by E. C. Blake
Her lips tightened. “The guards had no such compunction. Or, rather, the Autarch did not. Eventually, he rode north and took personal command of the army, determined to crush me, the last remaining obstacle to his undisputed reign.
“My use of the villagers as a source of magic produced an unexpected benefit. The people who inhabited the tiny hamlets of the region became so terrified of me that none of them would any longer betray me willingly, no matter how large the proffered reward. The story had gone around that I was able to pull the living souls out of people, that those I attacked were left as empty shells, their spirits utterly destroyed. For believers in the Old Religion that still lingered in those days, before the Autarch eradicated its followers and its holy places, that meant they could never experience the afterlife. It was literally a fate worse than death.
“The Autarch put entire villages to the sword and torch trying to get someone, anyone, to point him to me. And eventually, inevitably, someone broke. The Autarch cornered me in my final hiding place, a secluded, wooded ravine on the side of the mountains.
“I killed his bodyguards, but I could not touch him. And that was when I learned the truth of him, as he no doubt had already guessed the truth about me: that in some measure, we shared the same gift.
“I killed his horse . . .” She snorted. “Keltan, first of that name. But I utterly failed to harm him. And the counterblow . . .
“I saw it coming. I could not stop it. I had no magic left, no one and nothing to draw on for more. So instead I retreated, deep into the cave in which I had taken shelter, deeper within it than I had ever gone before. I heard the ravine hurled to destruction behind and above me, tons of rock and ice and shattered trees choking the secluded glade where I had stood just moments before.
“I had no choice but to plunge even deeper into the darkness of that cave. I found a little black lodestone there, and enough magic that I could illuminate my way, but not enough to do anything else.
“I wandered for hours, and for a time I thought I was lost forever. But then I realized I was seeing things around me as deep black on lighter black, and then as shades of gray, and at last I emerged into sunlight . . . to find myself in another ravine, one that seemed to continue indefinitely through the range.
“The ‘impassable’ mountains were not impassible at all. I had found a way through . . . and a new lease on life.”
Mara looked toward the head of the column, where Hamil and the Lady’s other followers continued to break a trail through the deepening snow. “But if the cave was blocked behind you, and you had to go through it to find the pass . . . how did the villagers follow you?”
The Lady laughed. “They didn’t. There was a village I had come across during my travels that had clearly been abandoned. I couldn’t figure out where the people had gone. But I found out when I reached the end of the pass . . . which those villagers had discovered long before me, and used to make good their escape from Aygrima.” Her laughter ended, and the accompanying smile faded. “I was half-dead,” she said. “More than half-dead. The top of the pass was far below the peaks, but high enough. The air was thin and cold, the snowdrifts higher than my head. I had no magic to protect me. I came close to death; would have died, if a hunting party had not found me.” She nodded toward the men and women struggling through the snow ahead of them. “Hamil’s grandfather, a young man then, was the one who spotted me, half-buried, unconscious, slipping past shivering to the deadly stillness of freeze-to-death. He warmed me, bore me back to their village.
“I still might have died had I not, though barely conscious of it, sensed the magic all around me and tapped into it. I Healed myself.”
“You took magic from them?” Mara said. “Without pain? Without harming them? And they were all right with that? What about the Old Religion? Everything that had terrified the villagers south of the mountains?”
The Lady made a dismissive gesture. “Of course it frightened them. But my youth protected me: they were not the sort of people who would kill a young girl just because she had done something alarming. And once I was Healed, I showed them just how useful my Gift could be. I helped them build stronger, warmer houses; helped them find food; helped them grow their crops. I even created for them a grand grotto in which they could practice their religion, though I have never been an adherent. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. And so it has been ever since.”
“But the pain,” Mara said. “The nightmares . . .”
