“At first, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then, in a haunting voice, he said that it represented the dance with death. I was rather horrified by that. He said the dance with death was the way of a war wizard.

“I sat on the floor beside him that night, him standing, staring out the window, me with my back leaning against the wall beneath it while I held his hand, as he held his private thoughts close, and that amulet in his other hand.

“He was a remarkable man, a man that in many ways I don’t think I really knew.

“And now he’s gone.”

Isidore gently touched her arm.

Magda came out of her thoughts to look over at the spiritist. “I’m hoping that you will soon know his spirit . . . at least enough to bring me the answers I need, or at least answers that can guide me in the right direction.”

Isidore gave Magda’s arm a sympathetic squeeze. “We will find your answers, Magda. You’ve found your way to the right person, a person with the right kind of vision.”

Chapter 35

Magda put thoughts of Baraccus out of her mind as she returned to the matter at hand.

She couldn’t bring herself to ask Isidore if Merritt had been the one to take her eyes. She skirted the subject and asked something else instead to steer the conversation back to the subject at hand.

“So what about you? What happened with Merritt? Was he able to help you with your efforts to find the lost souls of Grandengart?”

“Well, when I finally found his place”—she pointed a finger toward the ceiling—“up under the southern rampart, of all places, Merritt seemed to be distracted by his own problems, but he was kind enough to allow me in and at least listen to my story. He listened as you have, and far more seriously than the council had. I guess people closer to your own age are more inclined to take you seriously.

“He didn’t say much as I told him what had happened. He stared down at that beautiful sword of his, lying on a table, as he listened. He asked a few questions, though, and I got the sense from those questions that, perhaps even more than me, he considered the implications of bodies being taken, and worse, their spirits missing from the underworld, to be quite ominous. In a way, his concern made me worry even more and served to reinforce my conviction in what I knew I had to do.