LEGENDS: Fifteen Tales of Sword and Sorcery

by Colt, K. J.

  A GIFT OF SHADOW

  MY MASK GIVES ME POWER. It gives me strength. It gives me courage. Without it, I am exposed. Naked. It is my armor, shield, and robe. It is also my lie—my story. Without it, all around me encounter the pathetic truth: I am not a warrior. I am not draeconis. I do not breathe fire and sail the skies. I am broken, raw, and vulnerable. All my talk of justice only cloaks a lust for vengeance. The ugly truth? Beneath the mask, I am human.

  Tarsha lived alone, they say. Alone and shunned beneath the snow-dusted peaks of the Timorous Mountains. Village chanters from as far away as Ismarya sang her story around their campfires, the flickering light glinting off a tin chanter’s mask as they told the sad tale. A cautionary tale, they warned. For Tarsha was full of pride and arrogance, presuming her place to be above that which the gods had set.

  But to Tarsha, her tale was simply ordinary. Where others saw hubris, she saw necessity. Where the chanters sang of great deeds of strength and courage, she saw only the daily plod of survival and subsistence.

  Her mask was not one for gloating. Its spirits were simple. Humble. They were concerned with ordinary things. Like finding enough food to store up against the harsh winter. Enough for the two of them.

  For Tarsha did not live alone, as the chanters told.

  “Sael, come hither.” She beckoned to the small girl who focused on her small pile of reeds and tak-weed, weaving a makeshift basket to hold the hangra fish she would catch from the gray pool near their thatch-roof hut.

  Tarsha looked her up and down. Small, gangly, almost as physically inconsequential as the spirits of her girl-child mask. Even though she was at least ten seasons old, she had the body of a child half her age. She was a stunted sapling, struggling to grow.

  Neglect and abuse made for poor soil.

  The girl bounded to Tarsha’s side, who was herself a young woman scarcely twice Sael’s tender age. As they differed in age and physicality, their masks also differed. Sael had colored her girl-child mask with charcoal and the green blood of horak fern fronds, lending it an ability to blend in with the earth and vegetation, while Tarsha’s was a brilliant red, white, and bronze mask that almost radiated a heat of its own, catching the eye and caution of all who saw.

  For Tarsha’s mask was not one to ignore. To ignore a draeconis mask was to tempt the gods. To invite folly and ruin.

  “Have you eaten?”

  The girl shook her head. Tarsha could almost see the spirits in her mask avert their gaze, as if hiding. Ashamed.

  “Eat. You need sustenance for the journey.”

  Sael dutifully scurried back to the hut. It was a small thing, simple and unassuming, with walls of thickly woven elmore branches and bundled dry weed for a roof. One could easily miss it in the trees if one was not looking for it.

  That was by design. Soon, spring would come, and they could return to their home in the upper valley of the Timorous Mountains. It was safer there. Away from prying masks and those seeking adventure.

  Seekers, they called themselves. Hunters was a better word. They wanted a trophy. To go down in the chants and songs as heroes who faced unspeakable danger, and lived. Such men were not much better than savages, men who laid aside their honest vocation and support of their children to seek vain glory and worthless status, for even with their trophies these lesser men would never merit the attention of men of high masks. The masks of power do not mix company with lesser masks, no matter the prizes won.

  Such was the way of life.

  But such men were numerous. At this thought, a presence and a shadow darkened her mind. She’d been aware of it for days. Her mask felt it approach. It hid, and moved slowly, deliberately. Crouching and waiting. Crawling deliberately through the dense elmore trees and horak ferns.

  Someone was coming for them.

  She craned her head around, peering through the dense needles and branches surrounding the gray pool and hut. He was there. Somewhere. Hunting them.

  Let him come, she thought, scoffing at the murderous spirits of his mask with her own. She stood up from her cross-legged task of skinning a wild goat she’d caught earlier in the day and stalked back to the hut.

  He has no idea what awaits him.

