“Sorry, but I don’t. Baraccus was a prophet, though, so he must know something about the future. A possible future, anyway. Our free will makes the future sometimes uncertain, even for prophets. I think that what he means is the future is yours to decide and he is hoping you will make the right decision.”

Magda’s arm lowered. “When the dream walker was trying to kill me, I remembered what he said in this note. Alric Rahl told me that the devotion he created—the one you helped him create—is meant to guard our minds from dream walkers. When a dream walker had me, and was trying to kill me, those words in the note made me realize that I had to give the devotion to Lord Rahl in order to guard my mind and save my own life. Baraccus’s words made me choose my own future, choose life, and as a result his prophetic words proved true.”

“Prophecy is often like that,” Merritt said. He seemed to surface from deep thoughts. “It also says your destiny is to find truth, just like you said, not the truth, as I had thought when you first told me.”

“Does that mean something to you?”

Merritt gave her a meaningful look, then drew the sword at his hip. As it emerged from the scabbard, the blade made a soft ringing sound that filled the quiet storage room. Magda could see something besides the gift in his eyes when he held the sword. It was a kind of deep, distant rage, something almost alive with its power.

Merritt carefully laid the sword on the workbench. Shadow gazed with drowsy green eyes at the blade he laid before her. Merritt finally looked at Magda in a way that told her he expected something from her.

She looked from Merritt to the sword and back again. “What?”

Merritt gestured to the sword. “What does it say?”

She knew very well what it said. She hadn’t been able to get it out of her mind. Still, Magda’s eyes turned to the hilt. She let her fingers lightly glide over the raised gold letters.

“It says ‘Truth.’” She lifted a brow at Merritt. “Are you saying that Baraccus’s words in his note—‘Your destiny is to find truth’—are meant to say that my destiny is to find the Sword of Truth? You really think that’s what he meant? You really think it could be that obvious?”

Merritt shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m a maker, not a prophet. But I made the word Truth on the hilt, and you came to me and found the sword with that word crafted into it. You are the one who named it the Sword of Truth.”

A jumble of thoughts tumbled through Magda’s mind. Was Baraccus saying that her destiny was to find Merritt and the sword with Truth on it?