Any Man So Daring (13 page)

Were those the voices in Miranda’s mind? Had the Hunter pursued the child? Why?

The tunnel closed and all was still.

“Miranda, what have you done?” Proteus asked.

Miranda did not know.

She tasted blood in her mouth, and felt as though she’d been hurled, screaming, into another reality. Her arms and legs hurt as though bruised, and her throat felt scratched, as if from screaming.

She’d got it wrong? How could she have got it wrong? Where was the boy?

And who else had gone with them?

Scene Ten

The bridge of air, a structure woven of light and magic power, is suspended — with one end of it near the hill in Arden woods, the other hovering over the strange terrain near the Hunter’s castle. It looks like one of those bridges that arch in the middle, seemingly making the journey more arduous. Only, from this bridge, should you look down midpoint, you’d see the Earth below, much diminished, a child’s toy globe. And around it, arrayed, the multitude of stars, paying it homage. On the bridge, Quicksilver stands, his mouth open, his face pale, his expression horrified.

W
hat was Proteus about? Quicksilver thought. Where was he headed that required the bridge of air?

Then Quicksilver felt the emanations of eternal justice and dark flowing power washing over the bridge.

Straining his eyes to see the other end, he saw the dark castle and, above the castle, the standard flying, showing the Hunter with his hunting horn.

The Hunter.

By the hell and damnation of mortals, Proteus had gone to the Hunter.

Why? To sell his immortal soul for enough power to murder Quicksilver?

Quicksilver’s heart skipped a beat and his feet as if possessed of thoughts and fears of their own took a step back upon the bridge.

In that moment, for a breath, he thought he heard, behind him, the clopping of horse’s hooves.

He looked over his shoulder and saw nothing, save the bridge of shining light and the starry darkness below.

Quicksilver followed Proteus slowly, wondering at Proteus's complete absorption in his errand that ignored the feeling of Quicksilver’s magic behind him.

Midway up the bridge, at the highest point of its curved expanse, with the Earth but a marble beneath, and the spheres of stars arrayed at his feet, Quicksilver glimpsed the other end with more certainty, and his breath caught, frozen within his throat.

Never, in land of mortal or of fairy, had Quicksilver glimpsed such a weird landscape, such rock frozen in an upheaval of waves, such trees so tall as though they’d been standing since land first emerged from the deep.

Then he saw the castle and his heart seized, for such a dark and ominous castle, one that flew the flag of the Hunter, could only belong to a dark lord, who might well help Proteus revive the war against Quicksilver’s enforced truce.

Aye me,
Quicksilver thought.
Ariel and Malachite have installed themselves in my brain and think their misgivings through my thoughts.

Ahead of him, Proteus had reached the forest of immense, dark trees at the edge of the wave-tormented ground.

Coming to meet him, hands extended, a comely young girl advanced. Or rather, one of her hands was extended, while the other held onto a large book.

Who was this woman -- no, this child on the edge of womanhood -- with her spun-silk hair, her well-cut green clothing?

Quicksilver smiled to himself. Malachite’s dire warnings of treason, Ariel’s disturbed dreams, all came to this — for this had he been frightened at the sight of the black castle.

Foolish Ariel, suspicious Malachite. And fool Quicksilver, for listening to them. For all of Proteus's plotting was no more than this — that he was in love with this comely beauty.

But who was she that lived here with the Hunter, and who had attracted heartbroken Proteus from such a distance?

Quicksilver inched forward upon the bridge, wishing to uncover the mystery, yet not willing to violate the lovers’ confidences.

Let Proteus preserve his privacy.

Quicksilver marked how the young elves laughed, how they smiled, how they touched, how they stood near each other.

Both were in love, Quicksilver judged, love as desperate as is the love of all the young.

He could tell the woman was an adolescent and comely and of elven race. He knew no more.

He advanced, fighting the feeling that behind him, step on step, hooves were carefully positioned on the light-woven pavement of the bridge.

I am imagining hooves,
he thought. He remembered the centaurs gathered for the execution
. I have centaurs of the brain,
he thought.
I am a fool.

He looked at the girl once more. Why would a child of elven race be living here? Why would an elf entrust his child to the Hunter, of all creatures on Earth? Why give a child to the dark creature?

Or was this girl the child of a visiting elf, a potentate from a faraway land and not consigned to the Hunter’s desolate landscape?

No.

The Hunter accepted no visitors, nor did he play congenial host to elven nobility.

Furthermore, the way this young woman stood, the ways she moved, all had the look of one in her accustomed place. And then, Quicksilver thought, feeling her elf power flare around her, as some emotion spiked high — and then, if she were a foreign potentate she’d be a princess, at least a princess, to have such power.

And he’d have heard of such a one.

Perhaps the Hunter had had a romance, with a female elf, long ago, and from it this single girl descended, this single, graceful creature.

But something bothered him all the same. The way the girl moved, and the way she walked, and the way she cocked her head sideways waiting for a reply, all reminded him of someone.

But she was so blonde and so small, so graceful and so obviously female that it took a while before Quicksilver’s mind and feelings met upon the puzzle.

Then the girl smiled, and held both hands out to Proteus and in that gesture, Quicksilver recognized a smile, a gesture he’d seen himself, often, before his mirror.

The girl reminded Quicksilver of himself, or rather or that Lady Silver who was, sometimes, the best part of himself.

