His smiled vanished. “Oh yes, I am protected. He tested me with the dream walker he held captive. That’s how Alric knew that the bond he created finally worked in others. I was the first one protected by the bond. So, you see, there is no chance that a dream walker is hiding in the shadows of my mind, listening and watching, if that’s what you’re worried about.

“Now, what is it you wanted to tell me about my friend Isidore?”

Magda’s heart sank.

“I’m afraid that I got Isidore killed.”

Chapter 45

Merritt’s face took on the look of chiseled stone, much like his statues. The aspect of the gift she saw in his eyes had a decidedly dangerous cast to it.

“What do you mean, you got Isidore killed?”

In that calm yet emotionally charged question, she could see that this was a man with more than a simple temper. It was a refined sort of bottled fury that had the potential to be devastatingly violent, and yet at the same time he was also a man able to control it.

That meant that he could focus it.

“It takes a bit of explanation.”

While at first a bit shy, once the subject became somber he turned all business.

“So explain.”

Magda rearranged the bundle under her arm as she finally sat on the wicker couch. It gave her the excuse to look away from his intense expression.

“I was at first in shock over my husband’s death,” she began. “I couldn’t understand why he would take his own life, couldn’t understand why he would leave me like that, leave all of us. People said that his journey to the Temple of the Winds in the world of the dead must have crushed his spirit and sapped his will to live.

“Everyone accepted that story. They believed it was a straightforward suicide. And while it may have made grim sense to them, it didn’t make sense to me. As I thought about it, I kept coming back to the core truth that Baraccus was not the kind of man to be so despondent that he would kill himself.

“Besides, I was there when he came back from the Temple of the Winds, and while there was no doubt that he was troubled and distracted, I wouldn’t characterize him as depressed.

“He had too much to live for, too many things that mattered to him, too many people he cared about, too much important work yet unfinished. He wouldn’t kill himself to end any kind of personal despair. He cared about us all too much to do such a thing. With all of the New World in danger he had every reason to want to fight for us.”

“Then why would he do it?” Merritt asked as he went to the table to gaze down at the sword.