The innkeeper hung before them in midair, suspended by an invisible web of power. They could hear crackling and a tumult as if a chorus of spirits encircled them, shouting in their wrath. But none of this fazed the maskmaker as he continued his chant, now nearly shouting it over the din of the spirits, and marched straight at Thora, the Terror, who seemed to have grown to the height of the tallest of men. Her arms extended towards the poor man dangling in the middle of the room, and he whimpered as the force of her will squeezed his body. But she had not yet noticed the newcomers.
The maskmaker shouted a final word and lunged for the Terror, clamping one hand firmly on the face of her mask. She screamed and struck him with her already outstretched arm, sending him flying through the air, and he hit the wall with a sickening thud. The innkeeper fell as well and his wailing wife ran forward, lifting his head and cradling it in her lap as she moaned.
The Terror, Thora, the servant of the innkeeper and his wife, held her mask and shouted as if in agony. But her wail turned to laughter, and Elu looked as she lowered her hands from her mask, revealing a burn mark in the shape of the maskmaker’s hand across its left cheek.
The mark began to fade.
She laughed again and approached Elu, but moved her legs slowly as if they carried great weight. She breathed heavily as she addressed him.
“I’ll repay you for this, brother. I will come for you. They call me the Terror, but that name won’t even begin to do it justice. And it is justice I will bring.”
Elu hardly recognized the voice. Or the eyes. Only the ragged black pit in the middle of her face, barely visible through her mask’s large eyeholes, told him who bore the mask. He stared at it in revulsion, locked in her gaze.
She felt his thoughts. He tried to hide the disgust from his mind, but it was too late. The Terror stretched out her arm to Elu, her eyes flashed, and his mask burned, white hot. He screamed, attempting to rip the mask from his face before it could damage him.
He could hear the sizzle. The sound burned his ears as the mask had burned his face. His hands cradled his head and he fell to his knees, moaning.
She vanished. The tumultuous chorus of spirits ceased. The awful wind that Elu had not even noticed calmed as well.
Elu, in great pain but fearful for his master, crawled over to the man and bent close over him. The man still breathed, but the breath caught and rasped against his throat. He bled from the ears and the nose. Elu cleaned what he could and fretted over what to do next, but a firm hand gripped his shoulder and thrust him to the side.
The healer knelt next to the master, mumbling her healing chants as she began feeling his chest and neck.
“Help me lift him to my home!” she shouted.
Elu and several others who had gathered lifted the maskmaker onto a table and carried it down the dirt pathway to the healer’s hut, placing it in the center of the room. The woman hunched over the man, administering all manner of aromatic herbs and salves. Her chanting never ceased and the maskmaker’s groans grew less urgent. Elu took heart.
“Will he be healed? Will he live?”
The healer did not speak.
“Healer? Will he live?”
She looked up, still facing away from him. “I think not, my child.”
“But, why? His bleeding has stopped. He moans less painfully now …”
“He moans less because his life ebbs. Some power works at odds to mine. My healing arts are useless. I fear he will fade, and go to that other world.” She eyed Elu with pity. “You need healing yourself. Immerse your face in the creek and hold it there awhile. Then rub this on it,” she said, handing him a salve. “Then come back to me and I will do what I can for you.”
Elu did as she asked but hastened through the steps, wanting nothing more than to be by his master’s side. He kept a silent vigil over the maskmaker, who never woke. For two days Elu would not leave his side, but his father, the teacher, finally persuaded him to come to his mother’s house and rest.
On the third night, the maskmaker passed out of the world and flew to that other world. The teacher, the presbyter, and the weatherweaver gathered in the healer’s hut and removed his mask, revealing his old, grizzled face, scarred with wounds old and new.
The mask was placed in the care of the presbyter who would choose the next maskmaker, most likely one of his former apprentices. Elu protested, saying that as the man’s current apprentice he was entitled to it, but the teacher forbade it saying the people of the town would not accept him as the maskmaker. His previous dishonor was still fresh on their minds, and news of his latest dishonor now crept among the people like fire among smoldering coals.
