Playing to the Gods

by Melanie Rawn

  Cade was about to say something snarky about how much he appreciated Mieka’s faith in him when someone else laughed—Kaj Seamark, now holding a dark red withie of his own. “He couldn’t keep pace even if we gave him the spells to do it with! Give it up, why don’t you?”

  Mieka ignored him. “All this blood and gore—it’s not you, Quill. It may be Black fucking Lightning, but it’s not you. Think, damn it! They’ve been bashing people witless with magic so long that they don’t know how to do anything else!”

  “So what d’you want me to do?” Case asked, exasperated. “Talk them to death?”

  “It’s an idea,” Mieka retorted. “So are words.”

  “What?”

  “Words. They’re ideas, Quill, and they’re powerful. They mean something.”

  There had been piles and piles of them in the white marble room. But that wasn’t what Mieka meant, and Cade knew it. He couldn’t think of words as physical things, like that notion for a play he’d had during those months when he was, he admitted to himself, thorned or drunk or both during at least half his waking hours. Words—ideas—thoughts—emotions—

  That was what came at him all of a sudden: emotions. And somehow they were physical things, each one a clout in the guts. Raw, basic things: rage, hatred, pain, fear. Things with teeth and talons, monsters compacted into emotions. Subtler things: contempt, jealousy. Things of poison, bitterness distilled into seeping acid. All the emotions Black Lightning had compelled him to feel. Cade, who always held himself apart from the emotional impact of any performance, who feared his own violence, who hid behind his careful fortress of words—he felt himself splintering. He had nothing with which to combat this. Nothing.

  “Cayden!”

  Someone walloped him a good one in the shoulder. Real pain, real physical pain, courtesy of an Elfen fist. The withie dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers.

  “You can’t defeat them that way! It’s all they know!”

  Didn’t Mieka understand? Summoning up the same things inside himself was the only way to fight them. If these things were all they knew, he had to counter with—

  “If you do, everyone here will die! Pirro’s magic is horrible enough—if you add to it, we’re all going to die!”

  The Lord and the Lady knew that right now he was scared enough to drown Pirro and the rest of Black Lightning and probably everyone within a mile in his own terror.

  Terror such as the Balaur Tsepesh fed on. Emotion that would feed them, make them stronger.

  Cade looked down into Mieka’s strained, unhappy face. “I don’t know what to do,” he breathed. “Help me.”

  “I’m here. All of us are. We’re here with you, Quill.”

  Mieka gave him the silver sword. It had to be a withie, it had to be—but when he closed his hand around the hilt, it felt like a sword. The heft of it and the balance were real, and the grip was warm with the warmth of Mieka’s small hands.

  No, the weight was wrong. Too light. He recognized it then. The knife that Mieka had worn at his back, that he had lost that night at Great Welkin. The knife returned to him here at Seekhaven—but not by the Archduke. Megueris, probably—but what did it matter? It was the knife that had slain Vered Goldbraider.

  Cade stared at the length of it, the gleam of steel that looked exactly like a sword, the slightly different shine of silver inlay along the first six inches. No wonder Mieka had surged so close to Knottinger—he had to make sure the part that was real got close enough to do the cutting.

  A sword—or even a knife—wasn’t his sort of weapon. But words were. Words … ideas … concepts that words made into reality … words such as courage, and kindness, and loyalty, and devotion. Bravery was an idea expressed through deeds. Gentleness was in the eyes, the touch, the smile. Trust wasn’t an emotion, it was a knowing.

  All these things and more were naught but dim memories to the minds assaulting him now with magic that could no longer touch him. He met their anger and hate with words that meant infinitely more.

  He thought of Derien, Mistress Mirdley, and Blye. Rafe and Jeska, Vered and Rauel and Sakary and Chat. Megs. Miriuzca. Everyone he loved.

  But more than anyone else: Mieka.

  “Here, Quill. Always here.”

  Not knowing whether he’d heard it with his ears or only within his mind, he focused his gaze on Sagemaster Emmot. He walked forward—not hurrying, not striding, merely moving to close the distance between them.

