The First Confessor (25 page)

Magda blinked in surprise. “To make the . . . spirits feel safe?”

“That’s right. The dead ends make them feel a sense of safety, feel that others can’t sneak up on them. The cloth gives them the comforting sense of being shrouded. Did you notice that the cloth panels have protection spells either painted on them or woven into the fabric? Most of it is very faint, but spirits can see them, or maybe they are aware of the spells in their own way.”

“I guess I hadn’t noticed,” Magda said.

“Some of those spells on the hanging fabric are my own creation, born of my work as a spiritist. They’re powerful and significant.” Isidore leaned toward Magda a bit. “The dead must heed them.”

“And the empty rooms?”

“The rooms are refuges that give the dead a sense of place. It has to be hard for them, not knowing where they belong. The rooms are empty so that the spirits don’t feel like they are intruding into someone else’s place. You see, the whole maze is a sanctuary for the spirits who find themselves trapped in this world.

“That day in my room, standing over the papers, Merritt said that he knew the right place to build such a sanctuary. He said that it would be down in the lower reaches of the Keep, below the crypts, where there were countless dead laid to rest. The crypts, he said, were a place of such specific energy that spirits trapped in this world would already tend to haunt that area. He said that the refuge he would build below would then draw them in to me.

“He said, then, that he would personally oversee the construction.” Isidore swallowed. “I knew what he meant. He meant that it was time for him to first take my sight.”

“I don’t see how you could allow a wizard to alter you in such a way,” Magda said, unable to contain her emotion any longer.

“Sometimes, it is necessary to step beyond what you have known and to reach for something more.”

Magda had intended not to bring her own views into the conversation—after all, what was done was done—but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m sorry, Isidore, but I can’t see how you could allow it. How could you stand to give up so much? How could you allow a wizard to alter you from the way you were born?”

Isidore smiled then. “It’s not that way at all, Magda. You were born unable to speak a language. Without people changing you from that natural, unaltered state, you would to this day not understand the spoken word, or be able to communicate.”

“That’s different,” Magda said. “A person is born with that potential.”

“A person is born with the potential to change, to learn, to grow. It’s not always an easy step to take. You were changed by being taught to read and write. Reading and writing aren’t natural abilities. They were instilled in you. Aren’t you happy that people cared enough to change you so that you would be better than you were born and thus have a better life? Aren’t you better for it? Didn’t the struggle make you stronger?”

Magda swiped back her short hair. “But Isidore, he took your sight. How could you stand to lose—”

“No,” Isidore said, holding up a finger to cut Magda off. “It’s not that way at all. Yes, I lost something, but I gained something truly remarkable. I gained far more than I lost. Do you know that I’ve never again bothered to hold those scarves with the knots?”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t need them. That memory is the past. I can see so much more now.”

Magda frowned. “What do you mean? See what?”

Isidore lifted an arm, slowly sweeping it around the room. “Well, I can see . . .”

The cat hissed as she suddenly jumped to her feet and rose up onto her toes.

Isidore’s arm halted in place.

The cat arched her back high. Her black hair stood on end as her mouth opened wide. Her muzzle drew back, exposing her teeth as she hissed.

Magda blinked at the cat. “Shadow . . . what’s the matter with you?”

“You should run,” Isidore whispered.

Magda looked up. “What?”

“Run.”

Magda sprang to her feet, following Isidore up. Shadow’s black fur stood out straight, making her look bigger than she really was. Her tail puffed out to twice as fat as normal. Hissing with her fangs bared, she looked ferocious.

Isidore swept her arm out, pushing Magda behind her. “It’s too late to run. It’s in the hallway.”

Magda thought that her own hair might stand on end along with the cat’s.

“What’s in the hall?”

A gust of wind swept in low along the floor and then up through the room, swirling around the wall, extinguishing all the candles. The air turned icy, as if someone had opened the door into the dead of winter.

The cat growled in a way that Magda had never before heard a cat growl. It was a ferocious, feral sound.

