Masks (32 page)

“I have a little sister,” Illina said softly. “You remind me of her. I would do what you did—and worse—to protect her. You did the right thing. Now shh . . . and sleep. We all need rest.”

Mara fell silent, then; and, wrapped in the warmth of Illina’s comforting embrace, soon followed that silence into deep, dreamless sleep.

She woke to find Illina already awake and rolling up her bedroll. Tishka was nowhere to be seen. Gray light seeped through the tent flap. “Rise and shine,” Illina said. “Did you sleep well the rest of the night?”

“Ye-e-ess,” Mara said, stifling a yawn. “Thanks to you.”

Illina smiled. “It’s amazing how powerful a hug can be. You’re welcome. Now get up, sleepyhead. We have many more miles to ride.”

Mounting the horse again wrung a groan of pain from her. She didn’t think she would have managed it at all without Hyram’s help (he got to her before Keltan could), and both he and Keltan rode close throughout the day, watching her as though afraid she might drop from the animal’s back at any moment. She laughed at them for it, but until a couple of hours had passed and the sun had once more loosened her joints she was secretly glad of their attention.

They went up, over, and down a series of ridges that day, and Mara realized that they were following more or less the same path she and Grute had taken on foot. On horseback, the journey didn’t last as long, even though the woods were thick enough the horses could only move at a slow walk (for which she was grateful). Early in the afternoon she looked up at the next ridge—and saw the square box of the hut where she had slain Grute.

She kicked her horse in the sides and trotted ahead of Keltan and Hyram to catch up to Edrik. “We’re not going up there, are we?” she demanded, thrusting her finger at the hut.

“Yes, we are,” Edrik said, his eyes on the hut and not her. “There might be something we can use in it. You said there was food—”

“We
have
food,” Mara snapped. “You’re going there to check up on my story, aren’t you?”

Edrik’s gaze swung to her. “Yes,” he said quietly.

“You won’t find anything of Grute. The magic saw to that.”

“But at least we will find the hut as you described it.” Edrik’s eyes locked with hers. “Won’t we?”

Mara’s jaw clenched. “Yes,” she grated. “You will.” She let her horse fall back until she rode between Keltan and Hyram again, but kept staring at Edrik, hoping he could feel her angry glare burning into his back.

Peripherally, she saw the boys exchange glances. “Um, what’s wrong?” Hyram ventured at last.

“Your father
and
your great-grandmother don’t trust me,” Mara said. “They think I’m lying about Grute. About the magic.”

“Oh.” Hyram cleared his throat. “I don’t think that’s quite—”

“Fair?” Mara swung her angry gaze toward him, and he quailed in his saddle. “I wake up every night screaming because of what I did in that hut!” She pointed at the square stone structure, growing closer by the moment. “I never wanted to see it again. And now I’m being forced to go there, because my word isn’t good enough! Is
that
fair? Would you like to be dragged to the site of your worst nightmare against your will? Is
that
fair?”

“He . . .” Hyram cleared his throat and straightened. “Father has responsibilities. So does Great-Grandmother. To the unMasked Army. I’m sure they believe you. But others may not. Everyone has to understand why—”

“Oh, shut up!”

He did.

She turned her glare back on Edrik, caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of Keltan’s face, and snapped her gaze in his direction. “And wipe that stupid smug grin off your face, Keltan—or whatever your real name is.” He flinched. “Did anyone question
your
story? Did anyone wonder why you have the same name as the Autarch’s
horse
? Or did they just accept what you had to say? Why am
I
the only one nobody trusts?” But she didn’t wait to hear whatever feeble answers either boy might have offered. Instead, she dug her heels into her horse’s flanks and trotted ahead of them until she was out of earshot.

She rode the rest of the way to the hut in black, fuming, solitary silence. Edrik held up a hand to stop them well short of the little square building, then slid from his horse and drew his sword. “We’ll approach on foot,” he said. “It may not be—”

Mara brushed past him. “Mara!” Edrik shouted after her, but she ignored him; limping to the hut, she threw the door open, then spun to face the rest. “Empty. As I knew it would be.” And then, without waiting for Edrik’s response, she went inside.

