FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  He turned his face south and west, to the low, rolling hills that bordered the forbidden barrows. It was rumored that thieves and brigands frequented those hills and apprehension had kept him from exploring them, but Elu was of age now, and no brigand would frighten him. On the trail that led from the village he heard rustling behind him. Thora ran up the path and nearly knocked him over.

  “Elu!”

  “Thora! Your father let you go?”

  “After a fashion, yes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is an obstinate man and required persuading before I left, though I cannot honestly say I had his leave. But enough. I’ve missed our wanderings. Lead on.”

  Elu looked deep into her mask. Off to the side of her eye, he could just make out a blue shadow, as if bruised, but the light coming off the snow cast strange shadows and beguiled his eyes. He turned and resumed his pace. He rarely spoke to her before in their wanderings, but now having not seen her in months he felt compelled to make conversation.

  “Do you enjoy your apprenticeship, Thora?”

  “I have none.”

  “Why is that? You are of age, are you not?”

  “I am. But no woman in town will have me.”

  “Then they know not what they deprive themselves of.”

  “I do work for the innkeeper’s wife. Not as apprentice, but as … as helper,” she said, struggling for words. No word existed for one who assisted another with their trade, and yet was not an apprentice. It was a grave dishonor to be of such comport and countenance that would preclude one from meriting an apprenticeship. Thora had often related to him the tauntings of the other girls, and occasionally hinted at nastier things unnamed adults in the village said in her presence, but he had not realized the extent of her exclusion.

  They traveled far that day. The snow ceased. The sun burned its way through thick clouds and the landscape rose up before them in a blaze of white. For hours they explored the hills, talking much and delighting at the rare blanket that covered the ground, however fleetingly. Elu turned his eyes further south.

  “Shall we explore the barrows?”

  “I will follow you to the end of the earth. But not there. And it is late.”

  “Why not there? Do you fear the spirits?”

  “No,” she said, defiantly.

  “Then why not?”

  “They are forbidden. Your father the teacher tells us to avoid that part of the land. As does the presbyter. And the maskmaker. And the weatherweaver. They all say the same.”

  “My father is the teacher and he is a good man, but he does not see all. He has never been there and knows not of what he speaks. Come. Let us find out for ourselves.”

  “No. I will not go. You persuaded me last season to enter the strange forest village. I followed you then, but not this time.”

  “And what ill followed? We entered the village, we saw it, and we left. The same shall be so again. We will enter the barrows, see, and leave. And if I recall, it was you who persuaded me to enter the village.”

  “For the last time, no!” And she punched Elu hard in the gut before flying northward. Elu doubled over, and before he caught his breath he was alone. He pursued her, but soon lost her tracks in the quickly melting snow. Why was she so nervous? She seemed different somehow from when they explored as children, as if some burden weighed her down.

  Further opportunities for exploring eluded him for some time, and he grew weary of the plodding monotony of the basin making. His back ached from hunching over the spinning wheel for so many long hours every day, and his spirit ached more at having to spend his vital youth in a trammel, a cage of boredom that leached his vigor.

  Inevitably he decided to make his own opportunities to escape. At first he resorted to simple lying. The potter, though skilled at his craft, was hopelessly dull in all other matters and naively believed Elu when he claimed his mother was ill and required assistance at home, or when his father needed help skinning a wrobly. Soon, as one lie required another for company it became too much to manage, so Elu resorted to contriving sicknesses, something that played well to the natural fears of the potter.

  On most occasions, Thora managed to escape the eyes of the innkeeper’s wife and steal away with Elu, but her partings were more inopportune and awkward, leading to uncomfortable situations in which the innkeeper and his wife both publicly scolded Thora for her insolence and laziness, and worse encounters that she only hinted at to Elu. She bristled at the treatment, but held her tongue, for someone with a mere child’s mask did not hold the rank necessary to question their treatment by an experienced tradesman.

