Masks

by E. C. Blake

  The tall woman with the braided red hair walked next to Mara. With a friendly smile, she introduced herself as Tishka. Like the unMasked behind her, she led an animal on a leash: Grute, rope around his chest, hands tied behind his back. Somehow, Mara thought, the unMasked had already realized what Grute was like. Maybe Alita told them.

  Grute, despite his bonds, showed no emotion as he looked around at the preparations except when his eyes flicked over Mara. Then, just for a moment, she thought she saw a flash of . . . something. Anger? She couldn’t be sure, and already his gaze had moved on.

  She decided, not for the first time, to stay as far away from him as possible.

  The unMasked band trudged through the forest in a generally westerly direction. Every now and then the sun, sinking ahead of them, stabbed Mara’s eyes through an opening in the tree, blinding her: but then, there wasn’t much to see—just trees, more trees, and more trees after that.

  Mara had never been in a forest before. She couldn’t figure out how Edrik could find his way through it. After a couple of hours she began to suspect he wasn’t, that he was as thoroughly lost as she. But no one else seemed concerned, so she kept her fears to herself.

  She had another thought she didn’t keep to herself, though, as she stepped around yet another pile of manure. “They’ll be able to track us easily,” she said to Keltan. “Won’t we lead them straight to the unMasked Army?”

  “We won’t be leaving tracks much longer,” Keltan said.

  Mara glanced at him. “What?”

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  And she did, very soon. As the shadows deepened and the sun, no longer able to pierce the forest canopy, turned the treetops orange, they reached a broad, fast-flowing stream, foaming white in the gathering gloom. Edrik called a halt. “We’ll follow the stream for the next few hours,” he said.

  “In the dark?” Mara whispered to Keltan, who just shrugged.

  “You’re crazy!” Grute shouted.

  Edrik ignored him. The unMasked were rummaging in the saddlebags again, pulling out clay pots filled with . . . Mara sniffed, and blinked. Goose grease?

  “Waterproofing,” Keltan explained, and Mara understood. Tishka brought Keltan one of the containers, and the two of them began slathering the grease onto their boots. Mara wrinkled her nose at the smell and feel, but gamely covered her borrowed boots until they glistened. They were slightly too large and she was pretty sure she was getting a blister as a result, but bare feet would have been far worse on the rocky path they’d been following—and the thought of wading barefoot in the mountain stream before them made her wince.

  Grute, however, continued to complain. “These damn boots you gave me are too tight,” he snarled at Tishka. “My feet hurt.”

  Tishka shrugged. “So don’t wear ’em. Your feet won’t hurt once they’ve gone numb. Won’t hurt at all after we’ve had to cut ’em off later.”

  Grute muttered something under his breath, but subsided. Tishka handed out sausage and cheese; Mara devoured both gratefully. After a few more minutes’ rest, they all plunged into the stream.

  The greased boots kept Mara’s feet dry, but almost at once she felt a chill creeping into them. And the way the boots slipped around on her feet made the uncertain footing provided by the slimy, water-rounded rocks even more treacherous. She skidded and stumbled and felt every moment as if she were on the verge of turning her ankle.

  As darkness descended and a full moon rose in a sky sprayed with brilliant stars, Mara, already exhausted, hoped, then expected, then prayed that Edrik would say they’d gone far enough and take them ashore to make camp, but instead they kept walking, and walking . . . and walking. Her feet felt like they didn’t belong to her anymore, as if they had been cut off and replaced with stockings full of frozen sand. She staggered and almost fell; Keltan grabbed her arm to save her, and she leaned against him gratefully.

  “How much longer?” she murmured. “I don’t know how much more I can stand . . .”

  If a voice could sound pale, then Keltan’s sounded pale as he replied, “I know where he’s taking us, but I don’t know the path well enough to say how close we are to it. But we can’t leave the stream until we get there. We can’t risk Watchers finding our trail.”

