by E. C. Blake
“Clearly, the great mages of old knew of this pass, though memory of it has been lost,” she had told Mara, “or they would not have placed one of the black lodestone border guardians at its apex. The Autarch had only to trigger one of those stones to activate them all, and he would have used the one closest to the place where he last saw me, so I am certain he never came here himself and is unaware of both the pass and the stone.
“I cannot destroy it myself,” she had continued. “The border guardians are tuned to my magic, and this one would rip my own Gift from me and tear me apart in the process were I to come anywhere near it. But if you do what I tell you, the magic will be rendered inactive in this one spot, at least for a time—long enough for us to pass through.”
She had explained to Mara that the black spire, and the others like it every few miles along the border, drew magic from the very spine of the mountains, the vast deposits of the strange mineral tapped by both the old and new mines of the Autarch. “You cannot destroy the border guardian directly,” the Lady had said. “Instead . . .”
And then she had explained.
And that was when Mara had started to worry.
She looked down from the rocky outcropping. For the first time, the Lady had sent all thirteen wolves with her, though Whiteblaze stayed the closest. She could feel the magic they held, ready to be drawn into herself, ready to be hurled at her target. It was the most magic that had ever been hers to control—perhaps not more magic than she had tapped at the mine, but then, that hadn’t really been controlled, had it? And she hadn’t had the amulet to focus and filter it.
She sighed and clambered down from the outcropping, then resumed toiling up the slope. All she was doing was stalling, and she knew it.
The Lady had pointed out a copse of pine trees some three hundred yards down the slope from the spire of rock. “That should be both close enough to the spire for you to accomplish your task, and far enough away to keep you safe.”
Should, Mara thought. If. Rather a lot of qualifiers, if you ask me.
There was one good thing about all the walking she’d done in the last while: she had toughened. She did not believe the Mara who had gone to her Masking could have climbed as steadily as she did now, breathing hard, yes, but never needing to stop. It took her almost an hour to reach the trees. Then she did pause, to regain her breath and gather her wits. Whiteblaze bumped his nose into her hand and she scratched his head absentmindedly, while the other wolves clustered around her, tongues lolling, and waited to see what would happen next.
Despite the wolves, she felt very alone. She looked back downslope at the camp. Tents remained in place, horses continued to graze, smoke rose from cooking fires. The army would not break camp until she had broken the magic keeping the Lady north of the mountains. If she could not accomplish her task, the assault on Aygrima would fail before it ever began. She wondered how many of those distant figures were looking up at her now, wondering, like the wolves, what would happen next.
She turned away from them. Well, she thought, let’s find out.
The problem, the Lady had told her, was that no magic they could bring to bear could destroy the obelisk. It would rebound any direct magical attack onto the one who sent it. Nor could it be destroyed by nonmagical means. A would-be demolitionist slamming a sledgehammer against it wouldn’t live long enough to wonder why it wouldn’t break, having been reduced to a drifting red mist on the wind.
But it could be attacked indirectly, and that was Mara’s task.
She looked from the stone itself to the ice-shrouded peak of the mountain, still four or five thousand feet above them. She reached out to the wolves.
She drew on their magic.
It flowed into her through the amulet, filling her, overfilling her, swelling her until she felt enormous, powerful . . . and on the verge of exploding. She could only hold that much magic for a moment. It had to be released.
And so she let it go, a flash of pure red fire, the color of magic used to manipulate physical objects, a blast that hurtled the distance between her and the peak in an instant.
High above, mingled dust and smoke and steam puffed from the mountainside. It looked like nothing much, and for a moment Mara stood there, panting a little, horribly afraid she had failed, feeling suddenly weak now that she was empty of the magic she had pulled from the wolves, who had all, as one animal, dropped whining onto their bellies.
And then she realized the mountainside was moving.
It dropped away, obscured an instant later by a growing new cloud of dust. And then the sound arrived, a distant roar, a terrifying thunder of stone on stone on stone that waxed and waxed and waxed, until Mara suddenly thought maybe she was a little too close to the rock spire after all. She turned and dashed down the slope, pursued by the roar, until the thunder grew so loud she had to stop and look back up again, panting.
With terrifying speed, a wall of jumbled stone and ice thundered down on top of the standing spire of black lodestone—and obliterated it. One moment it was there, the next there was only the roar of the landslide, a cacaphony that stopped only as the mass of rock piled up against the slope on the opposite side of the pass.
Of course, not all of the rocks stopped: some of them, ranging from house-size to merely horse-sized, bounded down the slope toward Mara. Gasping, she pulled more magic to her from the wolves and struck out with it, shattering the four or five that seemed certain to crush her into pink paste, each blast accompanied by the whining of the wolves, until they had no more to give and Mara herself was on her knees, sobbing with weakness.
But the deadly stampede of boulders had stopped.
The noise of the landslide had stopped.
It was over.
Mara let herself fall forward and dug her fingers into the soil, grateful for its stolid permanence. She breathed deeply of the smell of damp dirt and crushed grass, then raised herself up again. Whiteblaze lay on his side beside her. He looked at her, and his tail flicked feebly. “Sorry, boy,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He whined and licked her hand.
