by Melanie Rawn
The painting echoed the Kiral Kellari’s projecting triangular bar and the array of goblets and bottles behind it, but instead of blue curtains and lamplit tables, the underwater scene featured chairs made of huge, bright, unlikely flowers and rippling green seaweed, illuminated by darting clusters of tiny golden fish. If the monarch’s square jaw and slightly receding hairline were reminiscent of Prince Ashgar, the ladies were rumored to be modeled on his various mistresses. For a man of only twenty-six, he’d notched up quite a few. Cade knew for a fact that if anything this collection was lacking another two dozen or so women. But the moving, living mural was a lovely piece of magic, and he wondered who had worked it.
He also found himself wondering how much that magic would interfere with what happened onstage, and how much the owners of the Kiral Kellari would mind when Touchstone shattered all those lovely little mirrors.…
There being quite a few naked breasts on the wall—he hadn’t yet seen all that many in real life, and hoped he’d never grow indifferent to the sight of them—it took him a while to notice a slightly stuttering change of color on the third tier of bottles behind the bar and again on the ranks of barrels. He stifled a snigger, for he knew now who had paid for the painting: Franion’s Finest Bottled Ale, Bellchime Keggery, and, of all people, Master Remey Honeycoil.
A stout, bespectacled man in a dreadful purple-spangled jacket clambered up onto the stage. So swiftly that it might have been a spell, the room was silent.
“My lords, gentlemen—the Shadowshapers.”
Cade had seen them early on in their career, and he knew Rauel from talking with him at various neighborhood taverns. Now that he was working regularly and could afford visits to places like this, the Shadowshapers were no longer booked into places like this. They played at the real theaters now, places where one had to buy an actual ticket. He had no idea what they were doing here tonight, but he wasn’t disposed to complain.
The curtains parted, revealing the group. At the tregetour’s lectern stood Rauel Kevelock, his coloring proclaiming more Dark Elf than was usually seen except in the North Province where he’d been born. He was almost as innocently beautiful as Mieka, but the long bones spoke of Wizard and the round face more than hinted at Piksey. In front was tall, sinewy Vered Goldbraider, Wizard-blood competing with Dark Elf and Light and even Goblin to striking effect, long white-blond hair contrasting with nut-brown skin. On the left, at his own lectern, was Sakary Grainer, whose mother was almost entirely Human and whose father was almost entirely Wizard; he looked the former, with his red curling hair and blue eyes, but magic strong enough to make a fettler proved him the latter. And at the glisker’s bench, behind an array of glass baskets full of withies, sat Chattim Czillag, whose bloodlines were anybody’s guess, except for the Elf that was essential to his art. He was short, skinny, dark-haired, and blue-eyed, with a whimsically irregular face that attracted even though it wasn’t at all handsome. No one knew where he came from, but no one really cared, because he was brilliant. Odd, Cade thought suddenly, how a glisker had been the catalyst for the Shadowshapers, too; one clever, talented little Elf, making all the difference.
He glanced down at his own glisker and whispered, “Beholden, Mieka. Best Namingday ever.”
Mieka grinned from ear to pointed ear, then took both their silver cups and set them onto the bar just as soft tendrils of magic began to drift through the room, and all else was forgotten as the audience was gathered slowly, subtly into the hands of experts. Darkness like smoke swirled out from where the glisker sat, enwrapping each table lamp, cloaking in shadow first the mural and then the opposite wall of mirrors. In the dimness onstage a light tiny and bright as a candleflame glistened, drawing all eyes. And from it the play emerged.
Their first offering was “Dancing Ground.” It told the story of a brave and fine-looking knight who, spied one afternoon by the Elf Queen, was invited by her to join the evening’s dance. Wisely, he declined. Even to watch the dancing of the Elves was to lose all perception of time; it might seem that only hours passed, but in truth it could be many long years. And if watching was dangerous, what would happen to the mere Human who actually danced with them?