But Quicksilver had no children. There were no children in his family. None, save only--

Save only his brother’s daughter, the long lost Miranda, Princess of elvenland. Now Quicksilver remembered what he’d gone a long ways to forget.

His brother’s only daughter, an infant, had been in her crib when Quicksilver had met and challenged Sylvanus for one last time.

And, as Quicksilver won leadership of the hill and Sylvanus was collected by the Hunter for his many and terrifying crimes, Sylvanus — already transformed, already hunched into the shape of one of the Hunter’s dogs — had picked his daughter up, between his jaws and with her had plunged into the midst of the pack.

Now Sylvanus was dead, but his daughter....could this be his daughter? This the lost Miranda?

Hair prickled at the back of Quicksilver’s neck and he felt as though a cold finger ran down his spine.

This was her, then, Sylvanus's daughter, princess and heir to Quicksilver’s own throne.

With suspicious eye, Quicksilver watched, with weary eye, remembering Sylvanus’s treasons and Sylvanus's crimes, he watched Sylvanus's daughter and wondered what hid beneath that small face, that flying blonde hair, those bright blue eyes that sparkled with such love.

Oh, let it be only love for Proteus and nothing more. Let it mean no more than two young people in love.

Then could Quicksilver have the two of them joined in matrimony and, thus unifying all the claims to his throne in one house, watch over them and their marriage with paternal joy.

Oh, then, thrice welcome long-lost Miranda.

And yet, there was something else, some other feeling. The feeling of power flying all around these two.

He thought they did some magic. A viewing spell? Quicksilver was too far away to see what it truly was.

It was the power that scared Quicksilver. Without stepping off the bridge of air, he leaned closer and saw the girl open the book she’d carried.

The power of the book flowed from it when she touched it, as it had not when in Proteus's hands.

The girl raised her arm, started reciting a spell.

What spell was this? What did it mean? The currents of power flowed from it strong and white and clear.

It was not, Quicksilver thought, a love spell. Nor was it, perforce, an attack spell. It felt harmless enough. Or did it not?

Tendrils from the spell stretched over fairyland and reached for the mortal world and picked--

Quicksilver recognized the dark curls, the golden eyes. Will, he thought. Only it was not Will, but a child, Will’s son, Hamnet.

What could this girl want with Hamnet?

He threw his power at the spell, trying to stop it, but it howled on, like a madman who would not listen.

Quicksilver felt within it the dark coils of a power stronger and older than his own.

Older than his own? How could it be?

And why would it meddle with Hamnet?

Before Quicksilver could think of any reason, he felt the vortex — a dark counterpart of the bridge of air open — and through it, the child come hurtling, screaming.

Quicksilver had time to realize, in a momentary panic, where the child was being sent. He threw himself into the vortex, willed himself to follow the child. He yelled at the girl to stop, but he didn’t expect it to be obeyed.

Oh, Ariel’s dark divining had been true, after all, in fact if not in detail.

By a dark castle had Quicksilver met his doom.

The child was Will’s darling, Will’s only son. Quicksilver would not allow the fairyland to steal him from Will.

Scene Eleven

Proteus and Miranda stand amazed, in the landscape that looks too quiet, too glossy, filled with a drowned light, like a scene cast in glass or seen through the filter of softening memory. Slowly, Proteus's face shifts to an expression of anger. Caliban, sitting nearby, moves closer to huddle near Miranda like a protecting dog at his mistress’s heel.

“L
uckless girl,” Proteus said. His voice came out strangled and slow, as though he’d forgotten how to speak or as though the remaining magic in the air made him witless. “Luckless girl. What have you done?”

What had she done?

Miranda would gladly have answered the question, but she knew not. She had done the spell. She had done it, as it wished — commanded — to be done. Had she not?

Those two voices in her mind, the sense of her father — her adopted father — so near, had it been real?

As she tried to remember what she had done, the memories and thoughts shifted and twisted just as the words had writhed upon the page, and she could not fix her mind to any certain thing.

It had seemed to her — it was passing strange — but it had seemed to her — she could swear it — that someone else had intruded upon the spell, that someone had touched her power with a greater power.

Quicksilver? The thought came to her, but she didn’t know how to express it, nor even if it was possible. “Did Quicksilver--” she started.

Proteus looked on her with cold eyes — hard-pebble eyes, black and opaque. He took a deep breath.
 

“Quicksilver,” he said, "came quicker than we expected. I should have known the tyrant, the despot, was following me. Yes, Quicksilver was here, but for a moment and in that twinkling he jumped into the stream of power carrying that child — do you know where your spell has carried the child?” He crossed his arms on his chest and looked remote and distant, a superhuman judge, trying her for her crimes that she couldn’t remember.

Miranda shook her head and lowered her gaze.

“You’ve sent the child to the crux,” Proteus said, his voice assured and full of strength as though making a final, triumphant argument.

“The crux?” Miranda repeated, like a child reading by rote, not knowing what the word meant.

Proteus's eyes opened wide, in surprise, his mouth twisted in disapproval. “Oh, what are you that don’t know what the crux is? The crux is the center of all magic, Miranda. It was once the world, or all the worlds. It enveloped all, was all, a part and parcel of the great egg from which the universe hatched, entire, all the spheres, the arrayed worlds.