THE CHOSEN MASK
The companions set off through the spiraling ways of
Castle Argenthyne. The Eletians, with Lynx, had sealed off the
grove entrance and blocked the corridor linking to the chamber with
the moondial to stop, or at least slow down, any pursuit by the
remaining Sleepers. After considering their options, Ealdaen
decided their best route of escape would be through the castle,
traveling inward to its core, then turning outward and westward to
the spiral of the castle that loomed over the lake they’d seen from
the forest, the Pool of Avrath.
From there, Ealdaen
explained, they could travel north and retrace their way along the
trail they’d used to get here.
The Eletians
maintained a severe pace. Yates and Lynx took turns supporting
Karigan as she hopped and limped along, but invariably she and
whoever was helping her fell behind. Now and then Telagioth or
Lhean would trot back to see how they were faring.
Around and around
they went, only to enter counter curves, circling in new
directions. The architecture was impossible. Were they getting
anywhere?
“This castle is
making me dizzy,” Yates muttered more than once.
They passed through
numerous chambers, but never paused to look. Karigan perceived
fleeting impressions of flowing sculptures, dry fountains, clusters
of furniture, but it all ran together. Sometimes they skirted
clumps of bone and fabric and broken weaponry on the floor. The
walls retained their inner glow, though they’d grown more dusky,
perhaps with the advent of night, or because Laurelyn was truly
gone.
Karigan started
stumbling so much that both Lynx and Yates needed to support
her.
“I’m sorry,” she
said. Her mind felt numb, but the pain of her leg burned
intensely.
“You need rest,”
Lynx said. “We all do, but Ealdaen fears the remaining Sleepers
will regain entry to the castle either at the grove or somewhere
else and come after us.”
“Seems safer in here
than out in the forest,” Yates said.
But as they entered
another chamber, they found the Eletians waiting for them, and it
was a good thing for Karigan’s legs gave out altogether—she could
no longer make them support her weight. Lynx and Yates lowered her
to the floor, and Lynx placed his pack behind her so she’d have
something to lean against.
“She can’t go on
like this,” Lynx told the Eletians.
Karigan did not hear
the rest of the conversation for she fell sound asleep where she
sat.
She awoke to the
ghostly light of the castle. Someone had draped a blanket over her.
Lynx and Yates snored nearby, but she heard the singsong murmur of
the Eletians as an undertone to her sleeping companions. She lifted
her head and saw the three Eletians sitting cross-legged on the
floor together, carrying on a conversation in their own
tongue.
The tower chamber
they were in was far more vast than any of the others they’d passed
through. Subtle crosscurrents breathed freshening air across her
face. Three large portals, and several smaller doorways yawned
around the chamber’s circumference. In the chamber’s center rose a
giant tree carved of stone with leaves of silver that fluttered and
flashed in the air currents. Roots sank into the floor, or seemed
to.
“Do you like the
tree?” Ealdaen asked, having broken off his conversation with
Telagioth and Lhean to gaze at her.
“It’s amazing,” she
said.
“A gift from King
Santanara long before war came to us.”
“What is this
place?” Karigan asked.
“The core of Castle
Argenthyne, its nexus, the meeting of the ways.”
She peeled off the
blanket and shivered in the cool air. She tried to rise, and found
it difficult with both a bad leg and a bad wrist. Lhean hurried
over with silent steps and helped her up.
“Should you not rest
more?” he inquired. “It is the middle of the night.”
“I will, but I’ve
got to, um . . .”
“Ah. I understand.
Do you require assistance?”
The idea of the
Eletian helping her to relieve her bladder mortified her. “Er, no,
thank you,” she hastily replied.
With the aid of the
bonewood, she limped for the nearest corridor and found an alcove
in which to take care of her need. When she returned to the
chamber, she felt herself lured to the tree. Some of the leaves had
fallen from their branches and shone brightly on the floor. An
elbow where root met trunk cradled an ovoid sphere of silver. Drawn
to it, like a crow to a shiny object, she approached carefully. She
saw her reflection in it.
“It can’t be,” she
murmured.
“What is it?”
Ealdaen asked.
She jumped, not
having heard his approach from behind her, or that of Lhean and
Telagioth.
“What’s going on?”
It was Lynx, his voice crusty with sleep. Both he and Yates were
sitting up.
“Karigan has found
something,” Ealdaen replied.
Karigan was almost
afraid to touch the thing, but she picked it up, a looking mask.
She couldn’t believe it. It had weight in her hand, appeared solid
in every way. There was her face reflected back at her, with the
Eletians gazing over her shoulders, all warped by the convex shape
of the mirror.
“When I chose . . .”
she began. “I didn’t think . . . I don’t understand.” She had told
them about the white world and her experiences there before they’d
left the chamber of the moondial.
“King Santanara was
correct when he called your tumbler a trickster,” Ealdaen said.
“You must have pleased him. Handle this object with
care.”
“I didn’t want any
of the masks,” Karigan said, “but I had to choose.” She rotated the
mask in her hand and there were reflections upon reflections, a
mosaic of silver leaves mirroring into infinity.
Lynx and Yates had
risen, and now crossed the chamber to join them.
“Karigan always gets
the good stuff,” Yates said. “First the bonewood, and now
this.”
Karigan ignored him.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Whatever you decide
to do with it,” Ealdaen said, like an echo of King Santanara,
“choose carefully.”
She was curious as
to what the inside of the looking mask was like. How could one see
through it? She had no wish to wear it—that seemed a dangerous
thing to do—but she couldn’t help being curious.
