He fell back laughing and his legs stretched out so that his feet, too small for his body, wiggled in the air-
“It sounds as if he has to use the outhouse!”
Feltheryn held back his own laugh. Taken out of context, the little comic was right.
“Come, Rounsnouf,” Feltheryn said, offering his hand and helping the little man up. “I think that we had best to bed, else wake the house.”
“Let me see . . .” the comic said as he gained his feet and shook himself. “The boy walked thus . . .”
And without any help he mounted the stairs, his body gliding sleekly in imitation of the shadow-spawned grace of one of the town’s most notable thieves.
Feltheryn sat down and considered: Rounsnouf had twice before become so engrossed in his studies that he had completely missed performances. He could not be allowed to do so again, at least not this early in the game. One could not bind him to the theater, nor yet threaten him. He only sulked and gave a bad reading if you did that.
What then?
Feltheryn looked in the purse of gold that Molin had given him and contemplated the best and most necessary uses the money could be put to. Of these, assuring the performance actually occurred was certainly one of the best, and so he decided upon visiting the Vulgar Unicorn himself.
But early the next morning he entertained a visitor who delayed his visit, a visitor who, of all those denizens of the empire he had entertained, was surely the most entertaining.
He awoke with the feeling that the room was burning. He started to cry out where he lay but immediately stopped. He knew too well that people died from leaping up and breathing in the burning air that accumulated at the top of the room, sometimes not more than a hand’s breadth above the sleeping face. He threw one hand out to anchor Glisselrand where she lay next to him, then thrust the other up to see at what level death hovered.
Two surprises greeted his hands. The first was that Glisselrand was not there. The bed was empty but for him. The second was that the air above him was not burning, only warm.
He focused his eyes more clearly, remembering as he always did in the morning that his eyes were not what they once were.
He was not in his room after all, not in his own comfortable bed. He was lying, rather, on a chaise lounge of red-brown satin with a damask coverlet thrown over him. He was still in his long woolen nightshirt, and the lounge was large enough to accommodate two, but that was the only resemblance to the situation in which he had fallen asleep.
He was in a low chamber with a black and white checked marble floor. Thick small carpets were scattered here and there and a huge fireplace blazed brightly not far away, the source of the heat that had made him think of fire. The walls of the room were paneled below the wainscoting with dark wood, but above they were covered with damascene silk of a dusky rose color. There were framed pictures on the walls, but Feltheryn found he could not look at them directly and see anything. They simply blurred.
A blind servant stood next to the hearth, and across from the lounge on which he lay was an ornate chair, a throne really, in which sat someone heavily robed and hooded, a someone whose eyes could be seen glowing redly out of the darkness of the hood.
“Master Feltheryn,” a voice said amiably from under the hood. It was a young voice, but he could not tell (and that bothered him!) whether the voice belonged to a man or woman. “You are not really here. I trust you realize that?”
Feltheryn had not, but he nodded in assent since he seemed to be expected to not only realize it but understand it.
“Very good,” the voice said. “I thought an actor would understand such an illusion. Such a way of communicating. I am Enas Yorl, a resident of this town who does not get out much for reasons which I may later choose to explain. I have chosen to come to you in this manner to request your help in alleviating my boredom at being so cooped up within my house.”
Now this Feltheryn understood. The way the man shadowed his countenance with his hood, the discretion he showed in conducting the interview, were symptomatic of many who suffered some deformity.
“You wish me to make some special arrangement at the theater,” Feltheryn said. “Something in the nature of a draped box, where you may see without being seen; is that it?”
“Do you then know of me so quickly?” Enas Yorl asked, and his voice began to change, not as to tone but as to timbre. This fascinated Feltheryn greatly, for it did not seem to be a deliberate alteration such as he, himself, would have made.
“No, good sir, only of others who have asked a similar boon. The effects of a pox upon a beautiful lady, the loss of looks that comes from war … It is not such an unusual request. In Ranke we reserved a box with curtains specifically for such a need. I think perhaps we might make one here as well, though I had not expected its requirement so soon.”
A laugh came from the hood, but even as it bubbled forth the laughing changed, and when next Enas Yorl spoke it was with a rough and guttural tone like that of an experienced soldier. Feltheryn instantly envied the man his remarkable ability!
“You do not know of me, that much is plain! And I think that I shall leave it so, for you have made me laugh by your innocence. Soon enough shall you leam. But then again, your assessment of my situation is not incorrect. Return to your rest, Feltheryn Thespian, and consider that you have the best of the bargains a man can make: for you change form at will, and can take off the masks you assume. Now sleep!”
Feltheryn wanted desperately to pursue the conversation and stay in the presence of Enas Yorl, for at that moment he observed that his interviewer was not only seeming to change his form somewhat under the robes, but to change his mass as well; and that was a trick he would dearly love to leam. Playing Roget the Hunchback was one of the greatest accomplishments of the stage, not because of the powerful emotion of the role but because of the difficulty of acting while strapped into the elaborate harness that simulated the deformity. He was about to plead his case for study with Enas Yorl when darkness intervened and he was awaking in his own bed, his arm thrown protectively over his lady and the morning sun pouring through the casement.
He moved his hand gently back, so as not to disturb her beauty rest, then climbed out of bed and dressed quietly.
He was in the small kitchen heating water for tisane when he heard the door of the theater open and close. That would be Lalo the Limner, come to paint the next set of flats and the periactois for the auto-da-fe in Act Three-
There was certainly nothing more impressive in all the world than the illusion of fire on stage, and nothing harder to accomplish- Feltheryn had chosen this time to bring about the miracle through the use of periactois -three-sided columns with different paintings on each side-which could be revolved. There would also be ragged strips of cloth dyed like flames which Lempchin could waggle furiously by means of strings descending from the flies. The strings would not be visible, and in the flickering light of the onstage torches the effect would be terrifying.
The vision so captured Feltheryn’s early morning imagination that he quite forgot the kettle of boiling water and went to get his script and notebook, adding several details which he thought would improve the stage picture. He barely noticed when Glisselrand put the pot of tisane and a clean cup at his elbow, and with it a plate of freshly scrambled eggs, cheese, sliced bread from the previous day, and a pot of rare red jelly made from the legendary oranges of Enlibar; of which they had a dozen left in trade for seating when (hey had played The Steel Skeleton, a play which many assumed to have been written by an Enlibrite wizard, and which the Enlibrites would travel fantastic distances to see.
He was roused from his deep reverie and study of the text when an unfamiliar voice echoed in the theater, followed by Glisselrand’s most opulent tones.
“I only came to bring Lalo his midday meal,” a woman’s voice said. “But I confess I did hope to see if it was you. It’s been many years, but how could I forget? While Lalo was working on the painting that won my hand there was nothing for me to do, so I came to see the play. I had seen you do a piece before the tent, so I knew it would be good.”