The First Confessor (11 page)

A hush fell over the room.

“What is the meaning of this interruption?” a red-faced Councilman Weston asked. “What matter could be important enough for you to dare to think you can intrude in this fashion?”

Magda clasped her hands. “A matter of life and death.”

Behind her, whispers rippled through the room.

“Life and death? What are you talking about?” Weston demanded.

Magda met the gaze of each councilman, now that one of them had made the mistake of inviting her to speak on the subject.

“The dream walkers are in the Keep.”

The room erupted with noise and confusion as everyone behind Magda started talking at once. Some people yelled questions. Others called out their disbelief. Yet others shouted denunciations. Many, gripped by fear, remained silent.

Elder Cadell, ever the arbiter of decorum in the council chambers, held up a gnarled, arthritic hand, calling for silence.

When the crowd quieted, Councilman Weston went on. “Dream walkers? Here in the Keep?” His eyes narrowed. “That’s absurd.”

Elder Cadell ignored Weston’s charge. “Lady Searus,” he said with practiced patience, “first of all, the council is in session and—”

“Good,” Magda said, not at all patient. “That means I don’t have to hunt you all down. Better that you are all gathered to hear this. Time is short.”

Councilman Guymer shot to his feet. “You have no standing to speak before this body much less to interrupt us! How dare you dismiss someone who was speaking on important matters and—”

“Whatever matter Vivian was wound up about this time can wait. I told you, this is a matter of life and death. I was just invited by Councilman Weston to speak. I intend to do so.” She arched an eyebrow. “Unless you want to have me dragged away before I can make known the mortal danger to our people as well as how the council can help to protect them?”

Assistants shared looks. Some of the councilmen shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. Not all of them wanted to so publicly silence her before she could reveal what the council could do to help to protect people. That reluctance gave her a window of opportunity.

Councilman Hambrook leaned back and clasped his hands together over his ample middle. “Dream walkers, you say?”

Guymer shot to his feet and turned his wrath on his fellow councilman. “Hambrook, we’re not going to be diverted from our agenda to allow this outrageous interruption to continue!”

Magda closed the distance to the desk in three long strides, placed her hands on the polished wood, and with a glare, leaned toward Councilman Guymer.

“Sit down.”

Taken aback by the calm fury in her voice, and somewhat stunned to be spoken to in such a way, he dropped into his chair.

Magda straightened. “Dream walkers have made their way into the Keep. We must—”

This time it was Weston, to her right, who interrupted her. “Disregarding your bursting in here in such an insolent fashion, what makes you think we would believe such a claim?”

Magda slammed the flat of her hand on the desk before the man. The shock of the loud smack made all of them jump. She could feel her face going red with rage.

“Look at me! This is what a dream walker did to me! What you see—the blood all over me—is what your countrymen and loved ones are going to look like before they die in unimaginable agony! This is what is coming for all of us!”

“I am not going to sit here and—”

“Let her speak,” Elder Cadell said with quiet authority.

Magda bowed her head to the elder in appreciation before collecting herself and going on. “A dream walker entered my mind without my being aware of it. I don’t know how long he was hidden there. I fear to think what he overheard while he was lurking in my mind without my knowledge.”

“What could he have overheard?” Councilman Sadler asked in a suspicious tone.

“For one thing, the reason I was coming here today: the solution to prevent the dream walkers from having free run of the Keep and destroying us all. Once he heard that solution, and knew that I was going to come here for the council’s help in implementing it, he acted. His intent was to kill me so that I couldn’t speak to you. His intent was to keep you in the dark so that we would all be vulnerable.”

As Magda looked at each councilman in turn, out of the corner of her eye she could see the crowd moving in closer so that they wouldn’t miss what she had to say. She straightened and stepped back to the center of the semicircle of councilmen so that she could make sure that everyone could hear her.

“While I don’t have any idea how long the dream walker was hidden there in my mind, watching, listening, his presence became all too obvious once he decided to rip me apart from the inside.” She slowly shook her head as she turned her back on the council to look out into the frightened eyes of all the silent people watching her. “You cannot imagine the pain of it.”

