Shadows (30 page)

Even stranger, the wolves, too, glowed white with magic.

The woman strode down into their camp. One of the sailors, moved by fear or foolishness, drew his cutlass and ran toward her. She flicked a finger at him and he flew back through the air a good twenty feet, crunching to the ground and lying there stunned.

Chell stepped forward. “Who are you and—” His voice dried in his throat. He made gagging noises and clutched his neck.

Catilla had gotten to her feet. Her eyes blazed, but she said nothing. The woman, wolves flowing around her feet, stepped by Catilla without a glance, then stopped, barely ten feet from Mara. The wolves arranged themselves around her feet and stared at Mara with their green eyes, tongues lolling.

The woman cocked her head to one side. “My name is Arilla,” she said.

The name meant nothing to Mara.

The woman smiled slightly. “You know me better as the Lady of Pain and Fire,” she said. “I have come to take you home.”

The Lady

T
HE BEACH MIGHT HAVE BEEN EMPTY of everyone except Mara, the strange woman, and the wolves. No sound seemed to penetrate the space between them, so that it was in utter silence that Mara breathed, “I should have guessed.”

“Indeed you should have,” said the Lady. “Unless my reputation has faded with time. Which I doubt.”

“Your reputation remains,” Mara said. “But nobody seems to know much about you
except
for your reputation.”

“And that reputation is . . . ?” the Lady asked.

“Murderess. Slaughterer of the innocent. Destroyer of villages,” Mara said. “Cast out from Aygrima in the earliest years of the Autarch's reign through the force of his magic and the glory of his cause.”

The Lady laughed. “I suppose I could expect nothing less.” The laugh faded. The smile that had birthed it faded in turn. “I am not what my reputation makes of me,” she said, “except in one thing: I am the enemy of the Autarch. I have been his enemy for sixty years. For sixty years I have awaited the opportunity to move against him. And now . . .” She spread her hands, encompassing the unMasked Army. “And now, such an opportunity is delivered to me.”

“You'll have to talk to Catilla,” Mara glanced at the old woman, who stood apart, glowering, “if you wish the help of the unMasked Army.”

“The unMasked Army?” The Lady of Pain and Fire looked at Catilla. “Is that what you call it, Catilla? It looks like a piss-poor army to me!”

“I have kept it secret from the Autarch for sixty years, Arilla,” Catilla said. “Sixty years of freedom for those within its ranks.”

“Yet the Autarch still reigns,” said the Lady.

“The Autarch still reigns,” agreed Catilla. “And you still lurk north of the mountains. Which of us has done more in the fight against him since we each chose our own ways all those decades ago?”

Mara stared at Catilla, mouth agape. “You two . . . know each other?”

“Knew each other,” the Lady said softly. “Once.” Her gaze fell to the ground, where Grelda and Ethelda lay side by side. A sound of pain escaped her. “Grelda?”

“Slain by the Watchers' magic.”

Mara's anger, forgotten for a moment in her astonishment at the Lady's arrival, waxed hot again. “You could have stopped it,” she cried. “You could have saved them both, could have saved all of them. You have the power! I tried, but there was so much magic, I couldn't hold it all . . . why didn't you stop it?”

“Even my power has limits,” said the Lady. “I was still too far away.” She suddenly strode forward. The wolves didn't move, though she had given them no command Mara had heard. Mara gasped as the Lady put her arms around her, trembling as she felt the magic burning like the sun in the Lady's small body. “I'm so sorry,” the Lady whispered into her ear. “I know just how hard it must have been for you, to bear so great a Gift alone.”

The Lady's touch burned her like fire and chilled her like ice . . . and excited her; excited her like Keltan's touch, like the feel of Chell's skin beneath her questing fingers . . .

She tried to push away, but the Lady's grip tightened. “Do not fight it,” she breathed. “Do not fight it. It only hurts when you fight it. You must learn to
welcome
it, if you are to control it . . . if you are to use it to overthrow the Autarch.”

