Shadows (23 page)

“If we do,” Chell said, “I'll know it soon enough. I sailed down the coast from the north, and I remember the landmarks.” With that, Mara had to be content.

In the end, though, there was no doubt.

It was late afternoon, the sun already nearing the western horizon. Its long rays were lighting up the coast, closer now since it had been a couple of hours since they had last passed rocks or shallows, at least any that they could see. The cliffs that had looked forbidding and black in the shadows of morning now looked bright and welcoming in the golden glow of the sinking sun.

But up ahead, Mara saw something that did not look bright and welcoming at all: smoke, and not just the wisps of chimney smoke that had led them to Stony Beach. This was black smoke, black and roiling, smoke that spoke of things burning that were not meant to burn.

Her heart in her throat, Mara pointed it out.

“I see it,” Chell said grimly. “We'll go in closer . . . but not too close.”

Mara nodded and, clinging to the forestay, stood up to try to get a better look as Chell pointed the bow at that column of ominous smoke.

She soon had all too good a look.

The smoke was rising from the Secret City.

The cove was full of Watchers.

They were too late.

The Shattered Army

T
HEY WERE SEEN, of course: though still far out to sea, they were silhouetted against the setting sun. Mara was still trying to understand the horror of what she was looking at, the black smoke billowing from every window in the rock face and from the cliff above, the black-clad Warriors milling around in the cove, when Chell said, “They're launching a boat!” Then he snapped, “Ready about,” and the boom swung over as he turned their own craft out to sea again.

Mara tore her gaze from the smoking cliff and saw what he had seen, one of the unMasked Army's fishing boats being pushed offshore, half a dozen men climbing aboard it, the sail rising up the mast. “They can't catch us, can they?” she said. “They'll have to do what we did to get out to sea, that zigzagging thing . . . tacking . . . right?”

“Sun's going down,” Chell said grimly. “Wind is failing. And if they've got the oars for it, they've got six men to . . .” His voice trailed off as the sail came down again on the boat and oars flashed out on either side and began driving the boat toward them. Chell looked up at the masthead, where the telltale ribbon hung almost limp. “We can't outrun them,” he said. “Not with this wind. And we can't outrow them, either, not with only two of us.” He glanced to port. “Our only hope is to lose them in the darkness. But the sun's not down yet.”

Mara looked out at the sun, then back at the oncoming boat, and knew at once that the boat would win that race. She swallowed. “We have no weapons,” she whispered. “Except . . . for me.”

“Can you stop them?”

“I don't know.” The strange muting effect the sea had on the nightmares . . . would it also keep her from using her Gift? And if it didn't . . . what would happen if she used magic as a weapon yet again? Would this be the time that tipped her over the edge, plunged her into madness?

Not if I use the magic we brought from the hut
, she thought suddenly. But there was so little of it. Would it be enough?

Even if it was, she couldn't use it until the Watchers were nearer. As yet she couldn't even feel the magic within their bodies. But they were growing closer all the time. Their wet oars, reflecting the orange light of the setting sun, might have been ablaze.

She could see them clearly now, rowing in perfect unison, three to a side. A seventh person sat in the bow of the onrushing boat as she sat in the bow of theirs, someone who also wore black like the Watchers, but whose Mask was a dark red.
Red is the color of engineers
, she remembered.
He can use magic to manipulate physical objects.

Next to that red-Masked Watcher stood an urn of black lodestone, twice the size of the one they had taken from the hut. As the boat neared them, the Watcher took the lid from the urn and reached inside it.

She wondered later why it took her so long to understand what was about to happen, why it had never occurred to her that she was not the only one who could use magic as a weapon. Her only explanation was that she had never seen it before. But when the red-Masked Watcher straightened again in the bow of the boat bearing down on them, his hands glowing as hot and red as the setting sun, she suddenly understood, and gasped. The red-Masked Watcher thrust out his hands at them. Magic streaked across the water . . .

...and Mara, acting on pure reflex, leaped to her feet and called that magic to herself.

