Assimilated

by Nick Webb

  With an impatient sigh, she returned to work, smiling as she heard another tiny twig break far down the hill.

  Soon, she thought.

  When I found Sael, she was worse than a slave. She was a child, wearing a girl-child mask, but the filthy man who kept her, the farmer who’d bought her and nursed her back to a scant health only to steal it from her anew, treated the girl as less than a slave. To him, she was an object. A receptacle and a target to satisfy his whims. The slavers, with their terrifying black masks, had sold her to him for a pittance. She was hardly worth any price, being near death and requiring more food and care than the slavers were willing to give—she simply wasn’t worth the investment. She spent a year with him. An entire unholy year before I happened across his path. His blood was the coldest. Like ice slithering down my throat and polluting my jaws. And yet, in spite of the unpleasantness of it, his was perhaps the most satisfying.

  Tarsha dreamed. After building a simple fire for warmth, she slumped to the ground and slept. He’d find her eventually, she knew, but he was still far down the hill, and she’d awaken long before he would have the chance to glimpse her as she offered his death to him.

  Her dreams were always the same. They always relived her kills, her hunts. She supposed it was the spirits of the wyvern mask at work, replaying the moments and bringing them to her remembrance, that she might study them and prepare herself for the hunts to come. The blood of the unrighteous was not in short supply.

  This particular dream was one she had often. In her mind’s eye, soaring above the image of her own body, she looked down at herself, naked and raw. Her body was clothed, of course, but her face—her stark, cold face seemed so pale and soft compared to the wyvern mask that usually clothed it.

  She watched as she held the mask in her lap, trembling and hesitating. With care, she wiped a spot of blood from the edge of the mask, scrubbing it clean with the ragged cloth of her shirt.

  The blood was not hers.

  Her gaze shifted to the body nearby. The broken, bloodied shell of a young man, his face otherwise clean and honest, even in death. He’d come hunting, at the urging of his father. How did she know that? Her mask told her. Its spirits were perceptive.

  She watched herself again, wiping not blood now, but tears. Her face was wet. Broken and afraid. Afraid of what she’d become. This man was no threat. Just a boy. A boy driven on by the wicked aspirations of a lazy father who sought only to increase the stature of his house among the village elders, and thus had sent his son on a fruitless, pointless hunt. For a trophy that would never come.

  And she wept. What had she become?

  Wyverns were not monsters, they were not seen as an evil thing. The chanters and the presbyters saw them as forces of nature. One does not hate a storm or an earthquake. It simply is, and when they strike, one cleans up, mourns the dead, and moves on with life. The weatherworker masks could predict the storms, but no mask could predict the actions of the wyverns. To be draeconis was to be unpredictable. Primal.

  But that knowledge didn’t lessen her pain. The guilt. And before she knew it she was curled up in a ball on the cold ground, cradling the hated mask in her hands and shuddering. She was not a monster. She was not a monster.

  The dream was unstoppable, even though, floating above, she wanted nothing more than to shout down to the prone girl, to warn her. Don’t let your guard down, she’d say. Get up, you stupid, wretched girl!

  But the shuddering figure didn’t hear the bushes rustle behind her, and the figure emerging from the woods walked up to the clearing uncontested, unwatched.

  His bow was drawn. The arrow pointed straight at her prone back. His mask, a simple clay potter’s mask, unadorned and crude, sneered with the hatred of all the lesser spirits that inhabited it. Even among the simple trade masks, there was honor and esteem to be had, as many of their spirits were great and wise, despite their low status. But this one was wretched, its owner appealing more to the base spirits within.

  She saw her spine stiffen, and as the arrow flew, she snapped upright. It pierced her shoulder, missing the intended target of her heart, and even though she floated above the scene the memory of the pain coursed through her. She leaped up and ran, even as the man chased her, readying another arrow.

  The mask tumbled to the ground as she fell, stumbling and reaching for her salvation and only defense. Without that mask, she had no hope. She would be at his mercy, and he had none.