  “What’s your connection with him?” He nodded towards the Archduke, who was still just standing there, motionless, silent.

  “Come now, Cayden. I expect better of you. I knew your grandmother, boy. Perhaps you’ve guessed—dreadful word, most unsuited to a scholar—why he still has no magic of his own, why he is unafraid of the fact that he’s dying.”

  “He trusts you?” He couldn’t help a snort of laughter.

  “As much as you used to. Granted, his first four servants aren’t doing as well as we’d hoped—”

  “They were to go on last, after everyone else’s withies were empty. Which is why Vered Goldbraider had to die. The Shadowshapers were too powerful. And Vered knew.”

  “Now you’re seeing it. Once the work here is done—rather messily, but one can’t quibble with success—he need never fear death again.”

  “His daughter weds Prince Roshien, his son weds Princess Levenie—but none of them gets to live forever.”

  “He will rule as King for enough years to create order in Albeyn, and then do as we have all done through the centuries.”

  “Pretend to die,” Cade said, “and go on ruling all the same. Are there more of you, waiting to turn Albeyn into your own private feeding trough?” Cade shook his head slowly. “You’ve fed enough for one lifetime,” he said, and plunged forward, stabbing the knife to the hilt into the Vampire’s neck.

  Cade yanked the blade free. It left a hole behind that quickly, neatly sealed itself.

  The Vampire began to laugh. The muscles of his throat rippling as he leaned back his head. “Cayden! Did you think any of this is real? That if only you believe hard enough and strong enough, what happens here will be real in the flesh-and-blood world?”

  Stunned and horrified, all he could think was that Mieka had failed him. The sword was no sword; it was naught but a withie’s magic cloaking a steel blade.

  “I can smell the silver in the hilt,” Emmot went on, taunting him. “Knottinger could not, with his thorn-dulled senses. But one goes to war with the army one has.” A fleeting gesture, and the steel in Cade’s hands flickered, shrank, magic fading away. “Foolish of you, Cayden, to fight that war with only an imaginary weapon.”

  Cade glanced at Thierin, whose neck had twisted so that his face was half-hidden in his shoulder. With the hand he had left he pulled his truncated wrist closer, licking at his own blood. To him, that blade had been anything but imaginary. Dreams, imagination … Cayden was a man whose dreams, waking or sleeping, often enough became reality.

  “You can’t live without dreaming, Quill.”

  Reality could be defined as what one could get other people to believe.

  “You have to do their dreaming for them.”

  So one went to war with the army one had? An army composed of fear and hate, pain, unspeakable horrors, corrosive emotion, and conjured monsters. None of it was real. Not the way Cade’s arsenal was real with years of knowing and caring, of shared triumphs and failures, of loyalty and of love.

  He looked down at the blade. Naught but a knife again, without the withie-magic. A beautiful thing, all shiny and smooth in his hand—but still warm to the touch with Mieka’s magic and with Blye’s. Into it he placed all the magic at his own command. Not the sort of magic that could create forested mountains or castle battlements or dragon or Caladrius. He primed the knife—made of steel, not glass; solid, not hollowed for the insertion of magic, but absorbing his magic all the same—he felt the growing warmth of the amethyst in its hilt that had been made to Mie
ka’s grip. The steel did not respond—mayhap its iron resisted the Fae idiosyncrasies in his magic—but the gem and the silver did.

  It was magic defined by words. His feelings for his family and his friends. Their gifts, their joy in their work, their love for each other. Words and emotions that were the real magic of being alive. And somehow these things became a libation, cleansing the blade that had killed Vered Goldbraider.

  Turning, tempted to laugh at the puzzled scowl that creased the Vampire’s brow, he returned to where Mieka stood and extended the knife.

  “Here,” he said. “Use this.”

  Mieka looked down at it, and then those eyes met Cade’s with triumph gleaming in them, gleeful and golden. “Beholden, Quill.” He paused, a grin suddenly decorating his face, and made a flourishing bow to the Archduke. Then he ran back towards the curtain, and swept it aside, and disappeared.