  Eventually, the inexorable pull of justice exposed Elu’s many deceptions. The innkeeper’s wife remarked at Thora’s frequent absences to the potter’s wife, and added that she believed the girl was still gallivanting about with the teacher’s son. The potter’s wife, ever the overbearingly loud gossip, passed her suspicions to her husband who confronted Elu’s father publicly in the street.

  When Elu returned to his father’s house from his wanderings that day, the usually calm, affable man awaited him. As he walked through the door the teacher stood up, strode over to his son, the son that had brought such dishonor upon the house, and ripped the potter apprentice’s mask violently from his head, revealing a shocked, naked face.

  Chapter III

  The Maskmaker

  ELU’S NAKED FLESH SHONE BRIGHT red from the cold and he quickly covered his face with his hands. But he did not move, knowing his father had discovered his evil ways, and he knew he had no excuse but one.

  “I’m sorry, father. But I had to get out.”

  The father approached his teacher’s lectern in silence and laid the potter apprentice’s mask on top. He sighed.

  “Father, I am not a potter. I—”

  “No, you are correct. Because of your impatience and insolence, you are not a potter. But you could have been. You could have been one of the great ones. You have the gift of an adventurer, son, and the power to speak to the very spirits of things. Combining the wisdom of your potter’s mask with your yearnings for knowledge and discovery would have made you great. In time, the king himself—gods bless him—would have called you to work at his court in the city of Skandia.” He paused, stowing the mask underneath the lectern.

  “But you’ve pissed it away.” His voice rose ever so slightly and he turned to regard his son. “Your shame lies naked for all to see. The potter will not have you back, and after his wife finishes telling every other homeweaver in town none will have you as apprentice. Do you understand me? None. It is not just that you love exploring, son, it’s that you run from your responsibilities. No one wants an apprentice who will neglect his tasks—who will shirk the roles given him.”

  The magnitude of his situation began to register on Elu’s mind. All he wanted was to explore. His heart yearned for it. His soul demanded it. But his father was right. With no occupation, he was nothing. He may as well present himself to the slavers, to be taken away and put to work at the lash of a whip. At least then he’d be useful. Why must the potter be so … so disagreeable? So lacking in vision that all he could ask Elu to make was basins?

  “I’m sorry, father. I will go to the potter and beg his forgiveness.”

  “No.”

  “No? But surely if I humble myself and ask—”

  “You do not understand me, son. When I say he will not take you back, that is what I mean. I know the potter. He is a proud, stubborn man. He may be simple, and paranoid, and of feeble mind, but these only make him more stubborn—as one who fears that what little he has in the way of grace must be compensated for with brutishness and abuse.”

  “Then what is to be done? Have I no chance to redeem myself?”

  Elu’s father nearly yelled now. “And what did you expect? You lied to a craftsman. You made him look a fool to the entire town. What other craftsman will want you? What other craftsman will trust you?”

  “Can’t I jus
t be your apprentice?”

  The man laughed. “Ha! A teacher does not choose himself. The people choose the teacher, and the mask confirms the choice. When the mask was placed on my face, the ancient teachers of old spoke to me. Whispered to my mind. They broadened my knowledge. They brought words to my remembrance such that I spoke in a manner as never before, and it became clear to all that I was chosen by the mask to be the teacher indeed.” He regarded the naked-faced youth before him, “And besides, a teacher can only teach wisdom if it is found within him. You have demonstrated a lack of wisdom: few in the town would desire you as a teacher.”

  Elu looked down, face still covered with his trembling hands. He wanted to reverse the flow of time, to return to the Elu from before his transgressions and warn him of the consequences, of the inevitable grip of justice that wrenches false masks from the charlatans that parade them as truth.

  “Then I am lost,” he said, and sobbed.

  The teacher looked at his wayward son, and pitied him. But the lesson must be learned, or it is no lesson at all.

  “Go find your child’s mask. Perhaps with time the town may forget. For now, though, you are my child once again.”