The frigid, whirling breeze died away, leaving the room to settle into murky stillness. Fortunately, the shield door on Magda’s lantern had been closed. The flame hadn’t been blown out by the strange gust of wind, so it was still providing some light. But sitting off to the side as it was, and with the shield door closed, it wasn’t much help at lighting the uncomfortably dark room.

Magda squinted, trying her best to see in the dim light, looking for any sign of movement, something out of place, something that didn’t belong. She didn’t see anything that would have Isidore and the cat in such a state of alarm, but it was so difficult to see in the near darkness that she couldn’t be sure there wasn’t something she might be missing.

Using an outstretched arm, Isidore began backing Magda through the room, following the curve of the circular wall. The blind woman was obviously able to tell quite well where she was in the darkness. Now it was Magda who was at the disadvantage.

Magda pulled her knife. With her other hand she clutched Isidore’s arm so if she had to she could pull the spiritist back out of harm’s way. Even though Magda knew how to use the weapon to defend herself, with the unseen nature of the threat the knife offered less comfort than she would have hoped.

Not seeing anything, Magda leaned close and whispered, “Maybe we should go into the back room.”

Isidore had both arms out, crouched a bit, as if she, too, was readying herself to fight the invisible opponent.

“No,” Isidore said. “If we go back there we’ll be even farther from the way out. We would be trapped.”

“Trapped by what?” Magda asked, holding her knife out as she scanned the room to both sides. “I don’t see anything.”

Isidore came to a slow, fluid stop as she crossed her lips with a finger, urging silence.

Slowly, quietly, each step taken with care, Isidore began ushering Magda closer to the side of the room, all the while facing the entrance.

For the first time, Magda heard something coming from the entry hall. The strange sound sent goose bumps tingling up her arms. It sounded like fingernails dragging along stone.

The cat, facing the black maw of the entrance hall, hissed and growled even louder. Magda didn’t know if Shadow intended on making an escape or attacking whatever it was that she and Isidore had first sensed in the entry.

With a sudden roar that made Magda gasp, a dark shape burst out of the blackness of the hall and into the room. In the dim light, Magda could see that it was a man. As Magda brought her knife up, Isidore ignited a bolt of power between her palms that lit the room in blinding flash of light.

In that flash, Magda saw that the man didn’t look the way she had expected. The folds of skin on his face seemed dry and stretched. It was difficult to see clearly in the crackling flashes of light, so she couldn’t be sure exactly what she had seen. His scraps of clothes were dark and clung tightly, as if stuck to him.

Isidore flicked her hands, casting the sizzling point of light toward the intruder. The cat screeched and sprang for his face.

A dark arm caught the cat in midair and flung it aside. At the same time the bolt of power that Isidore sent flying at the man seemed to glance uselessly off the dark figure as he advanced through the room. Stone shattered where the flickering light of Isidore’s power hit the wall, sending shards flying and dust boiling up.

Isidore didn’t waste any time. Another bolt of powerful light ignited. This time, Magda had to turn her face away from the searing heat that slammed into the advancing figure. The shimmering heat turned to white vapor as he pushed through it without slowing.

“Try to get around him and run,” Isidore said.

“I’m not leaving without you,” Magda told her as she tried to think of a way they could get past the hulking man.

“Forget about me—I am already lost!” Isidore yelled as she pushed Magda back.

“You’re not lost!” Magda regained her footing and seized Isidore’s arm. “We both have to get out of here!”

“We can’t both get away.”

“Yes we can. Hold my arm. When I cut him that will give us an opening. Stay with me.”

“You will only have one chance,” Isidore said, ignoring Magda’s command and shaking her arm free. “When that chance comes, take it! Don’t lose your life in here, Magda. You have to get away! You are more important than I am.”

Magda had no intention of leaving a blind woman to her fate with whoever, or whatever, was in the room with them. She grabbed Isidore’s arm again and yanked her back just in time from what the woman couldn’t see. A powerful arm swept past them both.

