Any Man So Daring (38 page)

The smooth, arched oak door of the white castle is closed. Miranda sits on the steps leading up to it; Proteus stands next to her. To her right, a pond of pure magic lays, undisturbed and flat. Galloping down the road comes the party of centaurs and Caliban,with Will and Quicksilver.

“W
hat is this?” Miranda asked, standing, feigning surprise. “What does this mean?”

Down the road, at a gallop, in a cloud of dust, came the strange party — the galloping centaurs, their tied-up victims and Caliban.

What did Caliban think he was doing? Was it true that he intended to violate his mistress?

Had their childhood friendship meant nothing? Had he always resented his subservient position? But he was a troll...

Yet what did that mean? Was Caliban not as good a troll as Miranda was an elf? And yet Miranda had always treated him as a servant, a monster, unworthy.

Feeling cold and scared, Miranda spoke in a thread of voice. “What is the meaning of this?”

Proteus smiled at her, but his smile was not the kind light of days gone by, but a hard, cold display of teeth. “Ask not what it is, Miranda, for you know well. I don’t know how you found out, but I know you do know. Doubtless you spied upon me, as remorselessly as you stole from the Hunter. Yet, I love you well. Now will we kill the tyrant, and you’ll shield my poor self from the death that waits those that kill the sovereigns of the hill. And then shall we be married and reign in elvenland.”

Miranda looked at Proteus and wondered, were she besotted yet would she have mistaken this for a call of love, for an appeal to her loyalty?

She remembered how, at his suggestion, she had stolen her father’s book. He’d only mentioned it, and she’d hastened to obey the implied command.

Now brought she stood and willed herself encased in magic, protected from a powerful enemy.

The centaurs arrived at the foot of the stairway.

And Proteus laughed at Miranda’s use of magic. Even as she tried to hold her power close, he tugged on it.

“So you know the truth,” he said. “So much the better. Now lend me your magic, for I’ll shield myself with it.”

He wrapped his power around her magic with crude, magical feelers, and seemed about to tear that living power from her body.

But Miranda was angry and -- her anger overpowering her fear -- she found within her that place of strength that was like holding the Hunter’s power to herself.

“No,” she yelled, and with the cold force of the Hunter held the villain at bay, and hugged her power to her. “No. You leave me be.”

They stared at each other across the stone step.

Proteus's face was chiseled in anger and tight with determination. He reached for her power and she pushed him back, and back and forth they went, in a deadly tug of war.

Sparks of magic flew around them, as a smile of lilacs rose.

All of Miranda’s unschooled power was just enough to keep Proteus's smaller but well-schooled power at bay.

He projected images around her of the Hunter’s infernal dogs, gathering, opening their maws in hatred of her.

But Miranda could see these were not the real dogs, that from her tenderest childhood had peopled her nightmares.

The dogs’ smell, horrible and sweet like the reek of the grave, was absent. As was their emanation of freezing cold.

They were only the incarnation of Proteus's hatred.

Closing her heart, she reached for those images around her and willed the illusory dogs back against him, blood-red tongues lolling, teeth gleaming, rough throats growling.

He stepped back, looking confused, but, as they closed in, he waved his hand.

They vanished.

A bolt of blazing fire flew at Miranda.

Miranda held it at bay, suspended in mid-air between them. Proteus pushed harder. She quaked, but she held firm.

Should she be distracted, should she fear, Proteus would have her power and her self. She could not allow that.

Locked in this duel, afraid to look away, she was only half aware of the centaurs’ dropping their bundles upon the dusty ground, galloping towards her.

She felt Proteus reach for the centaurs’ power and with that ancient power, so different from elves, repair his own power and augment his force. With his greater force he pushed against her defenses, and she pushed back as hard as she could.

Yet the power of the centaurs was little, she remembered. The king of elves held almost all of it.

The ball of fire drew nearer and nearer.

She sweated and grunted and felt she could not hold on long. Their power, smaller though it was, was better aimed and more intent.

Oh, why wasn’t her uncle free? Why could he not help her? Let him help her, for she couldn’t do it alone.

Yet why should he help her when it had been she who’d brought them both to this trap?

Panic rose in Miranda, as she felt her power give under the push of the centaurs and Proteus combined.

The ball of fire, near, singed at her hair and made her skin smart with the heat.

“Leave her be,” Caliban’s voice said.

And Caliban, a fury of fur and unbound fangs, threw himself in front of Miranda, nipping at the horse legs of the centaurs and growling at Proteus.

