A sly smile overcame the man at the point of her knife as he signaled the two men near the doors to stand down. Magda was surprised by his smile, but her anger kept her focused, and kept her knife where it was.
“What’s this? A nobody, a woman not born noble, a woman with short hair, a woman of no standing, who has the nerve to tell me, the Lord Rahl, what I will and will not do? What gives you the right to speak this way to the leader of D’Hara, a man who commands the army outside your room, and guards inside it? How dare you think that you can speak to me in such a manner? Where do you, a woman of no status, a nobody, get the gall to think you have such a right?”
“Such a right?” Magda raged in fury.
But then she saw the twinkle in his eye and realized what he was doing. Her fury faltered. She suddenly felt foolish. She couldn’t keep a shamed smile from overcoming her.
Magda bowed her head in a gesture of exaggerated respect.
“It would seem that the Lord Rahl is not so stupid as some on the council say.”
His grin widened. “Magda, I knew Baraccus long before you met him. I’ve fought beside the man. I knew his character. He would never be attracted to a weak woman. He never cared about the length of your hair or standing when he met you, did he?”
Magda shook her head, remembering the first time she met him. He didn’t even look at her hair. He looked into her eyes and asked her name.
“He cared about your character. He cared who you were. Baraccus was a man of power. He was only attracted to strength and temperament that could complement his. He could have had any woman he wanted—I know because many sought him out and he always turned them away. Yet he chose you. He chose you not because you were weak and common, but because you were rare, and his equal in every way that mattered.”
She smiled again, but this time in appreciation. “Thank you for the kindest words about my husband—and me—that I have ever heard.”
“They are true words, Magda. He chose you because you were worthy of him. He was lucky to have you. I’ll not have you selling my friend’s wife short.”
Her smile turned downhearted. “I don’t think I could begin to tell you how much I miss him, how lost I am without him.”
“I understand. Now, let’s put this nonsense aside; we have urgent matters that must be addressed. With Baraccus gone, you are the only one I can turn to for answers. This is a time for courage and honesty if we are to have a chance.”
Magda finally lifted her chin. “What can I do to help you, Lord Rahl?”
Chapter 10
“You must speak to the council and let them know of the threat, make them understand how serious it is,” Alric Rahl told her. “With Baraccus dead, it’s up to us, and we’re running out of time.”
“What threat?”
A bit surprised, he cast her a suspicious look from under a lowered brow. “Surely, Baraccus must have told you about the dream walkers.”
Magda stilled. She wanted to help the man, but she didn’t like the idea of talking about anything Baraccus had told her in confidence. The two of them had always had an understanding that, because of his position, the things he discussed with her were meant to remain strictly confidential. She never spoke about such matters without her husband explicitly telling her that it was all right.
She remembered, then, the note in her pocket, the note Baraccus had left for her up on the battlement. Those were his last words to her.
Your destiny is to find truth. It will be difficult, but have the courage to take up that calling.
It seemed clear that Baraccus meant for her to act. His note didn’t ask her to keep silent, or to stay out of things. He said that she must have the courage to act.
Magda realized that with Baraccus gone she needed to trust someone. While she knew a number of the people her husband had worked with and trusted, she never heard him speak about his trust in anyone the way he spoke of his trust of Alric Rahl.
“He did,” she said at last.
“Good. Tell me what you know about them, anything Baraccus said.”
Magda took a deep breath to gather her thoughts. “Well, when enemy gifted in the Old World not long ago created dream walkers, Baraccus told me that such weapons, made out of people, could mean the end of us all. He said that there was only a small window of opportunity to act. In secret, he worked tirelessly on the problem. In the course of that work he discovered that the dream walkers were created through the use of a constructed spell.”
Lord Rahl nodded. “He told me that much of it when he traveled through the sliph to warn me about the dream walkers.”
Magda bristled at the mention of the sliph. She hated that creature made from a woman. The sliph took Baraccus away from her to travel great distances in a short time. Yet one more of the abominations created by wizards out of human beings.
Magda reminded herself not to be so harsh. Had not wizards created some of the things they did, all of them would be dead by now, or worse. There were wizards who created weapons, such as the dream walkers, to cause harm, but there were many wizards who used their ability to create things that saved a great many lives. The sliph, as much as Magda didn’t like her, was one of those things.
“Baraccus and I discussed the situation and made plans as to how we could deal with the dream walkers,” Lord Rahl said, “but I’ve not heard what happened since. I don’t know what Baraccus was able to accomplish, if anything. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here.”
“Well, because Baraccus understood what the spell did, he was able to work in reverse from there to create a close replica, even though it was not entirely functional, of what he believed the constructed spell would have had to be like. From that approximation, he was able to ignite an artificial verification web. Once he had a functioning verification web, he back-traced the spell’s unique nodes and core elements to the men who would have created the real one.”
His brow had lifted in surprise as he listened. “That’s quite remarkable. I didn’t know that such a thing was possible.”
She confirmed that it was with a nod. “I saw it one night. It was a frightening thing made of glowing lines tracing their way through midair. Baraccus ignited the web around himself in order to trace the nodes. I was terrified for him while he floated motionless inside it.”
He eyed her as if seeing her in a new light. “For one not born with the gift, you certainly have a remarkable grasp of it. I doubt that one gifted person in a hundred would even understand what you have just told me.” Lord Rahl rolled his hand impatiently. “So what did Baraccus do then?”
“He had contacts with a shadowy group. I never saw them and I don’t know who they were, but I suspected that they might have been resistance fighters from the Old World. He met with them in secret and sent them on a covert mission to the Old World.”
Lord Rahl arched an eyebrow. “Did the council know about this?”
“No one knew. The replica spell, the artificial verification web, its ignition and node traces, the meetings in the dead of the night with those men, no one knew any of it. Baraccus said that with dream walkers now a reality, it would jeopardize everything if anyone knew about any aspect of it.
“Not long ago, he came home a few hours before dawn and told me that the men he’d sent had gotten in and killed the team of gifted in the Old World who had constructed the dream-walker spell. He could share his excitement with no one but me. He was nearly in tears with relief and said that it meant that in all likelihood such a constructed magic could never again be brought to reality.”
Lord Rahl let out a great sigh of relief. “That was the confirmation I’ve been hoping to hear. I can’t imagine how he managed to pull off such a feat, but all of mankind owes Baraccus an enormous debt of gratitude.” His frown returned. “What about the constructed spell itself?”