  My first kill was the most potent. The most raw and primal. He was a young hunter who had heard rumors of the untamed wyvern that had taken up residence in the Timorous Mountains. Draeconis masks, in all their forms, were prized among all men—not to be worn, of course, for men do not become draeconis, but to display above one’s hearth as a trophy. For it gives off its own light and heat, warming one’s home as if by dragon fire. But he was indiscrete, blundering through the trees as loudly as a wild boar, the spirits of his mask blustering their wicked intentions to my ears far sooner than I could see him. And his blood was sweet in my jaws. It coursed down my throat like welcoming fire, warming my belly and enlivening my soul. It was like the sweet nectar of the gods, and soon, I came to depend on it, my body weakening and withering when I was deprived of it.

  “Little one, you must hide again.”

  Sael had been stuffing her meager belongings into a leather satchel, but stopped when Tarsha entered the hut.

  “An evil mask?”

  Tarsha nodded. “A hunter, no doubt.”

  Sael looked up into Tarsha’s mask. Sometimes it unnerved her how perceptive the child was. Somehow, in spite of the neglect and abuse of her early years, the girl had learned how to read the spirits of the masks of those around her. Perhaps it was nothing more than survival—if one could perceive the intentions of those who meant to harm, one could live to suffer another day.

  “You worry about this one. More so than the others.”

  Tarsha nodded again. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Tarsha picked up a ragged leather shirt of Sael’s and folded it. “I know not.” She slipped it into the satchel. “But I know this one is potent. Powerful. More so than any that have come.”

  Sael looked out the small opening in the wall’s branches that served as a window. “Why do we not leave now? Go to our home in the mountains?”

  “We will, child. We will.” Tarsha paused, tempted to lie to the girl, to assure her that they only lingered to await better weather for traveling, or to gather more nuts and dried meat for the journey. But she couldn’t hide the truth from the perceptive spirits of the child’s mask. “But this one is different. I … I need to test myself against him. It’s been so long since….”

  The child nodded in understanding. “Since you’ve made the offering of blood. The justice offering.”

  “Yes.”

  The child phrased it so delicately. So righteously. It almost sounded like something clean and benevolent—a holy offering to the gods.

  In reality, she thirsted for blood. For the fire to spill down her throat and quench the ravaging demand. She called it justice—and it was, for she did not invite the hunters; she did not summon them.

  But she welcomed them. With fire and with death. With justice.

  Her hearing was heightened by the wyvern mask, and she heard a tiny twig break, far away down the hill.

  He was coming.

  “Time to hide, child.”

  Sael nodded, and pulled on a goat skin cloak that she’d altered, attaching branches and needles to the hide. Wearing the cloak, Sael blended in perfectly with the forest. She crept out the door and slipped through the trees up the hill, disappearing even from Tarsha’s keen eyes. Soon, even the girl’s heartbeat seemed to vanish from hearing, leaving Tarsha crouched alone beside the empty tanning rack, the goat still only half-skinned.

  With an impatient sigh, she returned to work, smiling as she heard another tiny twig break far down the hill.

  Soon, she thought.

  When I found Sael, she was worse than a slave. She was a child, wearing a girl-child mask, but the filthy man who kept her, the farmer who’d bought her and nursed her back to a scant health only to steal it from her anew, treated the girl as less than a sl
ave. To him, she was an object. A receptacle and a target to satisfy his whims. The slavers, with their terrifying black masks, had sold her to him for a pittance. She was hardly worth any price, being near death and requiring more food and care than the slavers were willing to give—she simply wasn’t worth the investment. She spent a year with him. An entire unholy year before I happened across his path. His blood was the coldest. Like ice slithering down my throat and polluting my jaws. And yet, in spite of the unpleasantness of it, his was perhaps the most satisfying.

  Tarsha dreamed. After building a simple fire for warmth, she slumped to the ground and slept. He’d find her eventually, she knew, but he was still far down the hill, and she’d awaken long before he would have the chance to glimpse her as she offered his death to him.

  Her dreams were always the same. They always relived her kills, her hunts. She supposed it was the spirits of the wyvern mask at work, replaying the moments and bringing them to her remembrance, that she might study them and prepare herself for the hunts to come. The blood of the unrighteous was not in short supply.

