by Melanie Rawn
“You’re wilting,” Rafe said to Mieka, pointing to the daisies still draped about his shoulders.
Eyeing the drooping petals, he sighed. “If Cilka or Petrinka were here, I could get them to do a preserving spell. As it is …” He lifted the chain and gathered it all between his palms, then crushed the flowers together and dropped them into the bin by the door. “Cade?”
Part of him wanted to keep it on, a reminder of how foolish he had been today. To have forgotten that the Fae always came out of the west, that Briuly had been captured and Alaen traumatized by the Fae because Cade had insisted on their listening to “Treasure,” and that something as common and innocent as a daisy and a coin could halt an enraged Fae in his tracks—actually, what miffed him the most was that Mieka had remembered all those things.
Mieka, who never opened a book, and read a broadsheet only if Touchstone was mentioned.
Mieka, whose education was best described as sketchy.
Mieka, who was worried enough to ask Mistress Mirdley how to defend him from the Fae if necessary.
Mieka, who had bullied and shamed him into accepting his Elsewhens again.
There was more than one type of intelligence in this world. Cade had never doubted it, but neither had he ever given any of the other sorts much more than scant acknowledgment and grudging respect.
He handed over the daisy chain. “You didn’t tell me you were Fae enough to make your blood interesting.”
“All my blood is perfectly fascinating.” Flowers disposed of, he raked both hands back through his hair and grinned. “Wait until I get hold of Yazz! All this about Giants riding dragons—I’ll grill him like a pork chop!”
The performance that night went brilliantly. They gave the audience “Troll and Trull” and “Dragon.” Cade had a glimpse of the farmer, seated front row center as befitted someone with a free pass, rapt with fascination and applauding wildly.
That night, lying under a light sheet with the breeze from the open window cooling the bedchamber, he broached with himself the topic of the Elsewhens. Though he had purposely forgotten their content, he retained a fair idea of what most of them had been about, and—his stupidity today seemed limitless—he finally realized something that he ought to have figured out long before this.
He’d thought that the Elsewhens were almost always visions of things that could happen in the future—weeks or months or years in the future—that he could influence. There had been a very few exceptions, or so he had to tell himself, cursing his own arrogance and cowardice up one side and down the other for deliberately getting rid of them. They might have confirmed this new idea of his—something Mieka had proposed and that Cade had, shameful to admit, not considered seriously: that the Elsewhens could also show him things that would happen in the very near future, within days or hours or even minutes, because of something that he’d already done or said. And that sometimes, as with the one about finding The Rights, they were events about which he could do nothing at all. Events he had in large part caused.
The others, of months or years into the future, no longer frightened him. It was the prospect of more Elsewhens like the one about Briuly and Alaen that sent waves of cold sickness through him. In common with everyone else in the world, he feared being helpless. But the Elsewhens held a particular cruelty. He understood now that sometimes he would see them not because there was something he could do or say to change them, but because something he had already said or done had brought them about and there was nothing, nothing, that would alter them in the slightest.
He was well aware of why Briuly and Alaen had gone after The Rights. He’d nagged Alaen into it. As for other Elsewhens of the kind—he might or might not know how they had come about. He might or might not realize which decision of his had led to them.
What he had to acknowledge, if he was to continue accepting and keeping the visions, was that sometimes he would be utterly helpless. He was well acquainted with worry, confusion, anger, fretfulness about what he ought to do to bring about or to avoid a certain Elsewhen. Now, for the sake of his sanity, he had to resign himself to the fact that there would be times when he could do nothing at all.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Give it a rest, would you?”
He nearly fell out of bed at the sound of Mieka’s annoyed voice.
“You’re thinking too loud! Stop it and get some sleep!”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, and turned over, and tried to compose his brain for slumber.
A rustle of bedclothes from the opposite side of the room made him sit up and light the bedside candle. Mieka was rummaging in his carry sack. Cade knew why.
“Just enough so you can sleep.”
