Faces (13 page)

“And is this second entrance guarded?”

“'Course it is,” the Watcher said. “We're not idiots. Got a permanent garrison up there, watching the entrance, riding herd on the diggers. Poor bastards.” Mara could tell he wasn't referring to the unMasked. “Kind of a punishment duty. Nobody's ever going to find that hole without knowing it's there.” A slightly confused look crossed his face. “Not supposed to say anything about it,” he added. “You won't tell anyone, will you?”

The Lady smiled at the Watcher, but there was no warmth in it. “No one who doesn't need to know.”

His face cleared. “Well, that's all right, then.”

“You've been very helpful,” the Lady said softly. “Thank you.”

“Fix my leg now, then, will you, ma'am?” the Watcher said. “Whatever you done made it stop hurting, but I'd like to get up. If your pet will let me, of course.”

“Fix your leg?” the Lady said. “No, that won't be happening. But I can guarantee it will never hurt you again.”

Before Mara could quite grasp what she meant by that, she reached out her hand again and touched the Watcher's chest once more. She saw a flicker of blue, the color of Healing, but no Healing took place.

Instead, the Watcher gasped slightly. His strangely trusting eyes, staring up at the Lady, widened, and glazed over.

He was dead.

Mara
saw
the magic rush out of him, the rush of magic that had so often before poured into her, causing pain and nightmares. But none of the magic streamed to her: instead, all of it went to the Lady, pouring into her black lodestone amulet.

The Lady stood up. Another flick of her hand, a flash, and the Watcher's body was gone, leaving behind only white dust . . . the same dust that had been all that had been left of Grute when she had burned away his naked, headless body from the magic-collection hut where he had attacked her. Her stomach twisted. He had been the first person she had killed with magic. He hadn't been the last. She didn't want to kill any more. But the Lady had just slain the young man she had been talking to an instant before as casually as swatting a fly. “You killed him!” she choked out. “
Why?
”

The Lady shrugged. “He could not be set free, to warn the mining camps, and we cannot spare a man to watch him day and night. Easier and cleaner this way. And he told us what we need to know.”

“And that made it all right to kill him? You used him and discarded him like . . . like a dust rag. As though he were nothing to you!”

A flicker of irritation crossed the Lady's face. “What do you think we mean to do to the Watchers at the mine, Mara? Sit them down and explain to them the error of their ways? This is war, or soon will be. We will kill many Watchers at both mines, just as I killed this one . . . and at that, he is more fortunate than most. A simple death at my touch is far preferable to bleeding out from a sword blow to the thigh or dying in agony from a spear through the gut. His fate would have been the same no matter what. I hastened and eased his passage. I showed him
mercy
.”

Mara looked down at the ground where the Watcher had lain, at the white dust still being scattered by the breeze. “He was only a little older than me.”

“And already a cold-blooded little bastard,” the Lady snapped. “With callous disregard for the suffering of the unMasked. He was an extension of the will of the Autarch, Mara. And if we are to bring the Autarch down, we must sever from him his only means of extending that will beyond the walls of the Palace: the Watchers, and magic.” She turned away from Mara and strode back toward the camp. “Come,” she said. “I must tell Edrik and Chell what we have learned. We have plans to prepare.”

As they turned away, the rain began, washing the dust from the weeds of the clearing, all that remained of the first casualty of the Lady's invasion of Aygrima.

The first, but certainly not the last.

“T
HIS ISN'T GOING TO BE EASY,”
Chell muttered, late the next morning. The rain had poured down for hours, but cleared sometime after midnight, and now the sky was bright blue. Chell rolled over on his back and slid down the damp grass a little bit to get below the ridgeline from which he and Edrik had been studying the split in the mountainside hiding the magic-filled cavern Mara had found, and from which the unMasked Army had rescued her.

That had been in late autumn. Now it was mid-spring, and the Autarch had clearly not wasted the intervening months. The opening into the narrow ravine, clearly visible more than a mile away across a broad, barren, river-carved valley, had been blocked by a high wall of stone, penetrated by a single iron-bound wooden gate. Watchers patrolled the battlemented top of the wall. Beyond that wall smoke rose into the sky from the ravine itself.

“When we rescued Mara,” Edrik said, “we climbed the mountain over there,” he pointed right, toward a shoulder of the peak, “and came down on them from above.”

“Clearly they remembered,” Chell said. “Since they've also built a wall around the
top
of the ravine.”

The Lady stood a few feet away, eyes closed. She hadn't bothered to climb to the ridgeline. Mara knew she was studying the situation through the eyes of her wolves, ranging somewhere in the valley or up on the mountain above the ravine.

Now her eyes opened, and she looked at Chell. “You still do not understand,” she said. “This war against the Autarch will not be decided by force of arms, but by force of magic.”

“Good thing, considering the size of our force,” Chell muttered.

