Any Man So Daring (10 page)

“It is to me that such comforting should fall,” Proteus’s voice said.

Miranda turned to see him approach through the broken landscape behind her. He looked tired, his hair matted and wild, his eyes sunk within dark circles, his face so pale that lips and skin and all seemed to melt in uniform gray-white sadness — like curdled milk or dingy sheets.

Yet he attempted a smile for her and through his colorless lips his voice came, if not as spirited as usual, making a brave attempt at spirit. “If comforting you need, lady, it should fall to me. Why ask you this of such a creature as Caliban?”

She turned fully and smiled on him. “You were late, milord.”

He tried to smile, but his mouth seemed to lack the strength to turn upwards and, instead, hovered in indecisive sadness, halfway between smile and frown. He sighed. “I had heavy business to attend to. Heavy business.” His black eyes, like shiny pebbles long polished by the patient sea upon a familiar shore, turned to her. Today they looked opaque and remote, as if the sea that rolled them were a cold sea, on whose shores no one lived and whose depths harbored no creature. “Today I saw the noblest blood of fairyland spilled wantonly like so much water. Today I saw my father— my father--” And here he stopped and his lips trembled, and his eyes blinked rapidly, a teardrop caught upon his blond lashes looking like a dewdrop that the morning has forgotten upon the flower.

“My lord,” she said, and put her hand on his wrist, struggling to hold the heavy volume with the other hand.

“You’ve got the book,” Proteus said, with such effusive joy that one would think she’d gone away to war and brought back the bounty of a thousand captured cities. “You’ve got the book, Miranda. Lady. My Queen.”

She was gratified as ever to be called his Queen and smiled upon him, a smile that was part pity for his sorrow and part pleasure at his company. “It didn’t take that much work, Proteus. It is not as though it were on the bottom of the sea or upon high cloud. It was in the library, and there I found it.”

He looked at her, and his eyes were suddenly animated. Pebbles upon which a ray of sun played, making them shinier than jewels. “Ah, no. You’ll not play down your value, for did you not brave the wrath of the immortal Hunter to get me this?”

He took the book from her and, setting it atop a taller shrub, opened it eagerly, searching through its time-yellowed pages. “Did you not go so far, indeed, for my cause? When we shall be married, you shall reap the full immortal joy of true love and true queenship.”

Miranda squirmed and felt her cheeks warm, pleased at his praise and yet finding it difficult to believe she’d been in any danger from the Hunter.

Oh, perhaps the Hunter wasn’t her true father. And perhaps he and his dogs roamed the night punishing evil doers.

Yet she’d been his joy and his happiness for years now. She’d seen him smile at her smiles and come as near to crying at her griefs as such a being could.

The Hunter hurt her? She’d sooner believe Proteus might.

It seemed to her, also, that at Proteus’s praise of her Caliban made a sound in the background. The sound was too faint to be sure of its quality, but Miranda would have sworn it was a snort of doubt and derision.

To abstract herself from her sense of discomfort at this praise, Miranda looked at Proteus's hands as he turned the pages of the book.

Such long, white fingers. How could Proteus ever have held a sword or discharged himself honorably in battle? It seemed to Miranda as though her own hands, trained as they were to do nothing except the labor of the pen and the working of her needle upon the pliant embroidery fabric, were stronger and more purposeful.

Proteus's hands shook, as he turned the pages, and rushed eagerly, like lizards darting upon a patch of sun, following the first line of every page, as though he couldn’t read it with his eyes and must trust his hands to guide him upon the meaning of the letters.

Proteus's index finger darted out, eager and curious, tracing the cryptic symbols upon the yellowed paper, then slowed on tracing the second line of symbols and finally stopped altogether.

He would turn the page and then trace the mystic symbols again.

The symbols were like no alphabet Miranda had ever seen before — strong and coiled like serpents about to strike. It seemed to Miranda, as she stared, that they writhed and moved upon the page, living letters — creatures of prey lying in wait for... whom? A reader? An enchanter?

Their strangeness, the sense that they were alive made her eyes strive to focus, caused her head to ache.

