Part 41 (1/2)

Eldyn shook his head, then hurried down the street. There were many theaters that offered sights such as those at the Theater of Emeralds, and they did not lack for patrons. However, that was not the sort of performance Eldyn sought. It was the fantasias, the idylls, and the reenactments of myths of ancient Tharos that entranced him. As the illusionists worked their craft, the stage became like a door to another world. For a little while at least, Eldyn could be somewhere far away from Invarel.

”Don't wish to be seen, do we?”

Eldyn turned around, startled. He had reached the last theater on that side of the street: a narrow edifice, rather plain and dilapidated compared to the others, being without gilt trim or lacquered doors. The columns along its facade listed a bit, and the only ornamentation was a sign above the doorway, a silver circle with black lettering. It read: Theater of the Moon.

”See?” the voice said again. ”You're not the only one who can do that trick.”

Eldyn looked around but saw no one. ”Who's there?” he said.

Laughter sounded next to him. ”So you can be fooled by your own trick.” The air rippled like a dark cloth, and the figure of a man Eldyn's age, or a bit younger, appeared as if stepping from behind a curtain. His features were finely wrought and pale, and his gold hair was tied back with a red ribbon, but the rest of him was clad in black.

”Now it's your turn to show yourself.”

Eldyn belatedly realized that, as he fled from the Theater of Emeralds, he had gathered the shadows around himself. With a thought, he let them fall away.

The young man's smile was a white crescent in the gloom. ”There you are. You shouldn't bother with shadows, you know. They won't hide you from our eyes. Is this your first time to Durrow Street? But, no, that can't be it. I believe I've seen you before. Which house do you work for?”

Eldyn shook his head. ”Which house?”

”You must be even newer than me! Which theater do you perform at?”

Now Eldyn frowned. ”I've come to see a performance. I don't work at a theater.”

”No? I would have thought...that is, are you certain we haven't met before?”

”I don't see how.”

The young man gazed at him a moment, then shook his head. ”Well, it doesn't matter. If it's a performance you wish to see, come no further. The Theater of the Moon is the finest on Durrow Street.”

”It doesn't look like much,” Eldyn said, eyeing the slanted columns and the curtain covering the door, which even in the dim light looked shabby.

”It's not how it looks outside but what's within that matters.”

”I haven't even seen you work an illusion. Why don't you show something of your play like at the other theaters?”

”Because I can't. Even the smallest glimpse would spoil the wonder of what you'll see inside. You cannot experience just a shard of it. You must behold it in the fullness of its splendor.”

Now it was Eldyn's turn to laugh, and he crossed his arms. ”How do I even know you're really illusionists? You probably just have a few actors in ratty costumes hanging about on wires and pulleys.” Except the other was an illusionist. How else could he have so easily mimicked Eldyn's talent with shadows?

The young man's expression grew solemn. ”You can't know. That's how illusion works. You can never really know anything; you can only believe.” He made a sweeping gesture toward the door.

Eldyn hesitated. Perhaps it was the other's kindly face. Or perhaps it was that, somehow, he did look familiar. Whatever the reason, Eldyn reached into his pocket, drew out a quarter regal, and counted the coins into the illusionist's hand. Then he stepped past the curtain.

W HEN ELDYN AGAIN stepped past the curtain, this time leaving the theater and heading out onto Durrow Street, he knew he was not the same person who had entered two hours before but someone-something-different. It was as if all he had been before, all he thought he had known, had poured out of him, leaving him an empty vessel ready to be filled with something new. Yet with what? He could not say, only that it had to be something better.

And to think he had nearly left the theater before the performance began! At first, upon taking a seat in the balcony, he had thought his fears had proven true. The chairs were rickety, the walls cracked and flaking, the cloth draped across the proscenium half-patched. A scant collection of people made up the audience, slumping in their chairs, loudly consuming nuts or tipping back bottles. Thinking the joke was on him-that the real illusion here was the way his money had been made to vanish-Eldyn had started to rise from his chair.

At that moment the lights went out. For a minute, the darkness was unbroken. It was so black he could not see his hand move before his face. He began to grow alarmed. Was some harm going to come to those fools who had been convinced to enter? Were they to be robbed of whatever funds they had left? Then, just as he was about to get up and try to feel his way toward the door, a face appeared in the darkness.

The face was silver, set inside a silver circle that hovered in the blackness, eyes shut. Whether it was the face of a man or woman, he could not say. Then, just when he realized what the face must represent (for this was the Theater of the Moon), the eyes opened, and the face began to sing.

Eldyn sank back into his chair.

When the song was finished, the circle of silver light expanded, revealing the moon as a beautiful, silver-clad youth who charmed all he encountered. Only then he made the mistake of letting his shadow fall upon the figure of a proud and jealous king who, clad in a coat of gold flame, could only be the sun. The king condemned the silvery youth to death for this transgression. However, the youth fled, while forces of the king pursued him across a fantastical landscape, beneath a deep ocean, and finally into the starry heavens themselves.

From time to time, it occurred to Eldyn that the illusions were not so elaborate as what he had seen at the other theaters; they were simple, even austere. The ocean was conjured by nothing more than flickering blue light; the stars were but a flurry of white sparks. However, it was the story itself that enchanted Eldyn. With the rest of the audience, he cheered the youth each time he escaped his pursuers, and he hissed and booed each time the king strutted onstage.

Despite all his efforts, the king could never capture the silver youth. At last their journey came full circle, back to where it began, and once again the youth's shadow fell upon the king, dimming his glory. Except this time-almost willingly, it seemed to Eldyn-the youth came too close to the flames, and in a flash of light and puff of smoke he was consumed.

