The Mask Is Alive
As if the talk were finished, Horace drew back. Chris had no intention of letting it end there.
"Give me some advice."
"What kind of advice?"
"Tell me a way to stay alive."
"Then I'll give you the easiest one."
Chris clasped his hands, bright with hope.
"What is it?"
"Run. And do a job with me."
Chris's shoulders sagged.
"If I could run, I would have run a long time ago."
"Poisoned, were you?"
"No. Grain took hostages."
"Ignore them."
Chris answered, flat and final.
"I won't sacrifice them."
"Someone precious?"
"The only two friends I have in this world."
Horace flared all at once.
"Friends! In a world where people throw away their own wives and children—friends! What friends! This brat still hasn't grown up."
"Say what you like. I can't abandon my friends."
"Then there's only one way."
"Which is?"
"Pray that on that day the Dimensional Wind doesn't turn to storm, and that the rifts aren't bad."
"And if it becomes a dimensional storm?"
"If Dimensional Wind is a breeze, a dimensional storm is a northern blizzard. Should the storm rise and the rifts start tearing open on top of it, everyone who enters the passage that day is as good as dead."
"A moment ago you said we should do a job together. What job?"
"Work for someone who means to stay in the Lower Realm. You're going up, so it no longer concerns you."
Chris's eyes went round.
"You're thinking of staying?"
"No. I intend to ascend. That's why I'm clinging to Mick Magic Tower, playing the part of Randal."
"If you're the one going up, how can you be handing work to the one left behind?"
"I told you it isn't your concern."
Right. It isn't my concern.
Chris shifted the subject.
"If we're ascending together, couldn't you protect me in the passage when the time comes?"
"I'll have my hands full saving my own skin."
Chris bowed carefully from the waist. He did it even though they were speaking through Thought Language.
"Is there no way to kill Grain?"
The answer came at once.
"No."
"But you're an Absorption Ring."
"I was an Absorption Ring, long ago. Right now I'm where you are—the lower grade of Ring Binding. Killing a man of higher realm is no simple thing. And I don't want to. If Grain dies, opening Heaven's Gate will be delayed."
The disappointment sank deep.
"I found a mage out of legend, and still there's no way."
"Be satisfied you learned what Grain is scheming."
"I can't be satisfied. I'll at least be taking the mask with me."
"The mask?"
"The one on your face. Give it back."
"Give it back?"
"I won it fighting with my life on the line."
"I'll give it to you after you've gone up to the Middle Realm."
"Give it to me now. Take the mask off and it's still Randal's face underneath. Same face either way—there's no reason to keep wearing an inconvenient mask."
"True. Unlike you, who has to hide his real face, I have no reason to wear one."
Horace knit his brow and brooded a long while, then tore the mask free. He conjured water and washed the blood from it before holding it out. The moment Chris reached, Horace yanked it back.
"What are you doing?"
"This mask is a bewitched thing."
"What do you mean, bewitched?"
"As you said, once I took Randal's body I had no more need of it. And yet I keep growing attached. Hard to take off. Hard to give away. Don't you find it strange that a man like me—someone who treats parents, siblings, even his own children as tools—would be like this?"
Chris's face went grave.
"It is strange. No question."
"And you're the same. You already have a mask. Yet here you are, demanding one you don't need. Why?"
"I do need it."
"You wear it even when you don't. Isn't that so?"
"I feel hollow without it."
"That's the strange part. However well a mask is made, it isn't as easy as my own skin. You feel that it doesn't belong, don't you? And still it makes you keep it on. It even makes you covet the others."
"Emerick gave his up."
"Who is Emerick?"
"One of the Children of the Mask. He was wearing one."
"If he gave the mask up, that means you received it."
"Yes."
"And once you had it?"
"I fused it with the one I was wearing."
A peculiar heat had entered Horace's voice.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes. Nothing out of the ordinary."
"How many have you fused?"
"Four."
"Quite a number."
Horace held the mask out.
"Fuse it. Here, in front of me."
"All right."
Chris peeled the mask from his own face and joined it to the one Horace had given him. A faint light seeped from the seam.
Horace snatched the mask from his hand. At once Chris, seized with anxiety, reached after it.
"Give it back."
"Let me look a moment. Then I'll return it."
Horace studied it for a while before handing it over. To Chris the wait felt unbearably long, and Horace watched that impatience without blinking.
"The more you fuse them, the stronger the urge to possess them grows."
"So it seems."
Something about it felt wrong.
"This thing... what is it?"
Even so, he wanted it on his face, and his hand kept twitching upward. That only made the wrongness worse.
"I suspect an extraordinarily skilled mage made it for some special purpose."
"What purpose?"
"That..."
Chris swallowed and fixed his eyes on him. Horace's lips shaped the rest.
"I don't know either."
The letdown was so sharp a curse nearly escaped him. Horace fussed his robes straight, as if a chill had touched him.
"If you can help it, throw the mask away."
The thought of discarding it hurt. Chris turned the mask over in his fingers, then gave in to a sudden impulse and set it on his face.
Horace flinched.
"Are you all right?"
Chris took stock of his body, then of his mind.
"I'm fine. Nothing's different from before."
Horace bit his lip, sunk in thought. At last he spoke.
"The masks haven't all been gathered. There are more. I'm certain of it."