And yet the more she looked on them the more she thought that she could almost understand them. Almost.

Those letters that twisted and writhed were like a phrase hovering on the edge of her tongue, like a recollection of a dream almost grasped and on the edge of vanishing forever into the nothingness that engendered it.

As Proteus turned pages, Miranda’s gaze traced the letters. There, that was a spell for...finding what’s been lost. And there, that was a spell for restoring hair that had fallen.

Yet farther on, she thought she saw a spell for mending a broken love, and for finding gold.

Proteus's finger moved on, restless, seeking.

“Milord, what words are this?” Miranda asked, fearing to interrupt him, fearing that he might upbraid her if he did, yet too puzzled to hold her tongue. “Milord, how is it possible that I can almost understand such strange symbols? What symbols are they?”

For a moment she thought that Proteus had not heard her, as his finger rushed on upon the page. But he spoke, as from a distant place, without turning, without so much as lifting his gaze from the page. “Those letters, Miranda, are the writing of our kind.”

“But I’ve never learned it--why should I understand it?”

“Because the language of elves is born with elves,” he said, as his finger moved upon the yellowed page like a creature distinct from himself. “Such is the virtue of our tongue that, unlike man who must be taught his language and learn to speak it, haltingly, as we learn to walk, step by step, elves are born knowing how to read and write their language.” Now he looked up, his dark eyes amused, a slight curl to his pale lips indicating, if not a smile, then a willingness to smile. “It might not be conscious language, and an elf raised away from her kind might not know she has such knowledge, but it will come to the mind when she hears or reads it, as water long buried, finding an opening in the ground, will bubble to the surface.”

Miranda blinked. The symbols still seemed vaguely disquieting to her. Something to her heart, some certain part of her soul, thought that letters should not be alive nor should they insinuate themselves into her mind with language she’d never known she possessed.

Still, she squinted and made an effort at reading the book, as Proteus turned the page.

And there, on the page next to last, she found she could read a row of symbols that translated as a spell to start a fire.

Proteus turned the page with a peevish gesture, and upon the next page — the last one in the ponderous leather-bound volume, Miranda read
, Spell for transporting of humans to various parts of fairyland.

She sighed and shaped her lips for an apology, sure that now Proteus would close the book and turn on her in just indignation, asking why she’d brought the wrong book and accusing her of some childish mistake.

But Proteus moved not. His finger had stopped upon that first line of text, his eyes wide and intent on the words.

Curiosity warred in Miranda’s heart with a strange, undefined dread.

Transporting humans to fairyland? Why would one do so? What would justify it? She’d read enough tales, sung enough ballads — furnished to her by her loving adopted father — to know that by ancient law, by millenary decree, the two worlds should be kept separate, else tragedy resulted.

And why would Proteus want to transport a human to fairyland?

The thought warred in her heart with her desire to keep still and not bother Proteus at his reading. Her restraint finally overpowered, the question flew through her lips, like a sigh. “Milord,” she said. “Milord — I thought you needed a spell to fight the wicked tyrant. What can a mortal have with our spells? Why? And which mortal?”

“A child,” Proteus said. Without looking up, he spoke while his long finger ran along the lines of characters. “Quicksilver, the tyrant loved once, you see.”

“He loved a child?” Miranda asked, startled, as her opinions of the creature shifted. She couldn’t imagine seeing him as she saw the Hunter — a fearsome creature of darkness, but one who could love and care for something as helpless as a child. Maybe her uncle wasn’t as bad as Proteus said. And yet, he’d killed her father, had he not? He’d killed Proteus's father, had he not?

How could such a creature be anything less than a monster?

Proteus shook his head at her question. “No, not loved a child, but he loved the child’s father.” Proteus looked up and, for just a moment, a sneer disfigured his beautiful features. “When Quicksilver gave his heart it was not, as befits immortal elf, to honor or truth, to the hill, or even to another elf, his equal, but to a gross mortal, a creature base and fleeting.”

