Masks (8 page)

“Ethelda?” Mara’s mother said, sounding hurt and bewildered, and Mara couldn’t blame her.
Daddy is already spending as much time with Ethelda as he does with us. Now she’s coming to my Masking?

A horrible thought struck Mara. Could her father be . . . be unfaithful? Her stomach fluttered at the very idea. No. It couldn’t happen.

But then why wasn’t the Autarch coming to her Masking? Why was Ethelda coming instead?

It’s because I lied about the magic I see
, she thought suddenly.
The Autarch knows. Maybe this Ethelda does, too. Maybe Daddy does, too. Maybe that’s why he’s been so distant. I don’t have the Gift at all. Or at least, not enough. Maybe I won’t be able to use it all. I won’t be able to be my father’s apprentice. . . .

All those thoughts raced through her mind in an instant, in the time it took her mother to press her lips together and then lift and don her own her Mask, pale blue with a pattern of white stars on the cheeks. Their true expressions hidden behind faint smiles of magical clay, Mara’s parents led her outside, and for the last time, Mara stepped into the cool morning air with her face uncovered.

They climbed silently up Maskmakers’ Way to the Maskery’s walled compound. The bronze-bound wooden gate in the tall stone fence stood open. Inside, rather than the cobblestoned courtyard she had expected, Mara saw a riot of color, flowering bushes growing in profusion on manicured lawns beneath tall trees whose leaves rustled in the light breeze. Liquid trills of birdsong filled the space, as though avian composers had been specially commissioned to mark the august occasion.

The midmorning sun glinted off a path of crushed white stone that led to the Maskery, a circular building of white marble, topped by a golden dome and surrounded by a slender-columned portico.

The other two children being Masked that day already waited by the Maskery door: a boy and a girl Mara had never met. Though they obviously shared a birthday, they hadn’t shared a tutor. The girl, far more buxom than Mara, wore a shamelessly low-cut red dress that hugged her hips. The boy, all in black from head to toe, looked more like a twelve-year-old than someone who had just turned fifteen. A heavy dusting of freckles stood out in stark relief on his paper-white face, framed by big ears. He kept swallowing and clenching and unclenching his fists. Mara just hoped he wouldn’t be sick.
That
would certainly take some of the shine off the proceedings.

She
didn’t feel nervous at all, she told herself, even as a bead of sweat slid down her exposed back. And she had a much nicer dress than the other girl, even if she didn’t fill it out in quite the same way.

Two Watchers in expressionless black Masks flanked the Maskery door. The door itself, though twice as tall as Mara, was so narrow that only one person would be able to pass through it at a time. Solid bronze, bearing high-relief images of four Masks, one above the other, it gleamed dully in the sunlight, far outshone by the Masker waiting in front of it: like Tester Tibor, he wore yellow, bright as a daffodil, from his Mask to his hooded robe to his sandaled feet. Even his toenails were painted yellow, Mara noted, then quickly raised her eyes and looked straight ahead again, feeling it must be somehow improper to be examining the toes of a Masker.

They all formed a line in front of the door, the Masker at the head, then the boy, the other girl, and Mara. The witnesses—her parents, a younger couple that seemed to be the girl’s parents, and an older couple she thought must be the boy’s grandparents—brought up the rear.

They stood there in silence for what seemed to Mara a very long time, until a final witness came up the white stone path from the Gate.

The newcomer, not much taller than Mara, wore a long white robe, belted with blue. Blue shoes slipped in and out from beneath the robe’s blue-embroidered hem as she walked. Blue also Masked her face; green gems glittered on the forehead and cheeks.

Ethelda
. Mara’s gaze swung to her mother, who took one quick look at the newcomer, and then turned to face forward again. Mara wondered what expression lay beneath the shining pale blue surface of her Mask.

“Healer Ethelda,” said the Masker, gravely. “You are here as a witness for the Autarch, long may He reign?”

