The Master of Heathcrest Hall (30 page)

Riethe extended a hand down to Merrick and then to Eldyn, who gladly accepted it. Once standing, he went to the curtain and parted it a fraction to peer out. Mouse was right; the soldiers were leaving. Only a handful remained, snoring in their seats.

“It looks like there’s a few drunks we’ll have to clear out, but that’s all.”

Riethe nodded. “We’ll toss them out in the gutter to sleep it off. And then I’ll be ready to sleep myself.”

Mouse gaped at him. “But you always want to go to tavern after a performance.”

“Not tonight,” Riethe said. “And thank God we’re dark tomorrow. I don’t think I can do this again any time soon.” He held out
his hands before him. The fingers of one were still a bit crooked from being broken last year, and both were visibly shaking.

“Well, you’ve earned your rest,” Hugoth said, clapping the big young illusionist on the shoulder. “And Eldyn and Merrick as well. To conjure such a finely detailed phantasm for so long—now that’s a feat.”

Eldyn looked at Hugoth. The wound on his cheek was covered with a dark crust, but was still oozing.

“You were amazing, too,” Eldyn said, and meant it. “And so was Mouse. I don’t know how you found the wherewithal to conjure the golden soldiers right after the satyrs.” He frowned as a thought occurred to him. “But who conjured the third?”

He, Merrick, and Riethe had been fashioning the maidens, and helped with the satyrs during the battle with the golden warriors. But other than Hugoth and Mouse, there was not another illusionist at the Theater of the Moon who could craft illusions of such complicated, humanistic figures. That was, no one except …

Eldyn turned to stare at the right wing of the stage. He was not the only one who had come to that conclusion, for the others did the same. Then as one they rushed to the shadows at the side of the stage. Merrick conjured a dim, wavering light, and Eldyn felt his heart stutter in his chest.

Master Tallyroth lay upon the floor, his cane fallen several feet from him. The master illusionist’s mouth was open as he panted for shallow breaths, but his eyes were half shut. His thin fingers tapped out a faint, chaotic rhythm against the wooden planks of the stage.

“No,” Mouse said, the words going hoarse. “He didn’t … but he’s not supposed to …”

He fell silent as Madame Richelour looked up at them. She knelt on the floor beside Master Tallyroth, the feathers sewn into her shoulders quivering as they betrayed her quiet sobs.

“Riethe,” she said, tears making tracks through the thick coating of powder on her cheeks, “help me carry him upstairs.”

E
LDYN WOKE to hot sun on his face.

Groggily he sat up in his bed, pushing dark, damp coils of hair from his face. He had no idea how long he had been sleeping. Last night, it had taken him and the other illusionists hours to clean up the theater. Normally they would have gone to the Red Jester to drink and laugh after a performance. But by the time they finished hauling out the drunk soldiers, setting all the seats aright, sweeping up the broken bottles, and throwing sawdust in the corners where men had relieved themselves, the sky was growing light with a fast-coming dawn.

They had already been weary from their efforts on the stage. Now utterly exhausted, going to a tavern had been the last thing on their minds. Eldyn had stumbled up the steps to his room and flopped into bed. So weary had he been that he had forgotten to draw the shutters. Now the hot, white light of day spilled through, and the room was stifling.

Unsteadily, he got up from the bed, groaning as he did. His head ached as if from the worst hangover, though he hadn’t drunk a drop last night. It was the aftereffects of conjuring so many illusions, he knew, and drawing upon his own light. It had left him hollow and shaky.

Well, coffee was cure for a hangover, so he could hope it would help this condition as well. He went to the window, squinting against the glare. Outside, the sun was high in the sky. The day was nearly half over; though whether the morning had been long or short was impossible to say. He drew the shutters, then put on his boots. There was no need to bother with anything else, for he had not taken his clothes off last night.

Downstairs, the rooms behind the theater were quiet. He went to the large room where they gathered before performances and to take meals, but there was no sign of the woman whom they hired to cook and bring in food for them. There were dirty dishes upon the table, though, and several coffeepots, but they were all empty. So he was one of the last to rise, then.

The others must be back abed, or out and about in the city, or
perhaps already at the Red Jester by now. Eldyn almost considered going there to see if that was in fact the case, only it was not rum he needed, but coffee. And it looked like he would have to find it himself.

He headed to the rear entrance of the theater. As he passed the foot of the stairs, he thought about going up to the second floor, to Master Tallyroth’s room, to see how he was doing.

Last night, just as they were finishing up their work to restore the theater to order, Merrick had come down to tell them how Master Tallyroth was faring. The good news was that Madame Richelour had gotten him to drink an elixir—one of her own fashioning, made with wine and honey and herbs. This had eased his pain and spasms, and he was sleeping now.

“And the bad news?” Riethe had said, setting down a bucket of sawdust and wiping his hands against his trousers.

Merrick’s face was even longer than usual. “Crafting the phantasms has aggravated his mordoth. It appears to have undone all the progress he’s made since he stopped working illusions, and he is more ill than ever.”

This was bad news indeed, though not entirely unexpected.

“What now?” Riethe had asked, his face as gray as the sawdust in the bucket.

They all adored Tallyroth, but the big illusionist perhaps more than any of them. No one received more scolding from the master illusionist—or more fatherly affection—than Riethe, and no one did more for him in return. Riethe was always at some task or running some errand for the master. It would have been him up in Tallyroth’s room at his bedside, except they all knew Merrick was the better choice, for he had spent three years apprenticing to a physician before becoming an illusionist.

“Won’t he just get better again, if he stops conjuring phantasms like before?” Riethe said.