  Elu left the room to search for the mask of his childhood, the simple leather and wood frame that his father bought from the maskmaker with pride and cleansed himself in the river over a dozen years earlier. The man lingered by the lectern and fingered the mask stored underneath—the blue jeweled adventurer’s mask—borne by the teacher before he was called teacher. Before he was even called father.

  The shame of losing his apprentice’s mask burned in Elu’s mind. As he walked the streets for the next few weeks the sight of the other boys his age working at their apprenticeships renewed his anguish. The injustice of it all frustrated him, but he caught himself—it was by justice that he was in this position. Exploring did not help. It only brought fresh feelings of guilt. Guilt at having dishonored his father, one of the most honored men in the town, of the same standing as the weatherweaver, the maskmaker, and the presbyter—though not quite as much as the magistrate, whose ruby-studded silver mask seemed filled with the power and majesty of the king himself, gods bless him.

  Elu found solace in Thora. For the first time in his life, rather than being followed and shadowed by someone else, he found himself loitering near the rear of the inn in hopes of catching Thora at an unoccupied moment, which were few as the innkeeper kept her very busy.

  “Thora!” Elu hissed from behind a bush. Thora had just emerged from the rear door of the inn.

  “Elu? What is it? I’m busy.”

  “Oh. I can come back later, if … if you want.”

  “I’d like that. The innkeeper and his wife are good to employ me, but the work is hard, and I’d like to talk to you sometime. I miss our wanderings.

  “So do I,” said Elu.

  “Then maybe later, after lunch. There is less work to be done then, and less chance of the innkeeper finding you here as he is usually asleep at that hour.”

  “I will return, then.”

  Elu crept away from the bush behind the inn and aimed for his own home. His mother would appreciate some help in the house.

  “Boy!”

  Elu looked around for the source of the voice. A craggy, hard voice. He saw the old man in his doorway, looking out at him. He recognized him—he had seen the man often talking with his father. His mask looked simple, elegant, yet lordly—constructed of pure, unpainted elmore wood, and adorned with a few touches of all the common mask materials: metal, glass, stones, and jewels.

  “Lord Maskmaker, sir.” He bowed slightly, touching the top of his mask in respect to the high office of the man.

  “Come here,” he growled.

  He approached the hut where the maskmaker conducted his business. He stood before the old man, and waited for him to speak. It is insolence to presume to speak before one of such authority.

  “I need a servant. Come inside.”

  “You want me to be your apprentice, sir?”

  “Don’t be foolish! I have had three in all my years and one such as you has no place as an apprentice. No, boy, I said I need a servant. Someone to fetch me materials. Someone to clean the piss out of my chamber basin. Someone to sweep my floor after I finish my work.”

  “But, sir, why me?”

  The man laughed at him. “Who else will have you? You’re the talk of the town! The potter has made sure that all know of your treatment of him, and if he missed someone, his wife will surely finish the job.”

  Elu considered the man beckoning him into the hut. To be a servant was … not exactly dishonorable, but servants never became craftsmen or masters of a trade. They remained servants. The servant mask was reserved for drunkards or idiots if one was a man, and the unmarriable or widows if one was a woman. He thought of Thora, in her servant’s mask. He never considered why she became a servant. Many of the girls her age had married already, and the rest were either apprentices to their mothers or another woman in town, or betrothed to a man, or had parents that still had not settled marriage negotiations with an appropriate suitor. Thora was able-bodied, intelligent, and strong. Why was she still a servant?

  “Well, boy? If you wait any longer, I might die, and then where will you be?”

  Elu bowed his head. “Thank you, sir, for employing me.”

  He entered the hut. The man was, after all, the maskmaker. If he proved himself with this man then other opportunities might follow. And the maskmaker was the keeper of all things related to mask lore. He knew the history, method of craftsmanship, owner, and powers of nearly every mask in the village of Gheb, and in many of the towns surrounding it. He might even know some lore of the masks of legend. Certainly he would know of the masks of power. He may even have crafted one of them.

