by Colt, K. J.
“Is that so? But you have your own mask of power, do you not? Does it not suffice? You crave more? Is that not itself against the natural order? You should be content with what the gods have given you and not lust for more.”
He fell silent. Well, at least he was an honest hunter. “Perhaps, wyvern. Your point is taken.”
She snorted. Smoke drifted from her nostrils as she scanned the tree line. “So you will leave, then?”
“No. I reckon I shall not.”
As soon as the words fell from his unseen lips, a searing pain pierced her side, and looking down she saw a tiny wooden shaft protruding from her thick hide. How it had penetrated she knew not, but she instantly knew that its tip was coated in some foul, unnatural substance, for her vision began to swim and her wings sink low.
She screamed. Fire blasted from her throat. She had to flee, she knew, before her consciousness fled.
But escape was impossible. She could not leave the child behind, left to the whims of the hunter. Sael’s destiny was something higher than to be a slave, she was sure.
With great effort she beat her wings, letting out a cry as the poison wrenched her muscles and sinews. Her eyes searched the brush and trees surrounding the clearing, but the child, and the shadow, were both well hidden.
“Sael!”
She risked crying her name, hoping the child would make her presence known. It worked. A small rustle in a bush caught her eye, far up the hill, and even as she saw the decorated leather cloak she could hear the child’s heart. Tarsha beat her wings and darted towards the thicket, slowing only to allow the child to grasp on to one of her legs.
The poison was surging through her blood, corrupting her vision and strength. She had only minutes to live, she supposed. But that was time enough. It had to be enough.
Sluggishly, painfully, she lifted her wings and pushed her way through the ever-thickening air into the sky, struggling to reach a height where the air currents could help keep her aloft.
She risked a look behind her, and there, finally, standing in the middle of the clearing, she saw him. The hunter. The shadow. His mask like a nebulous cloud of veiled darkness covering his gaunt face. He looked up at her and their eyes met, just for a moment. He smiled, and bowed in respect. His eyes, and his meaning, were clear: he respected her power and majesty, but he would find her. He would not stop until he had his trophy.
She screamed fire, and sluggishly beat her leaden wings until, finally, after what seemed an age of the world, she alighted in the high valley just under the tallest peaks of the Timorous Mountains.
And she collapsed, the child calling her name as she sunk into darkness.
I was betrothed once. Promised to the youngest son of the village cobbler, himself a lecherous drunken man. My mother was dead, and my father saw it as a gift from the gods that anyone would desire me, much less agree to take me as a wife for their child. The price paid was a pittance, but my father, the simple village herder, accepted it gladly. I had not even seen my twelfth season when the silver coins dropped into his greedy hands and the scroll signed. My father never learned letters, so he signed the marriage document with an ornate drawing of a goat’s head—he may not have been able to write, but his drawings were strikingly beautiful, a marked contrast to his greedy, lazy soul. The spirits of his mask had always hated me, too, ever since his wife had died bearing me. It was to be another year before the boy’s mother would lead me off to him. But, thank the gods, it was not to be.
When Tarsha awoke, she was not sure if she awoke to a dream or to life. But the stiff pain in her joints confirmed it. She was alive. How, she knew not. At a glance, she saw that whatever shaft had pierced her side was gone, replaced by a ragged cloth rag, black with blood.
Sael sat crouched nearby, watching her. Tarsha groaned, and tried to move. Her limbs still felt thick and heavy, as if infused with poison. But her head was clear. The venom’s effect was beginning to fade.
“How long?” Tarsha’s tongue was sluggish.
“A day,” replied Sael.
A whole day. Time in which the shadow approached, hunting her, coming for his trophy. For a moment, she considered taking the child to some city far away, leaving her with a kindly elderly couple, perhaps inn-keepers, or merchants. One does not spurn the gift of a wyvern, and the child might be well taken care of. And then Tarsha could return and submit, giving up her mask as a trophy and facing either death or banishment.