The spectators stared in silent anxiety.

Weston broke the silence. “Do you expect us to trust—”

“No,” she said without looking back at him. “I expect you to look with your own eyes at the result of what was being done to me by the dream walker who had slipped into my mind, here, in the Keep, where we thought we were safe. We are not safe.” She held out the skirt of her dress. “As I fell to my knees, dying, blood running from my ears, blood choking me, I could feel the dream walker break each rib, one at a time.” Some in the crowd gasped. “The pain was beyond endurance, yet there is no way to avoid enduring it.”

She walked slowly across the dais to be sure that everyone out in the crowd, as well as all those behind the desk, could get a good look at the blood all over her. The sound of her shoes on the wooden floor of the rostrum echoed through the room.

“The blood you see all over me,” she said, “is the evidence of the torture he was inflicting. If it is shocking to see, I promise you, you would not have wanted to hear my screams as I lay in a pool of my own blood and on the brink of death.”

“And so I guess that the good spirits swept in and saved you at the last moment?” Councilman Guymer asked, bringing a smattering of laughter.

“No,” she calmly answered as she gazed out at the crown. “Though I prayed they would, the good spirits did not come to my rescue. I saved myself.”

“And how, may I ask, did you do that,” Sadler asked, fingers skyward, “if the dream walkers are in fact such fearsome beings?”

“You’re right. They are fearsome. They are also powerful. But I invoked magic even more powerful and as a result I was protected from the dream walkers.”

“You are not gifted,” Guymer scoffed.

“You don’t have to be gifted to be protected,” she said out to the crowd watching, addressing them rather than the council. “You must choose, though, to accept the solution. At the last moment before I was about to die, I came to understand that, and I chose to do what was needed to save myself.

“That’s why I’m here. I want all of our people to know that there is protection for them, for all of them. Believe me, the dream walkers can steal into the minds of anyone and they will show no mercy. But none of you need fear them. None of you needs to suffer and die.”

“And how do you know that you really are protected?” Guymer asked.

“If I wasn’t protected, the dream walkers would have torn me apart where I stood so they could prevent me from coming here to tell you how to protect yourselves and our people from their abilities.”

Concerned chatter rippled through the room. People among the onlookers shouted out over the noise, wanting to know what was needed to be protected from the dream walkers.

Magda let the worry build for a time before she finally lifted her arm, pointing to the back of the room near the great doors. Everyone turned to look where she pointed.

“There stands Lord Rahl, the key to your survival,” she said in a voice loud enough that all could hear her. “He alone created a protection that shields him from the dream walkers. That protection constructed of magic is powerful enough to protect anyone bonded to him.”

“Lord Rahl!” Guymer shouted. “Not that nonsense again! Lord Rahl has already come before us with his plans to rule the world.”

Magda turned a glare on the man. “And since when is toiling to protect your life and the lives of all the other innocent people of the Midlands as well as the D’Haran Lands interpreted as wanting to rule the world?”

“This is about the oath he insists we must swear to him, isn’t it?” Elder Cadell asked.

Magda spread her hands. “We are all on the same side in this. We of the Midlands and those of the D’Haran Lands share a common interest as well as a common threat. Those in the Old World want to subjugate all of the New World. They don’t care about our internal boundaries. They want to rule us all. If they win, there will be no Midlands, no D’Haran Lands. We will all be either dead or their slaves. This is about our survival, not petty matters of rule.”

“Petty?” Sadler asked. “I don’t see bowing to the rule of Lord Rahl as petty.”

“You will think it petty enough,” Magda said, “if a dream walker silently slips into your mind and becomes your master, if he makes you do his vile bidding. They can make you betray those you care about, even kill people you love. If you’re lucky, that master will choose instead to rip you apart from the inside.”

Sadler licked his lips but didn’t speak up to argue.

The whispers in the crowd fell silent as a man who had been watching from the shadows at the back of the room behind the councilmen stepped out into the light.

