by E. C. Blake
She tried to sit up. The too-familiar room swam around her, but she managed to hold herself shakily up on her elbows. At the table by the fire sat someone she didn’t know, though she had seen her briefly during her period of semiconsciousness: the Maskless Healer. “What’s going on?” she said, or tried to say. Her voice didn’t want to work, so it came out as a harsh whisper. “Who are you?”
The Healer’s head turned sharply toward her. “You’re awake!” She looked almost frightened.
“Yes, I’m awake,” Mara said. She could feel anger rising within her—and this time it was all hers. The Lady was gone for good. She had felt her vanish into the maelstrom of the Autarch’s fury and fear as he fled back into his own body to try to heal the wound from Greff’s knife. The Lady’s ghost had accompanied the Autarch’s spirit to hell, or wherever demons like him went when they died, and good riddance.
But she was the one who had exorcised him, and the Lady, too, with Greff’s sacrifice and the help of so many others. Why was she iron-Masked and imprisoned and blocked? “I asked you a question. Who are you? And why am I here?”
“I am Healer Chara,” the woman said. “Lord Edrik asked me to . . . look after you. But I’m afraid,” she hurried on, “I can’t answer any more of your questions. I am to send word to Lord Edrik as soon as you are awake. I’m sure someone will come shortly.” She went to the door, unlocked it, and spoke in a hurried whisper to someone outside. Footsteps clattered away. The door closed, and the Healer bolted it again. Then she turned back to Mara. “Now,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Weak,” Mara said. “And betrayed.” She touched the iron Mask. “What the hell is this doing on my face?” And why does she keep referring to Lord Edrik?
“I told you,” Chara said weakly, “I can’t answer any questions.”
“What can you do?” Mara said. She had to lie down again; her vision was showing an alarming tendency to close in around the edges. She took a deep breath. “Can you give me food and water, at least?”
“Of course,” Chara said. “That I’ve been doing all along.”
“I don’t remember it,” Mara said as Chara hurried over to a cabinet against the wall.
“You were awakened enough to eat but not enough to be fully aware of it,” Chara said. “It is a healing technique for when the brain may be damaged and must have time to heal.”
“You mean I ate even though I was asleep,” Mara said.
“Essentially. Yes.” Chara was putting fruit and cheese on a plate. She filled a mug with water from a clay pitcher, placed everything on a wooden tray, and brought it over to Mara. She placed it on the low table by the bed, and then said, “Let me help you sit up.”
Still feeling horribly weak, Mara let Chara push pillows under her back until she was upright. She ate, her hands still shaking. “You’re saying you deliberately kept me asleep?” she said. “For how long?” She looked down at herself. She was wearing a nightgown and covered by a blue blanket. At least there’s no diaper this time, she thought, remembering another occasion when she had awakened after being unconscious for an unknown time. But if they woke me up enough to eat, maybe they woke me up enough to . . .
She decided not to ask.
“I don’t think I should tell you how long you’ve been asleep, either,” the Healer said. “Someone else will.” She put her hand to her face, then drew it back again and gave a shaky laugh. “I can’t get used to not wearing a Mask,” she said. “I feel . . . naked.”
“Can you at least tell me what happened to the Masks?” Mara said. “When the Autarch . . . died?” When I tore his head off . . .
“They broke. All of them. Everywhere. From one end of Aygrima to the other.” The Healer shook her head. “It was terrifying. Worst for the youngsters, the ones who had been Masked in the past two or three years. We all knew there was something different about their Masks, different about them. Then when the unMasked Army started attacking the weakened part of the wall, they all dropped whatever they were doing and marched to battle. They were fearless, even though many of them came unarmed. Some of them came naked. The unMasked Army fell back. They didn’t want to kill teenagers, though there were a few . . .” She swallowed. “It was bad. But when the Masks failed, those young people all screamed and fell senseless. Some of them died instantly. Others . . . still aren’t themselves. A few are starting to recover. I was trying to help some of them when I was seized by the unMasked Army and told I had a new patient. They brought me to you. You had suffered a blow to the head. I made sure there was no permanent damage, but then they had me put you to sleep . . . or try to. You screamed and screamed as if suffering terrible nightmares. The young man . . . Keltan . . . suggested we bring you your wolf. Once you touched him, you finally went under completely.”
