Thornlost (Book 3) (50 page)

“Smug bastard,” Rafe muttered.

“Let it go,” Cade advised quietly. “We won. They lost. We’re Second Flight, they’re Third.”

“By one point,” Mieka reminded him sullenly. “One, when it ought to’ve been a thousand!”

That one point was Cade’s fault, and he felt guilty about it. He hadn’t mentioned to the others his Elsewhen about the Archduke’s reprimand of Black Lightning. But how was he to know they’d still be nervous about that nameless fettler? Neither Rafe nor Jeska nor Mieka had said anything to him about anticipating yet another interference. They’d gone into their performance of “Dragon” (another rigged draw, he was certain) cautious and on edge. Everyone had noted the difference. Black
Lightning had gone immediately before them, doing a violent—and violently reworked—version of the Eighth Peril, which involved the treacherous murder of an heir to the throne. The standard text called for the death to happen offstage, or at the very most in the shadows, to spare the feelings of any Royals who might be watching. Knottinger had rewritten it to show not just the quick knifing by an unknown assailant described in historical sources but also a crowd of spectral figures swarming around the Prince, all of them armed with gleaming steel—and all of them very much shorter than Humans or Wizards. Not so blatant as “The Lost Ones,” still it clearly implied that the killers were Goblins and Sprites, Pikseys and Gnomes. As Cayden watched the audience from the wings, he saw disgust on some faces, dread on others, and was sure that the same specificity of magic was being directed to pick out those of “unclean” blood and make them uncomfortable. Thierin had said in that Elsewhen that they knew how to do it now, how to identify who was what. But to what ultimate end, Cayden couldn’t begin to guess.

The piece had been good enough to earn Third Flight on the Royal for Black Lightning, displacing the Crystal Sparks—who were so furious that they departed Seekhaven before the next dawn, their manager lingering to give some excuse about family emergencies that no one believed.

Cade had to admit that the Eighth had been good, if bloody. It wasn’t his fault Black Lightning had done well, but it was partially his fault that Touchstone hadn’t done their best. He was beginning to agree with Vered, that Trials were a pain in the ass and it would be better to have done with them altogether. This was easier than admitting to himself that he’d failed in his resolve to share his Elsewhens with his partners.

It would be a relief to go home tomorrow. They’d play at the usual venues in Gallantrybanks, perform for the Princess, pack up the wagon, and set off a few days before the official
start of the Royal for a private show—
gigging
, as he was learning to call an engagement—this one at Shellery House, the seaside manor belonging to Lord Mindrising. Kearney had been startled by the request, unaware that they knew Megs in circumstances other than Her Ladyship self. Nobody enlightened him. Equally amazing was that Lord Mindrising had requested Touchstone to visit his two other summer residences—he had seven major properties in total, which he regularly visited on a kind of circuit of his own—during the Royal to entertain his guests and his villagers. Women included. This made Kearney nervous; it made Mieka laugh.

But Romuald Needler had been right, years ago: now that women were beginning to dare attendance at theaters, swollen audiences would bring swollen profits. And it began to seem to Cade that this was what Vered had been waiting for. With twice the number of tickets to be sold, a group could afford to go out on its own and thumb its collective noses at Trials and the Circuits. Cade wasn’t sure he was quite that brave. And besides, he wanted First Flight on the Royal at least once in his career.

The audience in Fliting Hall settled. There were no women present. Too soon, Cade thought, just a little too soon for the Stewards to unbend. He hid a smile, thinking how flummoxed they’d be when the daughter of one of the oldest noble houses in Albeyn voiced her intention to become one of them. Not that he could quite believe it himself. Her ambitions, those he understood perfectly. That Megs really was the daughter of Lord Mindrising was something he still couldn’t quite work into a comfortable place in his brain.

There was no announcement from the stage of the name of the group or the title of the piece. Curtains parted on a swirl of pale gray haze. The Shadowshapers were already onstage as the mists of their own making cleared. Chat was seated at the glisker’s bench, dressed all in black that emphasized his starkly
pale face and the streak of white in his hair. To Cayden’s eye, he looked apprehensive. Sakary stood behind his lectern, also in black, more solemn and aloof than ever. Rauel was near but not standing at the tregetour’s lectern, his tumble of dark hair a boyish contrast to the grim determination of his expression. Vered, whose play this was but who would be performing as masquer, with Rauel seconding, occupied the center of the stage, looking defiant. From what Cade knew of what the audience was about to see, all four Shadowshapers were hiding that they were just plain scared.