A strange, feral smile distorted Proteus's face. “While this man is too wily to fall into our traps, the creature has three children, one of them a son and prized higher than both the other two.” He looked not at Miranda but at the air above her left shoulder, as though there he saw, arrayed, an army disposed for his command. “If we take the human’s child, the human shall go mewling and complaining to your uncle’s throne. And your uncle, who still can deny him nothing, will come after the child. Here, in this isolated place, we can then kill him. Then will you be Queen of fairyland and rule by my side over the glittering hill.”

All of a sudden, as though only then noticing her, Proteus extended hands to Miranda. “Oh, Miranda, how fair you’ll look, wearing the jewels of the ancient hill and leading the dance by my side.”

The prospect was so dear to Miranda’s heart, the shine in Proteus's eyes so strong, so full of that soft radiance of love and hearth and home that for a moment, as though entranced by it — as though she, an elf, were pixie-led — she gave her hands to Proteus and allowed his dream of a large court, of her own majesty at the head of it, to keep her from thinking of what they’d be doing to get there.

But little by little thought intruded. The sovereign of fairyland had more than his share of power with which he’d been born, that share of power that Proteus told her was so large in her also.

The king of fairyland, by ancient law, held in him the power and strength of all his subjects. With such power and such strength, he was stronger, more vital, better protected than any of his subjects — stronger than Proteus. Perhaps, even, stronger than Miranda.

Miranda felt a shiver of cold up her spine. “Milord, you say you’ll bring the king here and we’ll overpower him. But he is king. So how will we do that?”

A smile, more beautiful than an angel’s, gilded Proteus's features as he let go of Miranda’s hands and reached into his black velvet doublet, pulling out... something.

It was a net, but to say so would only be to prove the inadequacy of words for their purpose. It was a golden net, spun of air and magic, a thing glittering and perfect, like distant stars in a summer sky.

“Oh,” Miranda said. She reached for it.

Proteus pulled it back, held it away.

“Touch it not,” he said. “Touch it not, for it is a magic net. With this net Circe caught the spirit of the hero Ulysses and kept him in her thrall for years. With this net did Medea bespell Jason and lead him to marry her. With this net shall we catch the tyrant’s magic. And when he’s thus unable to defend himself, we shall have revenge. Your power is enough to protect us if he’s immobilized.”

Relief flowed over Miranda and for a moment masked something else — a twinge of worry, a fear — no, not fear. She realized that she felt guilty, scared of what they were going to do and of how it might stain her mind. “But killing him by stealth is dishonorable,” she said. She remembered her father — her adopted father — explaining to her the crimes he punished, and this sounded like base murder, which was one of them.

Proteus's eyes widened in surprise, as though he’d never expected her to protest any of his decisions. Then he shrugged.

“The king of the hill is such a creature, with such magical power at his disposal, that we kill him by stealth or not at all.” He shook his head. “I knew we’d need this from the beginning. We’d heard of it, my father and I, from the centaurs of the south that serve us. There were tales of their ancestors that told of this net. Yet my father thought that he could win by mere force. I searched for the net alone, but it lay near the base of Vesuvius, covered in so many spells and incantations that it took me all my magic, all my effort, to find it, to penetrate its shields, to acquire it.” He looked into the middle distance again, and his eyes slowly filled with glittering tears. “While I was thus occupied, Quicksilver won the war and imprisoned my father. He had my father condemned to death. To save my own life, I had to forswear my father and my claim on the kingship of the hill. I did it so I could live to avenge my father’s death. Lady, I promised then that, if it took my last breath, I would ensure that the net would be used and would help me slay the tyrant.” His eyes filled with tears and he looked at her, a picture of resolute tragedy, a picture of grief and courage so mated that one could not be pulled from the other.

Miranda knew not what to say. For once her quick wit fed no words to her still tongue.

But then she thought on the child they would kidnap, steal from his mother and the safety of his hearth. The child’s father might be the beloved of Quicksilver, but what had the child done to deserve being enmeshed in the battles of immortal elves?

Yet the father of this boy had been loved by the tyrant. How good could a mortal be whose heart knit such an evil creature as Quicksilver to him?

No. No. The boy might well be evil, a dark thing.