Touchstone

by Melanie Rawn

  “Mieka, who’s this?” Cade pointed to a name he didn’t recognize at all.

  “You’ve met them—well, a couple of them. The other night at Kiral Kellari. The one pretending to be kagged, he’s Lederris Daggering, and his dark glowering Wizard friend, his name is Mirko Challender. They were talking to Rauel.”

  “They were in the other coach, weren’t they? I thought I recognized them.”

  “Pretending to be kagged?” Jeska’s lip curled.

  “Repulsive, I know,” Mieka agreed. “I’ve never seen the Crystal Sparks—another asinine name, don’t you think?—but it’s said they’re not bad. They might even be competition.”

  “Competition?” Cade laughed. “For us?”

  “That’s why we love you, Cayden,” Rafe commented. “So modest and unpretentious. So humble.”

  Pressing his palms together in the conventional pose of worshipful stained-glass Angels, Cade batted his lashes and smirked. Mieka crumpled up the performance schedule and threw it at him. Jeska, with the reflexes of a street-brawler, snatched it midair and stuffed it in a pocket of his second-best tunic.

  “And that will be sufficient mucking about,” Rafe warned. “We’re almost at Chapel. Some decorum, please.”

  The last corner had taken them onto a major street, wide and gracious, paved in red brick with quartets of pleached blue-leaf elms at stately intervals down the middle. The shops were expensive, the sidewalks scrupulously clean. Scores of people were all heading in the same direction, converging on the High Chapel, its twin spires and massive central tower gleaming white in the late afternoon sunshine.

  “At least pretend you’re civilized,” Rafe went on.

  “I know how to behave,” Mieka protested. “I’ve had lessons.”

  Cade rolled his eyes. “I s’pose it wouldn’t hurt to ask if you were awake during any of them?”

  “Oh, it never hurts to ask, Quill. It just hurts to find out.”

  Chapter 10

  High Chapel was required at Trials, not so much because the players would want to beseek any deity they could think of for help, but because one of the highlights of the town’s year was getting a good look at the hopefuls and the established groups. The players who called themselves Crystal Sparks were at High Chapel along with everyone else connected to Trials. Now that Cayden knew them for Touchstone’s competition—no matter how arrogantly he’d dismissed them earlier—he decided that if he could manage it, he’d try to see them perform. There was about their tregetour a sort of brooding disgruntlement that might make for an interesting interpretation of whichever of the Thirteen Perils they drew.

  The High Chapel rite that evening was entirely typical, if celebrated with rather more pretentiousness—and much more expensive implements—than Cade was used to. A thurible made of solid silver encrusted with gems was wielded by a Good Brother in crimson silk vestments; a Good Sister even more splendidly attired in blue spurged the four corners with scented water from a golden bowl rimmed with pearls, using a glass withie swirled with green and tipped with a pearl the size of a baby’s fist. Ritually purified, the congregation made the required bows to the images of the Lord, the Lady, their children who had become Angels, and the ancient unknowable Gods. Facing front again, towards the two stone plinths, one garnished with a small fountain and the other with a feathery blue flame, everyone sat down and prepared for the recitations.

  Rafe’s strictures on proper behavior had made some impression on Mieka. He was solemn enough when it came time to honor the Old Gods with a deep bending of his knees, but like most Elves he merely nodded to the Lord, the Lady, and the Angels. As the Good Brother took up his place behind the fire plinth and began talking, Mieka looked round at the windows, the statuary, the paintings, the carved wooden pews, the faces and fashions of his fellow congregants—anything, in short, was more interesting than the droning precepts of faith.

  Cade silently agreed with him, but kept his gaze more or less on the Good Brother. He’d been trained long ago by his mother to present a pious face, no matter what his thoughts. That it was essentially a Wizardly faith being celebrated afforded him a cynical smile that never even got close to his lips. In theory, all peoples were equal. In theory, too, a citizen was a citizen was a citizen. But just as there were royals and nobles and common folk, so there was a hierarchy in heaven. The Lord and the Lady were tacitly understood to have been Wizards; the Angels were Human; everybody else came under the jurisdiction of the Old Gods, who remained conveniently nameless, faceless, and enigmatic.

