Shadows (4 page)

Mara looked down at her own hands, twisting together in her lap. “This . . . Library,” she said. “In the Palace. Do you really think it might contain information that might help me control this?”

“I think there's an excellent chance,” Ethelda said. She sighed. “Catilla would have been better served kidnapping Shelra, the Mistress of Magic, than the mere Master Healer. Shelra is extremely learned in all lore pertaining to the Gift. No doubt if she were here, she would know exactly how to help you . . . and train you. Or, if she did not, she would know exactly where to look in the Library for the knowledge she required.”

Mara clenched her hands into fists and looked up. “Does my father have access to this Library?”

Ethelda's eyes narrowed. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Mara, what are you . . . ?”

“I have to talk to Catilla,” Mara said. “Now, more than ever. I have to talk to the Commander.”

Ethelda looked away, into the fire. “That might be difficult,” she said after a moment. “Catilla . . . is very ill.”

Mara blinked. “I knew she wasn't feeling well,” she said. “Are you saying it's something serious?”

Ethelda didn't look at her. “It is not common knowledge,” she said in a low voice, “not yet, and you are not to tell any of your friends . . . but she is suffering from far more than just an autumn ague.” Now, at last, she met Mara's eyes again. “She is dying.”

“Oh, no,” Mara whispered. She had no great love for Catilla, but she respected the old woman, who had led the first members of the unMasked Army to the Secret City in the wake of the failed rebellion six decades previously. And besides, she was Hyram's great-grandmother. “But . . . you are . . . were . . . the Master Healer. Can't you—?”

“If I had magic, I might be able to do something, but without it . . .” She shook her head. “Grelda is of more use than I am. At least she has potions that can ease Catilla's pain. But a cure is beyond her abilities. Catilla suffers from a tumor, blocking her esophagus.”

“Her what?” Mara had never heard the term before.

Ethelda gestured at her throat. “The tube that runs from the mouth to the stomach. Already she finds it hard to swallow more than thin gruel, and even that pains her. She is losing weight, and she had little enough to lose to begin with.”

“But you could cure her, if you had magic?” Mara said.

“I don't know,” Ethelda said. “Tumors are difficult. Often they spread throughout the body, so that even if you eliminate one, there are others growing you cannot see. But she would at least have a chance.” She sighed. “But I have no magic.”

Mara felt the flow of magic within Ethelda herself, magic she could seize if she wanted, and said slowly, “I have.”

Ethelda looked up sharply. “
No
. Mara, we've discussed this. If you give in to the urge to use the magic you can draw from others, even once . . . it will be that much harder to resist the urge the next time, and the next time, and the time after that. You will become as addicted to it as the Autarch . . . or the Lady of Pain and Fire. Do you want to become like
either
of them?”

“No,” Mara said. “But if I could help Catilla . . .”

“You might just as easily kill her,” Ethelda said flatly. “You were lucky with Prella: lucky,
and
using magic filtered through black lodestone. You could see the damage the spade had caused and you had a clear image of what an uninjured, healthy Prella looked like. The magic did your will, and returned her to that image. But the tumor that is killing Catilla is inside her. Do you know what an undamaged esophagus looks like? Can you tell diseased tissue from healthy? If you strike at the tumor with magic, you might just as easily blow her chest apart.”

Mara winced, remembering when she had done just that to a Watcher in the camp, a Watcher threatening Keltan. That Watcher, a bloody hole torn straight through his body where his heart should have been, featured prominently in the nightmares that still sometimes fought their way through her drug-aided sleep. She remembered the glisten of organs in the firelight, the red gleam of the severed ends of ribs and spine, superimposed that horrific image on Catilla's frail frame, and thought she might be sick.

“I see in your face that you understand the danger,” Ethelda said softly.

“But . . . couldn't we get magic for
you
?” Mara said desperately. “The hut—”

“The hut where you killed Grute is now guarded constantly,” Ethelda said. “As are the other magic-wells in the vicinity. As is the cavern where you found magic for the Autarch's geologists. Already the Watchers are building permanent shelters there. By spring they will have unMasked mining it.” She shook her head. “No. We have no way to get magic. Not in the quantities we need.”

“But there must be
something
we can do!” Mara cried.

