The First Confessor (23 page)

Baraccus had said, “I couldn’t give Merritt the formulas he needs. I wish I could, but all the breach calculations are locked away in the Temple of the Winds, out of reach in the underworld.”

Magda knew, in Isidore’s story, that Merritt was not destined to get what he needed by visiting the First Wizard.

“Finally,” Isidore went on, “the elder suggested to Merritt that he go back to work on lesser tasks until he could come up with something worthwhile, something not outside the realm of possibility.

“When Merritt passed me on his way out, I could see that his jaw was set and his teeth were clenched. His fist was tightly gripped around the wire-wound hilt of his sword. I felt sorry for him because I heard something in his voice that I liked.”

Magda came out of her thoughts and glanced over at the woman. “What do you mean?”

Isidore shrugged. “I don’t know. Sincerity. Competence. I could tell that he knew what he was talking about even though the council wasn’t taking him seriously.

“And his eyes . . .”

“What about his eyes?”

Isidore shrugged self-consciously. “I don’t know. They were an unusual color for one thing—on the green side of hazel. But it was what I could see in his eyes that caught me up.

“When he looked at me, I was stopped dead by his gaze. It was like he could look right into my soul. Even though he was quietly angry at the council’s rejection of his request, there was still something gentle about his eyes. Through the anger in them, I could also see his compassion.”

Even in the soft candlelight, Magda could see that Isidore was blushing. “He made you feel safe,” she guessed.

Isidore nodded. “And I felt bad for him. I thought they were failing to recognize his true ability, his potential. I guess that because I’m a young sorceress I know what it feels like to have people not take you seriously when you really do know what you’re talking about. Sophia had taken me seriously, but few others ever did.”

“What about your meeting with the council?” Magda asked. “Did they agree to help you?”

Isidore let out a deep sigh. “When my turn came, the council sympathized with my story, but said that there was nothing they could do about the tragedy.

“I suspected that they didn’t entirely believe me. I can’t say that I blamed them. Most people, even most wizards, don’t really know much about the underworld, so the council couldn’t grasp the significance, the danger, of the things I was telling them any more than they could grasp the insights Merritt had brought them. My father would have, but these men hadn’t spent a lifetime studying the underworld the way he had.

“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.

“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?

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.”

“You are a rare person as well, Magda Searus. You seem to know more on the subject than even most of the gifted I’ve ever encountered.”

“I would never have understood about makers, either, had it not been for Baraccus teaching me about them. It was a subject close to his heart.” Magda shook her head as she remembered some of the things Baraccus had done. “He made such beautiful things. I still have all his tools. Since he died, I sometimes go to his worktable and pick them up, trying to feel a bit of him.”

Isidore was smiling as she listened. “I wish I could have known him.”

Magda’s own smile ghosted away. “Some of the things he made, I feared.”

Isidore frowned. “Really? Like what?”

Magda stared off into her memories. “At the start of the war, Baraccus created an achingly handsome amulet of precious metals surrounding a bloodred ruby. Despite its mastery, its beauty, its intricacy, that amulet was at the same time invested with meaning I couldn’t begin to understand. Yet I knew how important its meaning had to be to Baraccus because he always wore it.

“One night, after a particularly disturbing report from some of his wizards, I found him again at the window, staring out at the moon. I knew that he was thinking, as he often did, about the Temple of the Winds off in the underworld. He was clutching that amulet in his fist. I asked him what the amulet meant to him, what its meaning was.

“At first, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then, in a haunting voice, he said that it represented the dance with death. I was rather horrified by that. He said the dance with death was the way of a war wizard.

“I sat on the floor beside him that night, him standing, staring out the window, me with my back leaning against the wall beneath it while I held his hand, as he held his private thoughts close, and that amulet in his other hand.

“He was a remarkable man, a man that in many ways I don’t think I really knew.

“And now he’s gone.”

Isidore gently touched her arm.

Magda came out of her thoughts to look over at the spiritist. “I’m hoping that you will soon know his spirit . . . at least enough to bring me the answers I need, or at least answers that can guide me in the right direction.”