“If you can take the mine using magic, why do you need our people?” Edrik demanded, turning like Chell before him and sliding below the ridgeline. He stood and brushed uselessly at the mud on the seat of his pants. “Why should we risk our lives? Blast the Watchers and be done with it.”

“Both Mara and I have drawn magic heavily from the wolves the past few days, so they are not at full strength,” the Lady said. “My Cadre is likewise weakened, and with possible combat imminent, I do not want to risk drawing from the other villagers, partially incapacitating them just when they must fight. I do not think either your people, Edrik, or yours, Chell, want me taking magic from
them
. I could, of course, take magic from the Watchers themselves . . . but not from this distance, and not without putting myself at more risk than I think is wise.”

“So what is your plan?” Chell demanded. “I presume you have one.”

“My plan,” the Lady said, “depends on Mara.”

Chell and Edrik looked at her. Mara remembered when Chell's first reaction on seeing her had been to smile, when his expression had always been one of open friendliness. That had changed after their frosty encounter in the Lady's tent en route to the fortress. Now it was . . . carefully blank. Whatever he thought of her, he showed nothing of it. Nor did Edrik. Considering her actions had brought the Watchers down on the Secret City, she suspected that was for the best.

She shoved the old guilt aside and schooled her own face to stoicism. Guilt and doubt belonged to the old, powerless Mara. Not to the right hand of the Lady of Pain and Fire.
I am powerful
, she reminded herself.
And in control. And if my opening of the pass did not demonstrate that to my old allies, perhaps this will.

“The heart of this mine of magic is—or was, they've probably destroyed it by now—” (she felt a pang for lost beauty) “a natural cavern with an underground lake, smaller than the one in the Secret City, but large enough. We learned from the Watcher we questioned that the lake is fed by an underground stream that pours down from the glaciers at the top of the mountain; that there is a second entrance to the caves far up the slope; and that it is possible to reach the main mine from that entrance, along stairways carved in the rock, like those in the Secret City.” She pointed toward the glimmer of ice high overhead. “There is a garrison of about a dozen Watchers at that ‘back door' . . . but it is still the weakest point in their defense. And there is magic to be found at that end of the cavern, as well.

“So,” she continued, carefully enunciating the plan the Lady had spelled out to her, though the military terms didn't exactly come naturally to her, “rather than mount a frontal assault, we will take a small force to this alternate entrance, overpower the garrison, and descend from there. While our main force keeps the Watchers' attention focused outward, we will surprise them from behind. I will use magic to blow open the gate. Caught between my magic and our small force inside the wall, and the Lady's magic and the larger force outside it, the Watchers will quickly be overpowered.” She glanced at the Lady, hoping she'd gotten the details right.

The Lady nodded approvingly.

“And
you're
going to lead this force?” Chell said. “Mara, I know you have magic, but—”

Mara felt her face heat. “Do you doubt my power?” she said, and though she recognized the echo of the Lady's words, it did not concern her. The Lady was no longer what she
feared
she would become, but what she
wanted
to become. “It's true I will not be swinging a sword.
But I don't need to.
”

“I don't doubt your power,” Chell said evenly. “I was in Tamita when your father died. I was with you every step of the way north to the Secret City. I saw what you did to the Watchers in the boat from the Secret City, and on the beach. I saw what you did in the pass. But you didn't let me finish. It is not your power I doubt. It is your ability to lead: to lead my men, and Edrik's.”

“My people will not follow you,” Edrik said flatly. “You cost too many of them too dearly.”

“They will follow her if I say they will follow her,” the Lady said. “Or they will pay the price.”

“They have already paid the price,” Edrik snapped. “Will you kill them? Torture them? Force them to your will with magic? You said yourself your power is not unlimited. And every time you hurt one of the unMasked Army, or one of Chell's men, or kill one of them, or force them to do something against their will, you are laying a trap for yourself. Because eventually you will be in a position of vulnerability, and one of them will seize the opportunity to take revenge.”

The Lady trembled with anger. Mara could see, though she knew both Chell and Edrik were oblivious to it, magic, bright as the sun, shining in Arilla's eyes. She stepped forward hastily, interposing herself between the Lady and the two men. “Lady,” she said softly. “Please.”

The light faded. The Lady closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, the irises were their ordinary extraordinary ice-blue. “Sort this out, Mara,” she said. “For their sake.”

“I can,” Mara said. “I will.”

The Lady nodded and, without another word, turned and strode away toward the camp. Wolves slipped out of the trees, wolves Mara hadn't even been aware were there, and followed her. Whiteblaze watched them go, but stayed at her side.

She wondered how close those wolves had been to tearing out Chell's and Edrik's throats.

She turned toward them. “That was foolish,” she said coldly. “Antagonizing the Lady will accomplish nothing but get the people you claim to care about hurt.”