  Mara glanced behind her. The bright moon and star-spangled sky provided more than enough light for her to see the other girls from the wagon clinging to each other in pairs, Alita and Prella together, even dour Kirika leaning on Simona. Only Grute walked alone, following Tishka at the end of his leash.

  Look at that, Mara thought. A horse’s ass, but no horse. The thought made her grin in the darkness despite her frozen weariness.

  An interminable time later, Edrik finally stopped—but not, Mara realized with dismay, to make camp. “We can take a short rest break here,” he said, coming back from the front of the column to address them. “Over there.” He pointed left, his gesture clearly visible in the moonlight. “Bread and water for everyone. If you need to relieve yourself, do it in the river; downstream, if you please, so we can replenish our water and the horses can drink. If your horse leaves anything on the rocks, wash them. We want no trace of our presence. We’re still too close to where we attacked the wagon.”

  Keltan led Mara to the riverbank, and she gratefully splashed out of the water and found a rock to sit on. The horses were variously ridden or led ashore, the unMasked kneeling beside them to check their legs and ankles before going off, one by one, into the darkness downstream, adjusting their clothing as they returned after a minute or two.

  “My turn,” Keltan said, and he, too, disappeared downstream. Mara, whose bladder had been uncomfortably full for hours, made her own trip a few moments later. She squatted above the freezing water feeling embarrassed, undignified, but resigned: the body had its needs regardless of the circumstances, and if she could use that noxious bucket in the cell with Grute not ten feet away, she could manage this.

  Shivering, she returned to the stony beach . . . and an argument.

  “I’ve got to go,” Grute said. “Untie my hands so I can go.” He was glaring at Tishka. Then his face slipped into a leer. “Unless you’d like to help me.”

  “Take him downstream,” Edrik snapped. “Untie his hands so he can relieve himself. But then tie him up again. And watch him the whole time.”

  “The whole time?” Grute said, eyes still fixed on Tishka.

  “The whole time,” Edrik said levelly.

  Grute shrugged. Tishka, face twisted in disgust, gave him a shove toward the river, then walked behind him. They moved downstream until they were just shadows, only visible because they were silhouetted against the sparkle of moonlight and starlight off the rushing water.

  Keltan handed Mara a chunk of crusty bread and a flask of water. As she nibbled and drank gratefully, she gave Grute no more thought . . .

  ...until she heard a sharp cry and a splash, audible even above the stream’s constant burble. Along with everyone else, she looked downstream.

  She saw two dark shapes strangely low in the water; a moment later they straightened abruptly, and then Tishka came splashing back upstream, holding Grute’s arm bent behind his back with her left hand, her right forearm clamped across his neck. She threw him, coughing and sputtering, onto the stones at Edrik’s feet. “Little beast tried to hit me with a rock,” Tishka snarled. “So I half-drowned him.” She put her boot to Grute’s rear end and shoved him facedown onto the rocks. “Should have finished the job.”

  “Nice guy, this friend of yours,” Keltan muttered.

  “He’s no friend of mine,” Mara shot back.

  Edrik glared down at Grute, still choking and shuddering. “Tie him up,” he ordered, contempt in his voice. “He goes the rest of the way as baggage. Sling him over the wagon horse.”

  Keltan made a snorting sound. “And I thought horses were a misery to rid
e the proper way!”

  Mara said nothing. She’d only known Grute for a day, but already felt certain that no amount of punishment would change him. He’s bad, she thought. Bad through and through. And the Mask knew it.

  But the Mask rejected me, too, and I’m not bad through and through . . .

  ...am I?

  She looked at the other children, slumped together on the rocks. Not unless Alita, Prella, Simona, and Kirika are, too.

  The call to resume the long slog through icy water came almost as a relief. Better the misery of that exhausting, freezing struggle than sitting and reliving the horror of her Masking yet again. But nothing, not the dark, nor the cold, nor the sound of rushing water, could blot from her mind the echoing memory of her mother’s screams.

