Fagirra paced around the narrow room. Egert watched as his well-made boots, hidden down to their ankles by his robe, stepped across the floor.
“Egert.” Fagirra stopped. “Did anyone you know die?”
“A friend of mine died,” responded Egert desolately. “And my teacher perished.”
“Yes.” Fagirra resumed his pacing. “I understand. As for me, Egert, six members of my family died: my mother, my brother, my sisters, and my nieces. They lived in the outskirts and all died in the course of one day.”
Egert was silent. He understood immediately that Fagirra was not lying; the robed man’s voice had shifted in an unnatural and strange way.
“I didn’t know that acolytes of Lash had families,” he said hoarsely.
“According to you,” Fagirra laughed bitterly, “the acolytes of Lash grow off trees, like pears?”
For some time the only sounds in the room were the crackling of the torch and the soft tread of Fagirra’s boots along the stone floor.
“I apologize,” Egert said finally.
Fagirra smirked without stopping his pacing. “You weren’t there in the Tower when all the entrances were sealed, when the Plague began, and there was nowhere to put the corpses.”
“You yourselves…,” Egert said in a whisper. “You yourselves willed it.”
Fagirra broke into a rough grin. “It is not for you to judge our designs.”
“But it was madness!”
“Yes, because the Magister is a madman!” Fagirra emitted a dry, sharp laugh. “He is a madman, but the Order, well, the Order is not composed of only the Magister. The Magister’s time is passing, but the Order remains, the Secret remains.” Here Fagirra’s voice slid into overt sarcasm. “And the Power that is bound to it also remains.” He became serious again. “You can’t understand, Egert. You are not a lover of power.”
“It is you who is a lover of power,” clarified Egert under his breath.
Fagirra nodded. “Yes. Do you know who will be the next Magister?”
“I know,” Egert replied dully, and it was quiet again for some time. Then somewhere in the dungeons below, iron rattled, and it seemed to Egert that once again he heard vague, distant screams. He felt chilled to the bone, but quiet reigned throughout the courthouse as before. It was possible that the terrible sounds were born from Egert’s afflicted imagination.
“Listen to me,” he said in despair. “Power is all well and good, but you know the truth no less than I do. You know where the Plague came from, and who defeated it. We owe our lives to Dean Luayan: you and I, the magistrate, the guards, the mayor, the townsfolk. The man gave us back our lives. Why do you wish to punish his innocent daughter?”
“Luayan was even stronger than I thought.” Fagirra stopped, squinting in the light of the torch. “He truly was an archmage.”
These words, spoken so simply and without reservation, compelled Egert to lean forward. “So you admit it?”
Fagirra shrugged his shoulders. “Only a madman, like the Magister, would wish to deny it.”
Egert clasped his sweaty palms together in desperation. “For Heaven’s sake, tell me what you want to accuse Toria of?”
Fagirra looked into Egert’s beseeching face, sighed, and sat down next to him on the stone floor, leaning his back against the wall. Somewhere in the distance, in the bowels of the building, an iron door clanged.
“You’ll return home,” said Fagirra without any expression on his face. “You have a decrepit father and an ill mother in a little town called Kavarren.”
“What do you want to accuse Toria of?” Egert repeated, almost soundlessly.
“Yes, she is beautiful. She is too beautiful, Egert. She will bring you misery. She was the reason, albeit indirectly, for the death of her first fiancé, that man you—”
“How do you—?”
“—that man you killed. She is not like other women; there is something in her.… A gift, I would call it a gift, Egert. An exceptional woman. I understand what you are feeling right now.”
“She is innocent,” Egert spoke into Fagirra’s eyes, which were twinkling in the gloom. “What do you accuse her of?”
Fagirra averted his eyes. “Of necromantic acts that resulted in the Plague.”
The walls did not collapse, and the earth did not tremble. The flame continued to wreath the resinous top of the torch, and the silver threads that adorned the empty armchair in the corner gleamed.
“I don’t understand,” Egert said helplessly. But he had understood, and immediately.
Fagirra sighed. “So try to understand. There are some things that are more valuable than mere life and simple, worldly justice. A sacrifice is always innocent, otherwise how is he or she a sacrifice? A sacrifice is always better than the crowd surrounding the altar.”
“Fagirra,” said Egert in a whisper. “Don’t do this.”
His companion shook his head dejectedly. “I understand. But I have no other alternative. Someone must carry the punishment for the Plague.”
“The guilty should.”
“Toria is guilty. She is a malevolent sorceress, the daughter of Dean Luayan,” Fagirra responded levelly. “And think on this, Egert. It is within my power to make you an accomplice, but you are no more than a witness. Do you realize how close you’ve come to the abyss in these last few days?”
Egert clenched his teeth, waiting for a dreary wave of fear.
Fagirra touched his knee with his hand. “But you are just a witness, Egert. And your testimony will carry weight because you love the defendant, but for the sake of truth you must repudiate your love.”
“For the sake of truth?”
Fagirra stood; a long, dark shadow grew on the wall. He walked over to the armchair and leaned his elbows on the backrest. In the torchlight he seemed like an old man.
“What awaits her?” Egert’s unruly lips asked.
Fagirra raised his eyes. “Why do you want to know how she will die? Return to your Kavarren immediately after the judgment. I don’t think you’ll be all that happy, but time draws in even such wounds.”
“I will not be a witness against Toria!” bellowed Egert before the fear had a chance to squeeze shut his jaw.
Fagirra shook his head. He shook his head, thinking about something, then nodded to Egert. “Get up. Come with me.”
At first his numbed legs refused to work; Egert stood on the second attempt. Fagirra drew a jangling ring of keys from the depths of his robe. A narrow iron door stood in a dark corner, and beyond it a steep, winding staircase led below.
A short, broad-shouldered man in baggy clothes was picking his teeth with a lath. The appearance of Fagirra and Egert caught him unawares, and he almost swallowed his toothpick as he sprang forward to meet the robed man. Taking the torch from Fagirra’s hand, he walked in front of them, cringing, while Egert tried to remember where he had seen him before. Egert’s speculations came to an end when their escort obsequiously flung open a squat door with a meshed window.
Two or three torches burned here already, and in their light Egert could see ugly torture devices, which could only have been conceived by a fiend of hell, staring at him from their places on the stone walls.
He halted, instantly feeling weak. Fagirra supported him with an exact, efficient movement, firmly taking his arm just above the elbow. Instruments untouched by rust, kept in full readiness, hung on hooks and lay on shelves in heaps: pliers and drills, knee splitters and thumbscrews, boards studded with spikes, cat o’ nine tails, and other abominable things, from which Egert quickly averted his eyes. Among the instruments of torture crouched a brazier, full of banked coals. Nearby stood a three-legged stool and an armchair with a high back, exactly the same as the one left behind in that small, empty cell. Egert’s darting eyes discerned a worn wooden trundle with dangling loops of chain that rested on a short raised platform.