She knew she should return to the camp, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Instead she lay down again, Whiteblaze warm against her side, and stared up at the sky, as empty of thoughts as she was of magic. She was still lying there when the Lady’s Cadre arrived, led by Hamil. He knelt beside her. “The Lady comes,” he said. “Can you stand?”
“I think so,” Mara said. With Hamil’s help, she climbed unsteadily to her feet. She looked around. The dozen burly men had formed a circle around her, as though shielding her from something. The wolves formed a closer circle inside that. Both circles opened as the Lady approached.
She strode toward Mara with her arms outstretched, and clasped Mara’s hands warmly. “Well done, child,” she breathed. “Well done.” She put her arm around Mara’s shoulder and gazed up at the tumbled mess of stone and ice and twisted, broken trees. “The way is open. I can feel it.”
“I can’t feel much of anything,” Mara mumbled. “Drained.”
The Lady nodded sympathetically. “There is a cost to such magic,” she said. “But I can help.” She released Mara’s shoulder, took her hands again, and gazed into her face. Her eyes glowed white with magic. Mara couldn’t have looked or pulled away even if she had wanted to. Peripherally she glimpsed the men around her dropping to their knees, but the strangeness of that seemed far off and unimportant. The light from the Lady’s eyes waxed, spilling out over her face, spilling out over the whole world, blotting out everything else . . .
And then magic and life flowed into Mara, and she gasped as if awaking from a deep sleep, and jerked her hands free at last.
She looked around. The villagers’ faces had gone slack, but they, too, were beginning to stir. Breathing deeply, one by one they climbed to their feet. Hamil nodded at the Lady, face grim, then turned and started
up the slope with the others, presumably to try to find a way over the mess left by the landslide.
“You revived me with magic you drew from them,” Mara said. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“I’ve told you,” the Lady said. “They expect it. They trust me. They would follow me anywhere.”
Mara licked her lips. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “And hungry.”
“I have brought both food and drink,” the Lady said. “Sit.”
They sat side by side on a flat boulder in an open space, watching the men of the Lady’s Cadre toil up the slope. “Can they really find a way through that mess?” Mara asked. She gulped another handful of dried apricots, and washed it down with a swig of cold spring water from a metal flask.
“They will go as far as they can,” the Lady said. “If there are places too blocked for them to proceed, they will wait for you or me to clear the path with magic.”
“Where is everyone else?” Mara asked. She twisted around, but trees blocked her view downslope.
“I forbade anyone else to leave camp,” the Lady said. “They will not advance until the path is clear. Ah, I see our four-legged friends are also recovering.”
Mara took another drink of water, wiped her mouth, and looked at the wolves, yawning and sitting up and generally looking a bit more alive, much like herself. “I emptied them,” she said. “How do they survive that?”
“Their life force is very, very strong,” the Lady said. “And though you drew much, you remembered your lessons and did not draw enough to permanently harm them. However, I will not draw on them again for a week. I will not even use one for my eyes over the pass until tomorrow.” She held out her hand and three of the wolves trotted over, crowding to get their heads scratched. Whiteblaze sat up, looked around, saw Mara, and came to join her, giving her hand a quick lick before sitting on his haunches beside her.
Hamil reappeared, picking his way down the slope. He came over to the Lady and Mara, panting a little. “The going is very difficult,” he said, “but we have a path as far as the crest. I do not think we will need any magic.”
“Excellent,” the Lady said. “Go down and tell the others to break camp.” Her eyes flashed, though whether with magic or just a reflection of the bright morning sun Mara couldn’t tell. “Tonight we make camp in Aygrima.”
The journey through the tumbled remnants of the slide was long and difficult, and the campsite on the other side of the pass was not ideal, with neither particularly flat land nor any source of fresh water, but it was definitely inside Aygrima, and that alone felt like a triumph. As the sun set off to her right, Mara sat on a rock staring down the mountain into the rolling foothills beyond. No smoke spoke of hunters or loggers or villages or even bandits. The northeast corner of Aygrima, Mara had always heard, was the wildest part of the Wild. The nearest villages would be many miles south.
From here they would descend, then turn west, following the base of the mountains until, in some four days’ time, if all went well, they would reach the new mining camp, built on the site of the fantastical cave of magic she herself had proved out.
They did not expect there to be a very large garrison at the mine, since the Lady was certain the Watcher Army, believing the borders secured by magic, had headquartered at the Secret City to watch the shoreline and the ravine where the Lady had made her last stand in Aygrima as a young girl. But they would not know whether their assumption was correct until they got closer.
Mara glanced back up at the landslide-choked pass. I did that, she thought again, as she had thought many times during the day, as though to convince herself to believe something clearly impossible through force of repetition. I really did that.
Someone cleared his throat off to her right, and she jerked her head around.
Keltan stood silhouetted against the setting sun. He wore mail and the blue-and-white tunic of the Lady’s forces. “We are not bandits,” she had said. “We are an army, and we will look like one.”
