Touchstone

by Melanie Rawn

  “Why d’you think we make him take the same room as you, when we’ve two rooms instead of just one?” Rafe asked.

  Jeska answered before Mieka could open his mouth. “Because he doesn’t need eight hours of sleep. Have to be at me best for every show, don’t I?”

  Mieka retorted, “Since when have you ever been in a bed for eight hours at a stretch if there wasn’t a girl in it with you?”

  “A touch, old son,” Cade told Jeska. “You’re in the local hayloft half the night most nights, no denying.”

  Jeska waved it all away. “Fact is, Mieka snores like grinding papers on a thousand withies, and there’s an end to it.”

  “He does, that,” Cade said. “Though it’s rather more like a tortured goose, don’t you think?”

  “Gosling,” Rafe corrected. “He can’t be full-grown yet, can he? I mean, look at him. Scrawny little thing.”

  “Cullions,” Mieka muttered, hunching himself into his corner. A few minutes later, he said, “I do not snore.”

  Whether he did or not had nothing to do with where any of them slept that night. Though Gallantrybanks’ reach might extend far into the countryside, for a hundred and more miles around Dolven Wold memories stretched even farther. Part of the kingdom now, to be sure, not the Archduke’s domains; but there was no mistaking their loyalties during the late war.

  “Nubboddy say’d nuddin’ ’bout no Elferbludded,” drawled the innkeeper, placing his considerable self in the main doorway of the only lodging within twenty miles.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Fairwalk said, stubby little fingers gripping the itinerary page. “This is the specified accommodation on the Winterly Circuit, is it not?”

  “Not fer his like.”

  Touchstone stood shivering in the gloom and mud of the stable yard, exhausted after dawn-to-dusk in the coach. They were cold, hungry, thirsty, and cramped, and the day had been bearable only because of the hot meal and warm beds supposedly waiting for them here in this lonely roadside inn.

  When the proprietor eyed him ears to boots, for the first time in his life Mieka knew what humiliation meant. He was an Elf, and he was unwelcome here. Elfenkind had declared for neither King nor Archduke; thus they were considered to have dishonorably eluded all responsibility. Sometimes in Gallantrybanks someone obviously Elfen would get stared at, and Uncle Barsabian claimed to have been spat upon. This innkeeper was regarding Mieka as if he were more foul than the shit decent folk scraped from their shoes. Mieka felt his cheeks burn. Then pride stiffened his bones and he deliberately shook his hair back from his face, giving the man an even better view of his ears. The man’s lip curled, and he looked away as if the sight of those pointed ears was too disgusting to contemplate.

  Rafe’s spine cracked as he drew himself to his full height. “You’ve had theater groups here before, on the Circuits. You’ve seen Elves. What’s your problem?”

  The innkeeper was thoroughly unintimidated. “New contract, innit? Shifted from the old Lamb ’n’ Lark t’me this year.”

  “We’ll go there, then.”

  “Try, if’n ye like. Burned down, the place did. Was Elferbludded what diddit, so it’s said, when a room got denied him. Fired it to the floorboards with his stinkin’ magic. No welcome fer such most places ’round here, now.”

  “But surely,” Lord Fairwalk protested, “surely you know that all gliskers are substantially of Elfen stock! I mean to say, there’s not a group of players in the kingdom without an Elf—have you never been to a performance?”

  He sniffed and spat. “Wuddint catch me in reach of that sort.”

  “How in all hells did you get this contract?” Rafe demanded.

  The coachman spoke up for the first time. “His will be the only beds between Dolven Wold and Vasty Moor, now. I hadn’t heard about the Lamb. And it’s not true that Squimmie didn’t let Elves under his roof. Been drivin’ the king’s coaches these fifteen years, haven’t I, and there was never a breath of a word spoken—”

  “Squimmie died this summer past,” said the innkeeper, with a certain degree of relish. “Him as inherited was a right-thinker, same as me, and paid fer it with the loss of his ’stablishment.” Then, looking at Mieka again, he warned, “Don’t you be thinkin’ nothin’ at all, Elferboy.”