  Left alone with four men who would love to see him dead and two who wanted very much to keep him alive, Cayden gifted all of them with his happiest smile. It widened when Thierin Knottinger cried out, and Kaj Seamark clutched at his skull, and Herris Crowkeeper fell to his knees, and Pirro Spangler toppled face-forward into his glass baskets.

  Mieka had made quick work of it. That’s my Elfling.

  The glittering curtain of magic was still between the audience and the stage. But no longer did it concentrate globes of colored lights and send them like malicious arrows at any of the thousands of people out there.

  He looked over at the Sagemaster. “Your work?”

  A nod. “What’s already done will not be undone.”

  Cade noted that he had not said “cannot be undone.” It would be easy enough to identify those affected—just ask how much they adored Cyed Henick. Maybe he’d save them all a lot of bother and just keel over. From the look of him, that was entirely possible.

  “You think you’ve won.” His voice was thready, rattling in his throat.

  “Not quite yet,” Cade admitted. “But I know you’re going to lose.”

  “Can you be so sure, boy?” asked Emmot.

  He turned his face up to the night sky, studded with stars. Something inside him began thrumming with power not his own. “They’re not happy with you.”

  High overhead, a section of sky had turned blacker than the night, like a cloud of nothingness blotting out the stars. It widened, and just as huge bodies and vast wings became visible, thunderous roars split the air, akin to the terrible cries of the vodabiests. The Sentinel Fae, more than a dozen of them, circled their mounts directly above the ancient Dancing Ground and slid from their saddles to descend gracefully, soundlessly, to the stage.

  Chapter 42

  Years and years and years—Cade might be able to understand how and why he did it, if he had a hundred years or so to think about it. But the facts were that he walked right over to Henick and rummaged in the man’s pocket for the Queen’s Right. The theory that donning it was fatal but that he could touch it without penalty was as yet unproved. He was shaking as he went towards one of the Sentinel Fae, the one with the biggest opalescent sashes tied crosswise on his chest. He held out the Carkanet in both hands. The silver and gold plaques were set with dollops of clear glass—no, not entirely clear. Specks and shimmers of silver and gold glinted within the glass, unfaceted but sparkling with some unnerving radiance that made him wonder what it must be like when worn by the Fae Queen.

  “Yours, I believe,” Cade said, grateful that his voice was steady.

  The Fae studied him. It wasn’t like someone staring into his eyes to try to discern his thoughts; this was a scrutiny that took him apart, observed and evaluated the workings, and put him back together again. It lasted perhaps two seconds. When it ended, he was gasping.

  “Our thanks,” rumbled the Fae as he slid the necklace into a pouch at his hip.

  Beholden implied indebtedness. That single syllable informed him that the word itself was payment enough and he was owed nothing beyond it. Cayden devoutly agreed. Even though he’d been the one to identify the place where the Rights had been hidden, and was responsible (in a way) for recovery of the Crown and now the Carkanet, he had absolutely no desire for the Fae to consider themselves obligated. He didn’t want to contemplate what their idea of recompense might be.

  “This one,” called another of the Sentinels, pointing at Emmot.

  “And this,” said a third, standing near Henick and looking as if the Archduke smelled like something he’d scrape off the soles of his boots.

  There were no gestures, no spoken words, but suddenly a cage of uprights encircled both men. The bars were made of sunlight—the way sun shafted to earth through parting clouds, and had they proved to be fire taken directly from the sun itself, Cade wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

  The Fae who now possessed the Carkanet turned his head slightly as another asked, “What is this thing?” He stood beside the gleaming curtain, scowling.

  “Some rather foul magic,” Cade heard himself say, even as he saw that it looked dead, somehow, a thing of substance still but without essence.

  At the same time, the Fae Lord (Commander? Captain? Who knew?) said, “Nothing to concern us.” He tilted his head slightly to one side, as if listening. Then he said, “She comes.”

  The Sagemaster and the Archduke shifted within their cages of sun-shafts, not liking this news at all. For himself, Cade could hardly wait. Anything they didn’t like, he was bound to welcome.

  He changed his mind when she arrived.

