Heroes And Fools

Scene 5. A Stage, in Xak Faoleen

The stage was nothing but boards on sawhorses, with stairs at either side and a second level to stand in for hills and balcony scenes. The theater was row on row of planks on upright logs. The backdrop was painted cloth-beautifully painted by Kela, a neighborhood scene, but only cloth and paint nonetheless. The few pieces of scenery-suitably minimalist-were some upright crenellated boards for a castle, three torches in stands for a hallway by night, and two standing branches for a wood.

The whole effect, Daev reflected, was much like magic must have been. Already they felt the distance, like an invisible wall, between the world of the actors and that of the audience.

Daev, Samael, and Kela had toiled until nearly dawn, when the kender stumbled up, panting, and announced that he had delivered the last of the books to the prepaid customers. His face showed disappointment that most of the work was done, the special effects all prepared. But after a day and a night of steady work, they had finished and were ready to face a waiting audience.

Frenni stepped onstage. Actually he shuffled, hampered by wearing a bass drum, a light drum, cymbals, a hunting horn, and a hand-cranked bullroarer, which made a noise like a spinning hoopak. Daev had been quick to see the comic possibilities of strapping every available musical instrument to a kender and watching him try to play them all at the same time.

After Frenni performed the overture, to great applause, the rest of the cast marched on and bowed.

Daev kept his expression but frowned inwardly. Something was off about the applause. The rhythms were sporadic, and some audience members were tapping lightly while others were pounding their fists on the benches.

The kender stepped back. Daev moved forward, arms raised, and spoke the prologue.

He made eye contact with the audience and faltered. They looked entirely normal until Daev looked closely at their eyes.

Some of them did look fascinated. Some of them were leering at everything, including the dog and the kender. Some of them looked furiously angry, deeply insulted by a play that hadn’t been performed yet. Some were quite clearly already in love, and one person was in tears for a tragedy that wasn’t on the bill.

Elayna, dead center in the front row, looked gorgeous but also strangely imperious. When approached by admirers-and far too many of the men who had purchased love potions felt free to approach her while the performance was on-she came dangerously close to striking them.

Daev finished the prologue, stepping back before bowing, and led the others backstage. Kela saw his face and said, “Is something wrong?”

“Your book, Samael,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I should have let you proof it a fifth time.”

Frenni clanked up, shrugging out of the band gear noisily. “It’s a best-seller. I only have one copy left,” he said proudly.

Samael opened it and froze. “Wrong font?” Frenni asked worriedly.

“No, no-but. .” Samael thumbed back and forth frantically. “These aren’t my recipes.”

“They are too,” Frenni said self-righteously. “Every word you wrote is in that book.”

Samael loomed over the kender. “Not in the order I wrote it.”

“Mostly in the order.”

Daev looked on interestedly. “What are the differences?”

Samael stabbed at the recipes. “This was supposed to make people attractive. Now it makes them attractive and invincible in battle. This one was to induce melancholy. Now it induces melancholy, anger, and a desire to dance. The sneezing powder. .” He peered at it with genuine horror. “Paladine alone knows what else it does now.”

“They’re basically the same,” Frenni pointed out defensively. “It’s just that I needed to fill in some places when the letters fell out before printing.”

Samael lifted the kender off the ground with one hand. “The letters what?”

“Fell out. Don’t worry. I got them all back in, every letter, before I printed the book.”

Samael dropped Frenni. The three humans looked at each other in silence.

Daev spoke first. “Frenni, what did you add to these recipes?”

“The usual thing,” the kender said indifferently. “A dash of this, a pinch of that.”

Daev turned to Samael. “How long until they recover?”

He shrugged. “Assuming they all only took one dose, just before the play, they’ll peak during act five.”

Daev closed his eyes, contemplating the potential for disaster. “The perfect audience. Well, don’t get too close to the front edge of the stage.”

Frenni said, “Because we’ll fall off?”

“Because not a god from past times or future could guess what’s going to happen if the audience gets its hands on you. They’re all a few dwarves shy of a mine, if you catch my drift.”

Frenni said, hurt, “My best scenes are in act five.”

Samael said, sadly, “My book is a disaster.”

Daev said, “I think maybe we should pack up between scenes.”

Kela looked starry-eyed as she watched Samael tweak the last hair of his false beard into place. “C’mon everybody,” she said. “The show must go on, and all that. They’ll like the play. How could they not, if they have any heart at all?”

Dave said coldly to her, “You’re right. The audience is waiting. So get out there and kiss.” He pushed her and Samael onstage hand in hand, and he wished he had never in his life tried to write about love.

The action of the play went well, as it should have. The father threatened the lovers, the grandfather took their part and fought the father physically, and the lovers met and kissed in spite of obstacles. Tasslehoff, with a pair of absurdly small wings and his spine and wagging tail tricked out with a sawtooth ridge, made a passable rogue dragon. With a helmet to block his vision and a ridiculously short lance under his arm, Daev charged the “dragon” but struck Frenni, knocking the kender’s hat over his eyes and starting a blind sword fight. A sheet of metal and exploding flare powder made an excellent storm.

