Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  “Good. You’re back.” Rafe didn’t explain this. He let go of Cade and turned to Mieka, then to Jeska. Their faces showed what Cade suspected his own must show: lingering humiliation, confusion, fear.

  “They had all of you for a minute,” Rafe said. “But not me. You’re protected now. I’ve got you. What worries me is what’s going on out there in the audience. Who’s protecting them?”

  “Rafe?” Mieka asked in a voice that didn’t quite tremble. “Why didn’t you—?”

  “Wizard,” Cade managed. Rafe nodded. “We three are other things besides Wizard or Elf.” And Rafe was shielding them from Pirro Spangler’s vile magic just as he would an especially sensitive person in an audience.

  Jeska was looking round at the other players backstage, alarmed. “Sweet Lord and Lady, look at their faces!”

  “They look the way I felt,” Mieka rasped. “Worse. They look as if they want to kill themselves.”

  Hawk’s Claw. Crystal Sparks. The Stewards hanging about backstage. Magical folk, all of them. Magical things other than Wizard or Elf. Despising themselves for being what they were.

  Cade whispered, “They look as if they’d give anything to be free of this.”

  “What about the audience?” Rafe said again. “There’s three thousand people out there. The King and Queen—Miriuzca—she’s got no magical blood, but what happens to those who do?”

  Mieka jumped in place to see over Gorant Pennywhistle’s shoulder. The masquer looked stricken to the soul. “Oy! Baltryn! Over here!”

  The young Steward seemed to shake himself, and looked around, utterly bewildered by the blank, staring faces all round him. He hurried to where Touchstone stood. “What in all Hells is going on?”

  “Black fucking Lightning,” Rafe growled. “Can you wrap some magic around a few of your friends? Like you’re protecting them from a careless fettler.”

  Baltryn nodded. “I’m pretty good at that, though I say it myself.”

  Cade had guessed Rafe’s idea. “Do it, and when they’re themselves again, tell them to do the same to as many people in the audience as they can reach. Keep Black Lightning’s magic from touching them.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Mieka warned. “Rafe’s protecting us—all right, fine. But I can still feel what Pirro wants me to feel. He’s working with more than withies up there. I’d bet anything that Thierin and Kaj are joining in.”

  “Why is almost everyone else affected,” Baltryn asked, “but not you and not me?”

  “You’re Human and Wizard and Elf—and nothing but,” Cade said quickly. “It’d take too long to explain. Go shake a couple of your friends awake and—”

  “The King!” Jeska exclaimed. “Gold coins with the Archduke’s profile on them—”

  Gold Coins reminded Cade that Derien was out there in the audience. And Blye—Kazie, Jinsie, Crisiant—the other Shadowshapers and their wives—people he cared about, people who had to be protected.

  “Cayden?” Baltryn was more confused than ever.

  “Go. Protect as many as you can. Now.” Turning to Rafe, Cade asked, “Can we move around? Can you—I don’t know, wrap something around us?”

  The fettler nodded. “Already done. I was going to build something between Black Lightning and the audience, but Mieka’s right. There’s more happening than withies account for.”

  They started for the stage. Their first look at the audience was terrifying. Thousands of faces—some of them awake and aware and frightened, some of them blank and unseeing, some recoiling from those around them, others flinching with unendurable shame. Cade easily sorted them into categories: those who had only Wizardly or Elfen blood or a combination of the two; those who were Human with no magic at all; and magical folk with Goblin or Piksey or any number of things other than Wizard or Elf.

  “Jeska—go to the Wizards and Elves and Humans. Try not to let them panic, but tell them to leave.” Glancing at Rafe, he added to his masquer, “If you start to feel what Black Lightning is making everyone else feel, come back.”

  “I’ll do my best.” He ran lithely up a side aisle, rightly judging that the chaos of headlong flight might be slightly less disastrous if the top rows left the theater first. Even better, he didn’t pause for a single instant. Whatever Rafe was doing, it was protecting him.

  Mieka was scowling. “The pureblood Humans look confused. But they’re starting to get scared.”

  Cade said, “There aren’t many—I’d say not more than a few dozen out of three thousand, mostly among the ambassadors and their people. See their faces?”

