Faces

by E. C. Blake

  The light faded. The Lady closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, the irises were their ordinary extraordinary ice-blue. “Sort this out, Mara,” she said. “For their sake.”

  “I can,” Mara said. “I will.”

  The Lady nodded and, without another word, turned and strode away toward the camp. Wolves slipped out of the trees, wolves Mara hadn’t even been aware were there, and followed her. Whiteblaze watched them go, but stayed at her side.

  She wondered how close those wolves had been to tearing out Chell’s and Edrik’s throats.

  She turned toward them. “That was foolish,” she said coldly. “Antagonizing the Lady will accomplish nothing but get the people you claim to care about hurt.”

  “That is the person you’ve chosen to emulate?” Chell said. “Mara, you’re not her. You’re—”

  “Don’t tell me who I am,” Mara said. “I know who I am. I am Mara Holdfast, and I have power—power that will enable us to take this mine and free the unMasked slaves within it, and strike the first of many blows against the Autarch that you, Edrik, claim to hate so much.” Edrik’s stony expression darkened, and Chell’s eyebrows drew together. But then Mara raised her hands in a conciliatory gesture. “But,” she said, “I also know my limitations. As the Lady likes to say, ‘My power is not unlimited.’” She smiled. It wasn’t a real smile, because inside she shook with anger that echoed the Lady’s, but apparently it was convincing enough, because Chell’s frown eased, even if Edrik’s did not. “I don’t need to be in command,” she said. “Order your forces as you see fit. When you are ready, we will climb to the garrison, and I will get us into the cavern . . . under your direction.” She looked from one to the other. “One question, though. Which of you will command?”

  Chell and Edrik exchanged startled glances, and Mara took that moment to turn and make her own grand exit, following in the footsteps of the Lady back down to the main camp.

  ···

  Mara had no idea how they had decided, but when the small strike force assembled early the next morning and began its long roundabout climb to the upper garrison, clearly Chell commanded. Indeed, the entire force was made up of men from the Korellian ships.

  They began the climb by winding their way up a dry streambed. Chell fell in beside Mara and Whiteblaze, halfway back in the group of twenty. “Shouldn’t you be leading us, if you’re in command?” Mara said to him. She was dressed in deerskin trousers, a blue blouse and, over that, a deerskin vest and then a snug sheepskin jacket. The air was still cool, cool enough she could see the breath she was puffing out, but she was already beginning to think she’d overdressed. She carried a stout black staff in her left hand, but with her right, she began unbuttoning the jacket.

  Chell, like his men, wore the Lady’s uniform: blue-and-white tunics over mail shirts. He had already shed his gray cloak—she could see the sleeves of it poking out of the top of his backpack. He bore a sword on his left hip and a dagger on his right. “Lieutenant Antril is up there,” Chell said. “He’s a fine officer, so I’m letting him . . . um, office.”

  “He’s very young,” Mara said.

  “Look who’s talking,” Chell said.

  “How did he get that scar on his cheek?”

  “Cutlass wound,” Chell said. “Just after we left Korellia, we were attacked by pirates. We weren’t flying the royal banner—trying to slip away incognito—or they never would have dared. Their idiot captain must have mistaken us for merchants. They grappled and boarded us in the night. During the battle Antril—just a midshipman, then—killed three of the scoundrels even though blood was pouring down his face from a head wound, a sword cut that came within inches of splitting his skull. He made sure the more seriously wounded were seen to before he allowed the surgeon to do more than give him a cloth to staunch his bleeding. Captain March promoted him on the spot. He may be young, but he’s seen and done his share.”

  I’ve seen and done my share, too, Mara thought. I, of all people, shouldn’t be surprised by anyone’s youth.

  For a few minutes after Chell concluded his story neither of them spoke. A turn in the riverbed had brought them to a field of rounded rocks that rolled beneath their feet in a fashion all-too-conducive to turned ankles and required concentration to navigate safely. When they were through it, though, she glanced at Chell again. “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “Why are you walking with me? You obviously have something to say.”

