by Melanie Rawn
Clumsy, clumsy, Cade thought. Some of the audience thought so, too. There were sniggerings throughout Fliting Hall. Touchstone, or the Shadowshapers or the Crystal Sparks—or Hawk’s Claw or even Black fucking Lightning—would have done it all in a soundless instant, and added birdsong and a growing warmth inside the castle as well. Hells, it could all have been done in an exterior scene, a garden mayhap, where with one flick of a withie the snow would melt, the grass would turn lushly green, flowers would bloom, and fruit would burgeon on the trees. One obviously needed magic to simulate magic.
The lady went to the window and flung it open—there was another painting just beyond it, of the same blue skies and summertime glory. She clapped her hands with pleasure and threw off her fur cloak. The lord grinned and nodded like anything, and Vaustas folded his arms across his chest, smugly satisfied.
Now what? Cade thought. And what does any of it have to do with selling his soul to Mallecho for twenty-four years? And why twenty-four?
He came nearer than ever to laughing aloud as a grapevine came slowly into view. Where Mieka would have sent it sinuously twining round the window, the vine thickening and the grapes purpling to ripeness, all that happened here was somebody below and behind the window slid an artificial assemblage of leaves and bunches of grapes higher and higher.
Vaustas reached into his pocket and produced—flourished, actually, to make sure the audience saw them—a pair of gleaming silver sickles. He gave both to the lord, gesturing him over to where the lady caressed the vine leaves. When each held a sickle, Vaustas said, “Choose and cut grapes. But only when say I—when I say,” he corrected himself swiftly.
The lord and the lady, half-hidden now by the growing grapevine (which the masquers had not quite unnoticeably pulled around their necks and across their shoulders), selected bunches of grapes and positioned their silver sickles. Vaustas laughed softly and said “Now!” But before they could slice off the grapes, the “illusion” vanished (through the simple expedient of the person behind the wall yanking the fake plant down—the lady was nearly throttled when the vine was momentarily stuck around her neck) and it was seen that they were about to lop off each other’s noses.
“Illusion!” Vaustas cried, laughing uproariously as the pair flung away the sickles and backed hastily away from each other, the lady screaming in little gasps all the while. “All illusion! Magic is all illusion from which all evil comes!”
The lord snatched up his sickle and made for Vaustas with murder in his eyes. Vaustas only laughed louder, and fled stage right. Darkness again descended on the stage, and Cade wondered if this was the ending. Evidently not; Vaustas’s laughter kept echoing through Fliting Hall, until Cade began to worry for the masquer’s voice. There was a rustle of garments, and a single light illumined Mallecho in all his fiery red finery.
A huge clock appeared on one side of the stage, its hands moving to count off the first hour. On the other side was a large rectangular painting of a river meandering through green hills, an apple orchard nearby and tall mountains beyond. This scene’s outlines stayed the same through a series of other paintings, stacked like playing cards one behind the next: the apple tree in bloom, and then the fruit heavy on the boughs, and then the trees bare of both fruit and leaves, and then snow covering everything. As the hour hand moved, marking off the quarters, these four scenes kept succeeding each other. Oh, Cayden thought. That’s why the twenty-four. Each hour is a year. Or something like that.
Vaustas walked onstage again, visibly older—gray in his hair, his posture a bit stooped. But his clothing was, if anything, even more luxurious, with many golden chains and the glisten of jewels at his neck and fingers and on the buckles of his shoes. Mallecho pointed to the clock, which showed barely a quarter of an hour left in the day, and then to the painting of winter.
“More—please!” Vaustas begged.
Mallecho laughed and brandished the parchment with Vaustas’s signature in blood. He flung a heavy black chain around the scholar’s shoulders and started towards the darkness to the left side of the stage, a darkness in which a single red light burned. The pathway to all the Hells? Probably.
