Masks (40 page)

“I can’t,” Grelda said, voice bitter. “My healing arts cannot deal with such a wound. She will die in minutes unless Ethelda has magical skill enough to heal her. Alita, leave Kirika! Find Ethelda, if you value Prella’s life!”

Alita gave Kirika another angry shove, then shouldered through the red curtain and was gone.

But in that same instant, Prella gasped and stopped breathing. Grelda turned and looked down at her. “Too late,” she said quietly.

“No!” Mara stared at the smaller girl. Kirika gave her own small gasp and sank down against the wall, burying her face in her hands. Keltan and Simona stood by, awkward, helpless, faces set in shock and disbelief.
This can’t be happening
, Mara thought.
This
must not
happen!

And just as it had in the camp in her moment of greatest need, magic answered her.

She did not draw it from those in the room. She did not need to. The magic in the urn poured out through the black stone sides as though they were porous as a sieve, and leaped to her. Hands sheathed in blue, she stumbled from her bed, eyes locked on Prella, who lay still and silent, face slackening into death, covered in blood, the awful hole gaping in her side. “What are you—” Grelda began, but her words died as Mara fell to her knees beside the wounded girl and touched her with her magic-covered hands.
Live
, she thought.
Oh, Prella. Live!

She gasped as power flowed from her hands into the dying girl: not because it hurt, but because, this time,
it didn’t
. It didn’t feel wrong. For the first time, it felt
right
.

The gaping wound in Prella’s side closed, pink flesh suddenly reappearing beneath the blood-soaked rent in her tunic. The ribs knitted, the lung sealed, the blood vessels rejoined. The heart that had stopped quivered and leaped back to thumping life. And Prella arched her back, took a huge gasping breath, then turned her head and coughed out blood. Her eyes flew open and met Mara’s. She smiled a little. “Hello, Mara!” she croaked. “Welcome back.” Then she looked down at herself. “Yuck! What happened?”

Mara hardly heard her. She raised her fingers in front of her face. Again she’d used magic without thinking, without proper control, despite all Ethelda’s warnings. But this time . . .
this
time she had used it to heal, not kill.

And this time it hadn’t hurt!

Grelda was staring down at her, eyes wide. Hyram and Keltan had similar awed expressions. By the archway, Kirika raised a face that now, at last, was as stained with tears as Alita’s had been. She saw Prella sitting up, looking confused, staggered to her feet and almost flung herself on the younger girl. “Oh, Prella,” she gasped out. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry!”

“I don’t understand,” Prella said, returning Kirika’s hug but looking over her shoulder at Mara. “What just happened?”

“What, indeed?” said Ethelda, coming into the room with Alita.

Mara would have liked to have answered. But everything in the room seemed to be receding from her as though disappearing down a long gray tunnel, and in another moment had disappeared entirely.

The sleep that followed was without dreams.

Aftermath and Beginnings

M
ARA SAT IN THE SAND
with Keltan and Hyram, watching the sun set over the restless ocean. Five days had passed since they had returned from the camp. Two of those days had brought cold rain and the third two inches of snow; but yesterday had been warmer and today the sun shone with enough warmth to make their seaside lounging comfortable, though skiffs of white still lingered in the shadows of the cliffs.

Keltan seemed almost fully recovered, though occasionally he just
stopped
, for a moment, as if his mind were elsewhere. Mara, ever since Healing Prella, had slept, if not entirely without dreams, at least without those dreams bringing her to screaming wakefulness. She had not needed Ethelda’s sleeping draught. She felt almost normal.

Prella showed no ill effects from having been dead. Keltan, who had seen the whole thing, had told Mara how the smaller girl had been hurt. “Kirika and Alita were harvesting potatoes,” he said. “They each had a sharp spade. Prella had been doing something else. She came out, saw them with their backs to her, and thought it would be funny to sneak up on them. She looked at me and put a finger to her lips, then crept up behind Kirika and threw her arms around her.” He’d gone pale as he’d told Mara the story. “Kirika . . . it was like when Simona touched her and she lashed out, only worse. She acted out of pure instinct. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. She threw Prella off her and swung around with her spade, all in an instant. The spade smashed into Prella’s side. It–it
crunched
. And the blood . . . Prella stared down at the wound, her face turned white, her eyes rolled up in her head, and then she collapsed. Simona and I hurried her up to the sickroom. The rest you know.”

I Healed her
, Mara thought. She still couldn’t quite believe it. Prella’s ribs had been smashed. Her lung punctured. She’d lost a huge amount of blood. She’d stopped breathing. Her heart had stopped.
And I brought her back.

And in the process, Ethelda thought, Mara had partially Healed herself. “It doesn’t change the risks,” she’d told Mara. “Everything I warned you about still stands. You are still untrained. Still a danger to yourself and others. You should
still
avoid using magic.

“But this time,
you
controlled the magic, at least after a fashion, although since you passed out afterward, I’d say your technique needs work. As for why the dreams have eased . . .” She smiled. “Perhaps by soothing the irritated magical pathways in your mind, you softened the imprints that have given you the nightmares. Or perhaps it’s simply because you’ve alleviated your guilt. I’ve noticed,” she said dryly, “that you’re almost as Gifted at guilt as at magic.”

You don’t know the half of it
, Mara thought. She hadn’t told the Healer what she’d been on the verge of using the magic for just before Prella had been brought in. That dark urge had vanished.
If I’d killed myself, I wouldn’t have been there for Prella
, she thought fiercely.
I wasn’t able to save Katia. But at least I saved someone
.