“Whiteblaze,” Mara said. “I saw him stabbed, I thought he was dead—” And Keltan is alive, too! A weight she hadn’t even been aware of lifted from her heart.
“He very nearly was,” the Healer said. “But I was told to Heal him as well.”
“Where is he? Can I see him?”
“He was taken away once your nightmares subsided,” the Healer said. “I’m afraid I don’t know where he is now.”
“And why am I awake now?” Mara said.
“I was ordered yesterday to allow you to wake up at last. I permitted you to rise from magical to ordinary sleep. And here you are.” She blinked suddenly and pressed her lips together. “I may have said too much.” Her hands went halfway to her face again.
“No Mask,” Mara said. “No one will know.” She touched the hateful pitted iron clinging to her face. “It appears I’m the only one still Masked in Aygrima.”
“And so it will remain,” said a new voice from the door, and Mara jerked her head around.
Catilla stood there, leaning on her cane of pale wood. She looked older than Mara remembered, older and yet somehow more fierce than ever, like an aging hawk still ready to fly to the hunt. Edrik was with her. The two of them came over to her bedside. “You’ve done well,” Edrik said to the Healer. “Leave us for a few minutes.”
“Yes, Lord Edrik,” the Healer said. “Lady,” she added with a quick bob of her head to Catilla. She gave Mara a faint half-smile, and then hurried out. A guard in the hall outside closed the door again.
“Lord?” Mara said. “Lady?”
“We have had enough of Autarchs,” said Catilla. “But Aygrima still needs a ruler. Once it was the Kingdom of Aygrima. So it will be again.” She nodded at Edrik. “In a fortnight, King Edrik will ascend the Sun Throne, and a new era of peace and freedom will begin.”
“King Edrik?” Mara said. “Not Queen Catilla?”
“There is no point in a crowning a Queen who will not live out the first year of her reign,” Catilla said. She coughed a little, and Mara suddenly understood.
“The cancer has returned,” she said.
Catilla nodded. “Ethelda bought me time, and for that I am grateful, for I have seen the overthrow of the Autarchy and the destruction of the Masks and will see my grandson become king and my great-grandson Crown Prince. My father is avenged and his heirs will rule. I am content.”
“I’m not,” Mara said. She touched the iron Mask. “Explain this. Explain what happened in the throne room, and how I came to be a prisoner here.” Her eyes narrowed. “And explain how you came to be here. You were in the north, days’ travel away. How long have I been a prisoner?”
“Three weeks,” Catilla said. “Three weeks have passed since you slew the Autarch and destroyed the Masks.”
“Three weeks?” Mara couldn’t believe it, though it explained her weakness. “What happened to me?”
Edrik regarded her steadily. “The unMasked Army fighters who you let into the city had orders,” he said. “If you succeeded, and survived, you were not to be allowed to go free. You were to be subdued and
brought to me.”
Mara stared at him, feeling cold. “The blow to the head . . . ?”
“Hyram,” Edrik said. “He took the task on himself because he felt he could judge the blow better than the others, who might have been tempted to simply . . . remove you.” He made a sour face. “More of a danger than I realized. One of Chell’s men let the Sun Guard through after the Autarch’s death in the hope he would kill you. Chell slew his own sailor for that. Fortunately, you . . . dealt with that threat. Rather forcefully.”
“And then Hyram knocked me out?” Mara felt more betrayed than she had any right to. Hyram had been infatuated with her when she’d first arrived at the Secret City, but his attraction had not survived her naïve betrayal of the unMasked Army to the Watchers. I’m probably lucky he didn’t kill me. But she missed him as her friend. She missed those early days when Keltan and Hyram had been competing for her attention. It seemed years past though it had only been a few months.