The bolt of red magic hurled at their sail improbably swerved in mid-flight. Intended to slam into the canvas, it instead blasted into her. Her clothes vanished in a flash of flame and a cloud of smoke, burned to ash in an instant, but she felt nothing, the magic shielding her from harm even as she absorbed it. She dimly realized she was naked, but it didn't seem to matter. All she could think of was the power brimming inside her, the power she had to release . . .
now.

She stretched out her hands and flung the magic that had been hurled at them back at the boat full of Watchers.

She saw seven pairs of staring eyes, wide and startled in the final rays of the sun, and then the Watchers' boat exploded. Every bit of it, from bow to stern, from the tip of the mast to the water-buried keel, burst into flame. The Watchers, screaming, writhed and burned where they sat, then their death agonies were blotted out by an enormous cloud of white steam as the boat crumbled and collapsed into the cold embrace of the sea.

The magic of all those suddenly snuffed lives slammed into Mara. She screamed, whether in agony or ecstasy she wouldn't have been able to say even if she were still capable of coherent thought, back arched, arms flung back, eyes staring at the last orange glow of the sun in the high, thin clouds overhead . . .

...and then the whole world whirled around her and disappeared into darkness, taking her with it.

Her last memory was of splashing into the icy sea, the cold water wrapping her nude body in a bitterly cold embrace that she welcomed, for it seemed to quench the fire that still burned through her.

•  •  •

Mara sputtered awake in darkness. Lost, disoriented, she struggled to move, but couldn't make her arms and legs obey her. She screamed, then gathered breath and screamed again as someone pinned her shoulders.

“Shhh, shhh,” Chell said. “You're safe. You're all right.”

She bit off the scream, stared up at him. He was only a black silhouette against the brilliant stars of the ocean night. “Ch . . . Chell? What . . . ?”

“You fainted,” he said gently. “Fell overboard. Good thing we were barely moving. I was able to pull you aboard. You weren't breathing.”

“I wasn't . . . ?” She blinked. “But—”

“I know how to give breath to drowning victims. It's something sailors are taught in Korellia.”

Give breath? Did he mean he'd kissed her? While she was lying there without any clothes on?

And she'd missed it?

That thought was so completely inane under the circumstances that she found herself giggling. But one she'd started, she couldn't stop. It seemed her mind stood a little outside her body, watching it giggle helplessly, thinking scornfully that that was no way to be carrying on but unable to do anything about it . . .

...until Chell slapped her across the face.

It wasn't a very hard slap, but the sting seemed to snap her consciousness back to where it belonged, inside her skull, and the hysterical laughter instantly dried up. “Ow,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It's all right,” she said. “I think I needed it.” She wriggled. “Can you free my arms?”

Chell nodded, and reached down to loosen the blanket. Mara used one hand to hold the blanket to her chest, and pulled her right one free to rub the side of her cheek where Chell had struck her. “I killed them all again, didn't I?” she said slowly. “With magic.”

Chell's reply sounded shaken. “I . . . guess. All I saw was . . . was a flash. You were surrounded by flame and smoke for instant, and your clothes . . . um . . .”

“Burned off,” Mara said, and in the darkness her cheeks flamed, but it was over and done and it wasn't like there'd been anything she could have done to prevent it.

“Yes,” Chell said. “And then the other boat just . . . exploded into fire. It broke apart and sank and took the Watchers with it. Since they were burning, too, it . . . it was probably a mercy.”

Mara felt sick. More deaths at her hand, more magic hurled at her from dying bodies, more ghosts imprinted on her, ghosts who would lurk inside her, ready to haunt her dreams and maybe even her waking hours. The ocean might protect her out here, but once they returned to land . . .

“The Watchers on shore launched another boat,” Chell said, “but the sun was almost down by then, and the wind picked up. They never had a chance to catch us. I doubt they're still pursuing.”

Mara nodded. She swallowed. “Is there any water?”

“Water is short,” he said, “but we have wine.”

“I'll take it.”

Chell handed her a bottle. Mara took a long swallow from it. It was dreadful stuff, and she made a face. But it warmed her and created a pleasant fuzz in her head, a fuzz that kept her from thinking about . . . anything. She had another swig, and then another, and another, and after that . . .