“I do not believe there is,” Ethelda said. She sighed. “I'm afraid, child, that one of the hardest truths you learn as a Healer is that there are times when there is nothing you can do.”

Mara sat in silence for a moment, staring down at her folded hands. “But . . . I still have to see her,” she said in a low voice.

“Why?” Ethelda asked, her own voice gentle.

Mara looked up. “I have to go back to Tamita,” she said. “I have to talk to my father.”

Ethelda blinked, then snorted. “I hardly think you need to see Catilla to know what she's going to say to
that
.”

Mara shook her head stubbornly. “It's the only way. If Catilla wants me to make counterfeit Masks, she's got to let me see my father. There's some . . . trick, some bit of magic, that must be performed to make the Masks work, even the counterfeit ones. Only my father can tell me what it is.”

Ethelda opened her mouth to protest further, but Mara rushed on. “Then there's the matter of my own magic. You said yourself there might be knowledge in the Palace Library, and that my father has access to it. He might be able to—”

“At what risk to himself?” Ethelda reminded her sharply. “Yes, he has modified his Mask so it is not as sensitive as most to disloyal thoughts, but if he starts actively aiding the unMasked Army . . .”

“He would be aiding
me
,” Mara said. “His daughter.”

“Catilla will never agree!” Ethelda repeated. “She—”

“And,” Mara said, “to make the counterfeit Masks will require a store of magic. My father can provide that, too. And if he provides enough . . . you might be able to use it to heal Catilla.”

She stopped. Ethelda stared at her; she pressed her lips together and stared back.

“It would be . . . incredibly dangerous,” the Healer said after a moment. “You are unMasked—”

“But I can still pass for a fourteen-year-old,” Mara said “So can Keltan. It's been less than half a year since either of us turned fifteen. And
he
knows how to get into and out of the city without being seen—he escaped it once already. We can slip inside. I know Catilla has a way to get a message to my father. She can send ahead, arrange the meeting. The Watchers will never know. And when we get back . . . I'll be able to make the Masks, you'll be able to heal Catilla, and I'll know how to fight this . . . addiction.”
Or maybe even how to use my Gift safely
, she added to herself but did not say out loud.

Ethelda looked away, staring at the fire. “I don't know what Catilla will say,” she murmured. “But . . . all right. I'll take you to her.”

Fifteen minutes later, Mara faced the Commander of the unMasked Army in her tapestry-hung chamber deep in the rock. This night Catilla did not sit at the golden-hued table where she had greeted Mara the first time they had met there. Instead, she lay in the four-posted bed, her gray hair unbound and spread on the pillow, her hands, blue-veined and pale, plucking restlessly at the pale blue counterpane. Grelda rose from the chair beside the bed. “I gave orders—” she said dangerously.

“The watchers on the door know I am a Healer, too,” Ethelda said.

Grelda's frown only deepened. “You have said you can do nothing. Why do you trouble Catilla's—”

“Enough!” The new voice, thin and tired but with the hard edge of command in it, stopped Grelda's protest. Catilla's eyes, which had been closed, were now open, and whatever drugs for pain she had been given, however much she hurt inside, those eyes remained bright, clear, and cold. “Grelda, I have told you before.
I
will decide who may and may not see me.”

“I'm your healer,” Grelda said. “It is my decision to make, not yours.”

“No,” Catilla said softly. “It is not. I am still Commander, while I live and while I am in my right mind. Do you deny either of those conditions exist?”

Grelda let out her breath in an explosive sigh and threw up her hands. “Fine! Talk to them. But don't complain to me if you take a turn for the worse afterward.” She sat back down on the chair, folded her arms, and glared at Mara and Ethelda.

Catilla ignored her. Her eyes were now on Mara. “Maskmaker,” she said. “How goes the effort?”

Mara remembered asking Catilla much the same question about how successful the efforts of the unMasked Army to overthrow the Autarch had been, and on a whim, startled by her own boldness, she gave the same reply Catilla had given her. “Like shit,” she said.

Ethelda shot her a startled look and Grelda frowned. But Catilla barked a hoarse laugh. “A . . . direct response,” she said. “Very good. Since I have no strength or time for beating around the bush.” Her eyebrows drew together. “Explain.”

