Faces (3 page)

Mara turned away from the Lady to stare back up at the men from whom she had drawn magic. When Mara had done it involuntarily in the mining camp, everyone had collapsed, unconscious. But the villagers, though they certainly looked dazed, were clearly still awake. Not one of them had fallen prostrate. Already they were gathering their tools, climbing to their feet. In another minute they were back at work as though nothing had happened.

The sounds from the camp had turned from screams of terror to shouts of relief. Mara turned around and looked back down at the huddle of tents and lean-tos. Mothers hugged crying children, men engaged in agitated conversation, and everywhere faces were turned up slope, looking at the Lady . . . looking at her.

Looking at them with both with fear . . . no, she realized suddenly: not fear,
respect
. Their expressions were not those of people afraid of a monster, but those of people grateful to have been saved by someone stronger than themselves.

If the Lady of Pain and Fire is not a monster
, Mara thought,
then even if I am fated to become like her, I may not become one, either.
The thought seemed to release something deep inside her, something hard and tight and cold. It opened and warmed. And suddenly she knew what that strange new feeling was.

Hope.

Mara turned to face the Lady once more. “You're right,” she said. “I have a lot to learn.” She paused. “Will you teach me?”

The Lady smiled. “My dear child. Did you really think I would not?” She strode forward, the wolves flowing around her feet. “Come inside, and I will begin.”

Mara stood aside as the Lady approached. The wolves did not enter the tent, instead scattering, as if given a secret signal, spreading out in all directions and vanishing into the fading light, all but Whiteblaze, who remained at Mara's feet, tongue lolling, eyes fixed on her face. The Lady swept aside the tent flap and went inside. Mara moved to follow, but paused as she heard a shout from behind her. “Mara! Mara, are you all right?”

She felt a flash of irritation.
Not now
. She turned to face Keltan, dashing up the snow-covered slope toward her. “Of course I'm all right,” she called back. “Why wouldn't I be?”

He skidded to a halt and stared at her. “Why? The avalanche—”

“The Lady stopped it.”

“I know, but . . .”

“Keltan, I'm fine. Go back down to your tent. Help Hyram. I have to talk to the Lady.”

Keltan's face, a pale blotch in the twilight, frowned. “Hyram doesn't need any help. The tent has already been set up. I thought we could eat together—”

“No,” Mara snapped, then softened her tone, feeling guilty. “Sorry. Keltan, I have to talk to the Lady. I have to find out how she did what she did. She knows how to control this power I have. I have to learn from her.”

Keltan took a step back. “I . . . I see.”

“Good. Thanks.” The guilt grew. “I'll come down later. We'll talk then. I promise.”

He nodded, but she only glimpsed it out of the corner of her eye as, burning with eagerness to talk to the Lady, she turned her back on him and pushed into the tent, Whiteblaze at her side. There was a moment's silence from outside, then she heard his footsteps crunching through the snow again, heading downhill.

The Lady once more sat in her place at the far end of the tent, her eyes on Mara, smiling. “I did not cause the avalanche,” she said, “but I almost wish I had. You have the hunger now. I can see it in your face. You hunger to learn to control the extraordinary Gift you have been blessed with, the Gift we both share.”

“Gift?” Mara walked toward the Lady. “To me it's seemed more like a curse.”

The Lady made a disparaging gesture. “Nonsense. It is absolutely a Gift. Without my Gift, I would not be here now. Without my Gift,” a wave, which somehow took in the aborted avalanche outside, “
none
of us would be here now.” She pointed at Mara with the same hand. “And without your Gift,
you
would not be here now. Were you an ordinary unMasked, you would have died in that mining camp when the rockbreakers exploded. Were you ordinary, you would never have been rescued from it in the first place. You would be Masked in Tamita, a part of your soul being drawn out from you every day to feed the false youth of that monster on the throne, to keep him alive long after he should have followed his father to worms and dust.”

“You draw magic from these followers of yours,” Mara said. “How is that different?”