“But father, I was his apprentice! Who else will take his place?”
The teacher stood in the doorway to the house, unmoving, as if guarding his home against an evil that would enter. “Old Goshorn had other apprentices. One of them will be called back. The people will never accept you—all they see when they look at you is one who dishonors his role and his mask and therefore scoffs at the ancients and destiny and the gods themselves.”
“At least give me your adventurer’s mask so that I may leave this town at last and find my own place in the world.”
The teacher shook his head. “Nay, son. That mask is mine until I go to that other world myself.”
“Then may you go there soon!” shouted Elu, and he stormed from the doorway of his mother’s house. He wandered the streets and the pathways, not knowing where to turn. The people eyed him suspiciously, for the word had spread among them of his evil deed in taking the blacksmith’s wild, damaged daughter to the forbidden tombs and unleashing the terror that had rested there, undisturbed for a thousand years or more.
He found himself at the door to his old master’s house and he entered, wishing against all that he knew to be real that the old man would grunt a cantankerous greeting at him from his workbench and order him to scrub the floors or empty his chamber pot.
He fingered the tools and the scraps of wood that littered the workbench. He looked at the mask his master had been working on when Elu unleashed the Terror.
An adventurer’s mask. Jeweled, bold, and with a vaguely wild and foreign feel to it. It was not quite like his father’s—for few masks look exactly the same, depending on the spirits that inhabit it and on the art and whims of the maker—but it was finished and Elu knew it was his.
The maskmaker had made it for him. He knew it by looking into its eyes. Its substance.
One task remained.
He grabbed it and hurried to the stream coursing through the outskirts of Gheb. He dipped it in once, removing any lingering foul and idle spirit, and strapped it to his face, placing his apprentice’s mask in his satchel. He raised his eyes to the world and saw it afresh. He saw it as he did long ago—with the wild and determined eyes of the teacher’s son who wandered unconstrained across all that country when he was a small boy.
Practicalities sprang to mind and he reentered the hut, scooping up the master’s coins into his satchel and selecting several of the finer and necessary maskmaking tools he might need.
Leaving the hut for the last time he looked east, the spirits of the mask indicating it to be a worthy direction to walk, and he left the town of Gheb, only looking back once while rounding the crest of the first hill, feeling both excitement and heaviness as he descended into twilight.
Chapter VI
Ri Illiath
ELU WALKED EAST FOR WHAT he deemed many weeks, and the midsummer fruit sustained him, along with what fish he could spear in the many streams issuing from the foothills of the northern mountains. The range soon bent away farther to the north and before him spread a vast coastal plain. Tiring of fruit and fish, he set his sights on a town far off in the distance at the confluence of two rivers and not ten leagues from the Lacian Sea—the vast ocean he had heard his father mention in his teachings to the people of Gheb.
On the outskirts of the town, a young boy told him its name: Ri Illiath. T
he scrawny youth sat perched on a rock spearing fish. He was brown, darker than the people at the feet of the mountains in the country around Gheb, and his child’s mask appeared wild, but friendly.
The people of the town talked with a foreign lilt to their voice, as if they spoke in song, but Elu understood them well enough and he asked the men in the inn if there was a maskmaker in Ri Illiath that might require an apprentice. A squat, hairy man wearing a fisherman’s mask replied, saying that due to the intransigence of the local magistrate the town had no maskmaker, the previous one having died several years ago and the magistrate, taken heavily to drink, had not seen fit to call for another.
When Elu found the magistrate and offered his limited expertise at maskmaking, the man heartily agreed, directing him to the old shack previously inhabited by the former maskmaker. He left the magistrate heartened, but as he approached the shack it became apparent to him that it was not as deserted as the magistrate thought, for a man and his wife greeted him at the door as he approached.
“Hail, stranger,” said the man.