It was just as she remembered it.
Of course it would be
, she thought. She went into the room with the stone basin. At least
that
had changed: the basin was almost full of magic once more, swirling and shifting color as she watched it.

She coughed. Entering the room had stirred up the fine white dust on the floor. Acrid on her tongue, it tickled the back of her throat.

Dust.

On the floor.

Grute . . .

She ran outside, shoving Edrik out of the doorway so hard he stumbled and almost fell, then turned sharply left, dropped to her hands and knees on the cold wet stone, and heaved up the contents of her stomach. It took a long time for the spasms to pass, long after her belly was empty and all she brought up was bitter liquid. Even then she could still taste the acrid dust . . .

. . . the dust of Grute.

Edrik knelt beside her. “Here,” he said gently, and handed her his waterskin. She poured water into her mouth, swirled it around and spat it out, then did it again . . . and again. “Mara, I never would have made you go in. I just wanted to see—”

“It’s Grute,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “The dust. In the hut. That’s Grute. That’s all that’s left of him. Just like the Watcher.”

“Can you stand?”

Mara nodded. Edrik helped her to her feet, then led her around to the sunny side of the hut. “Wait here,” he said. Finding her legs shaky, she leaned her back against the wall, then sank down to a sitting position. The stones had soaked up enough sun to warm her aching body. She shut her eyes against the glare.

A shadow moved behind the dark red curtain of her eyelids. She opened them and blinked up at Keltan, who slid down the wall to sit at her right. He closed his own eyes. “My real name is Birik,” he said, his voice low and rough. “But I’ll never use it again. My father gave it to me, and I want
nothing
of his. He beat my mother to death when I was ten years old. The Autarch hung him for it. It’s the only good thing the Autarch ever did. I watched him die. I wasn’t supposed to be there, I was given to my mother’s brother after . . . after my mother died . . . but I sneaked out. I wanted to see. And I saw. And I saw the Autarch. He was there himself that day, not for my father, there was some high-ranking City Official being hung for some offense, I don’t know what. He was sitting on his beautiful white stallion. Keltan. And that’s when I chose that name for my own.” His eyes opened, but he didn’t look at her: he gazed up at the mountains’ gray-and-white peaks, wreathed in thin cloud. “I told Edrik all of this when I joined the unMasked Army. He knows my real name. He knows why I’ll never use it. And he swore he’d never tell anyone the truth.” Finally, he turned his eyes on Mara. “Except for him, you’re the only one who knows,” he finished, his voice barely above a whisper.

Mara felt sick in a whole new way, sick for having tried to hurt Keltan with her revelation about his name, for having responded to her own hurt by trying to hurt a friend. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”

Keltan shrugged. “It’s all right.” He looked back up at the mountains again, but his left hand found hers, held it. “There’s an old saying: ‘Be gentle, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing of.’ I think that goes double for those who have found their way to the unMasked Army.”

Mara nodded, lips pressed together.

Keltan’s hand felt good in hers, so she kept it there. For about five minutes they simply sat in companionable silence; then Hyram came around the corner. “There you two are—” he began, then his face lost expression as his eyes darted to their linked hands. Suddenly embarrassed, Mara pulled free. Hyram’s eyes flicked up again. “Father wants to see you,” he said. His voice had gone wooden. “But he’d like to see you in the hut. If you think you can stand it.”

Mara nodded. “I can stand it.”
I hope
, she thought. She left Keltan and Hyram looking at each other like tomcats circling one another stiff-legged in the street, and went around the corner of the hut to the open door. The rest of the party sat on the rocks, eating their midday meals, while the horses tugged at the sparse grasses growing among the stones. Illina gave her a friendly wave; she managed a smile in return, then ducked into the hut’s dim interior.

At once she tasted the dust again. Trying not to think about what—who—it really was, she went through the front part of the hut into the back room, where magic seethed in the black stone basin.

