Magda lifted her long brown hair back over her shoulder as she turned to the seven men crossing the room. She recognized the familiar faces of six members of the council. Each face was fixed with a stony expression. She suspected that the expressions were a mask for a bit of shame they likely felt at what they had come to see done.
She had known they would come, of course, but not this soon. She had thought that they would have paid her the grace of a bit more time.
There was another man with them, his face shadowed by the hood of his loose brown habit. As they came closer, into the weak light leaking in around the closed shutters, the seventh man pushed the cowl back to rest on his rounded shoulders.
The man’s black eyes were fixed on her, the way a vulture’s steady gaze fixed on a suffering animal. Men often stared at her, but not in this way.
He had a short, wide, bull neck. The top of his head was covered in closely cropped, wiry black hair. Stubble darkened the lower half of his face. A high hairline made his forehead and the top of his skull look even larger. The lines and folds of his face for the most part tended to all draw in toward the center, giving his expression a pinched, pushed-in look. All his coarse features looked firm and densely packed, as if every part of the man was as hard as his reputation.
He wasn’t ugly, really, merely unusual-looking. In a way, his striking visage gave him an intense, commanding air of authority.
There was no mistaking that it was the head prosecutor himself, Lothain, a man of far-reaching authority and the renown to match it. His singular features, punctuated by those black eyes, made him impossible to forget. Magda didn’t know what such a man was doing with the council, carrying out the formality of a miserable little task. It seemed beneath his time.
Lothain’s grim expression, fixed with weathered creases lining his leathery face, did not look as if it might be covering the slightest bit of pity, as did the expressions of the others. Magda didn’t think the man was capable of uneasiness, much less shame, and certainly not pity. The hard lines of his face bore testimony to the fact that this was a man who went about his work with relentless, iron determination.
Not a full moon before, everyone had been stunned when Lothain had brought charges of treason against the entire Temple team, the men who had, at the direction of the Central Council, gathered dangerous items of magic together into the Temple of the Winds and then sent it all into the underworld for safekeeping until after the war. The trial had been a sensation. In it, Lothain had revealed that the men had gone far beyond their mission and not only locked away more than they were supposed to, but made it all but impossible to recover.
In their defense, some of them said that they believed in the Old World’s efforts to save mankind from the tyranny of magic.
The convictions had ensured that Lothain’s reputation had an edge to it that was as razor-sharp as the axes that had beheaded the hundred convicted wizards of the Temple team.
In a bold effort to try to undo the damage done by the traitors, Lothain himself had on his own authority then gone beyond the veil, into the underworld itself, to the Temple of the Winds. Everyone feared for him on such a journey. Everyone feared to lose a man of such ability and powers.
To everyone’s relief, Lothain had returned alive, if shaken by the journey. Unfortunately, the damage done by the Temple team had proven to be greater than even he had suspected, and he had not found a way in, so he had returned without being able to repair the damage done by the Temple team he had convicted.
Lothain strolled in closer to Magda and gestured, indicating the formality of his preamble.
“Lady Searus, may I offer my condolences on the unfortunate and untimely death of your husband.”
One of the council members leaned in. “He was a great man.”
Lothain’s sidelong glance moved the man back in line with the others.
“Thank you, Prosecutor Lothain.” She glanced at the councilman who had spoken. “My husband was indeed a great man.”
Lothain lifted a dark eyebrow. “And why do you suppose that such a great man, a man beloved by his people as well as his alluring young wife, would throw himself over the Keep wall to drop several thousand feet down the side of the mountain to meet his death on the rocks below?”
Magda kept her voice steady and spoke the simple truth. “I wouldn’t know, Prosecutor. He sent me away for the day on an errand. When I returned, he was dead.”
“Really,” Lothain said in a drawl as he touched his chin and gazed off in thought. “Are you saying that you suspect that he didn’t wish you to be here, to see the terrible damage a fall from that height to the rocks below would do to him?”
Magda swallowed. She had been unable to prevent herself from imagining it a thousand times in her mind’s eye. By the time she had returned, people had already seen to having him sealed in a stately coffin.
That morning, scant hours after she had learned of his death, the ornately carved maple coffin with her husband’s remains had been placed on a funeral pyre on the rampart outside the First Wizard’s enclave. Because his body had been sealed in the coffin, she wasn’t able to look upon his face one last time. She didn’t ask to have it opened. She knew why the coffin was sealed.
The pyre burned for most of the day as hundreds of solemn people stood silently watching the flames consume their beloved leader, and for many, their last hope.
Instead of answering such a tasteless question, Magda changed the subject. “May I inquire as to your business here, Prosecutor Lothain?”
“If you don’t mind, Lady Searus, I will be the one to ask the questions.”
His tone had an edge to it that took her by surprise.
Seeing the shocked expression on her face, he offered a brief, insincere smile. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your grieving, but you see, with the war threatening our very existence, there are matters of pressing concern to all of us that I’m afraid I must ask about. That’s all I meant.”
Magda was not in the mood to answer questions. She had her own pressing concern. But she knew this man well enough to know that he wouldn’t leave her to her own business until he saw to his.
She saw no choice but to answer his questions.
Chapter 3
Magda smoothed the front of her dress as she gathered her composure. “And what pressing concerns would you need to ask me about?”
He flicked a finger out toward the shutters. “Well, there is the matter of the moon turning red.” Lothain strolled off a few paces and then turned back. “After I failed to gain access to the Temple of the Winds, others, presumably with abilities more effective for such a specialized undertaking than I, also made the journey. None of them returned.”
Magda was baffled as to what he was getting at. “They were good men, talented men, valuable men. It was a great loss.”
Lothain strolled back close to her. His black-eyed gaze glided over items on the table, like the eyes of a vulture looking among bones for scraps. He turned a notebook with a finger to see what was written on the spine before addressing her again.
“Your husband selected those men.”
“They were volunteers.”
He smiled politely. “Yes of course. I meant to say that your husband selected the men who were to go to the Temple and ultimately their death from among a group of volunteers.”
“My husband was First Wizard.” Her brow tightened. “Who would you expect to select men for such a dangerous mission? The council? You?”
“No, no, of course not.” He gestured offhandedly. “It was clearly First Wizard Baraccus’s responsibility to select the men who would go.”