“Hail. Is this not the old maskmaker’s house? The magistrate told me I should stay here.”
“It is. But it seems we have a problem. First, however, allow me to introduce myself. I am Derry, a wizard by profession, and this is my wife, Londu.”
“Greetings. I am Elu,” he said, bowing low to Londu as Derry presented her. “But you mentioned a problem, sir?”
“Yes. It seems that the magistrate has put us in a difficult situation, for not one year ago at the height of the festival of midsummer, he gave me this house for my place of residence when I offered to serve him and his town by my art.”
“Did he?” said Elu, and he laughed, for in spite of this new misfortune Derry had a kind disposition and it pleased Elu to finally have someone near his age to talk to, for the wizard looked nearly as young as Elu himself.
He focused on the young man’s mask—clearly a mask of power, for Elu could nearly see the air surrounding the frame crackle with spirits and fire, but without his own apprentice’s mask on he had a much more difficult time understanding the spirits within. Plainly, the mask was made for Derry since it looked new. Pristine. It was constructed of metal, wood, and glass, with leather straps and set with a single ruby in the brow, signifying to Elu that the wizard’s specialty was in the magic of fire and life.
And it showed in his eyes. Derry smiled kindly at Elu as he invited him into the house, but his eyes shone as brightly as fire—not red, but active and alive, friendly but with smoldering intensity. He motioned for Elu to sit.
“Come now, and let us discuss our problem. It seems—“
Elu interrupted, “It seems that we have no problem, friend. The magistrate made a mistake, clear enough. And since he promised you the house first and I am but a wanderer, I will move on and find another place to settle.”
Derry stroked his mask. “We will not accept that. No, you must stay here with us. We insist. Look, there is an extra bed in the second room that we have no use for. There is space enough for all of us. Londu agrees, do you not, apple?”
The young woman nodded, “Of course!” Her witch’s mask obscured the view, but Elu could just make out a blush on her cheeks as she shyly looked down.
Elu studied her mask. It seemed to be a living thing, made of stone and earth with lichens and mosses sprouting in patches—mostly green in color but subtly changing as the conversation progressed—and Elu guessed that their spirits were influenced by her mood and altered their color accordingly. For now they blazed a more vivid green with patches of fiery orange lichen.
“But—I should be such a burden and an imposition. You would soon tire of me. It is not right for a man to live with another man and his wife as if their child and yet fully grown.”
“It is good then that you are not fully grown.” Derry nudged Londu with his elbow. “Look, wife, Elu means for us to adopt him. You shall have a child after all!”
She laughed, and Elu, hearing their tone and laughter as mockery, nearly stood to leave. But Derry leaned forward and placed a hand on his shoulder. Elu looked into his eyes, and though still masked as the adventurer he saw the honesty written there as they burned brightly at him, and coupled with the wide smile they told him he had nothing to fear.
“No, we insist. Please stay with us—as our friend. You can always change your mind later if we prove to be burdensome housemates, and we shall in that case assist you in finding your own place. But for now, be at ease. Tell us of yourself. Wife, have we any refreshment?”
Londu offered Elu a carrot, a hunk of bread and some goat’s milk which he devoured rather quickly, having eaten nothing but fruit and fish for weeks, and scant amounts at that. A long tale of his journey and childhood followed, though he left out any mention of Thora and her mask. He explained that he had an interest in masks, having been an apprentice for some time to an accomplished master maskmaker, and had a desire to establish himself in the profession in some new town away from the country of his youth.
“Do you think that I will be welcome here?”
Derry shrugged. “I should think so. Londu and I come here from the north. From Varnor, Tilith fiefdom, and we were welcomed here quite warmly.”
Londu cleared her throat. “And what of Karna, husband?”
“The magistrate invited Elu to set up his trade here. He should have no problem with Karna,” said Derry.
“Who is Karna?”
