Shadows (7 page)

Keltan glanced back at the forest, where no doubt Edrik was watching and fuming. Mara followed his gaze, plastered a big grin on her face, and gave a cheery wave in that direction. “Come on,” she urged. “A hot breakfast? It could be the last one for days. And then we'll get my horse and be on our way.”

“Edrik will kill us,” Keltan muttered.

“Hot food,” Mara countered, and clearly she had the better argument; Keltan heaved a huge sigh and walked up the path toward the house with Mara. “Oh, and by the way,” Mara added brightly, “we're from Riverwash, and my name's Prella.”

“River—?” Keltan began, but then they were in the hallway and Mara was introducing Keltan to a surprised Filia, although she called him “Hyram,” since even Filia might be expected to know the name of the Autarch's horse.

The breakfast went well, with Filia apparently perfectly willing to believe Keltan was Mara's brother and had been searching for her all night. “You look very close in age,” Filia commented.

“We're twins,” Mara offered, earning another startled glance from Keltan. “Fraternal, of course.”

“Of course,” Filia said dryly.

“May I have another slice of ham?” Keltan said quickly.

Less than an hour after they had entered the farmhouse, they were on their way again, Filia waving good-bye to them, and Mara, the cut on her back covered with a fresh dressing, feeling full, contented, and generally pleased with herself.

Edrik did not share her high opinion of how things had gone. “What if they had gone straight to the Watchers while you slept?” he said coldly. “What then?”

“Nice to see you, too,” Mara said. “Why would they have gone to the Watchers? I'm clearly just an unMasked child, harmless and lost. But if I
had
disappeared suddenly in the night, or if I had run off the moment Keltan appeared this morning, then they really
might
have gone to the Watchers, because they would have been afraid something bad was happening to me. Instead they fed us both and sent us happily on our way.” She gave him a bright smile. “See? It all worked out perfectly.”

Edrik grunted but said nothing more. Chell and Keltan both gave her smiles as they mounted their horses.

They moved well back in the woods and spent the day holed up in the trees, keeping watch in case someone came along. They didn't ride again until nightfall. “We're behind our time now,” Edrik growled, “thanks to your adventure. We'll have to travel all night and through tomorrow with only short rests if you're to make your rendezvous.”

Mara just nodded.

That night's travel passed without untoward encounters of either the human or canine kind. Daybreak of the twelfth of Winterwhite found them in rougher country, with plenty of stands of trees through which to pick their unobserved way. But by the end of the day, broken only by brief rest stops, the refreshing sleep and hot meal in Filia and Jess' house seemed like something Mara had experienced only in a dream. Reality had always been this, jolting along on the back of her mare, almost falling from her saddle from weariness.

The others had to be even wearier than she was, since none of them had had even
one
peaceful night in a soft bed. Perhaps that was why Edrik, as they neared the edge of a wood, for once did not slow and scout, but simply rode out into the open.

They emerged into no ordinary clearing, but into a swath cut through the forest to allow the passage of a road: and there, in the middle of the road, astride a white stallion, black-Masked head turning toward them as they crashed out through the undergrowth that had screened him from them, rode a Watcher.

The Watcher reined in the horse and stared at them. He took in their unMasked faces in an instant and his sword slithered from its sheath. “Hold!” he shouted.

Edrik uttered one startled, disgusted oath, then clapped heels to his horse and galloped forward, drawing his own sword. The Watcher's stallion reared. Edrik reached him. Steel crashed.

Keltan, face white, drew his sword, too, and started forward, but Chell was faster. Though he had no weapons at all, he, too, dug his heels into his horse's flanks and charged forward. As the Watcher's stallion, bigger and stronger than Edrik's mare and doubtless battle-trained to boot, shouldered the unMasked Army's second-in-command back, Chell flung himself from his saddle and crashed into the Watcher. Both of them thudded to the ground. The Watcher's stallion, suddenly riderless, galloped away. Edrik brought his own horse under control and spun to assist Chell, but there was no need. Chell got to his feet, wincing. The Watcher lay still, head twisted at an unnatural angle. As Keltan and Mara rode up, his black Mask crumbled away . . .

