Masks

by E. C. Blake

  Mara felt a pang of guilt for doubting her father. An upwelling of love threatened to choke her. “Why?” she cried. “Why is the Autarch doing all this? Destroying Gifted, sucking the life out of the Child Guards, feeding on the magic of his people? Why?”

  “Because he’s old,” Ethelda said flatly. “Old and childless. He fears death, and more than that, he fears losing his grip on the reins of state. To hold on to both youth and power, he needs more and more magic to fight the ravages of time. He’s an addict, and like any addict, it takes greater and greater quantities of what he’s addicted to to give him the results he wants. And to hell with those he uses and discards along the way.” She leaned forward. “But it is you I’m most concerned with now, child. Tell me, using magic from the black lodestone jars hurts, doesn’t it?”

  Mara nodded. “The more I use, the more it hurts.” She remembered the searing pain in her hands when she had killed the Watcher threatening Keltan.

  “That is because you are untrained. You have not learned to direct it properly, and so it scrapes your nerves on its passage through your body. But the magic you tore from the people in the camp—that hurt in a different way, did it not?”

  Mara shuddered, remembering that soul-shredding agony. “Like being burned alive.”

  Again Ethelda nodded. “The magic from the lodestone is smoothed and blended by its long passage through the rock. But the magic from a living mind is pure, strong—and not intended for use by you at all. It’s like . . .” she paused as if trying to think of the proper simile. “Sometimes, Healers have tried to replace the blood lost by the victim of a terrible accident by injecting them with blood drawn willingly from someone else. Rarely, that saves a life. More often . . .” She sighed. “More often, the victim dies a painful death. We believe that just as there are various kinds of magic, there are different kinds of blood, though we have no way of telling them apart. And if you receive the wrong kind of blood, it causes a reaction that in many cases proves fatal.

  “You received the wrong kind of magic. You received very many different kinds of the wrong kind of magic. You were lucky to survive. If you had held it within yourself for long, I don’t believe you would have. Fortunately, you thrust it away at once, to contain the explosion.” She shook her head. “An amazing feat. I wish I had seen it.”

  “I wish I hadn’t,” Mara said. “But it’s not just the pain. There’s something else. The . . . dreams.”

  Ethelda leaned closer. “More vivid than any dreams you’ve ever had before?” she asked.

  Mara nodded.

  “You see those who have died?”

  Mara nodded again. “Grute was the first,” she said. “The Watcher I . . . destroyed . . . with magic in the mountains. Another Watcher I–I blasted to save Keltan. They’re the most vivid, the most real. But I’m seeing others, too, others I didn’t kill.” Not directly, at least, she thought bitterly. “The Warden. Katia. Illina . . .”

  “Here is what I think is happening,” Ethelda said. “When someone dies, their magic is released, and you have the ability to draw magic to yourself. You’re like living black lodestone. So when someone dies near you, whether you killed them or not, their magic flows into you, suddenly, with enough force to leave an . . . an image, like a vivid painting; an imprint of their magic on your mind. And if you did kill them, using magic, that imprint is particularly strong.”

  “A permanent imprint?” Mara cried out, stiffening in terror. “Will I see them my whole life?”

  She expected—needed—Ethelda to reassure her, but Ethelda hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m only guessing. I can give you herbs to dull the dreams and let you sleep more calmly and perhaps, over time, the imprints will fade, like the ball of light that remains in your vision after you glance at the sun.”

  “Perhaps?” Mara felt sick. “You don’t know?”

  Ethelda shook her head. “No, child, I don’t. I can only guess.” She put her hand on Mara’s shoulder, and squeezed it hard. “Listen to me very carefully, Mara,” she said. Her eyes, wide and clear, free of the shadows of the Mask, bored into Mara’s; her voice, low and intense, bored into Mara’s ears and mind. “You are in a fragile state. Stable, but barely so. Those who kill with magic can grow to like killing. Those who pull magic from others can move past the pain and grow to like the power.”

  “Like the Autarch?” Mara whispered.

  “Worse.”

  “Worse!”