“A squirrelly pretender that calls himself a maskmaker. Somehow, he came to possess the old maskmaker’s mask after he died, and told the people to come to him for any masks they required. Some do, but many see him as the charlatan he is. I’m not sure why the magistrate allows it to continue.” Derry refreshed Elu’s milk from the basin on the floor, and he accepted it gratefully. The setting sun shone in through the open door and appeared to light Derry’s ruby afire.
“I shall have to go see him. It is unwise to usurp a mask. Bad things follow …” he trailed off, the shadow of the Terror still lurking in his thoughts. He wondered if it would find him here. Can the Terror read his thoughts? She spoke to him as if she knew him for ages. Elu imagined himself sleeping in the night with a looming shadow close at his side, reaching for his mask, causing it to flare and burn into his flesh. He shook his head.
“Tomorrow I shall introduce you to some people of the town. There are many who will rejoice at having a proper maskmaker here again. You will soon have more work than you know what to do with,” Derry said, reassuringly. “The sky darkens. Let us show you around before we retire.”
Derry rose to his feet and helped Londu get up, and escorted Elu out of the tiny house, showing him the small garden, the latrine, the shallow creek that ran down to the sea some five leagues distant. The air smelled oddly refreshing with an unknown aroma, and Elu later came to adore the salty ocean air infused with seaweed and fish.
Elu looked around at the landscape, regarding the now distant mountains to the northwest, the grey sea to the east, the laughing stream trickling pleasantly between their house and the next, about a hundred paces off. He sighed contentedly, happy with his new discovery, fingering the chin of his adventurer’s mask and feeling gratitude to its spirits for leading him here.
He reached in his satchel to retrieve the apprentice’s mask, knowing that his journey was over for now and that he must settle into the patterns of a maskmaker. His finger brushed against the strange mask he had taken in haste from the barrows, the companion to the Terror. He nearly shuddered as he touched it, feeling the distinct impression and confirmation that it was not made for him. Its spirits felt foreign.
Did all masks of legend feel this way? Would he be cursed if he placed this on his face, suffering a similar fate to Thora? He feared that if she ever found him, he might be forced to wear it, and he resolved there and then to do so only at the utmost need.
What evil might he unleash then, he wondered.
The day came and he met many peopl
e of Ri Illiath, and as Derry said, all seemed pleased that a maskmaker had come to them at last. Many townspeople asked how soon he could begin his crafting and offered to help him procure his first stock of needed materials, which he gladly accepted. Petch, a kind baker, offered him bread for a year if he could make his apprentices new masks.
“The ones that Karna made for me seem empty. Not cursed—just empty—and all that my apprentices make for me comes to naught! The bread won’t rise for them. The salt either has no savor when they use it, or else it has too much! I am desperate—you must help me. You will, won’t you? Splendid!”
For many months Elu labored at a feverish pace, keeping up with the throng of townspeople asking for masks. It seemed to him that he made fifty child masks at least, and almost that many apprentice masks for a variety of trades. The barman needed his mask repaired, as did the healer, whose mask, though strictly not a mask of power, drained Elu for all the labor and art and chant it required of him, for he had never made a healer’s mask and had to teach himself. But the spirits within it and his own mask showed him the way, bringing the required knowledge to his remembrance, the skill to his hand and the chant to his lips.
In fact, Elu found that his mask brought him not only the required skill, but combined with his own adventurous spirit, inspiration as well. As he did before with the pottery he explored new forms. To the barman’s mask he added a black stone in the brow. The stone spoke to him of empathy and understanding, and besides, it looked rather striking against the stark wood and leather of the mask. The barman caught him in the street weeks later.
“I do say this mask is not quite the same since you mended it. Nay, it seems better! When I listen to my patrons recount their sorrows it seems I have ears for it, yes and words too—words that soothe. And words that encourage them to drink more, of course. Ha!”
Elu found peace and contentment for the first time in his life living in Ri Illiath, with real friends now rather than little brothers following him or other boys sneering at him.
FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy Page 267