Faces Read Online Free PDF

power I have. I have to learn from her.”
    Keltan took a step back. “I . . . I see.”
    â€œGood. Thanks.” The guilt grew. “I’ll come down later. We’ll talk then. I promise.”
    He nodded, but she only glimpsed it out of the corner of her eye as, burning with eagerness to talk to the Lady, she turned her back on him and pushed into the tent, Whiteblaze at her side. There was a moment’s silence from outside, then she heard his footsteps crunching through the snow again, heading downhill.
    The Lady once more sat in her place at the far end of the tent, her eyes on Mara, smiling. “I did not cause the avalanche,” she said, “but I almost wish I had. You have the hunger now. I can see it in your face. You hunger to learn to control the extraordinary Gift you have been blessed with, the Gift we both share.”
    â€œGift?” Mara walked toward the Lady. “To me it’s seemed more like a curse.”
    The Lady made a disparaging gesture. “Nonsense. It is absolutely a Gift. Without my Gift, I would not be here now. Without my Gift,” a wave, which somehow took in the aborted avalanche outside, “
none
of us would be here now.” She pointed at Mara with the same hand. “And without your Gift,
you
would not be here now. Were you an ordinary unMasked, you would have died in that mining camp when the rockbreakers exploded. Were you ordinary, you would never have been rescued from it in the first place. You would be Masked in Tamita, a part of your soul being drawn out from you every day to feed the false youth of that monster on the throne, to keep him alive long after he should have followed his father to worms and dust.”
    â€œYou draw magic from these followers of yours,” Mara said. “How is that different?”
    The Lady’s eyes narrowed. Her fingers touched the amulet around her neck. “It is different,” she said, “because I am not the Autarch. They have given themselves to me willingly.”
    Mara blinked. “What?”
    The Lady leaned forward. “You will see, when we reach my home. But for now, know only that I take nothing from them that they have not volunteered to give.”
    â€œWhen I . . . do that,” Mara said softly. “When I take magic from those around me . . . it . . . hurts.” Hurt was a sadly inadequate word to refer to the agony that had coursed through her. “Ethelda said it was ‘unfiltered magic,’ that it burned for that reason. Does it . . . does it hurt
you
?”
    The Lady frowned. “I did not know this Ethelda you speak of, but she was a Healer, was she not?”
    Mara nodded. “She Healed my face.” She touched the skin of her cheek, unmarked by the scars that marred the features of Alita and Prella and all others whose Maskings had failed. “She saved my life. And my sanity.”
    â€œThen clearly she was an unusually perspicacious member of her profession. But you must understand that even the best Healer is still a prisoner of her preconceptions, shaped by her training within the Masked regime of the Autarch. And the Autarch does not want anyone to know the truth. He does not want anyone to know that he survives by draining magic from those around him, from the Child Guard in particular and, increasingly with these newest Masks, from everyone else. More to the point, he does not want anyone
else
to arise who has that ability. He wants—
needs
—all the magic he can get to stave off advancing age and protect himself from the threats he imagines all around him. So of course he has made it clear to those beneath him that anyone who comes along with the same kind of power he secretly wields must be destroyed, must be hounded out of the kingdom . . . as was I.” The Lady spread her hands. “Your Ethelda clearly understood some of the former, but, ironically, seeing