Masks

by E. C. Blake

  That, in view of what she could still hear of the conversation between the Watchers, instantly wiped her smile away. Pixot held up a hand. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said. “I know what that must have sounded like.” He glanced back at the Watchers. “But I assure you, that’s not why I am speaking to you.” He leaned close, prompting a burst of laughter from the Watchers. Pixot ignored it. “I know your father,” he murmured.

  That simple phrase, which once would have been an everyday pleasantry, skewered her heart like a pick of ice, so painful she gasped out loud.

  Pixot leaned even closer. “He and your mother are well,” he whispered rapidly. “When I get back, I will tell them—”

  “You! Rock-man!” one of the Watchers called. “Get away from her!”

  Pixot straightened. “Rock-man?” he snapped as he twisted to face the Watchers, the friendly tone he had been using with Mara instantly replaced by one as cold and haughty as a statue of the Autarch carved in ice. “I am the Autarch’s Master Geologist. In his service, I have personally discovered major new lodes of gold, silver, and copper. I am here at his direct request. I will speak to whom I wish, when I wish, and if you take issue with that, I suggest you take it up with the Autarch the next time you talk to him, for I certainly will.”

  The Watcher stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head, leaned over to the other Watcher, and muttered something Mara could not catch, though she was pretty sure he was not complimenting the—what had Pixot called himself?—Master Geologist.

  Pixot twisted back around in his saddle and winked at Mara. “Black-britched bastards,” he said. Mara laughed out loud, but very carefully did not look back to see if the Watchers had heard him.

  Pixot lifted his Masked face to gaze up at the mountains; they had rounded the corner of the palisade to follow a trail that wound up the ridge to the north. “Strange stuff, black lodestone,” he said conversationally. “Not just the fact that it attracts magic, though, of course, that’s why we’re looking for it. Strange all the way around.”

  “What do you mean?” Mara said, more to keep him talking than anything else. She hadn’t had an ordinary conversation with anyone for days; not since Hyram had shown her around the Secret City. And Pixot knew her parents. It was as close as she’d been in a very long time to being home . . .

  ...as close as she ever would be again. The thought fell through her mind like a lump of lead tossed into a pool.

  “Its density is all wrong,” Pixot answered. “It’s not as spongy as pumice, which actually floats on water, but it’s only about half as dense as it looks like it should be. And it is studded with very strange crystals. It . . .” He shook his head. “Frankly, it’s like nothing else to be found in the Autarchy. And it is only found here, on the edge of the mountains.” He pointed behind them, at the camp. “As well, very little of it is found as loose stones. It’s mostly found in discrete masses, enormous masses in some cases, like the one that has been mined in the camp for decades, but still, they’re essentially giant rocks, studding the ordinary granite and gneiss and limestone and shale like currants in a bun.”

  Despite everything, Mara found herself interested. “So how do you prospect for it?” Her father, who used precious metals in making Masks, had told her some of how they were found. “I know you look for copper by keeping an eye out for colored rocks. Green, blue, or red, isn’t it?”

  “Very good,” Pixot said. “Black lodestone is found the same way, except all you’re looking for is black stone.”

  “But there must be lots of different kinds of black stone.”

  “There are. Hence the difficulty. Most black stone is not black lodestone. And the most obvious outcroppings of black lodestone have long since been identified.”

  “So why has there only ever been this one mine?”

  “Because most masses of black lodestone are too small to justify a mine—or too inaccessible. Instead, whatever magic they have attracted is harvested by other means. I understand you were found in the hut of one of the magic-wells?”

  Mara nodded.

  “There are about a dozen of those, scattered around. They are the way magic has traditionally been gathered. Most have existed for centuries. Perhaps you could mine the rock beneath some of them, but a man would be a fool to destroy such an elegant, sure source of magic in favor of the brute-force approach being used,” he jerked his head toward his right shoulder, “back there.”

