“Weston and Guymer. It would be them,” Magda murmured to herself. She looked up again. “I thought the council didn’t want you to use this same basic conjuring to create this, this person who could pull truth from lies.”

His hazel eyes again locked on her.

“The Confessor,” he said.

Chapter 50

“Confessor?” Magda asked.

“That’s right.”

She leaned forward, puzzled by the name. “Confessor?”

“Yes, that’s what I call the person I would create because with the power I would invest in them, they could make anyone—anyone—confess the truth, no matter how abhorrent the truth may be, no matter how desperately they previously may have wanted to conceal it, no matter the lies they’ve told or hidden behind. The touch of a Confessor’s power would change all that.”

“So, the council wants you to make the key, for which there would be no use, but not this Confessor for which there could possibly be great use?”

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

“To say the least.” She wondered if something more than irony was involved. “I still don’t understand why both the key and this Confessor could require the same base elements.”

“Because at their core they both serve the cause of truth.”

“How can the key serve the cause of truth? I get the Confessor, but not the key.”

“At their root, the key and the Confessor both authenticate truth. The Confessor’s power would force the subject to reveal the truth, while all of the coded alignments of the key involve proofing it against reality. Reality is truth. Therefore, both the Confessor and the key need the same formulas to initiate their ultimate function.

“In much the same way that a verification web authenticates a spell, the base elements of this new form of magic I’m trying to create gauges, or measures, matters at hand against reality. In the case of the Confessor, the subject is left unable to speak anything other than the truth.

“The key, as well, follows a verification sequence. By building in authentication routines, it prevents a person from using it, for example, if they are lying about their reason for unlocking the power.”

“Maybe the council doesn’t want you to create the Confessor because they fear the truth,” Magda said.

“You may have just arrived at the heart of it.”

“But they still want the key.”

“Right,” he said. “They want a simple key to make the power work, but I didn’t think I could trust anyone with a key to that much power, even the council, so I intended to make the more complex key. That has been a great deal harder to devise, but if I ever get the chance to finally ignite the web, it will be worth the years of extra work.