  Another arrow struck her leg. She cried out, both her body on the ground and her dreaming spirit in the air, and when she fell, fortune smiled upon her, for she landed near the mask. In desperation, she grabbed it and pressed it to her face, even as the third arrow flew.

  The wyvern mask melded to her face like skin. She didn’t even bother fastening the leather straps. Scales sprouted from her neck, and when the arrow struck it, rather than plunging into her flesh it bounced off, landing harmlessly at her feet, which now grew into the armored claws of the wyvern.

  With a desperate, pitiful cry, the man turned and ran, throwing his bow to the ground. He tripped, falling over the body of his dead son.

  His son. She gasped. The man had sent his son to hunt her, the spirits of the wyvern mask now told her, whispering in her ear and revealing the truth of his intentions. The son was the distraction. The bait. So great was the prize of the wyvern mask in the eyes of the worthless potter that he was willing to sacrifice his third-born son in its pursuit.

  Anger at his callous ambition surged in her, and with one flap of her wings she soared into the air, and breathed. The flame snapped quickly at the man as he caught fire. The screams pierced her ears, and yet she still breathed, bathing him. Baptizing him with cleansing flame. Such desperate, rank evil needed to be extinguished. Erased from the face of Terremar.

  Soon, he was nothing more than burnt flesh. An ignominious death. The blood all disappeared to vapor and smoke. A wasted offering—she would not get to enjoy his blood. She would go hungry that night.

  Sael would not eat for three days after I rescued her. The sight of a wyvern tearing into her master was too much for her to bear, I suppose. But soon, she grew. And in the season of her thriving, the hunters came with renewed vigor. They came in droves. Dozens arrived in the first season alone. Nearly two dozen the next. For I was an aberration of nature. Wyverns were a force of nature, and hunters always came to seek nature’s trophies. And if a hunter failed, it meant he was not worthy. Justice was done and the wyvern praised for cleansing humanity of the blood of the unworthy. But Sael’s master had not hunted me. I hunted him. When I saw him from afar, I knew the world must be cleansed of his evil. And so I did what no force of nature does: I hunted him. And for that, the chanters, the presbyters, the weatherworkers, the king himself declared me unholy and unnatural. A thing to be extinguished. I would be the greatest trophy of all. If they could only catch me.

  She awoke, and when her head was clear she could hear his heartbeat. He was close.

  But something was wrong. His mask. It was different, somehow. The spirits were murderous, yes, and she could clearly feel his intentions. But his mask was one she had not encountered before.

  Potters, wainwrights, farmers, ironsmiths, hunters, leatherworkers—these she had all bested. She’d tasted the blood of all the common masks. She’d even dueled masks of power. One apprentice wizard had hunted her the previous summer, no doubt urged to the task by the king’s wizard himself. He’d been the most difficult of all, for even an apprentice mask of power was not something to trifle with. She’d only narrowly escaped impalement by a magically-hurled shaft of iron aimed for her heart.

  His blood was the sweetest of all. Power can corrupt, but it can also season and refine, and this young man’s blood was like honey on her lips, surging with its own intensity. The spirits of his mask, after his death, bowed to her own, acknowledging her mastery of them, even as she tossed his broken mask of power from the highest cliff of the Timorous Mountains.

  But
the mask that now hunted her was unlike any of them. It was keen and careful. Wary, yet powerful. It pulsed with energy of its own, yet was almost completely hidden from her view. She could hear his heart pump his life’s blood through his veins, but even sight of his shadow was denied her.

  “I see you.”

  She jumped. With a rush of wings she leaped into the air and circled the small clearing surrounding the hut and pool.

  The clearing was empty. Nothing but cold, still water, the empty tanning rack, and a half-skinned goat. She flapped her wings slowly, hovering just above the level of the trees.

  “Who are you?”

  “A hunter. Like you,” came the voice. She looked all around, but couldn’t see any mask. She could hear his heart, but could not see his lips.

  “I am no hunter. I am cleansing fire. I am justice.”

