Jala's Mask

by Mike Grinti

  “Her name is Jala,” Azi said. “Jala. Your queen. The woman I love.”

  “She’s a corpse, and you’re throwing away your family, your throne, your life—”

  Azi grabbed his uncle by his shirt with both hands and pulled him close, ready to shake him. He was surprised how light the man was.

  “You know it’s true,” his uncle said. “You’re just too weak to admit it. A sentimental weakling. Jin would never have been so foolish. I don’t even know whose son you are.”

  He was holding him up off the ground, Azi realized. Since when had his uncle been shorter than him? Underneath his buttoned shirt the great Lord Inas was thin, wasted away with grief and wine and worry in place of food and life.

  Azi set him down gently. “You’ve been like a father to me, and you know it,” he said. “I can’t exile you, Uncle. I’m not as strong as Jala. But it’s easier to let someone you love go when you don’t know what it’s like to lose them.”

  His uncle clenched his fist, and for a moment Azi though the man would hit him. But instead Lord Inas just seemed to deflate. “So you would have me lose you because you can’t bear to admit she’s gone?” He sounded old. He was old, Azi realized.

  “If you don’t want anything to do with me when I return, that’s your choice, not mine,” Azi said. “I won’t just let her go. If there’s even a chance, if there’s something I can do . . .”

  Lord Inas spat in the sand at Azi’s feet, and then he, too, walked away.

  His uncle was right. He was throwing it all away. Only his love for Jala would be left.

  Jala, Askel, and the remaining Hashon man rode slowly back to the city. They each rode a horse of their own now. The Hashon man was in the lead. Jala’s reins were tied to his saddle and Askel’s tied to hers, and the remaining horses trailed behind them in a crooked line.

  The desert wind blew at their backs as they rode, scouring them with sand and tugging at their clothes. Jala thought it would tear the mask off her face, but the mask didn’t move.

  “What will you do when you get there?” Askel whispered behind her.

  “Find Natari, get Marjani, and get out of here,” Jala said. “We’ll burn the grayships if we can find them.” It was what she should say, but the words sounded hollow to her, like the things she cared about mattered less than they had only hours before.

  Escape, her people, even the vast expanse of desert felt small compared to that other thing slowly flooding her mind.

  There is a price for this, island queen, the voice whispered, as soft as sand, as old as the river. Lord Stone the deceiver, my old enemy, still holds the palace, but with the Anka the people will rally to us. This is why I brought you here.

  “What did you say?” Askel said. He was looking at her strangely.

  “Nothing,” Jala muttered, though she wasn’t sure. Her voice sounded so very far away.

  Who are you? she asked.

  Who are you? the voice of the river asked her in return.

  She was the voice of the river. The true leader of the Hashon, the river-people. On her banks the people lived, and on her banks they died. When the people came down from the far-off mountains, fleeing from the cold, cruel stone, the river had taken them in and nurtured them. But the stone was jealous and stole the heart of the people. The Anka. All their stories, all that made them who they were, the stone kept as a hostage. For a while, the river was silent.

  But now the Anka had returned to the river, and on the river it would stay. Lord Stone would fall, and Jala would once again take her place among the people.

  Jala shook her head. I’m not Lord Water, she told herself. But the thought had come so easily, so naturally, just like the tongue of the Hashon had come to her when she needed it. Was this sorcery, then? Or something else? She touched the mask but dared not take it off. She needed Lord Water’s voice if she was going to free her people.

  There is a price . . .

  There was always a price for sorcery, Askel had warned her. He’d tried to make others pay the price for him. Someone else could wear the mask. But who could she trust to free her people and burn the ships? Who was she willing to sacrifice in her place if the price for this sorcery was her life? There was no one else. She had to be the one. If she stopped now, this would all be for nothing.

  “You have to remember for me,” she said to Askel. “In case I forget. We have to free everyone. We have to burn any ships we can’t take. Then we have to flee this place.”

  “My queen? What are you talking about?”

  “If I forget myself, you have to remind me. Promise me.”