“As I already told you, they were bearable,” the Lady said. “And soon enough a thing of the past, as I continued my study of the precious books and scrolls my father had obtained.” She touched the amulet around her neck, and then turned toward Mara. “It is something you can learn, too, Mara. Something I can teach you.” She placed her gloved hand on Mara’s forehead. “I can sense the strength of your Gift. What can we not do, together? The Autarch cannot stand against us. No one can.”
Mara didn’t know how to respond. After everything that had happened, everything her unwanted “Gift” had stolen from her, all the pain and misery it had visited upon her, the possibility that it didn’t have to be like that, that she could satisfy the constant aching desire to draw magic from others without harming herself or them, seemed too much to hope for—too good to be true.
The Lady withdrew her hand. “Thank about it,” she said. “Walk by yourself for a time, or talk to your friends.” She smiled. “Or to Whiteblaze.”
Mara looked down at Whiteblaze and the two wolves with the Lady. “And where did they come from?” she asked.
The Lady shrugged. “I drew a half-dozen mated pairs from the wild with magic: the fact they responded to that magical call told me they had at least the beginning of the traits I desired. After that, it was a simple matter of selective breeding . . . and the judicious application of more magic at crucial times in their development.”
Mara scratched Whiteblaze behind the ears, and his tail wagged. “Thank you for him,” she said softly. “You may have found the nightmares bearable when you were my age, but I do not.”
The Lady smiled again. “Go on,” she said gently. “I will see you tonight, in my . . . our . . . tent.”
Mara nodded mutely and slowed her pace to allow the Lady to draw ahead. For a time she toiled along in silence, her mind whirling, but her circling thoughts brought her no closer to deciding whether or not she could trust the Lady. She wanted to—oh, how she wanted to. But the guilt and pain and nightmares that had resulted every time she had drawn magic from living people, and even, in a strange way, the fact she so much wanted to believe there was a way to do so without suffering any of that, spoke against it.
About an hour after she had dropped back from the Lady, Keltan caught up with her. “You didn’t come down last night,” he said, panting a little. “You promised.”
“I . . . fell asleep,” Mara said. “I’m sorry.”
“You could have joined us at breakfast.”
Mara glanced at him. “I was talking to the Lady.”
“And how’d that go?”
She frowned. She’d thought his flushed face was due to the climb. But there was also something odd about his voice. “Are you angry with me?”
“Me? No. Why should I be angry?” Keltan carried a roughly trimmed wooden walking stick. He stabbed it into the snow as if thrusting a spear into the Autarch.
“I don’t know,” Mara said, a little heat rising to her own face. “Why should you?”
“Maybe because I thought we were . . .” He paused. “Together. After the ship. After everything . . .”
“And because I chose not to come down to the camp for supper last night, you think that’s changed?” Mara said. She heard the ice in her voice, but she didn’t try to soften it. “I like you a lot, Keltan. And I know you like me. But that doesn’t make me your property.”
His face turned redder. “I n
ever—” He bit off whatever he’d intended to say. “Never mind.” He jerked his head at the Lady. “So what did the Mysterious Mistress have to say?”
“Don’t call her that.” Mara pulled her cloak closer around her. “She’s earned her name.”
“Lady of Pain and Fire? Who would want to earn that?”
Mara jerked her head toward him. “You know nothing about it!”
“And you do?”
Mara stopped. He took two more steps before he realized it, and turned back to face her. “What part of what’s happened in the past few months have you missed, Keltan?” she demanded. “You were at the camp. You were in Tamita. You were on the beach. Don’t you think maybe I know a little bit more about what the Lady of Pain and Fire—who shares my gift and earned her title when she was the same age I am now—has experienced, the burden she carries, than you do?”
Keltan’s eyes widened. “Mara, I didn’t—”
“You belong with the unMasked Army,” Mara snapped. She knew she was hurting Keltan, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. “I don’t. I never did. I never can. Go back and walk with your kind. And I’ll walk with mine.”
