her husband’s exact words.
“Baraccus said, ‘We will have to deal with the ones they’ve already created, but at least they will be minting no new dream walkers and no more will be born into the world. That magic is now safely locked away.’ Then he stared off and under his breath added, ‘For now.’”
Chapter 11
“‘For now’? What did he mean by that?”
Magda shook her head. “I don’t know. That was all he said. He was quiet and distracted after he returned from the Temple of the Winds. I wasn’t even sure that he had intended for me to hear that last part of it.”
What she remembered the most was the way he had held her for a long time, as if she were the most important thing in the world to him. She longed for the feel of his sheltering arms around her again. So why then, if he cared that much for her, and there were so many pivotal issues facing them, had he killed himself? Magda swallowed and tried to put the memory from her mind lest she be overwhelmed by tears.
“As I had hoped, Baraccus once again managed to accomplish the seemingly impossible and eliminated their ability to create more dream walkers.” Lord Rahl regarded her with a determined look. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t do anything about the ones that already exist. They are easily trouble enough to annihilate us. That element of the threat must be countered as well.”
Magda knew the truth of that. Baraccus had told her that after a person had been enclosed by that constructed spell, the power from it was fused into their being, into their very souls. They were in part the same person, but now they were more. They became beings with powers and abilities that others didn’t possess and couldn’t defend against.