  “Is it the mask, my queen? Is that what worries you? Let me wear it for you.” He sounded hungry. “I am a sorcerer, my queen. Let me use my skills to help you.”

  “Promise me!” Jala said, and the power of the river was in her voice again.

  Askel reared back, his eyes wide. “I promise,” he said. Then, after a long while, he spoke again. “Who are you?”

  Jala faced Askel. “I am Lord Water.”

  Wearing the mask, Jala walked through the city’s streets with the Anka held high. Her followers—Lord Water’s followers—surrounded her to protect her from those wearing the paper masks. “Stone feels nothing for you,” her followers called to people they passed. “The river brings us life. The river brings us the Anka.”

  It was like living a dream. She walked and talked, but it was like she watched herself from some small part of her mind. Thoughts and feelings washed over her, engulfed her, and even though a part of her knew they were not her own, she felt and thought them all the same.

  A dream, but a dream that was more real than anything she’d felt before. She could lose herself in this. She could become this.

  People filled the streets. A man ran past wearing one of the fire masks, a broken chair in his hands. He threw it into the nearest window, shattering the glass. A woman ran up behind him and flung a flaming bottle of oil through the broken window panes. Within moments, flames had begun to engulf the building.

  Jala kept walking. The glass from bottles and broken windows crunched under her feet.

  More fires lit the sky, and the graffiti flames that marred the city’s walls seemed to shimmer in the orange glow, as if they, too, might burn at any moment. Lord Stone had caused this, she knew. He’d sacrificed too many people in his drive for revenge, left too many broken families and grieving friends. Hurt, anger, and desperation had always been the kindling Lord Fire used to twist the people to his madness. He whispered to them until they put on the fire masks and let the fire carry them.

  Lord Fire had been an unknowing ally to her, for a while, but now she needed the people to return to her. “You have been deceived,” she called out. Her voice echoed off mud brick walls and limestone, her voice was carried on the wind and the angry waters of the Hashana. “It was Lord Stone who stole the Anka from you, Lord Stone who sacrificed your brothers and sisters, your sons and daughters. Lord Fire would have you burn the city in your grief, but the water can quench even the strongest flames. Follow me, and let your madness wash away.”

  Her words brought hope, and people looked at her with eyes clear of madness, and they saw the Anka. They believed in her, and with their belief her power grew. This was her city. These were her people. Soon even Lord Fire began to lose his hold on them, and those who were not completely lost pulled off their masks. They cried out as they began to feel the burns on their faces and ran to the river, seeking solace from their pain in its cool water.

  Some rose again to follow her. Some remained on the bank, crying fitfully. Some drowned rather than feel the burns again, and their sacrifice gave her strength. For an hour, for two hours she walked through the city, collecting the people who were not yet too burned to follow her.

  “Lord Stone has done this to you. Lord Stone will break,” she cried, and the people cheered for her. A madness filled them still, Jala thought from the small place in her mind, but not the kind that burned.
/>   Palace guards stood to block her path, but when they saw her and saw the Anka, they lowered their weapons and stepped aside.

  Jala heard the voices of the other masked lords as she walked through the palace, carried on the waters of the Hashana that flowed through the walls and beneath their feet.

  “He is here,” said Lord Near, the Close Seer. “He carries the Anka.”

  She was remembering things she’d never known. The names of the masked Hashon lords, their voices and their domains. She tried to tell herself it was Lord Water’s knowledge filling her head, but she felt as if she had always known these lords and this place.

  “He wears down the mountain,” said Lord Far, the Distant Seer. “He puts out the flame.”

  She’d known they would see her. But it didn’t matter. Let Lord Stone see her coming now that it was too late.

  “The red poison spreads far and wide, and the living ships no longer hear their heartsong,” said Lord Empty-Face, the Never Seer, who only saw things that had not happened yet and might not happen ever. “The great fire stirs in its sleep, awakened by the silence, and the islands burn. The leviathan lifts his bulk, and the god-waves break on stone and shore. The king takes a new queen, and the old burns in the desert.”