All at once two people arrived stage right—the same masquers who had played lord and lady, but clothed this time in the blue and green of the Lord and the Lady. There had been no attempt to translate the words they and Mallecho flung back and forth; there was actually no need. They battled for Vaustas’s soul. What Cade would have done with flashes of light and wild imagery, they did with tone of voice and gesture. He had to admit it was effective.
Infuriated, Mallecho flung back his hood. As one, the audience gasped. In the tales of Albeyn, Mallecho was merely a very naughty Elf, a rascal and a troublemaker to be sure, but not really malevolent. On the Continent, evidently, he was no Elf at all. His height and especially the large pointed ears marked him as Fae.
Vaustas writhed on the floor, on his knees in penitence, hands reaching to the Lord and the Lady in their cool blue and green robes. Mallecho waved the parchment contract, shrieking incoherently. Stalemate.
Cade’s lip curled in derision as an entirely new character walked out from the wings. The other four froze in place as he took center stage, settled his black robes, and said in very careful Albeyni, “The bargain struck. Though twenty-four hours is as twenty-four years to a Fae, likewise a mere turn of the hourglass for a breed that counts life in centuries. And thus Vaustas was given over to the Fae for that length of time—a brief taste of Hell before the Lord and the Lady in their mercy claimed his soul for their own.”
The counting up of hours, days, years, whatever, made no sense to Cade. He was too busy watching the slow fade-out of all the lights but one, marveling in spite of himself at the skill of the specialist. All alone the fifth character—Cade surmised him to be the Continental equivalent of a Good Brother—stood saying his piece, while behind him came the rustle and flurry of painted scenery being changed. Well, Cade thought, one worked with what one had. There was more about the kindness and benevolence of the Lord and the Lady, and how no man was so lost in evil and sin and malicious magic that he could not be saved if he were truly penitent. Then the stage suddenly lit up in a vision of paradise. Rolling green hills, snowcapped mountains in the distance, a cool blue lake, trees, flowery meadows, everything as lovely and idyllic as anyone could wish. Vaustas meandered onstage wearing a rather sappy smile, meant, Cade supposed, to convey relieved delight.
The curtains whisked closed, and the audience began to applaud: politely, but no more than politely, and only for a couple of minutes. There was none of the frenetic cheering Cade was used to after a Touchstone performance (well, with that one mortifying exception). The masquers didn’t even come out to take a bow.
As the audience rose and began to file out of Fliting Hall, Touchstone and the Shadowshapers stayed in their seats. Cade eventually leaned across Sakary to look at Rauel, who was looking at Vered, who drawled, “Won’t be seeing them on any of the circuits, I s’pose.”
Mieka snorted and got to his feet. “If I’m to watch you tregetours break your arms patting yourselves on the back for your cleverness, I need a drink.”
8
Sitting in the back garden of the Shadowstone Inn, with drinks and nibbles close at hand, the Shadowshapers, Touchstone, and the Crystal Sparks held a lengthy discussion about what they had seen that night on the Fliting Hall stage. As accomplished players, they snarked and sneered for a while about how they could have done it better with their eyes closed in the middle of a three-day drunk before getting down to genuine analysis.
“It was dead,” was Rauel’s opinion. “No emotion, no sensation.”
Mirko Challender snorted. “They emoted all over the stage! Did you ever see such overacting?”
“But it went only as far as the stage,” said Rafe. “Possibly the first couple of rows. You’re right, Rauel—to the majority of the audience, it was a cold dead lump.”
Lederris Daggering, masquer f
or the Sparks, began enumerating flaws on his thick, blunt fingers. “Just for starters, the vines should’ve brought a strangling sensation. The sickles should’ve felt cold in their hands. Pulling the fur cloaks closer should’ve felt warm, with softness all along the chin and jawline. That pathetic little red light meant to be the Hells—naught of flames and stench and fear, a real Hell. It was all dead, just as you say.”
“I disagree,” Cade murmured. When the others turned on him, protesting, he smiled and held up one placating hand. “Oh, it was lifeless compared to what we can do, yes. But not all the applause was mere politeness. Some of the audience felt honestly moved.”
