Window Wall (18 page)

The play had been the easy part. It was the notations for performing it that had proved problematic. Each of the three gliskers had his own little code by now, incomprehensible to anyone else. None of them had studied with the same master, so there was no shared foundation to build on. At length they decided to work the way they always worked, each using his own code, marking the scripts in that code with warnings about which of them would take over at various points in the play.

Cade watched with a smile twitching his lips as Baltryn Knolltread made a respectful bow to his elders in the wings and sidled his way through a break in the curtains. A few moments later his voice rang out to announce the players and the play—and surely it wasn’t just Cade’s imagination that supplied the buried laughter in his voice.

“Your Majesty! Your Royal Highnesses! Your Grace! My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen! The Master of the King’s Revelries is pleased to welcome the Shadowshapers—
and
Touchstone—
and
the Crystal Sparks—in a special performance of a new play! ‘The Soul-Snuppers’!”

So that’s what we’re calling it
, Cade thought, wondering who had come up with a title. Somehow, in all the discussions and deliberations, wrangles and analyses, not one of them had thought to name the thing. He thought he detected Vered’s sardonic sense of humor;
snup
came from
snap up
, as in grabbing something valuable at a bargain price.

Baltryn had included
Ladies
in his greeting, so there were more women here than just Miriuzca, who could be counted on to attend any performance she possibly could. Only one
Your Majesty
meant the Queen was not in attendance. Queen Roshien had dutifully sat through several plays at the last Trials and a few Court performances since, but, it was said, had decided that although theater was charming enough, she wasn’t particularly interested. Everyone knew, however, that she had the intellectual prowess of a teakettle and didn’t like theater, because she didn’t understand it.

The plural
Highnesses
meant that both Ashgar and Miriuzca were here. Iamina, of course, would not demean herself by coming to a play. And, because there were two Your Graces in Albeyn and only one had been mentioned, neither would the Archduchess Panshilara be present. The newfound piety of Princess and Archduchess demanded renunciation of theater and other crude amusements. And, if the stories were true, abandonment of personal ornamentation as well; Iamina’s famous yellow jewel had been given to the new little Princess Levenie as a Namingday present, and Panshilara’s bulky and vulgar wedding ring had gone into her husband’s coffers—possibly against the day when their daughter, Belsethine, would be old enough to wear it, possibly for the future bride of their son, Boltris. It remained that neither woman wore much by way of jewelry these days, which, in its way, was as ostentatious as the gaudiest finery.

Cade drummed his fingers on his lectern, caught himself at it, stopped, and wondered why the curtains stayed shut. Nervous enough about this performance already, the tregetours and gliskers, masquers and fettlers, all looked at each other with varying degrees of anxiety, bewilderment, and annoyance. Then Cade heard a gruff voice rise disapprovingly.

“What’s it called? Never heard of it. And weren’t we given to understand that Hawk’s Claw would perform tonight?”

The King, who had been attending plays for longer than any of these particular players had been alive, was confused. Someone else’s voice came soothingly, but His Majesty was having none of it.

“All three in the same play? Never been done. Crowds the stage, what?” Pause; low-voiced explanation. “Goldbraider, you say?
And
Silversun? Hm. Clever boys, both of ’em. But I don’t care much for surprises in my theater.” Longer pause. Then: “Response to
what
? Oh. I see. Very well. Let’s see what this new thing is.”

Cade was so astounded to hear himself praised in the same breath as Vered Goldbraider that he almost missed the opening swirl of shadows. They were of Chat’s making; this was, after all, partly a Shadowshapers performance. As for the rest of it … Cade smiled to himself and did his usual work of surveying the audience in support of his fettler. Strange, to sense two other fettlers in the mix, and stranger still to have four masquers onstage while three gliskers used the magic of four tregetours to create Albeyn’s reply to the Continental players.

Vaustas (Lederris Daggering: nondescript, plainly clothed, and fidgety) was a boy of about fifteen, with mixed Wizard, Elf, and Goblin blood, physical traits indicating his ancestry: height, pointed ears, crooked teeth, and so on. The play opened on him alone onstage in a library that looked just like the one used in the magic-less players’ play. It was Mieka’s little joke on them to have Vaustas wander over to the shelves and pluck out a book or three to hold in his hand or set on a table or chair. Lederris’s own glisker, Brennert, was clothing him, but for this portion of the play, Mieka had control of the backdrop while Chat provided the sensations.