  Ethelda nodded. “There are tales of those with these powers commingled: the magekings and witchqueens of old. They have names: The Beast of Barak’kum. Bloody Britha. Atul the Slaughterer. Ancient names that have inspired terror for centuries. And one other, not ancient at all: The Lady of Pain and Fire.”

  Mara blinked. The first three names, dreadful though they sounded, meant nothing to her. But the Lady of Pain and Fire—the witch the Autarch had supposedly personally defeated—she remembered hearing about from Tutor Ancilla. In recent years Mara had begun to suspect she was a myth created to bolster the image of the Autarch as all-knowing and all-powerful. “The Lady of Pain and Fire was real?”

  “She was,” Ethelda said. “And maybe still is. Her body was never found. Whether she still lives, outside our borders, I cannot say. Perhaps the Autarch knows. But if you’ve heard of her, you know the things she did: whole villages wiped out, forests leveled, children snatched from their beds, men and women tortured to death for no purpose anyone could ever discern.” Mara had a sudden flash of memory, a white skull grinning at her from a green mound in the ruined village where she and Grute had sheltered. Ethelda leaned closer, lowered her voice further, and said with grim certainty, “Mara, if you continue in this path you have chosen, though you chose it inadvertently and in ignorance, you could become just like her: a thing of nightmare, one of the most terrifying creatures the world has ever birthed.”

  Mara gasped, and tears filled her eyes. “No!” she said. “No! I could never—I wouldn’t—I’m not a monster!”

  “No,” Ethelda agreed quickly. “No, of course you’re not a monster.” She touched her unscarred face. “I’m not accusing you, child. But I am warning you. The danger is there.”

  “What do I do?” Mara begged. “Ethelda, what do I do?”

  “Be very careful using magic,” Ethelda said. “I think, with training, you can safely use that which is collected in the usual fashion. But do not draw magic from life as you did in the camp. Above all, do not use magic to kill, not if you value your soul.”

  Mara’s heart raced. “But–but every time, it just happened. I didn’t do it on purpose. What if I can’t control it?”

  Ethelda’s hand trembled on her shoulder, but she didn’t release her. “I don’t know, Mara. Somehow, we have to find a way. I must think on it.” She relaxed her hand, drew it back. “For now, I’ll go prepare a draught of the sleeping potion of which I spoke. It will take some time. Rest here until I get back.” She gave Mara a smile, glanced at the shattered Mask, took a deep breath, and then went out, leaving the broken shards where they lay.

  She also left the urn of magic. Without Ethelda to distract her, Mara was more aware of it than ever, aware of the power lurking within the simple black vessel. It called to her, urging her to use it, to touch it, to draw it to her, to . . .

  She swallowed. I could be a monster, she thought. Magic could make me into a monster. I’ve already killed three people, maybe more.

  It was a horrible thought, a terrifying thought. Be very careful using magic, Ethelda had said, but how? How could she be careful? She had no control, and Ethelda clearly had no way to teach it to her. She hadn’t meant to kill Grute, or the two Watchers. But she had, magic leaping to do her bidding without conscious thought on her part. And then, in the camp, there had been searing pain as she had stripped living creatures all around her of the magic they unwittingly possessed. Already the memory of t
he agony was fading, and all she could remember was the power, tantalizing her, calling to her. She’d saved lives, true, but she might just as easily have taken them. If she could not control her magic, when would she kill again? The next time she got angry? And who would the victim be? Edrik? Catilla? Hyram? Keltan? Prella?

  As for those she had already killed . . . Ethelda could not promise the dreams would stop. And the last time Mara had seen the shades of her victims, they had not even waited for sleep: they had come for her while she rode the waking world. How long could she live with horrors always lurking just beneath the surface of her mind, ready to invade her thoughts night and day without warning? How long before she went mad? And if she went mad, what would she do with her terrible power then?

  Hot tears flooded her eyes, poured onto her cheeks. She let them lie there. She hadn’t asked for this power. She didn’t want this power. But she had it, and she couldn’t see any way to be rid of it, or rid of the danger it posed to everyone around her.