  “As if they need any more reasons to hate and fear magic,” the Elf muttered. “They’re safe enough. They’ve no magic to be exploited or warped.”

  Rafe looked startled. “I thought you were going to say ‘victimized’ or something like that. What d’you mean, ‘warped’?” A sudden wince interrupted him. Cade felt the intensity of Black Lightning’s magic increase for a few moments, then fade to just out of arm’s reach again. “Sort it later,” Rafe growled. “Right now it’s the Royals who need protecting.”

  Mieka nodded. “Get Megs to do it. She’s more than good enough.”

  “What can the rest of us do?” Trenal Longbranch’s voice, shaking slightly, came from behind Cade. Baltryn had been at work, bless him. “All our withies are spent, but we could prime them anew, have something to work with.”

  That was it—the spent withies. No wonder Black Lightning had been so scared of the Shadowshapers—best in Albeyn—no wonder they’d wanted Touchstone to go on before them—nothing to work with, no magic stored in slender glass twigs—even if someone guessed what was happening, it would take long minutes to prime them again—

  “Mieka!” Cade blurted, and the Elf flinched. “All our withies—get them, quick. Trenal, you and Mirko get yours primed, and have your gliskers ready to use them at Mieka’s direction. You’ve got five minutes.”

  “But—”

  He had no time for questions. He leaped down the side steps from the stage level to the seats. Striding quickly along the front row, he spared a single glance for Black Lightning up on the stage. They weren’t even pretending to put on a performance. Pirro Spangler sat on the glisker’s bench, a withie gripped in each hand, eyes closed, sweat gleaming on his face. As each glass twig was expended, he tossed it over his shoulder and grabbed a new one. Herris Crowkeeper clutched his lectern with both hands; his eyes, too, were shut. Kaj Seamark’s and Thierin Knottinger’s eyes were fully open, and they stared only at each other. Some sort of silent, invisible communication was going on there, something that brought identical smiles to their faces.

  Cayden reached front row center and instantly saw four things. First, the Archduke was gone from his seat next to Prince Ashgar. Second, the Prince and his father were cringing, shoulders hunched. Third, Queen Roshien was looking at her husband of over forty years as if he had suddenly turned into a pile of wyvern shit. And lastly, Princess Miriuzca was cowering in her seat as if expecting a fist to the face, which she wholeheartedly believed she deserved.

  It was this last that brought Cade up short. He hadn’t expected the Archduke to stay within reach while all this was going on. Everybody knew that there were magical antecedents in King Meredan’s family; that the Queen had Wizardly or Elfen blood in her and possibly both was a bit of a surprise. But—Miriuzca?

  They had stripped her mother naked to examine her for signs of—oh, Hells, they probably didn’t even know what. Cade guessed, Mistress Mirdley’s stories notwithstanding, that Vered had been right in that the “mark” of a Caitiff was purely imaginary, something to soothe people through the idea that there was a way to identify such women. Miriuzca’s mother had had no such mark; neither would she. But magical blood she most certainly did have, though what kind was unknowable.

  If she did, and Ashgar did, then their son and daughter did, too.

  Cade shoved the realization aside and stood in front of Megs. She was so pale that her freckles looke
d like spattered blotches of brown paint. That she loathed herself was clear in her eyes, in the trembling of her lips. He picked her up by the shoulders and pulled her to him, holding tight, some sort of thought in his head about bringing her inside the wrapping that Rafe had created around him, but mostly because he couldn’t bear to see an expression like that on her face.

  After a few moments, she sobbed once against his chest and clung to him. He held her closer, rocking her, murmuring wordlessly.

  “C-Cayden?”

  “Just me. It’s all right.” It wasn’t, not yet, but it would be. “I promise it’s going to be all right. Can you do something for me?”

  She pulled away a little and nodded. She knuckled her eyes, wiped her nose, and looked up at him. “Tell me.”

  “Protect Miriuzca. You’re a fettler. Shield her from the magic.”

  “What about the King and Queen?”

  “A Steward will be here soon. Don’t worry about them. Your job is to keep Miri safe from—from whatever it is they’ve got planned. I can’t pretend it won’t get nasty.”