But the thought only lingered for a moment, replaced with a burning desire for survival. For justice.
She peered into the girl-child’s mask, at the greens and the blacks of the coloring the child had applied. She searched for the spirits within, unable to find them at first, but soon hearing their still voices. How silent they were! Like shadows themselves, even more inscrutable than the shadow mask that pursued her. The girl-child mask’s spirits were far more potent than Tarsha had given them credit. They were spirits of survival.
“Will we stay here, Tarsha?”
She shook her head, slowly, since the lingering poison made her vision swim if she moved too suddenly. “I don’t know, child. I have not the strength to flee further. But you are right, we cannot stay here.”
Sael nodded solemnly.
For hours Tarsha lay prone, near the murmuring brook that tumbled from the still-snowy peak just above them. Finally, the strength returned enough for her to walk, and they busied themselves restoring their summer home to a livable condition. The summer hut was even smaller than the winter home far below, but the air was cleaner, the water cooler, and the location safer.
But he was coming. She could feel it. The spirits of his mask had tasted her blood, and now they called to hers.
“Child, when he comes, you must run. Run up the pass. Go down the other side of the mountains. There is a town yonder. Rainwood, it is called. Find a home there. Look for a kind woman to take you in. You have skills to offer her that will earn you your keep, and the town is poor enough that you should have no trouble finding a house that needs an extra pair of hands.”
Sael nodded again, less solemnly. She seemed to know, to understand that their time together as protector and ward was coming to an end. That she needed to move on. The wyvern had given her all she could, and now the child must learn to survive on its own.
The girl sat near the entrance to the hut, a wooden shaft clutched in her small hand. Her knuckles turned white as she squeezed, and the shaft snapped in half.
It was the dart that had pierced Tarsha’s side. The tip, made of some unnatural and powerful metal, was stained black with the wyvern’s dried blood, and, presumably, a trace of the poison that had nearly finished her.
“Sleep now, child. It is late.”
The moon arched high above the peak to the east when the girl’s eyes finally closed, fast asleep.
And an hour later, Tarsha heard a twig break, far down the mountainside.
He was close. It wouldn’t be long now.
She circled me three times before alighting on a hillock nearby, and when I looked again the wyvern had gone, replaced by a fierce young woman. At first I thought she was my mother, returned from the ground and the gods with glory in her wings, coming to save her beloved child from a hopeless future of toil and rod, but closer inspection revealed a wild stranger, her hair spiraling into thick locks that splayed out like fire from her golden mask. Her beautiful, wondrous mask, which covered only her eyes and temple, leaving her mouth free to dispense wisdom and fire. It was a wyvern, and she held in her hands a similar mask, holding it out towards me. The gods had spoken. My destiny decided.
The half-moon was settling over the eastern mountains when the rustling bushes awoke her. The shadow had arrived. The hunter was ready to claim his trophy.
She shook the girl. “It is time, child. You must run.”
Sael blinked a few times, and nodded her understanding. She pulled on the needle-and-branch-wreathed cloak and crept out the doorway, but a moment later she ran
back to Tarsha, holding her close.
“Thank you, Tarsha. Thank you.”
She held the child, embracing her, even while wincing at the sharp pain in her side. Before long, the child was off, scurrying away into the brush, aiming for the saddle between the two tall peaks that loomed over them as sentinels. Soon, she’d be gone forever. And safe. Sael, masked and cloaked, disappeared like a shadow. Even her heart was gone. Even the very spirits of her mask hid themselves from view.
Another twig broke nearby. She heard his heart. It quickened in anticipation of the hunt.
She’d give him a hunt. She’d give him the fight of his life. With a roar she burst out the door of the hut, breaking one of the wooden beams as her form swelled, filling out into the fearsome body of the wyvern. Her mask blazed with fire. Her wings pumped the air. She soared.
“I see you,” he said.
