“When you hear the words ‘the tyranny of magic,’ as we heard from Elder Cadell, you will know that it is the calling card of killers. Don’t be fooled by their platitudes that it is for the common good. Their real purpose is to strip us of our abilities so that they may more easily conquer and rule us.
“If we are to survive, we need magic now more than ever to defend ourselves from those in the Old World. We need to learn, discover, create. We need to use our reasoning minds and truth.
“You have now heard the confession of the traitor Lothain and how he subverted the Keep. You have heard from Naja what Sulachan has planned. We now know the real nature of the war that is upon us.
“If we lose this war, we lose more than our lives, we lose more than the future for our people. We will lose our connection to all that is good.” Magda lifted her hand, showing them the ring with the Grace on it. “We will lose our connection to the very nature of creation, life, and our souls.
“We did not choose this war, but if we don’t defeat Sulachan’s forces, these thieves of souls, then we and future generations will live in a half world of the half people and the enslaved dead, disconnected from the Grace forever. We will be ruled by Sulachan, who will be nothing more than the embodiment of the Keeper of the underworld.”
Her gaze carefully moved across everyone in the room. Every eye was on her. People listened in rapt attention. Every face was serious. Everyone knew that they were hearing the truth.
“To win, we must have the truth,” Magda said. “Today, the true war for our survival begins. I intend to help see to it that we win this war, that our people not only survive, but thrive. The Midlands is my home. I promise you all that I will not abandon you, our cause, the Midlands, or truth.”
As she looked out from her seat at the tall, center chair, the crowd erupted in cheers.
Chapter 97
“The first thing we need to do,” Magda said when the crowd had finally quieted, “is to seal the catacombs.”
Councilman Sadler frowned. “Seal the catacombs? But wizards work down there.”
“The dead also work from down there,” she said. “The dead hide in their resting place, only to come up in the darkness and murder us. We don’t know how many of those dead down there have been prepared by the enemy to be able to be awakened. We don’t know how many of the dead that have been laid to rest there were really being placed by spies.
“We have no way of knowing which corpses might sit up and strangle us. How would we find them? The wizards will have to be moved to other work areas.”
“But seal the catacombs?” Councilman Hambrook sounded incredulous. “That’s sacred ground. The people of the Keep have been laying loved ones to rest there for centuries. Visiting ancestors is a deeply valued tradition. Are you sure there isn’t another way? Maybe it isn’t necessary. Maybe our gifted could find a way to reveal the dangerous bodies and remove only those so that we wouldn’t have to take such a drastic step.”
Magda looked out at all the faces watching. “Do any of you feel comfortable risking having the dead walk the halls of the Keep at night, looking for more victims to rip limb from limb? I know that I certainly don’t.”
The crowd assured her they did not like that idea one bit.
She looked back at Hambrook. “I understand your concerns. But we are fighting for the survival of the living, not the dead. They are gone. We have to let go of those who have died and move on to devote ourselves to the living.”
Magda’s own words abruptly hit a painful place deep within her. She still could not let go of Baraccus. As much as she knew that he was gone, and as much as she realized that she had to move on with her life, she couldn’t seem to let him go.
“Magda is right,” Merritt said. “Even if we thought that we had come up with a way to detect the dangerous dead from all the rest, how would we ever know for sure that we were right? A day could come when we tragically learned that we had only been fooling ourselves. Aren’t the living what really matter? Would any of us want to lose the life of a loved one on such a risk? Would anyone here want to lose a mother? A father? A child?”
None in the onlookers indicated that they would.
Councilman Hambrook sighed in resignation. “I have to admit, that makes sense. I wouldn’t want to risk loved ones.”
“Nor would I,” Councilman Clay added.
Councilman Sadler nodded. “We have a responsibility to life. The living should be our only concern.”
“Then seal the catacombs,” Magda said with finality.
“We will need to use magic to be sure,” Merritt cautioned. “We’ll need some of those keeper spells that Isidore developed. They will ensure that none of the dead can escape to hunt us.”
“Please advise our wizards what they will need to do,” Councilman Sadler said. “General, please assemble a team as swiftly as possible.”
General Grundwall clapped a fist to his heart in salute. “At once.”
“And let it be done before Lady Searus’s nightmare comes to life,” Sadler added.
“Confessor Searus,” Merritt corrected under his breath.
Councilman Sadler lifted a finger and addressed the onlookers. “I meant to say, ‘Confessor Searus.’”
The crowd seemed to like the title.
Chapter 98
As Magda and Merritt made their way from the walkway around the inside of the great tower and into the stone room with the sliph’s well, Quinn heard their footsteps and looked back over his shoulder. Seeing who it was, he set down his pen and stood. Smiling, eager to see them, he flipped his journal closed and put it back with all the others.
“Magda, how are you feeling?” he asked as he came past the sliph’s well to greet them.
She smiled. “A night’s rest did me wonders.”
She glanced at the well, but the sliph didn’t emerge to take a look at the visitors. Magda couldn’t say that she was unhappy about that. The sliph was probably off traveling.
“How are things going?” Quinn asked.
Merritt rested the palm of his left hand on the hilt of his sword. “I talked to General Grundwall this morning. Overnight the Home Guard captured most of those named by Lothain. They should soon have the rest in hand. Magda will have to use her Confessor power on some of the worst of them in order to get them to confess the details we otherwise would have gotten from Lothain had he not died. That will enable us to be sure we’ve rooted out all of the traitors and collaborators.”
“What about the councilmen, Weston and Guymer?” Quinn lifted a finger toward the sliph’s well. “Lothain told us that they used the sliph to travel to the South to collaborate with Emperor Sulachan and his officers.”
Quinn’s task was to guard the sliph to make sure that the enemy didn’t use her to secretly slip into the Keep to do them harm. It had been Baraccus who had asked Quinn to take up the duty after they’d had some unfortunate penetrations by dangerous people. Now anyone unauthorized and not a friendly force would not live long enough to climb out of the sliph’s well after using it to try to sneak into the Keep.
In the beginning, Quinn had killed a number of the enemy gifted who had thought they could slip into the Keep through the sliph. After a while, they realized it would no longer work and such incursions ended, but Quinn or one of several others always stood guard over the sliph to make certain they didn’t decide to try it again, especially with a weapon created out of a person.
It was a personal outrage for Quinn, who guarded the sliph to prevent the enemy from using her, to know that two of their own people, trusted councilmen, were actually traitors who had used the sliph for a deadly purpose and no one knew it.