Between Vered and Chattim a scene appeared: a score of knights in antiquated armor that was little more than thickly padded tunics and metal breastplates limped frantically towards a castle gate. They staggered and stumbled, dragging each other along, swords used as crutches encrusted with blood.

“Another battle lost. The taste of bloody defeat bittering their mouths. The heartbeat thunder of terror thudding in their ears. The tremors of exhaustion shaking their limbs. The swords besmirched with enemy blood trailing enemy guts behind them—and yet the enemy was undefeated. Another battle lost, another of dozens that ravaged their numbers, and mayhap next time battle raged, the whole war would be lost. Skill and valor counted for naught. Love of homes and families and rich green fields and towering mountains meant nothing. For they were not fighting mortal beings. They were fighting the
balaurin
.”

The knights staggered through the castle gates and vanished into mist that swept across the stage. As it faded, Vered was now seen to be a tall, blue-robed Wizard, wearing his own compelling face and long white-blond hair. Around him in a stone chamber, an incomparable display of skilled and powerful magic coalesced the score of exhausted knights and a gathering of their leaders, one of each: Goblin and Fae, Elf and Giant, Gnome and Piksey and Human. Their voices rang out, first one side of the stage and
then the other, startling in their speed and volume.

“They are wounded unto death but do not die!”

“Killing even one is the work of half a day!”

“Such spells and strengths as each of our kinds possess and use against them—”

“—they pause for only moments and then attack again!”

“They hang from our swords and laugh—” “—unless their heads be lopped from their necks and even then they laugh with their last breath—I can hear their laughter even now—”

The Wizard held up a hand and all was silence. “The very first battle taught us their only weakness. How many battles have we fought since then, against warriors of speed and strength and skill and shrewdness, who kill ten of ours for every one of theirs whose head we claim? I tell you that we fight as cripples. Unless we fight as one, we all will die. Our separate powers must be as one power, our individual gifts one gift.”

Mutterings there were, and gestures of dismissal. The Wizard strode back and forth before them, the representatives of each race.

“I will hear neither argument nor opposition. We must forget petty jealousies. We must set aside the instinct to hoard to ourselves what we can do and what we know. We must become one strength. We must do away with contention amongst us, and give of ourselves without stinting or withholding. Gnome and Elf, Wizard and Goblin, Piksey and Giant and Fae, we must become as one to defeat our common enemy. Or all is lost.”

Slowly, reluctantly, between each elder’s cupped hands appeared a glow of light: Goblin green, Wizard blue, Elfen yellow-gold. Hovering between the gnarled palms of the Giant was reddish-brown fire. The Piksey’s fingertips sparked dancing blue and green. The Gnome held a red-orange gout of flame. The long, elegant hands of the Fae grasped a sphere of blazing silver. Of them
all, only the Human held no fire. The audience murmured softly.

“Strength beyond the normal strength,” the Wizard said. “Flashing quickness of sword and limb. Hearing that hears the flicker of an eyelash. Cunning to discern not just an enemy’s next move but the moves three moves beyond it. Might and speed, sight and feeling, what was given to each of us must be shared by all.”

The distinct glowing fires rose and met in midair and combined into a huge white sphere of flame. This spread, paler and more transparent by the moment, moving with quick ragged flashes of lightning over all the knights and flowing back through the castle walls—and out over the theater. And the confidence that came of strength and speed and craft and magic touched every man there.

Shadows reclaimed the stage, leaving only Vered as the tall, blue-robed Wizard. He paced a few steps in one direction and then the other, irresolute, fretful. Another figure moved into the light: Rauel, clad in a plain green cloak and carrying a knight’s sword. He wore his own boyishly handsome face, big brown eyes worried as he gazed at the Wizard.

“That which troubles you, my old friend, also troubles me,” he said. “How long have we known each other? How well do I know you, and you me? For all that you chose the Wizardly path and I the training of a Knight, still we are known, one to the other, even after all these years. So tell me, my old friend, tell me your thoughts and fears. Share them with me.”