“I am,” Ethelda said. Her voice sounded slightly breathless, as though she had run most of the way from the Palace, whose tall golden walls loomed above them atop the crest of Fortress Hill.

The Masker nodded, then turned toward the door. Though he didn’t touch it, it swung silently inward. One by one, they stepped inside.

The first thing Mara noticed was the sound of running water, issuing from the dimness beyond the door. As her turn came to enter the Maskery, she discovered the source: just inside, a bridge arched over a shallow moat about five feet wide, filled with water that tumbled foaming out of golden spouts, shaped like the heads of mountain cats, set at regular intervals around the Maskery’s curved white marble walls.

Between the spouts burned white torches in golden sconces, their yellow flames the only source of light—except for the eyes of the golden mask at the very top of the dome, fashioned exactly, Mara saw at once, like the Mask of the Autarch. (Although on those rare occasions she had seen the Autarch, his eyes had not actually blazed with light like the eyes of
this
Mask, lit from behind by a skylight.)

At the center of the chamber rose a circular dais perhaps ten feet in diameter and two feet high, covered with gleaming white tiles that contrasted with the blue tiles of the main floor. Beyond the dais, white-tiled stairs led down through an opening in the floor. More torchlight flickered in the underground corridor beyond.

Mara had been told what would happen, so she knew to follow the Masker to the edge of the dais, but not to step up onto it until called. The three candidates stood side by side while the Masker took his place in the middle of the dais. The Watchers stood to either side of him. The Witnesses spread out behind the candidates, several steps back.

On a table beside the Masker rested three lumps, each covered with cloth of gold. Mara looked at them and licked dry lips. One of those, she knew, was her Mask.

The Masker looked down at the three children. “Perik Adder, come to be Masked.”

The boy jerked forward so suddenly he almost tripped over the edge of the dais, but caught himself just in time and stepped up onto the white tiles. He faced the Masker, his hands, Mara saw from behind, working more convulsively than ever.

The Masker turned to the table and pulled the cloth off the nearest lump. A white Mask, its cheeks and forehead marked with red stars, stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
Not one of ours
, Mara thought disapprovingly. She made a mental note to never make anything that ugly.

The Masker raised the Mask in both hands, and turned back to Perik. “Perik Adder, you have reached the age of fifteen years. It is now the will of the Autarch that you become a full citizen of Aygrima, with all the duties and responsibilities that entails, and that you serve him and his heirs for the rest of your life. Do you accept the will of the Autarch?”

Of course he does
, Mara thought.
He has to get his Mask. He can’t leave here without one.

“I do,” the boy said.

“Should you prove false, the Mask you are about to receive will reveal your treachery to the Autarch’s Watchers,” the Masker warned. “Serve the Autarch well, and you will live a long and happy life in his service. But be untrue, and that life is forfeit. I ask you for the second time, in the full knowledge of these truths, do you accept the will of the Autarch?”

Was it Mara’s imagination, or did the boy hesitate? But it was only for a second, if he did.

“I do.”

“So that there can be no mistake, for the Autarch does not want in his service those who do not come to it freely, I ask you for the third and final time: do you accept the will of the Autarch?”

The eyes of the golden Mask overhead dimmed suddenly as a cloud passed in front of the sun.

“I do,” said the boy.

The Masker inclined his head. “Then I welcome you to full citizenship, to adulthood, and to the service of the Autarch; and in recognition of your thrice-made vow, I present you with this Mask, symbol of your devotion, guardian of your thoughts.”

He turned the Mask and settled it gently onto the boy’s face. The boy gasped. Though it appeared to be made of glazed, fired clay—though in fact, as Mara knew well, it
was
made of glazed, fired clay—the Mask
squirmed
as it touched Perik Adder’s face. Then, abruptly, the movement stopped, and the Mask looked exactly like his face had looked—except, of course, in white clay. The boy swayed for a moment, then straightened; he turned to face the Witnesses. Polite applause pitter-pattered through the domed chamber. Mara glanced behind her, and saw the older couple hugging.