...and Mara gasped. A ghostly image of the Watcher, a gleaming, multicolored ghost, rose into the air, wavered . . . and flowed into her.

She swayed in the saddle. The world whirled around her.

And then she fell into darkness.

Return to Tamita

M
ARA OPENED HER EYES. She lay where she had fallen, but now Keltan knelt behind her, cradling her head in his lap. She blinked at his upside-down face, his eyes wide and warm with concern. Edrik stood behind him, staring down at her; Chell stood to her left, looking puzzled.

“She's awake!” Keltan said, sounding relieved. “Mara, what happened?”

Groaning, Mara sat up. “I . . .” She looked past Edrik at Chell, who did not know of her Gift and was not to be told. “I . . . I fainted.” She hated making herself sound so weak, but she saw no alternative. “The . . . the Watcher . . . his neck . . . it was horrible.”

“I did not mean to kill him,” Chell said. “Just to knock him from his horse. But he landed badly.”

“You could say that,” Edrik said dryly. “But I
did
mean to kill him, so I won't fault you for it.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I wish his horse had not escaped. When he is retrieved, riderless, they'll come looking for this one . . .”

Chell shrugged. “He fell off his horse. Broke his neck. It happens.”

“Not with the tracks of other horses nearby,” Edrik said. “The Watchers are many things, but they—well, at least, most of them—are not stupid. We must move on. And we must do our best to cover our tracks.” He sighed. “And that, I think, means giving up our horses. They will follow them . . . and not us.”

Mara got to her feet. She felt . . . odd. Tingling.
Magic
, she thought.
When the Watcher died . . . the magic he contained didn't just . . . evaporate. It flowed into me. I've got his magic inside of me. Magic I can use.

“I may have a better solution,” she said softly, and Edrik gave her a sharp look. She glanced meaningfully at Chell, and Edrik, rather to her surprise, took her hint. His eyes narrowed.

“You're sure?”

She nodded.

He grunted. “Very well. Mount up,” he said to Chell and Keltan. He glanced at Mara. “I'll lead your horse . . . ?”

She nodded again.

Keltan shot Mara a startled look. She winked at him. His eyes widened, and he turned to his mount.

Only Chell protested. “We can't go on without Mara—”

“We're not going far,” Edrik said. “Mount up. Now.”

Though obviously sorely puzzled, Chell did as he was told. He, Edrik, and Keltan rode down the path, disappearing around a bend in moments.

Mara turned back to survey the scene. She considered the power lurking under her skin, the magic the Watcher had released as he died. It . . . fizzed, a sensation not even close to the agony she had felt when she'd actively pulled magic from living people to contain the explosion at the mine, but irritating, like an itch she couldn't scratch. She had to use it, had to get it out of her, and she thought she knew how to do it.

She looked at the earth beaten down by their horses as they rode out of the forest, at the trampled undergrowth beneath the tall trees. She pictured it undamaged, unmarked.
That's what I want
, she thought.

She released the magic.

Red and green, blue and gold, yellow and purple, and other colors she didn't even have a name for seemed to explode from her skin. She gasped: for an instant her skin felt on fire, as if the power had burned as it rushed out of her. But the pain only lasted an instant. Then it was gone, and the tingling irritation with it . . . and so were the marks of their horses. Grass, earth, and trees alike looked unmarked. Neither hoofmark nor manure remained. Not a blade was bent, not a twig was broken.

Mara took a deep breath. She started to follow the others, then, struck by a sudden thought, turned back to the dead Watcher and carefully slid his sword back into its sheath.
So they won't realize he was facing an enemy
, she thought. She looked down at his corpse. His dead eyes stared sightlessly from his pale face into the forest she had just restored, the shards and dust of his crumbled Mask clinging to the black stubble on his cheeks. With a shudder, she hurried away.

Her companions awaited her just out of sight. “Done,” Mara said to Edrik as she climbed wearily into the saddle of her patient mare.