  There would be no blithely assuring the man that “Thinking only gets in the way! Me, I never allow a thought to linger longer than I can recognize it and throw it right out me brain!” There would be no charming his way into food, drink, and a bed tonight. There would be no deployment of what his mother called The Eyes, no winsome smiles, nothing of his usual tricks for getting what he wanted. This wasn’t the first time his wiles had failed him, but it was certainly the most important. It wasn’t just him disconvenienced, was it? Because of him, his friends would suffer.

  The coachman shrugged, surveying the place from the dark, narrow upper windows to the cresset torches set at intervals along the inn-yard walls. “Never been here before. I didn’t know. Sorry, lads.”

  “Not your fault, not at all,” said Fairwalk. Then he reached for his purse. “Perhaps we might come to an arrangement with this good man, don’t you think?”

  Cade grasped his wrist. “No.”

  Mieka began to back away. “It’s all right, I’ll sleep in the hayloft tonight, it doesn’t matter—”

  “No,” Cade said, even more forcefully. Using the clipped highborn accent Mieka had last heard in Blye’s glassworks, he went on, “Suppose we address a few words to the Master of the King’s Revelries.”

  “You’re a long ways from Court here, case you hadn’t noticed,” the innkeeper sneered. “Ain’t never been an Elferbludded under this roof and never will. I’ve rights as owner and freeholder and if that boy wants a bed he can make himself one in the sty, where the likes of him belong.”

  Jeska started forward, fists clenched. Rafe put a cautioning hand on his arm. “Not yet,” he murmured, and the innkeeper turned brick-red.

  The coachman glanced over his shoulder, squinting at his horses, then shook his head. “I’d say drive on and find another place, but there’s another five miles in them, and that’s all.”

  “Stable them,” Cade said suddenly. “And get yourself to a bed. This is our matter to resolve. Perhaps a bit of illumination?” he suggested—and suddenly every torch ringing the yard blazed to life with brilliant blue flames three feet high. “You’ll note,” he said pleasantly, “the color. That’s not Elf-light, that’s Wizardfire. It’s rather uncommon, and I’m rather good at it.”

  “I’ll have the law on you!”

  “I’ll have the price of our rooms and food for the night,” Cade snapped. “Now!” The fire flared emphasis.

  “Wizardly threats,” the innkeeper blustered. “Do as you like—you’ll have no beds, no dinner, and no coin from me! And you’ll not be the only one a-writin’ to the King!”

  “Foreigner, ain’t you?” Jeska said all at once, and the man swung towards him with a snarl. Pointing to the inn’s sign, nailed above the door, the faded colors glowing eerily in Cade’s blue fire, Jeska continued, “That’ll be a Huzsar’s cover, all that tall fur and a gold chinstrap. What name was it your father took on after he was paid to ride in the Archduke’s cavalry? It’ll be something to do with horses—bridle, stirrup, saddle, reins—c’mon, man, what’re you called?”

  “Prickspur,” Mieka said. “It’s there, in small letters, at the bottom of the sign. See?”

  “And what of it? I’m born and bred here, same as you, and I’ve rights!”

  “Of course you do,” Lord Fairwalk soothed. “We don’t look to interfere with them, we’re only asking you to fulfill your contract.”

  “Contract says naught ’bout puttin’ up Elferbludded in my inn.”

  “Thing of it is,” mused the coachman, “it probably doesn’t. That’s all understood.”

  “In this case, deliberately misunderstood,” Cade observed. “The coin. Or it’s not Elfen magic you’ll be
worrying about. It’ll be mine.”

  The blue flames spread, torch to torch, creating a solid ring of fire around the muddy yard. Muffled screams came from behind the shuttered upstairs windows. The innkeeper’s face turned an even deeper crimson as he dug into his pockets and flung two handfuls of coins into the muck.

  “And not the barn, neither!” he shouted. “Ye’ll sleep in that great ugly coach and be out of here by daybreaking!”

  The door slammed behind him. Iron rasped on iron as a heavy bolt slid home. Mieka gulped and crouched to pick up the coins.

  “Don’t touch them,” Cade ordered, and as Mieka snatched his fingers back, said, “Rafe? Which spell, d’you think? Vomiting? Purging?”

  Jeska shook his head. “What if he sends somebody else out to get them?”

