Free Faces by E.C. Blake Page A

But the Lady clearly had other things on her mind, though exactly what, Mara couldn’t tell. She had stopped and spread out her hands toward the huts below, her eyes closed. Her nostrils flared in her thin, white face, warmed by the glow of the fires they were approaching, but Mara didn’t think it was the smoke or smell of meat she was sensing.
    Abruptly she opened her eyes, lowered her arms, and smiled at Mara. “A good night’s sleep,” she said. “And then we will make haste toward my home at first light.”
    Mara nodded. She followed the Lady to the tent that was already being erected for them. Before she pushed through the flap, she looked over her shoulder, but if Keltan were watching her or hoping she would join him for supper at the communal fires, he made no appearance. She turned her back on the unGifted still struggling into the camp, put her hand on Whiteblaze’s mane, earning a soft whoosh of happy breath, and stepped into the familiar confines of the tent she shared with the Lady.
    She and the Lady ate together, roast venison, fresh bread with rich gravy to dip it in, stewed turnips slathered with butter, cold water to wash it down, and hot mint tea to follow it. The Lady did the talking for them both, though Mara was so tired her words might as well have been the drumming of rain on a windowpane for all the sense she took from them. “. . . much more comfortable than when I arrived . . . chambers already prepared . . . training as soon as we can . . . must work quickly, spring is coming . . . plan of attack . . .” Mara couldn’t concentrate, and what little focus she had slipped even more as the warmth and food took hold of her tired body. Pleasantly stuffed for the first time since she could remember, Mara stumbled to her bed and fell instantly and wonderfully asleep, Whiteblaze at her side.
    The Lady was true to her word: in the early morning twilight, while the rest of the camp was just beginning to stir, she and Mara mounted horses and rode toward the white fortress that rose in the east, the wolves ranging easily alongside them, six of the Lady’s and Whiteblaze. Mara was glad for all the practice she had had riding over the past few months, for the pace the Lady set belied her advanced years. The road, which mostly followed the winding course of the frozen river, was wide and level—Mara remembered Hamil saying the Lady’s magic had helped build it. The horses were able to keep up a steady trot—a gait she’d never experienced for such long distances before, since most of her riding had been through broken terrain that would not permit it. She kept falling out of rhythm with the horse, taking teeth-clattering jolts until she could find it again, and as a result she was feeling desperately sore and bruised by the time the Lady called a halt for a brief rest some two hours after they had set out. Climbing back into the saddle again she thought was about the bravest thing she’d ever done, and what followed hurt almost as much as using magic she had ripped from other people.
    Not really
, she told herself as the thought occurred to her.
Not even close.
    On the other hand, the pain of misusing magic was only a memory.
This
pain was current and extremely localized.
    The ride ended at last, as they rode through the open gates of the village whose smoke she had first seen from the ridge the day before. A wall surrounded the community, less than a third as tall as the one surrounding Tamita on which she used to like to sit and watch the Outside Market—a lifetime ago, it seemed now, a distant time when the Lady of Pain and Fire was only a dusty historical oddity, not a living, breathing person who apparently could ride circles around Mara, based on the ease with which
she
sat her horse even after five hours in the saddle. The wolves milling around them looked similarly unfazed by the