Now she did push the Lady away, and stood trembling. “Me?” she said. “Overthrow the Autarch? I can't—”

“You can,” the Lady said. Her mouth quirked. Up close, her face seemed ageless: eighteen or thirty or a hundred.
Closer to the latter
, Mara thought,
if she's really an old friend of Catilla's.
Yet there was nothing of age or infirmity about the Lady, despite her long gray hair.

The silence intensified around them. Mara could hear nothing but the pounding of her own heart, the rush of her own breath, and the voice of the Lady.
More magic
, she thought. “I did not come for the unMasked Army, Mara,” the Lady said, and Mara knew not a hint of what she said could be heard by anyone but her. “I came for you—the one I have awaited for decades. The one who shares my Gift and my power. The one who, joining forces with me, can throw down the tyrant who now sits upon the Sun Throne and set all Aygrima free.”

She smiled. “But I can see this is overwhelming to you. We will talk later, in detail. For now . . .” She took a step back, and the feeling of impenetrable silence vanished, the noises of the beach, wails of grief, the roar of surf, the rush of wind, the crackle of fires, crashing in on Mara so suddenly she flinched. “Catilla,” the Lady said, turning to the Commander of the unMasked Army. “Gather your people. There is food and shelter a short march inland. I will take you—”

“Your pardon,” said a new voice, and Mara turned to see Prince Chell watching the Lady with narrowed eyes, his voice clearly restored but his face set in anger. He had his hand on his sword hilt, though what possible good he thought a blade could be against someone who had just slain a hundred Watchers single-handedly, Mara couldn't imagine.
Probably a soldier thing
, she thought.
Maybe it just makes him feel better.
“I am Chell, Prince of Korellia, commander of the flotilla that has foundered on the rocks of your shore.”

The Lady's eyes glittered as she turned her head to look at Chell. She stepped away from Mara and closer to him. The wolves flowed forward, arranging themselves around their mistress and the prince. Chell glanced down at the animals, all of which were staring at him, then returned his gaze to the Lady. “Korellia,” she said. “One of the old Island Kingdoms. So it still exists.”

“It does,” said Chell. “But it is sore beset.” He studied her. “I have come here,” he said, “because the Kingdom of Korellia faces a foe whose machines of war threaten our survival. I have come in search of magic, as was traded with Korellia of old. I seek power to overthrow our enemies. I thought I had found it,” he glanced at Mara, then back at the Lady, “but now I think I beheld only a reflection of the true power in this land.”

The Lady laughed. “Your body is fair, your face is handsome, your tongue is silver,” she said. “These things work for you.” But like a snuffed candle, the laughter vanished in the next instant, leaving nothing of merriment behind. With a face white and smooth as polished ice, in a tone as cold as the winds of the storm that had driven them ashore, the Lady said, “But hear me. I do not say I will not aid you. I do not say I will. What I do say is that until the Autarch is overthrown, your wishes and the concerns of your little land mean nothing to me.”

“But I can help you with that,” Prince Chell said persuasively. “If you help me get my ship afloat, I will sail to my kingdom and return with an army. I will—”

The smooth visage of the Lady cracked in an instant, gave way to fury. “I do not need your help, interloper!” she screamed at him, and if before she had wrapped silence around her words, now they cracked across the beach with the force of a thunderbolt. Fresh crying broke out from children just beginning to calm after the terror of the battle. “The Autarch rules by magic, and by magic he must be overthrown!” Mara, with her Gifted sight, saw the white fire shining within her wax even brighter. “What good would your armies be against
this
?” She raised her hands and flicked them as though directing an unseen choir.