Edrik nodded. “Excellent,” he said. “We'll risk riding along the path a bit farther, then we'll take to the woods again.”

Chell was staring at her with bright, narrowed eyes. She gave him an innocent smile. A flash of irritation crossed his face as he reined his horse around to follow Edrik.

Keltan rode up close beside her, and leaned even closer. “Are you all right?” he murmured. “You used magic, didn't you?”

She nodded. “I had to do something with it,” she murmured back. “When the Watcher died . . . his magic leaped to me.”
As though I were made of black lodestone
, she thought. “But it . . . itched. I had to get rid of it.”

“But Ethelda said—”

“I know what Ethelda said. I didn't have a choice,” she snapped.

Or was I just looking for an excuse to use magic again despite the warnings?

It had felt good . . .
right
 . . . to use her Gift. But what other surprises did it have in store for her? When Illina had died in front of her during the raid on the mining camp, Mara hadn't received
her
magic. What had just happened with the Watcher had never happened before.

But then, when Illina had died, she hadn't yet drawn any magic from others. That had happened spontaneously when she had contained the explosion in the mining camp. Perhaps that had also awakened
this
new ability, but since then no one had died in her presence until now, so she had been unaware of it.

She wondered if there really were books in the Palace Library that could explain her strange power . . . and tell her how to control it.
I'll ask Father when I see him
, she thought.
He could look it up . . . send a message . . .

But she felt uneasy even as she thought it. She was already putting her father into terrible danger by meeting with him. How much more could he risk? How much more did she
want
him to risk?

He put
you
in terrible danger by arranging to have your Mask fail and the unMasked Army rescue you!

The harshness of her own thought surprised her, and not for the first time, she wondered what she would say to him when she saw him again. She wondered what he would say to her.

She'd find out soon enough, if all went well.

Possibly a big “if,”
she thought, thinking of the dead Watcher by the side of the road.

She thought of that Watcher a great deal more than she wanted to later that night, for as she slept, he came to her, head flopped over, tongue extended, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, eyes glazed. He could not speak from his twisted throat, but he made strange grunting noises, and his hands reached for her—

She woke with her own scream echoing in her ears, and jerked upright to see Edrik, who was on watch, on his feet, hand on his sword hilt, eyes wide; looked right to see Keltan, lying on that side, gasping with the fright of one woken suddenly from sleep . . . and looked the other way to see Chell lying still, but with his eyes open, studying her.

“Sorry,” she gasped out. “Sorry. Bad dream.” She got up and stumbled to her pack. The fire had burned down to coals, but there was enough heat there to boil water in one of their cooking pots and pour in one of the packets of herbs Ethelda had prepared for her. Keltan, who had come to the fire with her, wrinkled his nose and drew away as steam rose from the pot, but to her it smelled like spring and flowers and baking bread and every other lovely smell all rolled together. She poured the hot liquid into a mug and drank it too fast, burning her tongue.

When it was finished, she lay back down, the memory of the nightmare receding. “Will you be all right?” Keltan asked her softly.

She nodded, and he returned to his own bedroll. She lay down, but could not sleep.

Just as Ethelda had warned her, the Watcher's death had left an imprint on her mind. Using the magic that had flowed into her from his body to erase their tracks hadn't removed that imprint. The Watcher with the broken neck now lingered inside her mind, joining all the others, Grute, two other Watchers, Illina, the Warden . . . Katia. The imprints of those earlier deaths had faded enough with time that she had stopped her once-daily brewing of the potion Ethelda had provided her. Apparently that had been a mistake.

She stared up at the star-bright sky, but the diamond glitter blurred and faded as tears welled in her eyes.
What am I?
she cried out silently to those distant lights.
What kind of freak am I?

The stars offered no answer, and she had none within herself. She could only hope that
somewhere
there was one.

She thought her sobs silent. Certainly Chell did not stir again and Edrik did not look around. But Keltan must not have been able to fall back to sleep either. He got up and came over to her, lying down beside her, his body warm against hers. She turned to him, suddenly sobbing uncontrollably, and he put his arm under her head and cradled her on his shoulder. “Shhh,” he said. “Shhh. It's all right.”

