SACRIFICES

Dale leaned forward, eager for Merdigen to continue, but the mage slumped in his chair as if in pain.

“What happened?” she prompted.

“Some of the villagers came during the dark of night while we slept and started killing us.” His voice was muffled. “They killed us, though we had never used our gifts of magic for ill, never for violence.”

“Why?” Dale asked, horrified. “Why did they do it?”

He lifted his head and gazed at her. His face looked awful, gray and shadowed. “Tell me,” he said, “why there is a spell of concealment over your Rider brooch.”

“What?” Dale’s fingers went to the gold brooch, touching its angles and contours, reassured by its familiar shape and texture. And she shrugged. “It’s always been this way. I was told that it was a way of identifying a true Rider from those who were false.” As she said it, it suddenly did not seem like an adequate explanation.

“Do the mundanes, er, the non-Riders around you, know of Rider magic?”

“No. It’s not something we discuss. The king and his advisors know, of course, and I suspect the Weapons do as well.”

Merdigen shuddered. “Yes,” he murmured, “the Black Shields would. Now tell me why you do not openly discuss your abilities.”

“Because,” Dale said, “its…magic isn’t accepted. People don’t like it. It reminds them of the terrible things Mornhavon did during the Long War.”

“Hmph. Once those badges of office were worn proudly and unhidden, but things changed. Imagine the atmosphere just after the war—the fear, the anger, the hatred of all things magical.”

Dale had not lived through that time as Merdigen had, nor was her knowledge of the history great, but she began to understand. It didn’t take much to imagine the fear and suspicion of people who had endured a hundred years of war led by one endowed with enormous powers, powers that were used as a weapon that took lives, leveled towns, and created monstrosities. If magic was held with suspicion today, back then it must have been despised.

The League may have defeated Mornhavon, but the Sacoridians had been a beaten people, reduced to the very lowest levels of humanity able to survive and carry on. She could only imagine how King Jonaeus had fought to retain his control over the ragged country. Opportunists must have swooped in like carrion birds to wrest power from him: warlords, mercenaries, his own subjects. In this environment, something had to take the blame for all the woes that troubled the land.

“Your brooches were known in those days for what they were: devices to augment your innate abilities. Those who were against all magic demanded the brooches be destroyed, along with many other artifacts of magic. Under great pressure from these powerful individuals, the king had no choice but to acquiesce.”

“But—” Dale gripped her brooch all the harder.

Merdigen’s lips curled into an ironic smile. “And thus it was believed the brooches were destroyed. The real brooches, however, received a spell of concealment and the Riders retained their abilities, but they’ve remained a well-kept secret, and for good reason.”

Dale wondered what kind of danger her ancestral Riders had been in simply because they possessed minor magical abilities that emerged only when coupled with the brooches. The opponents to magic must have judged the Riders harmless once their brooches were amputated from them. And this after all the Riders had done against Mornhavon in the service of their country.

“Yes,” Merdigen said, “they came for us, those who feared and hated us. You referred to the Scourge as a disease, a disease that started taking lives at the end of the war. True, there was plague that spread among the population and claimed lives, but there was another that selectively culled those with magical talents, or those suspected of having them. It was not that they sickened, but that they were persecuted; persecuted by those who had not slaked the hatred in their hearts during the war. They believed magic to be the root of evil, and its elimination the remedy to every ill. Things would improve once the evil magic was cleansed from the land—the cleansing, they believed, would end starvation and poverty and the country would arise from the devastation. The fanatics spoke with bold voices and the promise of better days easily bought by the elimination of magic. Many rushed to their cause, and across the land thousands were murdered.”

This was a part of history Dale had never learned, not even during her Green Rider training. She had always heard of the Scourge in terms of illness and plague, not in terms of persecution. She had always thought the end of the Long War brought celebration and light, but now she saw just how devastated her ancestors had been. Peace was not something to celebrate, but something to survive.

Merdigen conjured himself another ale and looked weary. He drank deeply from his mug and said, “A very bleak time, and all the while the king struggled to hold the country together. Perhaps that was a greater battle than those he fought in the Long War. Though I might have railed against him and cursed his name during my exile on the Island of Sorrows, I began to see him for the leader he truly was. But that is jumping ahead in the tale.”

“The attack,” Dale said. “How did you escape the attack at your lodge?”

Merdigen looked into his mug, and could not meet her gaze. “For all my years, I never used my powers against another soul. Never. I suffered a long exile for my beliefs, but that night as the members of my order, who were my only family, were murdered in their sleep, I used my powers and killed. Killed to defend us. Killed every last marauder.” A strained silence gripped Merdigen.

“What then?” Dale gently prodded, both horrified and fascinated.

“In the morning the eagles came to us. They had seen the light of my powers from their eyries, so vicious had my assault been. In the daylight we found the charred husks of the villagers, including the one whom we identified as our old stablehand. Among our own we lost thirty of our order to the slaughter, and two were very near death, including Daria, the one true healer among us. We tried to aid them, but could not.”

A tear dripped down Merdigen’s cheek into his beard.

“After we burned our dead, the eagles took us aloft before more villagers could organize a reprisal.” Merdigen created a vision of the remains of the lodge amid a mountain meadow and smoke rising from pyres for Dale. She could almost smell the stench of scorched flesh. The scene dwindled from view, grew smaller and smaller, as if she watched from Merdigen’s eyes as an eagle lifted him away, until the scar on the mountain blended into its surroundings and the Wingsong Mountains opened in a white-peaked panorama framed by clear blue sky. Merdigen waved his hand and abruptly the scene dissipated like smoke.

