Jala's Mask (39 page)

She heard the thudding of footsteps. They were out of time. Either they were going to surrender and be captured, or she had to try to kill this man. There was no other choice. If she had the mask, she could make this right. If she could speak with Lord Water's voice, if she could just remember the words, the way it felt.

It was so close, a word on the tip of her tongue, a memory she could almost grasp.

Jala's throat burned, and her nose tingled with the half-remembered smell of sorcery. Her mind roiled, and she clung to the thoughts she knew were her own: her love for her friends, her family, her home.

She shut her eyes, breathed in deep, and spoke.

“KNEEL.”

The sound burned her throat and tongue and lips as it left her mouth. She tasted sand and mud and river-water. Her vision blurred, and she barely saw the guard kneel down, his head pressed to the floor. What happened? Where had that voice come from? Azi was kneeling too, but she couldn't remember why it mattered. The room spun about her and she wondered if she should kneel as well.

“Jala!” Someone grabbed her, shook her. Marjani. A sudden sharp pain across her cheek like a splash of cold water.

Jala shook her head, and her vision cleared. “What?”

But Marjani was already pulling Azi up off the floor. “Come on, we have to go.”

“Right, of course,” Azi said. He glanced at Jala. “What was that?”

“You sounded just like Lord Water again,” Marjani said. “How is that possible if you're not wearing the mask?”

“I don't know,” Jala said. “Probably just the last of his power leaving me.” Her throat was sore. It hurt to talk. “Does it matter now? I want to go home.”

Azi started to speak, but Jala didn't wait for him. She ran, and Azi and Marjani had to follow. She wanted to run from all of it, from the guards and Lord Water and the sound of the river lingering in her ears. But she couldn't. There was only one way out, the same way she'd left before. Down through the river-ways beneath the palace.

“Jala, wait!” Azi said. “Do you know where you're going?”

Jala nodded. Everything about that night when Lord Water's people came for her was a haze of blood and fire. But she didn't need to remember the way. She knew. She could hear it, feel it, even from here.

She led them quickly through the palace, through unmarked doors and winding stairways.

The river's whisper grew louder as they descended, until finally they were back in the tunnels beneath the palace. The river had become a roar, an almost physical thing pressing against Jala's ears. Or was it only in her own ears that the sound was so overwhelming? Jala didn't want to know. The effect of being surrounded by the river was made that much worse because they hadn't brought any light with them.

“Which way?” Azi's voice echoed for just a moment before the river swallowed it.

“Turn right,” Jala said. “We just have to follow the river.”

They waited for a little while, hoping their eyes might adjust to the darkness. Water sprayed up in a thin mist on Jala's face. She shivered.

“Are you all right?” Marjani asked her. Jala thought she could just make out the silhouette of her face now, a shadow in the shadows.

“I think I should have eaten before letting him try to rescue me,” she said, and Marjani laughed. She'd wanted Marjani to laugh, because that meant she knew Jala really was all right.

Even if she wasn't. Even if she didn't know what was happening to her.

I just have to leave this place and then I'll be fine. I'll feel normal again
, she told herself.

“I think I can see a little now,” Azi said.

“Be careful,” Jala said. “The stone's worn smooth. It's slippery.”

She saw him nod. He splayed his arms out, pressing himself back into the wall. She did the same, giving his hand a quick squeeze. He shuffled forward carefully, and she shuffled after. The walls and floor were as slimy and slippery as she remembered. The river churned beneath them, fast and angry. It made it hard to think. It made it hard to make herself move.

Jala slid her right foot forward, shifted her weight, then slid her left foot up. Again and again.

Water sprayed in her face and lapped her feet. She could feel the current tugging at her, trying to pull her in. It called to her.

The tunnel and the darkness spun around her.

“Jala?” Marjani yelled into her ear. “What's wrong? We have to keep moving.”

Marjani was right. Jala knew she was right. But the strength seemed to have left her muscles. She felt cold and weak, and the water was still rising. It couldn't be high tide.

The water sloshed against her legs, her waist, and her chest. Waves where there was no wind. It was no use running. The river meant to have them all.

She tried to slide her foot along the walkway but instead found only water. Then she was falling, the river pulling at her dress, pulling her down into the cold dark.

The water closed over her face, and it felt just like putting on a mask.

Wake up. Wake up, little queen.

Jala hadn't thought she was asleep. The last thing she remembered was falling into the river. She tried to breathe but couldn't. She panicked and kicked her arms and legs, trying to swim, but there was no water. No air. Nothing.

Jala. My little queen. Open your eyes.

It was her father's voice. But that didn't make any sense; he was back on the Five-and-One. He'd called her “my little queen,” the way he used to. Maybe he'd forgiven her for what she'd done . . . but that seemed impossible. This was a dream, and if she opened her eyes, he would be gone.

You don't need to breathe here. You don't need to be afraid. This is a quiet place, a place outside.

“Outside of what?” she asked. She spoke without drawing breath, but her voice still echoed around her.

Outside
, her father repeated.

It was just as he said. There was no pressure on her lungs or pain in her chest. She didn't need to breathe. Even in her dreams she'd always needed to breathe.

Jala opened her eyes and looked around. There were stars above her, the same stars she'd seen all her life. Palm trees grew around her, leaves swaying gently in a breeze she couldn't feel. She was on the Second Isle again, lying on the shore of the bay where she and Marjani had gone swimming the night before her wedding.

Jala looked down at her hand. Her finger was still missing. In her dreams, her hand was still whole. But though the wound was still a bright, ugly red, it didn't bleed.

