Assimilated

by Nick Webb

  The half-moon was settling over the eastern mountains when the rustling bushes awoke her. The shadow had arrived. The hunter was ready to claim his trophy.

  She shook the girl. “It is time, child. You must run.”

  Sael blinked a few times, and nodded her understanding. She pulled on the needle-and-branch-wreathed cloak and crept out the doorway, but a moment later she ran back to Tarsha, holding her close.

  “Thank you, Tarsha. Thank you.”

  She held the child, embracing her, even while wincing at the sharp pain in her side. Before long, the child was off, scurrying away into the brush, aiming for the saddle between the two tall peaks that loomed over them as sentinels. Soon, she’d be gone forever. And safe. Sael, masked and cloaked, disappeared like a shadow. Even her heart was gone. Even the very spirits of her mask hid themselves from view.

  Another twig broke nearby. She heard his heart. It quickened in anticipation of the hunt.

  She’d give him a hunt. She’d give him the fight of his life. With a roar she burst out the door of the hut, breaking one of the wooden beams as her form swelled, filling out into the fearsome body of the wyvern. Her mask blazed with fire. Her wings pumped the air. She soared.

  “I see you,” he said.

  “I don’t need to see you,” she croaked through dragon teeth. With a gust of fire, she breathed, scorching a path of charred earth and bush. Again and again she swept the earth, igniting swath after swath, creating a cage of fire to trap her quarry, her would-be hunter.

  When all was ablaze, she hovered, catching her breath, beating her wings, scanning the bleak, charred landscape for any hint of movement. For a body. For a shadow.

  But nothing was out of place. The fire cast no shadow. At least, not his.

  “You cannot contest me, beast. You are an abomination of nature. An aberration. And I am the shadow. Unnatural things must needs fall into the shadows, and be lost. Erased. Yes, I will erase you, beast. The king commands it. Nature herself commands it.” The shadow paused. His voice seemed to come from all around her, yet from nowhere. “Submit to me with honor, and I may even spare your life, merely taking your abominable mask as my trophy and proof to the king that I have vanquished you.”

  Perhaps he was right. She had hunted. Against the natural order. Wyverns were fire and wings and justice, but their justice was only meted out to those who chose to test themselves.

  A shaft sailed towards her chest, lancing right through a wall of fire that consumed a stand of bushes, and at the last moment she pounded the air with her wings and stretched out of the way. Following the path back to its source she blasted the bare patch of ground with cleansing fire.

  The voice called out again, but from the opposite direction. “Submit, beast. Do not make me request again, or I will withdraw my offer of mercy.”

  She panted. Fatigue gripped her. The wound in her side pulsed with searing pain. Her draeconis lungs heaved. She knew she was bested; there was no chance for victory against this foe. How does one hunt a hunter one cannot see?

  The ground trembled as she alighted. “Very well, hunter. I accept your offer. Here is my mask. Leave me be.”

  Her eyes darted all around the flaming forest, searching for the shadow, but still he hid. But now she could hear the spirits of his mask.

  They were murderous. He was not only a cunning hunter, he was also a liar. One of the mask’s spirits, a marksman, readied the last spear. The one that would pierce her draeconis heart and still the fire.

  And suddenly, he was there, standing not ten paces away. He screamed. The spirits howled. She could see him. She could see them, wrapping themselves around the nebulous mask like wispy black fog.

  He looked down. A shaft was embedded in his foot. One of his own shafts.

  Its end was broken.

  He spun around, searching for who had thrust it into his foot, but he was alone, surrounded only by fire and ruin. And seeing her chance, Tarsha leaped forward, bathing him in cleansing fire. He howled all the louder, covering his melting flesh with impotent hands and running for the trees.

  But the trees would not save him. They burned with their own fire. Soon, his flesh and breath expended, he fell. The hunter fallen. The trophy safe.

  Tarsha collapsed to the earth, exhausted and spent. But she still had strength to speak. “Child, my child, why did you linger here?”