The Lady's eyes narrowed. Her fingers touched the amulet around her neck. “It is different,” she said, “because I am not the Autarch. They have given themselves to me willingly.”

Mara blinked. “What?”

The Lady leaned forward. “You will see, when we reach my home. But for now, know only that I take nothing from them that they have not volunteered to give.”

“When I . . . do that,” Mara said softly. “When I take magic from those around me . . . it . . . hurts.” Hurt was a sadly inadequate word to refer to the agony that had coursed through her. “Ethelda said it was ‘unfiltered magic,' that it burned for that reason. Does it . . . does it hurt
you
?”

The Lady frowned. “I did not know this Ethelda you speak of, but she was a Healer, was she not?”

Mara nodded. “She Healed my face.” She touched the skin of her cheek, unmarked by the scars that marred the features of Alita and Prella and all others whose Maskings had failed. “She saved my life. And my sanity.”

“Then clearly she was an unusually perspicacious member of her profession. But you must understand that even the best Healer is still a prisoner of her preconceptions, shaped by her training within the Masked regime of the Autarch. And the Autarch does not want anyone to know the truth. He does not want anyone to know that he survives by draining magic from those around him, from the Child Guard in particular and, increasingly with these newest Masks, from everyone else. More to the point, he does not want anyone
else
to arise who has that ability. He wants—
needs
—all the magic he can get to stave off advancing age and protect himself from the threats he imagines all around him. So of course he has made it clear to those beneath him that anyone who comes along with the same kind of power he secretly wields must be destroyed, must be hounded out of the kingdom . . . as was I.” The Lady spread her hands. “Your Ethelda clearly understood some of the former, but, ironically, seeing the manner in which the Autarch uses his power only strengthened her belief in the truth of the falsehoods the Autarch has spread to maintain his leech-like attachment to his sources of magic.”

The words seemed to wash over Mara like a wave from the ocean. “I don't understand,” she said.

“Come, sit with me,” the Lady said. She moved over, and after a moment's hesitation, Mara sat beside her on the red cushions of the folding bench, her hip pressed close to the Lady's, warmer than Mara would have expected, as though the Lady burned with some hidden internal flame. The Lady put her hand on Mara's knee. “Child,” she said. “The Autarch has lied, and those lies came to you through Ethelda. There is nothing evil about the power I have—the power
you
have. You
can
draw magic from living creatures without harming them, or yourself.” She pointed at Whiteblaze. “Does he not look healthy?”

“But when I do it,” Mara said stubbornly, “when I draw magic from other people . . . it hurts. Every time. As if it's wrong. As if it's . . . bad for me. And Keltan . . .” She glanced at the tent flap, already regretting her words turning him away. “He collapsed. He wasn't the same for . . . days. I did something to him . . .”

The Lady put an arm around her shoulder and pressed her too-warm cheek against hers. “That wasn't because what you were doing was wrong, child,” she said, an indulgent chuckle in her voice. “It was simply because you were doing it badly. Because you lacked knowledge, and experience, and training.”

Mara didn't know what to think. She wished she could talk to Ethelda, but Ethelda was dead, slain by the Watchers who had attacked them on the beach, her body blown away into white dust by the Lady's cleansing fire. The Lady had saved everyone who survived by drawing magic from her villagers before she reached the beach, and from the wolves and from the Watchers themselves once she was there. How could that be evil?

“How can magic be evil?” the Lady said, her words echoing Mara's thoughts so exactly that Mara pulled away and shot her a startled look. “It's simply something that exists, like clay or wood. It's something that some people can use, and some cannot, just as some people can shape clay or wood to make beautiful objects, and others cannot, no matter how hard they try. Something that some Gifted people—people like you and me—can use much more effectively than others, just as some potters or carpenters are more skilled than others.
Things
aren't evil. Only
people
can be evil. And that evil is revealed by their actions. The Autarch uses magic in an evil fashion, but it's not the magic that is evil—it's
him
.” She smiled at Mara. “When you contained the explosion at the mining camp, you saved scores of lives. How could that be evil?”