  “Then why . . .” Mara looked back down the slope of the ridge to the camp. Smoke from its chimneys had turned the color of gold in the rays of the sun, just clear of the ridges to the east. It looked tranquil, pastoral, like a picturesque village where jolly matrons made smelly cheese to serve on crusty bread piping hot from the oven . . .

  ...an oven fueled by the bodies of dead children, Mara thought savagely, and turned her back on the camp once more.

  “Why is there even one mine?” Pixot said. “You would have to ask our ancestors. They began it—just scratchings—two centuries ago. Large-scale mining started in the time of the Autarch’s father, before there were Masks. Once there were Masks—and therefore unMasked—the Autarch hit upon the idea of using those whose Masks failed as workers. Over the decades, the mine has expanded significantly, and a good thing, too; if it were not for the mine, I fear execution would automatically follow the failure of a Mask.” Mara shot him a sharp look, but of course his white Mask remained as impassive as ever. “During its lifetime, the mine has produced vast quantities of magic. At its peak, more than all the wells put together. But that peak is long past. It produces less each year—even as the Palace’s hunger for magic grows and grows.”

  Since Pixot seemed so forthcoming, Mara asked a question that had been puzzling her. “Why does the Palace need so much magic? My father often complained that even he, Master Maskmaker of Tamita, could barely get what he needed.”

  “I have no idea,” Pixot said. “The Autarch does not tell me such things.” He leaned close to her. “Despite what I told that lump of a Watcher, I am not quite on such intimate terms with the Autarch as all that.”

  Mara laughed.

  Pixot straightened again. “In any event, we have been tasked with finding a new source of magic, a place to establish a new mine. And that has meant, over the past several years, searching these mountains summer after summer—we’re not fool enough to do it in the winter!—for another mass of black lodestone as large or larger than the one beneath the mining camp.” He glanced back at the Wardens; they had fallen back and were well out of earshot. He turned his black-and-white Mask toward Mara again and leaned over. “Turpit and I believe we may have found just such a mass. But we do not have the Gift. And the Palace has been reluctant to send us anyone who does . . . again, for reasons that are mysterious to me.” Although there was something about the way he said that that made Mara think they perhaps weren’t as mysterious as he wanted to let on. “Which is why the, if I may use the term, miraculous fact you retain your Gift even after a failed Masking makes you so important to our endeavors.”

  Mara said nothing for a moment, mainly because they had reached the top of the ridge and had now started to descend the other side, down a narrow, back-and-forth trail, and the change in slope had been abrupt enough to make her clutch at the mule’s reins. At least she had reins this time, unlike the last time, and proper stirrups, too, although since she’d never ridden an animal in her life until she’d been captured she couldn’t decide if the reins were a good thing or not. What if she did something wrong and the mule galloped off with her and jumped off a cliff?

  Although, to be honest, the mule seemed pretty much impervious to anything she did, trudging along in the wake of Turpit’s horse without doing more than flicking an occasional irritated ear in her direction, as though she were an annoying insect it had no choice but to tolerate for the moment.

  “The Warden said something a
bout a small space I’ll have to squeeze into . . . ?” With the narrowing of the trail, Pixot had fallen back, so she was talking to him over her shoulder.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s true. We see degraded black lodestone on the surface, but when it’s as broken down as this is, it’s impossible to tell how attractive it has been for magic. Fortunately, there’s a natural opening, a narrow crevasse, which we think will provide access to the main body of the stone.”

  “Couldn’t you just dig into it? Open it up?” Mara said. “Isn’t that what you would have done if I hadn’t come along?”

  “Possibly,” Pixot said. “But the location is difficult. Bringing up men and equipment would be time-consuming and expensive, and the mountainside above the opening appears unstable. We fear any attempt to widen the opening might cause a major rockslide. The risk will be worth it if the deposit proves rich enough in magic: even if the rock face collapses during mining it would be cost-effective to clear it afterward. But while there is still a risk that the lodestone deposit is worthless, we’d rather avoid that.” He laughed. “Plus, I don’t want to be anywhere near it if it does come down!”

