Merritt nodded, and after a check of the surrounding area one last time to make sure they weren’t missing anything, they quickly headed off the road, through the dense undergrowth, and in a short while found the trail. The ground was covered in a layer of pine needles, so it made for silent passage. With the moon out, enough light made it through the trees to the forest floor and the trail so that they could see to make their way.
“Now,” he said after they had moved deeper into the protection of the trees, “not that I’m unappreciative, but what are you doing here? I told you that you must rest. I’m surprised that you have enough strength to stand up, and after that battle you’re lucky you can still breathe on your own. You’re in more trouble than you realize, Magda. You—”
“And we’re in more trouble than you realize. Lothain is being installed as First Wizard tomorrow afternoon. He forced me to agree to marry him at the ceremony.”
“What!”
Magda didn’t let him launch into a rant. “Listen to me. I had no choice. He said that he would start killing everyone I know if I didn’t agree. He had Tilly and had done terrible things to her just to show me that he was serious. Had I said no he would have killed her on the spot. As it was, she was in a bad way. She was just the first of many he would start in on if I didn’t agree. I couldn’t allow that.”
“Dear spirits,” he said under his breath.
“Here,” Magda said as she pulled the baldric off over her head and handed him his sword back. “I have a plan, though. I’ve figured it out. I know what we have to do.”
After Merritt had put the sword on, he gripped her arm. “You may have a plan, but I can clearly see in your eyes that you’re at the end of your endurance. That battle and running around out here is only making you worse. I can’t heal you further. You must rest to complete what I’ve done.”
“This wasn’t my choice, Merritt,” she said impatiently.
He sighed. “I suppose not. But I’d better get you back to the Keep. We can talk about your plan after you rest.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Magda insisted as she pulled her arm away from his grasp. “We have something much more important to do and it has to be done right now. I know that I need rest. Do you think I don’t know how weak I am? But we don’t have any choice. This can’t wait.”
He appraised the resolve in her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Merritt, we’re in a lot of trouble. Lothain obviously intended to get rid of you so he must suspect that you’re working to find the truth of what’s going on. You were surely being taken back to be tried and executed, and you can bet that they would have tortured a confession out of you, first.
“Lothain needs to end the doubts about himself and subvert any opposition as a last step to seize rule at the Keep. He’s consolidating his power. He was able to dismiss Councilman Sadler so that he can more easily control the council. He already has his own private army.
“By marrying me he gains the confidence of the Home Guard and a number of key officials, as well as a lot of wizards who believed in Baraccus. Were I to refuse, he would then need to discredit me. He’d simply throw me in the dungeon, torture a confession out of me, and have me executed for treason. It isn’t all that hard to get people under torture to confess.
“I’m in a box. The way it is right now, no matter whether I go along with him or not, I can’t change what is going to happen. It still all ends the same way. My word alone against Lothain’s won’t sway enough people. He will be First Wizard. He will rule the Midlands.
“By agreeing to marry him during the ceremony tomorrow when he is named First Wizard, that at least keeps people from dying tonight. But that’s all the time it buys. If I refuse, a lot of innocent people are going to die immediately, but I hold no illusions; once he uses me to win the popular support in the Keep and has an iron grip on rule, he will purge the army and the officials of anyone who doesn’t fully support him and then I will encounter an unfortunate end. I am only an expedient means to his ends, and my value to him is very short-lived.
“If we don’t do something, and do it now while I’m still useful to him, then we and a lot of our people are going to die. I now know the truth about him, but half the Keep doesn’t.
“Many people believe that Lothain is fighting for the good of mankind by prosecuting those he says are traitors. They think he is our savior. If I tell them otherwise, that he is often prosecuting people who can reveal his true intent, like Naja, most people won’t believe it. They will believe the lies Lothain tells them.
“People aren’t going to believe me if I try to tell them what is really going on. They believe the word of Lothain, an important man, the head prosecutor. When Lothain makes the accusation that Baraccus conspired with those in the Old World to defeat us, they believe him. No matter what I say, they would think I am the real traitor for siding with Baraccus.
“People need the truth. I’m the only one who can deliver truth. But I’d be dead before I could finish making the accusation.
“The way things stand, I don’t have any way to stop him.”
Merritt eyed her suspiciously. “But you said that you have a plan.”
“Yes, I have a plan. It’s true that I’m so exhausted I can hardly stand. I understand that. But we have only one chance. We have to take it. I came looking for you for a reason.”
Merritt’s expression turned unreadable. “What reason?”
Magda gathered her resolve.
“I want you to use me to create a Confessor.”
Chapter 87
Merritt tilted his head toward her as his eyes narrowed. “You want me to alter you into a Confessor?”
“Yes,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time. We need to hurry.”
Merritt walked off a distance to stand beneath one of the enormous limbs spreading from an ancient oak. With his back to her, the moon cast cold light over his broad shoulders.
Looking grim, he finally turned back.
“Please don’t ask that of me, Magda.”
She stepped closer under the massive limbs of the oak. “I had always thought that changing a person’s nature with magic was a cold, calculating, callous thing to do for the sake of creating a weapon. I could never understand how people could allow wizards to alter them. I thought that it was a perversion of our existence.
“Isidore taught me that it isn’t always the case. She taught me that if it’s done for the right reasons it can actually be a chance to make the best of ourselves. Done in the right way, it is adding to who and what we already are and what we already believe. In that way it’s not altering a person’s nature, but adding to it. Such a purpose can be the moral thing to do.
“Even more, though, you’re not only a wizard. You’re Merritt. You may not see the difference in that, but I do. Though we haven’t known each other for long, it has been long enough for me to know you, to know your heart.”
“That’s reassuring to hear, but knowing me isn’t enough.”
“I realize that, but I’ve thought this through. You may not believe that, but I have. It’s not ju
st that this is the only way, it’s that it’s the right thing. While creating weapons out of people can be a terrible deed, done in the right way by the right person and for the right reasons, it can be a wondrous thing.
“You envisioned the idea of a Confessor for the right reasons. Life is truth. Truth is life. You wanted a way to seek truth. Such a cause, in the promotion of life, is noble.
“Killing is a terrible thing, too. I hate killing. But killing isn’t necessarily wrong.” She gestured back down the trail. “Killing those men tonight was the right thing to do, for the right reasons. It was done for good. It was done to preserve innocent life. In this instance, not killing would have been immoral.
“You intend the Confessors to stop evil, just as my killing those men stopped them from doing evil. That makes both the right thing to do.
“Merritt, I want that person, that Confessor that you create, to be me. I understand the nobility of purpose in the creation of a Confessor. I know precisely what to do with that opportunity. Please, give me the chance to do what only I can do. Give me the means to help stop evil and preserve life. Don’t let me fail to do what only I can do.
“It’s my life. I want it to have this purpose.”
“There’s more to it, Magda. We need time to consider all the implications.”
“Ordinarily, that would be the right thing, but we have no time. It has to be now. It has to be tonight. I have to use that Confessor power to expose the truth. I wish it could wait, but it can’t. This is our only chance.
“Baraccus told me that my destiny is to find truth—”
Merritt threw an arm up, gesturing angrily. “Life is not about fulfilling a destiny. Your life has no destiny but what you make of it.”
“And this is what I want to make of it. Baraccus also told me to live the life that only I can live. He told me to have the courage to take up that calling. He was asking me to choose my destiny. Prophecy is not only about destiny, but the balance—free will. Becoming a Confessor is my calling. But it’s not preordained. It’s a chance, a fork in the road of my life. I have to have the courage to take it on of my own free will. In that way, the balance of prophecy and free will is the magic of the future.”