  This particular dream was one she had often. In her mind’s eye, soaring above the image of her own body, she looked down at herself, naked and raw. Her body was clothed, of course, but her face—her stark, cold face seemed so pale and soft compared to the wyvern mask that usually clothed it.

  She watched as she held the mask in her lap, trembling and hesitating. With care, she wiped a spot of blood from the edge of the mask, scrubbing it clean with the ragged cloth of her shirt.

  The blood was not hers.

  Her gaze shifted to the body nearby. The broken, bloodied shell of a young man, his face otherwise clean and honest, even in death. He’d come hunting, at the urging of his father. How did she know that? Her mask told her. Its spirits were perceptive.

  She watched herself again, wiping not blood now, but tears. Her face was wet. Broken and afraid. Afraid of what she’d become. This man was no threat. Just a boy. A boy driven on by the wicked aspirations of a lazy father who sought only to increase the stature of his house among the village elders, and thus had sent his son on a fruitless, pointless hunt. For a trophy that would never come.

  And she wept. What had she become?

  Wyverns were not monsters, they were not seen as an evil thing. The chanters and the presbyters saw them as forces of nature. One does not hate a storm or an earthquake. It simply is, and when they strike, one cleans up, mourns the dead, and moves on with life. The weatherworker masks could predict the storms, but no mask could predict the actions of the wyverns. To be draeconis was to be unpredictable. Primal.

  But that knowledge didn’t lessen her pain. The guilt. And before she knew it she was curled up in a ball on the cold ground, cradling the hated mask in her hands and shuddering. She was not a monster. She was not a monster.

  The dream was unstoppable, even though, floating above, she wanted nothing more than to shout down to the prone girl, to warn her. Don’t let your guard down, she’d say. Get up, you stupid, wretched girl!

  But the shuddering figure didn’t hear the bushes rustle behind her, and the figure emerging from the woods walked up to the clearing uncontested, unwatched.

  His bow was drawn. The arrow pointed straight at her prone back. His mask, a simple clay potter’s mask, unadorned and crude, sneered with the hatred of all the lesser spirits that inhabited it. Even among the simple trade masks, there was honor and esteem to be had, as many of their spirits were great and wise, despite their low status. But this one was wretched, its owner appealing more to the base spirits within.

  She saw her spine stiffen, and as the arrow flew, she snapped upright. It pierced her shoulder, missing the intended target of her heart, and even though she floated above the scene the memory of the pain coursed through her. She leaped up and ran, even as the man chased her, readying another arrow.

  The mask tumbled to the ground as she fell, stumbling and reaching for her salvation and only defense. Without that mask, she had no hope. He would be at his mercy, and he had none.

  Another arrow struck her leg. She cried out, both her body on the ground and her dreaming spirit in the air, and when she fell, fortune smiled upon her, for she landed near the mask. In desperation, she grabbed it and pressed it to her face, even as the third arrow flew.

  The wyvern mask melded to her face like skin. She didn’t even bother fastening the leather straps. Scales sprouted from her neck, and when the arrow struck it, rather than plunging into her flesh it bounced off, landing harmlessly at her feet, which now grew into the armored claws of the wyvern.

  With a desperate, pitiful cry, the man turned and ran, throwing his bow to the ground. He tripped, falling over the body of his dead son.

  His son. She gasped. The man had sent his son to hunt her, the spirits of the wyvern mask now told her, whispering in her ear and revealing the truth of his intentions. The son was the distraction. The bait. So great was the prize of the wyvern mask in the eyes of the worthless potter that he was willing to sacrifice his third-born son in its pursuit.

  Anger at his callous ambition surged in her, and with one flap of her wings she soared into the air, and breathed. The flame snapped quickly at the man as he caught fire. The screams pierced her ears, and yet she still breathed, bathing him. Baptizing him with cleansing flame. Such desperate, rank evil needed to be extinguished. Erased from the face of Terremar.