...after that, she didn't really notice much of anything until she woke in the morning light to find the sail set once more, a high gray haze obscuring the sky, a foul taste in her mouth, and a pain in her head.

“Ow,” she said. She'd been saying that a lot, she realized. She sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. “Ugh,” she said, by way of variety. And then, as her stomach heaved, “Urk.” She scrambled to the side and threw up a fair quantity of red wine which tasted far less appetizing coming up than it had going down . . . and it hadn't tasted all that great going down.

“Good morning,” said Chell from the back of the boat, and Mara, feeling the cold air on her back . . . and lower . . . remembered she wasn't dressed and quickly gathered the blanket around her more securely.

“Good morning,” she said. She reached for the water cup, filled it from the barrel, swished out her mouth and spat over the side, then looked around her. The high gray haze overhead was matched by a low gray haze all around, shrouding the sea. But they were close enough to the coast that even through the haze she could see cliffs that were higher and more barren than the ones farther south. Inland, there would be high foothills, and then the mountains. Could you get past the mountains she had always thought of as impassable by following the coast? It had never occurred to her to wonder before.

“We're not far from the islands where my ships are anchored,” Chell said. “But since we resumed sailing, I've been searching the coastline.”

“For what?” Mara said.

“Survivors,” Chell said simply, and suddenly everything that had happened the day before crashed down on Mara with the force of a landslide.

She slid down into the bottom of the boat. “I betrayed them,” she said dully. “I told Stanik where to find them.”

“No, you didn't,” Chell said. “He figured it out. It's not the same thing.”

“I don't think Catilla will see a difference,” Mara said. “Or Edrik, or Hyram . . . or Keltan. If any of them are still alive.”

“Edrik and Keltan should have gotten to the Secret City before the Watchers,” Chell said. “They should have gotten everyone away.”

“But have you
seen
any of them?” Mara said.

Chell hesitated, then shook his head.

Mara put her head in her hands. It throbbed from the lingering effects of the wine, but that was the least of the pain she felt. She had betrayed the unMasked Army. She had killed again. And her father was—

Unbidden, the image of his horrifying death sprang into her memory, and she gasped. It had only been three days. Three days since she had seen him hang. And the worst of it was that that horrible moment had already faded. So much had happened in the interval that it seemed a lifetime ago.

And her mother . . . what had happened to her? Hat the Watchers tracked her to her home village down south? Had she, too, been executed?

Was Mara doomed to betray everyone and everything that mattered to her? Was that her
true
Gift?

Tears started in her eyes and she made no attempt to staunch them. They streamed down her cheeks as she hung her head and wept, the sobs racking her body. She was still weeping when Chell said softly, “There they are.”

Mara jerked her head up in mid-sob and saw them, tiny black specks strung along the narrow beach at the base of the towering cliffs, burdened with packs and bags, a handful of mounted riders leading the way, another handful bringing up the rear.

“Can we—?” Mara began, but Chell had already altered course, angling in toward the shore to intercept that crawling line of people.

Somewhere along the way they were seen, and the black dots on shore scurried around, coalescing into a larger group with the horses around the periphery. Mara saw the silvery glint of drawn swords. She wrapped the blankets tightly around herself, stumbled barefoot to the bow, and then drew her chilled feet up onto the thwart to warm them while she sat and watched the shore draw nearer, her attention torn between the remnants of the unMasked Army and the water in front of them. It wouldn't do to run into a rock now.

Closer and closer the shore came, and now she could make out individuals. Among those on horseback she recognized Keltan and Edrik and Hyram. Back in the crowd on foot were Alita and Prella and Kirika. She didn't see Catilla or Ethelda or Grelda, or a handful of others she would have expected to see, like Tishka.

She'd been recognized now, too, and the swords were lowered . . . but not sheathed. And then Chell was scrambling forward to lower the sail, letting their forward momentum carry them into the shallows. They ground against the rocky bottom still twenty feet from shore, and men and women splashed into the shallows to pull them farther up.