  And yet you’re sending me into it? Mara thought, temper rising. “Well, if it happens to ‘come down’ while I’m under it, be sure to tell my parents I died for a good cause,” she snapped. “Black rock!”

  “Mara—”

  Mara ignored him after that. Now that they were in single file, it was easier.

  They reached the bottom of that first ridge and started up the ridge beyond. The pattern repeated itself all day, each ridge higher than the last. Late in the afternoon they splashed through a shallow river easily a hundred feet across. A couple of hours later, as the sky darkened, they were on the forested lower slopes of the first of the giant mountains, its high peak still pink from the setting sun, long since hidden from them by the hills to the west.

  They made camp in a clearing near an icy stream that tumbled down from high above. Although the long canvas bundles of tents hung from some of the horses and mules, the Watchers didn’t bother pitching them, since no clouds threatened. Instead, they spread out their bedrolls on the forest litter and slept under the open sky, Mara with her feet shackled. She lay awake for a long time, staring at the stars, so much brighter and more plentiful than they were in Tamita, listening to the night wind sighing through the trees, hoping she might also hear the sound of unMasked Army scouts creeping up on the camp; but in the end she slept, only to be shaken awake, far too soon, in the bitterly cold gray predawn light, chilled, stiff, and singularly un-rescued.

  They spent the morning angling across the face of the mountain, Pixot and Turpit leading the way, Mara in the middle, the Watchers behind. At midmorning they emerged from the forest at the foot of a massive cliff face, easily two hundred feet tall. It certainly wasn’t made of black stone: in fact it was such a light gray as to be almost white. Nevertheless, they rode along its base. It went on for miles, growing taller and taller, while to their right the slope became steeper and steeper, until their path was little more than a ledge between the sheer wall to their left and a not-quite-sheer-but-quite-steep-enough-thank-you drop to their right. Far below, the tops of trees swayed in the wind whistling down around them from the peak, and Mara occasionally glimpsed the glitter of the river they had crossed the day before.

  Mara held onto her reins so tightly her knuckles turned white, squeezed the flanks of the mule so hard her thighs ached, and sat as still as she could for fear of waking the beast from its plodding stupor, just in case it realized it had finally found the perfect place to rid itself of the annoying lump on its back.

  Periodically, huge cracks split the cliff above them, wide at the top, narrow at the bottom, as though someone had taken a giant cleaver to it. Most of the resulting narrow ravines were choked with tangled masses of undergrowth or the crisscrossing trunks of spindly trees, all fighting for the limited sunlight, but early in the afternoon they reached one that was different: larger, darker, and distinctly shy of vegetation. A stream poured out of it across their path, cascading away to their right in a long slash of white water not quite steep enough to qualify as a waterfall, hurrying to join the river far below.

  Into that barren ravine the geologists turned, Mara’s mule following. Mara saw a few stunted trees, a patch or two of scraggly weeds, and piled and crumbled stone: black stone.

  Then something blue and red caught the corner of her vision, and Mara turned her head to see, glistening in a shadowed corner of the ravine, the color-shifting sheen of magic. “I see magic,” she said to Pixot. It was the first time she’d spoken to him all day. She pointed. “Over there. Is that enough? Do I still have go underground?”

  He shook his head. “The surface collection doesn’t matter. We need to know what’s in the body of the stone.” He looked up at the slice of sky far above. “All the black lodestone we know of is like this, embedded deep in ordinary stone like a pearl in an oyster. We only find it when it is somehow exposed to the surface. Some long-ago shrug of the mountains fortuitously split the cliff right where this mass of black lodestone lurks, revealing its presence. But how much is there? And how much magic has it attracted over the millennia? That’s what we need to know; what we need you to tell us.”

