The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus

Chapter 4

After watching the door close, Councilman Sadler turned back to Magda. “I must apologize, Lady Searus.”

“No need for you to apologize.” Magda arched an eyebrow. “Unless you support Lothain’s accusations against my husband?”

Sadness softened his expression. “Baraccus was a good man. We all miss him. I fear that bitter sorrow over recent events may have clouded Lothain’s better judgment.”

She glanced at the other five. Hambrook and Clay nodded their agreement. Elder Cadell made no show of his feelings. The gazes of the last two men, Weston and Guymer, dropped away.

“He did not seem to me to be a man possessed by sorrow,” she said.

The hunched elder, Cadell, gently touched the back of her shoulder. “There is grave concern in the air, Magda.” His hand left her shoulder to gesture past her and the other councilmen toward the shuttered window overlooking the city of Aydindril. “All of us stand at the brink of annihilation. People are understandably afraid.”

Councilman Sadler let out a troubled sigh. “Added to that, there is great confusion as to what happened with First Wizard Baraccus. It doesn’t make sense to us, so imagine the rumors and gossip spreading through the Keep, much less down in the city. Everyone expected First Wizard Baraccus to always stand with his people, to defend them, to protect them. Many feel that he instead deserted them. They don’t understand why. Prosecutor Lothain is merely giving voice to suspicion and unease, merely speaking aloud what whispers are saying.”

Magda lifted her chin. “So you believe that it is proper for Prosecutor Lothain to give voice to gossip? Do you also believe that such talk from anonymous people who know nothing of the true reasons behind events calls for fabricated accusations from the head prosecutor himself and quick beheadings in order to quell gossip and discontent? Is that your position?”

Councilman Sadler smiled somewhat self-consciously at the way she had framed it. “Not at all, Lady Searus. I am merely suggesting that these are stressful times and perhaps Prosecutor Lothain is feeling those stresses.”

Magda didn’t relent or shy from his gaze. “Since when do we allow fears and misgivings to guide us? I thought we stood for more. I would think that a head prosecutor, of all people, would only be interested in his duty of seeing the truth brought out.”

“And maybe that is exactly his purpose,” Elder Cadell said, speaking softly in an attempt to make what was a sharp point sound less harsh and at the same time bring the disagreement and criticism to an end. “It is the rightful duty of the head prosecutor to question. That is how we discover where the truth lies. Beyond that, the man is not here to speak to his reasons for asking the questions he asked, so it is only right that in his absence we in turn not speculate or fabricate accusations of our own.”

Magda had dealt with Elder Cadell for several years. He was open-minded and fair, but she knew that when he made it clear that he was finished hearing a point of view, he expected it to end there. She turned away to rest a hand on the smooth, rounded edge of the worktable and changed the subject.

“So what would be the purpose of this visit from the council? Have you all come to discuss some of the matters I have pending before you?”

There was a long silence. She knew, of course, that that wasn’t the reason they were there. She turned back around to face all the men watching her.

“Those are matters for another time,” Sadler said.

“And will I be heard when I return to the council chambers at another time? Will the concerns of those I speak for be heard by the council, then, when I am no longer the wife of our First Wizard?”

Sadler’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “It’s complicated.”

She leveled a cutting look at the man. “Maybe to you, but not to me.”

“We have a great many matters before us,” Councilman Weston put in, trying to turn the issue aside.

“Our immediate concern is the need for a man to replace First Wizard Baraccus,” Elder Cadell said. “The war rages on. Aydindril and the Keep itself could soon be under threat of siege. Those matters require our full attention.”

“Alric Rahl has also just arrived from the D’Haran Lands,” Sadler said. “That man has turned the Keep upside down with his own urgent demands. He had been hoping to meet with First Wizard Baraccus. Something to do with some rather startling claims and even more startling remedies. With your husband dead, there are an endless variety of urgent problems that must be attended to.”

“As you can no doubt appreciate,” Councilman Guymer, down at the end of the line, added, “we have any number of pressing issues of rule which require our full attention for now.”