Merrick did not answer, but he didn’t need to. Eldyn knew it wasn’t that simple. Refraining from creating illusions had kept Tallyroth’s mordoth from worsening, but it hadn’t made it any better, either. After all, a man only had so much light in him. And given
his weakened condition, there was only one way Tallyroth could have conjured the illusions that he had tonight—by drawing on his own inner light.

Which meant he now had less light than ever to sustain the force of his own life. It had been terribly foolish. And terribly brave.
Above all else, the show
—that was the motto of the Siltheri.

“I’m going to the Theater of the Doves,” Merrick said at last. “The master illusionist there is an old friend of Tallyroth’s, and I’ve heard he knows more about the mordoth than anyone on Durrow Street. He may have some advice about what we need to do.”

Riethe laid one of his big hands on Merrick’s thin, stooped shoulder. “Thank you.”

Merrick gave a wordless nod, then was gone into the night. After that they finished their work in the theater, then went up to bed.

Now, Eldyn put his foot on the first step, thinking to go up to Master Tallyroth’s room. Only that could serve no purpose other than to disturb him, and that was the last thing Eldyn wanted to do. Last night, Merrick had said Tallyroth needed sleep more than anything else. Besides, if there had been any great change in his condition, one of the others would have woken him. It was better to let him rest, and then talk to Merrick later.

Eldyn turned from the steps and headed out the back door of the theater into the alley beyond. It was time to find some coffee before his headache grew any worse.

There were several coffeehouses along Durrow Street, but Eldyn didn’t patronize any of them. They were no more disreputable than the taverns on the street, but while strong rum might taste fine coming from a chipped or dirty cup, the same wasn’t true for weak coffee. So despite the ache in his head, he walked some distance to a coffeehouse on King’s Street. It was a small establishment and tended to be quiet—something which suited both his mood and his head.

He sat near the window, sipping from a hot cup. He had drunk no more than a quarter of it, though, when a flash of blue passed just on the other side of the window.

It was a soldier running along King’s Street, his hand on the hilt
of the saber that was belted alongside a pistol at his hip. Two more soldiers followed after him a second later, moving as swiftly as the first, the red plumes on their helmets whipping as they went.

Surprised, Eldyn stared out the window. Where were the soldiers going in such a hurry? He didn’t know. But given the way they were running, and the hard looks on their faces, there must be some commotion there. Which meant maybe there was some scene worth making an impression of. He hadn’t sold anything to the publisher of
The Swift Arrow
since the impression of the princess, and he could do with some coin if he wanted to buy more engraving plates and impression rosin.

Eldyn took one last swig of his coffee, then regretfully set the cup down. Well, if he sold another impression, he could afford many more cups. He tossed a coin on the table, then dashed out the door of the coffeehouse. Looking down the street, he glimpsed three flecks of red just a moment before they vanished around a corner.

If he didn’t hurry, he was going to lose them. Eldyn broke into a run himself, weaving among horses, carts, and startled people who glared and shook their fists at him as he careened past, having just recovered from the abrupt passage of the soldiers.

He was panting for breath by the time he reached the intersection where the soldiers had turned. While performing at the theater was physically demanding, it did not exactly provide the sort of vigorous exercise that running for long periods required, and he was still weary from last night’s exertions. All the same, he did not let up his pace as he turned the corner and ran down the broad avenue.

He had lost sight of the soldiers, but he quickly knew he was still going in the right direction when a big bay gelding nearly ran him down from behind. The rider wore a blue coat marked with the gold stripes of an officer, and he spurred the horse in a gallop down the street.

Eldyn ran after the horse. Now a low, roaring sound emanated from up ahead. It sounded almost like rushing water, though there was a rhythm to it he almost but didn’t quite recognize. The street
had suddenly become deserted, so that he no longer had to dodge and weave among carriages and passersby. All the same, he was forced to slow to a walk, for his lungs were afire and his side ached.

It was only then that he realized where he was. So intent had he been on following the soldiers that he hadn’t looked up to see where it was they were leading him. Now he did. This was University Street, and in the distance rose the spires that surmounted the various colleges.

A dread welled up in Eldyn. He suddenly thought he knew where the soldiers were going. Despite the burning in his lungs, he lowered his head and broke back into a run. The street bent to the left, then ended on the edge of the open expanse of Covenant Cross.

Only the cobbled square was anything but open. Wooden crates, barrels, and loose timbers had been heaped into makeshift barricades. Some of them were on fire, and the air was hazed with the resulting smoke. The tolling of bells rang out, a counterpoint to the clatter of hooves and the rhythmic, roaring noise, which Eldyn now realized was chanting.

Feeling suddenly exposed, Eldyn shrank against the wall of a bookshop and, hardly thinking about it, brought in close what shadows could be found along the edges of the street. From that vantage, he could see a great portion of Covenant Cross.

There were dozens of young men in the center of the square—no, he amended, hundreds of them—hurling rocks and pieces of wood toward the soldiers and waving flags that bore the crests of various colleges. There were the seven rings of Gauldren’s College, the crossed quills of Highhall, the crook and miter of Bishop’s College, and even the gold chalice of Eldyn’s old college, St. Berndyn’s. As the flags waved to and fro, the young men shouted a slogan over and over, though Eldyn could not make out what it was for the way it echoed and reechoed about the cross.

The soldiers were gathered to Eldyn’s right, on the east end of the square, out of range of anything the students might throw. There were at least thirty of them, and a good number more on
horse, but they were still vastly outnumbered. What’s more, the various barricades and obstacles prevented them from advancing in any sort of formation which might have afforded them some protection. Instead, to progress toward the center of the square, they would have to break up into smaller groups to pass around the heaps of wood and refuse.