The Elf Queen hid her annoyance and offered gifts—which he was tempted to accept, for he was in fact riding to his own wedding. What marvels could the Elf Queen give him that he could bestow upon his lady for her delight? Riches were offered, and jewels, a never-empty golden wine goblet, and a magical bow and quiverful of enchanted arrows. But wisdom was yet with him, for he declined all gifts no matter how tempting. Being a mannerly young knight, he apologized for the necessity, and gave his explanation why he must ride on.
Now the Elf Queen was both angry and jealous. But again she disguised her feelings, and walked down to where the forest met the lake, to the place where her kind danced the night into morning: a large round dancing ground, marked at the edges by pebbles of silver and gold, and great shining diamonds. She bent down and plucked up a particularly fine gem, and a chunk of gold to go with it, and told the knight she wished to offer his bespoken lady a gift for the wedding. He saw no reason to refuse such generosity, and when she tossed the diamond and then the gold towards him, he caught the one in his right hand and the other in his left. And thus he had no hand to reach for his sword when the Elf Queen—
But that wasn’t how the Shadowshapers played it.
She had picked up the diamond and the gold and was about to fling them when the knight suddenly said she had not yet offered the only thing he really wanted, the only thing that meant anything to him. The Elf Queen demanded to know what that might be. The knight smiled, and said, “Give me your promise that after I’ve danced with you, the gift you’ll give me is that which I most desire.”
Intrigued, she agreed. And so they danced.
What Chattim did then was nothing short of amazing. Into the crowd, seemingly created from the chunks of gold and silver and diamonds, he flung separate bits of longing for those things men most desired: money, success, love, a beautiful wife, plenty of children, a fine home, an imaginative mistress, a bottomless barrel of beer. And as each man present grasped instinctively at what he wanted most, the magic expanded under Sakary’s skilled direction, permutations multiplying into vague and then specific visions, feelings, thoughts. Cayden held himself separate to observe what was happening: that every man’s most cherished desire was, for the length of this shimmering magic, granted.
Perhaps even more remarkably, as the enchantment slowly ebbed, not one man sighed with disappointment, nor frowned his frustration, nor surreptitiously wiped moisture from his eyes when that thing he most longed for faded from him. So gentle, so careful was Sakary that it was only pleasure that remained, and deep contentment.
Cade held himself back from this, too. The thing he most desired … He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want his mind or his heart to reach for the magic that would let him feel it for certain. Instinct told him that to know would be fatal to his work; experiencing such fulfillment would destroy the hungry striving that goaded him. Part of him wished he could share just a little of the audience’s satisfaction, and that part reached out a tentative fingertip, like a child trying to touch a raindrop on the other side of a window. Most of him backed away from it, and as the power seeped from the room in a slow swirl of shadows, he was unsurprised to find that both his hands were clenched into fists.
Why didn’t he want to know? All these men—for a few moments they had possessed what they most desired. Or at least they thought they had. They now knew what it felt like. Whatever they saw or felt or discovered about themselves—why didn’t Cade want the same? Why did it feel so dangerous even to speculate?
What was it, he asked himself, that he wanted more than anything?
And what would he do to get it?
And then, without warning, another question: What about the Elf? What was it that he was feeling right now? Had he touched what he most wanted, taking it into himself, satisfying w
hatever dream or need was hidden deepest in his soul?
The applause began, startling Cayden out of his thoughts. Though it was boorish to throw trimmings onto a real stage in a real theater, there was no such rule here. The chink and chime of coins was almost as loud as the clapping of hands. Vered, whose interpretation of “Dancing Ground” this had been and who’d acted as masquer, ignored the coins bombarding the stage, leaving it to Rauel to come out from behind the tregetour’s lectern and do the smiling and the bowing and the collecting. Vered strode to the abandoned lectern and gripped it with both powerful hands, looking grim.
“Ooh, that’s trouble,” Mieka said under his breath, and Cade leaned down to hear. “I thought something was going on.” Cade’s nudging elbow encouraged him to elaborate. “Didn’t you feel the tweaks Rauel kept giving the backdrop while Vered was playing the knight?”
