There were also profoundly beautiful statues standing in random places around the room, not as if they had been placed to be admired, but simply, it appeared, put wherever there had been an empty spot at the time. There was a soldier about to unsheathe a sword carved from a gray stone, there were several smaller statues of men in robes carved from pale butternut wood, and, carved from pure white marble, there were several statues of the most graceful women Magda had ever seen.
Draped over the table beyond the overturned chair was a large square of red velvet. The tabletop was the only place in the entire room that wasn’t cluttered. A single gleaming sword sat in the middle on a raised portion of the red velvet.
Magda noticed an ornate gold and silver scabbard attached to a baldric lying on the floor. The scabbard was so striking that it could only belong with the sword.
Merritt righted the chair, then hung the baldric and its scabbard over the back before he hurriedly removed books from the wicker couch. “Sorry for the mess. I don’t ordinarily live in such clutter. It’s just that this place isn’t as roomy as my place at the Keep. Please, Lady Searus, won’t you have a seat?” He looked around. “Tea. I should make tea.”
“No, none for me, thank you,” she said as she made her way to the wicker couch.
He looked relieved. Magda wondered why he no longer lived at the Keep, but didn’t ask; she had more important matters to get to first. She waited until he turned around to her again.
“I need to talk with you, Wizard Merritt.”
“So talk.” He gestured to the couch. “What about Isidore?”
Magda wasn’t ready to sit. “What about the oath?”
He put both hands in his back pocket as his posture relaxed a little. He grinned boyishly. “You mean the devotion to the Lord Rahl? Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. That oath?”
“Yes. You’re familiar with its purpose, then?”
He was smiling as if it was a private joke. Magda didn’t think it was funny. She could feel her own face heating to red.
“Actually, you see, Alric is an acquaintance of mine.”
“You know, then, that he’s a good man, and that he means the devotion to protect us from dream walkers?”
He still had a hint of a crooked smile as he kept her locked in his gaze. “Yes. Their side creates a weapon, we have to work to counter it. That’s why I helped him in creating the power contained within its bond.”
Magda blinked in surprise. “Are you saying that you helped him create the magic that protects people from the dream walkers? That power? You helped him with that?”
Merritt nodded. “To a certain small extent. I don’t know exactly how he crafted magic that could do such a thing, but I do know that he’s as smart as he is determined. He was stuck at a point that was keeping the bond from taking hold and igniting in others, at their end. It worked for him, but he wanted it to work to protect other people as well, and it wouldn’t go to root in them, I guess you could say. He knew that I happen to be familiar with unusual calculations for spell couplings, so he asked for my help.”
Magda tilted her head toward him. “You helped Alric Rahl create the magic of the bond.”
He nodded again, looking quite earnest. “I provided the authentication routines for the verification web, from inside of it, in order to complete the validation process. That was what initiated the unification of the spell components he was trying to combine so that the bond would activate in the proper sequence.
“Once it ignited, locking down the series reductions, I was the first one to speak the devotion. When I did, I did it from inside the completed web. I wanted to test it first to ensure that it wouldn’t inadvertently harm people when they gave the devotion to invoke the bond.”
Magda couldn’t help staring openly at him. She touched her fingers to her forehead, trying to take it all in. “You mean that you were the one who made it work?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “No, not really. Alric did most of the work. He came to me because he knew that I would be able to understand what he was trying to do. There aren’t many people who understand such complex combination routines well enough to discuss it with him. He thought I might be able to see why the verification web wasn’t functioning exactly the way he intended and hoped that I would know what was needed.”
“So it wouldn’t have worked without what you did,” she said.
“Alric Rahl created something masterful. I guess you could say that I just added a little seasoning to his stew.”
“Then you are bonded to him?” Magda asked. “You are protected from the dream walkers?”
His smiled vanished. “Oh yes, I am protected. He tested me with the dream walker he held captive. That’s how Alric knew that the bond he created finally worked in others. I was the first one protected by the bond. So, you see, there is no chance that a dream walker is hiding in the shadows of my mind, listening and watching, if that’s what you’re worried about.
“Now, what is it you wanted to tell me about my friend Isidore?”
Magda’s heart sank.
“I’m afraid that I got Isidore killed.”
Chapter 45
Merritt’s face took on the look of chiseled stone, much like his statues. The aspect of the gift she saw in his eyes had a decidedly dangerous cast to it.
“What do you mean, you got Isidore killed?”
In that calm yet emotionally charged question, she could see that this was a man with more than a simple temper. It was a refined sort of bottled fury that had the potential to be devastatingly violent, and yet at the same time he was also a man able to control it.
That meant that he could focus it.
“It takes a bit of explanation.”
While at first a bit shy, once the subject became somber he turned all business.
“So explain.”
Magda rearranged the bundle under her arm as she finally sat on the wicker couch. It gave her the excuse to look away from his intense expression.
“I was at first in shock over my husband’s death,” she began. “I couldn’t understand why he would take his own life, couldn’t understand why he would leave me like that, leave all of us. People said that his journey to the Temple of the Winds in the world of the dead must have crushed his spirit and sapped his will to live.
“Everyone accepted that story. They believed it was a straightforward suicide. And while it may have made grim sense to them, it didn’t make sense to me. As I thought about it, I kept coming back to the core truth that Baraccus was not the kind of man to be so despondent that he would kill himself.
“Besides, I was there when he came back from the Temple of the Winds, and while there was no doubt that he was troubled and distracted, I wouldn’t characterize him as depressed.
“He had too much to live for, too many things that mattered to him, too many people he cared about, too much important work yet unfinished. He wouldn’t kill himself to end any kind of personal despair. He cared about us all too much to do such a thing. With all of the New World in danger he had every reason to want to fight for us.”
“Then why would he do it?” Merritt asked as he went to the table to gaze down at the sword.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Baraccus knew that I wouldn’t believe that he had simply wanted to end his life. He was counting on me to realize that something about it didn’t make sense.
“He knew that I would recognize that he would only have done such a thing if it was to somehow protect all of us. That’s the way he was. That was his mission in life. That was why he was First Wizard. He was a war wizard, after all. He took that mission very seriously.