So much had happened in so little time . . .
“Don’t be too hard on him, Mara,” Edrik said. He surprised her by the softness in his tone. “He was following our orders. He argued against them. He thought we were being unnecessarily cautious. He really didn’t want to hurt you. He has been very concerned about you.”
Mara didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he still knocked me out. “‘Unnecessarily cautious,’” she repeated slowly. “You had me knocked out, and then put this Mask on me before I woke . . . you’re afraid of me.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Catilla said. “In fact . . . aren’t you?”
Afraid of myself? Mara thought. She wanted to scoff . . . but in truth, she couldn’t.
I am afraid. Afraid of my Gift. Afraid of what it means to be the only one left who has it. Afraid of where it might lead . . . where it already has led. So much death and destruction . . .
“I think you begin to understand,” Catilla said. Her voice, too, was softer than it had been, with a warmth she had rarely heard from the old lady. “The Lady began as you are now, young, powerful, idealistic, trying to overthrow tyranny. But she became a tyrant in her turn, unable to resist the lure of her Gift, the attraction of control over others, the desire to live forever. I don’t know that that will happen to you . . . but I don’t know that it won’t. And I don’t believe even you can be certain.”
Mara swallowed. “No,” she said. “No, I can’t.”
“The new Kingdom of Aygrima must have time to rebuild without worrying about your power. Perhaps you need time to rebuild, too. And so we have Masked you, with the help of the Master Maskmaker: one last Mask before we burned his workshop to the ground.”
Burned . . . “My old house?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Catilla said. “I’m sorry. But it had to be done. We’ve ordered the destruction of all the Maskmaking shops round the kingdom, as proof that the era of the Masks has ended.” She coughed again.
Anger poured into Mara, white-hot. She ached to tear the magic from the evil crone cackling at her bedside, tear her apart as she had the Sun Guard, burn Edrik where he stood . . .
She caught herself, horrified and sick. The Lady is gone! she thought. Where are these thoughts coming from now?
There was only one place they could be coming from. Within her.
Is Catilla right? she thought.
Monster . . . monster . . . monster . . . The chants of her nightmare visitors whispered in her ears.
She touched the Mask again. Maybe this is for the best, she thought. Maybe I do need time to rebuild. Just like the Autarchy . . . no. The kingdom.
“How long do I have to wear this?” she whispered.
“For as long as you stay in Aygrima,” Catilla said.
Mara stared at her in shock. The anger lurched back to life inside her like a creature rising from the dead. “You’ll make me wear it the rest of my life?”
“That’s not what she said, Mara,” Edrik said. “She said, ‘For as long as you stay in Aygrima.’”
“You mean exile.”
“I’m sorry, but we simply cannot risk having someone with your power active within the kingdom,” Catilla said.
“But I can’t remove it myself,” Mara said. “Even if I leave Aygrima, it will remain—”
“No,” Catilla said. “The Mask you wear is keyed to the magical boundaries of Aygrima, the defenses that protect us from invasion on all sides, set in place by the great Gifted creators of the ancients. Once you pass far enough beyond those boundaries, the Mask will fall away.”
Mara found her fists had clenched. She eased them open. “So where am I supposed to go?”
“Prince Chell asked me to once more extend to you an invitation to travel with him to his home country of Korellia,” Edrik said.
Mara’s heart leaped. She’d thought . . . “His ships were destroyed. It will be months before—”
“For his men working alone it would have taken months to jury-rig one of his hulks into a sailable vessel, it’s true,” Edrik said. “But we have provided him with Gifted Engineers and a good supply of magic. He believes he can salvage one ship from the wreckage of the two in less than a month with their help. He has already traveled north with them and his surviving crew and officers.”
“You’re allowing other Gifted to travel and use magic freely?” Mara said a little bitterly. “I’m surprised you’re not locking up all Gifted.”