  Cade chewed his lip for a moment before nodding. “Right. How about what we did to Master Plerian’s switch?” When Rafe grunted softly, Cade gestured to the coins, glinting dully in the mud. “They hold the imprint of the last hand that touched them—and when that hand touches them again—”

  “He’ll wish he hadn’t,” Rafe finished.

  Jeska pulled Mieka to one side as the pair of Wizards hunkered down on their heels. “That switch Cade talked of—it was tin, and three feet long, willow-supple, and Rafe still has scars on his back from the last time it was ever used.”

  “What did they do to it?” Mieka whispered.

  “Bespelled it so that the next time the man touched it, it burst into flames. I heard that he wore bandages for a month. You can’t put the fire out with water, and it burns until there’s nothing left but a lump of metal.”

  “How old were they?”

  “Twelve or thereabouts. Sneaked in after school hours to do it. Don’t ask where they learned something like that, I couldn’t tell you. But that much magic, that young…” He ended with a shrug.

  Implication understood, and it staggered him: Cade and Rafe could have been anything, chosen any Wizardcrafting they fancied. Their magic was powerful enough to get them into any academy in the kingdom, even university at Shollop or Stiddolfe. Yet they were players, tregetour and fettler, here in this mud-thick inn-yard, casting a schoolboy’s vengeance spell because someone had refused to let Mieka sleep under his roof.

  Back in the coach, they arranged themselves and all the blankets and carriage rugs as comfortably as they could. Everyone was thinking about it, but Fairwalk was the only one who spoke longingly of his own rig with its fold-down seats. Before bundling himself up in his cloak, Cade got out his pen and ink.

  “Which is it?” he asked. “Were we uncivil, or did we damage His Gracious Majesty’s property?”

  “The coins are still coins, right?” Rafe shrugged. “Will be until sometime tomorrow, I reckon.”

  “After we’re long gone,” he agreed. “Incivility it is, then.” But he hesitated, and glanced over at Mieka. “Unless you had something more interesting planned for that one?”

  Mieka shook his head wordlessly. A part of something well worth being part of, he reflected, huddling with them under the carriage rugs that night, and fell asleep hoping he wouldn’t snore.

  Chapter 20

  On arriving at the next stop, the only inn serving a tiny market town, Touchstone stayed hidden in the coach with the shades drawn until Fairwalk could be sure there’d be no repeat of the previous night. For certes, it all looked much the same. The yard was just as deep in mud-slush, and the sign above the door bore the name STRINGFELLOW below a depiction of a drawn bow. But after a tense few minutes, His Lordship returned smiling to the coach with the innkeeper himself in tow: a dark-skinned man whose ears had obviously been kagged.

  Touchstone was made welcome—so much so, in fact, that after an excellent supper and fortified by herb-flavored home-brewed ale with an astonishing kick to it, out of sheer gratitude they played a rather cramped but still satisfactory version of “The Sailor’s Sweetheart” for free.

  His Lordship had spent half the day mentally composing his letter to the Master of the King’s Revelries. It took him an hour in a corner of the crowded taproom before dinner to write it out in a flamboyant hand, with all his names and all his titles at the bottom, plus his personal seal marking the yellow wax that affixed the yellow and green ribbons. Mieka announced himself awed by the brass-bound wooden box that unfolded into a traveling writing desk with all the embellishments, including a selection of silver-nibbed pens like the one Cade’s parents had given him. Then he sneezed.

  “Bit smoky in here,” he said, not wanting to admit that his head was beginning to feel stuffy. Last night in the coach he’d been warm enough to fall asleep but not warm enough to stay asleep very long. He absolutely refused to catch his usual winter sniffles, the Old Gods’ annual snide reminder that whereas he had enough Human in him to drink, use almost any sort of thorn he pleased, and grow a beard, he was also helpless when it came to a head cold.

  After the show, as they mounted the stairs to their room, Fairwalk mentioned that he’d hired a lad to carry the letter back to Gallantrybanks by way of Dolven Wold, where a second letter would warn the next group coming through. They could adjust their travel to bypass Prickspur entirely, or adhere to the itinerary and forget about sleeping in real beds that night. The Second Flight was the Crystal Sparks. Although Elfenblood didn’t show in their masquer, their tregetour and glisker had very pointed ears.