Defender
rose from the sea. Water cascaded from its sides in sheets, pouring across the deck of the stricken
Protector
. Masts and spars shattered like kindling; ropes stretched and snapped. Trailing the wreckage of its own rigging and much of
Protector
's,
Defender
floated majestically over the water, the work party clinging desperately to its shrouds and railings. One man slipped and fell, and with contemptuous ease the Lady flicked a finger and caught him in midair, lowering him almost gently to the beach; almost, for his breath whooshed out as he thudded onto the sand.

Defender
she was less careful with. Trailing green weed, the ship rode up above the beach a hundred yards north of where they stood. . . .and then dropped twenty feet, shaking the ground as it slammed onto dry land, the keel snapping with an ear-splitting crack. Broken-backed,
Defender
heeled slowly onto her port side and lay still.

The Lady's mouth was slightly parted, and she moaned a little as she turned and faced
Protector
. Prince Chell, with a furious cry, drew his sword and stepped toward her; she flicked a finger and he was flung backward, sword skittering from his hand as he, too, thudded to the beach.

The Lady reached out her hand. Mara felt magic flowing to the Lady, pouring into her, though where it came from she could not tell. The Lady opened her hand, then closed it again, forming it into a fist. Her knuckles turned white.

Out on the rocks,
Protector
 . . . crunched. Its sides stove in with a terrible rending sound, its remaining masts shattered and fell, and suddenly there were two pieces of ship where before there had only been one . . . and then there were none, as the Lady turned her hand over and pressed it down, and the remnants of Chell's flagship sank beneath the waves in a flurry of white foam.

“Stop it!” Mara said. “Stop it!”

The Lady's head jerked toward her, and Mara took a step back, for with the magic pouring through her skin, the Lady looked like nothing human at all: only a skull with eyes on fire and teeth bared in a horrible death-grin.

But then the Lady seemed somehow to gather herself together. The magic-light faded from her, pulled back inside her skin. She looked normal again . . . or as normal as anyone dressed all in fur and surrounded by wolves could look, Mara thought. “I trust I make my point,” the Lady said to Chell, who had picked himself up and was staring at her, holding his arm. Then she turned to Catilla. “I offered you food and shelter,” she said quietly. “Will you accept?”

If Catilla had been horrified or startled by what she'd just seen, she gave no sign of it. She inclined her head slightly, her eyes glittering in the pale sun. “For the sake of my people, it would seem I have no choice.”

The Lady turned again to Chell. “I will not let the Kingdom of Korellia interfere in the affairs of Aygrima,” she said. “But I will make the same offer to you. Food and shelter for your men. Will you accept? Or will you stay here . . .” Her gaze moved past him to the shattered hulk of
Defender
, and her lip curled, “with your ship?”

Prince Chell bent over and picked up his sword from the sand. He slid it into its ruby-encrusted sheath. He stared at the Lady for a long moment. “It seems I, too, have no choice.”

“Excellent,” said the Lady. “Food and shelter it is. And then . . . talk.” Her eyes turned back to Mara, and even though she had pulled her power back into herself, Mara could still see a glint of it gleaming in those dark brown pools. “I have plans,” she said softly. “Plans I have spent many a weary year perfecting. It is time to put them into action.”

She turned away from Mara. The wolves flowed around her. “I will wait upon the hill,” she said. “Follow me when you are ready.”

She strode away.

Chell came up beside Mara. “That,” he said softly, “is the most terrifying woman I have ever met.”

“That,” Mara said, her eyes locked on the departing Lady, “is what I may become.”

Chell looked at her, shocked, but Mara was only peripherally aware of it. She turned and looked at the broken ship on the shore, at the scattered debris that was all that was left of
Defender
, and then turned once more to stare after the Lady of Pain and Fire.

What she had told Chell was true. The Lady of Pain and Fire was what she might become. And what frightened her most was that she didn't know if she feared that . . . or longed for it.

She saw Keltan staring at her, and went to join him.

Around her the unMasked Army and the shipwrecked sailors of Korellia gathered their supplies and their dead, and prepared to follow the Lady of Pain and Fire into the unknown.