In the Court of the Yellow King (9 page)

Sometime in the night, she woke to an odd flapping noise, unlike anything she had ever heard in her apartment. She rose and peeked into the darkened living room. Yumiko was not on the pullout sofa bed, and she didn’t see Koki anywhere. The heavy flapping came again, and she now determined it originated outside her window, which overlooked the narrow alley. She drew up the venetian blinds and then staggered backward with the realization that she was not awake but dreaming.

Where the opposite brick wall should have been there was vast, dizzying space: a midnight blue sky lit by alien stars over an endless body of inky water. High above and to the right, a huge, blood-red star lit the night sky, and she knew
this
was Aldebaran, the sun that blazed above the city of Alar. Around it, a cluster of stars — the Hyades — glittered like the jewels adorning Cassilda’s diadem. And now, slowly, the rim of the silver moon breached the farthest edge of the Lake of Hali and rose until it resembled a cyclopean eye, its gaze burning through her body straight to her hammering heart.

Then, on the horizon: an impossible array of gleaming, dizzying spires that wavered like ghostly tendrils before taking solid form
behind
the bright, full moon.

C
arcosa.

Moments later, it came: the thin, childlike dream voice she had heard before; distant, barely comprehensible.

“Doggy!”

No. The word only sounded like “doggy.” That wasn’t what it had really said.

“Joggy!”

It was still too far away, too difficult to understand. The flapping sound came again, and now, in front of those distant, luminous spires, a silhouette appeared in the sky, its contours vague, imprecise. It was coming toward her, trailing black smoke, as if it were on fire.

“Bloggy!”

A little clearer now, the reedy voice sounded excited. The shape in the sky was no clearer to her eye than the voice was to her ear. It seemed ghostly in its way, surrounded by an aura of indeterminate color. Was this what it was like to be color blind? It was neither gray, nor silver, nor white, nor violet. But it
was
color.

“Byakhee!”

Now the thing was rushing toward her, and she could see its eyes, burning with that indefinable, radiant gleam. She backed away from the window, knowing the thing was aware of her, had
targeted
her.

Then a hand touched the small of her back. She spun around and looked down. Standing before her was the child she had seen at rehearsals. Even now, she couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Curly dark hair hung low over big blue eyes, its short, slightly pudgy frame garbed in a pale blue robe, a tiny replica of Cassilda’s jeweled diadem adorning its oversize head. Those eyes were too mature to belong to a child.

The tiny, cherubic mouth spread into an overly huge grin, revealing two rows of polished, very large, very adult teeth.

“Grandmother!” it said.

“I want out of this,” she said, and from the long silence, she didn’t know whether Bryon had even been listening to her. “I can’t do this play.”

The low voice that finally replied was disbelieving. “You signed a contract.”

“Screw the contract.”

“You do
not
back out on Vernard Broach. Are you fucking serious?”

“There’s something wrong with him. He’s not
right
.”

“What’s he done? Tried to rape you or something?”

“No, of course not. But I can’t eat anymore. I can’t sleep — not without these nightmares. I see things that can’t be real. Bryon, no play is worth my health.” Then she whispered, “Or my mind.”

“You break this contract, you’ll be temping and waiting tables till that drama mask tattoo on your ass is sagging to your knees. Are you that damned stupid?”

“This is not negotiable. Call. Him.”

“You’re not my client anymore. I’m done with you. You tell Broach yourself.”

Bryon Florey hung up on her.

Her eyes were swollen from crying, and her throat felt as if she had swallowed razor blades. She’d had to call in sick at the temp agency, and they were hardly any happier with her than Bryon was. For that brief moment, when she had sung Cassilda’s song on stage, there seemed a chance that everything might yet turn out as she had hoped. But then came the aftermath, so repulsive, so full of unendurable
dread
.

She had barely put her phone down on the nightstand when it began to vibrate. It was not a number she recognized. “Hello?”

Director Vernard Broach’s voice. “I know you wish to leave the play.”

“How did you—?”

“If you stay, I promise something wonderful will happen. Kathryn, you are our shining star.”

“Mr. Broach, this is taking too much out of me. I feel awful, physically and mentally. I just can’t do this.”

“I will double your pay. No. Triple it. Kathryn, you
are
Cassilda. Trust me when I say that, after the first performance, things will be very different.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I’ve treated you well, have I not?”

She had to concede that, personally, Broach had shown her only respect. What if she
were
to face her fears and finish out this play? All kinds of new doors would open to her. And this bullshit would be behind her.

“When you wake up in the morning, the money will be in your account. And you will have a new agent. A real agent.”

“Mr. Broach, I—”

“Kathryn. Please?”

“All right. All right. I’ll sleep on it and call you in the morning. I promise.”

There was a long silence. “I trust you, my good friend Kathryn. Now I ask you to trust me. Tomorrow morning, call me and say you will stay. I will honor my word to you.”

“I’ll call.”

“Until then, Kathryn.”

