The First Confessor (Sword of Truth 0)

After Lord Rahl had left, she’d spent weeks making discreet inquiries, all to no avail. She had spoken to every wizard and sorceress she knew, at least the ones she felt comfortable enough to approach. Most were sympathetic, but no one knew anything that was in the least bit useful to her.

Magda knew that Baraccus confided little in others, even the gifted, except for specific things they needed to know. Her questions had only confirmed it. Others knew only small bits of the picture. Magda had been a bit surprised to come to the realization that she knew a great deal more about Baraccus and his activities than did anyone else, even the people he regularly worked with.

Through Baraccus, Magda had seen more of the larger picture of the war, complex alliances, and covert activities than any of them, even if she didn’t know some of the finer details. Other people saw the details of small segments, while she in many cases glimpsed the overview of all the things with which Baraccus dealt. She had a deeper insight into how all the parts that various people knew about were connected.

Even Lord Rahl, one of the men Baraccus trusted most, was not a great deal different. Baraccus might have trusted him with more vital missions than he entrusted to others, but he hadn’t trusted him with everything. Even with as many details as Alric Rahl knew about the dream walkers, he didn’t know as much as Magda about the larger picture.

Her husband had been a man who closely guarded not only his secrets, but his activities and the reasons behind most of the things he did. He’d often said that keeping things to himself was a matter of survival.

Yet even with as much as she knew, Magda still didn’t know nearly enough about the various matters he had been involved in. She still didn’t know why he had killed himself.

A number of those she had spoken with had been more interested in talking to her, than about Baraccus. They wanted to know about the dream walkers, and if what they had heard from people who had been at the council meeting the day she had gone before them, covered in blood, was true. When Magda had confirmed that it was, they asked about the devotion that was said to be able to protect people’s minds. She had given her counsel to anyone who had wanted it. Some of those people had listened with open minds and had been grateful. Some weren’t interested in being allied with Alric Rahl.

A few of the gifted, she learned, had already met with Lord Rahl and had already taken up the bond to him.

At first, after Lord Rahl had left the Keep, Magda had been worried about the bond working once he was gone. To her surprise, she had discovered that she could sense him through that bond. It was the strangest feeling, but through that link she could feel her connection to him, tell the direction he was in, and sense the distance. It was a reassuring connection that let her know she was safe from the dream walkers.

Now, with the summer wearing on and the secrets behind Baraccus’s death haunting her at every turn, the only thing left was to try Tilly’s original suggestion. She still didn’t like the idea, especially in light of the new dangers down in the Keep, but Magda had reached a dead end in her search for answers. In the back of her mind, she also feared to lose the chance should the dream walker get to the woman first.

Despite her misgivings, Tilly seemed to understand Magda’s need to find answers as to why Baraccus had killed himself. Tilly thought that if she went to see the woman, it would at least help bring peace to Magda’s heart. Magda was looking for more than peace. She wanted answers.

The passageway finally emptied them out into a vast, narrow chamber that rose up like an enormous split inside the mountain. Fine-grained granite blocks lined the soaring walls. The chamber was perhaps half a dozen stories high, yet only as wide as the public corridors up in the Keep where merchants sometimes sold their wares from small carts or stands.

The narrow hall was so long that Magda couldn’t make out faces of people at the far end. In some cases she couldn’t even make out their gender. She was able to make out the dots of various colors of robes, denoting rank and duties.

Magda found herself somewhat relieved to see people again, relieved not to be alone in the dark passageways. The screams she had heard, and learning that men had just died, made her own loss fresh again.

Up near the lofty top of one of the long walls, slits were open to the night sky. Bats up high darted about, chasing bugs.

One of the Keep’s young cats sat on its haunches, peeking around the corner, its big green eyes watching the bats. It was obviously hungry. Feeling sorry for the scrawny black cat, Magda pulled a small bundle of chicken strips from her waist pouch. She unwrapped the meal she had brought along and tossed a small piece down to the hungry cat. As long as she had it out, Magda handed Tilly a strip and took one for herself before replacing the bundle in her waist pouch. The cat pounced and devoured the unexpected prize as Magda and Tilly went on their way, each nibbling at her own snack.