  She looked beyond him to the stage. “Surely a tregetour could come up with a better word than nasty.” Meeting his gaze again, she straightened up and said, “Go on. I’m fine now. Do what you have to.”

  It occurred to him that in a play, the hero at this point would have bent down to kiss her. This wasn’t a play. He was no hero.

  He kissed her anyway. For the space of two heartbeats she kissed him back, then shoved both hands against his chest.

  “For Gods’ sake!” she snapped. “Why are men so fucking stupid? Go!”

  He went.

  Chapter 39

  Unusually subdued, Mieka was waiting for him. Cade had passed Baltryn and another Steward on the way, and barely kept himself from demanding that one of them find Derien and protect him. The best thing he could do for his brother—for everyone—was to stop Black Lightning. For something new had appeared on the stage: a shimmering, writhing curtain of translucent light, glistening with sparks of color that seemed to be gathering together, red with red, blue with blue, and so on, accumulating into bright globes. It was this that Mieka was watching with grave uneasiness as Cade reached him.

  “I’m not sure this is what’s needed,” Mieka said. “The withies are primed for Window Wall.”

  Jeska fidgeted nearby. “Better it should be ‘Dragon’ or something else with a lot of fighting in it.”

  “Ours are ready for the Third and the Sixth,” said Trenal.

  One Peril a battle against a Giant, the other a battle against demons. For reasons he didn’t understand, the whole notion troubled Cayden.

  Mirko looked up from kneeling beside his glisker, Jacquan Bentbrooke. “We’ve put our ‘Piksey A-Straying’ images in these.” He gestured to the single, very large glass basket of withies. “Upside down, sideways, backwards, and inside out. With some extra twists.”

  “Dizziness, nausea, and, if you like, actual proddings to yark all over themselves,” said Jacquan with a hard little smile.

  Cade nodded uncertainly. “Has anybody tried just grabbing them and hauling them offstage?”

  “Can’t get through that damned curtain,” said Lederris Daggering. “I’ve a few pints of Goblin blood in me along with Wizard and Elf, and whenever I get near it, it feels like I should have bad teeth and a single eyebrow and mottled skin—and a hunger for Human flesh seethed in milk.” He pushed the hair off his forehead as if to make sure he indeed had two eyebrows. “Even with Brennert protecting me, I can’t walk through it, or past it, or into it—whatever that thing is.”

  “Anybody else try?”

  Gorant Pennywhistle lifted one hand, let it fall to his side helplessly. “I’m Wizard and Human, like Rafe—but I haven’t the first clue about fettling. I can’t protect anybody. And our own fettler … well, he’s so many things not even he knows, and the first wallop of this hit him pretty hard.”

  Mieka, his arms full of multi-colored withies, looked up at Cade. “You could. I could.”

  “How d’you figure?”

  “Fae. Wizards and Elves are pure, according to Black Lightning, right? Rafe and Baltryn—and Gorant—are our only purebred Wizards, as far as we know. They’ve got other work to do. But twice I’ve seen this play, and twice I’ve felt this, and neither time has there been anything that targets the Fae. I think Black fucking Lightning is afraid of them.”

  “Here’s something else to add to the festivities,” Cade said. “The Archduke is gone.”

  “Good riddance.” Mieka seemed unconcerned. “I bet we could get past that barrier thing, and use the Fae inside us to do it. We both know how charming the Fae can be when they really try!”

  Cayden had begun shaking his head halfway through this brave and unpersuasive argument. Mirko looked from one to the other of them and observed, “Quite the imagination the lad’s got, ain’t it?”

  “You got any better ideas?” Mieka challenged.

  “What happens if we do get inside?” Cade asked.

  The familiar wickedly gleeful grin spread across his face. “Quill! I’m surprised at you! When you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, doing it becomes easy!”

  “Not imaginative,” Lederris corrected. “Insane.”

  “That, too,” Mieka shot back. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Can’t you feel it? It’s getting stronger and it’s expanding. We gotta try something, and soon.”