  Sidlowe was a port town, inland on a river Mieka didn’t know the name of and didn’t care about. The place fascinated Cade, though, for it was here that the tenth of the Thirteen Perils had actually happened: the loss of a fabulous treasure. He spent his free hours tucked away in the Minster library or talking with old-timers who might remember something their grandsirs might have said that was real about the event. He even wanted to dig it out of their folio and present it at least once, but Jeska dissuaded him.

  “And what if we get a reputation for doing it one way, the way we planned in case we got it at Trials, and eventually you find out that it happened another way? Leave it for when you’re sure.”

  Thus neatly sidestepping the issue of how lethally dull the tale was. If “Dragon” was mostly flash and gimmickry, “Lost Treasure” was nothing but talk, some rain, more talk, a few bursts of lightning, yet more talk, thunderclaps, and somebody yelling that there’d been a mudslide and nobody could find the treasure. After all this time somebody ought to have spiced the thing up a bit. The truth Cayden seemed determined to find was probably even more boring.

  Fairwalk, who was returning south now that Touchstone was duly launched, reminded them that Sidlowe would be a good place to buy and send Wintering presents back to Gallantrybanks for their families. With ample coin in his pocket, Mieka indulged himself for days in shop after shop, and along the way learned that Rafe could give a magpie lessons in acquisitiveness. He could also haggle from half to two-thirds off the price of just about anything. The packages they gave Fairwalk took up most of the boot of the post coach and the equivalent of another seat, to the irritation of the three other passengers.

  Mieka had watched for further indications of Fairwalk’s intentions towards Cade, but nothing suggested anything other than admiration for great talent and a wish to be friends. Still, Mieka knew what he knew, and figured the nobleman was simply biding his time. Considerate of him, not to try to distract Cade on this, their first Winterly, when he had enough to do and enough to think about. Once one got used to his rather prickmedainty ways, Fairwalk was all right. And he encouraged Cade to write his own works, not merely rewrite other people’s; for this alone Mieka would have put up with just about anything from him.

  After Sidlowe came the long, snowy trip to Scatterseed, where they played nine shows in nine days: four afternoon performances and five evening. That last day, with two shows ahead of him, Mieka could hardly get out of bed. He hadn’t consulted Auntie Brishen’s wyvern-hide roll of thorn very often, but he knew today he’d need it. His head had a fuzzy sort of ache and his nos
e felt raw inside.

  Afterwards, he admitted (but only to himself) that mayhap he’d used a little too much. Either that, or he should have stuck to beer and not had those two—or had it been three?—hotted-up whiskeys. Whichever, by the time the Minster chimes sang out seven and they were ready to go onstage at Scatterseed Grange, he was bleary and twitchy all at once, and nearly tripped over his own feet on the backstage stairs.

  “Mieka?” Rafe grabbed his arm to steady him. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine, fine.” He wanted very badly to ask what playlets they’d decided on for tonight, because suddenly he couldn’t remember. He was hoping someone would say something pertinent before Cade made the actual announcement of the titles.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  Wrenching his arm away, he laughed. “What, frustled up in me second-best shirt that matches your jacket and Cade’s tunic and Jeska’s neckband? We’re all of us gorgeous, no arguin’ with it—”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Jeska demanded from behind them.

  “Nothin’ a-tall,” Mieka said, hoping his voice didn’t sound as slurred to their ears as it did to his own.

  “Paved,” Rafe announced, shaking him. “Can you work? Answer me honest, Mieka, I won’t have you endangering—”

  “Paved?”

  Cade snarled, “As in your face hitting the pavement because you’re drunk!” It was as abrupt as it was frightening, the sight of that face looming over him, furious as only Cade could be furious. He saw a hand raised in a fist and waited for it to connect with his cheek or his jaw. He couldn’t move, not even to flinch.

  Then, just as swift and twice as terrifying, the gray eyes no longer saw him. Elsewhen. Mieka knew it. There was no anger in Cade’s eyes anymore, only fear. It sobered Mieka like a drenching of ice water.

  The fingers unclenched, and for an instant he thought Cade would slap him. Then his jaw was seized in a grip that wasn’t quite cruel.

  “Don’t ever do this again, Mieka.” His voice shook. “Do you hear me? Not ever again.”