It was Prosecutor Lothain. His menacing gaze was fixed on Magda.

Lothain’s smile looked every bit as deadly as a skeleton’s grin. “And how do you know, Lady Searus, that it was not really Alric Rahl’s own magic that was in fact tearing you apart from the inside, as you put it?”

“Lord Rahl’s magic?” Magda gaped at the man. “Why would he do such a thing?”

Lothain arched an eyebrow. The grace of his smile, as mocking as it had been, vanished. “Perhaps for the exact reason that brings you to stand before us—to have you put on a show to frighten people into going along with his scheme to seize power and become the leader of all of the New World.”

He stood as motionless as a rock, challenging her to deny it.

“That is not what is happening.” Magda wished her own voice didn’t sound so inadequate and defensive.

“Because your husband had convinced you that Alric Rahl was to be trusted?”

Magda blinked. She didn’t want to agree with the man, but she had to say something. She pulled herself up straighter.

“My husband told me of the very real danger from the dream walkers. As a war wizard he knew all too well exactly what they are capable of. Like everyone else, I have for years admired Baraccus’s knowledge and wisdom. He was, after all, named First Wizard because of the respect in which he was held. As First Wizard, he had a great deal of trust in Alric Rahl. They were both fighting on the same side in this war. They both have fought from the beginning to keep all our people from being slaughtered.”

Lothain smiled just a bit, as if he had caught her in a slip of the tongue. “It would appear by your own admission that your husband carefully shaped your thinking in a great many areas.” He stroked a finger across the stubble on his chin as he took a few slow strides toward her. “Are you saying, then, that your husband was all along a secret party to Alric Rahl’s plot to rule the New World? Perhaps that was the reason for your husband’s secret dealings and covert midnight meetings with strangers?”

Magda’s hands fisted at her sides. This time she had no trouble bringing power to her voice.

“My husband has from the beginning fought this long war for no reason other than to protect us all.”

“This long war that we are losing.”

“Your accusations are as insulting as they are groundless.”

Lothain bowed his head. “Your loyalty to your husband is admirable, Lady Searus. But it is to be expected.”

“This is all quite beside the point,” Elder Cadell said. “Motives aside, we have been through all of this before quite exhaustively and in the end we made our decision to decline Lord Rahl’s offer.”

Magda closed the distance to the elder sitting at the imposing center of the council’s desk. “But things have changed. There is no time to waste. The dream walkers are here, now, in the Keep.”

“No one is doubting that you may in fact believe that,” Prosecutor Lothain said from behind her. “However, even though there may be those who are inclined to trust your sincerity in what you believe, it is the truth of that belief that is in question. Dream walkers will no doubt pose a threat at some point in the future but when they do I would expect that they will come after important targets.”

Magda rounded on the prosecutor and held out her bloodstained arms. “They came after me!”

Lothain smiled dismissively. “At such a great distance from down in the Old World, how would a dream walker know of you, or find you, and more to the point, why would they bother with you? But Alric Rahl was in the Keep, right there in the room with you, and he had motive enough to want to make you believe it was a dream walker who was attacking you.”

“That’s absurd,” she said. “The dream walkers are real and a threat.”

“Of course they are,” Elder Cadell said. “But in any event, we have decided on our own solution to protect our people.”

“Your own solution?” Magda’s brow twitched into a frown as she rounded on the elder. “Surely you don’t mean the towers?”

Councilman Weston, to the side of the elder, leaned forward, his hand clenching into a fist on the desk. “We don’t need to hear your skepticism of a matter that is the council’s concern and not a topic meant for public discussion.”

Magda knew that, for obvious reasons, they would of course want to keep the true nature of the project a secret. Baraccus had never agreed to the proposal, or to keeping the plan a secret. He thought that if the situation was grave enough, the idea was something that would reluctantly have to be considered, but he thought it had to be considered publicly. Apparently others thought so as well. As a result, the tower proposal was one of the worst-kept secrets in all of Aydindril.