“I don’t need to see you,” she croaked through dragon teeth. With a gust of fire, she breathed, scorching a path of charred earth and bush. Again and again she swept the earth, igniting swath after swath, creating a cage of fire to trap her quarry, her would-be hunter.
When all was ablaze, she hovered, catching her breath, beating her wings, scanning the bleak, charred landscape for any hint of movement. For a body. For a shadow.
But nothing was out of place. The fire cast no shadow. At least, not his.
“You cannot contest me, beast. You are an abomination of nature. An aberration. And I am the shadow. Unnatural things must needs fall into the shadows, and be lost. Erased. Yes, I will erase you, beast. The king commands it. Nature herself commands it.” The shadow paused. His voice seemed to come from all around her, yet from nowhere. “Submit to me with honor, and I may even spare your life, merely taking your abominable mask as my trophy and proof to the king that I have vanquished you.”
Perhaps he was right. She had hunted. Against the natural order. Wyverns were fire and wings and justice, but their justice was only meted out to those who chose to test themselves.
A shaft sailed towards her chest, lancing right through a wall of fire that consumed a stand of bushes, and at the last moment she pounded the air with her wings and stretched out of the way. Following the path back to its source she blasted the bare patch of ground with cleansing fire.
The voice called out again, but from the opposite direction. “Submit, beast. Do not make me request again, or I will withdraw my offer of mercy.”
She panted. Fatigue gripped her. The wound in her side pulsed with searing pain. Her draeconis lungs heaved. She knew she was bested; there was no chance for victory against this foe. How does one hunt a hunter one cannot see?
The ground trembled as she alighted. “Very well, hunter. I accept your offer. Here is my mask. Leave me be.”
Her eyes darted all around the flaming forest, searching for the shadow, but still he hid. But now she could hear the spirits of his mask.
They were murderous. He was not only a cunning hunter, he was also a liar. One of the mask’s spirits, a marksman, readied the last spear. The one that would pierce her draeconis heart and still the fire.
And suddenly, he was there, standing not ten paces away. He screamed. The spirits howled. She could see him. She could see them, wrapping themselves around the nebulous mask like wispy black fog.
He looked down. A shaft was embedded in his foot. One of his own shafts.
Its end was broken.
He spun around, searching for who had thrust it into his foot, but he was alone, surrounded only by fire and ruin. And seeing her chance, Tarsha leaped forward, bathing him in cleansing fire. He howled all the louder, covering his melting flesh with impotent hands and running for the trees.
But the trees would not save him. They burned with their own fire. Soon, his flesh and breath expended, he fell. The hunter fallen. The trophy safe.
Tarsha collapsed to the earth, exhausted and spent. But she still had strength to speak. “Child, my child, why did you linger here?”
A voice, just inches from her head, answered. “Because you saved me, Tarsha. And so I must save you.”
Tarsha searched all around her, scanning the ground and the flame and the few unburnt bushes. She couldn’t even hear the child’s heart. The girl-child mask spirits were as silent as shadows.
“Where are you, child?”
“Right here,” said the voice.
She saw her, finally. Standing in plain sight, near one of the few bushes left. She was one of the bushes. The leather cloak with its needles and branches fell from her shoulders and the child rushed forward to clutch onto one of Tarsha’s vast legs.
And did not let go for a long, long while.
I considered her my child, though I was only of an age to be her sister. I considered her mine even while the farmer still lived. Even as the potter’s son lay dead at my feet and I realized the boy was just bait. Even as the potter himself attacked me, and I saw into his soul. His history was laid bare to me. I read the story of his life, and through him, his brother. The lecherous farmer. The one who owned Sael, and slowly destroyed her. Destroyed my child. Even then, seeing her suffering from afar, like a tavern-whispered tale or a dream remembered as story, the rage and the justice swelled within me. After I slew the potter, I stalked the farmer. I hunted him. I lay in wait. And when he plowed his field I nourished the soil with his unholy blood, took my child, and ran. The hunters came ever after that.
