Shadows Read Free Page A

stumbled and fell, splashing into the water . . . and didn’t get up. She hesitated, torn between fear and compassion.
    Compassion won.
    She hurried forward, not quite daring to run on the ice-slicked beach. As she got closer, she saw the stranger try to get to his hands and knees, but he collapsed forward, head turned, his cheek pressed against the stones.
    His
unMasked
cheek, she realized with a thrill.
    Another wave splashed over him, and receded.
    Just because he wasn’t wearing a Mask didn’t necessarily mean he was
really
unMasked, of course. Like the Watcher who had found her in the magic-collection hut the morning after she had slain her kidnapper and would-be rapist, Grute, with magic—blowing off his head in a gruesome fashion that continued to haunt her dreams—this young man might merely have removed his Mask while he wandered the Wild, intending to don it again whenever he got back to civilization.
    But she didn’t really think so. The young man wasn’t carrying anything with him, and anyone Masked would keep his Mask close at hand at all times: the Masks would crack and crumble if they were abandoned and that would be a death sentence should the wearer encounter a Watcher.
    The stranger wore dark blue trousers, a heavy leather coat, and black boots, all soaked through. His pale hair—Mara had never before seen anyone young with such pale hair, so blond as to almost be white—was plastered to his head in lank, dripping strands. At his side he wore a sword with a strange, basket-shaped hilt.
    She took all that in as she ran up to him. As she reached his side, she was able to see around the shoulder of the cliff for the first time. Debris lay scattered along the shore, bits and pieces of planking and rigging, clearly the remains of a wrecked boat. Debris . . .
    ...and corpses. Her breath caught. She counted five, all dressed in nondescript clothing like the young man at her feet. She didn’t have to go close to them to know they were dead: her Gift told her. When living people were near, she could always—always—feel the magic within them, the magic she sometimes had to fight not to draw on. She could feel no magic from those sprawled, wave-tossed bodies.
    But she could feel it in the young man. She could do nothing for the others, but him, she might still be able to save.
    She knelt, the icy pebbles digging painfully into her knees. The stranger’s face was white as the ice all around, his lips the color of a bruise. His eyes fluttered open, startlingly blue in his white face, framed by that astonishing pale-gold hair. “Help . . .” he whispered.
    â€œI will,” Mara assured him.
But how?
her mind whispered, as panic fluttered in her chest. If she ran for help, he might freeze to death before she returned. She had nothing with which to make a fire.
    Magic
, she thought.
If only I had magic
 . . .
    But she had none, except for what she sensed in the shivering frame of the frozen youth, and if she drew on that, she’d likely kill him.
    Not to mention what it might do to her.
    â€œI’ll help you,” she said again, “but you have to help me do it. You have to walk.”
    â€œDon’t know . . . if I can,” he said. His words were oddly shaped, vowels elongated, consonants clipped.
    â€œYou have to,” Mara repeated firmly. “You can lean on me.”
    A brief smile flickered across his white face. “I’ll t-t-t-try,” he said through chattering teeth.
    She helped him to a sitting position, then slipped his arm over her shoulder. “We’ll stand together,” she said. “On three. One . . . two . . . three!”
    She struggled to rise and he struggled to rise with her. Mara’s foot slipped on an icy rock and they both collapsed back into a heap, Mara on top of the youth, who grunted at the impact. “Sorry!” she said,