Daev, the stilts and absurdly long arms making him even taller, got. laughs just by standing next to the kender in long beard and floppy clothes.

The audience interrupted occasionally, calling out, “Kiss her more!”

“No! No! Hit him.”

“Louder and funnier!”

“Sweeter!”

“Give us a fight!”

By the last scene of the second act, the father had forbidden the lovers to meet, the grandfather had threatened more destructive but well-meaning help, and the dispirited lover Samael/Amandor had retreated to his books again. Kela/Sharmaen, real tears flowing down her cheeks, vowed to make everything right in a single night.

A man and a woman leaped up cheering. Three other audience members leaped up and knocked them down, and it was time for intermission.

Backstage, Daev clapped his hands for their attention. “All right. Let’s hold it together and finish fast.” He glared at the kender. “Remember, fake blows and no improvising. Keep the curtain call short and make a bee-line for the wagon.” It was already packed except for the fifth-act costumes and props.

Samael nodded and left. Frenni, sulking, stomped off to change costumes. Daev gently wiped the tears from Kela’s cheeks. “Do you love him so much?” he said softly.

She blinked at him mutely and said through her tears, “I just want it to work out for them. Lovers ought to be together forever.” She dashed away, drying her face and looking for her props.

Daev stared emptily after her. “I always thought they should be. I thought. .” What he thought he left unfinished.

Tulaen walked into Xak Faoleen, looking quizzically at the empty homes and deserted streets. Clearly something important was going on or some disaster had caused the townsfolk to flee.

Tulaen disliked missing disasters. He quickened his pace, moving to the central square. Once there he barely glanced at the stage and actors, moving slowly through the audience and checking their faces. He was nonplussed by the strangeness of people’s postures and expressions, but he was indifferent to them: none of them was Daev or the young woman who sketched.

He tapped one of the audience members on the shoulder, lightly. “Excuse me.”

The man emitted a high-pitched shriek and ran off. Tulaen shrugged and continued searching the crowd. Bored and frustrated, he glanced at the cast onstage for the end of the second act. The father was too tall to be the one he looked for; the grandfather was too short. The woman had the wrong color hair, and the lover was nothing like. .

Tulaen looked at the backdrop more closely, saw the magnificence of the painting that went into it, and smiled for the first time in quite a while. “Actors who print books,” he said, shaking his head at his own folly.

He moved slowly to one side of the stage. There was no hurry now. He tested the edge of his sword on his thumb, feeling only satisfaction when his thumb began to bleed.

“Last act,” Daev hissed backstage. “The wagon’s ready. Keep them laughing, move the action along, and don’t waste time on the curtain call.”

He called out loudly, “The final scene. A woods, outside town,” and half-pushed Tasslehoff onstage.

The dog, grinning happily, entered and sat at stage center. Pieces of brush were strapped to him, and a sprig of leaves was tied to his wagging tail.

Kela waltzed on stage, patted the “woods” and announced Sharmaen’s plans to trick Amandor into marrying her with the unwitting help of her clumsy grandfather and angry father.

Samael/Amandor strode on and promised, at her request, that he would do whatever she asked.

Frenni/Old Staffling, disguised in a sorcerer’s costume, entered pretending his staff was a magic wand. He produced flashes from it with powders supplied by Samael, and he laid out four fire-fountain pots the size of ale kegs. Frenni/Old Staffling’s hat fell off each time he set down a fountain; each time, without seeming to notice, he caught it on the end of his staff and flipped it back onto his head.

Daev took a deep breath, tested the wooden stilts to be sure he could keep his balance, prayed that the fire fountains would all work as Samael had said, and strode out, waving an outsize gauntlet and threatening one and all with death and destruction.

There was the sound of soft clapping. The actors turned.

Tulaen entered stage right, still applauding. He stopped and raised his sword.

Daev knew exactly what the big, evil-looking man had come for. He stepped back, raising his prop sword in as threatening a manner as possible.

Tulaen slid forward effortlessly and swung his sword. Daev stumbled back, wondering why he wasn’t dead.

“No blood?” Tulaen asked. From the stage he picked up the chunk of wood, sandal still attached. “Ah. Not your real foot.” He moved forward again. “Yet.”

Some of the audience thought that screamingly funny. One of them did in fact scream. Daev retreated upstage, confused by still being alive.

Tulaen swung again, deftly circling over Daev’s prop sword, and sliced all the fingers off Daev’s empty left gauntlet.

Tulaen kicked at the empty glove fingers, scratched his head, then brightened. “You must be in there somewhere,” he said mildly.

Daev backpedaled, bumping into Frenni and sending him sprawling. Kela and Samael were watching with befuddled expressions. Frenni bounced up in a handspring and said jealously to Daev, “Who is that guy? You’d never let me improvise like that.”

