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“You are a rare person as well, Magda Searus. You seem to know more on the subject than even most of the gifted I’ve ever encountered.”
“I would never have understood about makers, either, had it not been for Baraccus teaching me about them. It was a subject close to his heart.” Magda shook her head as she remembered some of the things Baraccus had done. “He made such beautiful things. I still have all his tools. Since he died, I sometimes go to his worktable and pick them up, trying to feel a bit of him.”
Isidore was smiling as she listened. “I wish I could have known him.”
Magda’s own smile ghosted away. “Some of the things he made, I feared.”
Isidore frowned. “Really? Like what?”
Magda stared off into her memories. “At the start of the war, Baraccus created an achingly handsome amulet of precious metals surrounding a bloodred ruby. Despite its mastery, its beauty, its intricacy, that amulet was at the same time invested with meaning I couldn’t begin to understand. Yet I knew how important its meaning had to be to Baraccus because he always wore it.
“One night, after a particularly disturbing report from some of his wizards, I found him again at the window, staring out at the moon. I knew that he was thinking, as he often did, about the Temple of the Winds off in the underworld. He was clutching that amulet in his fist. I asked him what the amulet meant to him, what its meaning was.
“At first, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then, in a haunting voice, he said that it represented the dance with death. I was rather horrified by that. He said the dance with death was the way of a war wizard.
“I sat on the floor beside him that night, him standing, staring out the window, me with my back leaning against the wall beneath it while I held his hand, as he held his private thoughts close, and that amulet in his other hand.
“He was a remarkable man, a man that in many ways I don’t think I really knew.
“And now he’s gone.”
Isidore gently touched her arm.
Magda came out of her thoughts to look over at the spiritist. “I’m hoping that you will soon know his spirit . . . at least enough to bring me the answers I need, or at least answers that can guide me in the right direction.”
Isidore gave Magda’s arm a sympathetic squeeze. “We will find your answers, Magda. You’ve found your way to the right person, a person with the right kind of vision.”
Chapter 35
Magda put thoughts of Baraccus out of her mind as she returned to the matter at hand.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask Isidore if Merritt had been the one to take her eyes. She skirted the subject and asked something else instead to steer the conversation back to the subject at hand.
“So what about you? What happened with Merritt? Was he able to help you with your efforts to find the lost souls of Grandengart?”
“Well, when I finally found his place”—she pointed a finger toward the ceiling—“up under the southern rampart, of all places, Merritt seemed to be distracted by his own problems, but he was kind enough to allow me in and at least listen to my story. He listened as you have, and far more seriously than the council had. I guess people closer to your own age are more inclined to take you seriously.
“He didn’t say much as I told him what had happened. He stared down at that beautiful sword of his, lying on a table, as he listened. He asked a few questions, though, and I got the sense from those questions that, perhaps even more than me, he considered the implications of bodies being taken, and worse, their spirits missing from the underworld, to be quite ominous. In a way, his concern made me worry even more and served to reinforce my conviction in what I knew I had to do.
“When I finished with my story he asked what it was I thought he could do to help. I told him that I believed that there was a threat that everyone was ignoring. He didn’t argue the point. I told him that because of my abilities as a sorceress and a spiritist I thought I had a unique understanding of the problem, an understanding that the council was not taking seriously. He seemed in harmony with that as well.
“I told him that while I believed the enemy was somehow meddling with the world of the dead, I at first had not been able to come up with any solution to finding the truth until I finally began to consider how I could use my ability to do what had never needed doing before. I told him how I had eventually come to understand that I needed to search the world of life for the dead, and for that I needed a new way to use my abilities, a way that had never been conceived of before.
“Up until that moment, he had listened with great interest to the things I was telling him, but now he was even more intently focused.”
Magda had no doubt of that.
Isidore smiled self-consciously. “I guess that I was trying to appeal to his nature as a maker, trying to talk to him in a language he would understand and appreciate. It seemed to be working, as he was acutely interested in what I was telling him.
“Finally, I told him that I had come at last to understand what was needed. I told him that I needed to have a new way to see, a way to see what no other could, and to do that I needed to have my vision of this world removed. To see, I had to first be blinded. I said that I wanted him to do it.
“Merritt was shocked and angered by my unexpected request. He refused to listen to anything else I had to say. He ushered me to the door and sent me away.”
Magda for the first time thought better of Merritt.
“Over the course of time, I had gradually become used to the idea of trading one kind of sight for another and had accepted its necessity. I was used to the idea. But I realized that it was a shocking request to make of Merritt, so for a while I left him alone to think about the things I had told him. I knew that he needed time to absorb it all.
“After a while, I went back to see him. I would have liked to have given him more time to consider the situation, but I knew that time was working against me—against all of us.
“Before he could say anything or send me away, I asked him to first tell me one thing. He folded his arms and looked down at me, waiting for me to pose the question. He’s a tall man—you are more his size than me. For a moment I had trouble summoning my voice under the scrutiny of his hazel eyes. I finally did, of course, and asked him to tell me why General Kuno’s forces would take the corpses of our people. He stared down at me for a long time.
“Finally he told me, in a quiet voice, that he feared to imagine. I told him that I did as well and asked him to allow me to explain.
“He at last stepped aside from his doorway and allowed me in. I again told him that I needed to be blind. Anticipating what he might say and before he had a chance, I told him that I needed to be really blind, not blindfolded, in o
rder to see what I needed to discover. I explained that I was searching for the answers to real problems, and I couldn’t use pretend methods.
“Merritt told me that if I wanted to be blind so bad, all I had to do was stab out my own eyes. I remember him pacing around his room, gesturing with his arms as he told me that he would be cursed with a lifetime of nightmares if he were to do such a dreadful thing. He said that it was a cruel request for me to make of someone.
“He grew more and more angry as he paced. He finally told me again to leave and said that if I decided to stab my eyes out for such a crazy cause I would be doing him a great favor if I made sure that he never learned of it.
“As he held my arm and led me to his door, I told him that if he cared about all the people who had been slaughtered, and all those I feared would be slaughtered, he needed to listen to me. I insisted that he wasn’t understanding what I was saying or what I was asking for.
“He finally calmed down and let go of my arm. He leaned back against a table covered in swords all neatly laid out on a red velvet cloth. He picked out one particularly stunning sword from a raised place at the center and held the wire-wound hilt tightly in both fists as he rested the sword’s point firmly on the floor. He then looked up at me and said he was listening. It was a warning that it was my last chance.
“I told him that it was not actually blindness that I sought. I was actually seeking vision.
“When he frowned, I went on and told him that of course I could blind myself, but I could not give myself the sight I needed, so it would be pointless to do so. Even more curious, he leaned toward me a bit and asked what I meant.
“I told him that being blind to this world was only half of it—the easy half. I said that what I really needed was a wizard with enough of an imagination and ability to be able to create a new kind of vision.