“It’s all right, I don’t—”
“Shut up and hold out your arm.”
He began to roll the loose sleeve up his right arm, then quickly switched to the unmarked left. He knew he needed bluethorn for the energy to perform, and blockweed to be able to sleep, and the occasional exotic mixture concocted specially for him by Auntie Brishen for interesting dreams such as those he’d had last night. But he couldn’t help feeling ashamed of the red pinprick marks on his right arm.
* * *
The rest of their stay at New Halt was unremarkable, as was the drive to Castle Eyot. They did not perform at the mansion outside New Halt, and had not for two years now. The substantial heft of the bags of gold they earned wasn’t worth the terrible drain on their energies and the sheer creepiness of the place.
They had only three days at Castle Eyot, rather than the six or seven that were usual on the circuits. The visit was memorable for the presence of Lord Rolon Piercehand himself, master of the place and of a fleet of ships. Most of these were sailing about somewhere, but he was on none of them because of the anniversary of King Meredan’s accession. Long a favorite with Queen Roshien, it was unthinkable that he would miss the celebrations.
Now that his Gallery was almost finished—with no further mishaps—he had repaired to Castle Eyot to greet Touchstone personally. His patronage, encompassing Windthistle Brothers and Cindercliff Glassworks, had expanded to Cilka and Petrinka for their expertise in hedge sculptures to be placed in decorative pots all around the new Gallery. Lord Piercehand welcomed Touchstone practically as family.
“Everything’s going frightfully well at the Gallery,” he told them as he escorted them up the stairs to their chambers. “All the walls up, all the windows in, all the roofs in place, and all that remains is to sort everything into the rooms for display. I really hadn’t realized I’d brought back so much from all my travels!”
At the top of the stairs waited someone familiar: Drevan Wordturner, looking rumpled and woebegone, a bedraggled goose-feather pen stuck behind one ear. He smiled to see them and while Piercehand showed Rafe and Mieka to their rooms, Drevan led Cade and Jeska down another hallway.
“How are things out in the world?” the scholar asked.
“How long have you been here?” Jeska countered.
“Too long,” Drevan returned morosely. “’Twas enough, so it was, cataloging His Lordship’s books and sorting out the duplicates, but then the Archduke took it into his head to compare this collection with what’s in his own library and the Royal Archives. I’m up to my gullet in lists, with no two entries giving the same information, so that I have to find and examine each book to see which edition is here or not here—and there are times when I think a particular volume doesn’t exist at all.”
Cade laughed. “Cheer up. It can’t be all that bad. I remember a few years ago, somebody had arranged all the books according to the color of the binding.”
“Who do you think had the rearranging? And there are times when I’m almost sure that that’s much the smarter method.” He gestured to a door. “This is you, Jeska. Tea downstairs in an hour or so—you’ll hear the gong. Cade, you’re this way.”
The chamber was as lovely and luxurious as always. Cade unslung his carrysack from his shoulder, went to the window to admire t
he view of the river, and turned to find that Drevan lingered in the doorway.
“Come in, sit down. I haven’t seen you for an age. What have you been doing, besides cataloging books?”
The young man hesitated, then shut the door and paced a few determined steps into the room. “Cayden—if I tell you something, can you make sure it gets to Vered Goldbraider?”
“Of course. It may be a while, though. I don’t think we’ll be seeing the Shadowshapers until we return to Gallybanks. I’m not even sure where they are, now that they’re booking their own giggings. I’m assuming,” he added, lowering his voice a little, “that it’s not to be trusted to a letter?”
Drevan twisted his long, ink-stained fingers together. “I hardly dare to trust you. Not that I don’t trust you,” he went on hastily. “That’s not the issue. You’re absolutely trustworthy, I know that. But it’s so—it’s such a—”
“Sit down and tell me about it.”
“Close the window first, please?”
Cade felt his eyebrows attempt to connect with his hairline. His room was two floors up from the garden below. He shut the window anyway and gestured to the couch and chairs in the far corner of the room.