  Cade moved a few steps towards the stage. What he saw convinced him that they did have to do something, and right now—for that curtain, like heavy silk made of magic, now curved in a gentle arc from the wings on either side all the way to the front of the stage. He could no longer see any member of Black Lightning. Embers merged together into glowing orbs of light—and the colors were just as Vered had envisioned when the magical races had given powers to the Knights of the Balaur Tsepesh. There were dozens of these globes, green and red-gold, blue-green and reddish brown, fiery red, opalescent, even purple shot through with gold, which he hadn’t seen since that night on the Vathis River when a strange old man had settled the shrieking of those hideous vodabeists. How had Black Lightning learned—? Ah, simple: they’d been to the Continent, and they had the Archduke to educate them.

  Vered had been right about the colors, but there were three missing. The blue of Wizardfire, the yellow-gold of the Elves, and the silver that Vered had used for the Fae. Perhaps Mieka’s instinct was correct, and the Fae in their blood—

  “Holy fuck,” Jeska whispered beside him as the globes suddenly spat out new sparks, seeking into the audience. Seeking and finding—sometimes three or four at once, converging on someone whose whole body spasmed, whose mouth opened in a silent scream.

  “Mieka.”

  It was all he had to say. The Elf gave him a single withie, and he felt it warm and alive with magic in his hand. Mieka held one in each fist.

  “Give me a couple,” Jeska said. “I’m no glisker, but I can give it a try.”

  “Protect those people if you can,” Cade replied. “Get the others working at it as well. Mieka…” he said again, and heard his voice shake.

  “Right here, Quill.”

  They strode onstage, heading directly for the translucent curtain where miniature multi-colored suns spat gouts of fire into the air, seeking Trolls and Gnomes, Giants and Goblins, Caitiffs and Pikseys and whatever that old man on the Vathis River might have termed himself. Cade glanced down to the front row, astonished to see red-gold and purple sputter into lifelessness no more than a foot in front of Princess Miriuzca. Megueris, close beside her, didn’t seem to notice; her eyes were dark, unseeing, her face drawn in lines of terrible intensity. Miriuzca was Caitiff, then, and—what had the old man said, gesturing at Mieka’s Elfen ears? Kin. He had the ridiculous thought that Jindra Windthistle was the closest thing Miriuzca had to magical kin in all of Albeyn.

  And then he stepped through the curtain, and his brain caught on fire.

  * * *


  Mieka saw the glimmering lights swallow Cayden, and cried out. Every instinct told him to follow. Somehow, his brain was shrewder than his instincts. He put both withies into his left hand, extended a single finger, and poked tentatively at the magic.

  What flowed invisibly up his arm and throughout his body was hatred of himself and everyone and everything in the world around him. An urge to violence seized him, violence of the kind that made wars and killed without mercy. What flooded his brain was sheer evil, the kind that clawed half-grown children from their mothers’ wombs and devoured them raw and bleeding. What made his lips curl into a snarl and his fingers clench like talons was everything he was. So many sorts of magic, so many talents and gifts and perceptions and abilities—some shining and others murky, some singing and others growling, stinking or fragrant, smooth or snagged or soft or hard, tart, sour, honeyed, salty—all of them his to use or to reject. He hated them all, everything he was that did not dance with Elfen magic or laugh with Wizardly pride.

  The withies dropped from his hand, one of them shattering, and he was certain sure that the sharp sound of it was what saved him. Winded as though he’d run twenty miles, over the thunder of blood in his ears he heard the screaming begin. A dozen, a score—soon there would be hundreds of people shrieking in agony. Not in pain; not with physical or emotional or mental or spiritual anguish. They were hungry, as he had just been hungry for unspeakable carnage. For fountains of blood, rivers of it.

  The Fae within him evoked nothing at all. He could feel it, could recognize it as the same quiver of something he’d felt when confronting the Fae below the Chalk Dragon. Yet it was untouched by Black Lightning’s magic. He hadn’t time to wonder why.

  However it was being done, whatever vicious magic was producing this, it would not have been possible if there had not been evil and violence and cruelty in each and every mind the magic touched. There was nothing in the world so inherently vile as a living, thinking mind. Mieka flinched back from knowing it, and instantly recognized himself for the coward he had always been. Hiding behind masks and laughter so that nobody would see how sniveling scared he was. He couldn’t even explain the things that frightened him—or perhaps he could. Without the laughter, someone might see him as he truly was … and be as disgusted, as contemptuous, as Black Lightning’s magic had made him see himself.