  He was as aware of Mieka’s disinterest in the proceedings as he was of Jeschenar’s authentic devotion: golden head bent, battle-scarred hands folded tightly together on his knees. There had been times in his life when Cade almost wished for Jeska’s type of unquestioning faith. Almost, but not quite.

  Despite himself, Cade found his gaze straying as the Good Sister took over the lecture. There was indeed much to distract the eye and mind. As expected in a High Chapel graced occasionally by royalty, the artwork was of the first quality. The statues of the Lord on the east wall and the Lady on the west were especially fine, bespelled to nod and smile as parishioners entered, to listen with grave approval to the recitations, and—as Flame and Fountain were conjured halfway to the gilded rafters—to spread their white marble hands in gracious benediction. Likewise the paintings of various Angels folded their feathered wings and smoothed their robes as they settled to listen to their Parents’ praises, then bowed in reverence as the blessing was spoken. There was, Cade felt, a good reason why there were no representations of the Old Gods. He could just imagine the favorite deity of, say, the Goblins bending his, her, or its head in veneration of Wizards. If any Chapel—High or Low—ever displayed such an image, there would be riots.

  Below each statue and painting, and somewhere in the brilliant colors of the stained glass windows depicting the scenic wonders of the kingdom, were the names of the donors. At each parish chapel in Gallantrybanks, and in the other cities and major towns, a few local families and guilds would be credited. Here, there were as many donors as there were works of art. Anyone who was someone —or wanted to be—was anxious that their generosity be noticed by the royals. Cayden thought of the little seaside chapel he’d attended while at Sagemaster Emmot’s academy: six short benches crammed beneath a low barrel-vaulted ceiling, no art at all. Only the two plinths, with tiny brass labels at their bases signifying that they had been the gifts of some long-ago lord and his lady. He wasn’t sure if it made services more impressive, all this expensive art, or if it wasn’t perhaps better to forego all the distractions to concentrate on what faith really meant.

  What he knew for certain sure, though, was that the stained glass on the western side of the building was in the most ostentatious bad taste: the symbols of all the most prominent Wizardly clans, jumbled together in a broad landscape. There was enough of hills, forest, and sky to accommodate everything from his own clan’s soaring white Falcon to a Squirrel clutching acorns, an Elk pacing a meadow, a Fox skulking through the undergrowth, and a Salmon leaping from a river. In the presence of this huge window, who would choose to listen to the service rather than search for the emblem of his clan?

  At length the rite was over, and Cade slipped out a side door with his friends and made for the courtyard. They stood to one side as nobility, wealthy merchants and proud guildsmen with their complacently overdressed ladies on their arms, and other groups of players (some looking decidedly travel-worn) filed out of High Chapel. Cade had never seen so many of his own profession together in one place, and some of them famous, too. Rauel Kevelock smiled at him on his way past, and Chattim Czillag stopped to talk to Mieka for a moment or two. Cade didn’t hear what they said, his attention caught by the high-pitched laughter of a group of young girls. Nominatives for the Good Sisterhood, they hid blushes behind gloved hands as the Sister Superior scolded them, urging them along towards the Minster. But their gazes darted from one player to another, and Cade
realized they would rarely have been within sight of so many young men in their restricted virginal lives.

  “That one’s rather lovely, don’t you think?”

  Cade was appalled that Mieka had said such a thing about a Nominative—without lowering his voice, too. And he was even pointing at her.

  “Chankings,” Jeska sniffed, “compared to the tall blonde.”

  The Elf considered. “One wouldn’t so much make love to her as climb her. I prefer them short, sweet, and shy.”

  “Shall we go for a scrape, then?”

  Rafe growled at them. “Did I or did I not tell you to behave yourselves?”

  “That was in Chapel.” Mieka grinned; the girl he’d been watching giggled. “See? She fancies me.”

  “The way they live,” Cade reminded him, “locked up most of the year, they fancy anything in trousers. Come on, we’ll be late for supper.”

  “Oh, I’m hungry, right enough.” He nudged Jeska with an elbow. “Let’s see if we can split them from the flock, shall we?”