“All I noticed was he made more switches back and forth than I could count, and faster than I’ve ever seen it done,” Cade admitted. “Impressive.”
“Well, while he was doing that, and Chat was giving him what he needed to do it with, and Sakary was keeping it all reined in, Rauel was fooling with the dancing circle. And did you notice when Chat sent the wishes out, the change in the taste of it? Rauel focused in on what each man wanted, and gave it to him.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure if he wanted to put his own hallmark on it so Vered doesn’t get all the credit, or if he was doing it to provoke.”
“Maybe he just couldn’t help himself,” Cade mused, turning back to the bar to order another drink. “There’s times when I—” He broke off abruptly, realizing what he was about to reveal.
Mieka guessed anyway. “You think I never sense it?” he demanded. “Is it that even after two months you don’t yet trust me, or you ‘just can’t help yourself’?”
“I do trust you. But I’m not used to that yet.”
Mollified, the Elf signaled the barmaid for a second round. “Think a moment on what you’d feel if some other tregetour messed about with your work.” With a shrewd upward glance, he answered the question. “You’d string him up by his balls and shove a few dozen withies up his nose, that’s what you’d do.” Handing Cade a fresh drink, he said, “Do you want to find a table this time?”
“I’m fine here.” He nodded off to their left. “Who’s that, do you know? The one in the emerald neckband that somebody really ought to teach him how to tie.”
Mieka sniggered into his silver cup. “That’s Pirro Spangler. Him and me, we took lessons from the same Master. He’d like to work the way I do, but he’s built too Human.”
Giving the glisker a once-over, Cayden was compelled to agree. The young man was not quite as tall but fashioned twice as solidly as Mieka, bull-shouldered and deep-chested, with powerful arms. He’d do fine working traditional, but Mieka’s style—no, not near light or quick enough.
“All Elf in the ears, though,” Cade remarked. Peeking shyly out from a tangle of dark brown curls, they were rather large but gracefully shaped, the tip of the left one decorated by three tiny silver hoops.
“More than can be said for that one over there.” He hooked a thumb, very rudely, towards the apex of the bar.
Cade knew instantly whom he meant. Lank brown-blond hair, wide-set blue eyes, and the unmistakable signs of surgery on his ears. Where there ought to have been a gentle inward furl rounding a Human ear, there were only hard edges. The young man looked their way, caught them examining him, blew them a mocking kiss, and turned his back.
“Fraud,” Mieka muttered. “He’s no more Elf than Yazz. Look at his ears. He was never kagged.”
“What?” He squinted but remained unenlightened.
“Like a tooth stump left in somebody’s jaw—”
“I know what it means.” He’d learned the term from Jeska, to whom it had been done. “You’re saying a chirurgeon never touched him?”
“Only to make it look as if another one had.”
“Why would somebody do that?”
“To pretend he’s Elf when he’s not—or more Elf than shows on the outside, anyway.” He drained his ale and turned the goblet upside down on the bar to indicate he was finished for the night. “They’re about ready again. This should be interesting. Rauel’s piece this time—I wonder if Vered will muck about with it.”
Vered didn’t game Rauel the way Rauel had gamed him. He stood at the tregetour’s lectern, straight-spined and solemn, giving every evidence of rapt attention. But Cade detected something coldly resentful in his eyes at Rauel’s hilarious rendering of “Piksey Ride.” Chattim could be seen laughing to himself as he created the weary and worn-out nag ridden nightly into exhaustion by Pikseys. Rauel’s befuddled farmer had everyone howling, and Cade appreciated the spry delineation of the Pikseys as dancing outlines all over the tavern. Still, he had the feeling that Vered considered such light entertainment beneath them.
Shadows again swept the tavern, and slowly vanished. Show over, Mieka took Cade backstage to the tiring-room, where the Shadowshapers were holding court, one on each of the four blue couches. The youth with the fake kagged ears was talking earnestly to Rauel. Beside him was a tall, lean, intense Wizard, his face all angles, his black eyes scouring the crowd as if looking for, and knowing he wouldn’t find, a reason to linger. He appeared, in fact, to have taken lessons in Haughty from Cade’s mother.