  Soon, he was nothing more than burnt flesh. An ignominious death. The blood all disappeared to vapor and smoke. A wasted offering—she would not get to enjoy his blood. She would go hungry that night.

  Sael would not eat for three days after I rescued her. The sight of a wyvern tearing into her master was too much for her to bear, I suppose. But soon, she grew. And in the season of her thriving, the hunters came with renewed vigor. They came in droves. Dozens arrived in the first season alone. Nearly two dozen the next. For I was an aberration of nature. Wyverns were a force of nature, and hunters always came to seek nature’s trophies. And if a hunter failed, it meant he was not worthy. Justice was done and the wyvern praised for cleansing humanity of the blood of the unworthy. But Sael’s master had not hunted me. I hunted him. When I saw him from afar, I knew the world must be cleansed of his evil. And so I did what no force of nature does: I hunted him. And for that, the chanters, the presbyters, the weatherworkers, the king himself declared me unholy and unnatural. A thing to be extinguished. I would be the greatest trophy of all. If they could only catch me.

  She awoke, and when her head was clear she could hear his heartbeat. He was close.

  But something was wrong. His mask. It was different, somehow. The spirits were murderous, yes, and she could clearly feel his intentions. But his mask was one she had not encountered before.

  Potters, wainwrights, farmers, ironsmiths, hunters, leatherworkers—these she had all bested. She’d tasted the blood of all the common masks. She’d even dueled masks of power. One apprentice wizard had hunted her the previous summer, no doubt urged to the task by the king’s wizard himself. He’d been the most difficult of all, for even an apprentice mask of power was not something to trifle with. She’d only narrowly escaped impalement by a magically-hurled shaft of iron aimed for her heart.

  His blood was the sweetest of all. Power can corrupt, but it can also season and refine, and this young man’s blood was like honey on her lips, surging with its own intensity. The spirits of his mask, after his death, bowed to her own, acknowledging her mastery of them, even as she tossed his broken mask of power from the highest cliff of the Timorous Mountains.

  But the mask that now hunted her was unlike any of them. It was keen and careful. Wary, yet powerful. It pulsed with energy of its own, yet was almost completely hidden from her view. She could hear his heart pump his life’s blood through his veins, but even sight of his shadow was denied her.

  “I see you.”

  She jumped. With a rush of wings she leaped into the air and circled the small clearing surroundin
g the hut and pool.

  The clearing was empty. Nothing but cold, still water, the empty tanning rack, and a half-skinned goat. She flapped her wings slowly, hovering just above the level of the trees.

  “Who are you?”

  “A hunter. Like you,” came the voice. She looked all around, but couldn’t see any mask. She could hear his heart, but could not see his lips.

  “I am no hunter. I am cleansing fire. I am justice.”

  “The king declares you a bane on the kingdom. He calls you a storm unbridled. A force uncontrolled. A thing against nature herself.”

  She scoffed, letting a brief lick of flame escape her nose. “I serve the gods, not the king. I do as they bid. The spirits of the mask compel me to action. I do not hunt. I defend.”

  “And yet, just three seasons ago, you hunted.” The man was holding still now, and his voice seemed unhindered by trunk or branch.

  And she understood. His was a mask of power. Great power. The Shadow Mask. It was rumored by the chanters that there were only one or two in existence across the whole of Terremar. Its bearer remains hidden, unseen and safe, for as long as it is worn.

  Finally, a match for her. A test worthy of the wyvern of the Timorous Mountains.

  “The farmer was a pathetic excuse of a man. Unworthy even of his lowly mask. Even his evil brother, who hunted me, was greater than him.” She saw a twig move beneath her near the pool, and with a gust of fire she breathed, incinerating the patch of ground to a smoldering scar.

  His voice sounded out again, but from nowhere near where she’d blasted. “But he did not hunt you. You hunted him. And for that revolt against the natural order the king put a bounty on your head. Not only will the champion obtain your mask as a glorious trophy, but the king will give him a cup of solid gold and his choice of mask from the royal maskery. There are great masks of power there, they say. Even a mask of legend or two.”