  Unless . . .

  She remembered Ethelda reaching down one blue-sheathed finger to touch the chest of the woman in the bed across the aisle from her in the camp hospital, how the woman’s breathing had simply stopped. “Release,” Ethelda had called it.

  There’s one kind of sleep where dreams will never trouble me, Mara thought then, the idea cold and clear in her roiling mind as a shard of ice shining in a muddy pool. One kind of sleep from which I’ll never wake screaming. One kind of sleep that will keep me from harming anyone, ever again . . .

  The magic called to her. Use me, it seemed to cry. Use me as you will. Use me . . .

  It would be so easy. Would she even have to open the urn? She could call for the magic, pull it into herself . . .

  . . . and stop her heart.

  Her breath went ragged in her throat. No, she thought. No, it hasn’t come to that.

  But the horror of the ghosts pulling her from her saddle, the terrible dreams of Grute and all the others . . . she could end them. End it all. Ethelda couldn’t promise she could free Mara from those horrors. But Mara could certainly free herself.

  She closed her eyes. Maybe it would be best. Maybe it would. No more troubles for me, or anyone else. No more dangers. No more deaths after this one . . .

  She took a deep breath. She opened her eyes again. She turned her head to regard the urn of magic, rolled over and reached for it . . .

  . . . and jerked back as frantic shouts erupted in the next room. Sweeping aside the red curtain, Grelda burst in, shouting, “Put her there!” Simona and Keltan came next, carrying someone between them. Alita followed, weeping as if her heart would break, and behind her came Kirika, face white, eyes red, silent, staring, horror-stricken.

  Simona and Keltan gently placed their burden on one of the other beds and Mara gasped as she saw who it was.

  Little Prella, still so childlike, lay shuddering on the bed, blood already soaking it as it had soaked her side, pouring from a horrifying wound, a gaping slash in her side through which protruded the white ends of broken ribs. Prella’s eyes had rolled back into her head so that only the whites showed, and blood bubbled from her mouth with each short, choking gasp.

  “What happened?” Mara cried, sitting up in her bed.

  “She happened!” Alita snarled, suddenly turning on Kirika and throwing her up against the wall. She held her forearm across the other girl’s throat. “She’s killed Prella!”

  Kirika said nothing, her face a waxen mask. She didn’t try to push Alita away.

  “Stop it,” Grelda snapped. “This is a sickroom, not a brawling ground. Mara, where’s Ethelda?”

  “She . . . she left. I don’t know where . . . she was going to make me a sleeping potion . . .” Prella gave a shuddering groan and fresh blood bubbled from her mouth. “You’ve got to do something!”

  “I can’t,” Grelda said, voice bitter. “My healing arts cannot deal with such a wound. She will die in minutes unless Ethelda has magical skill enough to heal her. Alita, leave Kirika! Find Ethelda, if you value Prella’s life!”

  Alita gave Kirika another angry shove, then shouldered through the red curtain and was gone.

  But in that same instant, Prella gasped and stopped breathing. Grelda turned and looked down at her. “Too late,” she said quietly.

  “No!” Mara stared at the smaller girl. Kirika gave her own small gasp and sank down against the wall, burying her face in her hands. Keltan and Simona stood by, awkward, helpless, faces set in shock and disbelief. This can’t be happening, Mara thought. This must not happen!

  And just as it had in the camp in her moment of greatest need, magic answered her.

  She did not draw it from those in the room. She did not need to. The magic in the urn poured out through the black stone sides as though they were porous as a sieve, and leaped to her. Hands sheathed in blue, she stumbled from her bed, eyes locked on Prella, who lay still and silent, face slackening into death, covered in blood, the awful hole gaping in her side. “What are you—” Grelda began, but her words died as Mara fell to her knees beside the wounded girl and touched her with her magic-covered hands. Live, she thought. Oh, Prella. Live!

  She gasped as power flowed from her hands into the dying girl: not because it hurt, but because, this time, it didn’t. It didn’t feel wrong. For the first time, it felt right.