  Exchanging a grim look with Rafe, Cade dug his fingers into Mieka’s shoulder and hauled him towards the street. Rafe had hold of Jeska, marching him right along.

  “But I wasn’t going to, not really!” Jeska protested.

  “He was,” Rafe snarled.

  Mieka laughed, and didn’t deny it.

  The twilight was deepening by the time they got back to their lodgings. Supper was provided, once they’d handed over vouchers that would allow the proprietor reimbursement from the Master of Revelries’ treasury. They ate on the broad back porch, which Cade and Rafe obligingly lit with rows of little flames to spare their host a few candles. The family’s Trollwife repaid them with the leftovers of the apple scrumping made for her employers’ dinner, and Rafe graciously avowed it was as good as his mother’s—not mentioning, of course, that his parents owned and operated one of the best bakeries in Gallantrybanks.

  But when they finished eating it was barely nine in the evening, and there was nothing to do. Cade had just finished his second half pint of ale and was about to comment on impending boredom when he noted that his glisker had vanished.

  “Where—?” he began, just as his masquer stood, stretched, and ambled down the porch steps towards the little garden’s back gate.

  “Prowling,” Rafe said, flicking a finger to douse his contribution to the lighting. “I’m for bed, and some real sleep. That wagon bunk was too short last night.”

  Left alone with the echoes of the clanging gate and his own flickers of light, Cade shrugged and settled back in his chair, listening to the darkness. After a while he pushed himself to his feet and wandered up to bed, still listening. So much quieter here than at home, for all that Redpebble Square was far from the rowdier sections of the city. He could even hear the river a couple of blocks away, and closed his eyes to imagine it the way he’d seen it earlier in the evening, crumpled silk in some places and near-perfect glass in others, reflecting trees and buildings and little stone footbridges. But it was nighttime now, and across the water would glimmer Elf-light from the streetlamps, and the silver of the rising moon … there was a word for that, a lovely word … moonglade … the river was talking to the moon, the water conversing with the light, dancing and flirting in the preliminaries of love … the words were dancing in his mind now, words for the sounds and the feelings, the clean scent of the water and the silver moonglade … he knew precisely what sort of magic he would leave inside the withies, all the laughter and longing … Mieka would love this one, dancing behind the glisker’s bench, colored glass twigs shimmering in his quick little hands …

  {He sat beside the dark river, hugging his knees, breathing slowly the scents of water and crushed green grass and woodsmoke, listening to windrustle and distant chirring birds, feeling the languid warmth of the night—for once not trying to remember, interpret, catalog. What he sensed, and especially what he saw, these things were to be savored, not used. Silvery light glowed over the nearby hills, tempting, promising, and he held his breath. As the moon arced over the rise, and the river sparkled like a pathway of suddenly flung diamonds, he felt hands settle lightly on his shoulders. He didn’t turn his head; he knew this touch, gentle and strong.

  After a few moments Mieka whispered, “I knew you’d be here,” and knelt behind him in the damp grass.

  Moonglade shimmered the length of the river. Lingering drops of afternoon rain dazzled trees and pasture, and the whole world seemed suddenly slurry with stars.

  “Did I get it right, then, Quill?”

  He laughed softly, because Mieka already knew the answer. He gave it again anyway. “You always do. Whatever I give you, you give back to me better than I could ever imagine it. You always do.”}

  In his sleep, Cayden smiled.

  * * *

  He woke with a single blink. There were moon-thrown shadows in the darkness of the bedchamber. One of these shadows wandered about the room, seeming to shed pieces of itself onto the floor.

  “Pick it up. All of it.”

  Mieka grasped dramatically at his chest. “Gods, Quill! Give me a seizure, whyn’t you?”

  He didn’t have to ask what the boy had been doing. He reeked of sexual satiation like a noblewoman’s gowns reeked of pricey perfume. “Just tell me you didn’t break into the Minster.”

  “Mad I may be, but stupid? Never.”

  “I’d argue with that. We’ve the draw in the morning, and first rehearsal right after.” He kept his voice steady and calm. “I need you rested.”