“He’s a real assassin,” Daev gasped, pulling back before Tulaen sliced off his left hand. “Do something. Whatever you want.”

The kender brightened. “You mean it?” He spun his staff over his head, leaped over a sword slash, and brought the staff down full on the assassin’s bald head.

Tulaen blinked, feeling nothing more than a tap.

Frenni, encouraged, vaulted back out of range, planted himself and swung on Tulaen from behind, striking the assassin in the midsection with a resounding smack.

“No more fake fighting,” shouted a desperate Daev. “Hit him as hard as you can!”

Someone near the stage shouted, “Hit him harder than you can!”

Frenni spat on his hands and aimed his best blow at Tulaen. Tulaen speared Frenni’s beard, lifted it up and tucked it over Frenni’s face and kicked the kender. Frenni rolled into a ball inside the beard, wobbled to the far edge of the stage, and dropped off.

Daev said desperately to the dog, “Tasslehoff! Kill!”

Tas wagged his tail and, barking, bounced around Tulaen. The assassin was quite fond of dogs, having slain several in his childhood. He merely raised a lip and growled. Tas tucked his tail between his legs, lowered his head, and slunk off stage right.

The audience howled-some with laughter, some with bloodlust, some attempting to sing. They were on their feet now, excited by the violence on stage.

Kela and Samael stood frozen. Kela, with anxious glances at Daev and at the audience, said in a stage whisper to Samael, “Amandor, this man means to harm Da- my father Stormtower. If you save my father’s life, perhaps he’ll let us marry.”

A voice from the audience called, “I already told you, kill him!”

Another voice called, “Kiss him, then kill him!”

A frightened voice quavered, “Run for your life.”

Samael looked uncertainly at Tulaen, set his jaw, and dashed off stage right. A woman called out, “Coward!”and a piece of fruit smashed on the edge of the stage.

Tulaen looked back at Daev impassively. “We’d better give them a show.” He closed in on Daev and sliced off some of the costume padding from Daev’s midsechon.

In desperation, Daev kicked over one of the fire fountains, aiming it toward the assassin, and pulled the priming string. Instead of emitting a shower of sparks, the fountain exploded with a deafening roar and a soaring fireball lit up every enthusiastic, deranged face in the audience. An immense puff of smoke enveloped half the stage.

Daev stepped out of it, coughing, and said conversationally to Frenni, “Changed the mix on the fire fountain, did you?”

The kender, still tangled in the beard and struggling on stage, said, “A little.”

“Interesting.” Daev leaned on his sword. “What did you put in?”

Frenni said airily, “Oh, you know, a dash of this, a pinch of that.”

In Daev’s opinion the line didn’t deserve it, but it got the best laugh of the day.

When the smoke finally cleared, Tulaen stood there, dazedly blinking at the audience. His clothes were smoldering, his beard was a charred crisp that left a burned-feather smell, and his eyebrows were gone. He was almost enjoying things.

So was the audience, one member of which was sneezing hysterically. A man who was sobbing and snarling at the same time struck the sneezer.

The woman now hopelessly in love with the sneezing man giggled but struck the sobbing man with a piece of bench anyway.

Daev watched, appalled, as a ripple, as from a stone cast in a pool, spread from the small group. The entire audience began jostling and muttering.

Samael ran in from stage right, sword at guard position. He shouted, “Daev!” and with his free hand lobbed a small pouch over Tulaen’s head.

Dazed though he was, Tulaen turned without any seeming effort and warded off Samael’s lunge, raising a boot and kicking Samael offstage again.

One audience member laughed until he sobbed. The man next to him sobbed until he laughed. They punched each other enthusiastically, occasionally landing blows on bystanders who became participants.

Daev managed to catch the pouch and undo the drawstring as Tulaen turned and charged, swinging his sword in an unstoppable, brute-force slash. Daev stumbled backward, the last of his costume padding undone.

Seemingly without haste, Tulaen closed in for his first truly bloodletting cut.

Holding his breath, Daev threw the entire powdery contents of the pouch straight into the face of the assassin.

Tulaen crumpled, sneezing. Daev, sword held shakily at the ready, retreated stage left.

Tulaen rose, facing the audience, and stared into Elayna’s furious eyes.

He dropped back to his knees, overcome by wheezing and adoration. For the first time in his bloody and indifferent life he felt joyous, hopeless love. He dropped his sword, held his empty hands straight out to her in pleading, and announced, “I love you more than anyone I have ever killed!” He sneezed again.

Elayna, gorgeous and invincible, climbed on stage. Tulaen raised his watering eyes hopefully and saw three things:

Elayna’s perfect but hate-filled face looking down at him.

Beyond her, the actor who played Amandor, as he brought the haying cart around and the other players leaped on it in the midst of a townwide fistfight.

Elayna’s fist, which seemed small at first, but which in the last moment before it reached his eyes seemed beautiful, gracious, and absolutely enormous.