The First Confessor (48 page)

Magda knew that the woman needed to gather her strength after having her arms freed. No longer hanging from the ceiling, she was at last able to breathe properly. Her wrists had finally stopped bleeding, but she had other, more serious wounds that Magda knew needed tending as soon as possible.

Merritt was impatient to get out of the dungeon—to be away from the shields so that he could heal her, but also to get them all away from the ever-present threat of the guards. By the way he kept checking the corridor outside the outer door, it was clear that he was concerned that the longer they waited, the more suspicious the guards would get.

They also had to worry that someone else might show up, possibly even those who had captured Naja, had put her in the dungeon, and had been torturing her. Getting trapped down in the dungeons would be the end of them all. No one knew they were there, and if they were locked in, no one would be coming to help them.

After catching her breath for a short time, Naja, without being asked, started to try putting weight on her legs. She looked to be even more impatient than Merritt to get out before the guards returned.

Naja finally stood to her full height. The woman’s clothes were nowhere to be found in the cell, but fortunately Magda’s cloak was big enough to wrap around her. Naja was thankful to have it, and clutched it to herself as she stood, testing her legs. She was proving to be stronger than Magda had expected.

The cloak would have to do for the time being. She was close to the same height and build as Magda, so Magda would be able to give her some of her own clothes. First they needed to get out of the dungeon.

“How is it that your blade did not cut me?” Naja asked Merritt as she moved her arms about, working the circulation back into them.

He looked back after checking out the doorway. “It has magic that prevented it from cutting you.”

“Magic does not work down here. I tried. I tried very hard.”

“This magic is not obstructed by the shields down here. It’s somewhat similar to the way the magic of the light sphere isn’t blocked by the shields. It’s complicated, and I don’t want to oversimplify it, but basically the sword’s magic won’t harm an innocent or a person believed to be a friend. I don’t consider you the enemy, so the sword didn’t cut you. I hadn’t tested that aspect of it, though, so I had to be careful. It appears to work as it should. It also appears, by the way it cut through those iron manacles, that the other side of its magic is working as well.”

This was news to Magda. He hadn’t told her the part about its magic not being able to harm innocent people. Merritt was full of wonders.

“Why are you two helping me?” Naja’s voice was clearly laced with pain, and justifiably, some suspicion.

“We’re actually hoping that you can help us,” Merritt said. “I heard that you wanted to join our cause. When we found out where you were, we knew we had to get you out.”

“I thought that the people here did not want my help. I thought I was wrong about the New World and the wizards who live and work here. Instead of my help, they chained me up in this awful place. They said that I was a spy and I was to eventually be put to death.”

“We believe that there are traitors, here, in the Keep,” Magda told her. “I think they had you put down here to keep you from helping our people.”

“I thought that I had made the worst mistake of my life in coming here,” Naja said, shaking her head. “I’m glad to learn that what I believed really is true, that there are good people here, as I had heard. But maybe it is not that there are traitors here.”

Magda frowned. “What are you talking about? Why would the men who captured you put you down here, if they weren’t collaborators with those in the Old World?”

She looked from Magda, to Merritt, and back to Magda. “Maybe dream walkers possess them and made them do it.”

Merritt stiffened. “Do you think that could be what is really going on?”

“It’s possible. Dream walkers can make people do terrible things.”

Magda let out a sigh. “We don’t know what is really going on. That’s why we came down here looking for you. We hope you can help us learn the truth.”

“If this place is shielded,” Naja said, “then maybe in here we are safe from the dream walkers hearing us.”

“That’s possible,” Merritt said. “The dungeon is heavily protected with some of the most powerful suppression shields ever created.”

“Your sword has a newly created form of magic,” Magda said. “It works down here in spite of the shields. The dream walkers were likely also created after these shields, so the shields may not be able to protect us from them.”

She cast a meaningful look at Naja.

Naja caught her meaning. “If one of them found me and was in my mind, watching us, I wouldn’t know it.”

