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Guymer shot to his feet and turned his wrath on his fellow councilman. “Hambrook, we’re not going to be diverted from our agenda to allow this outrageous interruption to continue!”
Magda closed the distance to the desk in three long strides, placed her hands on the polished wood, and with a glare, leaned toward Councilman Guymer.
“Sit down.”
Taken aback by the calm fury in her voice, and somewhat stunned to be spoken to in such a way, he dropped into his chair.
Magda straightened. “Dream walkers have made their way into the Keep. We must—”
This time it was Weston, to her right, who interrupted her. “Disregarding your bursting in here in such an insolent fashion, what makes you think we would believe such a claim?”
Magda slammed the flat of her hand on the desk before the man. The shock of the loud smack made all of them jump. She could feel her face going red with rage.
“Look at me! This is what a dream walker did to me! What you see—the blood all over me—is what your countrymen and loved ones are going to look like before they die in unimaginable agony! This is what is coming for all of us!”
“I am not going to sit here and—”
“Let her speak,” Elder Cadell said with quiet authority.
Magda bowed her head to the elder in appreciation before collecting herself and going on. “A dream walker entered my mind without my being aware of it. I don’t know how long he was hidden there. I fear to think what he overheard while he was lurking in my mind without my knowledge.”
“What could he have overheard?” Councilman Sadler asked in a suspicious tone.
“For one thing, the reason I was coming here today: the solution to prevent the dream walkers from having free run of the Keep and destroying us all. Once he heard that solution, and knew that I was going to come here for the council’s help in implementing it, he acted. His intent was to kill me so that I couldn’t speak to you. His intent was to keep you in the dark so that we would all be vulnerable.”
As Magda looked at each councilman in turn, out of the corner of her eye she could see the crowd moving in closer so that they wouldn’t miss what she had to say. She straightened and stepped back to the center of the semicircle of councilmen so that she could make sure that everyone could hear her.
“While I don’t have any idea how long the dream walker was hidden there in my mind, watching, listening, his presence became all too obvious once he decided to rip me apart from the inside.” She slowly shook her head as she turned her back on the council to look out into the frightened eyes of all the silent people watching her. “You cannot imagine the pain of it.”
The spectators stared in silent anxiety.
Weston broke the silence. “Do you expect us to trust—”
“No,” she said without looking back at him. “I expect you to look with your own eyes at the result of what was being done to me by the dream walker who had slipped into my mind, here, in the Keep, where we thought we were safe. We are not safe.” She held out the skirt of her dress. “As I fell to my knees, dying, blood running from my ears, blood choking me, I could feel the dream walker break each rib, one at a time.” Some in the crowd gasped. “The pain was beyond endurance, yet there is no way to avoid enduring it.”
She walked slowly across the dais to be sure that everyone out in the crowd, as well as all those behind the desk, could get a good look at the blood all over her. The sound of her shoes on the wooden floor of the rostrum echoed through the room.
“The blood you see all over me,” she said, “is the evidence of the torture he was inflicting. If it is shocking to see, I promise you, you would not have wanted to hear my screams as I lay in a pool of my own blood and on the brink of death.”
“And so I guess that the good spirits swept in and saved you at the last moment?” Councilman Guymer asked, bringing a smattering of laughter.
“No,” she calmly answered as she gazed out at the crown. “Though I prayed they would, the good spirits did not come to my rescue. I saved myself.”
“And how, may I ask, did you do that,” Sadler asked, fingers skyward, “if the dream walkers are in fact such fearsome beings?”
“You’re right. They are fearsome. They are also powerful. But I invoked magic even more powerful and as a result I was protected from the dream walkers.”
“You are not gifted,” Guymer scoffed.
“You don’t have to be gifted to be protected,” she said out to the crowd watching, addressing them rather than the council. “You must choose, though, to accept the solution. At the last moment before I was about to die, I came to understand that, and I chose to do what was needed to save myself.
“That’s why I’m here. I want all of our people to know that there is protection for them, for all of them. Believe me, the dream walkers can steal into the minds of anyone and they will show no mercy. But none of you need fear them. None of you needs to suffer and die.”
“And how do you know that you really are protected?” Guymer asked.
“If I wasn’t protected, the dream walkers would have torn me apart where I stood so they could prevent me from coming here to tell you how to protect yourselves and our people from their abilities.”
Concerned chatter rippled through the room. People among the onlookers shouted out over the noise, wanting to know what was needed to be protected from the dream walkers.
Magda let the worry build for a time before she finally lifted her arm, pointing to the back of the room near the great doors. Everyone turned to look where she pointed.
“There stands Lord Rahl, the key to your survival,” she said in a voice loud enough that all could hear her. “He alone created a protection that shields him from the dream walkers. That protection constructed of magic is powerful enough to protect anyone bonded to him.”
“Lord Rahl!” Guymer shouted. “Not that nonsense again! Lord Rahl has already come before us with his plans to rule the world.”
Magda turned a glare on the man. “And since when is toiling to protect your life and the lives of all the other innocent people of the Midlands as well as the D’Haran Lands interpreted as wanting to rule the world?”
“This is about the oath he insists we must swear to him, isn’t it?” Elder Cadell asked.
Magda spread her hands. “We are all on the same side in this. We of the Midlands and those of the D’Haran Lands share a common interest as well as a common threat. Those in the Old World want to subjugate all of the New World. They
don’t care about our internal boundaries. They want to rule us all. If they win, there will be no Midlands, no D’Haran Lands. We will all be either dead or their slaves. This is about our survival, not petty matters of rule.”
“Petty?” Sadler asked. “I don’t see bowing to the rule of Lord Rahl as petty.”
“You will think it petty enough,” Magda said, “if a dream walker silently slips into your mind and becomes your master, if he makes you do his vile bidding. They can make you betray those you care about, even kill people you love. If you’re lucky, that master will choose instead to rip you apart from the inside.”
Sadler licked his lips but didn’t speak up to argue.
The whispers in the crowd fell silent as a man who had been watching from the shadows at the back of the room behind the councilmen stepped out into the light.
It was Prosecutor Lothain. His menacing gaze was fixed on Magda.
Chapter 16
Lothain’s smile looked every bit as deadly as a skeleton’s grin. “And how do you know, Lady Searus, that it was not really Alric Rahl’s own magic that was in fact tearing you apart from the inside, as you put it?”
“Lord Rahl’s magic?” Magda gaped at the man. “Why would he do such a thing?”
Lothain arched an eyebrow. The grace of his smile, as mocking as it had been, vanished. “Perhaps for the exact reason that brings you to stand before us—to have you put on a show to frighten people into going along with his scheme to seize power and become the leader of all of the New World.”
He stood as motionless as a rock, challenging her to deny it.
“That is not what is happening.” Magda wished her own voice didn’t sound so inadequate and defensive.
“Because your husband had convinced you that Alric Rahl was to be trusted?”
Magda blinked. She didn’t want to agree with the man, but she had to say something. She pulled herself up straighter.