“They carried us to the eyrie of Venwing, lord of the eagles. His eyrie was a mere ledge among the clouds in the mountains, the air sharp and thin. We clustered together, those of us who survived—ten of us as it would happen—lost in grief and shivering with cold.

“‘Thus it has been across the lands,’ Lord Venwing said, ‘the killing does not end.’ I crumpled to my knees, feeling the weight of the lives I had taken.”

“You were defending your people!”

“So I was, and for that reason I was not executed immediately. But what right had I, or anyone else, to cause a life to end?”

“You were trying to preserve the lives of your people.”

“And such was the rationale of those who went to war.” Merdigen shook his head. “But I only proved the fearful stories of those villagers true. I was a user of magic, and used it to kill. I gave those who had not died that night reason to persecute us. The taking of a life, for some, is a heavy burden. For others? They noticed it little more than they would the swatting of a fly.”

Dale leaned back into her chair, thinking of the battles she had engaged in, of the lives she had taken. Yes, it was a burden, but one she could live with. There were gray areas in Merdigen’s extremes.

He continued his tale. “Lord Venwing told us, ‘Yes, across all the lands it has been happening, the attacks on those gifted with magic.’ That was when we began to realize the extent of the persecution. If it was happening in our remote mountain location, one that was little touched by the war itself, then it must be so widespread that nowhere was truly safe. ‘They seek to end all magic in the world,’ Venwing said. ‘But to end all magic is to end life.’

“You see,” Merdigen explained, “what those who attempted to eradicate magic did not know is that magic is a natural force. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. By killing those with the ability to work magic, they were not killing the magic itself, just those who were attuned to it and could use it. From what I understand has happened on the outside world, magic has lain dormant, or so it would seem, with so few possessing the ability to work it. I fear the eradication of magic users proved much too successful”

Dale rubbed her upper lip. “When Mornhavon awoke, all manner of strange magic occurred on our side of the wall, and the special abilities of some Riders became unreliable.”

“Interesting,” Merdigen said. “He created a flux in the natural order, and it must have flowed through the breach.”

“So what happened next?” Dale asked. “Did the eagles return you to the king?”

“Yes. And once there, Theanduris Silverwood could not hide his gloating. He knew what would befall us, the ingrate. We were offered sanctuary only if we committed ourselves to the towers.”

“Which you did.”

“Yes. We’d little choice, for the world was no longer safe for us. It was only after we were stationed in our towers that we learned the truth about the wall guardians, that they’d been coerced into joining with the wall with threats of torture against them and those they loved. For the magic haters, this accomplished two things at once: the elimination of thousands of magic users and the strengthening of the D’Yer Wall against the influence of Blackveil.”

Merdigen released a deep sigh. “Life in our towers was not bad. The wallkeepers kept us company and updated us on the news of the world. In the beginning we were visited by members of Clan Deyer, the occasional Green Rider, and…Black Shields. Over the years these visits waned, then ceased altogether. I slept and no one woke me for two hundred years, until your friend, the Deyer, stumbled into the tower.” Merdigen fell silent, bemused, then softly added, “If no one has entered the other towers, I suppose my companions still slumber.”

Now that Merdigen had concluded his tale, Dale decided to ask the question she had been dying to ask from the beginning. “Merdigen, what are you?”

“I am a magical projection of the great mage Merdigen.”

“Yes, but what does it mean?”

“It means I am Merdigen, his personality and memory, though his corporeal form long ago ceased to exist.”

“So you are illusion—”

“No. This is illusion.” Merdigen flashed his hand out in a wave and a black bear suddenly appeared rearing over Dale, swiping its claws through the air, its growl resonating through the chamber. Dale was so surprised she almost tipped over backward in her chair.

“It has no personality, no soul, and it’s certainly not self-aware,” Merdigen explained. With another wave of his hand the bear vanished, much to Dale’s relief. It might have been an illusion, but it sure seemed real. “Unlike the bear,” he continued, “the spirit of Merdigen exists within the tower. I am a projection of it.”

“A ghost?”

“No, no, no. Ghosts are shadows of the dead. I guess you could say I am a shadow of the living. I am not unlike the guardians of the wall with my spirit anchored in place, but unlike the guardians, I exist as an individual.”

Dale still didn’t completely understand it, but she supposed it didn’t matter. Aside from the history lesson, interesting though it was, all she really learned was no, Merdigen had no additional information about the wall that could help Alton unravel its mysteries.

“Merdigen,” she said, “can any of the wall guardians help us understand the wall?”

His comb had reappeared in his hand and he stroked it through his beard again. “No. They are no longer individuals. They are song. They bind the magic of the wall together. They’ve no memory, except the memory of stone, and of the song they must sing.” He paused his combing and became reflective again. “Theirs was a much greater sacrifice than ours. Perhaps the lack of memory is a mercy for them.”

It was not something Dale could conceive of, this sacrificing of one’s spirit to the wall and existing only as song.

The interview over, she took leave of Merdigen to report back to Alton, who must surely be going mad by now to hear what she had learned. She was afraid he was going to be disappointed. She stepped into the wall, but somehow it felt even worse this time, less fluid around her, almost rigid. Crackling chimed in her ears, a primordial sound, if she knew it, of a time before people, a time before light brightened the Earth; before time itself was measured. It was a sound of liquid rock cooling and fracturing, and forming crystals; a sound heard, had there been anyone to hear it, when the Earth’s bedrock formed.

The wall was solidifying.

Through the chiming she heard the voices, voices in lament, despairing, and others chanting, Hate, hate, hate…

Blinded in the darkness and seized by panic, she thrust forward, hardened rock abrading her flesh, crushing the breath from her body, crushing her. Like one who is submerged and drowning, she could only scream within herself.