Magda looked up at Merritt. “We can’t trust that the bond will work through the shields. We only know for sure that it works when not shielded. We dare not take a chance. Before we talk, we’d better first get her out of here and then get her protected from the dream walkers.”

“She’s right,” Naja said. “If you have a protection that works, then we need to get out of here and use it.”

Merritt lifted his sword a few inches and then let it drop back into its scabbard, making sure that the weapon was clear.

“As soon as you feel strong enough to go, we’re ready. We’re glad to have you on our side in the war, Naja. And we do need your help,” Merritt added. “Just as soon as we heal you.”

“If there are traitors in the Keep, spies who are working for Emperor Sulachan, and not merely dream walkers using people, then you need my help more than you realize.”

Magda didn’t like the sound of that.

Before she could say anything more, Naja started sinking again toward the ground. Both Magda and Merritt held her up.

“We need to get out of here,” Merritt said to Magda. “I think that she’s as recovered as she is going to get until I can heal her. We can’t wait any longer. We need to get her out of here, bonded, and healed. She’s strong, but her injuries are serious. It can’t wait any longer.”

“He’s right,” Naja said through gritted teeth from a stitch of pain. “I’m able to stand, now. Let’s go.”

Magda nodded. “We’ll help hold you up as best we can, but it’s narrow and you’ll have to be strong for a little bit longer. Merritt can carry you once we’re out of the dungeon.”

“Thank you both,” Naja managed between gasps of increasing pain.

Now that the surge of excitement from being cut down from the chains was wearing off, it was clear that Naja’s strength was flagging. By the twitches of her brow, Magda could see that even though she didn’t complain, she was enduring increasingly serious waves of pain. Her determination was keeping her moving better than Magda would have thought possible.

Naja had difficulty trying to make it out through the small doorway of her cell. It was proving easier to stand than to bend. Merritt held an arm on the outside of the doorway while Magda, still in the inner cell, held her other arm. After Naja was through, Merritt picked the woman up in his arms and carried her across the outer room. He stopped before the outer door, still holding Naja in his arms.

He gestured with a tip of his head. “Check outside,” he whispered to Magda.

Magda carefully stuck her head out of the doorway and peered into the darkness.

“It’s too dark to see,” she told him.

“Take the light. I’ll carry her.”

Magda lifted the heavy glass light sphere from his hand. Merritt rearranged his hold on Naja while Magda stuck the light out into the passageway, checking. She signaled to Merritt that she didn’t see anything.

Naja wrapped her arms around his neck to help hold on as he bent low to pass through the slightly larger outer doorway and follow Magda into the narrow tunnel. Merritt was easily able to carry the woman, but in places it was so narrow that he had to turn sideways and even then it was a tight squeeze.

“How are we going to get her past the guards?” Merritt asked as he followed behind Magda.

Magda looked back over her shoulder without slowing. “I guess we bluff our way out the same way we bluffed our way in.”

Merritt looked more than a little skeptical. “You really think they’ll go for that with us trying to leave with her?”

“I’ll tell them that we have to take her to my soon-to-be new husband because he personally wants to question her.”

Merritt let out a sigh as if to say how unhappy he was with such a sketchy plan, and that he didn’t think for a minute that it was going to work.

“Unless you have a better idea,” she said.

“We can try it. You know my backup plan.”

Magda hadn’t liked his backup plan of killing the guards, but now that she’d seen the condition Naja was in, Merritt’s suggestion that they might have to kill the guards was not sounding like nearly such a bad idea. She still didn’t know, though, if the two guards actually had anything to do with what had happened to Naja. They might be nothing more than they seemed: guards who didn’t know what was really going on.

Before they reached the outer doorway to the dungeon entrance, where the two guards would be waiting, Merritt came to a halt.

“Do you think you can walk?” he asked Naja in a quiet voice. “Just until we get past the two guards? I may need to get at my sword.”

She nodded. “I’m getting some of my strength back. Put me down.”

