The First Confessor (Sword of Truth 0)

Lothain again fell to his knees, again clasping his hands as he gazed up at her with wide eyes filled with the desperate need to please her.

She had always thought of the prosecutor as a bull of a man, a commanding figure feared for his dogged pursuit of his quarry as well as his intimidating presence. Now, he looked weak and powerless. She supposed that he was. The man that he had been, was no more.

Now, he was a man who suddenly appeared to be in great distress as he hesitated. “I’m not sure what you mean, Mistress.”

Magda frowned as she looked down the length of her white dress at him. “It’s a simple question. Who are you loyal to? Answer the question.”

“To you, Mistress! I am loyal to you and no other!”

Magda shared a look with Merritt.

“That’s not the right answer,” she whispered.

“You have to be more specific,” Merritt whispered back. “He is trying to follow your instructions exactly.”

Magda understood. She looked back down at the concern on the stocky face peering up at her, waiting expectantly.

“No, that’s not what I meant—”

Lothain cried out in anguish at hearing that he had displeased her. He fell to the floor, grasping the hem of her white Confessor’s dress.

“I’m sorry, Mistress!” he sobbed. “Please, forgive me! I’ll tell you whatever you want to hear!”

“I want to hear the truth. I meant that I want to know where your loyalties used to lie before you became loyal to me.”

Relief washed over his creased face at understanding what she wanted, relief that he now knew how to please her. He sat back on his heels.

“I was loyal to Emperor Sulachan, Mistress. I was a spy for him. I did his bidding.”

The crowd gasped. Some of the people were still helping those in pain on the floor as others were pushing around them, trying to get in closer to be able to hear.

“How can that be?” one of the older wizards near the front asked. “How is it possible for our prosecutor to be loyal to Sulachan, and even if it was, why would he admit it to you?”

Magda gestured to Merritt, for the first time really noticing how much blood was all over him. She paused momentarily to take him in, then turned to the watching faces.

“This is Wizard Merritt. He is a maker.”

That sent ripples of whispering back through the crowd. Some people, she knew, thought that makers were a myth. Other people had known that Merritt was gifted, but hadn’t known that he was a maker. A number of the gifted, though, nodded knowingly, some even with pride.

“I want you all to understand what has happened, and why this traitor is confessing. You see, with his gift as a maker, Merritt created an entirely new form of magic never conceived of before.”

Excited whispering swept back through the crowd at the news. Magda waited for the crowd to quiet down. Wanting to hear what she would say next, they quickly did.

“That magic was crafted specifically to get the truth from a person. Touched by this power, anyone will reveal the truth, no matter what the truth may be, no matter how guilty they have been, no matter what evil they have committed.

“Once touched by this power, anyone, no matter how much they may have wished to hide it before, is changed forever and they will reveal the truth.

“This is not the time to go into a detailed explanation of how it works. That doesn’t matter right now. Right now, the important thing for you to understand is that this powerful magic is infallible at what it is designed to do. A person touched by this power confesses the truth about anything they are asked. They cannot lie.”

“What kind of power were you using for this?” a wizard in plain robes standing in the front of the crowd asked. “I’ve never heard of such magic.”

“In part, I used the calculations for a seventh-level breach,” Merritt explained with casual finality.

Eyebrows around the room lifted. Wizards shared grim looks.

Merritt stepped up closer beside Magda. “You’ve seen the terrible weapons that have been created out of people, things such as the dream walkers. This one was created to help us. This power creates a new kind of weapon that serves the cause of truth. That’s what matters.

“Lady Searus volunteered her life to the attempt. It was a perilous journey she undertook for our sake, for the sake of being able to know truth from deception and lies. I guarantee you that none of you can imagine the sacrifice she made to do this, or the personal risks she took for our cause. In the end it worked, and she has been reborn with this new power.”

Merritt held a hand out in introduction. “Please meet Magda Searus, the first Confessor.”

Chapter 93

Magda could hear the word “Confessor” whispered over and over, repeated countless times back through the mass of people watching. Lothain, still on his knees, continued to gaze up at her, patiently awaiting her further instructions.

When Magda signaled, Quinn brought Naja forward. Naja pushed her hood back so that Lothain could see her. Rage reddened her face. Magda could see the dangerous aura of the gift shimmering in her icy blue eyes.

Naja pointed at Lothain. “This is the man who put me in the dungeon. This is the man who tortured me and—”

Quinn grabbed her and pulled her back as she lunged, trying to kick him between his legs. “We need him to be able to talk,” he whispered in Naja’s ear. “Magda needs to get all the truth out of him. Let her do it.”

Naja, her breast heaving in rage, pressed her lips tightly together as she looked into Magda’s eyes. Magda could see that the sorceress was on the edge of unleashing enough violence to reduce Lothain to a smoldering corpse.

“I know,” Magda whispered to her. “I know.”

“I owe you both my life,” Naja said to Magda and Merritt. “Everyone here does. My trust is the least I can offer in return.” At last, she pulled back from the brink and gave Magda a nod to continue.

“Who is she?” Magda asked Lothain as she gestured to Naja. “Tell everyone here who this woman is and what her duties were before coming here to the Keep. Tell us what you know about her.”

Lothain looked out at the crowd watching him and answered without hesitation. “She is a defector from the Old World. She came here to help the cause of the Midlands. She was Emperor Sulachan’s spiritist. She knows about the ways of the wizards in the Old World. She knows how they have been able to use the dead to serve the ends of Emperor Sulachan. She knows how we are able to control the souls of the dead in order to use their corpses to do our bidding. She knows, too, about the half people and how we steal their souls as well.”

Cries of terror broke out as near panic washed back through the people watching. The true dimension of the threat from the Old World was sinking in. Most of these people had never heard of such things.

“And what did you do w

hen she defected and came here to help our cause?” Magda asked him.

“I had her chained in the dungeon and tortured.”

“Why did you put her in the dungeon?” Magda asked.

He leaned in eagerly at the question, happy that he was able to answer her, to be able to please her. “To make sure that she couldn’t help the wizards and sorceresses here at the Keep who work to defend the Midlands and counter the weapons being created in the Old World. We didn’t want her to stop what we were secretly doing with the dead, or with assassinating important people.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Mistress. I meant you harm, too.” He fell to his knees again, clutching at the hem of her white dress. “Please, forgive me!”

“Stop that and look at me.”

He immediately came to attention on his knees.

Magda suddenly went cold with dread.

She had forgotten to take it into consideration.

She looked down at Lothain. “You know about the dream walkers?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Are there dream walkers here, now, secretly hiding in people’s minds, watching us right now?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

She hadn’t considered that. She had been so worried about getting Lothain to confess in front of everyone, so determined to expose his treason, that she hadn’t thought about dream walkers watching along with everyone else.

A man, his eyes wild, his hands clawed, screamed with murderous intent as he ran toward the dais, toward Lothain.

Merritt, grasping what was happening, thrust his hand out just in time, sending a charge of power into the man flying in toward Lothain. The man shuddered when the power hit him and he fell dead at Magda’s feet. He had been one of their own, not a traitor, but a dream walker had turned him into an assassin.

As a couple of soldiers dragged the body away, Magda looked up at the shocked faces. “That was a dream walker taking control of one of our people to try to kill our witness, here.”

People backed away, gawking at the dead man being dragged past their feet, one of them, used by a dream walker to become a killer. It was suddenly becoming all too real to people who hadn’t been willing to believe that it was possible dream walkers were already invading the minds of people in the Keep.