Magda had been to the enormous room several times, though by a more agreeable route, so she knew that it was a central hub leading to a number of important areas of the lower Keep. The first time she had been to the place, Baraccus had told her that the slits along the top of one of the walls helped the chamber serve as a ventilation chimney, drawing air through the lower Keep in order to provide a bit of fresh air.

The open slits were also one of the ways that birds sometimes found their way into the Keep. It wasn’t uncommon to find a small bird lost in the halls. Sometimes grackles found their way into dining halls, where they hopped around on the ground looking for crumbs, or even boldly stole food right off people’s plates.

Magda could see several sparrows that had obviously found their way in via the high slits, roosting on supports near the tops of the wall. She even spotted a raven perched on a beam, its feathers fluffed up, its black eyes watching the people down below.

With it being hotter outside than in, the ventilation openings seemed to be working in reverse this night, letting muggy air sink into the room and leaving the place feeling clammy. A haze of smoke coming from work areas had stratified throughout the room.

Stone stairs built tight against the wall to the right led to long, narrow balconies with widely spaced openings. Some had doors, while most were passageways to different areas.

Many of the people in the room seemed in a hurry, but Magda was used to seeing people in the Keep in a hurry. As large as the place was, it wasn’t uncommon for a journey between areas to take hours. Delaying for any reason, such as to chat, could in certain cases cause an errand to end up taking the better part of the day. That was probably why Tilly preferred the mostly deserted secondary passageways.

When Tilly saw Magda staring at carts piled high with bloody bandages parked haphazardly along one wall, she leaned closer and whispered, “Down here, in the matters these people deal in, errors are costly. Even worse, they are frequently punished by death.”

Magda didn’t have to ask what Tilly was talking about. She had escorted Baraccus to the place several times when he needed to speak with some of his wizards working on weapons for the war effort.

They were entering the area of the Keep where some of those weapons were created out of people.

While she understood the need, she was still appalled by the very idea of using magic to alter a person’s nature, to change who they were—in some cases to something no longer even human. She found the practice of changing people in such ways to be beyond abhorrent.

Chapter 20

“Over there.” Tilly gestured to an entryway, set back into the shadows, some distance down on the far side of the vast chamber. “We must go down that way.”

Magda nodded. She knew of the place, of course, though she had never had reason to go down there before. She pressed a hand against the pang of anxiety tightening in her stomach.

As they made their way along and diagonally across the chamber, she tried as best she could to keep her face concealed by the cowl of her cloak. She wasn’t going to go out of her way to prevent people from recognizing her, but she wasn

’t going to deliberately let people know she was there if she didn’t have to. The echo of her every footstep, though, whispered through the cavernous room, as if to betray her.

Glancing out from the edge of the hood of her cloak, Magda saw gifted people she recognized. Even though she was doing nothing wrong, she didn’t want to stop to talk with them or have to explain her purpose. It was nobody’s business. She kept the hood pulled forward.

Baraccus had often told her that if she was doing something important, she shouldn’t tell people anything they didn’t need to know. He lived his life by that rule. In fact, he often wouldn’t even tell Magda about things he thought she didn’t need to know.

Like why he had killed himself.

She was certain that what Baraccus had done was not the simple suicide it had appeared to be to those who didn’t know him as well as she did. Magda knew that it was more complicated than that. Suicide was simply not consistent with his character, so she knew that there must be more to it, that there must be a larger purpose to it. She also knew that for Baraccus to sacrifice his life, that purpose had to have been vitally important.

She also suspected that this time it was different in that he really did want her to find the reason behind it. His last words, in the note he had left for her, seemed to say as much. His voice still rang in her head with his words from the note.

Your destiny is to find truth.