He set her on her bare feet. For a moment Magda wondered if the woman was going to be able to stand, but she steadied herself and with an effort straightened her back.

“I’ll go first and do the talking,” Magda whispered. “Naja, stay close behind me. We’re going to try to walk you right out of here before they have a chance to argue.”

The three of them made their way silently the remaining distance down the stone tunnel toward the light coming from the outer door. The lamplight from the doorway was a relief, because that meant the heavy iron door was still standing open. Magda hiked up her skirts and boldly stepped over the raised threshold out to the area where the guards waited.

Naja’s hand lightly touched Magda’s back for guidance as she stayed close behind.

The two burly men stood waiting, one a little in front of the other, blocking the iron stairway up out of the dungeon. The big man in front had his thumbs hooked on his belt. The men were close enough that she could smell how badly they stunk.

There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver. Magda hoped that Merritt had enough room to use his sword if needed. If he did have to go for his sword, Magda intended to pull Naja out of the way and protect her.

“Well, well,” the guard in front said. A depraved grin widened as he spotted Naja in Magda’s shadow. “Look who we have here out in the light.”

“We need to take her for further questioning,” Magda said in an icy voice, not wanting to discuss anything with the man. “Stand aside.”

“Well, the thing is,” the man said, scratching the stubble on his chin and no longer looking the least bit cowed, “you forgot what I told you.”

Magda glared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I told you that sound carries through these tunnels. We heard what you said. ‘We’re going to try to walk you right out of here before they have a chance to argue,’ I believe is the way you put it. Did I get it right?”

Magda felt a quick touch, a light pressure, at the small of her back. Before she could fully make sense of it, Naja flew past her.

Naja had Magda’s knife.

The woman struck like lightning. The blade slashed the first guard’s throat open from the side of his neck under his right ear clean across his windpipe. Blood erupted in great throbbing gouts from a severed artery at the side of his neck. His open windpipe blew clouds of red mist as he struggled to breathe.

As Naja twisted around, completing the powerful, slashing strike, the second man’s big hand clamped down around her other wrist where the manacle had been.

Without pause, Naja used his hand holding her wrist for leverage to spin herself around. Using his hold on her wrist, she deliberately yanked herself forcefully toward the hulking guard. As she flew toward him, she whipped the knife in her other fist around in an arc and hammered it straight into the his heart.

His eyes opened wide in shock.

The first man hit the floor with a heavy thud. Blood from the severed artery in his neck pumped out into a spreading pool. His last breath gurgled from his lungs. The man with the knife in his chest toppled back. The back of his head hit the stone floor with a loud crack. Blood oozed out from under his greasy hair. He was as still as the stone that had cracked open his head. He stared with wide-open, dead eyes.

It had happened so swiftly that only then did Magda even realize that she’d heard the sound of steel being drawn. Merritt stood with the sword in his hand and rage in his eyes.

Magda had to catch Naja when she stumbled back a few steps. She weakly got her balance and then straightened herself to stand tall and glare down at the bodies at her feet.

In the lamplight Magda could finally see that Naja’s eyes were as blue as the sky on a bright summer day. Her jet black hair and bangs made her blue eyes all the more dazzling.

Now, though, those blue eyes were filled with fiery rage.

“They both took turns having their way with me,” Naja said defiantly. “If I had had the time, I would not have given them the mercy of a swift death.”

Magda couldn’t blame the woman. She would have felt no differently. The surprising strength she had shown reminded Magda again that Naja Moon was not a woman to be trifled with, or underestimated.

“Then you have carried out justice,” Magda told her. “You’ll get no condemnation from me.”

Naja smiled with triumphant satisfaction.

“Well, that simplifies things,” Merritt said under his breath. He slid the sword home into its scabbard. “No one knew we were coming down here. No one else but these two knew that we were in here, or would be aware that we freed Naja, and they aren’t going to do any talking.”

“Right now we’re anonymous,” Magda said. “Let’s get out of here before someone shows up and identifies us.”