“What do you mean?”
“It is more than a blindfold keeping me from seeing this world.”
Magda reached out and laid a hand over Isidore’s. “Show me.”
As the cat curled up for a warm nap in Magda’s lap, Isidore nodded, then reached up behind her head to the leather thongs holding on the blindfold. When at last it was untied, she slipped it away and sat a bit stiffer, nesting her hands again, letting Magda look at her face.
Isidore’s eyelids were closed over sunken sockets where her eyes should have been. They were not sewn shut. There were no eyelashes. It looked as if she had never had eyes, or as if they had been injured and healed over.
Magda knew better. She knew that Isidore had not been born this way, nor had she been injured.
“How did you lose your eyes?” Magda asked, fearing that she already knew the answer, fearing that this was wizard’s work.
“Is that the question you have come to ask the spiritist?”
“No. It is a question I would ask from one woman to another, because the reason for it greatly concerns me.”
Isidore thought a moment, her head turning blindly as if trying to see Magda.
“My eyes were taken from me so that I could see.”
“You were altered by wizards.”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Magda said in soft sincerity.
The woman’s brow bunched with the ache of tears that could not flow.
She cleared her throat. “No one has ever been sorry for my loss.”
“That makes it even worse, then, doesn’t it?”
The young woman nodded. “In a way. But the loss is far greater than you could suspect.”
“Tell me why you would allow this to be done to you.”
“I did not allow it, the way you may think. I sought to have it done, asked to have it done, so that I could see into the spirit world.”
Magda was incredulous. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“I had need enough.”
“Need enough? Why would you request wizards to alter you in such a way? Why would you have him take away your eyes?”
“It’s not a pretty story. Either to tell, or to hear.”
“I imagine not.” Magda steeled herself. “But I would hear it, if you are willing.”
Chapter 25
Isidore nodded, then started to reach up as if to wipe away tears. Her hand paused when she realized that she could no longer make tears any more than she could see. The hand sank to her lap.
“I lived in Grandengart. The name means ‘guardian at the gates.’ It’s an old name that signifies Grandengart’s place at the southern fringe of the New World and long standing as an outpost in the trackless lands of the wilds. The Old World lies beyond to the south.
“Because of its location it has long been a crossroads of trade routes in the New World. Rare trade goods also came up from a few distant places down in the Old World. Grandengart had for ages been an outpost as well, the place where people first come over from the Old World. Trade relations with peoples of the wilds and distant places to the south had always been good.
“The several thousand people who lived there mostly made their living in one way or another because of the trade. For many of the peoples who inhabit vast stretches of inhospitable land of the wilds, and the merchants who dealt with them, we were a trusted place to do business. As a result, with all the different kinds of people and goods passing through, it was an exciting, vibrant place to live, with different cultures and beliefs, as well as plenty of fascinating stories of far-off places from all the travelers.
“A while back we began to see the first signs of trouble. Rare spices, foodstuffs, and other commodities from the South began to slow and then halted altogether. Everyone considered that a worrisome sign in and of itself. For a time there was no word. Then trickles of people fleeing the new rule down in the Old World began to come through, headed north.
“When trade stopped, timber coming down from the North, a scarce commodity down in that part of the world, began piling up, awaiting transport to arrive from buyers in the South. That transport never arrived. Foods waiting to be moved rotted.
“With all that trade halting, people began to worry about how they would make a living. They worried, too, about what the distant signs of trouble could mean, not just for themselves, but for people they know to the south.
“I was the sorceress assigned to serve the people of Grandengart. People from the South, down in the Old World, didn’t hold much with magic. They always stayed well away from me as they passed through. But the people of Grandengart relied on me for my abilities, my skills, but mostly for protection from shapeless worries.
“To most people I possessed inscrutable abilities, so in a way I was not exactly one of them. As a result I sometimes felt that I was little more than their talisman meant to somehow keep shapeless evil from their door. People seemed to think that merely having a sorceress’s powers nearby was a vaguely beneficial thing, that it would somehow ensure good fortune, much like their prayers to the good spirits for a safe journey.
“Their worries about the increasing signs of trouble to the south, though, were not so shapeless. They looked to me for help with this troubling development.
“I didn’t know exactly what I could do about it. Magic didn’t offer any solution that I could see, although it seemed as if it must to those who knew little about it. In the end I traveled here, to the Keep, to see the council, hoping they could help. They told me that they would take the concerns of the people of Grandengart, as well as the details I had offered, under consideration, along with other reports they were receiving. They suggested that the unrest would likely soon calm down and trade would resume. One of them even suggested that perhaps a bridge had washed out and it was nothing more than that. I told them that from what I had heard from people fleeing from the South, there was a new ruler and his forces were the source of the unrest. They seemed disinclined to see such a change in rule as necessarily a bad thing, because the old rule was so fragmented and inefficient.
“While I could get no immediate help from the council, they did promise that as soon as troops were available they would send a detachment to investigate the situation. I decided that until the troops could be sent, it would be best if I returned home at once. I knew how nervous people were, and I wanted to be there for them.
“I arrived home the day after General Kuno and his forces from the Old World flooded across the border and swept through Grandengart. Even if some of us saw the storm building, until the day Kuno arrived, the world had been at peace.”
Magda stiffened in alarm. “General Kuno? Right hand to the emperor?”
Isidore nodded. “Emperor Sulachan himself sent Kuno north and through my home place.”
Magda took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. She knew from Baraccus that General Kuno was ruthless. He struck fear into the hearts of anyone in his path.
Emperor Sulachan wanted the world under one rule, the rule of the Old World. He wanted everyone to bow to him as emperor of it all. She knew, too, that the start of the war had been both swift and violent. Apparently, it had started in Isidore’s hometown.
“General Kuno had everyone brought to the town square,” Isidore said, “where he told them that this was a new day, that the world order was about to change, and they had been selected to be given the opportunity to join the cause of the Old World, and bow to Emperor Sulachan. He told the men that the choice was theirs to choose for their families to either stay a part of the New World, or join the empire of Sulachan. He asked for a show of hands of those who would side with the emperor, or those who would decline the offer.