  “I do?”

  Mara snorted. “Of course you do. Just like Keltan. He’s talked to me exactly once since we entered Aygrima, and he tried to drive a wedge between me and the Lady. Again.”

  “Why would he want to do that?” Chell said.

  “For Catilla, of course.” Mara shook her head. “That stubborn old woman has it in her head that she should rule in the Autarch’s place. As if that could happen now that the Lady is back in Aygrima—and she’s cooling her heels back in the village.”

  “The Lady will rule, then?” Chell said.

  Mara shot him a look. “Who else?”

  Chell shrugged. “I don’t know. Not my land. Not my concern, except that I hope whomever is finally in control remembers what I and my men have done to assist in the Autarch’s overthrow.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure you will receive your reward.”

  She didn’t realize how much bitterness she had let seep into her words until Chell said softly, “Why are you angry with me? You were angry when I visited you in the Lady’s tent. You’re still angry. And I don’t believe I’ve done anything to deserve it.”

  “I’m not angry,” Mara said, and winced. She’d barked her response like an angry dog.

  “Uh-huh,” Chell said.

  Mara concentrated on climbing for a minute, marshaling her words. Finally she said, “Prince Chell. You assisted me in escaping from Tamita, and helped me travel north. But it became clear, when you met the Lady, that you had done so only because you had thought my Gift might be of use to you in your own country’s war. You switched your attention to the Lady because she demonstrated the kind of power you need when she destroyed your ships. You came to me in the Lady’s tent to try to get me to intercede on your behalf with the Lady. Now you seem to be trying to cultivate my friendship again. I presume this is because you now know I, too, have that kind of power. You are being friendly because you hope to take me back to your father and offer him my help in your war with . . . whatever the name of the kingdom was.”

  “Stonefell,” Chell said. He shook his head. “Mara, that’s . . . remarkably cold. I’ve never stopped being your friend.”

  “Perhaps that’s because you were never my friend to begin with.”

  That statement fell between them like one of the rocks littering the streambed. Mara heard Chell’s sharp intake of breath. She didn’t look at him. If she’d hurt him, it was no more than he deserved. He’d hurt her, after all.

  The old her. The one that had made that embarrassing attempt to initiate something physical between them in the magic hut down the coast. Not the new her, growing these past few weeks in the company of the Lady.

  She no longer craved the friendship or attention of someone like Chell.

  Or Keltan?

  She pushed that voice of doubt aside. I am powerful, she reminded herself yet again. I don’t need any of them. I am powerful.

  “Mara,” Chell said softly. “Do you really believe that I have only ever been interested in using you, that I never cared for you as you, with or without your Gift?”

  “That’s what it looked like to me,” Mara said.

  Another silence. “Do you know what it looked like to me, Mara?” the prince said at last. “I saw a girl who had saved my life. A girl who bravely reentered the most dangerous place in the world because she thought it had to be done to help her people. A g
irl with a terrifying ability that was almost undone by the most horrible event any young person could ever witness—the brutal murder of a parent—and yet was not undone, who gathered herself together and did her best to save her friends and community.”

  And failed, Mara thought, but she said nothing out loud and once again pushed the guilt down as a waste of emotion. He’s trying to soften you up. Stay focused. Stay centered. Stay powerful.

  “By that time, I no longer saw a girl,” Chell went on. “I saw a brave young woman. A young woman I respected, and admired, and liked . . . and, yes, occasionally feared . . . but never, never saw as someone I could merely use. I hoped she would choose to help me, that she would decide that was something she could do and remain true to herself . . . but I always knew that decision would have to be her own to make.