“Bah!” snapped Jacquan Bentbrooke, glisker for the Crystal Sparks, with a toss of his golden head. “How could they be? Lacking a glisker to quicken their emotions, how could they be feeling what they were supposed to be feeling? Answer me that!”
“And how could it be done,” Sakary mused, “with all those people onstage?”
“Total chaos,” agreed Jeska. “If the glisker and fettler had to switch emotions each time a different character speaks a few lines—Gods, how maddening!”
“Literally maddening, in all likelihood,” Rafe said. “For us and the audience both. There’s a good reason why there’s only one masquer in our sort of play—or two at the most,” he amended, glancing at Vered and Rauel.
“The effects,” declared Mirko, “were feeble at best. Did you see the crackles in that painted canvas backdrop?”
“And the little bladder of red paint to simulate blood!” Mieka sniggered. “And the way that revolving painting got all hitched up at one point, and the grape vines half-throttling them, and—”
“And any number of things,” Cade interrupted. “Nonetheless, there were people who responded.” He turned to Rafe. “You remember the show we did in Shollop that time? Taking out all the sounds, making the visuals and Jeska’s face do most of the work?”
“And my glisking!” Mieka reminded him, frowning.
“And your glisking,” he echoed dutifully to mollify his vain and volatile little Elf. “My point is that even without all the sounds, and even without Jeska speaking the words, the audience in Shollop was affected by the play.” He speared a marinated mushroom on his fork and waved it gently in Vered and Rauel’s direction. “Your ‘Life in a Day’ holds back the emotions until the very end. And yet every time I’ve seen you do it, the audience is responding all through the piece.”
Chat narrowed his gaze. “Are you trying to say that mayhap they’ve got something going, these players?”
“I’m saying that if the story’s good enough, it doesn’t need all the flash and spangle.”
“Don’t tell that to Black Lightning,” Mieka smirked. “Their whole career is built on flash and Spangler!”
They all grimaced and groaned at his word-play on Pirro’s last name. He sat back in his chair, looking sunnily pleased with himself. Cade rolled his eyes and drew breath to continue the discussion, but Vered beat him to it.
“What was so great about that story?” Vered demanded. “Aside from insulting everyone in Albeyn who has even a twitching of magic, that is.”
“Consider,” said Cade, “how it plays on the Continent.” He glanced at Mieka, who nodded agreement.
“Cade’s got the right of it. Magic is squinted at sidelong, and anyone with ears like mine had best cover ’em up quick. This play, with magic being evil and spiteful and ending you up in one of the nastier Hells—oh, they eat this Mallecho play up with shovels over there, they do.”
“Consider,” Cade said again, silky-voiced, “what a slightly different version would do to them, eh?”
Rafe narrowed his gaze for a moment, then sighed his resignation. Jeska took a gulp of his drink. Mirko was chuckling into his glass; he knew Cade rather better than Jacquan, Lederris, and the Sparks’ taciturn fettler, Brennert Copperboggin. As for the Shadowshapers—Rauel looked confused, Chat looked resigned, and Sakary looked from face to face to face, one corner of his mouth twitching in amusement. Vered began to smile. But it was Mieka, who hadn’t known him longest but somehow knew him best, who laughed with anticipatory glee and poured Cade another drink.
“You’re about to suggest something really, truly, appallingly, scathingly awful, aren’t you?” the Elf asked.
Cade gave them all his best Innocent little me? expression. Rafe plucked a knife from the table and poised it to throw at him. Vered, who was seated next to Cade, wrapped both arms around his head and cowered dramatically—and all at once Cade felt the nagging, clawing sensation of an Elsewhen on the edges of his mind. He pushed it away, adept at rejection by now, and grinned.
“If it’s a fiendish thingy you have in mind, me lad,” said Sakary, “how can we help?”
* * *
The next morning, letters arrived from Gallantrybanks just as they were preparing to head out for the rehearsal hall. They lingered in the taproom, expecting a quick read, but moments into Blye’s letter Cade was fuming.
