The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus

Chapter 82

Lothain had told his men that they should remain in the hallway outside the apartment all night to make sure that no one went in and that she didn’t leave. The guards all knew, of course, that they were several stories above the surrounding portions of the Keep. The soldiers in green tunics who had brought her back to the apartment all knew that the only way she would be able to leave was back out through the doors into the corridor where they stood guard.

Since they knew she couldn’t sneak past them, it seemed to her highly unlikely they would have any reason to come into the apartment, much less her bedroom. Lothain was covetous of her. They weren’t going to want to give the man cause to be suspicious of what they might be doing with her. Magda was relatively confident that they would stand guard but not want to come into the apartment without direct orders.

In any event, she couldn’t worry about the off chance that they would come in and check on her. She would simply have to be quick about it. She had to do what was necessary, or she was going to find herself the wife of the new First Wizard Lothain.

Without delay, Magda went to the big maple wardrobe that had belonged to Baraccus. His clothes still hung where he had left them. Magda hadn’t known what to do with them, so she had simply left them there. Before he had killed himself, he had left his war-wizard outfit in the First Wizard’s enclave. The wardrobe held a variety of other clothes, everything from old pants and shirts he wore when working at his workbench to elaborate ceremonial robes. She pushed the ceremonial robes aside to reach in on the side as far as she could.

Magda pushed in the right spot, and the door over a hidden compartment slid open. Baraccus had made the hiding place himself. Reaching inside, her fingers found the knotted rope hanging from a peg. She pulled it out, relieved that it was still there.

There had been times when Baraccus had to meet people under cover of darkness, and for the safety of the men he was meeting, those meetings had to be kept secret. Had he left the apartment by the front door and gone out through the corridors, all kinds of people would have known about it. Whenever he went out in the Keep there were always eyes watching him. He’d said that he never knew the motives of the people who saw him.

If he had been seen leaving the Keep in the middle of the night, word would have eventually gotten around. People would have wondered what he was doing, where he was going, who he was seeing. As it was, as careful as Baraccus had been, it seemed that Lothain had found out about at least some of the late-night meetings.

In an attempt to keep such meetings secret, Baraccus had kept a knotted rope hidden in his wardrobe so that he would be able to leave from the bedroom balcony. It was a drop of several stories, so people would not be expecting him to leave that way.

The rope was exactly the right length to make it safely all the way down to a shallow slate roof. The roof led to a rampart where there were old, unused exterior stairs that were hidden from view. Magda knew how to make her way from there without being seen.

She grabbed a clean, black, hooded cloak and threw it around her shoulders. She went to a cabinet and pulled her shielded travel lantern out by its wire handle. With a long splinter that she lit in one of the reflector lamps on the wall, she set flame to the wick of her travel lantern. Once the wick was adjusted low, she shut the curved metal door and latched it so it wouldn’t give off any light until she wanted it to, then hooked it on her belt.

Magda went to the bedroom doors and carefully checked the bolt to reassure herself that the doors were locked. Across the bedroom, she went out the leaded-glass door onto the balcony. It was heavily overcast and black as pitch. Fortunately, there were a few lights around the Keep that let her see what she was doing.

Magda knelt at the edge of the balcony and slipped her hand out through the balusters, feeling over the edge for the heavy hook that Baraccus had sunk into the stone with the aid of magic. Her fingers found the hook. She slipped the loop on the end of the rope over the hook, then fed the rest of the rope out between the balusters.

Once she was confident that it was secure, she climbed over the railing and was able to lower herself down and get ahold of the rope. She started down, catching the knots between her feet for support as she carefully descended hand over hand. She had never used the rope before, and it was frightening hanging in midair in the darkness, but she kept her mind on the task and before long she touched down on the slate roof.

She was glad that it was a dark night so that no one would see her leaving.

She followed the rooftop until she reached the rampart, then ran until she found the small opening for the stairs. With no time to waste, she took them down two at a time.