  Lord Never Seer’s words were about the islands, about her home. What if something terrible was going to happen? What if it had already happened? What did he mean about the king and a new queen? But the islands were far away, and small. She didn’t need them now that she had the Anka. Jala held it out before her, and though she had brought only a few of her followers with her, the palace guards let her pass. She was Lord Water. They saw her and they believed. Only the fire and Lord Stone would dare touch her now. But water had put out the fire, and water would wear down the stone.

  When she reached the secret room where the seven Hashon lords met, she waved a hand, motioning her people to wait. She went in alone.

  The room was lit only by a single lamp, with seven shadowed alcoves where the masks were sometimes kept when their vessels succumbed to the weaknesses of living flesh. Lord Stone stood behind the lamp, waiting for her. The three Seers stood on either side of him, Near and Far on his left, Empty-Face on his right.

  “You choose a strange vessel,” Lord Stone said softly.

  Jala laughed. “The river does not always run straight. The fire almost took me and the Anka, but the fates are, as always, on my side.”

  “This isn’t fate,” Lord Stone said. “Your puppets stole the Anka. You woke the fire. You almost destroyed the Anka, the people, and yourself.”

  “That’s not the story the people will tell,” she said softly. “I didn’t steal the Anka but brought it back to its rightful place. I will bring healing where you brought only death and flames. Your people have abandoned you.”

  She reached over the lamp and grabbed Lord Stone’s mask with both hands. She pulled. It was like trying to break a boulder with her bare hand. Like trying to pull up the root of the mountain. But even the largest boulder can be moved by flowing water, even the deepest mountain roots eaten away by hidden lakes and streams. Cracks formed on the mask’s surface. Lord Stone grasped her wrists, but there was no holding on to water. The man behind the mask screamed.

  Slowly, slowly the mask came free. The man fell to the floor, sobbing and gasping for breath. The air around the mask hummed.

  “Go back to your mountain,” she whispered. “Flee back to your holy city. I will tend to the heart of the people.”

  Jala took the mask in both hands and broke it with a resounding crack! Splinters rained down on the stone floor at her feet. The broken man touched what was left of his mask, of his god, and sobbed.

  Jala reached out and drew a knife from the belt of a nearby soldier. She knelt beside the man and held the knife out to him. “You may follow him, if you think he’ll have you.”

  Tears streamed down the man’s face, and he shut his eyes. With a trembling hand he took the knife and cut his own throat.

  It started as a single shout when a Kayet sailor found the guards in the cellar bleeding and unconscious, and from there the commotion spread through the entire manor and out into the nearby villages.

  Lord Mosi had escaped.

  From his window, Azi could see lamps and torches bobbing in the distance as they searched the beach, the forest, and the villages for signs of Jala’s father.

  Azi belted on his sword and knife, then reached up and pulled the King’s Earring out of his ear. He set it down on the table and walked out without looking back. He’d had everything ready for a few days now. All he’d needed was the right time to slip away, and this distraction was too good an opportunity to pass up. By the time his uncle realized he was gone, they’d be too far away for any other ship to catch them.

  Nobody paid much attention to him as he made his way through the manor and out onto the beach. The grayships were lined up along the shore. The ship he meant to take was at the far end, as far away from the bonfires and merriment that accompanied a new raiding season as possible.

  Azi looked around and spotted Captain Darri. He touched the woman’s shoulder then leaned in to whisper. “We’re going. Gather your sailors.”

  It wouldn’t take long. They were only taking ten sailors, just enough to get Azi to the Constant City. The trade fleets would be there. He’d borrow one of the traders to translate for him. Surely there was some news of Jala. Any news. He had to know for sure. After that . . . well, after that he’d figure out what to do.

  For her, Uncle, I’d throw away not just a throne but my life. It’s no less than she’s done for me.

  Azi reached Darri’s ship and climbed aboard, landing on the deck with a dull thud. He knew everything was ready, but he couldn’t help checking anyway, just to have something to do. He was too anxious to just sit.