  A voice, just inches from her head, answered. “Because you saved me, Tarsha. And so I must save you.”

  Tarsha searched all around her, scanning the ground and the flame and the few unburnt bushes. She couldn’t even hear the child’s heart. The girl-child mask spirits were as silent as shadows.

  “Where are you, child?”

  “Right here,” said the voice.

  She saw her, finally. Standing in plain sight, near one of the few bushes left. She was one of the bushes. The leather cloak with its needles and branches fell from her shoulders and the child rushed forward to clutch onto one of Tarsha’s vast legs.

  And did not let go for a long, long while.

  I considered her my child, though I was only of an age to be her sister. I considered her mine even while the farmer still lived. Even as the potter’s son lay dead at my feet and I realized the boy was just bait. Even as the potter himself attacked me, and I saw into his soul. His history was laid bare to me. I read the story of his life, and through him, his brother. The lecherous farmer. The one who owned Sael, and slowly destroyed her. Destroyed my child. Even then, seeing her suffering from afar, like a tavern-whispered tale or a dream remembered as story, the rage and the justice swelled within me. After I slew the potter, I stalked the farmer. I hunted him. I lay in wait. And when he plowed his field I nourished the soil with his unholy blood, took my child, and ran. The hunters came ever after that.

  They stood solemnly next to the brook. Tarsha wearing her draeconis mask but in human form, and Sael wearing her girl-child’s mask, but holding another. A shadow. Her trophy.

  “Will you do it for me?”

  Tarsha shook her head. “No, child.”

  “But that is the custom, is it not? Your mask is cleansed and given to you by your elder?”

  “Yes, child, that is the custom. But I do not give you this mask. The gods give it. Destiny gives it. It is yours to cleanse and to keep.”

  Sael nodded solemnly. She bent down towards the clean rushing water, and prepared to dip it in.

  “But submerge it thrice, child, for these spirits are potent, unholy and unclean. Once will not be enough, I fear.”

  Sael pushed the shadow mask under the water and held it there a long time. She pulled it out and repeated the process twice again. When she held the dripping mask up in the air Tarsha studied it, searching its spirits.

  “It is clean. The trophy is yours.”

  Sael carefully removed her girl-child’s mask, releasing the leather straps that held the simple frame to her face. Pockmarked and red, the child’s face was nonetheless beautiful. Raw power seemed to radiate from it, like it did from all faces. But her power seemed the greater. Best that it be sheathed in a mask appropriate to the task. The shadow mask was one of power. It would suffice.

  She pressed it to her face and it fused of its own accord, requiring neither strap nor clasp. Wispy clouds seemed to swirl around her face, but rather than a dark, fearsome fog, these were vapors of light. The sun shone down, and for a moment, the child seemed to disappear in the brilliant shaft, but a moment later Tarsha saw the girl smiling at her. The smile was pure; something that had, until that time, been broken was now bound up, whole and holy. And though the path was different from her own, Tarsha’s draeconis heart sensed the winding tendrils of power and purpose that now yoked them both to the demands of justice.

  “It is well, Tarsha.”

  The wyvern smiled back.

  “May I stay with you, Tarsha? For a long while yet?”

  “Yes, child. For all time, if you wish it.”

  They would be swift. They
would be sure. And they would cleanse a wounded world, bathing it in light and shadow.

  So the chanters and their stories say. The wyvern and the shadow made their home in the Timorous Mountains. The Seekers still hunted, but failed to pierce the dance of light and shadow. As their prowess grew so did their fame; the glinting edge of a cleansing justice gradually usurping base greed and lust. As the years passed, only the boldest of the hunters still sought the wyvern and the shadow. They were also the most desperate.

  None were a match. So the stories say.

  The world of Terremar awaits you! The adventure begins in:

  The Maskmaker’s Apprentice

  The Maskmaker’s Apprentice

  By Nick Webb

  One

  The Wanderer

  He had worn his mask since he could walk.