Mara was suddenly struck by how much taller and . . . solid . . . Keltan looked than when she had first seen him in the basement in Tamita, just before her fifteenth birthday and just after his, more than half a year ago.
He’s grown, she thought. Well, so have I. In more ways than one.
“Hello,” she said, keenly aware of his parting words when they had met in the village, the last time she had spoken to him. “I love you. I thought the feeling was mutual.”
It is, she wanted to tell him, but a proclamation of love seemed an awkward way to begin a conversation, and in any event, she wasn’t certain he still felt the same way.
“Hi,” Keltan said. “May I join you?”
She moved over on the rock. “If you like.”
Keltan came and sat beside her. The wind brought her his scent, dusty and sweaty but strangely pleasant. “I saw you in the camp before we left,” he said. “Saying good-bye to Prella and Kirika and Alita. That was nice of you.”
Mara sighed. “Alita wouldn’t talk to me. And Prella and Kirika were . . . cool.” She glanced at him. “When did that happen, by the way? Prella and Kirika?”
“While we were away from the Secret City,” Keltan said. “When I got back there, they were together.”
“I’m glad,” Mara said. “Prella needs love, and Kirika needs to give it. I’m glad they found each other.”
“So am I,” Keltan said. “As Alita found Hyram. As I . . .” His voice trailed off. He bent down and picked up a twig from the forest clutter surrounding the base of the boulder, turning it over and over in his fingers. “Mara, I’m sorry,” he said, without looking up. “When I spoke to you outside the village . . . I wasn’t trying to drive a wedge between you and the Lady. I wasn’t acting on Catilla’s behalf. I wanted you to know I was concerned . . . about you, and about what I’d seen in the village. I didn’t think how it would seem to you.”
“I was too harsh in my response,” Mara said in a low voice, while her heart leaped in relief that his feelings toward her hadn’t changed. “But, Keltan, you have to understand what working with the Lady has meant to me.” She gestured behind them. “What I did . . . up there . . . I was in control of it. I did it without pain. I . . . I feel like maybe, just maybe, this Gift of mine really is a Gift, and not a curse, for the first time in . . .” Her throat closed. “For the first time since my father died, I think.”
“I understand that,” Keltan said. “Really, I do. But, Mara . . .” He turned fully toward her for the first time since he’d sat down beside her. “Please, don’t be angry. But . . . you drew magic from the wolves, not from the villagers. Not from humans. The Lady . . . yes, she’s using the wolves as a source of magic, but she uses the villagers, too, all the time. And I know you don’t want to hear it, but it is changing them. Just like the Masks are changing people in Tamita. I’m not telling you not to trust her. All I’m asking is . . . be careful.”
Mara, who had been somewhat distracted by the way the orange glow of the setting sun was backlighting Keltan’s hair, stiffened as he spoke. “You’re sorry for what you said before, but you’re going to say it again?” she said. All her warm feelings evaporated like sweat in a cooling breeze. She felt herself growing angry. She seemed powerless to stop it, or the words she threw at him like stones. “Who sent you? Edrik? Hyram? Or did Catilla give you more instructions before we left?”
“What? No! Mara—”
“Save it.” She turned away. “And leave me alone.” She walked away. What are you doing? Stay with him! Talk to him! a part of her begged her, but the stronger part, the colder part, the angry part the Lady had been teaching her to draw on for power, kept her feet moving away from him, and kept her from looking back.
She didn’t wipe the tears from her cheeks until she was out of Keltan’s sight.
···
Over the next four days they moved cautiously thr
ough the Wild. For the first two days, they saw no humans.
On the third, they came across a small stone building on a low, barren hill. “Magic collection hut,” Mara told the Lady as they looked up at it from half a mile away. “We’re getting closer to the mine.”
The Lady nodded. She closed her eyes for a moment, and Mara knew she was looking through the eyes of one of the wolves. Which one became immediately obvious, as a big gray male trotted away from his fellows, slipping in and out of the trees, and in and out of sight. He finally disappeared completely for several minutes, only to emerge right by the hut. He trotted around it, sniffing, then looked back at them.
The Lady opened her eyes. “No one there,” she said. She turned to her left, where Hamil stood quietly with the rest of the Lady’s Cadre. She understood why they were nicknamed the “human wolfpack.” The twelve men spoke little more than the wolves, and sometimes seemed to move at the will of the Lady without her speaking to them.
As if she has altered them to serve her, she thought, and shoved the thought away angrily, cursing Keltan for putting it there. So they’re loyal. Why wouldn’t they be? Their village was barely surviving until she used her magic to carve something approaching civilization out of that frozen valley. Without her help, they couldn’t grow crops or keep livestock alive. Of course they’re loyal.
“Hamil,” the Lady said. “Take Mara to the hut.” She glanced at Mara. “See if there is magic there we could use.”
Mara nodded at her, then at Hamil. He led her into the woods, while behind them the entire column, which had been resting while the hut was investigated, swung into motion, curving off to the right on a path that would take them around the base of the hill Mara would have to climb.