Faces (16 page)

“I saw it,” Chell said. “Farther ahead than I'd hoped, but not as far as I feared.” He looked at Antril. “Double-time,” he said. “Let's see if we can't catch those bastards.”

“Aye, Your Highness,” said the young lieutenant. “You heard him, lads!”

And with that, the men started running. Mara would have dashed off with them, but Chell held her back with a hand on her arm for a moment. “I should be there if they catch them,” she protested.

“There are eighteen of them and only a couple of Watchers,” Chell said. “What would they need you for?” He frowned a little. “Unless it's to suck down the Watchers' magic?”

“You make it sound . . . disgusting,” Mara said.

“Sorry,” Chell said. “It's just not something I can quite get my head around.”

But you're more than willing to use the magic I “suck down,” aren't you?
she thought angrily. “We've waited long enough.” She charged after Antril and the others, Chell easily keeping pace with her.

Ahead, the light grew. There was too much now to be just from the Watchers' torches.
The cavern
, Mara thought. The light wasn't the multicolored glow of magic, however, but the familiar yellow of open flames.
What have they done to that beautiful chamber?

She couldn't see any details, just the glow of light, and the silhouettes of Chell's men against it. Swords glinted and flashed, there were shouts and curses. She gasped as someone died and she was brushed by his escaping magic, though it didn't reach her full-force because it was once more pulled into the black lodestone all around her.

She needed magic. She'd thought to use the magic filling the cavern, but she couldn't feel it, couldn't reach it.
I need to get closer.
Without even realizing it, she lengthened her stride, filled with new energy. The end of the tunnel swelled in her vision. She could see wooden platforms now, the lake, Chell's men battling Watchers, unMasked cowering in the dark. What she couldn't see, as she glimpsed the far wall of the cavern, was any sign of the vast storehouse of untouched magic the cavern had once represented, the magic she had counted on.
They've already ruined it
, she thought.
They've already stripped the walls, crushed the stone, sent the magic to the Autarch
. There had to be magic all around her, but buried deep in such an enormous mass of black lodestone, it would not let her draw it out in the amount, or as fast as, she needed.

But there was still magic to be had. So much magic, filling the unMasked. Magic she needed, magic she could ignite with the spark of rage inside her to do what needed to be done.

So she took it.

As she burst out into the cavern, the dozen or so unMasked closest to the tunnel fell to their knees, dropped their tools, and collapsed unconscious, the living magic they contained ripped from them like unripe fruit from a tree. The remaining unMasked screamed. But she knew she had killed none of those who had collapsed; she knew within the breadth of a hair how much she could safely take. The fallen unMasked would live. And so she did not spare them another thought, not with the power pouring into her. Filtered through the amulet at her breast, it did not hurt at all. Instead, it filled her, satiated her, satisfied the need that lurked always beneath the surface of her skin, like an itch that wouldn't go away.

She could control that need when she had to—but now she didn't have to. Now she could give into it, and give into it she did.

Half a dozen Watchers battled Chell's men. Chell was right, they didn't need her: one Watcher was already down and the others beset. But she didn't care. She saw the Watchers, and seeing them she saw all the Watchers: the ones she had known in the old mine, the ones who had stood by while her father was executed, and the ones who had attacked the Secret City and chased the unMasked Army along the shoreline. Most of all, she saw the cavern of blood where the Watchers they had followed here had slaughtered the unMasked workers rather than let them be rescued.

Rage-fueled magic leaped from her outstretched hands. She could have blasted the Watchers before her into white dust. But that was too clean a death. Instead, they exploded in a red rain of flesh and entrails, bone and blood. Their bodies' released magic tried to pour into the rock, but she greedily seized it instead, “sucking it down” as Chell would have it, once more filtering it through the black lodestone crystal so it did not burn, so their death-twisted soulprints would not haunt her dreams. Her nightmares were a thing of the past: more largesse of the Lady, the Lady to whom she owed so much.

Ignoring the horrified stares of Chell's men, ignoring Prince Chell himself, single-minded with focused fury, she stalked across the wooden walkway that had been built over the lake. The narrow passage she had crawled through alongside the stream had been shaped into a proper tunnel wide enough for two men to walk abreast. She strode out through it. No warning had made it out into the ravine beyond. The only Watchers she could see were standing atop the wall across the ravine's mouth.

