The First Confessor Read Free Page A

men.”
    “They were volunteers.”
    He smiled politely. “Yes of course. I meant to say that your husband selected the men who were to go to the Temple and ultimately their death from among a group of volunteers.”
    “My husband was First Wizard.” Her brow tightened. “Who would you expect to select men for such a dangerous mission? The council? You?”
    “No, no, of course not.” He gestured offhandedly. “It was clearly First Wizard Baraccus’s responsibility to select the men who would go.”
    “Then what is your point?”
    He smiled down at her. That smile might have been on his lips, but it was not in his eyes.
    “My point,” Lothain finally said, “is that he selected men who failed.”
    Hard as she could, Magda slapped the man across his face. The six council members gasped as they drew back. Her hand probably stung more than Lothain’s solid face, but she didn’t care. The sound of the slap seemed to hang in the air for a moment before fading.
    Lothain dismissed the slap with a polite bow of his head. “Please accept my apology if it sounded like I was making an accusation.”
    “If it was not an accusation, then what was it?”
    “I am simply trying to get to the truth.”
    “The truth? The truth is,” she growled, “that while you were in the underworld, attempting to gain entrance into the Temple, the moon each night and each night since turned red in a warning, the most serious warning possible from the Temple, that there is some sort of grave trouble—”
    He cut her off, dismissing the issue with a flick of his hand. “The appearance of repeated red moons was probably because of the damage done by the Temple team.”
    “And when you returned, after failing in your attempt to undo that damage, the First Wizard had the terrible duty to select a volunteer to answer the Temple’s nightly call of a red moon. And when the first man failed to return, the First Wizard had to send another, more experienced wizard, and when that one failed to return, he had the grim duty to select yet another, even more skilled man, all of them friends and close associates.
    “I stood beside him at the rampart each night as he stared off at the red moon, inconsolable, as one friend after another failed to return from the underworld. Inconsolable that he had sent valuable men, his friends, men who were husbands and fathers, to their death.
    “Finally, when no one else had succeeded, my husband undertook the journey himself, and in the end paid for it with his life.”
    Lothain let the ringing silence go on for a moment before speaking softly. “Actually, he did not pay for it with his life. He took his own life after returning.”
    Magda glared at him. “What is your point?”
    Lothain tapped his fingertips together for a moment as he studied her wet eyes. “My point, Lady Searus, is that he took his own life before we learned what had happened on his journey to the Temple of the Winds. Perhaps you can tell us?” He cocked his head. “Did he make it in?”
    “I don’t know,” Magda said. But she did know. Baraccus had told her that he had, and told her a lot more. “I was his wife, not a member of the council or—”
    “Ah,” Lothain said as he tipped his head back. “His young, exquisitely beautiful, but so very ungifted wife. Of course. So obviously a wizard of such great ability would not discuss matters of profound power with someone who had none.”
    Magda swallowed. “That’s right.”
    “You know, I’ve always been curious. Why would . . .” His frown returned as his black eyes again fixed on her. “Well, why would a man of such extraordinary ability, a gifted war wizard, a man whose talents included everything from combat to prophecy, why would a man like that marry a woman who had no ability at all? I mean, other than . . .” He let his gaze wander down her body.
    He was fishing, accusing her of being nothing but a pretty bauble, the shallow possession of a powerful man. Prosecutor