  All that day Elu did as the man commanded with exactness. He soon learned of the maskmaker’s eccentricities and singular way of looking at the world. He looked at the world, as do all, through a mask, but a maskmaker is unique in that he must look at the world as through any mask—whichever mask he is intent on making. If he is crafting a homeweaver mask, as he was that first day, he must become the woman, caught up in the daily cares of the matters of weaving together a home, juggling the upbringing of children, the mending of clothing, the procuring and cooking of food, the care of a husband; and so the tasks he assigned Elu that first day mostly revolved around the care of the maskmaker’s hut—scrubbing the floors, mending the old man’s shirts, rinsing the chamber basin.

  At the end of the day, the maskmaker released him, and he set out for home. He remembered his promise to Thora to come visit her after lunch, and though it was well into the hour of the evening meal he decided to go to the inn to see if she was very busy.

  He casually ambled into the main room of the inn and sat on one of the many wooden benches ringing the central common area. Travellers and men from many neighboring towns sat at the tables and filled the stuffy air with their raucous jeering and laughter, spinning lurid tales and jokes as they drank their beer and feasted on the meal set out before them by the servants and the innkeeper’s wife.

  Elu caught sight of a familiar figure serving tankards of beer to the table near him. When she distributed the last of them he reached out to her arm.

  “Elu!”

  “You did not expect me to return today, Thora?”

  “I thought you forgot about me and decided to go explore instead. You shouldn’t be here. It is the dinner hour and—”

  “I did not go exploring. Thora, I think I might have a way to redeem my family’s honor. I met—”

  “Elu, please go. I should be working. The innkeeper’s wife has already scolded me once today. You must leave.”

  “I will go. But first, let me tell you my news. The maskmaker! He has taken me as a servant! I know it is just the lowly servant’s mask but maybe it will lead to better things. Maybe if I serve him well, I could be accepted as apprentice to someone else. A hunter, maybe�
��that would let me be out in the forests. Or maybe to your father, the blacksmith—then at least I could travel to the other towns selling my wares … Thora?”

  Thora no longer looked at him, but up at the doorway to the next room. The imposing figure of the innkeeper darkened the candlelight behind him, and his mask looked directly at Elu and Thora. He pushed his way through the crowded room.

  “Insolent wench!” he yelled as he reached Thora, who now cowered before him, and before Elu could react the man struck her face with his open palm, knocking her mask onto the floor. The room fell silent. Elu jumped to his feet and ran at the man, but the innkeeper saw him coming. He grabbed Elu’s shirt and sent him flying into the wall behind the bench and the youth crumpled onto the floor, looking up at the imperious form of the innkeeper whose mask flared with anger and violence.

  A hushed murmur arose from the crowd of men now standing to see the commotion, and Elu saw disgust and revulsion in their faces, and in a few, fear. He followed their gaze to Thora, and cringed.

  Her face. Her lips. Her nose.

  The black scars.

  Half her nose was simply gone, and the other half looked mottled and purple. Raw. In its place were two ragged holes, surrounded by cheeks and lips that looked as if a scorching fire had nearly burned them away. The horrible scarring nearly disappeared near her eyes, which were themselves surrounded by a lighter shade of purple, the apparent source of which had now turned its attention from Elu back to her, and struck her face again.

  “Get up, wench, and work! I didn’t take you off your father’s hands only to be repaid with laziness! Get up, I say!”

  He delivered a swift kick before turning to leave, but not before looking to Elu.

  “Leave, teacher’s son, and if you come around to distract my servants again I’ll give you a lesson that not even your father could teach you, gods bless him.”

  Elu glared at him from behind his mask—the one the maskmaker had given him earlier in the day. The mask glared with him. He stared at the man’s head as he walked away and saw his innkeeper’s mask look this way and that as he attended to his patrons and assured them that all was well, begging their pardon for the disturbance.