Touchstone

by Melanie Rawn

  No, it wasn’t Mieka’s unpredictability onstage that so infuriated Cayden—though the shattered withie at Trials had been a reminder that he was likely to do almost anything if the impulse struck him. Instead, Cade remembered the snow and the streetlamp, and the words he’d never said—and the uncanny echo of the foreseeing in real life: “It’s not in you to be wicked, Cade, nor cruel.”

  And yet—hadn’t he seen himself slap Mieka so brutally that it knocked him to the ground? Hadn’t he beaten him bloody?

  He would have to control his temper. That was the start and the finish of it. No matter how angry he became, and no matter how much the Elf deserved that anger, Cade could not give in to it. If he sometimes just had to succumb to the urge to hit something, the world was full of walls and doors, furniture and glass windows—and other people. But not Mieka. It was too dangerous for reasons he would never, could never, explain.

  Thus settled in his mind, Cayden could relax and enjoy the torchlit walk to the castle that night—especially as the ladies had sent three liveried pages to carry the crates and withies and Rafe’s new oakwood lectern that had been his parents’ gift on making Trials. Trusting the security of Mieka’s cushioning spell, Cade had no qualms about letting the boys take charge of the glass baskets. But Mieka was oddly reluctant to part with the black velvet bag of withies. Cade couldn’t make out the expression on his face—it was there and gone even faster than usual—before he gave an awkward little laugh and told the lad to have a care.

  “If the glass breaks, all the magic will escape,” he confided, “and you might end up crying all night, or laughing into the middle of next week, or with a stiffcocking you won’t be able to ease for a month—”

  “Leave off,” Rafe chided, adding to the saucer-eyed boy, “He’s not serious, don’t worry.”

  Looking none too reassured, the page gulped, nodded, and clasped the velvet bag to his chest with both arms. Had it been an infant, it would have suffocated.

  The pavilion where Touchstone would perform unofficially for the ladies of the Court turned out to be a hammered copper roof balanced on thirteen pillars with seating beneath for approximately five hundred.

  Torches lit the path through the castle precincts. Past little walled gardens they walked, glimpsing paved courtyards that featured potted specimen trees from distant lands, fountain pools, knot-gardens, and fish ponds. After a long walk across an expanse of close-clipped grass, the players were led to the pavilion by the little redheaded lady who still hadn’t mentioned her name. When Cade at last saw the circular copper roof half-embraced by a grove of beeches and poplars, he nearly tripped over his own feet. The thing was gigantic. Worse, it was outdoors. They’d never played an outdoor site—though there were several on the Ducal and Royal Circuits, and one reason for starting out on the Winterly was to provide groups a look at where they’d perform if they made it up a notch in the next Trials.

  Lady Redhead, as Cade had no choice but to call her, stopped at the short steps leading to the stage. “Here’s where I leave you—but not for the whole of the evening, I hope,” she added with an eloquent glance up at Cade. “I’ll look for you after.” And she melted away into the chaotic crowd.

  “He won’t be comin’ home tonight,” Rafe advised Mieka.

  “All the more privacy for me!”

  Jeska shook his head. “Oh no, mate. The Trollwife was specific—no girls in our rooms. That means you’ll have to find someplace else.” Then he winked and whispered, “The hayloft will be free tonight.”

  Mieka sniggered. “Chose a sneezer, did you? Or does she just want something a bit less rustic?”

  “Will you shut it?” Cade demanded. “Where do you want to set up? Stage forrards or stage back?”

  They arranged themselves a bit farther to the front than usual, considering the size of the place and the lack of walls. Rafe paced back and forth across the stage, calculating the potential rebound off the support pillars and high, peaked copper roof. Mieka joined him on two of these surveys, then helped Cade set up the glass baskets. Cade looked out at the casual jumble of chairs, wondering helplessly how to signal that they would soon begin. But Lady Redhead had been watching, and came forward and lifted both dainty little hands.

  It took a few moments, but the two hundred or so ladies found seats and quieted down. A tremor of expectation and excitement rippled through the crowd. And abruptly Cade realized that for the first time, they were standing in front of an audience composed entirely of women.