When she wondered
how to open the mask, a hairline seam appeared around its
circumference as if in answer, the two halves subtly parting like a
clam shell. She licked cracked lips and lifted the faceplate. It
moved on hidden hinges.
The interior of the
mask was mirrored, as well. There was no cushioning or straps to
help support it on the wearer’s head. It sang to her, implored her
to wear it. She lifted the mask so she could gaze through the
faceplate, and when she did, she almost dropped the mask. With a
flick of her wrist, the faceplate swung closed with a distinct
click and the seams
vanished.
“What did you see?”
Ealdaen asked.
Karigan’s heart
thrummed. “The universe,” she whispered.
Just then a wind
roared through one of the arched portals, the castle seeming to
shriek, snatching leaves from the tree, the rest raging like
thrusting daggers. One clipped Karigan’s cheek as it flew off the
tree. Warm blood flowed. The walls of the chamber dimmed, the
castle stricken.
Karigan knew why,
she knew what had changed. She’d borne Mornhavon the Black within
her. She knew his feel. A sickening pall draped over her. Finally,
their timeline had merged with his. She had not taken him far
enough into the future.
She turned to
Ealdaen. “It’s—”
“I know,” he
replied.
Just as suddenly as
the maelstrom had begun, it ceased. The remaining leaves on the
tree clattered and chimed against one another. Those strewn across
the floor looked like the shards of a shattered
mirror.
Karigan peered
around the chamber trying to perceive Mornhavon. He was there, but
well-cloaked.
“What’s wrong?” Lynx
asked. “What happened?”
“Mornhavon the Black
is here,” Karigan replied, still unable to pinpoint him. He lacked
a physical form of his own, but he could use others. She squinted
at her companions, but they all gazed fearfully over their
shoulders.
“Perhaps we should
leave,” Lhean said.
“There is no running
from him,” Ealdaen replied. “He is the master of the
forest.”
“So we just
wait?”
Karigan’s mind raced
with possibilities. Maybe she could bear Mornhavon into the future
again, let him inside her as before. She almost sobbed, remembering
the violation of it. How would she move forward in time without the
aid of the First Rider? Could she return to the moondial and move
him to a piece of time in the future? Were the moondials able to do
that, or did they only go to the past? If she could cross
thresholds, surely she should be able to—
“Can I look at the
mask?” Yates asked.
“What?”
“The looking mask. I
was just wondering if I could have it for a moment.”
“I don’t think this
is the time.” But she felt strangely compelled to let him have it.
She took one step toward him, and then another. He reached out to
receive it. “No,” she said, but her resistance crumbled and she
took another step.
She glanced at the
mask and saw Yates’ reflection in it, the black, cloudy aura
hovering around him. “Oh, Yates,” she murmured and put her will
into resisting him.
“GIVE ME THE MASK.”
All pretension fell away. Yates’ posture changed, an inferno burned
in his eyes. His cheeks flushed.
Karigan fought the
compulsion, fought with herself to stand still. She heard swords
drawn from sheaths.
“No,” she told the
others “Attacking him will not work.”
“That is correct,”
Mornhavon said in Yates’ voice, but without his inflection. There
was no humor, no lightness. Only cruelty. “I will give this Green
Rider back to you if you give me the mask.”
“Don’t do it,” Lynx
said. “Yates wouldn’t want you to.”
“It would not be
wise,” Ealdaen added.
“THE MASK. GIVE IT
TO ME.”
Karigan closed her
eyes. Tears ran down her face. She recalled what she had seen when
she’d looked through the faceplate of the mask—all the stars, like
the lights of celestial cities. She’d seen millions of threads, as
the Eletians called them, some as fleeting as the glowing tails of
comets, others solid, luminous chains. They were the possibilities
and variables of individuals, of entire worlds, far too much for
her to take in. If she’d the control, she could tinker with the
threads, change outcomes, change whole worlds, past, present,
future.
It was the realm of
the gods, and she could not wear the mask. Too much power, too much
influence and responsibility, a path to madness.
Mornhavon must have
known what the mask was the moment he saw it, and now he coveted
it. She knew he’d use the mask like a puppet master, pulling
strings and rearranging the workings of the universe to his own
liking.
Mornhavon as a god.
She shuddered.
He hadn’t tried to
force it from her. Perhaps it must be freely given, as it had been
to her. Maybe Yates resisted him from somewhere deep inside. She
opened her eyes. He stood before her. The semblance of her friend
was only on the surface. Sweat poured down his face.
What remained of
Yates? Her friend the jester, the pursuer of women, the skilled
artist and cartographer? The Rider whose courage had not faltered
even when he was blind and stumbling in Blackveil? She had seen
threads when she peered through the mask.
Yates . . .
Mornhavon as a
god.
Herself as a god.
She held the power in her hand.
“You want this?”
Karigan said, holding the mask above her head. She knew the
Eletians were poised to strike her with their swords should she try
to hand the mask over to Mornhavon.
“Yes, yes. GIVE IT
TO ME.”
Through the mask,
Karigan had seen endless possibilities for this one moment, the
weaving and unweaving of infinite luminous strands. The decision
was hers, and hers alone. Everything came down to what she did
next.
“Here it is,” she
replied.
With every ounce of
strength remaining to her, she slammed the mask onto the floor at
Mornhavon’s feet. It shattered into thousands of silver pieces.
Threads snapped and unraveled, and the universe rushed
out.