  “The king declares you a bane on the kingdom. He calls you a storm unbridled. A force uncontrolled. A thing against nature herself.”

  She scoffed, letting a brief lick of flame escape her nose. “I serve the gods, not the king. I do as they bid. The spirits of the mask compel me to action. I do not hunt. I defend.”

  “And yet, just three seasons ago, you hunted.” The man was holding still now, and his voice seemed unhindered by trunk or branch.

  And she understood. His was a mask of power. Great power. The Shadow Mask. It was rumored by the chanters that there were only one or two in existence across the whole of Terremar. Its bearer remains hidden, unseen and safe, for as long as it is worn.

  Finally, a match for her. A test worthy of the wyvern of the Timorous Mountains.

  “The farmer was a pathetic excuse of a man. Unworthy even of his lowly mask. Even his evil brother, who hunted me, was greater than him.” She saw a twig move beneath her near the pool, and with a gust of fire she breathed, incinerating the patch of ground to a smoldering scar.

  His voice sounded out again, but from nowhere near where she’d blasted. “But he did not hunt you. You hunted him. And for that revolt against the natural order the king put a bounty on your head. Not only will the champion obtain your mask as a glorious trophy, but the king will give him a cup of solid gold and his choice of mask from the royal maskery. There are great masks of power there, they say. Even a mask of legend or two.”

  “Is that so? But you have your own mask of power, do you not? Does it not suffice? You crave more? Is that not itself against the natural order? You should be content with what the gods have given you and not lust for more.”

  He fell silent. Well, at least he was an honest hunter. “Perhaps, wyvern. Your point is taken.”

  She snorted. Smoke drifted from her nostrils as she scanned the tree line. “So you will leave, then?”

  “No. I reckon I shall not.”

  As soon as the words fell from his unseen lips, a searing pain pierced her side, and looking down she saw a tiny wooden shaft protruding from her thick hide. How it had penetrated she knew not, but she instantly knew that its tip was coated in some foul, unnatural substance, for her vision began to swim and her wings sink low.

  She screamed. Fire blasted from her throat. She had to flee, she knew, before her consciousness fled.

  But escape was impossible. She could not leave the child behind, left to the whims of the hunter. Sael’s destiny was something higher than to be a slave, she was sure.

  With great effort she beat her wings, letting out a cry as the poison wrenched her muscles and sinews. Her eyes searched the brush and trees surrounding the clearing, but the child, and the shadow, were both well hidden.

  “Sael!”

  She risked crying her name, hoping the child would make her presence known. It worked. A small rustle in a bush caught her eye, far up the hill, and even as she saw the decorated leather cloak she could hear the child’s heart. Tarsha beat her wings and darted towards the thicket, slowing only to allow the child to grasp on to one of her legs.

  The poison was surging through her blood, corrupting her vision and strength. She had only minutes to live, she supposed. But that was time enough. It had to be enough.

  Sluggishly, painfully, she lifted her wings and pushed her way through the ever-thickening air into the sky, struggling to reach a height where the air currents could help keep her aloft.

  She risked a look behind her, and there, finally, standing in the middle of the clearing, she saw him. The hunter. The shadow. His mask like a nebulous cloud of veiled darkness covering his gaunt face. He looked up at her and their eyes met, just for a moment. He smiled, and bowed in respect. His eyes, and his meaning, were clear: he respected her power and majesty, but he would find her. He would not stop until he had his trophy.

  She screamed fire, and sluggishly beat her leaden wings until, finally, after what seemed an age of the world, she alighted in the high valley just under the tallest peaks of the Timorous Mountains.

  And she collapsed, the child calling her name as she sunk into darkness.

  I was betrothed once. Promised to the youngest son of the village cobbler, himself a lecherous drunken man. My mother was dead, and my father saw it as a gift from the gods that anyone would desire me, much less agree to take me as a wife for their child. The price paid was a pittance, but my father, the simple village herder, accepted it gladly. I had not even seen my twelfth season when the silver coins dropped into his greedy hands and the scroll signed. My father never learned letters, so he signed the marriage document with an ornate drawing of a goat’s head—he may not have been able to write, but his drawings were strikingly beautiful, a marked contrast to his greedy, lazy soul. The spirits of his mask had always hated me, too, ever since his wife had died bearing me. It was to be another year before the boy’s mother would lead me off to him. But, thank the gods, it was not to be.