“
That
is the person you've chosen to emulate?” Chell said. “Mara, you're not her. You're—”

“Don't tell me who I am,” Mara said. “I know who I am. I am Mara Holdfast, and I have power—power that will enable us to take this mine and free the unMasked slaves within it, and strike the first of many blows against the Autarch that you, Edrik, claim to hate so much.” Edrik's stony expression darkened, and Chell's eyebrows drew together. But then Mara raised her hands in a conciliatory gesture. “But,” she said, “I also know my limitations. As the Lady likes to say, ‘My power is not unlimited.'” She smiled. It wasn't a real smile, because inside she shook with anger that echoed the Lady's, but apparently it was convincing enough, because Chell's frown eased, even if Edrik's did not. “I don't need to be in command,” she said. “Order your forces as you see fit. When you are ready, we will climb to the garrison, and I will get us into the cavern . . . under your direction.” She looked from one to the other. “One question, though. Which of
you
will command?”

Chell and Edrik exchanged startled glances, and Mara took that moment to turn and make her own grand exit, following in the footsteps of the Lady back down to the main camp.

···

Mara had no idea how they had decided, but when the small strike force assembled early the next morning and began its long roundabout climb to the upper garrison, clearly Chell commanded. Indeed, the entire force was made up of men from the Korellian ships.

They began the climb by winding their way up a dry streambed. Chell fell in beside Mara and Whiteblaze, halfway back in the group of twenty. “Shouldn't you be leading us, if you're in command?” Mara said to him. She was dressed in deerskin trousers, a blue blouse and, over that, a deerskin vest and then a snug sheepskin jacket. The air was still cool, cool enough she could see the breath she was puffing out, but she was already beginning to think she'd overdressed. She carried a stout black staff in her left hand, but with her right, she began unbuttoning the jacket.

Chell, like his men, wore the Lady's uniform: blue-and-white tunics over mail shirts. He had already shed his gray cloak—she could see the sleeves of it poking out of the top of his backpack. He bore a sword on his left hip and a dagger on his right. “Lieutenant Antril is up there,” Chell said. “He's a fine officer, so I'm letting him . . . um, office.”

“He's very young,” Mara said.

“Look who's talking,” Chell said.

“How did he get that scar on his cheek?”

“Cutlass wound,” Chell said. “Just after we left Korellia, we were attacked by pirates. We weren't flying the royal banner—trying to slip away incognito—or they never would have dared. Their idiot captain must have mistaken us for merchants. They grappled and boarded us in the night. During the battle Antril—just a midshipman, then—killed three of the scoundrels even though blood was pouring down his face from a head wound, a sword cut that came within inches of splitting his skull. He made sure the more seriously wounded were seen to before he allowed the surgeon to do more than give him a cloth to staunch his bleeding. Captain March promoted him on the spot. He may be young, but he's seen and done his share.”

I've seen and done my share, too
, Mara thought.
I, of all people, shouldn't be surprised by anyone's youth.

For a few minutes after Chell concluded his story neither of them spoke. A turn in the riverbed had brought them to a field of rounded rocks that rolled beneath their feet in a fashion all-too-conducive to turned ankles and required concentration to navigate safely. When they were through it, though, she glanced at Chell again. “Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

“Why are you walking with me? You obviously have something to say.”

“I do?”

Mara snorted. “Of course you do. Just like Keltan. He's talked to me exactly once since we entered Aygrima, and he tried to drive a wedge between me and the Lady. Again.”

“Why would he want to do that?” Chell said.

“For Catilla, of course.” Mara shook her head. “That stubborn old woman has it in her head that she should rule in the Autarch's place. As if that could happen now that the Lady is back in Aygrima—and she's cooling her heels back in the village.”

“The Lady will rule, then?” Chell said.

Mara shot him a look. “Who else?”

Chell shrugged. “I don't know. Not my land. Not my concern, except that I hope whomever is finally in control remembers what I and my men have done to assist in the Autarch's overthrow.”

“Don't worry. I'm sure you will receive your reward.”

She didn't realize how much bitterness she had let seep into her words until Chell said softly, “Why are you angry with me? You were angry when I visited you in the Lady's tent. You're still angry. And I don't believe I've done anything to deserve it.”

“I'm not angry,” Mara said, and winced. She'd barked her response like an angry dog.

“Uh-huh,” Chell said.

Mara concentrated on climbing for a minute, marshaling her words. Finally she said, “Prince Chell. You assisted me in escaping from Tamita, and helped me travel north. But it became clear, when you met the Lady, that you had done so only because you had thought my Gift might be of use to you in your own country's war. You switched your attention to the Lady because she demonstrated the kind of power you need when she destroyed your ships. You came to me in the Lady's tent to try to get me to intercede on your behalf with the Lady. Now you seem to be trying to cultivate my friendship again. I presume this is because you now know I, too, have that kind of power. You are being friendly because you hope to take me back to your father and offer him my help in your war with . . . whatever the name of the kingdom was.”