  Should it make a difference? They hadn’t really discussed it, not in direct terms. They’d chosen two standard pieces, both of them liberally rewritten by Cayden over the last months. The first was quite short, the second rather longer. Jeska had wanted to do two cloyingly romantic playlets; Rafe had snorted his opinion of this, Mieka had shrugged indifferently, and Cade had said, “The idea is to make them remember us, and talk about us—and anybody who thinks the ladies stay silent and keep the so-called secret of these shows is a shit-wit. So let’s give them things they’ve never even thought about before, eh?”

  Accordingly, when Lady Redhead turned and smiled up at him, he nodded, stepped forward, and announced simply, “‘Caladrius,’” and effaced himself to his side of the stage.

  “Once there was a great white raven, a solitary raven, a lonely raven called Caladrius, that kept to itself, not mingling with its kind.”

  The tale went on to describe the bird in detail, and as Jeska spoke the lines, Mieka fashioned the huge snow-white raven and set it to preening itself where it perched on a castle windowsill. It was a very pretty bit of magic, that slender stone tower and arched window, and Cayden was very proud of it.

  The first half of the story had Jeska gradually sprawling into a chair—a real one, which Mieka disguised as a one-armed sofa covered in plain blue silk—sickening unto death, increasingly hoarse-voiced. He wore his own splendid face and form; Mieka and Cade knew without having to mention it that Jeska’s looks would have every woman in the audience just that much closer to tears as he failed and faltered. So young, so beautiful, and dying … When the white raven rose up and flew in a great circle round the whole pavilion, the ladies all gasped. It came to rest on the end of the sofa, tilting its head as Jeska grated out words of despair—and sudden hope, as he recognized the white raven for what it was: the Caladrius, bird of healing. Should it look away from him, he would die—but if it gazed steadily into his eyes, the malady would be taken into the bird and flown to the highest heavens to be burned away by the sun.

  “Look at me,” Jeska pleaded, “look at me, I beseek, and do not look away!”

  Shining gold eyes regarded him for a long, long moment. The audience held its breath, trembling as Jeska trembled, afraid to hope—and then crying out with happiness as the wide wings spread and the yellow-orange mists of the illness seeped from Jeska’s eyes into the bright eyes of the bird. Then the white raven launched itself into the air, spiraling upwards and vanishing into a wayward cloud.

  Cade was pleased with that cloud, too; he and Mieka had worked on it for hours, while Rafe experimented with increasing the sensations of well-being as Jeska “healed” and finally leaped from the sofa, shading his eyes to look at the place where the white raven had flown up to the sun.

  But where most tregetours would have ended it there, simply telling the legend of the Caladrius, giving the audience pain and fear and then joyous relief, Cade had different ideas.

  Jeska turned back to the chair, and in the time it took him to sit down he had acquired the smug face and dark green robes of a respected physicker with a thriving practice. He used one finger to twirl the point of a fussy white beard—crimped, scented, edged around his cheeks and lips with excruciating precision. After the delighted relief of healing that still lingered in the air, the amused condescension he emanated brought a few low mutters from the audience. Cade hid a grin. Men or women, it didn’t matter who was watching; the reactions were the same. Touchstone was that good. />
  “Oh, have they started?”

  Piercing as a swordthrust to the magic as well as the ears, the woman’s voice echoed off the copper ceiling and off every single one of the thirteen columns. Cade pushed his fury into a box and locked it, frantically assisting Rafe in the redistribution of energy and sensation Mieka had only just conjured. Jeska’s guise didn’t waver for an instant, and he gave a casual, commanding gesture that drew people back into the playlet, but the flow of mood was ruined. As Cade helped Rafe reestablish the environment, he was marginally aware of the rustle of gowns and the scrape of chairs as the woman found a seat proportionate to her importance.