  They pushed on for another eternity, then another, and then another. The bump on Mara’s head throbbed counterpoint with her sore ribs. Toward the end, Mara only stayed on her feet by leaning heavily on Keltan, who had grown very quiet and grim, but gamely offered what strength he had to spare.

  As they walked, the landscape changed, the banks rising higher and higher, lifting the forest with them, until finally they slogged between sheer gray cliffs, the only hint of the trees the sound of rushing wind far above.

  At last Edrik pointed again, to the right, the gesture much harder to see this time, for the moon had long since vanished behind the towering stone walls, leaving only the light of the narrow strip of stars. They emerged from the water onto a shelf of rock. Even without the moonlight, Mara could see a dark split in the cliff wall. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Our road home,” Keltan said from out of the darkness. “Rocky, narrow, and almost impossible to find even if you know it’s there. It would take a miracle for the Autarch’s men to trail us now.”

  Mara nodded. That was good news, of course, but she couldn’t dredge up much enthusiasm from the deepening black mud of her exhaustion.

  “Fires,” Edrik said. “Safe enough down here. A hot meal for everyone. Then sleep. We ride again at first light.”

  A rough and ready camp sprang up. Mara had wondered where the wood for the fires was supposed to come from, but the unMasked answered that by opening bundles of sticks that had been slung on the horses. The night was clear, so there was no bother with tents. There being nothing to graze on, the horses got feedbags. “Always see to the horses first,” Keltan said, when Mara protested that the animals got to eat before they did. “They’ve already drilled that much into me!”

  Two fires flickered to life. Mara immediately went to the nearest and sat as close to it as she could, soaking up the glorious heat as if she could never get enough—which, at the moment, she didn’t think she could. Keltan was busy elsewhere, and Simona and Kirika already slept, despite the stony ground, stretched out near the second fire, but Alita and Prella joined her. The smaller girl cuddled close to Alita and promptly dozed off. Alita stared into the flames, her face drawn and her dark eyes glittering in its unsteady light.

  “So,” Mara said. “We’ve been rescued.”

  “For now,” Alita said. “But the Autarch . . .” She looked around to make sure she couldn’t be overheard. “He won’t stand for this,” she said in a low voice. “They’ve gone too far. Sooner or later, he’ll find this ‘unMasked Army,’ no matter where they hide. And then it will be worse for us all.”

  Mara looked across the fire to the dark bundle of Grute, who, still bound and gagged, had been dumped unceremoniously on the cold gray stone. “I doubt it,” she said. “This mining camp they were taking us to must be full of people like Grute. Would you really rather be there than here?”

  Alita also gazed at Grute. A small smile flickered across her tired face. “Well, when you put it like that . . .”

  After that they both fell silent, staring into the fire. Somehow Mara lost track of time: the next thing she knew she was being gently pulled upright by Keltan; she’d fallen over onto her side. He shoved a bowl of steaming stew with a spoon in it into one hand, and a hunk of brown, crusty bread into the other.

  “Eat,” he said. “And then sleep.”

  Like the good girl she’d always thought she was, Mara did as she was told.

  EIGHT

  Magic in the Dark

  EDRIK WAS TRUE TO HIS WORD—or threat, Mara thought wearily, as at first light she was rousted out of her bedroll, which had proved more comfortable than a couple of blankets spread across bare rock had any right to be. The bump on her head had subsided, she discovered, feeling it carefully, though the spot was still very sore. But a night in a cold, hard bed hadn’t done much for her bruised side and she gasped, pressing a hand to her ribs, as she got stiffly to her feet.

  After a hurried breakfast of bread and dried fish, the party moved on, leaving the rushing stream behind to climb up the narrow, winding gully. Only a trickle of water flowed down the middle of it, but rounded rocks and scattered driftwood spoke of past floods and made Mara wonder uneasily what they would do if one came roaring down on them now. She asked Keltan about it; he shrugged. “Drown, I guess.”

  She punched him on the arm for that and got a grin in response.

  Edrik had relented enough to untie Grute that morning for a short period of time, but this time when he’d relieved himself he’d done so in full view of the entire camp, though thankfully his back had been turned. Mara sighed. It seemed that she was doomed, in her new unMasked life, to watch Grute pee.