  Mara said nothing. She couldn’t speak through a suddenly dry mouth and a throat grown tight at the sight of the cave she would be asked to enter—if you could call a crack in the rock barely as wide as her shoulders a cave. Out of it the stream poured, white and foaming, down wet black rocks. She looked up. The mountainside loomed perilously above them, tilted forward, riven with cracks. Numerous giant boulders that had obviously fallen from that tottering cliff littered the ground around the cave mouth.

  She found her voice. “You can’t send me in there!”

  “We have to,” Pixot said. He sounded both apologetic and utterly determined. “We have to know. The Palace demands—”

  “I don’t care what the Palace demands!” Mara yelled at his impassive Masked face. “You think I care about the Palace anymore? I won’t go in there!”

  The nearest Watcher kicked his horse forward, shouldering it between her and Pixot. “The Warden,” he said, eyes cold behind his black Mask, “told me that, should you prove reluctant to do as you are told, I was to say this to you: Katia.”

  Mara’s heart flip-flopped.

  Pixot trotted his horse in front of hers so he could face her again. “You have to,” he said. No warmth remained in his voice. “For all our sakes, including yours.”

  Mara closed her eyes and took a deep breath that shuddered through her trembling body. That narrow opening in the crumbling cliff terrified her. But she’d ridden the river out of the Secret City. She’d gone down into the mine. She’d survived. This can’t be any worse, can it?

  “Katia,” the Watcher said again, softly, and she knew, as she’d really known all along, that she had no choice.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Now?” said Pixot.

  “Why wait?” she snapped. “I’ll crawl into that crack. I’ll tell you what I see. Then you can go back and tell the Warden, and the Autarch, and you can all get together and figure out exactly how many unMasked lives it will take to mine it. Not that you’ll care.”

  She got down from the mule, not without difficulty, since she felt as stiff and sore as . . . well, as someone who had ridden a mule for two days. One of the Watchers tied a rope around her waist, and gave her a small candle lantern on a loop of rope she could hang around her neck, to keep her hands free. It dangled there, uncomfortably warm but not—quite—burning hot.

  She went up to the cave mouth. “I may not get far,” she said to no one in particular, as she looked at the black gash through which the stream poured. “I may get stuck.”

  “You get stuck, we’ll pull you out,” the Watcher who had tied the rope
around her said.

  “Maybe,” said the other Watcher. “Unless you’re too stuck.”

  “Oh, I’m sure if we pull hard enough, we can at least get part of her out,” the first Watcher said, and they both laughed.

  Mara didn’t bother looking at them. She took a deep breath, then climbed up the slippery rocks, the water instantly chilling her as it soaked her clothes. At the cave mouth, she looked back. Pixot gave her a small wave. Turpit stood with arms folded. The two Watchers watched.

  Gritting her teeth, she got down on her hands and knees in the ice-cold water and crawled into the darkness.

  The candle lantern, dangling at her throat, cast dancing shadows all around her. Wet black stone glistened, but only with water. She peered into the darkness ahead, took another deep, shaking breath, and crawled forward.

  The biggest problem, she quickly discovered, wasn’t the narrowness of the cave—though it certainly was narrow, her shoulders brushing the stone on both sides—but the water. It sucked heat from her body as it rushed over her hands and wrists and around her knees, calves, and feet. The heat of the candle lantern now felt welcome, but despite its warmth, she was shivering before she’d crawled fifty feet. Yet she could not escape the water: it filled the entire bottom of the passage.

  She saw no magic, saw nothing but the ordinary yellow gleam of candlelight on wet stone, until she was, by her rough reckoning, a hundred yards into the tunnel and she could no longer feel her hands. Suddenly, there was no tunnel anymore.

  She stopped, gasping, as the ceiling opened up above her. She found herself on the edge of an underground lake, out of which the water poured. The candle lantern only illuminated a few feet of the glassy surface, but she could see the whole vast chamber clearly . . .

  ...because it blazed with magic.

  Auroras of blue and green and red played along the walls. The water pulsated with the ever-changing hues of magic beneath its crystalline surface. Sheets of color raced across the ceiling, a good fifty feet over her head.