“Mieka!” he snarled, and the Elf looked up from a letter from his wife. “Didn’t you tell her to give that glass shard to Blye?”
“Of course I did.”
“Well, she didn’t.” He read aloud, easily interpreting Blye’s quick, illegible scrawl; he’d been deciphering it for many years:
The evening of the day you left for Seekhaven, I asked Mieka’s wife if she had anything to give me, but she didn’t. Nearly as I can figure, it was wrapped in a bit of wool, and when she changed dresses to go shopping, she didn’t take it out of her pocket. Whichever of the cousins it is who gathers up the laundry took the skirt downstairs, went through the pockets like she does with everything, and threw away the clump of wool. The cousin and Mieka’s wife are both ever so sorry, but it remains that the thing is gone.
“Oh,” Mieka said inadequately. “She doesn’t mention it in her letter.”
“What were you thinking could be done with a crimped end of a hallmarked withie, anyhow?” Jeska asked. “It’s not proof of anything, we decided that in the wagon on the way here.”
“You remember that spell we were told about on the Continent? The one about a brick suddenly deciding to grow dozens like itself and become a building? I was thinking maybe we could find someone with—I don’t know, a Reassembly spell, I guess you might call it—and have it put back together.”
“Would such a spell tell you who put the magic into it?” Rafe asked. “More to the point, would it identify that person before it reassembled the magic as well as itself—” He leaned forward, right into Cade’s face. “—and blew up?”
Cade slumped. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted.
“It’s gone, and there’s an end to it,” Rafe said, heading for the door. “And we’re late for rehearsal.”
On their walk, Mieka pulled Cade back a few paces and said, “She says Fa is furious with all the things people are saying about Jed and Jez, that they’re incompetent. He went to inspect the Gallery, every part of it he could get to. What she doesn’t write in her letter but Jez does in his was that Fa took along one of the Staindrop uncles, or great-uncles, I’m not sure and it doesn’t matter, anyway one of ’em who’d actually got caught up in the war and knows what he’s looking for by way of nasty magic. The rest of the withie is in a million pieces, but tracing back the shards and the destruction pattern—whatever that means—they found where it had to’ve been put.”
“Where?”
“On the river side of the Gallery, in a room on the ground floor. Anybody could’ve just tossed it in from the riverbank or even from a boat on the water—no windowglass yet.”
“Blye said she was there to take final measurements,” Cade mused. “So we’re left with knowing it was one of Splithook’s withies, and he makes them for Black Lightning, among others, and somebody primed it and threw it right before it exploded. But the evidence got binned.”
“I’m sure she’s sorry,” Mieka mumbled. “I ought to’ve told her how im
portant it was.”
“It makes no neverminding. It’s not as if we could make any accusations, even with the crimp end to hand. We know as much about the accident that wasn’t an accident as we’re ever going to know—”
“Unless you see something that explains it.” Mieka smacked a palm to his own forehead in an exaggerated mockery of recollection. “Oh, but you don’t do that anymore, do you? Too boring.”
Cade lengthened his strides, boot heels emphatic on the paving stones as he caught up to Rafe and Jeska. He was in no mood to quarrel. He’d thought Mieka had given over being angry about the Elsewhens, and simply accepted the situation. Nothing had been said on the journey to Seekhaven, and indeed the Elf had been behaving towards him just as he always did. Cade cursed himself for ever having admitted the truth.
The Shadowshapers and Crystal Sparks were waiting in the rehearsal hall. Vered and Rauel had offered their own time there to work on the response play, saying that the Shadowshapers were more than ready for Trials. Liquor had loosened their imaginations last night, ideas tumbling any whichway, but in the sober light of morning there was practical stagecraft to be organized by professionals, the best in Albeyn.
It fascinated Cade to see how the other two groups worked. He learned as well a new respect for the group from the Continent, and especially for whoever it was who managed the performances of thirty-five or forty people onstage and backstage. Usually it was all he could do to keep track of a single wayward Elfen glisker.