Mara told Catilla what she had told Ethelda . . . and what she proposed they do about it. Catilla listened without comment. Ethelda and Grelda stood—and sat—silently by. When she had finished, Mara watched Catilla's face while she waited for a response.

The old woman took a long, shallow breath, grimacing as she did so. “Sneaking into Tamita . . . is not something we have ever done,” she said. “Into the villages, we have risked it, using children or, where Watchers are few and unwary, those whose Masks have not yet crumbled. But Tamita . . .”

“Sneaking into Tamita is why you want the counterfeit Masks in the first place,” Mara said. “If you ever hope to send in a force large enough to do whatever it is you plan to do there, then you must let me sneak into the city now.”

Catilla pressed her lips together against a silent cough that shook her slight body. When it passed, she lay with her eyes closed, breathing in quick, shallow gasps. Grelda got up and turned to her. “Catilla, you should—”

“I should finish this conversation, is what I should do,” Catilla snapped without opening her eyes. Grelda, lips drawn in a thin white line, plopped herself back onto her stool.

Catilla's eyes opened again, locked onto Mara. “Very well,” she said. “I will send a message, through our secret channels, to your father, telling him when to expect you, and what you expect from him. You may dictate it to Edrik, once I have told him of my decision. And then . . . you and Keltan will go to Tamita.” A faint smile twisted her lips. “With Chell.”

Mara's jaw dropped. “With . . . Chell?”

“Edrik will explain.” She closed her eyes again. “Now get out. Ethelda, please send someone to fetch my grandson.” Another cough racked her. Grelda got to her feet again and leaned over the bed, muttering something Mara couldn't hear. Ethelda took Mara's arm and ushered her out, but just before they reached the door, Mara glanced back . . . and caught a glimpse of the cloth Grelda had used to wipe the Commander's mouth in the wake of the cough.

Even from across the room, Mara could see the bright red blood that stained it.

Forgotten History

H
YRAM SQUEEZED SNOW between his clasped hands, forming it into a ball. “I should be going with you,” he said plaintively. “Why aren't I going with you?” He threw the snowball as hard as he could: it splattered against a pine tree, leaving a white lump stuck to the dark bark.

“Good shot,” Keltan said. “Did you picture your father's face when you threw it?”

Mara, sitting on a rock in the forest above the Secret City, said nothing. She was looking down into the cove, down to the beach, where Chell was examining one of the unMasked Army's small fishing boats. It had been a week since she'd found him on the beach, half of him frozen, the other half drowned. Soon she'd be traveling with him and Keltan to Tamita to see her father. It didn't seem quite real.

“Anyway, you know why,” Keltan continued. “This is a stealth mission. The fewer the better. Mara has to go, obviously. I have to go because I know how to get into Tamita unseen. As well, if we
are
seen, we can both pass for fourteen. You can't.”
Keltan's a better actor than I would have given him credit for
, Mara thought.
He almost doesn't even sound smug
. But she thought it rather absently. Chell was climbing over the boat, which had been pulled high enough onto the shore that even storm-driven waves couldn't touch it, and she was admiring the confident way he tugged on ropes, felt spars, ran his hands over the painted flanks . . .

“Neither can
he
,” Hyram said. He was already forming another snowball, and he looked down into the cove with eyes narrowed, as if wishing he could throw it far enough to hit the stranger.

“Yes, well, he doesn't have to, does he? He's not coming into the city with us. He's just scouting.”

“For the Royal Korellian Navy,” Hyram said. “If it even exists.” He turned and threw his new snowball even harder than before. It hit the tree trunk just below the first one.

“Your great-grandmother and your father are both convinced,” Keltan said. “Why aren't you?”

“I don't know,” Hyram growled. “I just don't like Chell.”

“I do,” Mara said, and then reddened, suddenly aware that both boys had turned to look at her. “I mean,” she hurried on, “he seems trustworthy enough.”

“Really,” said Keltan.

“You don't say,” said Hyram.

“Oh, stop it,” Mara snapped. “I'm not your personal property, you know, either of yours. I can have other friends.”

“Nobody's denying it,” Hyram said, though it sounded as if he would have liked to. “But you hardly know Chell. Just because you saved his life doesn't mean you can trust him.”

