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Merritt leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Sometimes, the best way to hide something important is to hide it in plain sight. Baraccus wanted to show us that with how he hid the formulas.”
Quinn threw his hands up in frustration. “But there are lots of people who have worked on creating the key out of a sword. A sword is the first thing someone searching for the key would suspect, the first thing they would look for.”
“Not necessarily,” Magda said.
Quinn’s gaze shifted between the two of them. “I’m listening.”
“They only think the key needs to be a sword because that was the theory gleaned from ancient books. I’m the one who came up with it, remember? I’m the one who told people it needed to be a sword.”
“Well there you go. That’s what I mean. Everyone believes it has to be a sword.”
“That’s why we need you to create a more inviting belief,” Merritt said, “something more convincing, something that will cause people to shift their thinking to a better theory of what the key would have to be.”
“A better theory?” Quinn looked intrigued. “You mean send them off track so that they aren’t looking for a sword?”
“Exactly,” Merritt said. “The boxes of Orden were stolen from the safest place anyone could think of to put them. So why were they vulnerable?”
“Because people knew where they were,” Quinn answered. “If you know where something is, you can work on how to steal it no matter how difficult it may be to get to.”
“You’re getting the idea,” Magda said. “What makes the key, in the form of the sword, vulnerable, is that if people know it exists they will look for it. That’s why secrecy is so critical. People won’t look for something if they don’t know it exists.”
“So in place of the sword,” Merritt told him, “we have to give people something else more inviting to look for.”
Quinn lifted a finger. “A diversion.”
Merritt smiled in answer. “It needs to be something they will come to believe is the key to the boxes of Orden. Then we’ll hide it—to make it look all the more important—when in actuality it will be carefully planted, not hidden. Hiding it makes it all the more enticing. If people are all looking for the diversion, they won’t be looking for the real key.”
“In the meantime,” Magda told him, “we’ll have the real key.”
Merritt smiled. “Magda named it the Sword of Truth, so that’s what it will be—a tool, a weapon, in its own right, as its own end. It has powerful magic designed around truth in order to protect the power of Orden, not just unlock it, so it will have a purpose—seeking truth—that will give it a purpose, a life of its own, a reason to explain its existence.
“Since it is the Sword of Truth—a weapon created to fight for truth—people won’t have reason to expect that it could also actually be the key to the power of Orden.”
Quinn slapped his forehead. “I never knew that my two old friends were this devious.”
Merritt smiled with one side of his mouth. “In the meantime, with the sword at my side, I’ll search for the boxes of Orden. If I can find them, we’ll protect them. With no one knowing about the existence of the true key hiding in plain sight, then hopefully the rumors of our diversion key will entice whoever has the boxes to look for that fake key instead of trying to use the power without it.
“We have to understand, though, that the power of Orden has existed for longer than any of us knows. It’s ancient. We have to realize that this search, this struggle to protect such an ancient power, may be a struggle and a search that is part of mankind itself, and very well may stretch beyond our lives. It may go on for centuries, or even for thousands of years. This is something more important than the three of us. It is our struggle right now, but we have to keep in mind that we may in the end be passing this struggle on to future generations.
“If we never find the boxes, then in the future, as the Sword of Truth is passed on to the right sort of person who can protect it, that person will have his own mission—seeking truth. In that way, the true power, the true purpose of the sword as the key, will be hidden in plain sight until the right person eventually comes along.”
Quinn stared at Merritt. “This is a heavy responsibility we’re taking on.”
“It is,” Merritt agreed.
Quinn put his fingers to his forehead as he paced around the room, thinking it through. He came back to stand before Magda and Merritt.
“So you two want me to create a fake key of some sort?”
“Yes, as a diversion for the real key,” Magda said. “Then we’ll hide it. If it’s hidden well enough, but we leave hints to its location, then people will come to believe that your fake key has to be the true key.”
“This is getting awfully complicated,” Quinn said as he dry-washed his hands. “We have to get a long list of things right for all this to work.”