“This isn't a dream,” Jala said. “But this isn't real, either. I'm still drowning in the river. Or am I already dead?”

Her father stood behind her, dressed in clean white robes, a half-smile curling one corner of his mouth. “Not yet, my little queen. Time will pass slowly here, and we have so much to talk about.”

“And when we finish talking, am I going to drown?” Jala asked.

“You may,” her father said. “You may not.”

Jala looked away from him. Far out over the water, where the bay flowed into the Great Ocean, a storm was brewing. “I know you're Lord Water,” she said. “Pretending to be my father won't help you trick me.”

“You have no father,” he said.

Jala winced. “I know what I said, but he's still my father, even if he can't be Bardo. I can't just forget him and everything he's done for me, good and bad.” She ran her fingers through the sand, let it fall through her fingers. It felt real, but the way it glinted in the moonlight was too beautiful, too perfect.

“I could be a father to you. My adopted daughter. My adopted people.”

Jala tossed the sand away. “No. I'm done with you. I'm done with the Hashon. You have to leave the Five-and-One alone, that was our deal.”

“Yet you chose to stay.”

“Because you tricked me,” Jala said. “Azi still loved me. He came for me.”

“You didn't believe in him,” her father said. “You wanted to be tricked. It was easier than going home and facing what you did to me, facing an uncertain future with your boy king.”

“Maybe at first,” Jala said softly. “But I'm ready to face it now, without you.”

“Yet you called on my power, used my voice. You want me to leave your people alone, yet you reach for me constantly.”

“I'm done,” Jala said again.

“It's too late,” her father whispered close to her ear. “You've worn Lord Water's mask too long, spoken with his voice too often. It's changed you. If you go back to your islands now, you will take me with you, and your people will be changed. I promised I would leave them alone, but you will unmake our deal if you return to them.”

“That's not fair,” Jala said.

“Isn't it? When you call on my power for the greater good once more, will it seem unfair that I answer?”

“Then I won't use the voice again. Ever.”

“You will,” her father whispered. “There will always be some reason. And your people will hear me, and I will be a part of them.”

“Why wear my father's face?” Jala demanded. “I've already rejected him once, just as I rejected you. Do you want me to say no? To drown in the river?”

“I'm offering you a choice,” her father said. He reached up and put his hand on his face. When he pulled his hand away, his face came off with it. A moment ago, Jala couldn't have told her real father's face from this one, but now it looked like a plain wooden mask. Where her father had been a moment before stood her mother. Lady Zuri dropped the mask of Lord Mosi on the sand.

“Perhaps a mother, then, instead of a father?” Jala's mother asked. “The water that nourishes and feeds. That washes away the wound, that listens to you in the middle of the night. I would be a better mother than your uncaring fire mountain, don't you think?”

It hurt so much to see her mother again. It felt like it had been years, and maybe it had. They'd fought so often. But while her father wanted to be great through Jala, her mother had always just wanted Jala to be great.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Jala asked, her voice hoarse. This place, whatever it was, might have been outside breath and time, but it wasn't outside tears. They stung her face and she had to blink them back.

“Because you have a choice to make, Jala,” her mother said softly. She'd never called Jala “my little queen” the way her father had. “You think I am Lord Water, and so you think you know me. But Lord Water is a mask and a name. He is not all of me. I am the rivers and the streams, the springs and the creeks, the seas and the lakes. All the children of the Great Ocean. The Hashon think of me as one great river, but I have other names, other faces. There are other stories told about me. Stories must change to fit those who tell them. Isn't that what your people say? So choose what our story will be. Choose what my mask will look like when you wear it.”

“Mother of Water,” Jala said, as if she was tasting the words. And they did have a taste, warm and comforting, familiar and old. But . . . “No. You're not my mother, or my people's mother. You would drown us.” In some ways, her mother's expectations for her had been as smothering and controlling as her father's ambitions.

“Only a child thinks they can ever be free of someone else's influence,” her mother said with a laugh. Then she reached up and took off Lady Zuri's face, dropping that mask on the sand as well. Now it was Askel who stood before her, eyes burning with fever in his gaunt, gnarled face.

“There are other kinds of sorcery in the world, my queen,” he said in his scratchy voice. “The power of your fire mountain burns away your life. But you could use the magic of water to heal. You could live beyond your years as a great sorcerer-queen. You could rule the islands with wisdom and sorcery and fear, and they would all bow to you and your daughters.”

“I won't make anyone bow through sorcery,” Jala said, though she knew she'd done just that only a short while before. “And to live longer, someone else would have to live shorter. There's always a cost for these things, no matter where the magic comes from. I've learned that much at least.”

Askel smiled his toothless, hungry smile. “Small lives are often cut short in service of greater ones. You risked many such lives to get here, and your king risked more to bring you back.”

“I don't want any of this,” Jala said. “Any mask you give me would swallow me up again. There'd be nothing left of me.”

The sorcerer took off his mask. Marjani looked back at her, her mouth turned down in worry. “And who are you?” her friend asked. “Queen Jala of the Bardo? Another mask. Jala, daughter of Mosi? Another mask, and one you've broken. Jala, love of Azi? Love is a mask, too, and it can swallow you up as certainly as any power or sorcery. You humans die a thousand times across your little lifetimes, and what's left of the people you once were?” She reached down and scooped up the glittering white and yellow sand, let it run through her fingers just as Jala had. “A scattering of memories. A lesson learned, perhaps, though not as often you'd have yourselves believe. Is this so different?”