“You may join your family,” the Masker said, and Perik Adder stepped down.

The other girl—Jilna Patterner was her name, and a very silly name it was, too, Mara thought—was next. Her Masking proceeded exactly as Perik’s had. She stepped down from the dais, wearing a white Mask like the boy’s, though hers was marked with little pink roses on the cheeks (Mara didn’t roll her eyes at the sight, but she wanted to).

And then . . .

“Mara Holdfast, come to be Masked.”

Even though she’d known that call was coming, Mara’s heart skipped a beat. Bearing herself as straight and proud as she could, she stepped up onto the dais. The Masker turned to the table and pulled the cloth off the last lump there, and Mara gasped. She had never seen a more beautiful Mask: gleaming, copper-colored, with rubies forming a fiery tiara across the forehead, more rubies sparkling like flickering flames on the cheeks. Tears started in her eyes.
Oh, Daddy!

The Masker lifted that magnificent Mask and turned to face her. “Mara Holdfast, you have reached the age of fifteen years. You have been tested, and found to have the Gift.” Mara couldn’t turn around to see, but she hoped Jilna Patterner’s eyes had just narrowed in jealousy inside her silly rose-painted Mask. “It is a precious thing, the Gift of magic,” the Masker went on. “Precious, for it enables you to serve the Autarchy in ways that those without that Gift can only dream of. With your Gift in particular comes great responsibility, for you, Mara Holdfast, are apprenticed to your father, Charlton Holdfast, Master Maskmaker of Tamita.” The Masker nodded over her shoulder in the direction of her father. “Someday, your Masks will adorn and glorify the faces of generations yet to come.”

Mara shivered, goose bumps running up her bare back and down her arms. She’d never thought of it in quite such grand terms.

Doubts and fears forgotten, she felt only awe and gratitude. She focused her eyes on the beautiful Mask her father had so lovingly crafted for her. The skin of her face seemed almost to have a mind of its own, a mind that yearned for the touch of the Mask’s smooth clay . . .

“Mara Holdfast,” the Masker intoned, returning to the vow he had already administered twice. “You have reached the age of fifteen years. It is now the will of the Autarch that you become a full citizen of Aygrima, with all the duties and responsibilities that entails, and that you serve him and his heirs for the rest of your life. Do you accept the will of the Autarch?”

It was hard to even say “I do” through the lump in her throat, but all too soon, it seemed, the oaths were over, and the Masker stepped forward with the beautiful copper-colored Mask in his hands. “Then I welcome you to full citizenship, to adulthood, and to the service of the Autarch: and in recognition of your thrice-made vow, I present you with this Mask, symbol of your devotion, guardian of your thoughts!” The Masker raised the Mask in both hands and settled it onto Mara’s face.

It was the most beautiful, wonderful, joyful moment of her life . . .

...and then it all went wrong.

The Mask writhed, like the others; but unlike the others,
it did not stop
. It squirmed and wriggled like a basket full of snakes, faster and faster and harder and harder. Mara gasped in terror, then screamed in pain, as she felt the skin above her cheekbones rip open, the skin of her forehead split, her nose break. She fell to her knees, eyes squeezed shut to try to protect them, scrabbling at the Mask with both hands, tearing at it with her fingernails, but it wouldn’t come off, wouldn’t come off, wouldn’t come off,
it was going to kill her
—

The Mask shattered, the thunderclap of its destruction making her ears ring. A dozen pieces fell away from her face and crashed to the dais. Her blood, shockingly red, splattered the white tiles. She coughed and choked and spat out scarlet-laced saliva and mucus.

Yellow toenails in white sandals stepped into her vision. Gagging, she looked up through bleary eyes to see the Masker looking sternly over her head at the Witnesses behind her. “This candidate has failed the Masking,” he intoned. “She cannot be made a citizen. In the name of the Autarch, clear this place!”

