The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus

Chapter 83

Magda staggered to a stop. She put her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. Her legs ached. In fact, her whole body ached. She knew that Merritt was right about her needing rest. That inexorable requirement after giving herself over to the completion of the sword was rapidly catching up with her. Her lungs burned, making her cough.

She knew that if she didn’t get rest, and soon, she ran the risk of collapsing. But she couldn’t stop, not yet.

She’d walked the Keep road down to the city countless times, but the low, threatening clouds hid the moon, making it hard to see. At least they reflected some of the isolated lights down in the city of Aydindril and it was enough for her to be able to make out roads when they came in from the sides. With those landmarks she knew where she was.

This part of the road coming down the mountain from the Keep to Aydindril wound its way through dense forests. She knew that the trees would soon thin out and then she might be able to see a little better. The thing that she had to be careful of was that to her left, around some of the turns in the road, there were steep drop-offs. Carelessly taking a step too far off the edge of the road in the darkness would likely be the last step she ever made.

From time to time on the way down, she had stopped and cracked open the door on her lantern to be sure of her surroundings and where she was. Each time, as soon as she got her bearings, she quickly closed the lantern door. With the danger of spies in and about Aydindril, the Home Guard was on the lookout for any suspicious activity. She didn’t want any patrolling soldiers to spot her and come to see who she was and what she was doing.

As she panted, catching her breath, a few fat, cold drops of rain splattered against her head and shoulders. She hoped it didn’t start coming down in earnest. Her breath back, she started running again.

Before long, as she entered the city, the reflected light off the clouds was enough for her to make out the road and the buildings to the sides. A little farther into the city the street narrowed because it passed between buildings that were shops on the first floor, with living space above. They were all dark.

It was still quite a distance to Merritt’s house, so, head down, she ignored her burning leg muscles and drove herself on at a quick pace. When she heard some odd noises up ahead, she stopped cold and looked up.

Ahead in the darkness, still off a ways on the narrow street, she saw a group of men coming toward her. They weren’t carrying any lamps, so it was hard to tell how many there were, but the bunch of them looked to be a goodly number. She stared with wide eyes, trying to tell who they were.

And then, as they passed a shop with candlelight coming from a window, she saw the glint of light off swords at their hips. Several men had upright pikes.

They were soldiers, probably a patrol of the Home Guard. There looked to be maybe eight or ten of them.

Before the patrol saw her, Magda quickly ducked into the alleyway to her left. She ran a map of the city through her head and realized that, rather than following the route she’d been planning on taking, she could actually take a shortcut to Merritt’s house and probably save some time, as well as stay out of sight from the patrol. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. She guessed that she was so drained of strength that it kept her from thinking straight. She reminded herself that her survival depended on thinking clearly.

She hurried up the alley, trying to put distance between her and the end of the alley where the soldiers would pass by. She knew that patrols sometimes took gifted with them to sense people who might be hiding. When she heard them approaching the intersection where she had gone into the alley, she slipped into the narrow space between two buildings to hide. She held the lantern behind her in case there was any crack in the metal door that might be spotted if one of the soldiers looked her way.

Magda peeked out with one eye. She could see them, off in the distance, as they passed by the end of the alley. It was hard to tell, but she was pretty sure that she was right, that there were eight to ten of them. She hadn’t thought that patrols were typically that large.

She saw, then, that one of the men in their midst appeared to be restrained with some kind of device around his neck with a bar in front. It looked like maybe his wrists were manacled to the end of the bar.

That explained the number of men. They had taken someone into custody. Soldiers typically took a larger contingent when they went to apprehend a criminal. She supposed that it was easier to catch a man in his bed than to try to run him down in the day.

Once the soldiers and their prisoner had gone past the alley, Magda cautiously emerged from her hiding place and checked in all directions for any sign of other soldiers. When she saw nothing and everything was dead quiet, she rushed off up the alley. She trotted to cover ground as quickly as possible. She didn’t think she had it in her to run anymore. At least the brief sprinkle had stopped, but she worried that the clouds still threatened rain.

When she reached a cross street with a two-story brick building that she remembered, she squinted in the darkness across the road. She saw a sign hanging over a door. It was the right size, but she couldn’t tell if it had a blue pig painted on it. Around the corner, though, she could see the narrow street following rolling, uneven ground. It was the right place. She turned up the street toward Merritt’s house.

When she at last saw a forked plum tree in the front of the little porch, she let out a sigh, thankful to have found the place so quickly in the dark. Light came from the window to the side of the house, so she knew that Merritt was still up working.

She knocked just loud enough that she thought he would hear her but the neighbors wouldn’t. She hoped that dogs didn’t start barking and rouse people.

When Merritt didn’t answer the door, she knocked a little harder. When she knocked harder, the door swung in a little. It wasn’t latched.

“Merritt?” she called out in a quiet voice. “Merritt?”

She thought that maybe he was out back, so she slipped inside. She pushed the door closed behind her as she looked around. She didn’t see him. A few lanterns were lit in the room, but Merritt wasn’t there.

She went to the back, looking out, but it was pitch black. She went to a dark doorway and opened the metal cover on her lantern, throwing light into the dark bedroom. The bed was empty. She couldn’t imagine where he could be.

On the way back through the house, weaving her way through the assortment of objects lying about all over the floor, she froze in midstride. In front of the table with the red velvet cloth, the chair was lying on its side.

The Sword of Truth, in its sheath, still hanging from the back of the chair, lay on the floor.

Magda righted the chair. She stood staring at the sword.

Merritt wouldn’t leave the sword. He had never left it before, and he certainly wouldn’t leave it since completing its transition into the key to the boxes of Orden.

And then she saw a small piece of green cloth snagged on one of the metal objects standing nearby. It was the same wool material and the exact same green color as the tunics worn by the soldiers of the prosecutor’s office. The same soldiers in green tunics who were guarding her apartment. The same soldiers in green tunics who had brutalized Tilly. The same soldiers in green tunics that were Lothain’s private army.

She remembered, then, the soldiers with a prisoner she had seen only a short time before. They were headed toward the Keep.

It was too much to be a coincidence.

Magda pulled off her black cloak and threw it on the table. She slipped the baldric over her head, laying it on her right shoulder, placing the scabbard with the sword at her left hip. Once it was securely in place, she put her cloak back on, hiding the sword, and headed for the door.

In her mind, she swiftly plotted a variety of routes through the city. All the times when she had been a young girl, running with friends through the city, were paying off as she considered the fastest way to intercept the soldiers.

She needed to get out ahead of them and cut them off.

She wondered briefly what she thought she was going to do to make them release Merritt.

As she ran out the door of his house, she knew only that she had to get Merritt away from those big soldiers in those green tunics.