The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus

Chapter 62

“This is the note Baraccus left for me,” Magda said. “You asked before about its exact wording. I thought we had better check. I know how important such little details can be to a wizard.”

Suddenly alert, Merritt stepped closer. “Would you mind if I knew what the whole note said? Context can be important in such matters. Besides that, I might be able to pick up on something you missed. I mean, only if you’d be willing. . . . Would you mind?”

Magda smiled. “No, of course not.”

She carefully unfolded the piece of paper and then held the note up in the light so that she could read it aloud.

“‘My time has passed, Magda. Yours has not. Your destiny is not here. Your destiny is to find truth. It will be difficult, but have the courage to take up that calling.’” She looked up. “I was right. It doesn’t say ‘find the truth.’ It just says ‘find truth.’”

Merritt was frowning, deep in thought. After a moment, he gestured to the note in her hands. “Is there more?”

Magda nodded and went on. “‘Look out to the rise on the valley floor below, just outside the city to the left. There, on that rise, a palace will one day be built. There is your destiny, not here.’”

She had to swallow and compose herself before she could read the last part. “‘Know that I believe in you. Know, too, that I will always love you. You are a rare, fierce flower, Magda. Be strong now, guard your mind, and live the life that only you can live.’”

The only sound was Shadow’s tail slowly, softly, slapping the top of the workbench.

“It’s a beautiful note, Magda,” Merritt said in a soft, compassionate voice as she stood staring down at the paper in her trembling fingers. “It’s clear how much you meant to him.”

Magda wiped a tear from her cheek. She hadn’t realized how shaken she would be to read it again. It brought back so much, and at the same time reminded her of how distant it had all become. Baraccus was gone. The world of life had moved on.

Magda cleared her throat. “Do you have any idea what he could mean about a palace, and my destiny being there?”

“Sorry, but I don’t. Baraccus was a prophet, though, so he must know something about the future. A possible future, anyway. Our free will makes the future sometimes uncertain, even for prophets. I think that what he means is the future is yours to decide and he is hoping you will make the right decision.”

Magda’s arm lowered. “When the dream walker was trying to kill me, I remembered what he said in this note. Alric Rahl told me that the devotion he created—the one you helped him create—is meant to guard our minds from dream walkers. When a dream walker had me, and was trying to kill me, those words in the note made me realize that I had to give the devotion to Lord Rahl in order to guard my mind and save my own life. Baraccus’s words made me choose my own future, choose life, and as a result his prophetic words proved true.”

“Prophecy is often like that,” Merritt said. He seemed to surface from deep thoughts. “It also says your destiny is to find truth, just like you said, not the truth, as I had thought when you first told me.”

“Does that mean something to you?”

Merritt gave her a meaningful look, then drew the sword at his hip. As it emerged from the scabbard, the blade made a soft ringing sound that filled the quiet storage room. Magda could see something besides the gift in his eyes when he held the sword. It was a kind of deep, distant rage, something almost alive with its power.

Merritt carefully laid the sword on the workbench. Shadow gazed with drowsy green eyes at the blade he laid before her. Merritt finally looked at Magda in a way that told her he expected something from her.

She looked from Merritt to the sword and back again. “What?”

Merritt gestured to the sword. “What does it say?”

She knew very well what it said. She hadn’t been able to get it out of her mind. Still, Magda’s eyes turned to the hilt. She let her fingers lightly glide over the raised gold letters.

“It says ‘Truth.’” She lifted a brow at Merritt. “Are you saying that Baraccus’s words in his note—‘Your destiny is to find truth’—are meant to say that my destiny is to find the Sword of Truth? You really think that’s what he meant? You really think it could be that obvious?”

Merritt shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m a maker, not a prophet. But I made the word Truth on the hilt, and you came to me and found the sword with that word crafted into it. You are the one who named it the Sword of Truth.”

A jumble of thoughts tumbled through Magda’s mind. Was Baraccus saying that her destiny was to find Merritt and the sword with Truth on it?

Or was he saying that this was the beginning of the path to her finding truth, and that path had taken her to Merritt?