She heard her mother screaming her name. She wanted to get up, go to her, beg her father to help, to do
something
 . . . but the room swayed around her, and the thunder of the falling water seemed to pound down on her, pinning her in place.

What’s happening to me?
Nothing made sense.
Is this a dream?

The door to the Maskery slammed closed, cutting off her mother’s screams.

An Uncertain Future

F
OOTSTEPS SOUNDED BEHIND HER.
Black-gloved hands seized her arms, pulled her upright. Her head swam and her vision grayed. Her neck seemed boneless. She couldn’t look up.

A hand lifted her chin. The Masker’s yellow Mask swam in her blurred vision. “Another failure of one of the Gifted,” he said, his voice strained. “Until two years ago I had never seen even one. But recently . . .”

“If I may?” said a woman’s voice behind her.

“Of course,” said the Masker. He stepped back.

Ethelda took his place. “Hold still, child,” she said. From a leather pouch hung on her blue belt she took out a flask of black stone. A metal clasp bound the stone stopper in place. She undid the clasp, pulled out the stopper, and dropped it back into her pouch. Then, holding the flask in her right hand, she upended it above her left palm.

Magic flowed out: glimmering, shining, heartbreakingly beautiful . . . heartbreaking, because Mara, staring at it with blurry eyes and a mind fogged with pain, knew that she would never, ever, learn to use it to make Masks with her father.

Would never see her father again . . .

Tears rushed to her eyes. She gasped out a sob, and choked again on the blood still flowing into her throat from her broken nose.

“Hush,” Ethelda said. “Lift your face to the light.”

Mara did so. The movement made the wounds on her cheek gape, and she felt a new rush of warm, fresh blood, pouring down her face to drip from her chin.

“Nasty,” said Ethelda. “But nothing that can’t be put right.”

“It hurts,” Mara whimpered.

“I know,” said Ethelda sympathetically. “And I’m sorry, but so will this.” She lifted her hand, coated with magic, no longer shifting and shimmering in a multitude of colors, but glowing a deep, sapphire blue, like some kind of elegant glove.

For a moment Ethelda held herself absolutely still, brow furrowed. Then she took a deep breath, opened strangely unfocused eyes, and reached out toward Mara’s face. Mara forced herself not to pull back, though she couldn’t help going cross-eyed . . . and then the Healer touched her, and she gasped, too shocked even to scream, as pain such as she’d never imagined froze the breath in her throat and made her heartbeat go suddenly unsteady.

If it had lasted more than an instant, she would surely have fainted; but almost before she registered it, the pain vanished:
all
the pain, not just the pain of the Healing but all the discomfort she had been feeling since the Mask had torn her face and broken her nose. Her face tingled, a feeling like the pins and needles she felt in her calves when she sat cross-legged too long. She raised trembling hands and touched her cheeks and nose, feeling smooth, unblemished skin beneath the slick of blood, the same straight and slightly upturned nose she had always known. Tears of relief sprang to her eyes: tears that in another instant turned to full-fledged sobbing. She threw her arms around the Healer’s neck and cried as if she would never stop.

“Shhh,” said Ethelda, patting her on the back. “You’re unharmed.”

Unharmed?
Mara had heard what happened to those who failed their Masking. They were banished—no one knew where. And their faces . . . crisscrossed with scars, noses crooked . . .

She drew back shakily from the Healer. “Will I . . . am I . . . scarred?” she whispered.

“Not with me doing the Healing,” Ethelda said. She seemed unconcerned by the blood Mara’s hug had smeared across the front of her white robe. “You were fortunate I was here to represent the Autarch. Most who fail the Masking are sent to
Healer
,” she made the honorific sound more like an insult, “Ruddek.”

“Healer Ethelda,” said the Masker from behind Mara. “Is the girl healed?”

Ethelda turned her head toward him. “You can see that she is.”

“Then your work is done. She is now one of the unMasked and no longer your concern.”