Her instructions were to open the gate: a trivial use of the power filling her. Instead, she raised her hands and, with the magic from the unMasked workers and the dead Watchers, sent a blast of red light the length of the ravine. Wall and gate alike blew outward in a thunderous rain of stones, timber and iron, mingled with red blood and white bone. She felt a dozen Watchers die . . . but not all of them. Some still lived in the ruin of the wall.

She strode through the ravine, sensed a Watcher cowering behind a boulder, flicked a hand, and sent the boulder crashing back against the ravine wall. Blood sprayed the rocks.

Out in the valley beyond the gates the unMasked Army, the Lady, and her followers rushed forward. Mara held herself still, rage still boiling beneath her skin. She saw the Lady hold up her hand, saw the villagers stop in their tracks. Behind them, the unMasked Army and remaining sailors likewise waited. She picked out Hyram, grim-faced, sword in hand, Keltan beside him.

She'd left them nothing to do. She smiled at that, a death's head grin.

The Lady came on alone. “Well done,” she said when she reached Mara.

Mara inclined her head.

“Let the magic go,” the Lady said softly. “Give it to me.”

Mara narrowed her eyes. Who was this old woman to take what was rightfully hers?

The thought shocked her. She didn't understand where it had come from. “Of course,” she said. She reached out her hands. The Lady took them. Mara released the magic she still held within her, gasping a little as she did so. Suddenly drained, she swayed. The Lady caught her arm.

“Now let me see what is what,” the Lady said. “Come.” She took Mara's arm and led her back toward the cavern. Together they walked down the tunnel alongside the stream, emerging into the mine a few moments later. The unMasked workers were clustered together against the far wall. The ones Mara had taken magic from were groaning and beginning to stir. Chell and his men stood guard. “We were uncertain what to do with them,” Chell said. “Do we release them?”

“Of course you release them!” Mara exclaimed.

“Quiet, child.” The Lady let go of her arm. “Stay here.”

She strode the remaining length of the wooden walkway spanning the lake, whose water, already sadly churned with mud, was now tinged with red from the slain Watchers. Mara gripped the amulet at her neck. She remembered killing those Watchers. She remembered
how
she had killed them. In her rage it hadn't seemed to matter. In her rage, it hadn't seemed to matter that she had torn magic from some of these unMasked without permission, without even considering what it might do to them. The fact that the amulet had kept both actions from hurting her as they always had before, that she had not felt the impact of the dying Watchers' magic, that she had not burned in agony with the influx of raw magic from living humans, did not change what she had done.

Reach down inside yourself and find your rage and hate,
the Lady had told her.
Don't fear letting it out. Learn to use it to power your magic. Do that, and there is almost nothing you cannot achieve.

The Lady had clearly been right.

She should have been happier about it.
This is a war
, she told herself.
The Watchers serve the Autarch. To destroy the Autarch, we must defeat the Watchers. And look at what they have done to the unMasked . . .

But then, look what
she
had done to the unMasked.

Confused, troubled, she had been staring at the rough wooden planks of the walkway. Now she raised her head, and saw that the Lady had reached the unMasked.

She couldn't hear what Arilla was saying, if anything. But she saw what she did.

She waved a hand casually, and Chell and his men sank unconscious to the wooden planking. Then the Lady reached out and touched the forehead of a young unMasked woman only a couple of years older than Mara, though with the pinched, hard look to her scarred face Mara remembered all too well from her time in the labor camp. The girl's face went slack.

And then she collapsed, bonelessly, falling to the planks with the thud, like a sack of meal thrown from a wagon.

And Arilla stepped to the right, and touched the forehead of a burly, bearded man with a permanent sneer . . . and he dropped the same way.

The other unMasked trembled, faces pale, eyes wide, but they couldn't seem to move. Her feet, too, seemed to have grown roots. With great effort she stumbled forward. “Arilla, stop!” she cried. She found it hard to speak, and suddenly realized why: there was magic flowing from the Lady, subtle magic, so that even with her Gifted sight Mara had not recognized it, had only thought it brighter in the cavern than the flickering torches could account for. “Arilla, what . . . ?”