When they were settled, Drevan balled his fists into knots and began.
“As you say, I had to go through the whole library when I got here—I purposely didn’t ask who put all the books into the shelves by color, because I didn’t want to have to find him and kill him.” A faint smile touched his lips and was gone. “I don’t even know how long it took to sort everything out by subject. Then by author. Then I had to decide whether to keep translations together with the originals, or make a separate section, and then the Archduke wanted me to go through all his books and compare them with those here and those in the Royal Archives, and—well, I said all that before, and you’re not interested anyways.
“There’s one section of about seventy books that deals with the part of the Continent the Archduke’s forebears came from. A lot of them are pretty worthless. Bad poetry, doubtful histories. But there are half a dozen that mention the balaurin. I’m assuming you know about them, from the Shadowshapers’ play.”
“And the Knights of the Balaur Tsepesh.”
“Who had as their symbol a red dragon on their shields and tabards. Well, they were real. I mean really real. Only what they were originally meant to do—fight the invading army with their own kind of magic—did you know that the only way to kill one and make sure it stays dead is to cut off its head?”
“‘It’? They were men, Drevan. Not things.”
“They became things when they became Balaur Tsepesh,” he stated grimly. “Things so horrible, I can’t even—” Breaking off, he shook his head. “Look, Cayden, I shouldn’t even be telling you this much. It’s all terribly secret, and the only reason I know about it at all is that I can read the language those books are written in. But what I wanted to tell you to tell Vered is this.” He paused for a deep breath, gaze nervously flickering all round the room as if searching for someone who might overhear. “There’s one book that shows up in Lord Piercehand’s collection but not in the Archduke’s. And it’s also in the Royal Archives. Vered wouldn’t be able to read this copy—but the one in the Archives is a translation. My grandfather or great-grandfather did it for a friend of his, who left his whole collection to the Crown when he died, and it’s been there ever since. And it will tell him everything he wants to know.”
Cade thought this over. “Would it be safe to say that he shouldn’t just walk into the Archives and ask to see it?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t think they know what they’ve got. But on the chance that they do—”
“Someone like Vered, without a history of scholarship—”
“—except in this one area,” Drevan interrupted. “He spent weeks last winter and the winter before pestering them for books and old scrolls, and you can be sure the Archduke knows all about it. If he asks for this one, they’ll know what it deals with even if they don’t recognize the title or know what’s really in it.”
“And that, too, would get back to the Archduke. Why is he so sensitive about it? I mean, he’s generations removed from the original Archduke who married one of our Princesses.”
“If you’d read this, you’d know. All I can tell you is that the name ‘Henick’ shows up as one of the Balaur Tsepesh.”
This time Cade felt as if his eyebrows were within inches of the nape of his neck. “One of his forebears was one of them?”
Drevan nodded. “Vered hasn’t been able to finish the second play, because he doesn’t know what happened. He won’t finish it until he does—” Another tiny smile twitched his lips. “—and that’s your fault, what with your example of ‘Treasure.’ Oh, yes, I believe your version. I know a lot of people think you made it up, but I’ve read enough to know better. Anyways, tell Vered that the book he needs is in the Archives, but it can’t be known that he’s looking for it.”
“What’s the title?”
“I’ll write it down for you to give to him. Just please tell him not to be obvious about it. The Archduke doesn’t have a copy, and I don’t think he knows that such a book exists. If he did, he’d see to it that it found its way into his own collection or was destroyed.”
“What’s so dire about it? It’s not his fault that one of his forebears became one of those things, as you call them. In fact, he ought to be proud. If I understand correctly, it was a magnificent sacrifice.”