She brushed past him and strode after the Lady as quickly as she could, closing the distance between them, Whiteblaze trotting, tongue lolling, at her side.
Keltan didn’t follow her. Good, she thought. But already she felt guilty. She didn’t want to hurt Keltan. She didn’t want to ruin whatever had been between them. But he shouldn’t have said what he said.
She sighed. It wasn’t just in the heavy snow of the trail that she felt she was floundering.
The Lady glanced at her as she caught up. “Mara, what is it?”
“I don’t want to walk by myself anymore,” she said.
The Lady looked behind them. Presumably Keltan was still back there, but Mara didn’t turn. “You are welcome, of course.” She did not ask Mara to tell her in more detail what had happened. She did not ask her if she had yet made a decision. She simply let Mara walk with her, in companionable silence.
It was, Mara thought, exactly the right thing to do.
But the walking itself was beginning to wear on her. The slope was unrelenting. The snow, even beaten down by Hamil and the other members of the Lady’s Cadre—the “human wolfpack”—up ahead, dragged at her feet with every step. “How much farther?” she asked after a while, panting along with the wolves, breath forming white clouds in the chill air. “To your home, I mean?”
The Lady, despite her age, seemed unaffected. “We will see it from the top of this ridge,” she said. “Not from where we will camp tonight, I think, but in the morning, when we start down the other side. We will not reach it tomorrow. But the day after that . . .” She gave Mara a smile. “The night after next, you will sleep in a real bed, under a real roof.”
Mara nodded. As they continued to climb, the Lady began to talk again, of inconsequential things: her own childhood, pleasant memories of growing up in Tamita . . . it all sounded exotic to Mara, for the Lady had been born under the reign of the Autarch’s father, and there had been no Masks then. The idea of adults freely mingling in the streets of Tamita with faces uncovered seemed unutterably strange, even after months with the unMasked Army and days with Chell’s sailors. She no longer blushed at the sight of an adult’s uncovered face, but it still seemed somehow . . . immoral.
And yet, that was the future they were all working toward: the Lady, the unMasked Army, and Mara.
But not Chell, she reminded herself. For the first time in hours she glanced back. She saw Keltan, walking with Hyram and Alita, the latter two holding hands. She looked past those three to where Prella walked several ranks back, likewise holding hands with Kirika. She was glad they had found each other, too, even though . . . or maybe because . . . Kirika had almost killed Prella once. Right behind Prella and Kirika she saw Chell, walking with Captain March, who no longer had a ship to command, though at least he still lived, unlike his counterpart, Captain Gramm, who had died in the battle on the beach. On the other side of Chell walked a young man she didn’t recognize, though she had seen him on board Protector and knew he was an officer of some kind . . . a lieutenant, she thought they called it. A different pang touched her heart: not of jealousy this time, but anger. Chell had helped her escape from Tamita. Only his nautical knowledge had enabled them to sail north along the coast, eventually delivering them to the shore where the refugees of the unMasked Army straggled northward.
Her cheeks burned as she remembered a hut, the half-naked prince asleep, kneeling beside him, her hand reaching out . . . What was I thinking? she thought. But the truth was, she hadn’t been thinking. Only feeling: feeling desperate to be just a girl, not a magically Gifted freak.
He had stopped her. He was married, he had said. And years older, despite his youthful appearance. In retrospect, she was glad nothing had happened between them. He had treated her no differently after that. She’d thought he’d remained her friend.
But now she wondered if he had only pretended to be her friend because he had needed her, needed her to sail to his own land, needed her to use her Gift to help him fight his own enemies. Because when he had seen the Lady of Pain and Fire, in an instant he had turned all his attention to her. I’m just a silly girl to him, she thought sourly. A silly young girl blinded by her own infatuation and desires, desires he could manipulate when he thought I could be of use to him, but which he could laugh off once he thought he had a better source of the magical power that is all he’s truly interested in.