Ethelda nodded brusquely. “Of course. I will return to the Palace and inform the Autarch of this lamentable occurrence.” She leaned forward and whispered, so low Mara was hardly sure she’d heard it, “Be strong. Don’t give up hope.” Then she straightened again, turned, and walked out of the Maskery, over the footbridge that crossed the foaming moat and out the bronze door, which swung silently open at her approach, letting in the morning sunshine. Mara heard a snatch of liquid birdsong, felt a breath of cool air on her still-tingling face, and then the doors slammed shut behind Ethelda with a sound like a coffin lid closing.

She turned to the Masker. “Now . . . now what?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, her throat still raw from screaming and choking.

The impassive yellow Mask regarded her for a long moment. Then the Masker glanced back at the Watchers. “Take her,” he said.

As one, they strode forward, the sound of their boots echoing from the domed ceiling, seized her arms, and dragged her from the dais. Mara, helpless in their grasp, looked down at the blood splattered across the once-shining green dress.
It’s ruined,
she thought. For the moment, that seemed the worst catastrophe of all; everything else that had happened, that was
still
happening, was too enormous, too horrible, to even contemplate.

Down the white-tiled stairs they went, her feet thumping nervelessly on each step. “Walk, damn you,” snarled the Watcher to her left. “It’s a long way to the warehouse.”

The warehouse?

“Walk, I said!” the Watcher snapped, and Mara struggled to get her legs to move, to put one foot in front of the other, and managed it after a fashion, though she felt so weak and shaken she knew if the Watchers let go of her arms she’d collapse where she stood.

She couldn’t think, couldn’t grasp what had just happened. The Mask had rejected her. The Mask
her own father
had made for her had rejected her. And then her parents had
abandoned
her, left her in the Maskery with no one to turn to. If Ethelda hadn’t been there . . .

Ethelda had healed her. Ethelda had told her to be strong, to not give up hope. But Ethelda was gone, and Mara didn’t feel strong, and she didn’t feel hope. She felt only numbness and despair.

Children whispered horror stories about those whose Maskings failed. Some said they died on the spot, that their ghosts haunted the city’s dark alleys at night, and that the curfew for children and the laws forbidding even Masked grown-ups from traveling most of Tamita’s streets at night were to protect the city’s people from the vengeful spirits of those whom the Masks, and therefore the city and the Autarch, had rejected.

But she hadn’t died, and she wasn’t a ghost.
Not yet, anyway.
She was still Mara. Mara, in shock, head swimming, stomach churning . . .

...stomach heaving. Her insides convulsed, and she threw up onto the white tile floor, the bread and fruit she’d had for breakfast spattering her bare toes. The Watchers swore and pulled her along faster. She did her best to keep up, but her legs felt like rubber and her stomach continued to roil.

After twenty yards or so the corridor turned sharply right for a few yards to meet up with a cross corridor, this one lacking the gleaming tiles but instead chopped out of solid rock, lit by torches at widely spaced intervals. To the right, the corridor ran in the direction of the Palace; to the left, it ran in the direction of the Market Gate, and it was to the left that the Watchers took her, from pool of flickering light to pool of flickering light through long stretches of darkness. Periodically, they descended flights of stairs.

Mara’s thoughts also traveled long stretches of darkness, with far fewer patches of light.
The warehouse?
she thought.
It can’t really be a warehouse. Is it a prison of some sort? Am I going to spend the rest of my life in a cell?

But I haven’t done anything wrong!
she cried silently.
I did everything right! I welcomed the Mask, I
wanted
the Mask.

Maybe something was
wrong
with the Mask . . . ?

No!
She rejected that idea instantly.
My father made my Mask. He’s the Master Maskmaker. He could
never
make a mistake like that.

It’s my fault. It has to be.
And then it came to her. She suddenly knew exactly what she had done to poison her Masking; she had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up again.
That boy, Keltan, I didn’t tell anyone about him, even though he was a criminal, on the run from his Masking . . .