“They are all broken,” the Lady said without turning around. Another touch, and a boy dropped lifeless. “The Masks rejected these for a reason. We cannot take them with us. We cannot leave them behind us. They are good for only one thing.” Another touch. This time it was a skinny dark-skinned man who rolled off the planking as he fell, falling into the muddy water with a splash and floating facedown. “I am taking their magic to make myself stronger. I am storing it up in my amulet. And I will use it against the Autarch who has made such evil use of them. In this way their miserable lives will have had some meaning.” A woman fell. A girl. A boy. “You left some magic in those you drew from. I will take it all.”

Mara felt sick, felt betrayed, felt . . . anger. Rage. The same kind of rage she had felt against the Watchers just minutes before. It roared up in her like a bonfire of dry wood. The Lady had drained her, but there was still a little magic to be had in the walls of the cavern, if she pulled hard enough. She struggled to reach it, felt some of it flow to her, but sluggishly, like syrup on a winter's day. “Arilla, stop! You're
murdering
them!”

The Lady rounded on her, and Mara saw that her eyes blazed once more with magic, as bright and white as the sun. “You can't murder cattle,” Arilla snarled. She glanced at Chell and his sleeping men. Then, face twisted with fury, she turned back to Mara, who had slowed again as she approached the Lady, unable to penetrate the magic permeating the very air around her. “How
dare
you! How dare you question
me!
I have been working toward the overthrow of the Autarch since before your father was born. No one else can destroy him. Certainly not
you
.” Her voice dripped with contempt. “You will never be what I am. You will never even be what I was when I fought the Autarch as a young girl. You are a tool, nothing more. I needed you to breach the borders. You were of some use to me here, and will be useful again at the mining camp. After that, I have one final—one
very
final—use for you. Until then, you will remember your place, and keep to it. I will make sure of it. You will not challenge me again.” She paused. “And I think . . . yes. I think it is time to prepare you for your final fate.”

What fate?
Mara burned with rage, but she had managed to gather only a flicker of magic to herself, and the Lady brimmed with power. She could do nothing against such a force.

The Lady strode toward Mara. She reached out her hand. She touched Mara's forehead.

In a soundless explosion of white light, the world went away.

M
ARA WOKE IN
the Lady's pavilion, wearing only her underclothes, wrapped in her blankets atop her usual bed of fragrant pine boughs. She stared up at the sloping white canvas, her mind a blank. What day was it? Where were they? What had happened?

Nothing came to her. She heard a whine from her right and turned her head to see Whiteblaze looking at her alertly. He gave a short yip and licked her left hand, which lay outside the blanket. She didn't remember entering the tent or lying down. In fact, the last thing she remembered was the discussion with Edrik and Chell of who would lead the strike force up the mountain to the new magic mine's “back door.” Then she'd . . . gone back to the camp?

Gone to the Lady's pavilion?

Gone to
bed?

That didn't seem likely.

What's wrong with me?
she thought with a touch of panic.
What's happened to my memory?

Whiteblaze yelped again, then turned and trotted out through the tent flap. Mara turned her head to watch him go, but she didn't try to sit up. She felt weak, drained. Her black lodestone amulet still rested on her chest, a reassuring weight, but she could sense no magic anywhere. It was almost like . . .

She blinked. It wasn't
almost
like, it was
exactly
like wearing the iron Mask placed on her when she had been taken prisoner in Tamita. Someone had blocked her Gift. And the only person with the power to do that, at least here, was the Lady.

But why would the Lady have done so? And had she also blocked Mara's memories in the process?

Could she
do
that?

Mara was uneasily certain she could. Hadn't she talked about how the way magic was bound up with a person's soulprint made it possible to manipulate people with magic? The Autarch did it through Masks. The Lady didn't need Masks.

Had Arilla removed her memories? And if so . . . what else had she done to Mara's mind?

She tried to raise her head, to get up and go in search of the Lady. But weariness held her down like a lead weight, and she slumped back again, breathing hard.

Fortunately, she didn't have to find the Lady. The Lady entered the tent a moment later, following Whiteblaze, three of her own wolves with her. She came over to Mara's side and looked down at her, unsmiling. “How do you feel?” she said.

“Like a lump of wet clay,” Mara said. “What happened? Why can't I remember anything? We were planning to go up the mountain . . .”

“You did go up the mountain,” the Lady said. “And successfully opened the gate to the mine. We have taken it. The Watchers who guarded it are dead.”