  Babies, being innocent, need no masks, and most small children will not abide one. But Elu, being of the adventurous sort, toddled over to his father’s lectern, grabbed the jeweled adventurer’s mask stored underneath and pressed it to his face. Fate smiles on those who tempt her, so the ancients say, but Elu’s mother, previously distracted with seven other busy children now gasped in horror at her newly masked son. Imagining all manner of curses and maledictions certain to now plague the family for her son’s impropriety she snatched it from the child’s grip and scolded him.

  Elu’s father, apparently not so convinced of the gods’ ire, laughed merrily at his son and teased his wife for her superstition. Had her own homeweaver mask not obscured her flash of annoyance he might have stopped sooner than he did, but now Elu, squirming in his mother’s arms grabbed at her mask as well, in spite of her shouted threats of whippings and punishment.

  Still laughing, the father announced, “Then perhaps it is time for his masking. It will not do for him to steal your woman’s mask when you are not looking.”

  “A child should not be masked until he understands the mask and the role he is given,” she replied in defiance.

  “True, wife. But our child has reached for his own mask, of his own will and accord. It portends great things for him. I foresee that he will make his own destiny and not be given his role by man.”

  And though he spoke with his wooden householder’s mask and not the green painted teacher’s mask of his daily wear, the prophetic speech stilled her words, but not her heart, which feared now for her youngest child. For people do not simply choose their own masks.

  Your first masks are given to you by the ones who also give you life. Later, with wisdom only a stern and unforgiving world can teach, you accept other masks given you by your masters, be it the king, the presbyter, or the teacher: on rare occasion the mask may be given by fate itself. One may choose his own mask, yes, but the gods frown upon such insolence. Such presumption.

  And so the following morning, next to the icy cold waters of the creek that ran through the village of Gheb, Elu was masked by his father. The child’s mask—a basic curved wooden frame with goat leather stretched across, punctuated by large eye holes and a small opening for the mouth, suggesting to the child that they should see much and say little—was every man’s first mask. The father, still young himself, slowly, ceremoniously, dipped the simple wooden frame three times into the swift, black water. Thus cleansed of the wood spirits that previously called it home, he strapped it proudly to his son’s face, who proceeded to rip it off and run for the brisk water’s edge, only to be yanked back by his frantic mother.

  Never had a child been given a mask at such a young age in the village of Gheb, and the neighbors, who early in the morning had merely scoffed, now openly derided the teacher for his folly. ‘Tis an evil thing, they said, for one so young to be masked, but the father stoically ignored them, firmly holding his son and reattaching the mask to his face. This time the child relented.

  Through his youth Elu kept his mask on. But he wandered. The small village could not contain him and he escaped early and often to the edges of the hills from which flowed the creek that fed the village below. Several of his older brothers, and later, his younger ones, often accompanied him but he did not abide more than one or two at a time.

  When the gullies and meanderings of the creek had yielded their secrets, he looked further up the hills and spied the beginning of the forest. Vast elmore trees with their bushy, prickly arms fluttered in the wind, or swayed with the whisperings of the wood spirits that called to his mask, seeking to reclaim their lost home.

  Elu ventured only short distances into the trees at first, not wishing to dishonor his mother who had commanded him not to wander too far, but the spirits called him, and he followed. Deep into the woods he went one day with his smaller brother, Lo. Higher and higher they followed the creek—a pathway of water encased by a low roof of dense foliage as if the stream had carved a tunnel through the green itself. Lush moss clothed the sharp rocks, and the muted water seemed to linger over its plush softness, but here and there the green had been torn or rubbed away by beast or man, revealing the black angled stones that made up the water’s bed.

  Elu and Lo paused at a large rock over which flowed a trickling waterfall into a shallow pool below. Hangra fish scattered to and fro as the boys tossed tiny stones at them. They competed—seeing who could come closest to hitting first the fish, then the furry dandra that scurried on the forest floor beneath the foliage. Small games escalated to larger ones, when finally Lo said, “I reckon you can’t be climbing that rock.”