  When Tarsha awoke, she was not sure if she awoke to a dream or to life. But the stiff pain in her joints confirmed it. She was alive. How, she knew not. At a glance, she saw that whatever shaft had pierced her side was gone, replaced by a ragged cloth rag, black with blood.

  Sael sat crouched nearby, watching her. Tarsha groaned, and tried to move. Her limbs still felt thick and heavy, as if infused with poison. But her head was clear. The venom’s effect was beginning to fade.

  “How long?” Tarsha’s tongue was sluggish.

  “A day,” replied Sael.

  A whole day. Time in which the shadow approached, hunting her, coming for his trophy. For a moment, she considered taking the child to some city far away, leaving her with a kindly elderly couple, perhaps inn-keepers, or merchants. One does not spurn the gift of a wyvern, and the child might be well taken care of. And then Tarsha could return and submit, giving up her mask as a trophy and facing either death or banishment.

  But the thought only lingered for a moment, replaced with a burning desire for survival. For justice.

  She peered into the girl-child’s mask, at the greens and the blacks of the coloring the child had applied. She searched for the spirits within, unable to find them at first, but soon hearing their still voices. How silent they were! Like shadows themselves, even more inscrutable than the shadow mask that pursued her. The girl-child mask’s spirits were far more potent than Tarsha had given them credit. They were spirits of survival.

  “Will we stay here, Tarsha?”

  She shook her head, slowly, since the lingering poison made her vision swim if she moved too suddenly. “I don’t know, child. I have not the strength to flee further. But you are right, we cannot stay here.”

  Sael nodded solemnly.

  For hours Tarsha lay prone, near the murmuring brook that tumbled from the still-snowy peak just above them. Finally, the strength returned enough for her to walk, and they busied themselves restoring their summer home to a livable condition. The summer hut was even smaller than the winter home far below, but the air was cleaner, the water cooler, and the location safer.

  But he was coming. She could feel it. The spirits of his mask had tasted her blood, and now
they called to hers.

  “Child, when he comes, you must run. Run up the pass. Go down the other side of the mountains. There is a town yonder. Rainwood, it is called. Find a home there. Look for a kind woman to take you in. You have skills to offer her that will earn you your keep, and the town is poor enough that you should have no trouble finding a house that needs an extra pair of hands.”

  Sael nodded again, less solemnly. She seemed to know, to understand that their time together as protector and ward was coming to an end. That she needed to move on. The wyvern had given her all she could, and now the child must learn to survive on its own.

  The girl sat near the entrance to the hut, a wooden shaft clutched in her small hand. Her knuckles turned white as she squeezed, and the shaft snapped in half.

  It was the dart that had pierced Tarsha’s side. The tip, made of some unnatural and powerful metal, was stained black with the wyvern’s dried blood, and, presumably, a trace of the poison that had nearly finished her.

  “Sleep now, child. It is late.”

  The moon arched high above the peak to the east when the girl’s eyes finally closed, fast asleep.

  And an hour later, Tarsha heard a twig break, far down the mountainside.

  He was close. It wouldn’t be long now.

  She circled me three times before alighting on a hillock nearby, and when I looked again the wyvern had gone, replaced by a fierce young woman. At first I thought she was my mother, returned from the ground and the gods with glory in her wings, coming to save her beloved child from a hopeless future of toil and rod, but closer inspection revealed a wild stranger, her hair spiraling into thick locks that splayed out like fire from her golden mask. Her beautiful, wondrous mask, which covered only her eyes and temple, leaving her mouth free to dispense wisdom and fire. It was a wyvern, and she held in her hands a similar mask, holding it out towards me. The gods had spoken. My destiny decided.