Mara blinked. “I opened the gate?” She closed her eyes, tried to find the memories. But there was nothing. She opened her eyes again. “Why can't I remember it?”

“You were careless,” the Lady said. “There was considerable death around you during the attack, and you let some of the released magic slip around the amulet. The soulprints tore through your mind.”

“And destroyed my memories?” Mara said. “That's never happened before.”

“No,” the Lady said. “
I
have blocked your memories. I was afraid that if I did not, you might not wake at all.”

Mara frowned. It made
some
sense. When she'd killed the Watcher outside the very cavern they'd been trying to find a way into, she'd awakened days later in the Secret City, in the chamber where Grelda placed those she expected to die. That had been when Grelda had introduced her to the noxious potion she had relied on many times since to block the nightmares. Grelda, though not Gifted herself, had said she had been suffering from “a surfeit of magic.” But the circumstances had been quite different. She had killed the Watcher, and certainly his soulprint must have slammed into her with great force, but the real problem had seemed to be that she had drawn too much magic to her too quickly, the incredible store of it in the cavern tearing through her like a hurricane. She'd had no control at all of her Gift then. Now, she had, thanks to hours of practice with both Arilla and, before her, Shelra, the Autarch's Mistress of Magic. A mere “surfeit of magic” would not affect her now the way it had then. But why would the impact of multiple soulprints? She'd experienced that before, too, and though she'd paid the price in nightmares, she'd never been close to death herself as a result. What was different this time?

“You said the Watchers are all dead,” she said. “What about the unMasked workers?”

“I took care of them,” the Lady said. “You need not worry.”

Mara nodded. They were already fading from her thoughts. “Are we still at the mine?”

“Not far away.”

“And when did all this happen?”

“Two days ago,” the Lady said.

Two days!
Mara shook her head. “It's hard to believe. It's so weird to have no memories.”

The Lady smiled slightly. “They're still there. Just inaccessible. Perhaps someday it will be safe to return them to you.”

“You've also blocked my Gift,” Mara said. “Why?”

“For your own good. You will heal much faster this way.”

“But why do I
need
healing?” Mara said, frustrated. “I've experienced this sort of thing before and survived without anyone blocking my memories or my Gift. What happened this time that made it so much worse?”

“You must trust me,” the Lady said. She reached out and brushed the hair off of Mara's forehead with a gentle hand, and Mara felt a hint of magic in that touch. She suddenly felt both stronger and calmer. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” Mara said. “And in rather desperate need of . . . um, relief.”

“There is a chamber pot at the foot of your bed,” the Lady said. “I will leave you for a short time, if you think you can manage on your own.”

“I think so,” Mara said. “I don't feel as weak as I did when I woke.”

“I just removed a light muscle block I had placed on you,” the Lady said. “You should be able to move around normally now. Just be careful getting out of bed—you may still be light-headed.” She nodded at Whiteblaze. “If you have any difficulty, he will come get me. Otherwise I will send you food in, say, fifteen minutes.”

Mara nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

“You're welcome, Mara.” The Lady touched her forehead again. “I am glad you are recovering. I have great things planned for you.” She turned and went out.

With only a little shakiness, Mara used the chamber pot. She found her clothes in their usual chest, and dressed. She was sitting on the Lady's stool at the far end of the pavilion from the entrance when the flap opened and a villager came in whom she knew by sight but not by name, one of the Lady's Cadre. He crossed to her, carrying a tray bearing bread and stew and hard cheese and cold water. “Thank you,” Mara said as she took it.

The man nodded and turned to go.

“Wait!” Mara said. “I wanted to ask you—”

But the villager left without even looking around.

Ordered not to tell me anything
, she thought.
What's going on?

She didn't find out that day. The Lady would tell her nothing more. “It's for your own good,” she said. Mara wasn't allowed to leave the tent, and a guard at the door, another of the Lady's elite corps of villagers, made sure she obeyed. Whiteblaze stayed by her side. No one except the Lady and the villager who brought her meals entered the tent. Neither he nor the guard would speak to her, and the Lady would only say that they would be breaking camp the next day, and moving on to their next target: the old magic mine, the slave labor camp where so many unMasked had been used and abused over the decades.

“Will you unblock my Gift for that?” Mara asked the Lady that evening as they ate supper together. “Please. I want . . . I
need
to help you destroy it.”