  Cade knew who she was. It had been over seven years, and she was masked now as she had been then, but he knew her by the flower she wore: not a real flower, but a famous and fabulous jewel worn sometimes as a cloak pin, sometimes as a pendant necklace, and tonight as a decoration in her coiled black hair. Each petal was a pearl—not the round or teardrop shape favored by other ladies, but eight long, thin, curving chunks tinted the yellow of a ripe pear. In the center was a thumbnail-sized yellow diamond. The whole was set in a spray of gold and silver leaves. It was well-known of her that she couldn’t resist wearing this flower, even when supposedly in disguise, for she would never tolerate being treated as anything other than what she was: Princess Iamina, the King’s sister.

  Cade helped Rafe and Mieka use the time she wasted finding a chair to rebuild the atmosphere in the pavilion. At length she was seated to her satisfaction. One of her attendants lifted a gracious hand in a Do go on wave. Touchstone would now be allowed to continue.

  Jeska fiddled with his beard a little longer, then spoke into the almost-silence. Gently, as if speaking to a backward child, but scarcely able to hide his scorn for such superstitions, he explained that if the sick man sees the white raven and the bird turns its head away, the person is thus filled with despair and loses hope, and with it strength, and sickens worse, and dies.

  “Yet should the Caladrius look keenly upon him with its bright golden gaze, will the sick man not take heart, and strengthen, and heal? So you see, the question is: Does the white raven heal the man, or does the man heal himself through what he believes about the white raven?”

  The physicker settled his robes about him, smiling an insufferable smile. As he did so, from the clouds flew the white raven, and a voice called softly from thin air:

  “But what if the malady is blindness? What if the sick man is blind? What if he cannot see hope and healing perched beside his bed? Tell me that, good scholarly man—tell me what happens then!”

  “Blind? That’s not in the story. What’s all this rubbish about being blind?”

  Control your temper, Cade told himself. This would be good practice. He glanced a warning at Rafe, felt him clamp down on the flow of magic from the glisker’s bench—where Mieka was seething, those eyes nearly black. Jeska, having just enough magic of his own to nudge a working if needs must, stripped himself of the old physicker’s countenance, stood, and looked down his perfect nose at the place where the princess sat.

  “Certain sources,” he told her—intimately, confidingly, as if they were alone in all the world, “mention that the white raven actually can cure blindness.”

  “Really,” she sniffed. “And how does it do that, masquer?”

  “Oh, very simply.” He smiled his sweetest smile, like an Angel in a High Chapel window, and said slowly and distinctly: “Eat its shit.”

  Lady Redhead suddenly jumped to her feet and began to applaud. The rest of the ladies did likewise. Cade went over to Mieka’s glass baskets, collecting Rafe and Jeska with a look. When they were all together—the Elf still with murder in his face—Cade whispered, “Let’s not give them ‘Purloin.’ She doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Who the fuck is that?” Mieka demanded. Anger whitened his face, making the livid bruise on his cheekbone uglier even beneath the makeup.

  “Princess Iamina,” Jeska said. “Or somebody just as rude who stole her flower. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it. I thought everybody knew.”

  While Mieka was squinting to get a look at the jewel, Rafe said, “How about ‘Troll and Trull’? She deserves that one, if anybody does.”

  Cade mentally ran through their folio, wanting something pointed but not lethal. There was magic enough in the withies he’d already primed—more or less specific to “Purloin” but with a few tweaks he could adapt them. But to which piece?

  “We’ll give ’em ‘The Dragon,’” Mieka snapped. “And send the firebreath right up her skirts. Everybody else has been there, why not us?”

  “Oh Gods,” Jeska moaned softly as Cade turned to do some fast work on the glass twigs. “Did you have to put that image in my head?”

  * * *

  As it happened, Cade didn’t make it back to the lodgings that night.

  Waking just at dawn, he lazed against lavender-scented pillows and traced with his gaze the graceful flow of red hair across Lady Torren’s naked shoulders. Not losing his temper, he reflected with satisfaction, had unexpected rewards. Torren had been deeply impressed that he had only shrugged off Iamina’s rudeness—but in truth she had been furious enough for both of them. She’d waited until they were safely hidden in a luxurious little grotto seemingly constructed of ferns and mosses before giving vent to her outrage. That night he learned an interesting aspect of anger that he’d never encountered before: that passionate feeling was passionate feeling, and could be expressed in ways infinitely more pleasant than punching a fist through a window.

