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When she turned to look back over her shoulder, Richard found himself looking into the face of his mother.
His muscles locked stiff.
"Richard." Her sad smile showed how much she loved and missed him. She didn't look to have aged a day from his last boyhood memory of her.
As Richard stood frozen in place she rose fluidly before him.
"Oh, Richard," she said in voice as clear and liquid as the waters of the fountain, "how I've missed you." She slipped one arm around his waist as she ran the fingers of her other hand tenderly through his hair. She gazed longingly into his eyes. "How I've missed you so very much."
Richard immediately choked off his emotions. He knew better than to be lulled into believing it was really his mother.
The first time he'd met Shota she had appeared to him as his mother, who had died in a fire when Richard had been but a boy. At the time, Richard had wanted to take Shota's head off with his sword for what he interpreted as a cruel ruse. Shota had read the thought and reproached him for it, saying that appearing as she had was an innocent gift of a living memory of his love for his mother and her undying love for him. Shota had said that the kindness had been at a cost to herself that he would never be able to understand or appreciate.
Richard didn't think that this time she was giving him a gift. He didn't know what she was doing, or why, but he decided to confront it calmly and without jumping to conclusions.
"Shota, I thank you for the beautiful memory, but why is it necessary to appear as my mother?"
Shota's brow, in the likeness of his mother's, wrinkled in thought. "Do you know the name… Baraccus?"
The hairs at the back of Richard's neck, that had only just begun to settle, again stiffened. He gently placed his hands on her waist and with great care backed her away.
"There was a man named Baraccus who was First Wizard back in the time of the great war." With one finger, Richard lifted the amulet hanging at his chest. "This was his."
His mother nodded. "He is the one. He was a great war wizard."
"That's right."
"Like you."
Richard felt himself blush at the idea of his mother calling him "great," even if it was Shota in her guise.
"He knew how to use his ability; I don't."
His mother nodded again, a slight smile curling the corners of her mouth just as he remembered. His mother had smiled that way when she'd been proud that he had grasped the point of a particularly difficult lesson. He wondered if Shota meant that memory to have meaning.
"Do you know what happened to him, to Baraccus?"
Richard took a settling breath. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. There was trouble with the Temple of the Winds. The Temple and its invaluable contents had been sent to the safety of another world."
"The underworld," she amended.
"Yes. Baraccus went there to try to fix the trouble." His mother smiled as she again ran her fingers through his hair. "Just as you did."
"I suppose."
When she finally finished fussing with his hair, her beautiful eyes turned down, her gaze settling again on his. "He went there for you."
"For me?" Richard looked at her askance. "What are you talking about?"
"Subtractive Magic had been locked away in the Temple, in the underworld, withdrawn from the world of life so that no wizard would again be born with it."
Richard didn't know if she was merely repeating what he had learned or if she was giving him what she believed to be the facts. "From the accounts of the time that I've studied, that's what I've come to suspect. As a consequence, people were no longer born with the Subtractive side of the gift."
She watched him with a kind of calm seriousness that he found disturbing in the extreme. "But you were," she finally said in a way that carried great meaning concealed in simplicity.
Richard blinked. "Are you saying that he did something while he was at the Temple of the Winds so that someone would again be born with Subtractive Magic?"
"By 'someone,' I presume that you mean… you?" She arched an eyebrow as if to underscore the sobriety of the question.
"What are you suggesting?"
"None has been born with Subtractive Magic and more, born a war wizard, since then, since the Temple was sent from this world."
"Look, I don't know for sure if that's true but even if it is that doesn't mean—"
"Do you know what war wizard Baraccus did upon his return from the Temple of the Winds?"
Richard was taken aback by the question, wondering what relevance it could have. "Well, yes. When he returned from the Temple of the Winds… he committed suicide." Richard gestured weakly to the vast complex above them. "He threw himself off the side of the Wizard's Keep, off the outer wall overlooking the valley and the city of Aydindril below."
His mother nodded sorrowfully. "Overlooking the place where the Confessors' Palace would eventually be built."
"I suppose so."
"But first, before he threw himself off that wall, he left something for you."
Richard stared down at her, not completely sure that he'd heard her correctly. "For me? Are you sure?"
His mother nodded. "The account you read was not privy to everything. You see, when he returned from the Temple of the Winds, before he threw himself from the side of the Keep, he gave his wife
a book and sent her with it to his library."
"His library?"
"Baraccus had a secret library."
Richard felt like was was tiptoeing across fresh ice. "I didn't even know he had a wife."
"But Richard, you know her." His mother smiled in a way that made the already stiff hair at the back of his neck stand out even more.
Richard could hardly breathe. "I know her? How is that possible?"
"Well," his mother said with a one-shouldered shrug, "you know of her. Do you know the wizard who created the first Confessor?"
"Yes," Richard said, confused by her change of subject. "His name was Merritt. The first Confessor was a woman named Magda Seams. There is a painting of them across the ceiling down in the Confessors' Palace."
His mother nodded in a way that made his stomach knot. "That's the woman."
"What woman?"
"Baraccus's wife."
"No…" Richard said as he touched his fingers to his forehead, trying to think it through. "No, she was the wife of Merritt, the wizard who had made her into a Confessor, not Baraccus."
"That was later," his mother said with a dismissive gesture. "Her first husband was Baraccus."
"Are you sure?"
She nodded firmly. "When Baraccus returned from the Temple of the Winds, Magda Searus was waiting for him, where he had asked her to wait, in the First Wizard's enclave. For days she had waited, fearful that he would never return to her. To her great relief he finally did. He kissed her, told her of his undying love, and then, in confidence, and after securing her oath of eternal silence, he sent her with a book to his hidden, private, secret library.
"After she had gone he left his outfit—the one you now wear, including those leather-padded silver wristbands, the cape that looks as if it has been spun from gold, and that amulet—in the First Wizard's enclave, left them for the wizard he had just insured would be born into the world of life… left them for you, Richard."