  Something moved on the deck. He squinted, trying to make his eyes readjust to the darkness, when the sharp point of a knife dug into his back and an arm snaked around his neck. “Make a noise and you die,” someone whispered in his ear.

  Four men rose from the shadows. “Dry hells. What do we do with him?” one of them hissed.

  “Just give him a tap on the head and dump him in the brush,” another said.

  “It’s too risky. We need to push off before someone realizes what’s going on.”

  “Greetings, my king,” the fourth one said, coming closer. He was a thin man, his hair unkempt and his eyes wild in the moonlight. But Azi recognized the voice. It was Lord Mosi. “You know, when my friends here freed me, I’d wanted to find you and your uncle. They convinced me it wouldn’t be wise. I let myself be content simply to take this ship, so conveniently placed away from all those lights. But it looks like I’ll be able to kill you after all. How nice for me.”

  The other men glanced at each other. “My lord, we don’t want any killing. And this is the king. Freeing you is one thing, but killing a king is war.”

  “Don’t think of it as killing a king,” Lord Mosi said. “Think of it as killing the man who stole my daughter from me. Who made her betray her own father, her own family, and then threw her away to die on the mainland.” He reached out and took the knife, then held it against Azi’s throat.

  “Wait,” Azi tried to say, but the moment he opened his mouth he felt the blade bite into his skin.

  “Quietly, my king,” Lord Mosi whispered. “Speak your last words quietly, so I don’t have to interrupt them.”

  “As if I could make Jala do anything,” Azi said. “She gave you the choice to back down, and you spat in her face. You made her choose between being herself and being nothing but your mouthpiece. What was she supposed to do?”

  “She was supposed to choose to be my daughter,” Lord Mosi growled. “She was supposed to choose her family.”

  “You could have chosen your family,” Azi said softly. “And you made the same choice she did.”

  Lord Mosi glared at him, then shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. She turned out s
tronger than I thought. You, on the other hand . . .”

  Azi’s heart raced. Where was Darri? He had to buy some time. “Fight me,” he said. “Kill me honorably, in the wind-dance, like a man instead of a murderer.”

  Lord Mosi stared at him. At any moment Azi expected to feel the knife cut out his throat. But Mosi smiled. “I accept, my king. But know that if you make a single sound, my men will kill you.”

  Azi nodded slowly. Lord Mosi pulled the knife away from his throat, and the man behind Azi stepped back into the shadows.

  “Give us a beat, my friends.”

  The men glanced at each other. Then one of them began to slap the bulwark lightly with the palm of his hands. The rest did likewise.

  “It’s been a long time since I danced the wind-dance to the death,” Lord Mosi said as he took off his robe and jumped over the side of the ship, landing lightly and immediately moving to the soft beat.

  Azi took off his sword and knife and held it out for the man behind him to take, then stripped down as well. In the days before steel from the mainland became a man’s weapon, nobles settled their scores inside a ring of chalk or sand. But that was a long time ago. When could Mosi have possibly fought to the death?

  As he climbed down, he wondered if he could make it if he ran. The man with the knife jumped down after him and stood tensely, tossing the knife from one hand to the other. How well could he throw that knife? Just stall him until Darri gets here. It’s the only way you’ll be able to find Jala again.

  He dropped his center down and began to let the rhythm move his arms and legs. They circled one another. He could only see Lord Mosi as a moonlit outline, arms moving back and forth, feet sliding across the sand.

  Then Lord Mosi jumped and kicked. Azi flung himself back, then spun into a kick, but Mosi had already moved aside. Another kick, another dodge. The man was too fast. His hard, wiry muscles were taut, and his face was lit up with bloodlust. He looked ten years younger, and far more dangerous. When they’d danced together the night he met Jala, it had been performance, but this was something else entirely. Lord Mosi danced closer to him, almost seeming to mock him. Then Azi saw an opening. He spun and kicked, expecting his foot to connect with the side of Mosi’s head. Instead, his foot swished through empty air, and Mosi’s foot caught him in his calf.