The First Confessor (Sword of Truth 0)

“The council’s view was that as tragic as it was, the people from Grandengart were dead and therefore beyond help. The elder said that they needed to worry about the living.

“No one on the council could see that my discovery had a direct bearing on the living, and especially on keeping the living alive.

“The elder looked me in the eye and said that they had a great many important things to worry about. Though he didn’t say it, I got the distinct impression that he meant to scold me for wasting their time.

“I said that with the war growing day by day I completely understood, but, as a sorceress and a spiritist, I believed that this had something important to do with that war and that it was somehow tied into it all. I said that I feared there was more going on than anyone was aware of and that we were all at far greater peril than anyone realized.”

Magda had been before the council a number of times and knew full well their capacity for detachment.

“What did they say?”

“Well, after a moment’s thought, the elder leaned back in his chair and suggested that perhaps I could find a wizard willing to help me. He said that if I could find such a wizard, I was welcome to his help.

“One of the other councilmen chuckled and suggested that I seek the help of young Wizard Merritt, that maybe I could take his mind off his daydreaming.”

Magda was afraid that she knew all too well what had happened next.

Chapter 34

“So,” Isidore said, “considering the possibilities of what the enemy could be doing with the bodies they had harvested and what they might be doing to prevent the spirits of those poor people from finding their rightful way into the spirit world, and why they would do such ghastly things, I decided that my best chance was to look for Wizard Merritt.”

Magda was not liking where the story was going, especially since she already knew that a wizard had taken Isidore’s eyes, and it seemed that Merritt was a man already engaged in the secretive business of altering people with magic into something other than the way they were born. She knew that some such alterations were relatively minor, but some, like the sliph, were monstrous transformations.

“Inquiring where I could find Merritt, I began to learn that people didn’t laugh at him, the way the council had. People were afraid of Merritt.”

Magda was surprised by this news, especially in light of the way the council had dismissed him. “Afraid of him? You mean because he alters people into weapons?”

“Well, yes, to an extent, but it’s actually more than that. They are afraid of him because he’s a maker.”

“A maker?” Magda leaned in. “Are you sure?”

She knew that the things made by such wizards often frightened people, and with good reason. She also knew that true makers were exceedingly rare and opinions of them tended to be contentious. She was beginning to better understand why the council hadn’t wanted to deal with Merritt.

Isidore nodded. “That’s one of his gifted talents. He makes all sorts of things, everything from exquisite leather bindings heavily invested with wards for books of magic, to piles of edged weapons that cut in ways that steel alone can’t, to complex metal creations I couldn’t even begin to describe and can only wonder at. He even carves beautiful statues from marble.

“His place was littered with an array of metal objects left all over the floor, sitting around the statues, and piled in corners. There were knives stacked on some tables and swords neatly arranged on others. I’d never seen the likes of it in my life. It reminded me a bit of the blacksmith places I’ve seen, except cleaner and, I don’t know, more refined, I guess.”

Magda smiled. “I’m familiar with strange objects left in corners. My husband was a maker, though I rarely heard that name applied to him.”

“Really?” Isidore asked. “Baraccus was a maker as well as a war wizard?”

Magda nodded. “When I met him he was already First Wizard, so that’s the way people referred to him, the way they thought of him.”

In fact, people were hesitant about calling him a maker, so they were eager to refer to him as “First Wizard.”

“Despite his duties and responsibilities,” Magda said, “Baraccus was always making things. He would often sit at a worktable late at night and craft the most intricate things I’ve ever seen, yet I always knew that some of those things, despite how beautiful they may have been, were actually quite deadly.

“Not long after we were married I asked him why, with so many responsibilities and other things to do, he took the time to sit at that table and make things. He smiled and said that he was a maker, and driven to make things.”

“That’s a maker,” Isidore said. “That’s the way they are. Creativity in large and small ways defines their nature in everything they do.”

When he had first mentioned that he was a maker, Magda had confessed to Baraccus that, although she’d heard whispers about “makers,” she didn’t really know much about them. At that time, a lot of things having to do with his abilities were a mystery to her. He had patiently explained how the gift manifested itself in various ways in different people. He said that as a war wizard his gift contained a number of these discrete elements.

Magda had been surprised. She’d always thought that being a war wizard was a unique talent in and of itself. She remembered him smiling and saying that a war wizard’s power was not a singular ability, but its strength actually came from a combination of components.

He explained that prophecy sometimes guided a war wizard. If combat was called for, such a man could envision a battle plan, or wield a blade, or sometimes focus the force of his rage into destructive power, or do the opposite and call forth his ability to heal the gravely injured. He said that in his case, if a stronghold and defenses were needed to protect people he also knew how to build them because he was a maker. All of those things and more, added together, he said, made up his unique ability as a war wizard.

She recalled how his eyes lit up when he explained that makers were more, though. They were actually artists, he said, and true artistic ability was as rare among wizards as it was among those without the gift. And, like true artistic ability, a lot of people thought they had it, but few actually did.

According to Baraccus, this genuine artistic ability enabled exceptional makers to use magic in creative ways that others had never imagined. He said that all new spells, all new forms of magic, all new uses for spells, were first envisioned by these kinds of makers.

Baraccus had told her that while a number of wizards could make things, the same as the ungifted could make things, it was this component of artistic ability in creating new things that took it to another level and made true makers more rare than true prophets.

That was also part of the reason that people feared them. They could conceive of and conjure what had never before been done. New things were frequently treated with suspicion, while new things having to do with magic were usually treated with great suspicion.

Baraccus held that without makers magic would stagnate, its scope left to accidental discoveries and to those who learned what to do through rules, formulas, and methods. Without that element of imaginative artistic ability, the gifted couldn’t expand on magic or build it into new forms. Without makers to show them new ways, show them new forms of magic, the gifted were left with doing only that which been done before.

Magda had always heard that there were rules and procedures that had to be followed in order to make magic work properly. She thought it must be rather like baking bread, that it had to be done correctly. She asked Baraccus how a maker could get magic to work properly if they weren’t following rules, formulas, and methods.

He laughed and asked how she thought all those things arose in the first place. Where did the rules originate? Where did the formulas come from? How were the methods first discovered?

Who created the first shield? Who first used the gift to mend a broken bone? Who first cast wizard’s fire?

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nbsp; Makers, Baraccus told her, first conceived of all those things and more. They created forms of magic that others then went on to mimic and copy and use. What was at first remarkable in this way became common, eventually acquiring rules and formulas and methods. But it was the creativity of makers that first showed the way. Makers created new recipes, as it were. Those who couldn’t wield magic creatively had to follow the recipe someone gave them.

Magda remembered the passion in his voice as he told her about such things. Making things was in his soul. Creating new things seemed to be his spark of life.

“Baraccus told me that without makers there would be no new conjuring and magic would be forever confined to simple things that were endlessly copied. He said that it takes makers to think up and create what never before existed.”

Isidore smiled as she nodded. “That’s the secret about magic that most people, even most of the gifted, don’t really understand. The things created by a maker are endlessly imitated and copied to the point where people cease to think about where such things originated. People who have lived with a particular form of magic their entire life tend to assume that it always existed.”

“I guess that’s because true makers, such as my husband, are so exceedingly rare.”