Edrik had taken one of the empty urns from the shelves and was turning it over and over in his hands. He glanced up. “These pots,” he said, “look like ordinary—”

“They’re not.” Mara could hardly tear her eyes from the basin, aswirl with beautiful, tempting magic. She couldn’t believe Edrik couldn’t see the glistening pool, the rainbow spray of colors chasing themselves around the walls, crawling over his face. “They’re made of black lodestone,” she said distantly. “Like the basin.” Three steps took her to its side. “And this . . .” She dipped her finger into the pool, pulled it out sheathed in glimmering light. “. . . this basin is the magic-well. It’s black lodestone, too. It’s drawing the magic out of a mass of the stone inside this ridge.”

“There’s magic in that basin right now?” Edrik set the urn aside, then leaned over the basin. He put his hand into it, his finger sliding beneath the surface of the magic but coming out clean. “I don’t . . .”

“Watch,” Mara said. There was so little magic on her finger, surely it would be safe to use it to . . .

She walked over to the stump of a candle set on the topmost of the shelves holding the black jars, touched her finger to it, and willed it to light.

Her finger stung as though she’d shuffled across her bedroom rug on a cold winter day and touched the metal door latch—and the wick burst into flame.

She turned back to Edrik. He was staring at the candle. “I guess . . . I guess I believe you,” he said.

“About time,” she said tartly, and didn’t feel at all sorry that he looked down, shamefaced. She turned her gaze back to the magic.

“Is there enough to fill some of these urns?” Edrik said, an odd tone in his voice.

She looked up. “Yes,” she said. “Two, at least.”

“Then fill them. We’ll take them with us.”

Mara wanted that, wanted to have magic close, just in case, but . . . “Grelda said I shouldn’t use magic.”

“Oh, I know. She warned you against using it, and warned me against
letting
you use it,” Edrik said. “But remember what
I
said?”

“That if it’s necessary, I should use magic to save those who are risking their lives for me and my friend,” Mara said slowly.

“Exactly.” Edrik nodded at the basin. “Fill the urns. So that you have it . . . as a last resort.”

“All right,” Mara said. The finger she had used to light the candle still hurt, sore as though stung by a bee. But she didn’t tell Edrik that. Nor did she tell him that despite that pain, she longed to touch the magic again: longed to touch it, longed even more to use it. She couldn’t explain it to herself, so how could she possibly explain it to him?

“I’ll leave that to you, then,” Edrik said. He snorted. “I can hardly help but leave it to you when I can’t even
see
the stuff.”

“It will only take a moment,” Mara said.

Edrik nodded again, and went out.

Mara picked up the nearest urn. It was lighter than she’d expected, and she remembered what Pixot had told her about the stone being much less dense than it looked like it should be. “Now,” she muttered to herself, “how does this work, exactly?”

She’d thought it would be a simple matter of dipping the urn below the surface of the pool and letting the magic flow into the urn like water. But when she took a closer look she realized that could not work, because the urn was so fat and round she would barely be able to get its mouth beneath the surface at all, certainly not enough to fill the urn.

She looked around for a ladle, or some other means of putting the magic into the jar, but saw nothing but urns, urns, and more urns, a dozen in all.
Well
, she thought,
I guess I’ll get what I can
.

But the instant she dipped the urn into the pool she realized why no ladle was provided. Rather than flowing like water, the magic
crawled
, like something alive, oozing up and over the lip of the urn, slithering down inside, and then . . .
coiling
was the word that came to Mara’s mind, like a fat snake in a cozy gap in a rock. Mara knew magic was
not
a liquid, that it had to be something else, but her brain had insisted on seeing it as a kind of colored liquor right up until that moment. Now she swallowed, looking down in the magic-filled urn, the swirling, shifting colors as beautiful as always, but also deeply, deeply, disturbingly
weird
.

She simply set the next urn down inside the basin, and watched the magic crawl up the urn’s side and pour down into its open mouth, like an overflowing milk jug in reverse. When it was done, only the faintest glimmer of magic colored the curved stone bottom of the basin.

On the lowest row of shelves lay stone lids, one per urn, with clever locking mechanisms, metal bars on hinges that lifted up and then snapped into place. With the urns sealed, Mara hefted each in turn. As far as she could tell, they weighed exactly the same as they had before the magic filled them. And yet she
knew
, without a shadow of doubt, that they were full. They might not push down harder on her hands, but they pushed down harder on her
mind
.