“I just don't feel like he's lying to us,” Mara said. “That's all.”

“Is that part of your Gift?” Hyram said. “You can
feel
when someone is lying?”

Mara flushed again. “You know it isn't.”

“Then you'll forgive me if I don't take your
feeling
as very strong evidence for Chell's trustworthiness,” Hyram said. “Because
my
feeling is just the opposite.”

“
Your
feeling is just jealousy,” Mara said. “You've been expecting me to throw myself at you since the moment I arrived at the Secret City.”

Keltan snickered; Mara turned her glare on him. “You're just as bad,” she said. “You're both so convinced I'm going to pick one of you as a boyfriend. You even got in a fight over me. But did either of you ever think to ask me if I was interested in either one of you?” And with that she jumped up and stomped away through the snow, half-surprised it didn't sizzle away from the heat of her anger.

The trouble is
, she thought grumpily a few minutes later as she lifted the branch-covered trapdoor that opened into the corridor leading to her workshop,
that I
don't
know I can trust Chell. I just
want
to.

And there it was. It made no sense, none at all. He was just a young man. A very handsome young man, but just a young man.

Yes, that's right
, she thought.
A young
man.
Not a
boy
like Hyram or Keltan . . .

She shook her head sharply.
And there you go again. What's gotten into you?

She went into her workshop and closed the door firmly behind her. Her kiln was cold, her tools untouched for days; she saw no point in wasting clay on yet another Mask that would surely fail the same as all the others.
Father can help
, she thought, for the hundredth time.
But will he?

She had dictated her message to Edrik, sitting at his table in the Grand Chamber the night after her meeting with Catilla, choosing her words carefully in case they went awry. “Father,” it began. “I cannot do what I have been asked to do without your help. May we meet? Send word by this messenger.” Then, on impulse, she had added, “I am well. I love you both.”

Edrik had written down what she'd said without comment. The message had gone out the next day. How it was being conveyed, and at what risk to the messengers, no one told her. There had not yet been time for a reply; they could not start for the city until there was.

Mara went to the window slit and looked down into the cove. Chell now stood a few feet away from the boat, talking to Edrik. As she watched, he threw back his head and laughed.
He's not evil
, she thought.
He can't be. He must be telling the truth. It all makes sense . . .

Hyram and Keltan, of course, had only heard his tale as it had been passed on by Edrik.
She
had heard it from Chell himself, on the night after her meeting with Catilla.

First, though, she had heard from Edrik. Once she had dictated the message, she had stood up, intending to rejoin her friends at their usual table far down the Chamber, but Edrik had indicated she should stay, and she'd sat down again, though not very comfortably, wondering what he had to say to her.

“The Commander has asked me to explain to you why we are allowing Chell to accompany you to Tamita,” he said, in a tone she thought implied he would much have preferred to keep her in the dark.

“It surprised me,” she admitted. “I didn't think you'd trust him.”
Catilla certainly didn't trust
me
when
I
first arrived
, she thought with more than a trace of bitterness.

“His story rings true to us.”

And mine didn't?
she thought. “
What
story?” she said out loud.

Edrik flicked his hand as though shooing a fly. “That's not important. I'll let him tell it, if he chooses to. All you need to know is that he will be coming with you, but he will
not
be entering Tamita.” He leaned forward. “And you also need to know this. You are
not
to tell him you have the Gift. He knows that magic exists in Aygrima, but he does not know that
we
have anyone with the Gift, about you and Ethelda. He does not know you are attempting to make Masks for us. All he knows is that you must speak to your father in aid of our cause. He does not know who your father is.”

Why the secrecy?
Mara wondered, but, “All right,” she said out loud. “But you know how hard it is to keep a secret in the Secret City. Are you sure no one else has told him?”

Edrik flicked his hand a second time. “We are not fools. He is guarded at all times, and no one is permitted to speak to him without permission.”

“He could lead the Watchers here, if he is captured.”

“He will not know where ‘here' is. He will be blindfolded for the entire first day of your journey. And he will not be alone. I had thought to send Tishka with you, but now I've decided to come myself.”