“Vaustas!” yelled Vered, unseen behind the illusory library walls, in a woman’s high-pitched tone of demand. “Clean up your clutter, boy, and come downstairs to dinner!”

Lederris called back, “Yes, Mother!” and, surveying the piles of books and papers all over the chairs and table and flowery rug, sighed dismally. He struggled within himself, the emotions clear on his face and in the magic lightly touching the audience. Then Vaustas pointed a finger, and a small pile of books rose from the floor and drifted lazily towards the shelves. Vaustas pointed to another stack of books, but before they rose from the table, he turned away and clenched both fists.

“No. I won’t use magic. I won’t!”

Cade sensed it, but knew the audience did not: the skilled handoff of the background to Chat, while Mieka readied himself. From the window that opened onto pasture and woods came a whirl of silvery smoke, and from it Jeska appeared, wearing his own gorgeous face, gorgeously robed in blood red: Mallecho.

“My, my! You
have
made a bit of a mess, haven’t you? Looks to be the work of an hour at least, and that means your mother will be annoyed and your dinner will be cold. Why
not
use magic on the rest of it, too?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Really? Why not?”

“I don’t like magic!” He hesitated, then burst out, “I
hate
my magic!”

“No need to be so defensive, lad. Magic is a thing that could happen to anyone, you know.”

“It’s deceitful.”

Mallecho snorted. “About as deceitful as having red hair or big feet. It’s part of you, and no denying it.”

“But I could dye my hair,” Vaustas said sulkily.

“And lop off your toes to make your feet shorter?”

“I wish I could do that to my magic! It’s wicked, don’t you see? It’s a cheat, and it’s rotten and evil and—and I hate it! I wish I could chop it out or carve it away, and have nothing to do with it ever again!”

“Hm.” Mallecho walked slowly round him, and at last folded his arms across his chest. “Well, then. If you feel that way about it, and if that’s what you truly want … I believe I can oblige. For a price.” He smiled, and it was Jeska’s sweetly captivating smile, nothing sinister about it at all—but with a smidgeon of mischief wafting over the audience from Mieka’s withies and Cayden’s magic.

“Anything! If you can truly rid me of magic, I’ll pay anything!” Feverishly, Vaustas clasped both hands together. “If I have to work the rest of my life mucking out stalls in the castle stables—cleaning the middens—taking care of the cows or—or stuck all alone on a hillside with the sheep!”

“Oh, it’s nothing so dire as that. Truth to be told, it’s really nothing much at all, as most people reckon it, if one takes into account what they do with their lives. One can’t help but wonder what they’re thinking, or if they think at all before they act, but—that’s their own business, I suppose.” Mallecho shrugged. “The price of your magic, my dear Vaustas, is your soul. You may live your life free of your own magic, but at the end of your life, your soul is mine. Agreed?”

“Agreed!”

“You don’t want a minute to think it over?”

“I don’t need even an instant to think it over! My soul will be the purer and my life the more virtuous for being free of magic. Do it now!”

“Don’t you want to clear up the library first? No? Very well. Brace yourself.”

Vaustas struck a pose, arms outstretched, head flung back. Mallecho rolled his eyes and shook his head. He made a coaxing gesture with his left hand, and from Vaustas’s chest, there streamed shimmering rivers of light, the blue of a Wizard and the gold of an Elf and the green of a Goblin. Mallecho caught all in his right hand and stuffed it into a pocket of his robes.

After a moment, Vaustas looked at him, frowning. “Well? Is it done? I didn’t feel anything.”

“Would you like it to have hurt?”

“No—I mean, shouldn’t I have felt
something
?”

“Try some magic,” Mallecho suggested.

Vaustas half turned, saw a pile of books, and made a gesture as if to brush them all back onto the shelves. The books stayed put.

Mallecho, listening to the young man’s joyous laughter, shook his head again and spread his arms wide, as if to say,
Who can possibly understand this idiot?
Then the mother’s voice shouted an impatient demand, and Mallecho said, “I told you that you should have cleaned the place up first!”