  “When I saw the Lady, and approached her in the hope she might help my cause, it was not because I had decided you would not, but because I thought there was an opportunity to remove you from the equation, free you from having to make a decision. My mission remains what it has always been, Mara. If we survive this . . . a rather large ‘if,’ I admit . . . then I hope to return to Korellia with magic to aid us in our desperate struggle against Stonefell. I still hope the Lady will provide that magic. If not, then yes, I hope you will see fit to do so. But all of that has nothing—nothing—to do with how I see you. You are still the girl who saved my life, who became my friend, and whom I have watched grow into a remarkable young woman.” Now a trace of bitterness crept into his own voice. “I hope you can eventually find a way to look at me and see whatever it was you once saw. Because I have not changed, Mara. I am your friend. I will always be your friend. Whether you are mine or not.”

  And with that, he lengthened his stride and moved up the slope ahead of her, to rejoin Antril at the lead of the column of armed men, leaving Mara alone with her thoughts.

  She tried to push his words away as she had pushed them away before. She didn’t want to be the girl she had been, stumbling from disaster to disaster, every wrong choice leading to pain and suffering for others, unable to control her Gift, hurting, frightened, confused, plagued by night terrors. She wanted to be whom the Lady had tried to make her: Mara Holdfast, powerful sorceress, possessed of the rarest of all magical Gifts, sure of herself, sure of her goals, sure of her prowess. Confident. Calm. Self-assured. Powerful.

  I’ll show him, she thought. I’ll show him I’m not the girl he remembers. I’ll show him who I am now.

  But even as she made the vow, a small voice deep inside her, a voice that sounded an awful lot like Mara Holdfast the Maskmaker’s daughter rather than Mara Holdfast the mighty sorceress, whispered, Are you sure you’re not really trying to show yourself?

  NINE

  Cavern of Blood

  THEY HAD BEGUN climbing the mountain at dawn, but by the time they were in position to spy on the garrison, the sun had long since swung overhead and begun its descent into the west. They had left the streambed when it curved off in the wrong direction, and had spent the last several hours picking their way through a sparse pine forest, littered with boulders: boulders of black lodestone, though they seemed to have attracted little magic—none Mara could see, at least. For some reason magic tended to seep down into the ground, vanishing like the water from the rain two nights before. Today the sky was mostly clear, streaked by only a few feathery wisps.

  Still, the fact that black lodestone could be seen on the surface this far up the slope made her wonder just how much black lodestone the mountain as a whole contained . . . and how much magic.

  She remembered what the Lady had said about how the spire in the pass, the “border guardian,” had a connection to the vast masses of black lodestone in the mountain range’s spine. If every mountain contained black lodestone, and all of it had been collecting magic from the countless living creatures that had died on the slopes over millennia . . .

  The thought was mind-boggling.

  Now at last they were peering over a ridge through a thin screen of scraggly evergreens toward the mine’s “back door.” Three stone huts clustered around one side of a gaping hole into which poured a stream that splashed and tumbled down from a white wall of ice and snow another quarter of a mile up the mountainside. Mara shot that overhanging glacier an uneasy look and hoped it stayed exactly where it was. From the fact that the forest they had climbed through didn’t really exist beyond the ridge, where everything had a distinctly scoured look, she suspected it occasionally . . . shed.

  Four Watchers lounged by the huts. Others might be in the huts, asleep; more likely they were down in the cave with the unMasked workers, whom Mara assumed were housed in the largest of the three huts—the one that could be bolted from the outside and had only slits for windows. A pen for animals, she thought angrily.

  Possibly some of the Watchers were patrolling, but they’d seen no sign of scouts during the climb and clearly the Watchers below had no clue they were themselves being watched. One looked sound asleep, two were playing some kind of board game, and one was whittling a piece of wood.

  Chell snorted. “I think we can take them,” he said dryly to Lieutenant Antril, on his other side. Then he glanced at Mara. “I don’t think we’ll need your special talents this time.”

  Mara nodded. She ruffled Whiteblaze’s mane, and his tail thumped the ground in response. “Then I’ll leave it up to you.”