  Not that he saw it. She was simply there, without sound or flourish, folding leathery batlike black wings and smoothing taloned fingers through sinuous snaking curls of black hair. As tall as Cade himself, and bizarrely beautiful, she fascinated and repelled at the same time. Enormous black eyes contrasted with skin as pale and luminous as moonstone. Her mouth was wide and full, lush as a ripe plum. Most of her body—a sensuous perfection of curves and suppleness—was covered to the knees with what appeared to be petal-shaped medallions of black glass that reflected no light and chimed ever-so-gently when she moved. In one long, elegant hand she held a leather scourge tipped in gold spikes.

  Cade knew her to be a Harpy, and he had never seen anything so beautiful and so terrifying in his life.

  A hundred flittering winged things suddenly appeared all round her. They were iridescent and every color of the rainbow and reminded him of gnats circling a corpse. One of them separated from the rest and flashed towards him, too quickly for the eye to follow. He began to lift a hand to swipe it away, and froze as his eyes focused on it. A faerie dragon—they were all faerie dragons, creatures of legend and speculation that no one had ever really seen—he raised his hand very slowly and extended a finger, and the tiny beast hovered for a moment before deciding to alight. Its claws were like fine hot needles but he brushed aside the pain as he had so often ignored the prick of thorn in his arm, and watched it fold its shimmering wings, tilt its head, seem to examine his face with big lustrous red eyes, faceted more complexly than princely rubies. Enchanted, he took mental note of its every aspect, wishing Mieka—no, Tavier—were here to see this thing that no one had ever seen before—if Cade remembered enough, he could hire an artist to draw the thing after all this was over, and Tavier would be—

  Assuming Cayden survived all this, which was a generous assumption.

  The faerie dragon evidently made up its mind—Cade wasn’t very interesting after all—and flew back to its swarm. The Harpy stretched her black wings, resettled them in elegant folds down her back, and the faerie dragons withdrew to form a small, flickering cloud of color just beyond her shoulder.

  “The Seemly Court have judged?” she asked in a low, honeyed voice.

  “Lady, they have.”

  Henick looked around dully, as if wondering where this “Court” had convened.

  “This one?” the Harpy asked, drifting delicately towards Cayden. He remembered to be scared again. “I can smell the Queen’s Right on his fingers.” />
  “Touched,” the Sentinel Lord informed her, and gestured to the pouch at his hip. “But only to return it.”

  “Ah.” She smiled and, feather-light, ran the back of one curved black talon down Cade’s nose. His eyes nearly crossed, staring at it. “Good lad.”

  Breath seeped back into his lungs and his heart began to beat again as she glided off with a tinkling of glass. Her eyes weren’t completely black; they were lit with crimson and green and yellow and silver sparks.

  “That one, then.”

  “Yes, Lady.”

  He couldn’t help but watch those long, luscious legs as she walked to where Emmot stood within a cage of sunlight. He told himself that it was because in the event of his survival, he wanted to be able to describe her so Mieka could get her exactly right onstage. Of course he knew it was really because they were the most perfect female legs he’d ever seen. He also knew that portions of his brain were nattering at each other for no other reason than that he was frightened out of his wits.

  The Harpy looked the Vampire down and up. “You have been judged by the Seemly Court, and found guilty. Not since the day when we created the Plume to ward off barbarian raiders has anyone defiled this ground.”

  Emmot’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Were those the barbarians who put carved dragon heads on the prows of their ships? Just to remind you that it wasn’t you Fae who rode the dragons, but Giants?”

  The Sentinel Lord was not amused. He rasped, “Fortunate they were that we didn’t transform their ships into dragons to devour them.”

  When Emmot laughed, the Harpy hissed and spat. Droplets sizzled against the bars of light. “You think magic is for fun, little man? For playacting? Perhaps it’s safest that way, for mortals—even mortals who are our kin,” she said, with a glance at Cayden.

  “As am I,” Emmot retorted.

  This she found entertaining, and smiled, good humor restored. She leaned closer, the serpentine ropes of her hair almost touching the shafts of light, and whispered confidingly, “Not so much that anyone would notice.” Then, moving away, she pointed to Henick. “And that one as well?”