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“But in the end, we can’t live our lives by ‘what if’ and ‘if only.’ We can only do the best we can to the best of our ability based on what we know. That’s why the truth is so important.
“Sometimes, as in Isidore’s case, it’s our skills that bring the attention of evil. Evil abhors those with ability. Emperor Sulachan wants to destroy just about everyone with the gift in order to make everyone helpless before him. He has already made significant strides in purging the Old World of magic. He can’t afford to let it flourish here.
“In the process, he is willing to lay waste to the gift itself, strip it from mankind, all to be able to consolidate power for himself and rule through brute force. The gift—our abilities—stand in his way and mark us as targets.”
“That’s true,” Magda said. “Baraccus told me once that Sulachan would rather annihilate us than allow us to live in peace, because that would mean the risk that his people would want the same freedom to live their lives that we have.”
Merritt nodded his agreement. “People like Isidore, like you, are not going to stand aside and do nothing as he slaughters people. Isidore was fighting for us all. She was well aware that she might lose her life in this struggle. In fact, I told her as much. That didn’t stop her.
“She was a warrior in our cause. So are you, or you wouldn’t be seeking the truth at the risk to your own life. If you were any less, you would give up your search and move away to somewhere safe. Yet you stay in the Keep, right in the midst of the danger.”
“There is no safe place, or at least there soon won’t be,” Magda said. “Safety is only an illusion when evil is on the hunt. I can’t stand by and watch. I have to act.”
“We all can be only who we are, no more, no less,” Merritt said.
“That’s a beautiful sentiment.” Magda smoothed a wrinkle in the skirt of her dress lying across her knee. “Is that why you gave in to her wishes when you could have said no?”
He stared off across the room for a long moment. “It was the path she chose. People have to live their own destiny.”
That sounded very much like what Baraccus had said in his note to Magda about her following her own destiny.
Magda wasn’t sure that Merritt was right, but it was an inviting notion to believe that she wasn’t responsible for Isidore being murdered.
“Thank you, Wizard Merritt, for helping me see it another way. I can see now that there is more to finding safety than me simply having Isidore give an oath. I must admit, though, that I do feel a bit ashamed for allowing myself to feel better. It isn’t easy to absolve one’s self of guilt.”
“Lady Searus, you were not the cause of her death. Evil likes to shift guilt to the victims. Don’t you let them.”
Magda nodded as she hooked some of her hair back behind an ear. “Please, I would feel better if you would call me Magda.”
His smile added a warmth that made his face all the more agreeable. “And I am just Merritt.”
Magda returned the smile, but it quickly faded.
“I’m afraid that I must ask some questions, Merritt, that you will not like me asking, but I need answers if I’m to get at the truth.”
He leaned back a little. “Really? And what do you need to know about?”
Chapter 47
“Why have you moved away from the Keep?”
He stood and strolled to the table with the sword. “I wanted to be alone to work in peace,” he said with his back to her. “I find the Keep to be . . . a distracting place.”
“Really? From the quantity and quality of what I can see in this room alone, to say nothing of what Isidore told me, I’d say you are a man of great focus and intensity. I think that you must have had more reason than that.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. “Well, besides that, it isn’t safe there.”
“I see. And why not?”
“You said yourself that the dead walk the dark passages of the Keep.”
“And you knew that before I told you about Isidore, did you?”
Magda wondered why he’d really left the Keep. It didn’t make sense to her that a wizard that Baraccus thought so highly of would leave what must have been important work at the Keep, where he would have been surrounded by a wealth of resources, everything from books, to tools, to an abundance of reference items invested with magic, as well as being able to draw on older, more experienced wizards for guidance.
Besides that, if it was a matter of safety, there were places at the Keep protected by guards as well as shields. She had seen no indications that his little home had any such shields to protect him as he worked.
But even so, that was really only a side issue. She was trying to find a way to ease into her relevant questions. He seemed to sense as much. He turned around, fixed her with a serious look, and again folded his muscular arms.
“Why don’t you tell me what it is that you really want to know, Magda?”
She lifted her chin. “All right, then.” She hated repeating hurtful words, but she didn’t know how else to get at the underlying truth without airing the charges so that he could at least have the chance to give his side.
“I hear it told that you are responsible for getting a number of wizards killed—good men who were important to our war effort. I’ve also heard it said that besides those deaths being on your hands, you have abandoned the men you led and refuse to help with important work for our defense. Some even say that you’re a traitor. Is any of that true?”
He stared down at her a moment. She had thought that the gift in his eyes might take on a dangerous appearance. Oddly enough, it didn’t. His expression was a strangely unreadable mask. In a way, that was worse because it hid his inner feelings. She felt like a traitor herself for asking him to answer such inflammatory charges, but too much was at stake and the charges were too serious for her to ignore.
“As long as we’re airing what ‘people say,’” he finally said in a chillingly calm voice, “I hear it told that you and Lord Rahl put on quite the show before the council to make it appear that dream walkers are in the Keep and invading people’s minds, all so that the two of you could frighten people into swearing loyalty to Lord Rahl.”
“But you know Alric Rahl.” Magda could feel her face going red. “You know why he created the oath.”
“Maybe I don’t know him as well as I thought I did. What with everything else I’m beginning to hear, what am I to believe? People say that according to no less an authority than Head Prosecutor Lothain, Baraccus had secret meetings with people who might very well be enemy agents. The prosecutor has said publicly that he suspects that Baraccus might have been part of a plot, and that he may have convinced you to go along with the scheme.”
Merritt clasped his hands behind
his back as he paced before her, going on without pause.
“Worse, many people both up in the Keep and down here in the city of Aydindril wonder openly if Baraccus is responsible for the war going so badly. They wonder if he wrongly took us into war in the first place and lied about the reasons. They say that if he really had our best interest at heart, we wouldn’t be losing the war. They say that Baraccus must have finally committed suicide because of his sense of guilt over dooming his own people.”
Magda shot to her feet. “But Baraccus didn’t take us into war. We were invaded!”
Merritt shrugged. “People say otherwise. They say we weren’t invaded at all, that our side started it. They say that you, Lord Rahl, and Baraccus plotted all along to start a war and use it as an excuse so that Lord Rahl could seize rule of the Midlands and take it over as part of D’Hara.”
“But you know that the dream walkers—”
“Yes, yes, I know that dream walkers are real, but am I to believe the preposterous story that they are already here, on the loose in the Keep, just because you say they are, when there is no proof except your own self-serving stories of how they attacked you and sent monsters to kill Isidore when you were alone with her? Am I to discount the credible charges against you and Baraccus brought by no less an authority than our eminent prosecutor and some members of the council, all saying that your wild stories of plots against our people and traitors in our midst are really meant to distract people from your own guilt? How can I be expected to disregard such serious accusations?”
He opened his arms before her. “So you tell me. Are you a traitor to the Midlands, as so many people say?”
Magda swallowed. She was sure that her face was bright red.
“For not living up at the Keep any longer, you certainly seem to have heard some of the ugliest gossip.”
He arched an eyebrow in a way that would have made her back up a step if the couch hadn’t been at her heels.
“Gossip? Not merely gossip, but the suspicions of even high officials. People say that since the charges are so serious there must be something to them. So, you tell me, Magda. Are they true? I need to know if I’m talking to a traitor. I think I have a right to know before I answer any of your questions.”