Opening night:

Upon her arrival, her first reaction had been to the brilliant sets. Everything looked as it had during the final dress rehearsal, but nothing
felt
like it. The balconies of the palace rose almost to the ceiling, and — more disturbing to her — the backdrop of the Lake of Hali uncannily resembled her vision from that night. The lavish interior sets were modular and could be moved by stagehands to their designated marks almost instantaneously. She had seen all these during their construction, but now she felt as if she were viewing for the first time a realm that actually existed.

Vernard Broach had been true to his word. By any standard she could measure, she was now a wealthy woman, about to sign a contract with a brand new, very reputable agent.

The
K
ing in Yellow
opened with an overture: a haunting, wistful composition built on the melody of “Song of Cassilda,” but that ended on a series of harsh, dissonant notes that set her teeth on edge. As she took her place on the palace balcony, she felt a moment of vertigo, and just for an instant, an image of that black, smoking silhouette with burning eyes flashed in her mind’s eye.

There was a rumble as the curtains separated and spread wide, and then the spotlights were on her, and beyond those lights, there was nothing — only a gaping abyss, blacker than the sky over the city of Alar. Behind her, Jayda spoke her lines, and the play commenced. Uoht and Thale argued over which of them would take their sister’s hand in marriage. Cassilda turned thoughtful as she decided that one of the brothers would succeed her and that Camilla would inherit the royal diadem.

Something seemed wrong. The space beyond the stage was too silent, too still. She felt as if she were trapped within a sealed sphere of light, barely able to breathe. But it was when she was supposed to describe to Camilla the four singularities of Carcosa that she received her first shock.

It wasn’t Jayda who knelt before her to listen. It was the child.

“Grandmother!” it said. “Tell me of Carcosa.”

Deaf and blind, existing somewhere apart from herself, her body continued to play her part, speaking the lines she was meant to speak. When awareness returned to her, the music told her it was almost time to begin her song. For a moment, the spotlights were turned away from her, and she chanced a look out at the darkened chamber.

It was empty. No living soul occupied a single seat.

She stepped in front of Brad Silva, who played Naotalba, the priest, her disbelieving eyes sweeping the empty space. “There’s no one there. There’s no one out there!”

She felt something tugging at her long, crimson skirt, and she looked down to see the child’s huge blue eyes peering up at her.

“There is an audience, Grandmother. But sensible souls in Hastur hide their faces.”

Inside, she began to scream. She tried to leave the stage. She pleaded, cajoled, threatened Cassilda, but the character refused her, and Kathryn played on.

The masked figure — the Phantom of Truth, played by a young man named Zack Cheauvront — appeared before her, and for the first time, she saw it. Not a crude, painted “X” but a blazing, yellow-gold sigil, simultaneously adorning the character’s robe while floating in some dimension in front of it. She could not have found words to describe the Yellow Sign, for it was rendered by no human hand.

The masked stranger was full head taller than Zack Cheauvront.

Kathryn sang “The Song of Cassilda.” And the empty, soulless auditorium erupted with thunderous applause.

This
was all in her mind.

She agreed to the stranger’s proposal, and the curtain came down on Act 1. She fell to her knees, sobbing, barely aware of tiny hands pulling the pallid mask down over her head.

The child took the stage and spoke to the emptiness.

“‘Your chance to escape has pa
ssed. Bound to us, at
last.

No harm can com
e to you in fantasy,
and this is not real
ity.

No sensibilities
offended, no immoral
ity decried.

But ’tis
now too late, for you
r sin is complete.

Yo
u have crossed the t
hreshold and the doo
r is barred.

Lament w
hat you will, but her
e you abide;

Sit and
listen, for you are o
urs forever,

And unti
l the end of time, we
are also yours.’”

The gong sounded.

Zack Cheauvront — it
had
to be Zack — as the Phantom of Truth stood before her, pointing to her face. She was supposed to remove her mask, but as long as she wore it, she couldn’t be seen. She did
not
want to be seen.

But she tore the mask from her face and regarded the horrid Yellow Sign on the stranger’s robe. She heard Camilla say, “You, sir, should unmask.”

“Indeed?”

That was not Za
ck’s voice.

“It is time. We have laid aside our disguises. All but you.”

“But I wear no mask.”

“No mask!” Camilla’s eyes turned to Cassilda’s, bright and bulging with horror.

“‘
Yhtill! Y
htill! Yhtill!
’”

The King in Yellow appeared before her and, with a glance, struck down the masked stranger. The monstrous figure floated above the stage: a giant garbed in tattered, brilliant yellow robes, its face covered by a golden mask that revealed only its eyes — eyes so black they glowed. One hand rose to point at her, and the King’s voice boomed across space: “Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

It was not the costume from their rehearsals.

It was not the same man.

It wa
s not a man at all.

The King pronounced Hastur’s fate. Declared its victory over Alar. Condemned every man, woman, and child in the city to wear a pallid mask for the rest of eternity.

Cassilda felt another soul inside her, one struggling to escape, protesting these events that never began and never ended. At last, it was time for her to rule in Hastur, to no longer revel in the ennui of perpetual siege. She stepped forward and gazed into those blazing sockets in the golden mask. “No,” she said, her voice firm and strong. “This will not do.”