“Mieka!” Chattim waved, and Mieka dragged Cade over. The glisker’s face was even more comically asymmetrical up close—one cheekbone wider than the other, the mouth lopsided especially when he smiled, the nose taking a sharp right turn below the bridge. Even the cleft in his chin was off-center. But there was so merry a nature clear in his blue eyes that he really did seem rather good-looking.
Introductions were performed, and Mieka settled on the sofa beside Chattim. Cade listened as Blye’s withies were praised even though Blye’s name never was mentioned, and hid a grin. Someone drifted by with a tray of drinks, and Cade snagged one before wandering about the room, hearing snatches of conversations that didn’t much interest him, but enjoying the atmosphere of sleek success … even if that success wasn’t his own. Yet.
“—fuckin’ snarge, that’s what he is,” snarled someone behind Cade, and he turned to find Vered Goldbraider grabbing two silver cups of wine, which he poured down his throat one right after the other. He came up for air to find Cade looking at him, and his black eyes narrowed dangerously. “Liked the ending, did you? All sweet and delightful, sunshine and smiles—”
“It’s kind of supposed to end that way, isn’t it?” Cade ventured.
“Not in my version it fucking doesn’t!”
Oh; wrong playlet. Cade tried to make amends for his mistake. “Unusual, though, wasn’t it—having the knight outsmart the Elf Queen like that—”
“And there it should’ve ended.” Vered wasn’t quite as tall as Cade, and as his head tilted back so he could look Cade in the eyes he swayed a bit on his heels, already quite drunk. “He tricks her. They dance. The end.”
All at once Cade understood. “Which makes every man in the place wonder what he would’ve asked for, what’s more important to him than anything else in the world.”
“Exactly! Make ’em think, wouldn’t it? That’s the way I’d end it. But not him. No, not him! Feeling’s the thing—Lord and Lady preserve him from ever having a single thinking moment in his life!” He turned a glare on Rauel, who was laughing with the burly little glisker Mieka knew. Another young man had joined them, delicate and compellingly beautiful, with dark curling hair and a graceful body. But he was somehow sinister, too, somehow dangerous—especially when seen next to Rauel’s boyish, wide-eyed charm.
“It didn’t not work, though, did it?” Cade was astounded by his own temerity in discussing the work as if they were equals. “I mean, not the way you intended, but it was effective all the same.” The audience had been washed with emotions and images, and that was what all good theater was supposed to do. Even if they hadn’t b
een forced to think during the performance they’d certainly think for days afterwards, just as Vered said he wanted. What the Shadowshapers had done tonight what not just good theater but great theater. Through their art, every man in the audience had learned something about himself, something true.
Almost every man in the audience, Cade suddenly corrected himself. And again he wondered what it was that Mieka most desired.
Vered was frowning. “I know you, don’t I?”
“You know my glisker. Worked with him, once. Mieka Windthistle.”
“Your glisker now, is he?” He laughed, so heartily that Cade was within a moment of being annoyed when he went on, “No stopping that little Elf, is there? I think I heard something of it—you’d be Silversun?”
“Yes. Cayden Silversun.”
“Got it! Touchstone!” With a cynicism that was almost a challenge: “They say you’re the next us.”
Cade ought to have known that even his blandest smile wouldn’t fool someone like this. A gaze both wily and wise bored into him.
“But you’d rather be the first you. Grab that by the throat, Cayden, and hang on tight. And if you value your sanity, don’t ever let another tregetour work with you.”
“Not in a million years,” Cade said fervently.
Vered laughed once more. “And here’s your Elf. So you’re with players worthy of you now, eh, Mieka?”
He gave Vered a grin and an elaborate shrug. “We fit, the four of us. And I s’pose all is forgiven—Sakary’s speaking to me again, anyway. Why’d you do this show tonight? I thought you were done and dusted for Seekhaven.”