Magda used the opening to duck under Isidore’s outstretched arm and to slam her knife up into the ribs just under the man’s extended arm as it swung past them. It was a solid strike. She pulled back in time to miss the elbow that cocked back, trying to get her. The arm swept around again, inches from her face. She tried to slash the arm but missed. Magda saw that the fingers were like shriveled, blackened claws.

Isidore pushed both hands out, using all her strength to send a concentrated, focused fist of air at the center of the figure. It bent him only a little. He staggered back a half step but then kept coming forward again as Magda and Isidore kept circling away from him.

The cat leaped out of nowhere up onto the man’s back. He twisted and threw it off. The cat hit the wall hard.

With an angry roar and sudden, ferocious speed, the man lunged toward them. Magda snatched for the blind woman’s arm to yank her back out of the way, but she caught only air as Isidore leaned in and again tried to force a focused wall of air at the attacker.

Magda felt as if she were moving in a dream. Even with all her strength put into the effort, her legs wouldn’t move fast enough to get her within range to stab the man, to stop what she knew he was about to do.

Lashing out with lightning speed, his clawed hand raked through Isidore’s middle. Isidore’s scream turned to a grunt with the impact of the blow.

An arc of warm blood and flesh splattered across Magda and then in a diagonal line up across the wall.

Isidore’s legs began to buckle.

“Run! Now!” she cried out at Magda as she was going down.

Magda instead rammed her knife into the side of the man’s neck. She had to stop him before he did any more damage. All she could think was that she had to stop him and then get help for Isidore.

Driving the knife in deep didn’t feel like stabbing into muscle and sinew. It felt hard and leathery and dead. She tried to yank the knife back so that she could stab him again, but it was stuck fast.

She gripped the handle with both hands, trying to pull the blade back out of his neck. It was then, when she was close enough, that she saw in the dim light that the man, though he moved with impossible speed and power, didn’t look like a man.

He looked like a corpse.

His face was sunken and partially decayed. His jaw hung crooked to one side; his dark teeth were exposed behind shrunken, shriveled lips. He looked like a rotting cadaver.

But even as dead as the rest of him appeared, his eyes were something altogether different. The look in his eyes sent an icy chill through her.

It wasn’t just that they glowed with a kind of inner light. It was that the glow was fired by the gift, yet unlike any light of the gift she had ever seen before. It was at once dead and empty, but alive with menace.

Magda was so shocked by what she saw that it stopped her cold for an instant.

Then, that frozen instant shattered with a crack that made her ears ring. The room suddenly spun in her vision. Her back smacked the wall, driving the air from her lungs. Her head hit the stone so hard that it knocked her senseless. Through the pall of pain she only dimly heard the terrible roar of the thing, only dimly saw blurry movement in the swirling room.

Magda could taste dry stone dust and blood. She realized then that the man had struck her with a blow so powerful it had lifted her from her feet and thrown her back across the room.

She was distantly surprised to realize that she still had her knife gripped tightly in her fist. Isidore’s warm blood ran down Magda’s arm and over her hand, making for a slippery hold on her knife.

Magda blinked, trying to clear her vision as she struggled to get her breath back. Looking up from the floor, she saw the man in a wild fury ripping into Isidore. He tore off the side of Isidore’s face and top of her skull with one powerful blow, the rest of her head with the next.

The dark figure roared as he flailed and ripped at Isidore’s body. Blood and gore from the poor woman splattered across the floor and up against the walls as he swung both arms in mad fury.

In a strange pall of quiet shock, Magda told herself that it was too late to do anything but escape. If she didn’t get away, she would be next.

As the man bellowed in a wild frenzy of savagery, she told herself that there was nothing she could do for Isidore. This was her only chance to get away. She knew that she had only a few fleeting seconds if she was to live.

She told herself to move.

Magda scrambled to her feet and staggered toward the black entrance to the hallway out. She snatched up her lantern on the way past.

Once into the hall, she looked back over her shoulder as she ran. She was still stunned from the blow, and her wobbly legs wouldn’t move fast enough. She could see the man back through the entrance, finished ripping Isidore apart, turn toward her.