The audience gasped and fell silent. The king threw his head back and laughed, his red hair crackling and throwing off sparks. But his laughter ceased as his own fiery aura began to dwindle and fade, then with one last sputter went out. He fell to the stage in a heap of cinders, and the theater went black. For a long, lightless minute, all was silent.

Then, in the darkness, a silver face appeared and began to sing.

Now, as Eldyn walked through the darkened city, he could not stop thinking of the play. He thought maybe he understood. The king and the youth were like the sun and moon-no, they were the sun and moon. Did not the moon sometimes move before the sun, casting its shadow on it as the youth had done to the king? The king had pursued the youth, but he had never been able to catch him, just as the sun could never pa.s.s in front of the moon in the sky. All the same, when the sun shone forth, the moon vanished under the force of its light.

Yet when darkness fell and the month turned, as it always must, the moon would s.h.i.+ne forth anew.

Yes, Eldyn understood what had happened onstage, but he didn't understand what it meant or why it made him feel as he did-as if he himself had been running all his life but had now come full circle and was ready to begin again. Yet begin what? He glanced up at the sky, seeking illumination, but there was no moon that night.

He walked onward through the Old City, and as he did the feeling of exhilaration, of possibility, receded. It seemed the farther he got from Durrow Street, the harder it was to remember just what had happened onstage-how the actors had looked or what visions they had conjured. Soon all he could picture were the rickety chairs, the moldy curtain, the unshaven men drinking gin in the balcony.

An illusion-that's all it had been. There was no truth to any of it. These narrow, grimy streets he walked through-these were real. This was all that mattered.

It was late. He meant to go directly home, but when he saw a familiar sign down a street, a sudden thirst came over him. His boots took him that way, and he pa.s.sed through the door of the Sword and Leaf.

As he entered the tavern, it seemed a bit of the night tried to follow after him, as if not wanting to let him out of its clutches. Eldyn gave the door a hard push, shutting out the dark. He sat at a table, ordered punch, and did not look up until his first cup was drained.

He had a faint hope that he would see Rafferdy grinning and waving at him from across the tavern, wanting someone to buy him a drink, but the place was mostly empty. The few other patrons did not talk or laugh and drank alone.

Eldyn had seen Rafferdy little these last months. Rafferdy's work for his father kept him busy and often took him away from the city. Even when he was free, his appet.i.te for drink and amus.e.m.e.nt seemed diminished.

It was just as well. Eldyn's position at the trading house left him little time or money for pleasure. Nor had he told Rafferdy that he was working as a clerk; the last time they met, he had said only that he was still working on his business, and as usual Rafferdy had not pressed for details.

However, that night as they had left the tavern, Rafferdy had given him a fond clap on the back. ”Do take care of yourself, Garritt,” he had said. ”I believe you've been working too hard on your business. You're fading away. At this rate you'll be a phantasm the next time we meet. Then the sun will rise, and you'll be gone.”

It had been a joke, but now Eldyn thought of the illusion play and how the silver youth had vanished in a puff of smoke. He put another lump of sugar in his cup and filled it to the brim.

I will write a note to Rafferdy tomorrow, he told himself as he drank. Only he wouldn't. When would he have the time? He would need to work a second s.h.i.+ft again to make up the cost of this punch he was now drinking. The thought occurred to him that he would go to Mrs. Haddon's on his next free day to see his old university friends. Only he wouldn't do that either. Two months ago he had read in The Swift Arrow how an agent of the Black Dog had appeared at Mrs. Haddon's coffeehouse. Nor was it just any of Lord Valhaine's spies, but the White Lady herself.

Lady Shayde had not spoken to anyone; she had merely sat at a table while she slowly drank a coffee. All the same, the effect could not have been more chilling if she had rushed in with a band of guards and arrested ten men for treason. Who would go to Mrs. Haddon's and speak criticisms of the king or a.s.sembly now?

Certainly not Eldyn-not after what he had done for Westen. Eldyn had never seen the White Lady, and he hoped to G.o.d he never did. It was said her face was the color of snow, and that one look from her and all your deepest secrets would spill out of you like water from a cracked pot. He did not dare go to Mrs. Haddon's, and he could only hope that Jaimsley, Talinger, and Warrett were keeping away as well.

Eldyn drained his punch and called for more.

T WO HOURS LATER, Eldyn staggered out the door of the Sword and Leaf and onto the street. He had consumed a second round of punch, and a third, but there had been something wrong with the stuff. It had not dulled his mind, allowing him to forget the dismal apartment he shared with his sister, or his position at the trading company, or his poverty. Instead, each drink had only brought these things into clearer focus, making them larger, until he could think of nothing else. It was only the hopes, the wishes and ideas of better things to come, that the drink caused to fade, until his brain was not capable of envisioning a single good thing-not even something so small as a pretty flower in the hand or a ray of warm sun on the face.

In this frame of mind, he stumbled down the street. As he started off, it again seemed to him that a patch of darkness peeled away from the inn and followed after. However, he could not muster the will to worry. He lurched along, and so deep was he under the effects of the punch that he did not bother to wrap the shadows around himself as he went.

It was his intention to go home, to bang on the door and tell Sas.h.i.+e to let him in, for he was in no state to fit a key into a lock. However, when he pa.s.sed the iron gates of Duskfellow's, a wild desire came upon him to enter the graveyard. He pulled at the bars, but the gate was locked. However, the stones of the walls were rough and thick with vines, and even in his current condition it was little problem to climb up and over the wall.