They stood solemnly next to the brook. Tarsha wearing her draeconis mask but in human form, and Sael wearing her girl-child’s mask, but holding another. A shadow. Her trophy.
“Will you do it for me?”
Tarsha shook her head. “No, child.”
“But that is the custom, is it not? Your mask is cleansed and given to you by your elder?”
“Yes, child, that is the custom. But I do not give you this mask. The gods give it. Destiny gives it. It is yours to cleanse and to keep.”
Sael nodded solemnly. She bent down towards the clean rushing water, and prepared to dip it in.
“But submerge it thrice, child, for these spirits are potent, unholy and unclean. Once will not be enough, I fear.”
Sael pushed the shadow mask under the water and held it there a long time. She pulled it out and repeated the process twice again. When she held the dripping mask up in the air Tarsha studied it, searching its spirits.
“It is clean. The trophy is yours.”
Sael carefully removed her girl-child’s mask, releasing the leather straps that held the simple frame to her face. Pockmarked and red, the child’s face was nonetheless beautiful. Raw power seemed to radiate from it, like it did from all faces. But her power seemed the greater. Best that it be sheathed in a mask appropriate to the task. The shadow mask was one of power. It would suffice.
She pressed it to her face and it fused of its own accord, requiring neither strap nor clasp. Wispy clouds seemed to swirl around her face, but rather than a dark, fearsome fog, these were vapors of light. The sun shone down, and for a moment, the child seemed to disappear in the brilliant shaft, but a moment later Tarsha saw the girl smiling at her. The smile was pure; something that had, until that time, been broken was now bound up, whole and holy. And though the path was different from her own, Tarsha’s draeconis heart sensed the winding tendrils of power and purpose that now yoked them both to the demands of justice.
“It is well, Tarsha.”
The wyvern smiled back.
“May I stay with you, Tarsha? For a long while yet?”
“Yes, child. For all time, if you wish it.”
They would be swift. They would be sure. And they would cleanse a wounded world, bathing it in light and shadow.
So the chanters and their stories say. The wyvern and the shadow made their home in the Timorous Mountains. The Seekers still hunted, but failed to pierce the dance of light and shadow. As their prowess grew so did their fame; the glinting edge of a cleansing justice gradually usurping base greed and lust. As the years passe
d, only the boldest of the hunters still sought the wyvern and the shadow. They were also the most desperate.
None were a match. So the stories say.
Read Chapter One of The Maskmaker's Apprentice on the Next Page, or Alternatively, Purchase it from Amazon Now.
MASKMAKER'S APPRENTICE PREVIEW
THE WANDERER
HE HAD WORN his mask since he could walk.
Babies, being innocent, need no masks, and most small children will not abide one. But Elu, being of the adventurous sort, toddled over to his father’s lectern, grabbed the jeweled adventurer’s mask stored underneath and pressed it to his face. Fate smiles on those who tempt her, so the ancients say, but Elu’s mother, previously distracted with seven other busy children now gasped in horror at her newly masked son. Imagining all manner of curses and maledictions certain to now plague the family for her son’s impropriety she snatched it from the child’s grip and scolded him.
Elu’s father, apparently not so convinced of the gods’ ire, laughed merrily at his son and teased his wife for her superstition. Had her own homeweaver mask not obscured her flash of annoyance he might have stopped sooner than he did, but now Elu, squirming in his mother’s arms grabbed at her mask as well, in spite of her shouted threats of whippings and punishment.
Still laughing, the father announced, “Then perhaps it is time for his masking. It will not do for him to steal your woman’s mask when you are not looking.”
“A child should not be masked until he understands the mask and the role he is given,” she replied in defiance.
“True, wife. But our child has reached for his own mask, of his own will and accord. It portends great things for him. I foresee that he will make his own destiny and not be given his role by man.”
And though he spoke with his wooden householder’s mask and not the green painted teacher’s mask of his daily wear, the prophetic speech stilled her words, but not her heart, which feared now for her youngest child. For people do not simply choose their own masks.