As though he felt her gaze upon him, the prince raised his head. Their eyes met. Mara stared at him for a moment, cheeks burning, and then jerked her head around, remembering his words on the beach before the Lady put him in his place by destroying his ships. I seek power to overthrow our enemies, he’d said. He’d looked first at Mara. I thought I had found it, he’d continued—but then he’d turned back to the Lady and finished, but now I think I beheld only a reflection of the true power in this land.
I’m nothing to him, Mara thought now, anger swelling within her. Nothing but a tool, a weapon, a poorly made dagger he could toss aside the moment he found a fine-forged sword to replace it—the Lady of Pain and Fire. It made the memory of that awkward moment in the hut all the more embarrassing.
But if I’m nothing to him, why didn’t he take advantage of me when I offered him the opportunity?
She shoved that thought aside. She didn’t want to make excuses for Chell’s behavior. Let him try his wiles on the Lady of Pain and Fire, she though, glancing at the old woman walking at her side, without any sign of distress despite the steepness of the trail. One corner of her mouth turned up. Somehow, I doubt he’ll find it as easy to talk his way around her as he did me.
After her cold exchange with Keltan, she had no more desire to join the others down in the main camp that night than she had the one before. When they reached the top of the slope, the Lady’s tent was the first pitched. Although the Lady and her wolves were elsewhere, Mara and Whiteblaze entered it the moment it was erected. A sizable fire already burned in the central pit, and had warmed the tent considerably. Mara removed her coat and sat by the blaze, holding out her hands to the blessed heat of the flames.
A blast of cold air caused those flames to dance, and she turned her head, expecting to see the Lady. Instead, Chell stood in the tent’s entrance. Whiteblaze’s head came up from where it had been resting on his front paws, but he made no sound, though he watched the prince intently.
“May I come in, Mara?” Chell said. His voice was soft. His eyes gleamed in the firelight, which lit his finely chiseled features with a flattering warm glow. But she couldn’t feel about him the way she had when he had been her sole companion on the long sail up the coast of Aygrima.
She heard ice in her voice as she said, “I’m not stopping you,” and didn’t regret it.
The prince nodded.
He glanced over his shoulder, and Mara glimpsed the young lieutenant she had seen with him and the captains earlier. “Wait outside, Antril,” he said. The young man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, nodded and moved out of her view.
“A guard?” Mara said. “Do you fear me now, Chell?”
The prince entered, letting the tent flap close behind him. “No,” he said. “But I’d like some warning before the Lady or one of her wolves arrive. Her, I fear.” He looked around the tent’s warm interior. His gaze followed the smoke of the fire for a moment as it poured up to and through the hole in the roof. “It’s very pleasant in here.” He lowered his eyes to her face, and smiled. “How have you been? I haven’t spoken to you since we began this mad trek.”
Every word he spoke scraped against Mara’s nerves like a whetstone on a dagger blade, sharpening her response. “Mad trek?” she said. “To the one place where I might learn how to live with the magic that has almost destroyed me?” She glared at him. “And why should I have spoken to you? You made it clear enough on the beach that you only aided my escape from Tamita because you want to use me in your far-off war.”
Chell shook his head. “No, Mara. Yes, I have my mission—but I would have aided you regardless. I care about you.”
His words washed over her like water over stone, leaving no impression behind. “And what do you want now?”
“I told you . . . to see how you’ve been.”
Mara stared at him. “And . . . ?”
“And to ask your help.”
I knew it, Mara thought. “Let me guess. You want me to talk to the Lady for you, try to convince her to help you return to your kingdom, promise to help you in your war. Am I right?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “Mara, I’ve told you how deadly the threat is facing Korellia. Magic may offer our only hope of survival. And the Lady—”
“The Lady will not help you until the Autarch is overthrown,” Mara said. “And it will still be her choice whether or not to help you once that is done. There’s nothing I can say that will change her mind.” She kept her eyes locked on Chell’s. “Nor will I try.”