For the moment, at least, the darkness that had been growing in her soul had retreated.

Hyram, returning from the camp two days after the others, had reported that the main gate had abruptly closed just before dawn the morning after the explosion. Shortly after that Watchers had emerged, but they had focused all their energy on finding their runaway horses. The unMasked had made it cleanly away. The Secret City remained a secret.

Mara had only spoken to Catilla briefly since awakening. She had agreed that Catilla had upheld her end of their bargain, and that she would, therefore, attempt to make the counterfeit Masks. “And learn to use your Gift,” Catilla had reminded her sharply. “That was part of our bargain, too. The power you demonstrated, in the camp, and healing Prella—”

“And learn to use my Gift,” Mara had agreed. “If that ever becomes possible.”

Catilla had had to be content with that. Mara’s Healing of Prella had exhausted the contents of the urn of magic they had brought back from the camp. “Among other things, you need to learn moderation,” Ethelda had told her severely. “You could have healed that wound with only a portion of that magic, and left some for future emergencies. And maybe if you
had,
you wouldn’t have knocked yourself out.”

But learning moderation, or anything else about using her Gift, would have to wait until they had more magic: and for the moment, there was no prospect of that.

Ethelda had explained that to Catilla, which was why Catilla did not press the matter of Mara better learning to use her Gift. Neither Ethelda nor Mara had told Catilla—or anyone else—where the magic Mara had used to stop the explosion had come from. Her ability to draw magic directly from living things remained a secret shared only by the two of them.

Given a room in which to work on Masks, Mara had examined the supplies stolen from the village Maskmaker and confirmed everything was there. Even the “recipe,” the black lodestone dust she now knew carried carefully crafted magic from the Palace had been brought, magic she would certainly
not
be incorporating into her fakes.

But what could
I
do with the Masks?
she wondered now, as she stared out at the orange-and-gold water.
With the power I have . . . ?

The power you dare not use
, she reminded herself, as she did every day: every day, because with each day the memory of the pain she had felt when she’d saved the camp receded like the tide, leaving behind, like a glass float from some fisherman’s net tangled in seaweed along the shore, the shining memory of the incredible power that had filled her: the unforgettable feeling that she could do
anything
. And unlike that glass ball, which lost some of its gleam as it dried, the memory of power seemed to grow more and more attractive, more and more something she’d like to experience again, no matter what the cost.

The Autarch is an addict
, she remembered Ethelda saying.
Am I one, too?

If Catilla knew where my power came from in the camp, she wouldn’t worry about what using magic might do to me. She’d see me only as a weapon. She’d . . . what? Send me to Tamita to kill the Autarch?

She
can’t
know. I don’t want to be a weapon. Not like that.
She remembered Ethelda’s grim warning.
If I became a weapon, how long before I’d turn from weapon to monster, another Lady of Pain and Fire?

But she couldn’t help turning the idea over and over in her head. What if she
could
get into Tamita? What if she
could
kill the Autarch? Would that really be so bad? How could
killing
a monster make
her
a monster? Killing monsters was something
heroes
did.

“I wonder if there really are monsters out there?” Hyram said idly, his question so close to her thoughts that she started.

“Out where?”

“Out there. In the ocean.” Hyram waved a hand. “And how far do you have to go before you fall off the edge of the world?”

“Some people say the world is round,” Mara said, glad to talk about something, anything, that had nothing to do with what she’d been thinking.

Hyram snorted. “And how does that work, exactly? If the world were round, all that water would drain off. And if you walked too far in one direction you’d eventually topple over and fall.” He leaned back on his elbows in the sand. His bare feet were stretched out in front of him, and he wriggled his toes. “No, the world is flat. And somewhere out there is the edge.”

“There are stories about other lands across the sea,” Mara said, remembering books she had read in childhood. “Once upon a time, the stories say, people from other lands regularly visited Aygrima. We even traded with them. It was a long, long time ago, though. Before the Autarch. Before the days of the Autarch’s great-grandfather, in fact.”

“Other lands?” Hyram looked at her. “What do you mean, other lands?”

“Islands, I guess,” Mara said.

“With other people on them.” Hyram shook his head. “Children’s tales. This is the only land. We’re the only people. And the Autarch . . .” His face turned grim. “The Autarch rules us all.” Then he grinned fiercely. “
For now
. Because one day, we will be rid of him and everyone will walk free and unMasked.”

“I don’t know,” Keltan said, rather unexpectedly; he had been gazing off into space as if lost in his own head. “In Tamita everyone thinks the unMasked Army is a myth, nothing but a children’s tale, that it can’t possibly be real. Yet here I am, in the unMasked Army.” He waved a hand at the sea. “So who’s to say the children’s tales about other lands beyond the waters don’t have some basis in truth, too?”

Hyram snorted again. “I’ll make you a wager. If we ever find out there are other lands beyond the water, I’ll clean your boots and make your bed for a month.”

Keltan laughed. “I’ll hold you to that.” Mara looked from one to the other, and smiled.
Maybe Keltan will be all right after all
, she thought.
Maybe I will, too.

With the sun almost gone, they went back into the Secret City, Mara walking between the two boys, enjoying their easy banter, the warmth of their companionship . . .

. . . and trying not to feel, deep in her mind, the insistent call of the magic within the two young bodies at her side . . . especially from Keltan, the boy she had already pulled magic from once before, and from whom it would be so easy, so
pleasurable
, to do so again . . .

She shuddered.
I can control this
, she thought fiercely.
I
can
. I am
not
a monster
.

They entered the Secret City. Behind them, darkness descended over the endlessly rolling ocean.