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Magda ignored them as soldiers surrounded the pair. “Anyone else?” she asked Lothain.
“Of course.” He began to lift his hand to point.
Elder Cadell thrust out his arms. With a thump, a tumbling ball of wizard’s fire ignited and shot across the dais. The sphere of liquid flame rolled through the air as it roared toward them, expanding into a deadly inferno that hissed with menace. The hot yellow glow of it lit the faces of the stunned people watching.
The room erupted in panic.
Chapter 95
Merritt dove on Magda, driving the wind from her lungs as he knocked her out of the line of deadly flames flying across the dais. The wizard’s fire lit everything and everyone in the fierce glow of its orange-and-yellow flames. Quinn, Naja, and the general dove the other way just in time.
The wizard’s fire hit Lothain with a sickening thump that Magda could feel deep in her chest. The liquid inferno exploded over Lothain as it hit. Blobs of the deadly fire splattered and sailed on past him to splash down among the crowd. People everywhere screamed, some in panic, some in mortal pain.
There was nothing that burned with the deadly ferocity of wizard’s fire. It had a thick consistency that stuck to victims, burning down to bone. People with bits of it on them screamed as they tried without success to extinguish the fiery blobs.
Lothain briefly struggled in agony, his movements rapidly slowing to a stop, as the inferno consumed him. The fire was so intense it hurt her eyes to look at it. His arms, like brightly glowing torches, disintegrated as the man crumpled to the floor, turning into an unrecognizable burning black mass.
Out in the crowd, gifted rushed to do their best to quench the droplets of fire that had splashed out into the crowd. Others bent close, helping those injured. There were a number of victims who were beyond help. People everywhere were screaming.
“He’s a liar! This is all lies!” Elder Cadell cried out as he stood in front of his taller chair at the center of the council desk. “This Confessor power is a curse that brings forth nothing but terrible lies. The Council forbade Merritt from creating such a power because we knew it would become a tyranny of magic controlling us all!”
Naja, her ice blue eyes as cold as anything Magda had ever seen, pointed at the elder as she addressed the crowd. “The term ‘the tyranny of magic’ is the excuse Emperor Sulachan uses to go to war. It is a cover for his true aim of disarming all those who oppose him. He wants to eliminate magic to keep anyone from fighting back effectively.”
“She’s a liar! And so is she!” Elder Cadell screamed as he pointed at Magda. “She’s a traitor! They are both traitors! This is the tyranny of magic right before our very eyes! This sham of a Confessor power is an evil contrivance of an unscrupulous wizard meant to thwart the common good and control our lives!
“Arrest her!” Elder Cadell yelled as he gestured wildly at the soldiers nearby. “Lady Searus is a traitor! Lothain proved it! She must be put to death. She must be—”
The elder’s words were cut off when a frightening blast of power from Councilman Sadler slammed into him. The elder staggered back a step, his hands clawing as his flesh blackened and boiled. He only had time to let out the briefest of cries before his shriveling flesh melted and sloughed away, leaving the top of his skull exposed. His eye sockets opened up as his eyes liquefied. His shriveled lips fell away, revealing a skeletal grin.
Elder Cadell collapsed dead across the council desk, a smoking corpse.
Grim-faced Councilmen Clay and Hambrook both watched as soldiers wrestled Weston and Guymer under control and dragged them away.
“I’m ashamed at how easily we were deceived by Elder Cadell, Weston, and Guymer,” Councilman Hambrook said, “to say nothing of Prosecutor Lothain.”
“How do we know that you two weren’t part of it?” General Grundwall asked as he suspiciously eyed the two remaining councilmen. “Lothain is dead. He can’t tell us if you were in on it, too.”
Clay gestured at Magda. “From what I know of this Confessor power from when Merritt came before us before, there is no limit to it. She can use this power to get Councilmen Weston and Guymer to confess all that they know, just as Lothain was in the process of doing. Under the touch of a Confessor they will reveal the truth and the rest of the story. That will confirm that I wasn’t a traitor.”
“Nor I,” Hambrook said.
“Councilman Clay is right,” Merritt said. “We will not only be able to confirm if there are any more traitors among us, but also who is innocent.
“That’s the beauty of having a Confessor working with us. She will be able to burn through the deception and lies.
“As a Confessor, Magda will for the first time reveal for us the truth.”
Chapter 96
Councilman Clay watched as the two treasonous councilmen were led away. “At least Magda can use her power on them and discover if anyone else is involved.”
“We’ll have to move quickly,” General Grundwall said, “before any of them can cause trouble before they are caught.”
“How did this nest of traitors come about?” Councilman Clay asked. “How were they able to work so effectively right under our noses?”
Magda stepped away from what was left of the smoldering remains of Lothain. She had never trusted Lothain, but she had believed in Elder Cadell. She was angry that he had fooled her for so long, and that he had betrayed them all.
“Naja was forced to help Emperor Sulachan with his twisted objectives,” Magda said. “I don’t think that any of us could have imagined what was going on down in the Old World while we were going about our lives. Everyone needs to know the truth about what they have been doing.”
Magda drew Naja closer. “Please explain it. Give these people a picture of the true horror that the enemy has in store for us. Tell them how Sulachan uses the dead, and how his wizards rip the souls from the living.”
Naja looked out at the faces watching her. “If there is a tyranny of magic, it is what Emperor Sulachan and those who rule with him would impose on all of you.”
Everyone quieted to listen to her story.
“Hold on a moment,” Merritt said as he caught Magda under her arm as her knees started to buckle.
Magda was beginning to realize how seriously exhausted she was from using her new Confessor power. The sword had given her the strength she had needed the night before, but the use of her Confessor power had drained that strength.
Magda gestured. “I need to sit down.”
Merritt guided her around the desk. He seized the robes at Elder Cadell’s back and heaved the c
orpse aside. He gave quick orders. Soldiers rushed up and dragged the body away.
Merritt held out the tall chair for Magda. When she sat, he stood behind her, resting a hand on the carved top of the chair.
“The council has lost members. We need a council,” Magda said from behind the chair in the center of the council table. “As a start, I hereby reinstate Councilman Sadler.”
No one objected. When Magda gestured to him, Councilman Sadler smiled and took a seat to her left. Clay and Hambrook sat on her right again, at their traditional places.
Magda nodded for Naja to go on, then sat quietly listening to what she already knew as the sorceress revealed those terrors being hatched by the rulers in the Old World.
Wide-eyed people listened as Naja explained what they had never heard before, and told them what they really faced.
When Naja finished her brief summation, Magda, having regained a bit of strength, stood.
“When you hear the words ‘the tyranny of magic,’ as we heard from Elder Cadell, you will know that it is the calling card of killers. Don’t be fooled by their platitudes that it is for the common good. Their real purpose is to strip us of our abilities so that they may more easily conquer and rule us.
“If we are to survive, we need magic now more than ever to defend ourselves from those in the Old World. We need to learn, discover, create. We need to use our reasoning minds and truth.
“You have now heard the confession of the traitor Lothain and how he subverted the Keep. You have heard from Naja what Sulachan has planned. We now know the real nature of the war that is upon us.
“If we lose this war, we lose more than our lives, we lose more than the future for our people. We will lose our connection to all that is good.” Magda lifted her hand, showing them the ring with the Grace on it. “We will lose our connection to the very nature of creation, life, and our souls.
