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She was sure that he must have been sad, heartbroken even, that he was about to leave her, that his life was about to be finished. It must have been agony.
Baraccus had loved life. She could not imagine him taking his life without a powerful reason.
Still, he had. That was all that mattered now. Everything had changed and there was no calling it back.
Her world had changed.
Her world had ended.
At the same time she felt shame for focusing so narrowly on her own world, her own life, her own loss. With the war raging, the world had ended for a great many people. The wives of the men Baraccus had sent to the Temple of the Winds still waited in silent misery, hoping their loved ones might return. Magda knew that they never would. Baraccus had told her so. Yet they still clung to the hope that those men could yet come home. Other women, the wives of men gone off to war, wailed in anguish when they received the terrible news that their men would not be returning. The corridors of the Keep often echoed with the forlorn cries of the women and children left behind.
Like Baraccus, Magda hated the war and the terrible toll it took on everyone. So many had already lost their lives. So many yet would. And still there was no end in sight. Why couldn’t they be left in peace? Why must there always be those seeking conquest or domination?
There were so many other women who had lost their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons. She was not alone in such suffering. She felt the heavy weight of shame for feeling so sorry for herself when others, too, were going through the same agony.
Yet she could not help being smothered beneath the whispers of her own grief.
She also felt a deep sense of guilt over those she was abandoning. She had given voice before the council to those who had no voice. Over the last couple of years she had gradually become the conscience of the council, reminding them of their duty to protect those who could not protect themselves. The night wisps, for example, that she had seen only days before, depended on others to speak for them and their need to be left in peace lest their fragile lives be silenced for good.
Because of her standing, she had often been able to go before the council and remind them of their duty to all those who lived in the Midlands. Sometimes, when she explained the situation to them, they did the right thing. Sometimes she shamed them into doing the right thing. Sometimes they looked forward to her recommendations.
But without standing she could no longer be that voice before the council. It was wrong that being married to a man of standing in turn gave her standing, but that’s the way the world worked.
She was proud that she had made friends of those rare and secretive beings that few had ever seen, or ever would see. She was grateful for all the friends she had made of far-flung peoples of the Midlands. She had made the effort to learn many of their languages, and because of that they had come to trust her when they would trust no other. She was proud of what she had been able to do to protect their peaceful, isolated lives.
She thought that maybe she had also been able to bring some understanding between different peoples, different tribes and communities, and in so doing helped in some small way to make them all feel a part of the larger Midlands.
But when her husband had ended his life, he had also inadvertently taken away her voice before the council.
Her life no longer had a noble purpose, except to herself.
And at that moment, her own life meant nothing to her but insufferable anguish with no end in sight. She felt as if she was caught up in a raging torrent of sorrow.
She just wanted the hopeless agony to end.
Inner whispers urged her to end the suffering.
Chapter 6
Looking down at the frightening drop over the edge of the wall, a drop of thousands of feet, Magda saw that the towering wall in this section of the Keep wasn’t perfectly vertical but actually flared out as it descended toward the foundation within the rock face of the mountain. She realized that when she jumped she would need to get herself some distance out away from the wall to ensure that she cleared the steeply angled stone skirt of the Keep or it would be a long, gruesome fall.
Her muscles tensed at the thought of a drawn-out, tumbling descent, repeatedly smacking the steeply angled wall and breaking bones all along the way down. She didn’t like the thought of that. She wanted a quick end.
She placed her hands on the stone battlements flanking the notched opening as she leaned out farther for a better view. She also checked back and to each side to make sure that no one was around. Like her husband, she didn’t need to worry much about anyone trying to stop her. Because it led to the First Wizard’s enclave, this particular rampart was restricted, leaving it a lonely, out-of-the-way area of the Keep. The guards back at the access stairs that spiraled up from below knew Magda and had offered their sincere condolences. Since they knew her so well, they hadn’t tried to prevent her from going up top.
Peering down the mountain, Magda tried to judge how far out she would need to jump in order not to hit the wall on the way down. She wanted it to be over before she had time to feel the pain of it. The whispers promised her that if she got out far enough, she would fall free until she finally reached the rocks at the bottom, where it would all be over in a single instant.
She hoped that Baraccus had been able to do the same and that he had not suffered.
But he must have felt a different sort of suffering all the way down: the suffering of knowing that he was leaving life and leaving her. She knew that she, too, would have to endure that final terror of leaving life behind.
But it would end quickly enough and then she hoped to be in the protective arms of the good spirits. Maybe then she would again see Baraccus smile at her. She hoped he wouldn’t be angry.
She wasn’t angry at him giving up his life because she knew him well enough to know that he had to have had a compelling reason for what he had done. She knew that a great many people had sacrificed their lives in the war so that others might live. Those sacrifices were made out of love for others. She knew that Baraccus would only have given his own life for just such a powerful reason. How could she be angry at him for making that sacrifice? No, she couldn’t feel anger toward him.
She felt only crushing sadness.
Magda gripped the top corners of the rough stone to each side. Even though the sun was setting, the stone was still warm. While the battlements were spaced quite a ways apart for her size, they would still be useful to help push herself off.
Not far away, out in front of her in midair, a raven rode an updraft, its glistening black feathers ruffling in the wind as its black eyes watched her prepare to leap.
Magda bent at the knees, readying herself for a maximum effort to jump clear of the wall. In a daze, she felt as if she were only watchi
ng herself. The whispers urged her on.
Her heart hammering, Magda took a deep breath, crouched down even more, and started rocking back and forth, swinging farther out each time, standing, crouching, standing, crouching, back and forth, farther out over the edge of the wall, farther out toward the drop that would take her pain away, building up speed for the final, big push.
In a swelling moment of doubt, she heard a voice within whisper for her not to think, but to simply do it.
As she swung herself out past the wall on the last rocking arc before the great leap, she realized in a single, crystal-clear instant the true enormity of what she was doing.
She was ending her life, ending it forever, ending it for all time. Everything that she was would be no more.
The voice became more insistent, telling her not to think, telling her to end her misery once and for all.
She was struck by how odd that seemed. How could she not think? Thinking was critical to any important decision.
In that icy flash of comprehension, in spite of the whispers, she realized just how terrible a mistake she was making.
It was as if, since learning of her husband’s death, she had been carried along in a raging river of emotions, urged onward by an inner voice pressing her toward the only thing that seemed like it could make the agony stop. She realized only now that she hadn’t thought it through, she had simply allowed herself to be swept along toward the spot where she now stood.
She was making no loving sacrifice. She was not trading her life for something she believed in, offering it for something of value as she knew Baraccus had. She was instead throwing it away for nothing. She was giving in to weakness, nothing more.
She was thoughtlessly rejecting all she believed in, all she had fought for. How many times had she gone before the council to speak for the lives of those who couldn’t speak for themselves? How many times had she argued for the importance of their lives, for the value of all life?