  The gaping wound in Prella’s side closed, pink flesh suddenly reappearing beneath the blood-soaked rent in her tunic. The ribs knitted, the lung sealed, the blood vessels rejoined. The heart that had stopped quivered and leaped back to thumping life. And Prella arched her back, took a huge gasping breath, then turned her head and coughed out blood. Her eyes flew open and met Mara’s. She smiled a little. “Hello, Mara!” she croaked. “Welcome back.” Then she looked down at herself. “Yuck! What happened?”

  Mara hardly heard her. She raised her fingers in front of her face. Again she’d used magic without thinking, without proper control, despite all Ethelda’s warnings. But this time . . . this time she had used it to heal, not kill.

  And this time it hadn’t hurt!

  Grelda was staring down at her, eyes wide. Hyram and Keltan had similar awed expressions. By the archway, Kirika raised a face that now, at last, was as stained with tears as Alita’s had been. She saw Prella sitting up, looking confused, staggered to her feet and almost flung herself on the younger girl. “Oh, Prella,” she gasped out. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry!”

  “I don’t understand,” Prella said, returning Kirika’s hug but looking over her shoulder at Mara. “What just happened?”

  “What, indeed?” said Ethelda, coming into the room with Alita.

  Mara would have liked to have answered. But everything in the room seemed to be receding from her as though disappearing down a long gray tunnel, and in another moment had disappeared entirely.

  The sleep that followed was without dreams.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Aftermath and Beginnings

  MARA SAT IN THE SAND with Keltan and Hyram, watching the sun set over the restless ocean. Five days had passed since they had returned from the camp. Two of those days had brought cold rain and the third two inches of snow; but yesterday had been warmer and today the sun shone with enough warmth to make their seaside lounging comfortable, though skiffs of white still lingered in the shadows of the cliffs.

  Keltan seemed almost fully recovered, though occasionally he just stopped, for a moment, as if his mind were elsewhere. Mara, ever since Healing Prella, had slept, if not entirely without dreams, at least without those dreams bringing her to screaming wakefulness. She had not needed Ethelda’s sleeping draught. She felt almost normal.

  Prella showed no ill effects from having been dead. Keltan, who had seen the whole thing, had told Mara how the smaller girl had been hurt. “Kirika and Alita were harvesting potatoes,” he said. “They each had a sharp spade. P
rella had been doing something else. She came out, saw them with their backs to her, and thought it would be funny to sneak up on them. She looked at me and put a finger to her lips, then crept up behind Kirika and threw her arms around her.” He’d gone pale as he’d told Mara the story. “Kirika . . . it was like when Simona touched her and she lashed out, only worse. She acted out of pure instinct. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. She threw Prella off her and swung around with her spade, all in an instant. The spade smashed into Prella’s side. It–it crunched. And the blood . . . Prella stared down at the wound, her face turned white, her eyes rolled up in her head, and then she collapsed. Simona and I hurried her up to the sickroom. The rest you know.”

  I Healed her, Mara thought. She still couldn’t quite believe it. Prella’s ribs had been smashed. Her lung punctured. She’d lost a huge amount of blood. She’d stopped breathing. Her heart had stopped. And I brought her back.

  And in the process, Ethelda thought, Mara had partially Healed herself. “It doesn’t change the risks,” she’d told Mara. “Everything I warned you about still stands. You are still untrained. Still a danger to yourself and others. You should still avoid using magic.

  “But this time, you controlled the magic, at least after a fashion, although since you passed out afterward, I’d say your technique needs work. As for why the dreams have eased . . .” She smiled. “Perhaps by soothing the irritated magical pathways in your mind, you softened the imprints that have given you the nightmares. Or perhaps it’s simply because you’ve alleviated your guilt. I’ve noticed,” she said dryly, “that you’re almost as Gifted at guilt as at magic.”

  You don’t know the half of it, Mara thought. She hadn’t told the Healer what she’d been on the verge of using the magic for just before Prella had been brought in. That dark urge had vanished. If I’d killed myself, I wouldn’t have been there for Prella, she thought fiercely. I wasn’t able to save Katia. But at least I saved someone.