“With you and no one else,” the Wizard admitted. “We have given you, our knights, all that we can give. Yet I fear it is not enough. I
know
it is not enough.”

The Knight strode forward and clasped the Wizard’s arm. “What must we do?” he asked quietly.

“It is a thing I must do alone. Wait for me here, my friend. I swear to you I will come back unharmed. But I must know. I must be certain sure.”

And with that he flung off his blue cloak and reversed it, and it became a cloak of shimmering black all shot with rainbows, and he vanished.

The Knight was the one who paced now: up and down, boot heels clicking on stone. He rubbed at a spot on his breastplate, trying to polish it back to silvery gleam. He raked both hands through his sweat-damp hair. At length he spoke. “I
do
wish he wouldn’t do that,” he muttered to no one. “Why, I recall once, when we were children, his parents spent a whole day looking for him. Couldn’t find him, of course. Invisible! First spell he ever perfected, and still the one he’s best at. He’s never seen unless he wishes to be seen. And he never
would
lend me that cloak, not even when we were older and there were so many interesting things to see in the neighbors’ bedroom windows!”

There was humor in his voice, and threading through the audience, but it was the sort of humor provoked by nerves and fear, and those things touched the audience as well. Cade knew what Vered was doing: taking up a bit of time, not much but just enough to indicate time had passed, and using the droll little speech to ease the tension a trifle. But only a trifle.

The Wizard reappeared, flinging off his cloak, shaking. The Knight ran to his side, steadying him.

“What is it? What did you see?”

“I saw—oh gentle Gods and blessed Angels, I saw—”

The Knight released him, went to a table, plucked up a goblet, and gave it to his friend. The wine was too sweet, gaggingly sweet.

“I saw such things as made me certain,” said the Wizard, recovering himself somewhat. “I saw the skulls of our dead that had been made into cups from which these creatures drank. The braided hair of our warriors hung from the golden handles affixed to stark white bone and—and I recognized the bright red hair of your brother, whom we lost three battles ago.” His head raised slowly, and he grasped his friend’s arm. “What they drank—it
was not wine. It was blood. And it is blood from which they receive their strength.”

The horror of it atop the cloying sweetness of the wine was nearly overwhelming. All through the theater men made soft retching noises, or coughed, or covered their mouths with trembling hands.

“Go to your chambers, my friend,” said the Knight, guiding the Wizard to a doorway. “Close your eyes. Rest. Think no more upon it. Close your eyes and your mind to it for now, and rest.”

Shadows of sleep swirled gently around the Wizard and he faded from view once more. The Knight turned, and went to stand beside the discarded cloak, a puddle of black rainbows. Softly he murmured, “My only brother… his wife, his sons and his daughters… this I cannot endure.”

And so he gathered up the cloak, swirled it around himself, and new shadows swallowed him.

Instantly the Wizard became visible again, standing at a castle window on the far left, anxiety and anger gushing from him in almost visible waves. Just as he came into view, so did the Knight, on the opposite side of the stage, wrapped in the black glistening cloak, kneeling before a campfire, a cup made from a skull cradled between his hands. From the golden handles swung two plaits of fine red hair.

Gasps and outcries swept the audience as the Knight upended the cup over his own mouth and a few shining crimson drops of blood trickled onto his lips.

Then the Wizard stood alone again. He whirled round from the window as the Knight came reeling, stumbling into the castle chamber, the shimmering cloak dragging from one hand.

“What have you done?” the Wizard rasped. “By all the Old Gods—
what have you done
?”

“You said—you said that their strength comes from this—”

“From blood—so you have made yourself as strong as they
by drinking as they do of blood—” He took a step forward as if to grab the Knight by the shoulders, then flinched back. “Do you know what you have become?”

“If it saves our lands, our homes, our families, I care not what I have become.” Straightening, he faced the Wizard defiantly. “I can feel the power in my bones and sinews. It is beyond what was given before. I can hear the falling of a feather from a preening bird in the dovecote high in the castle tower.” His expression crumpled slightly. “But it takes no special magic to see the pain in your eyes. You know what I have become: a creature like them. And you know that I cannot stand alone against them. There must be others of our Knights willing to do what I have done.”