“Of course,” the Lady said. “I need your help to do so. But not until we reach it. For your own good.”

Mara tried to push away her mounting frustration with that answer. “Why aren't you allowing anyone to come see me? I've been alone all day.”

The Lady reached for another piece of bread and dipped it in the mixture of oil and salt on her plate. “Mara, no one has even
tried
to see you.”

“No one?” Mara said blankly.

“I'm sorry, Mara,” the Lady said. She reached out and touched Mara's hand. “I was afraid it would come to this.”

“To what?” Mara stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Your . . . ‘friends.' I suspect they have not tried to see you because . . . they are afraid of you.”

“Afraid . . . ?”

“Your clearing of the pass was impressive, and inspired awe. But in the ravine . . .” She shook her head. “I know you do not remember, but you were like a force of nature. You killed almost all the Watchers single-handed. Chell and his men were with you, but had they not been, it would not have changed a thing. Men like Chell, and those of the unMasked Army . . . yes, even Keltan . . . they do not like to be shown to be useless. Especially by a girl. They don't know how to deal with your power.”

Mara looked down at the Lady's hand touching hers. There was something about that touch that made her feel uneasy, though she couldn't understand why. She drew her hand back. “But I'd never hurt them,” she said.

“And I'm sure they understand that . . . intellectually. But having seen what you did in the ravine. . . .” The Lady drew her own hand back and took another piece of bread. “Frankly, I was a little frightened of you myself.”

“But I can't even remember it!” Mara cried.

“I know it's difficult,” the Lady said. “But try not to fret. In time I hope it will be safe to return those memories to you. And in the meantime . . . the labor camp awaits.”

“What if the same thing happens there? What if . . . whatever I do . . . ends up hurting me again? What if you have to take my memories of that battle, too?”

“I think it unlikely,” said the Lady, “from what you have told me, that you could feel any ambiguity about whatever actions may be required to destroy the mine. Wouldn't you agree?”

Mara thought about the mine, about everything she had done there, about everything she had seen. Those memories were all-too-intact. “Yes,” she said. “I would.”

“Good,” said the Lady. “Because I will need your help once again. You have shown a skill at destroying walls and gates. Would you like to destroy some more?”

This time she didn't hesitate at all. “Yes,” she said fervently. “Oh, yes.”

They moved out the next morning. The routine of the Lady's Cadre packing up the pavilion and loading it on the packhorses was familiar, but when Mara attempted to move away from the small circle of the members of the “human wolfpack” and their horses, Hamil stopped her at once. “No,” he said. “The Lady forbids it.”

He had put his hand on her upper arm. Whiteblaze growled at him, and anger, sudden and fierce, flashed into fire inside her. If she had had her magic, she would have made him regret that touch . . .

But her magic was still blocked, even if her anger was not. She jerked free. “Why?”

“She said to tell you, if you asked,” Hamil said, lowering his hand, “that it would be unwise to expose yourself to the others' accounts of the events at the cavern: that to do so could damage you further. She said that she—and you—cannot afford to risk that when we are so close to the attack on the labor camp.”

Mara stood still. “And what if I just walk past you?”

“Then I am ordered to stop you.”

“You'd hurt me?”

“I am twice your size,” Hamil said, spreading his hands. “I do not think I would need to.”

Mara glared at him, then looked past him at the main part of the camp. The last of the tents and supplies were being loaded onto the horses. She could see Edrik and Hyram in conversation with Keltan, but no sign of Chell.
What are they talking about?

She turned her gaze back to Hamil. “What did
you
see at the cavern?” she demanded. “What did
you
see me do?”

“You must know I cannot tell you that.”

“Because the Lady told you not to.”

“The Lady commands.” Hamil blinked hard and his mouth twitched, as though some strong emotion had poured through him. “The Lady commands,” he repeated. “Please do not make me use physical force, Mara. The Lady commands, and I will obey, but I would . . . prefer not to.”

“Very well,” Mara said. Her anger had subsided. Hamil had no more choice than she.
The Lady commands,
she thought. “I'll be good.”

“Thank you,” Hamil said. But he watched her closely as she turned and went back to stand with the packhorses. Whiteblaze growled at him one more time before following her. She put her hand on his head as he sat on his haunches close by her feet, and waited for the Lady.