“No one is doubting that you may in fact believe that,” Prosecutor Lothain said from behind her. “However, even though there may be those who are inclined to trust your sincerity in what you believe, it is the truth of that belief that is in question. Dream walkers will no doubt pose a threat at some point in the future but when they do I would expect that they will come after important targets.”

Magda rounded on the prosecutor and held out her bloodstained arms. “They came after me!”

Lothain smiled dismissively. “At such a great distance from down in the Old World, how would a dream walker know of you, or find you, and more to the point, why would they bother with you? But Alric Rahl was in the Keep, right there in the room with you, and he had motive enough to want to make you believe it was a dream walker who was attacking you.”

“That’s absurd,” she said. “The dream walkers are real and a threat.”

“Of course they are,” Elder Cadell said. “But in any event, we have decided on our own solution to protect our people.”

“Your own solution?” Magda’s brow twitched into a frown as she rounded on the elder. “Surely you don’t mean the towers?”

Councilman Weston, to the side of the elder, leaned forward, his hand clenching into a fist on the desk. “We don’t need to hear your skepticism of a matter that is the council’s concern and not a topic meant for public discussion.”

Magda knew that, for obvious reasons, they would of course want to keep the true nature of the project a secret. Baraccus had never agreed to the proposal, or to keeping the plan a secret. He thought that if the situation was grave enough, the idea was something that would reluctantly have to be considered, but he thought it had to be considered publicly. Apparently others thought so as well. As a result, the tower proposal was one of the worst-kept secrets in all of Aydindril.

“We have a solution and we are working on it,” Elder Cadell said in his typically calm tone of authority. “That is all that matters here.”

Shocked, Magda paused only briefly. “Do you mean to say that you’ve actually gone ahead with the plan? You began implementing it without Baraccus’s knowledge?”

“The First Wizard had his own responsibilities; this was under our jurisdiction.” Elder Cadell gestured, glossing over the question. “Once completed, the towers will not only protect us from the dream walkers, they will seal away the Old World and protect us from anything that the enemy gifted might create and send to destroy us. The towers are not a partial solution such as Lord Rahl proposes. They are a complete solution that will not only protect us from all manner of onslaughts, they will seal us off from the Old World and end the war.”