“That’s why we came to you,” Magda said. “You’re the only one who could pull it off.”
Merritt regarded him with a sobering look. “Quinn, you know how dangerous the power of Orden is. Used in the wrong way, it very well could breach the veil and destroy the world of life. We have to do everything in our power to see to it that such a thing never comes to pass.”
Deep in thought, Quinn flicked a hand. “Yes, of course you’re right. How will we hint at this diversion key?”
Chapter 100
Merritt waggled the journal. “We’ll hint at it in books of magic, information, records, and history. That’s how I came to the belief that the key had to be a sword. You’re always recording history of the Keep. You need to create a false history, for the false key. Create a better idea of what the key should be, one that makes more sense to people, so that they believe in the diversion we create.”
Quinn nodded thoughtfully. “Wizard’s First Rule.”
“Right,” Merritt said. “Emperor Sulachan has been able to amass information because he is a student of history. He gleans all he can from records and accounts. According to Naja, that’s part of the way he uses dream walkers.
“So, in order to help hide the real key, we need to make some parts of history more muddled. We need to obscure what I learned about the key needing to be a sword. We don’t want it to be easy for Sulachan, or anyone who might get their hands on the boxes, to be able to so easily learn the truth through history.
“If people see the muddled history you create, they will repeat it. Those accounts you create will take on a life of their own. They will become the conventional wisdom. As they do, the truth will be blurred, at least until we find the boxes or, if not us, then the right person eventually comes along.
“So, while you’re down here with the sliph, writing your journals and histories of the Keep, don’t make clear what is happening now. Don’t make it easy to understand what has taken place here in the Keep, or to grasp what we know, what we have discovered, and how we solved the plots against us. Don’t let people know how Magda uncovered Lothain’s plots, or how we unmasked the traitors and collaborators and spies. Don’t let the enemy know how we did what we did. Mix it up.”
“Of course. Disinformation,” Quinn said. “I can do that. I’ll leave out critical events, then I’ll put in false information and twist everything that has happened around into a kind of vague, shadowy history that obscures what really took place.”
“Good,” Merritt said with a firm nod.
Quinn snapped his fingers. “And what if I made the diversion for the key, be a book?”
“A book . . .” Merritt gazed off as he considered it.
“Yes, kind of like the books with the complex rift formulas that Baraccus brought back from the Temple of the Winds.”
“That would be fitting,” Magda said.
Quinn shook a finger as he thought. “I could even use some calculations from the rift formulas to give it legitimacy. Not enough to make it function properly, of course, but enough star azimuth angles and such to make it appear legi
timate. If it was complex enough, and if some of the magic in it actually functioned, that would make the false key look real.”
“What kind of book would it be?” Magda asked.
Quinn leaned in. “A book of instructions. After all, isn’t that what people expect? They will want to know how to use the power of Orden. An instruction book meets their expectations.”
“The power of Orden predates the star shift,” Merritt said. “Information about it is sketchy, at best.”
“Exactly,” Quinn said. “So they will want to know how it works. They start out invested in wanting a book of magic that will tell them how the power works. So why not give them one?”
“Create a fake instruction book as the key to the power?” Magda asked.
“Yes. It would be a book on how to use the boxes of Orden, full of legitimate formulas that predate the star shift to add legitimacy, but altered just enough so that they wouldn’t be of any value as a real key. Who would know they’re false? There would be no way to check them, nothing to check them against.”
Magda was intrigued. “And you think that you could create a book that would appear real enough that people, even if they found it and looked at it, would believe it was real?”
“The power of Orden is ancient,” Quinn said. “How would they confirm anything in it? I can make it look real and fabricate a verification process within the book itself, but this book would actually be nothing but shadows. Along with the muddled history I create, that would further add to the sense of authority of this shadowy book.”
“You could even call it that,” Merritt said. “Name it Shadows, or something.”
“That’s too simple,” Magda said. “Sounds like my cat’s name. It would work better as a diversion if it sounded like it functioned as a key. Like it contained methods for unlocking answers. It needs a more mysterious title.”