  Each of Chell’s men carried a bow. Below the ridgeline, they strung them, then nocked arrows. There was a brief murmur of conversation as they sorted out targets. Then, at Chell’s signal, they rose up and fired as one.

  The four Watchers died an instant later.

  Even at that distance, Mara felt their deaths, but the magic did not rush to her as she expected. Instead, she felt it pulled away from her, down into the depths of the mountain . . . down to where the vast mass of black lodestone waited.

  She felt a surge of annoyance. She didn’t need their magic, certainly didn’t need whatever seeds of horror their soulprints might plant in her mind if she failed to draw that magic through her amulet . . . but she had come to expect it, unless the Lady were around.

  And if she really allowed herself to think the truth, she craved it.

  Chell’s men swarmed over the ridge, dropping their bows and drawing their swords as they rushed the huts. They kicked in the doors, and Mara felt two more Watchers die. Once again their magic plunged downward, into the mountain.

  She got up then, and strode toward the huts, trying to project an air of perfect calm like the Lady’s. Chell emerged from one, wiping blood from his blade on a towel he must have found inside. “All dead,” he said. “But we’re still short a half-dozen.”

  “They must be underground,” she said. She glanced briefly, because she didn’t want to look closely, at the Watchers dead on the ground outside the huts, their Masks already crumbled into dust and shards. “Will you hide the bodies?”

  He shook his head. “Not seeing any Watchers would arouse suspicion if any patrols do come this way. We’ll prop these,” he nudged the nearest corpse with his foot, “up against the walls, so they look like they’re snoozing, put their hoods up so anyone will have to get close to even see they’re not wearing Masks. Might buy us some time.”

  Mara nodded. “I’ll examine the cave entrance.”

  Chell turned to call out orders. Mara walked away from the dead Watchers to the thing they had been guarding so poorly.

  From a distance it had been little more than a shadow in the ground. Now that she was next to it, she could see it was a perfect circle, clearly artificial, the sun penetrating only a short distance into it and showing nothing but black rock, wet on the uphill side where the stream poured over the edge and cascaded down, sparkling until it vanished into the depths. The water reappeared a hundred feet below, splashing into a torch-lit pool only visible to Mara after she shielded her ey
es against the afternoon sun. She couldn’t see anyone moving down there, or hear anything, but all six of the missing Watchers could be standing just outside her field of vision, and she wouldn’t know.

  She stood up and brushed dirt from her hands. “Well?” Chell said from behind her.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Hundred feet. Torches at the bottom. Nobody in sight, but I can’t really see very well.”

  Chell nodded, and looked into the depths. “Your wolf won’t be able to get down there.”

  Mara hadn’t thought of that, and felt a moment of anxiety at the thought of losing her canine companion . . . and emergency source of magic. She kept it from her face and turned to Whiteblaze. Touching his head again, she projected an image of the Lady. “Go to her,” she said. He yelped, turned, and loped away.

  Chell stared after him. “I’ll never get used to those things.”

  “Whiteblaze is a sweetheart,” Mara told him. “He won’t eat you unless I tell him to.”

  He gave her a raised eyebrow, and she returned an innocent smile. Then she let it slip away. “If there are Watchers at the bottom,” she said, “this is a death trap.”

  Chell grunted. “Maybe we can fix that,” he said. He turned toward Lieutenant Antril, who had followed him to the pit edge. Mara caught Antril’s gaze over Chell’s shoulder. The young man smiled at her and she found herself smiling back. Then his smile disappeared into a look of concentration as Chell spoke to him.

  “Change of plan,” the prince told the lieutenant. “Take the Watchers into the hut and strip them. Choose four of our men and have them put on the Watchers’ uniforms. They’ll go down the ladder first.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” Antril turned and started shouting orders.

  Twenty minutes later, the four men Antril had chosen stood in almost-fitting Watcher’s uniforms, still glistening with blood, at the head of the shaft, exchanging uneasy glances.