  The uncaring shrug was in his voice as he replied, “Then let me sleep in tomorrow.” He fell onto the bed with a grunt of satisfaction, wriggling amid the pillows to burrow a comfortable nest. “Shoulda brought you along. She had an adorable little friend—”

  “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “No? All right, then. Sweet dreaming, Quill.”

  Cade unclenched his fists and told himself he wasn’t angry because he was envious. He was angry because tomorrow was vitally important. Their career—hells, their lives from now on—depended on what happened tomorrow. And that worthless little Elf had to go out prowling—

  —and come to think of it, had Jeska made it back tonight?

  “I’ll cripple the both of ’em,” he muttered, pulling his pillow over his head to muffle the snuffling snores coming from the other bed. “After Trials.”

  The next morning Cade was too nervous to eat. By the time he got downstairs Rafe was already up and fed—and quite abundantly, too, judging by the huge plate at his elbow—seated at the kitchen table writing a letter to Crisiant. Cade’s arrival elicited a nod and a question: “Where’s the Elf?”

  He replied with a smirk. Far from allowing Mieka to sleep in, Cade had left him thoroughly awake: pillowless, coverless, and howling with outrage at the crisp breeze through windows Cade had flung wide open. Cade nodded his gratitude to the Trollwife as she gave him a huge cup of soothing tea. Her eyes were a soft lavender, unusual in her people, and the sympathy in them was an unexpected annoyance. How many tregetours had passed through her kitchen on just such a morning as this? He wasn’t like any of them—Touchstone was different, unique—oh Gods, which of the Thirteen would they have to perform? Please don’t let it be “The Dragon,” or “The Prince’s Plague,” or “The Treasure”— He gulped tea but his stomach kept gnawing on itself.

  A plate of eggs and fried bread was set before him. He simply couldn’t face it. Turning to Rafe, he asked, “Where’s Jeska?”

  “Jeska,” Rafe echoed musingly. “That’s something we need to discuss.”

  Before he could ask, a voice from the taproom rose in a squeak of shocked dismay: “Holy Gods! What happened to you?”

  “Oh,” Rafe commented, returning to his letter. “The Elf’s found him.”

  They came in together, the one torn between horror and giggles, the other defiant and guilty.

  “I didn’t know she was bespoken, all right?” Jeska snarled, the
n winced and groaned as his cut lip, black eye, and swollen jaw moved in directions no longer compatible with comfort.

  “P’rhaps we should’ve attempted the Minster girls,” Mieka offered. “Might’ve been safer. No great hulking boyfriends lurking about.”

  “You—you—” Cade’s considerable vocabulary deserted him. Or else so many words came to mind that they all got tangled on his tongue so none of them could make it out of his mouth.

  “Was she worth it?” Mieka wanted to know.

  Another incautious use of facial muscles—this time for a smug grin—brought another moan.

  “No teeth for your collection?” Rafe taunted.

  “Part Giant, he musta been,” came the reply, stiff-lipped. He looked down mournfully at bruised, scraped knuckles. “Bones like bricks.”

  “And you’re still alive?” Mieka snagged a slice of bread and began tearing it into small pieces, handing each to Jeska with a mocking grin. “Chew gently.”

  They went on teasing the masquer while Cade fought real nausea. Jeschenar’s physical beauty, especially that exceptional face, was something Cade counted on even though he never admitted it. Today—in less than three hours, in fact—they’d be presenting themselves, and that face, at Seekhaven Castle, intent not just on the draw but also on impressing the judges right from the start.

  “Oh, don’t look so tragic, Quill,” Mieka chided. “Nothing’s broken.” He paused, then squinted at Jeska. “Nothing’s broken, is it?”

  He shook his head and sipped warily at the tea handed him by the Trollwife.

  “There must be a leech or physicker somewhere in town who can set him right,” Rafe said. “We don’t perform for another three days, after all—”

  “I’ve a better plan,” said the Elf, grinning as if the whole situation had been crafted exclusively for his entertainment. Or, Cade thought suddenly, for him to use in entertaining others. Whichever, Cade wasn’t disposed to argue with anyone who had a practical solution to the cuts and bruises on Jeska’s face.