Edrik laughed. “Mara, just because we never had magic at the Secret City doesn’t mean we hated it. It’s Aygrima’s greatest asset. Now that people are free from the Autarch’s tyranny, the kingdom will blossom again, thanks to magic. Eventually we’ll reach out into the outside world again and resume the trade in magic that once enriched us all.” The amusement in his voice died away. “No, Mara. We don’t fear magic. We fear you.”
“Do not mistake us, Mara,” Catilla said. “I am grateful for what you have accomplished. I’m in awe of it. I spent my whole life trying to find a way to overthrow the Autarch with my unMasked Army. Years ago I decided the task was hopeless, but I kept going through the motions, because at least we provided hope and freedom for those who found their way to us. When we first rescued you, at your father’s urging, I thought only to use your nonmagical ability to craft believable Masks—a foolish scheme born of my own ignorance. I had no idea that by saving your life we would finally bring an end to the Autarch’s tyranny. Yet in eight scant months you have achieved the task I set for myself when I fled to the Secret City . . . and failed at so spectacularly through decades of wasted time.” She smiled sadly. “Mara, you are dangerous—dangerous now, and who knows how dangerous in the future? You’re not even sixteen years old, and you have single-handedly slain the two most ruthless and powerful Gifted individuals Aygrima has ever seen. You may think you could never turn into a new incarnation of the Lady of Pain and Fire or the Autarch, and I pray that you will not—but you cannot yet know that for certain. More to the point, neither can we.” Her smile faded. “After all, I never thought, when I was sixteen, I would turn into this.”
“Why not just kill me, then?” Mara said bitterly. She spread her hands wide. “I am helpless before you.”
“We are not monsters,” Catilla said. “We fought to make this land better and freer. Executing the one who gave us the opportunity to do so would be a poor way to begin the new era.”
“But you seem to think I’m a monster.”
“I think you could be, yes,” Catilla said. She looked at Mara steadily. “Don’t you?”
No, Mara wanted to say, but she could not. Because how many times had she expressed to herself the same fears Catilla was expressing to her now?
“Live,” Catilla said. “Live, and prove our mutual fears wrong. Go with Chell.”
Mara swallowed. “What if . . . what if I do . . . become evil? If the Mask frees me as you promi
se it will, what will prevent me from simply returning and taking my revenge?”
“Once you leave,” Catilla said, “the borders of Aygrima will be closed to you as they were against the Lady. She only broke through that defense with your help. I do not think you will find anyone Gifted as you are in the world outside our land.”
Anger still bubbled in Mara, trying to break free . . . and oddly, that helped convince her. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go with Chell, to Korellia. I’ll leave Aygrima.” Her throat closed and it was a moment before she could speak again. “Do you . . . do you know if my mother is still alive? I haven’t seen her since my Masking . . .”
Edrik shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mara,” he said softly. “I asked after her, but . . . the Autarch’s Watchers found her in the south and brought her back to the capital after your father’s death and your escape. She was executed, in accordance with his practice of killing the entire family of anyone convicted of treason.”
Executed. Mara’s anger rose again, but this time directed at the Autarch. She’d had her revenge. He was dead and the Masks gone forever. But so were her parents. So were so many others. The anger dropped away into the old familiar seething turmoil of grief and guilt that filled the cauldron of her thoughts. Tears pooled in her eyes and slipped down the iron of the Mask.
There’s nothing left for me in Aygrima, she thought. Catilla is right. I’m too dangerous. Unstable. Aygrima needs time to recover from the ravages of people like me. And I need time to recover myself . . . if that’s even possible.
She raised her head. “I will go into exile with Chell.”
“Good,” Catilla said. “But you need not go alone. There are two others waiting to join you. They’re outside. We’ll send them in.” She reached out a wizened hand and put it on Mara’s arm. “I am sorry, Mara,” she said softly. “I truly am sorry it had to come to this. But . . . thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Her eyes gleamed, and a single tear tracked down her cheek. She dashed it away with the back of her hand. “Damn old age,” she growled, and turned away. “Come along, Grandson.”