"What makes you think so?"
"Because nothing changed. If the purpose had been fulfilled, there would have been a change. There wasn't."
He flicked his fingers and went on.
"Emerick, now. He didn't give that mask up of his own will. The mask drove him to it."
"Drove him?"
"The mask chooses its master. It was disappointed in Emerick."
"Disappointed?"
"It decided he had no future. So it left him."
"And you and I?"
"Futures to spare. I, for one, was a mage of the Absorption Realm. And you..."
He looked Chris up and down.
"How old are you? Not a hundred yet?"
"No. Not yet. Does it show?"
"The grime of years hasn't settled on you. That's why you can still squeak out that bullshit about refusing to sacrifice your friends."
"Were you pure too, when you were young?"
"No. I was a shameless little wretch from the age of ten. Truly great men are extraordinary from childhood."
"You have a strange way of praising yourself."
"Regardless, you're a genius. That's why the mask chose you. It's playing tricks to keep you wearing it."
A great mage more than ten thousand years old, come down from the Middle Realm, had called him a genius. That startled him first. That the mask was scheming startled him second.
"I'm a genius?"
"You bound a ring before a hundred. That's a genius."
Turning it over, he had to admit he had climbed fast. He still didn't feel like a genius. He had dragged his realm upward through genuine, grinding hardship. Mastering Iron Body had meant enduring pain that set his teeth on edge, and after that he had met the evil spirit Tenbo, and ogres, and trolls, and very nearly died. Let even one of those things have gone wrong, and he would never have reached Ring Binding.
"It was all luck."
Horace cut him short.
"Luck is skill."
"Isn't it strange, counting luck as skill?"
"That isn't what matters now. The mask is alive."
Chris passed a hand over it.
"Alive? This?"
"It thinks. No blood, no flesh, and still—if it can do that, you have to call it a living thing. Throw it away. Now."
"Its purpose might be something that benefits the one wearing it. Isn't that possible?"
"It might. But you... you truly don't want to take it off, do you?"
Chris bit his lower lip and thought. Then he answered.
"No. I don't want to take it off."
"Given how cunningly it's steering you, I doubt the thing means you any good. Even so... fine. Keep wearing it."
"A moment ago you told me to throw it away."
"I changed my mind."
"You said it would do me harm."
"I said it wouldn't do you good. I never said it would do you harm."
"That's the same thing."
"The mask's purpose might be neither. Value-neutral."
"Why the sudden change of heart?"
"I've grown curious what that purpose is."
"Meaning you don't care whether I'm harmed or not."
"Of course I don't."
"I feel a little hurt, somehow."
"You and I are strangers. Not the sort of tie where hurt feelings apply."
"I was the one who took the mirror out of that drawer. If not for me, you'd still be trapped inside it. And since it's come up—why did you go into the mirror?"
"To live. A soul scatters if it has nowhere to lodge."
Horace rose and flicked a hand, ordering him out.
"Go in peace, Elder Gary."
Chris got to his feet with a sour look.
"Until next time."
"Yes. Come by whenever you like."
Their Thought Language was saying something else entirely.
"Do not come again."
"If something I'm curious about comes up, I will."
Horace drew a hard line.
"No. I'll see you on the day of ascension."
The whole of the valley was Daryl's domain. Chris followed the murmuring water upward. Flowers spilled in lavish bloom along the path, and as he climbed, taking them in, he saw a pavilion raised atop a massive boulder.
Daryl sat in the pavilion, drinking tea. Chris stepped inside, clasped his hands behind his back, and looked down over the valley.
"Fine view."
"I worked hard arranging it. Took a hundred years."
"So it isn't a landscape nature made on its own."
"I fussed over every flower. Every stone."
"Remarkable."
Chris sat across from her. Daryl poured from the tea she had already prepared.
"You were waiting for me?"
"I was."
"Did Wilbur send word that I was coming?"
"Since it's come up, stop tormenting Wilbur."
Chris felt the injustice of it.
"And when, exactly, have I tormented Wilbur?"
"Going to see him is torment enough."
"I only went to learn where you live, Elder Daryl."
"From now on, don't look at him. Don't speak to him."
"Spoil him too much and he'll pick up bad habits."
One eyebrow climbed, and Chris changed his tone at once.
"Understood. I won't so much as acknowledge him."
"Why did you come?"
"To make a trade."
"And what would you and I have to trade?"
Chris set a wooden box down and smiled with meaning. The moment Daryl reached, he pulled it back.
She licked her lips.
"What do you want?"
"Magic texts. Something that can take a student from the fundamentals all the way to mastering Ring Binding."
"Advanced texts, for a single Motaro? Your greed runs too far."
"I never said there was only one."
"Then we can talk."
"Mana stones as well. A generous amount."
"The very highest grade will be difficult."
"Why?"
"Your master swept up every last one. Not a seed left."
"High-grade will do. But the quantity has to be large."
"You're Ring Binding yourself. Why do you need texts and stones?"
"I'm thinking of raising a disciple."
Daryl smiled in a way that was hard to read.
"Well. At Ring Binding, one may raise a disciple."
Chris composed his face.
"I don't mean to devour them. I mean to raise them. Truly."
"I was pure at the start, too. The years pass, and you fall. Little by little. Little by little."