“He knows we're on the coast,” Mara said. “All the Watchers have to do is sail far enough north—”

Edrik glowered at her. “Enough! The Commander and I judge the risk acceptable, and that is all you need to know.” He leaned forward. “He has asked to speak to you, and I have agreed that he may do so. But I repeat:
do not tell him that you have magic
.
That
secret we are not prepared to share.”

And then, an hour after that, Tishka, a tall, thin woman who wore her long red hair in a braided ponytail, one of those who had accompanied Mara on the disastrous attempt to rescue her friend Katia from the mining camp, and who had been coldly formal to her ever since, found Mara in her workshop. Without speaking, Tishka led her to one of the windowless storerooms along the Broad Way, which was emptied of bags of grain and turned into a cell for Chell.

Two other storerooms nearby, she knew, were also being used as cells: they held Turpit and Pixot, the Autarch's geologists, captured when the unMasked Army had rescued Mara for the second time from the clutches of the Watchers, at the mouth of the magic-filled cavern that would soon be Aygrima's second magic mine. Mara had tried to speak to Pixot once or twice—he had seemed almost friendly when they'd first met—but he had refused to see her. Both of them wore their Masks every day, though there were no Watchers to see. Mara suspected they were convinced they'd be rescued and they were afraid of doing anything that might get them labeled traitors once the Watchers finally arrived.

As they might, if this mission goes horribly wrong
, she thought, and then pushed the uncomfortable thought firmly away.

The only furnishings in Chell's chamber were a wooden chair and a narrow bed. Chell pointed Mara to the chair; he sat on the bed. Tishka stationed herself at the door, silent, but watching and listening.
Making sure I don't say anything I shouldn't
, Mara thought.
I wonder what her orders are if I do? Kill Chell?

She couldn't dismiss the possibility out of hand.
Be careful
, she warned herself.
Be very careful
.

“Thank you for coming to see me,” Chell began. “I've been wanting to thank you again for saving my life. If you had not come along when you did . . .”

“Anyone would have done the same,” Mara said, though in fact she was uncomfortably aware she had almost turned and run back for help . . . in which case, given the way the waves had been washing across the beach where Chell had fallen, they probably wouldn't now be having this conversation.

“Perhaps. But you
did
.” Chell gave her a crooked grin, and once again she was struck by how handsome he was, and how much more
mature
he was than Keltan or Hyram. His lean face, stubbled this late in the day, had lost the boyish softness their countenances still bore. “And in return, I want to tell you in person how I came to your shore.”

“I've been wondering about that,” Mara said. “It seems an awfully big coincidence that your boat should capsize so close to the Secret City.”

“Not really,” Chell said. “We knew the Secret City was here. Well,” he held up his hands hastily, “not the Secret City as such, but some sort of settlement. We saw what we thought was smoke, from far out at sea.” He shook his head. “Now, of course, I know that most of what we saw was really steam from the hot springs. Nonetheless, it drew our attention.”

Mara remembered wondering just a day or two before if it were really safe for the Secret City to allow so much smoke to escape from the cliff above her workshop. “You were looking for a settlement?”

“Yes,” Chell said. “I . . .
we
 . . . came to Aygrima in the hope of contacting its people . . . if any still survived.”

“You sailed across the ocean in that tiny boat?”

Chell laughed. “No, of course not. We marked the location of the smoke and sailed north until we found a better harbor for our ship. Then the scouting party set out in the boat along the shore.” His smile faded. “But the storm caught us in shallow water. The waves . . .” He shook his head. “Again, I thank you for saving me. I wish you could have saved the others.”

“If you have a larger ship, why not sail
it
along the shore?” Mara said. She heard the almost accusing tone in her voice, and recognized it as the same one she'd used with Edrik earlier. She didn't seem to be able to take anything at face value anymore.

Well, there were reasons for that.

“We did not want our approach to seem threatening,” Chell said. “A small party, in a small boat, could be travelers from farther up the coast rather than from across the sea. And we had no idea what we might find here. Caution seemed in order.”

“And when will your ship come looking for you?” Mara said. “You've been gone for several days already.”

“Not for some time,” Chell said. “We were equipped for several weeks. We intended to scout as far as we could before returning with our report.”

“So you're a scout,” said Mara, “for the ‘Royal Korellian Navy.' What
is
that?”