“At first, yes. They saved the Continent and, by extension, Albeyn. But that kind of power—and the way it was maintained—” He actually shuddered. “Believe me, Cayden, if everybody, or even a small fraction of everybody, knew what really happened—and that’s another thing. I’m telling you this because I think you might be able to convince Vered to let the whole thing drop. I’m taking the chance that if he sees that book, he’ll understand why. He’s drawn enough of the Archduke’s attention with his researches so far. The play they perform, it only hints at what came next. The second play, the one he can’t finish—it shouldn’t be finished or performed at all.”
15
In a low, intimate drawl, Lord Rolon Piercehand murmured, “It has come to my attention that you and I share certain tastes.”
He said this with one arm slung companionably about Mieka’s shoulders, leaning down from his great height so that his words could not be overheard. Mieka hated it when really tall people loomed over him like that (well, not Yazz or Cade, except when they were angry with him). Lord Piercehand made things worse with the sharp curl of his fingers into Mieka’s right shoulder. But worst of all was the truly astonishing smell of the man’s breath, caused in part, as he had learned last night when Piercehand opened his mouth wide to roar with laughter, by several back teeth that were succumbing to black-rot. Mieka forced himself to smile rather than screw up his face in disgust at the odor of bad teeth, stale liquor, the spices from last night’s dinner, and the sickly scent of sweet violet candies. Like an unwashed whore who soaked herself in strong perfume instead of a bathtub, His Lordship mistakenly believed that the violets masked any other smells.
“And those tastes might be?” Mieka asked politely. A wink was the only answer. He was propelled by that powerful, heavy arm along a hallway from the breakfast room to a staircase, up to another hallway, around several turns (one of which took them past the library), and at last to a painted wooden door. Every time Mieka parted his lips to speak, Piercehand hushed him with a shake of the head or another wink, conspiratorial now, as if some delicious secret awaited him.
The arm was removed as Piercehand delved in both jacket pockets, muttering about a key. The door was painted with the scene of the family name’s origin: a battle, a king in armor, a young squire with one palm held out at the level of the king’s chest, and an arrow shot through the middle of that palm. The dripping blood was made of dark crimson rubies set into the wood.
Noting Mieka’s interest, Piercehand sa
id, “Yes, saving a king’s life turned out quite profitable in terms of lands and castles. I wonder that more people don’t do it. Here we are—it always takes me half of forever to find the damned key.” Applying it to the lock, he flung open the door.
The room was long and rather narrow, paneled in pale wood, lit by three hanging candle-branches of a dozen lights each, and cluttered with wide couches, deep chairs, spindly tables, glass-shaded lamps, thick carpets of violent and mutually antagonistic designs, tall shelves displaying a thousand different trinkets and trifles, and a deeply carved wooden desk below the middle window. All three windows were festooned with ropes of fat, shiny glass beads. The outer two were done in patterns of gold, blue, green, and purple, arranged in squares and rectangles and diamond shapes. The middle window, above the desk, was hung with scarlet only, as if someone had strung together solid drops of blood. Mieka looked away from it, uneasy somehow, and saw that on the desk were all the things appropriate to the elegant pricking of thorn.
“Our other shared interest is the company of beautiful girls,” Piercehand chuckled as he walked towards the desk. “But we’ll save that for tonight! Now, I wonder if you’d care to sample one or two interesting things I’ve picked up on my voyages. And would it be too much of presumption to ask if I might call you ‘Mieka’?”
“Please do.” Mieka took a few steps into the room. With one exception, he’d only ever used thorn provided by Auntie Brishen Staindrop. That exception had been a horror provided by Pirro Spangler, glisker for Black Lightning and, after that incident, former friend. It had been in this very castle that he’d taken the thorn that had so tangled his mind that he ran frantically through the halls, seeking Cayden and safety.
Still … he admitted to himself that thorn nowadays was rather usual. A bit boring, actually. Blue, white, green, purple, red, yellow, combinations of two or more … he was familiar with all sorts of thorn and knew what effects they would produce. Auntie Brishen hadn’t sent him any new mixtures for quite a long while. It might be entertaining to experiment for an afternoon with whatever Piercehand had discovered out there in the wider world.