Shadows wafted once more across the stage. When they lifted, Vaustas was much older: stooped and white-haired, any age from eighty to a hundred. He wore the same drab clothing, and stood in the same library, with the same books and the same woodland scene beyond the windows. He hobbled about the room, as faded as the flowered rug, mumbling to himself.

Mallecho, young and vigorous, handsome as ever in his dark crimson robes, appeared in a gusting shadow that rippled lightly across the library’s curtains and a few loose papers on a table. Vaustas looked at him, blinking and confused.

“You?” he asked at last. “Have you come for me?”

Strolling idly round the library, Mallecho said, “Don’t tell me you’ve read all these books! The work of a lifetime, eh? Have you had enough? Not that it matters. Yes, I’ve come for your soul.” He trailed a finger along a shelf, and held it up, gray with dust. “Ugh. Nasty. Well, it’s appropriate, anyway. Dust you came from, and dust you shall be. It’s time, so if there’s any note you’d like to leave for your loved ones—no? Not a single loved one? Not a single friend?”

Before Vaustas could reply, two more shadows were spun from thin air, and in the next eyeblink had coalesced into the Lord and the Lady (Vered and Rauel, respectively).

Mallecho looked mildly surprised, but unworried. “And what are
you
doing here?”

“He is one of Ours,” said the Lord, gathering his dark green cloak around him.

“One of Our children,” added the Lady, beautifully garbed in blue and silver. “All living beings are Our children.”

Both of them lowered their hoods to reveal ears extravagantly pointed, more Fae than Elfen. Mallecho bowed mockingly and said, “Come to claim him for yours? I assume you know he sold his soul to me, in order to be rid of his magic.”

The Lady inclined her head gracefully. “Nevertheless, We claim him.”

“That depends on what sort of soul he’s got, doesn’t it? What he’s done with it during his four-and-twenty and four-and-twenty and—” He paused to count up on his fingers. “—and four-and-twenty years. Let’s have a look-see, shall we?”

Vaustas limped forward at the Lord’s gesture. Hunched and frail, he seemed completely uninterested in this contention over his soul.

“I have everything all ready for him,” Mallecho said, and snapped his fingers, and where the window had been, there now was a yawning void that quickly filled with greedy flames. The red glow flared, then settled down like a cat at a mouse hole, complacently waiting for the inevitable kill. “Haven’t decided yet which Hell would be the most appropriate,” Mallecho went on rather apologetically, “but he can roast a bit while I figure it out.”

“We, too, are prepared for him,” said the Lady, and waved a hand. Opposite the fires a scene of sylvan peace replaced a wall of books: tender greens, crystalline blues, warmed by sunlight and cooled with a soft breeze.

“Very pretty, my dear,” approved the Lord. “Now, where were We? Ah, yes. The soul.”

The Lady spread her open hands wide, as if to gather something up. Nothing happened. The Lord attempted the same thing, with the same result.

“What’s wrong?” Mallecho asked in a concerned and sympathetic tone at odds with the smile playing around his lips. “Can’t you find it?”

“Silence!” the Lord commanded. Both he and the Lady tried again, but to no avail.

“But he has to
have
a soul,” the Lady fretted. “Everyone does.”

“He’s not dead yet,” Mallecho remarked, “so it must still be in there. I mean to say, it’s not as if it suddenly vanished or anything. You gave it to him, so if not even You can find it, then—”

The Lord, after a horrible scowl for Mallecho, confronted Vaustas and bellowed, “Come forth!”

All at once a thin, shriveled, colorless lump of
something
appeared in Vaustas’s place. More substantial than a pallid gray fog, less solid than a cloud of spun white sugar, it drifted aimlessly upwards, then downwards, from side to side, and at last settled a few feet from the library floor.

“That’s
it
?” Mallecho asked, staring. “Scarcely worth contending over!”

“Pitiful,” muttered the Lord. More briskly, moving around the wan, pathetic lump of a soul, he said, “You know what’s happened, don’t you?”

“Enlighten me,” Mallecho invited.

“It was all your fault,” the Lady admonished. “You were the one who took away his magic.”

“But he asked me to! Said it was evil and unclean, and wanted nothing to do with it!”

“Without it,” said the Lord, “he could not become what he was meant to become. His soul remained a mere nursling. It never grew up. It never grew at all.”