“It hurt Keltan,” Mara said. “It may have hurt others. There were many who were weak and sick in the camp. I've feared . . . I may have killed others . . .”

The Lady shook her head. “Unlikely,” she said. “You would have felt it.”

“But still—”

“You weren't doing anything wrong, Mara,” the Lady said forcefully. “You acted as you had to. Taking their magic hurt those people because you took it clumsily from at best unwitting, and at worst unwilling, donors. The magic I take—
skillfully
—from my followers is given
willingly
. They do not fight me, and so I can draw from them painlessly and at will. The wolves, too, are devoted to me . . . and this one, now, to you.” She reached down and scratched Whiteblaze behind his ears.

Mara looked down at the animal. “He is?”

“I have given him to you,” the Lady said. “I felt your distress last night as the nightmares took hold. I took a little magic from you—just a little—and linked it to Whiteblaze. Then I severed my own link with him. He is yours now as completely as the others are mine. One day you will be able to look through his eyes as I do through the eyes of his fellows.”

Mara blinked. “Really?” Then she blinked again. “Wait. You took magic from me? But I didn't feel . . .”

“Only a little,” the Lady said. “And let the fact you did not feel any distress from that reassure you as to how little distress I cause my followers.” She rubbed Whiteblaze under his chin, and his tail thumped. “These wolves, which I have bred and magically modified for many of their generations, are . . . black lodestone with legs, if you like. Not only can you learn to draw magic from Whiteblaze, he can draw from you the magic that causes your nightmares, magic polluted with what I call the ‘soulprint'—the imprint left by a living soul, like the imprint left in a blob of wax by a signet ring. When you kill with magic or are near someone who dies violently, that soulprint pours into you along with the magic they contain. It's as if the person has become a vengeful ghost haunting your mind. But Whiteblaze takes those ghosts into himself.”

“Whiteblaze will dream my nightmares every night?” Mara said. She glanced down at him. “Sorry, boy.”

The Lady laughed. “They are meaningless to him. And over time, they fade, until even without Whiteblaze, they would not return. Though, of course, without him you would be subject to new ones if you were once again exposed to violent death. And note that although he can help prevent the nightmares, he does not prevent the soulprint from making its mark on your mind.”

Mara nodded, fascinated. “What about the potion Grelda showed me how to brew? How does it help?”

“The wolves drain away the nightmares. The potion only blocks them,” the Lady said. “It contains, among various other substances, black lodestone dust. You are fortunate anyone at the Secret City had the recipe . . . and the ingredients. But as you know, once your body has eliminated it, the nightmares return, unless you continue to dose yourself with it.” She shook her head. “Not a good idea. It contains substances that I think would gradually poison you if you used it for an extended period of time.” A flicker of a smile crossed her lips. “There's a reason it smells so awful to the unGifted.” She glanced at Whiteblaze again. “Your friend here will keep you free of nightmares whenever he is with you. And since I have turned his mind so that he is now devoted to you, as well as magically linked, that will be all the time, unless you send him elsewhere.”

“Turned his mind?” Mara dropped her hand onto the wolf's head protectively. “You can do that?”

“A wolf's mind is a simple thing,” the Lady said.

“What about a man's?” The question emerged from Mara's mouth before she'd fully thought it through. The Lady's eyes narrowed.

“A much more difficult undertaking,” she said. “But, yes, it is possible. The soulprint . . . the essence of a person . . . is inextricably bound up in the magic which all living things produce. Modify the magic, and you can modify the soulprint: modify the
person
.”

“If you can do that,” Mara said, “then . . . can the Autarch? Can he also influence others? Make them do things they wouldn't otherwise do?”

“Probably,” the Lady said. “Though his ability depends always on the Masks.”

“Everyone wearing Masks?” Mara said. “He can control them all?”

The Lady shook his head. “Not the original Masks. At least, I don't think so. But the Child Guard . . . probably.”