“Who else but you can stop that from happening? Who else but you can complete the key? Who else but me can we trust to help you?
“I have to do this, Merritt. I trust you to take care with my life, but if I lose it in the attempt, then I will have died trying to save all life and I don’t want you to blame yourself. This is worth doing. I’d rather die trying to preserve the value of life than watch it all end because I failed to do what only I can.
“Trust in yourself, Merritt. Do what no other but you can do. Use me for what you need to complete the key.”
He watched her eyes for a long time as lightning flashed and thunder boomed.
“You’re something else, Magda Searus.” He slowly shook his head. “You really are.”
She realized that she was glad he was having a difficult time putting her life at risk. She wouldn’t want him to be indifferent.
Merritt finally held out a hand, palm up. “Give me your arm.”
Magda held her arm out for him. Merritt closed a big hand around her wrist and held it in a firm grip.
“Be still, now,” he said. “I don’t want you to jerk or I might cut too deep.”
Magda took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to steady her racing heart. It wasn’t the blade she feared as much as the unknown of the ordeal that was to follow. She glanced around, briefly wondering if she would ever see the world of life again. She met Merritt’s gaze.
“I’m ready. Do it.”
Without preamble he drew the blade across the inside of her forearm, close to her wrist. She felt the razor-sharp edge bite into her flesh as he dragged it across her arm, carefully controlling how deeply he cut. It sent a shock of pain through her. Blood immediately began gushing down her arm. He had cut deeper than she had expected. She felt faint. She fought the feeling. She knew that she had to remain conscious.
Magda watched the blood flood down her arm, her wrist, down over her palm, to finally engulf and run off her fingers. She was shocked to see how much blood there was.
“Hurry, now,” Merritt said, “before you lose too much blood.”
Feeling like she was watching herself in a dream, Magda took a couple of steps away to begin drawing the outer circle, the one representing the beginning of the world of the dead.
“No,” Merritt said, holding her shoulders as he guided her back, “I need you to start in the center. You need to draw the star first.”
She looked up at the shadow of his face. “But I thought—”
“I know what you thought and ordinarily you would be right, but it can’t be drawn the way you were taught. This is for something entirely different than the Grace is usually used for. We’re altering the elements involved.” He nodded his encouragement. “Draw the star first.”
Magda had been taught that a Grace was always started with the outer circle, then moved inward through the square to the inner circle to the central eight-pointed star, and then finally the rays of the gift were drawn from the star to cross that inner circle, the square, and finally across the outer circle out into the underworld. She had always been told that the Grace was never to be drawn in any other way, not even casually. The Grace was a serious device that carried great importance as well as powerful magic if done by the right people, and especially if done by them in blood.
Worried about the implications, Magda nonetheless did as Merritt asked, letting the blood drip in a steady line across the sandy ground he had smoothed out. She was careful to go slow enough that the lines of blood were unbroken.
“Good,” he said. “Now draw the beginning of the world of life around it, touching the points of the star.”
Lightning flashing all around, thunder booming, Magda followed his instructions. Wind whipped her hair across her face and she had to pull it back to see what she was doing. What the lightning didn’t light for her, the lantern did. After the circle was completed, he had her draw the square, and then the outer circle, where ordinarily a Grace was begun.
“Now,” he said, “draw the rays. But you need to begin them out beyond the outer circle, in the world of the dead, pulling the lines inward through the whole thing until they touch the points of the star, until they touch creation.”
Magda stared at him. “Merritt, are you sure? I’ve never heard of a Grace being drawn that way. I’ve never heard of anyone daring to draw the rays inward from death toward the Light of Creation. It seems a sacrilege.”
He was nodding. “I know. But that’s what I need you to do. We’re mixing elements, remember? This is what the rift calculations are for. This is why I need the seventh-level breach formulas. Hurry, before you lose too much blood.”
By the time she was finished, she was feeling decidedly light-headed. She tingled all over, except for her fingers. They had gone numb.
Magda realized that the dim world all around her seemed to be tilting at an odd angle. Merritt caught her in his arms before she hit the ground.
He set her down, leaning her against a log off to the side. He placed a hand over the cut. “You did good, Magda.”
She felt the heavy warmth of magic flowing into her arm.
“This will stop the bleeding so that it can start to heal,” he told her. She could hardly hear his voice. “While I’m working, I want you to sit right here and rest. Be strong for me, now. I need you to be strong for the next part.”
Magda nodded, but he was already rushing back to the Grace drawn in blood.
Her blood.
Chapter 66
Magda lay back against the log, watching the lightning flicker deep in the clouds overhead, turning them a greenish color deep inside. The lightning danced from place to place, running in jumping, jagged lines as it ripped across the sky, causing a great cracking, booming sound in its wake. She could feel the deep rumble of thunder through the sandy ground.
Something about that greenish color tickled at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t seem to bring it forth.
When Magda realized that not all the lightning, not all the rumbling roar, was coming from the sky, she used her elbows against the log to push herself a little more upright. Standing near the center of the Grace, Merritt was using a finger and thumb to pull a line of light through the air, as if he were pulling yarn from a skein. Before him stood a structure of hundreds of thin lines of light all connected into a complex scaffolding. It was a verification web beyond the complexity of any she had seen.
Lightning crackled around it, jumping around from poin
t to point on the framework or coming down from the darkness above to connect with it, touching here and there, testing, almost as if the threads of lightning were tasting it.
In the center of the armature the Sword of Truth floated in the air, a goodly distance above the ground. It stuck halfway out of the top, turning slowly as if turning on a spit. As it turned, the blade reflected flashes of the colored light from the glowing lines in all directions out across the Grace.
As Merritt added more lines, and yet others spontaneously sprang on their own from various points to establish new junctures, the structure grew ever taller, with the sword continuing to rotate inside. Merritt circled around the outside of the lighted framework, adding bits of lines here and there, pulling some of them in arcs from intersection to intersection, as if reinforcing areas he deemed weak.
As the structure began building more rapidly on its own, Merritt raced to the points of the star of the Grace and began drawing spell-forms in the sandy ground. He used his finger and drew each line with swift precision until the form was complete. He moved from point to point on the star, adding a complex and exacting drawing at each of the points. Each spell-form looked different to her.
When all eight had been completed, he returned to the glowing structure, pushing at it here and there with his palms, testing, then carefully adding a line of light here, another there, to stiffen the whole thing.
Magda’s head felt as if it were in a vise. The pressure was painful. She didn’t know the source of the pain. She wondered whether it was her connection to the Grace and the spells, or simply the loss of blood. She didn’t know what to expect as she watched the framework continue to build on itself, growing ever upward, growing broader at the base. Legs of light grew from the side of the skeleton of lighted lines to anchor themselves at places along the lines of the star drawn with her blood. She saw blood being drawn up along the beams of light.