  Or exploding a glass withie.

  He knew the ladies felt cheated that they hadn’t seen Touchstone’s trademark. Cade hoped that meant there would be another invitation to a “secret” late-night performance, but it didn’t really matter to him one way or another. It hadn’t been until halfway through “The Dragon” that he realized that Mieka Windthistle in a rage was dangerous. The flames were fiercer, the Dragon bigger and nastier, and Cade could sense Rafe working harder to temper the emotions surging on waves of magic. Tonight the Prince wasn’t just troubled by the prospect of having to live up to his ancestors’ exploits: he was also resentful, and rebellious, and angry.

  Jeska adapted, as he always did. But tonight he kept hold of the spent withie Mieka had thrown to him as his “sword,” refusing to toss it back at the end of the piece. To shatter one of the withies still in the baskets, one that still contained even a trace of magic, would be a colossal stupidity even Mieka wouldn’t risk—though when he leaped off the glisker’s bench and joined them to take their bows, he was furious at being deprived of his flash. Rafe’s elbow in his ribs and nod to the audience mollified him a little, for Princess Iamina was still white-faced and shaking. Mieka had sent the Dragon’s fiery breath right at her.

  Gazing up at daybreak through the screen of green leaves, Cayden stretched on the bed of pillows and blankets and reflected that whatever the Elf had done with the residue of his rage, he didn’t want to know. Lady Torren had approached him while he was packing the crates, and he’d lost track of everyone else at that point. A woman could do that to a man, he mused. Girls were one thing; women were quite another. And Torren was definitely a woman. He suspected that this wasn’t the most profound insight of his life, but it was certainly the most recent.

  He hadn’t lied when he told Mieka he was fifteen, his first time. What he hadn’t said, and what he wouldn’t have admitted if someone set him alight with real fire, was that the first time had been a disaster. The second had been much worse. But because at fifteen a boy could be randy and scared or randy and determined, but randy above all else, the third time had been rather wonderful. It had remained warm in his memory until he discovered the girl was spreading word amongst her friends that the legendary correlation of the length of a boy’s nose to the length of other appendages in the predominantly Wizard male was in fact no legend, and she could attest to it of her own experience.

  After that, he’d decided
that he was willing to be as emotionally shallow as any girl ever born, because the good Lord and Lady knew no girl was ever going to want him for his looks. If they closed their eyes, their minds, and their hearts while they were with him, so much the better. It meant that he didn’t have to see, think, or feel, either.

  Done often enough, of course, shallow became very easy. By his eighteenth year, this began to worry him. Not worried enough to puzzle out what to do about it, but concerned nonetheless. He began to wonder what it might be like to have what Rafe and Crisiant had together. It would be nice, just once, to find out what it was to be with a girl and have his eyes and mind and heart wide open.

  Not that this was apt to happen. The beard he’d been struggling to grow—which, on Mieka’s wise advice, he had shaved off—had done nothing to hide or improve the rest of his face. At nineteen he was still getting taller, and ever more awkward in the arrangement of arms and legs and hands and feet that seemed to have no correlation to each other. He remained what his mother had always said he was: someone’s horrid joke on his handsome parents.

  But Lady Torren hadn’t seemed to think so. And he’d seen, by the light of a trio of tiny lamps she asked him to ignite so she could look at him, that she kept her eyes open the whole time.

  And this time—well, both times, actually—had been better than wonderful.

  He stretched again, and reached a finger to stroke the smooth line of her back. His touch woke her. She blinked drowsily up at him, and smiled, and in the golden dapples of early morning sunshine he saw the freckles scattered across her nose, and the flecks of brown in her green eyes, and that even without lip rouge her mouth was a lovely shade of peach.

  “What most ladies say at such a moment,” she mused, “is ‘I must look a fright.’”

  “You don’t,” he replied. “And you’re not ‘most ladies.’”

  “As it happens, I’m not,” she agreed.