  “I reckon I can,” said Elu.

  “Show it to me,” said Lo.

  “Show it yourself.”

  “You are the elder. Show it first.”

  “I will, but you follow when I succeed.” Elu started to climb up the slick rock before calling back, “If you can.”

  Slowly, but steadily, he climbed the rock and within a minute stood triumphantly on the top, kicking water down at his brother below.

  “Your turn to show it, brother.”

  Lo began unsteadily at first, but gained confidence and skill as he climbed. Not an arm’s length from the top his bare foot slipped off the mossy rock and he fell, hitting his head as he dropped out of sight. Elu yelled and jumped into the shallow pool below, making a wave that washed his brother’s unmoving form up against the rock. He dragged the boy out of the water and examined him. His mask had been thrown off and blood issued from the back of his head, but soon he stirred and opened his now naked eyes.

  “I didn’t show it.”

  “You’re showing it all over me. Come, we must heal you.”

  Lo stumbled to his feet, but soon collapsed. Elu lifted the boy and carried him down the ravine, off the hills and to the village where he entered the healer’s hut. The healer, a young woman with the black oak and bone mask of her trade, hurried Elu inside and snatched the smaller boy out of his arms. She laid him on a table and began chanting as she pressed cloth to the wound. Elu listened to the chant, how it began in the woman’s throat, but flowed through the mask, channeled and shaped by the ancient healers’ spirits that gave life and power and purpose to the mask. Long-dead masters of the healer’s art now caressed Lo’s head, and the bleeding staunched.

  “Where is his mask, young one?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Then the gods have punished him for removing it. We do not remove them for play. You know that, child.”

  “He did not remove it. It fell off when he fell.”

  “The gods punish lying as well. Leave this place and tell your mother what you have done this day.”

  “What have I done this day?” said Elu, his voice now raised defensively.

  “You have lied, and to a healer, by the gods. I can see it. In your countenance. In your face, written upon your very mask. I know a liar when I see one. Get thee hence.”

  Elu returned to his mother, a troubled but shrewd woman who could read her child’s mask like the teacher reads his scroll. He recounted the day’s events. She knew he did not lie—a child of hers could not dare to�
��but she knew his foretold destiny and feared for her other children. His free spirit would infect them—she knew. No more would his siblings be allowed to follow him in his wanderings. Not the older children, anyway, for they were now too busy with their apprenticeships, and now not the younger ones, by command of their mother.

  And so Elu met Thora.

  Thora ran and jumped as the boys, but with the grace as of a rowyn, with its delicate antlers and slender legs. Thora had not antlers but long braids of hair tied at the ends with coarse bark string, and her girl-child’s mask radiated thin strips of speckled, shining tak-weed from the river, tied there by Thora herself, which caught the beams of the sun and scattered them where she ran. The wild one, the villagers called her, and the other girls dared not play with her out of fear the wayward spirits haunting her mask might also latch onto them. Her girl-child’s mask must not have been properly anointed in the river during her masking, so Elu thought, otherwise, how else could the spirits find her and speak troubled, mischievous thoughts through the mask to her ears?

  Elu did not care though, for she began to follow him in his adventurings, in spite of his younger age and the social impropriety of a girl and a boy alone together, unbetrothed. Some day, Elu’s mother would choose his partner and obtain for him a householder mask, but Elu did not feel, or yearn for Thora in that way. She simply filled the void left by Elu’s brothers, and he liked her. She climbed better than Lo, threw rocks farther than Lan—Elu’s next oldest brother—and punched harder than Elu himself.

  Several villagers began to whisper, particularly those whose masks were wont to gossip. The potter’s wife especially, whose homeweaver mask must have been home to several considerably loud spirits, for the woman’s voice carried as she remarked at the ill manners of the teacher’s son and the blacksmith’s daughter. Her neighbor, the weaver’s wife, nodded in agreement, her mask giving its solemn approval to the prudent judgment.