  Once he was done, he’d been fed a chunk of bread and a chunk of fish, then gagged and tied again and once more thrown like a sack of meal onto the wagon horse, which Tishka led. “What will happen to Grute?” Mara asked Keltan as they left the river behind and began trudging up the gully.

  Alita, walking nearby, snorted. “Who cares?”

  Keltan glanced at her, then turned back to Mara. “That’s up to the Commander.”

  “Edrik?”

  “He’s not the Commander.”

  “He’s not?” Alita asked.

  Keltan shook his head. His mouth quirked at some private joke. “You’ll see.”

  “See what?” Mara asked, but Keltan wouldn’t say anything more about it.

  “Newest of the new, lowest of the low, remember?” he said primly. “Not my place to fill you in.” And with that, Mara had to be content.

  The second day’s travel, though as miserable as the first, was at least miserable in a whole new way. Icy water no longer ran around their feet, but the tumbled stones of the gully threatened a twisted ankle with every step, and as the day went on, the way grew steeper, the little stream leaping down beside them in a series of miniature waterfalls. The riders led their horses: the only one mounted, if you could call it that, was Grute.

  They climbed all morning. Just as the sun found them, having finally cleared the ravine’s rock walls, they toiled up one last slope to find themselves at one end of a small lake, out of which the stream they’d been following poured down toward the river they’d left behind. Sheer cliffs surrounded the lake, forbidding and black except where the occasional stunted tree clung in defiance of gravity.

  Just beside the creek’s outlet grew a tiny patch of yellowed grass, barely large enough to accommodate them all. While the horses pulled up mouthfuls of the scraggly growth, the humans rested and ate a meager lunch of dried meat, dried fruit, dry bread, and hard cheese. Mara thought longingly of mashed redroots, soft white loaves, tender roasts, and brown gravy.

  I wonder what Mommy made Daddy for lunch today? she thought, and the claws of grief clutched her heart and squeezed her throat so tight she could hardly swallow, the pain far worse than the fading discomfort of her bumps and bruises. But she forced herself to keep eating. She had no idea how long they would have to walk before they got wherever they were going.

  She glanced at the creek, tumbling down into the gully they had left, and wondered if, even then, black-maske
d Watchers were relentlessly climbing after them. Like Alita, she couldn’t believe the unMasked could evade the Autarch forever. Children told each other that the Autarch’s powerful magic allowed him to see everything that was happening in the Autarchy, everywhere at once; that he could actually look out of the eyes of any Mask he chose. Mara’s father had told her that wasn’t possible. But she no longer knew if what her father had told her was the truth, since the Mask he had crafted just for her had betrayed her so viciously.

  It’s not his fault, she told herself. It’s yours. For helping Keltan . . .

  But looking at the boy who sat beside her, munching unenthusiastically on his own rations, she couldn’t wish she had betrayed him to the Watchers, even if it would have meant success at her Masking.

  If it’s my fault, then so be it, she thought defiantly. And to hell with the Autarch!

  The seditious thought, surely enough to at least twist a Mask, if not shatter it entirely, sent a strange thrill through her. She shivered a little, grinned, and ate with more appetite.

  Grute was untied and once again Mara found herself looking at his back as he peed. She groaned and turned to Keltan. “Where do we go from here?” she said. “It looks like a dead end.”

  Keltan shook his head and pointed. “Look again. Down at the far end.”

  Mara squinted in that direction as Grute’s arms were seized and tied behind him once more. “He didn’t wash his hands,” Prella said from where she sat with Alita. “Yuck.”

  Yuck, Mara thought. That sums up Grute in a nutshell, doesn’t it? She was gazing at the far end of the lake as she thought it, still not seeing whatever-it-was Keltan was pointing out . . . and then she did.

  “Oh, no,” she groaned. “Is that what it looks like?”

  Keltan grinned. “If it looks like a cave, yes.”