“Ah.” Magda smiled without humor as she looked at each man in turn. “Pressing issues. Matters of state. Great questions of warfare and rule. You must all be terribly busy with such work. I understand.

“So you are here, then, about one of these momentous issues? That is what brings you out of council chambers to see me? Vital business of state? Matters of war and peace?”

To a man, their faces turned red.

Magda strolled past the line of six. “So how may I help with such important issues that require the council’s full attention? Please tell me what urgent matter of state brings you to me this particular day, the same day we all stood by and prayed that the good spirits would take my departed husband, our leader, our First Wizard, into their gentle arms? Speak up, then. What urgent matter takes you away from your vital work and brings you all up here today?”

Their expressions turned dark. They didn’t like being mocked. At that moment, Magda didn’t much care.

“You know why we’re here,” Cadell said in an even tone. “It is a small duty, but an important one that demonstrates our respect for our heritage. It shows people that even in such times, tradition still has meaning to every one of our people, even those in high places. Sometimes, ceremony is essential for the continued cohesion of society.”

Councilman Sadler’s bony fingers fidgeted with the sky blue band of rank sewn on the sleeves of his black robes. “It demonstrates to people that there is continuity of the ways that have been handed down to us, that the customs of our people, that the practices that govern civilization itself, still matter and will not be abandoned.”

Magda glared at the man a moment before turning her back on them and sitting on the chair before the table.

“Do it, then,” she said in a voice finally gone lifeless and empty. “Carry out your critical custom. And then leave me be.”

What did it matter anymore?

Without another word one of the men pulled out a bloodred ribbon and handed it to her over her shoulder. Magda held it a moment, feeling the silken material in her fingers.

“This is not something we take pleasure in doing,” Cadell said quietly from behind her. “I hope you can understand that.”

“You are a good woman, and have always been a proper wife to the First Wizard,” Sadler said, his words rambling on, apparently in an attempt to cover his obvious discomfort. “This is merely an upholding of custom that gives people a sense of order. Because of your high standing as the wife of the First Wizard, they expect us in this case, as the Central Council, to see this done. It’s more for them, really, that they might see that our ways endure, and thus, despite the perils of the times, we will endure as well. Think of it as a formality in which you play an important role.”

Magda hardly heard him. It didn’t really matter. None of it did. An inner voice whispered promises of the loving embrace of the good spirits awaiting her beyond the veil of life. Her husband, too, would be there waiting for her. Those whispers were reassuring, seductive.

She was only distantly aware of her hands gathering her long hair together in the back and tying it tightly with the ribbon near the base of her skull.

“Not that short,” Cadell said as his fingers gently took hers away and slipped the ribbon down until it was just below the tops of her shoulders. “Though you may not have been born noble, you have proven yourself in your own right to be a woman of some standing, and besides, you are, after all, still the widow of the First Wizard.”

Magda sat stiff and still with her hands nested in her lap as another man used a razor-sharp knife to slice through the thick rope of her hair just above the ribbon.

When it was done, Cadell placed the long hank of hair, tied just beneath the fresh cut with the red ribbon, in her lap.

“I’m sorry, Magda,” he said, “I truly am. Please believe that this does not change the way we feel about you.”

Magda lifted the length of brown hair and stared at it. The hair didn’t really matter to her. What mattered was being judged by it, or by the lack of it, rather than by what she had made of herself. She knew that without the long hair she would likely no longer have standing to be heard before the council.

That was just the way it was.

What mattered most to her was that those whose causes she brought before the council would no longer have her voice to speak for them. That meant that there were creatures without an advocate who very well might die out and cease to exist.

That was what having her hair cut short meant to her, that she no longer had the standing needed to help those she had come not merely to respect, but to love.

Magda handed the severed hair back over her shoulder to Elder Cadell. “Have it placed where people will see it so they might know that order has been restored, that tradition and customs endure.”

“As you wish, Lady Searus.”

With her place in the world now corrected, the six councilmen finally left her alone to the gloomy room and her bleak thoughts.