“I don't have much of that potion,” she said in a choked whisper. “If the dreams come back . . . I'll run out . . . I can't bear . . .”

“No dreams will come back tonight,” Keltan whispered in return. “I'll stay right here to keep them away. Now go to sleep.”

She nodded, remembering when Illina had held her after she woke screaming during the journey to the mine.

Illina, who had also died, and whose image had also haunted her dreams . . .

She shuddered, and Keltan's embrace tightened. “Shhh,” he whispered again. “Shhh . . .”

She closed her eyes. It felt good to be held.

She slept.

•  •  •

On the morning of the thirteenth of Winterwhite, they finally caught sight of Tamita.

They came over a rise and there it was in the distance, walls of yellowish stone surrounding rank on rank of houses and other buildings, climbing the terraced slopes of Fortress Hill to the gleaming white towers of the Palace, whose blue banners, snapping in the sunlight, were only occasionally visible through the wreaths of steam and smoke from the city's thousands of hearths, all alight to ward off the wintry chill. (
Though if they think
this
is cold
, Mara thought,
they should visit the mountains
.) The Heartsblood flowed toward Tamita and, eventually, into it, passing beneath the walls, as would she and Keltan when they entered the city that night. The ridge they had climbed held the last bit of forest cover: only brown stubble-covered fields and the occasional farmhouse remained between them and the city walls.

“This is as far as Chell and I go,” Edrik said to Mara. “Once it is dark, you and Keltan can enter. But it's too exposed to go any closer until sunset.”

“I cannot learn anything of the city from here!” Chell protested. “If I am to report—”

“This is all you get to see,” Edrik said flatly. “It's too dangerous for us to go closer.”

Chell's jaw set, but he nodded, once.

“We'll camp here for the rest of the day,” Edrik continued. “No fire.”

Mara sighed. The warm night in the farmhouse seemed an eternity ago.

The day crawled by. Clouds rose in the west and swept over the sky as the hours passed, swallowing the sun shortly after noon. The temperature rose slightly but the air became damp, making it feel colder rather than warmer.

Chell sat by himself, writing in a small notebook, presumably making notes about what he had thus far seen in Aygrima. Edrik stood watch, staring out over the plain below, where nothing moved except a few cows and, once, a lone farmer trudging along a path through the fields, his Masked face a white dot beneath a brown hood.

Keltan sat close beside Mara, gazing at Tamita. “I never thought I'd be going back in there,” he said in a low voice. “I never wanted to.”

Mara said nothing. She knew that Keltan's life in the city had been hard, his father abusive, their home a hovel. She, on the other hand, had longed to return since the day her Mask had failed, had dreamed of her own room, her own bed, her mother and father, of life as it had been for the first fifteen years of her existence, the life that had been torn away from her in one horrifying moment of blood and pain.

Now she
was
returning home, to her own room, to her father . . . and though she had longed for it, now it terrified her. She wasn't the little girl who had once slept in the room where she would meet her father that night, and she could never be that little girl again. She was . . . whatever she was now, with her strange, terrifying Gift. She had seen and experienced things she had never dreamed of in her worst childhood nightmares. Her faith in her father had been shattered along with the Mask he had so carefully crafted to fail. She understood that he had judged the fear and agony of that moment worth the possibility of freedom if the unMasked Army succeeded in rescuing her, but at the same time, he had sentenced her to all the terror, pain, and degradation that had followed. And he had made that choice
for
her, hadn't warned her what was to come, hadn't discussed it with her. She knew he had had to protect himself and his own Mask in order to protect her, but still, she wished he had been able to give her some kind of warning, some kind of reassurance. And she still remembered the screams of her mother, being forced from the Maskery after Mara's Mask had shattered. Her father had caused his wife to suffer, too, and hadn't confided in her, either—at least not before the fact. Whether or not her mother knew the truth now, Mara didn't know.