I should have turned him in. I should have told the Night Watchers where to find him. But I didn’t. And the Mask knew. The Mask knew I had
already
betrayed the Autarch
. That’s
why it rejected me!

Guilt crashed down on her, black as the darkness between the flickering torches, more painful than when the Mask had wounded her, more painful than when Ethelda had Healed her. She’d wrecked
everything
. Everything her parents had worked for, everything they’d hoped for her, their only child. Everything she’d hoped for herself.

Her life was over. She’d just turned fifteen years old, and her life was already over.

She wished then that she really
was
dead, but wishing didn’t make it so. She kept breathing. She kept hurting. She kept walking.

By her reckoning, they had descended far enough, and walked long enough, to have almost reached the city wall, when the tunnel at last ended in a door of rough black wood, bound with rusty iron. One of the Watchers unlocked the door with a large key from his belt. The other Watcher pushed the door open. Together, they ushered Mara through.

She winced and flung her arm across her eyes as she stepped into a beam of bright sunlight, slanting down from a window high up the far wall of the building they had entered. The next instant she was in darkness again, but, dazzled, she still couldn’t see much of the building’s interior. From the echo of the Guards’ booted feet on the flagstones, though, she thought it must be enormous.
It really is a warehouse
, she thought.
One of the warehouses by the city wall, like the one that used to be my grandfather’s.

As her guards led her out into the middle of the vast room, she had the distinct impression she was being watched. She glanced around. The contrast between the patches of sun on the floor and the deep shadows everywhere else still made it hard to see, but as her eyes adjusted, Mara realized cells made of iron bars lined two walls of the warehouse, six on a side. Both of the other two walls were mostly taken up by huge double doors, large enough for wagons to drive through. There were no windows except the small ones high up under the eaves.

Most of the cells were empty, but not all.

Some of them held children.

She counted three girls and a boy, each locked inside a metal cage maybe ten feet deep and eight wide. Besides the child, each cage contained only a covered bucket and a narrow wooden bed. She couldn’t see the children’s faces clearly, but their watching eyes gleamed wide and white in the gloom.

A fourth girl stood in a beam of sunlight in the middle of the room, in front of a seated fat, bald man who wore a plain gray Mask. He held a pad of paper in one hand; the other grasped a long piece of charcoal that scratched the page as he stared at the girl.

Taller than Mara, the girl wore a gray, shapeless smock that had been pulled down to expose her dark brown shoulders, which shone like polished wood in the patch of sun. One hand clutched the smock at her breast to keep it from slipping off. She stood very still, her head tilted back, staring up into an empty corner of the warehouse ceiling.

She was beautiful—or had been; as the Watchers brought Mara right up next to her, she saw the half-healed scars, white and pink, crisscrossing her dark skin.

The girl’s brown eyes flickered in Mara’s direction as she approached, but otherwise she didn’t move.

The fat man looked up at the Watchers. “You’re in my light,” he complained. Then he saw Mara and his eyes widened inside the gray Mask. “Her face,” he breathed. “It’s unmarked!”

“She had a better Healer than most,” said the Watcher. “But she’s yours now. She’s to go out with the others.”

“Tomorrow,” said the fat man. He leaned forward, never taking his eyes off Mara’s face. “UnMasked, and unscarred,” he murmured. “I must draw her!” His eyes snapped to the other girl. “You, back in your cell.”

The dark-skinned girl’s gaze snapped down. She nodded without speaking, gave Mara an unreadable glance, pulled her smock back up over her shoulders, then turned and walked away, not hurrying, to one of the cages whose door stood open. She stepped inside, turned and gave the fat man a haughty look, and pulled the door shut. The metallic click echoed in the emptiness of the warehouse.

“You’re good, then?” said the Watcher who hadn’t spoken yet. “Don’t need us no more, right?”

“Yes, yes, on your way,” said the fat man. He got to his feet as the Watchers, without another word, went back the way they had come. “First things first,” he said. “Follow me.”