Proteus jumped back and -- for a moment -- Miranda found such respite as she’d been seeking. With all her mind, she extinguished the ball of flame.

“Foul thing,” Proteus said. “I thought you were loyal to us.”

“Loyal to you, corruption?” Caliban asked. His voice sounded more human and less encumbered than usual. “Toads, beetles, bats light on you.” He ran in and nipped and nipped and ran back from the centaurs’ kicking hooves.

“Thou most lying slave,” Proteus said, "whom I offered thy whole heart’s desire, your love, your mistress to do with as you please.”

“As I please...” Caliban stopped his run and stood, his mouth half open. A sob tore through the lipless fissure. And now, the beast’s voice echoed with human tears. “As I please, you say. But what I please is to let her be, to let her be herself and to me, nothing. For if she loved me, oh, if she loved me, what I would have done. I would people the world with Calibans, a strong tribe, a fierce people. But she loves me not. Her desire was for you, you low, smooth-tongued villain.”

Caliban stood, as though stricken by the truth, the awful truth of this.

He didn’t notice Hylas’s charge or the hoof aimed at his head.

“Caliban,” Miranda screamed and, in her anxiety for him, for a moment forgot her defense, her magical shield and reached towards him.

The ball of fire enveloped Miranda. It didn’t burn her skin, though it stung. But it seemed to burn away at that place of calm and resolute anger that was her right as the Hunter’s daughter.

The hoof descended and hit Caliban’s head with a sound like a stone hitting a melon.

Caliban whimpered and fell, his fur all blood, his eyes wide open and fixed, staring.

She knelt beside him, cradling his gross, blood spattered head. “Poor creature,” she said, and, looking up, flung out with hatred, “And yet he’s worth a hundred of Proteus.”

“Caliban,” Miranda screamed. But she felt Proteus's power pressing her all about, trying to force her to do what he wished.

The leash of his controlling power closed about her magic. She could not now oppose him or attack him. But something she could still do to prevent herself from following his commands and being used as a shield between him and his most foul crime.

She closed her eyes and wished herself to sleep, as she had slept when she’d been very young, in her little bed, while the Hunter crooned a thunderous lullaby.

Scene Forty One

Quicksilver is carried forth to lie next to the insensible Miranda. The two centaurs carrying him joke and laugh.

Q
uicksilver didn’t know what to think. He’d seen the troll, Caliban, then Miranda, also collapse.

Caliban — what a tangle of deception he’d woven -- had been a good troll all along, trying to protect his mistress, and for the sake of that, Quicksilver would gladly forgive him any offenses towards himself.

But now Quicksilver and Will were left alone and defenseless.

“The fool thought to trick us,” Hylas said, and laughed coarsely, as he dropped Quicksilver to the hard ground. “By changing to the aspect of this female and in that aspect entreating us let him go.”

Proteus raised his eyebrows and smiled. He’d drawn a knife from his belt. “Aye, the fool. The cursed fool. That’s an old, accustomed trick of his.”

The knife was dark onyx and sparkled. It was the same knife, Quicksilver knew, that had inflicted the wound that still smarted upon his shoulder. It must be magical, and now it would sever his life.

“What will you use for shield,” Hylas said, "if she won’t do it and would rather collapse than serve you in this?”

Proteus laughed. “Oh, she’ll help easily enough. One of you, revive her.”

And, while the brown centaur knelt by Miranda, patted her face, and reached for her with his power, forcing her awake, Proteus ordered, “Bring me the mortal.”

With Will within his reach, he lifted him up and put the knife to his neck.

“She’ll help me for the love of him,” he said.

Trembling, Quicksilver imagined Will’s dear life severed here, before his eyes.

Quicksilver would have helped for the love of Will too. He closed his eyes. He would have killed himself for Will’s love, also. But he could not move or use his magic. He didn’t wish to see Will like that.

He didn’t wish to think that in seconds, all their misbegotten lives would be over. He might deserve it, but these others didn’t. Silver had been right, Quicksilver wrong. Divided as Quicksilver was and as unworthy as any of the tyrants of old, who’d murdered trolls and oppressed centaurs — good and bad alike.

Silver herself would never judge anyone for his appearance. Oh, if only Quicksilver could be here again. He’d never realized she had been a true gift of the gods, of magic and of fate, designed to guide him, to make him a better king.

If only he could have accepted her and learned from her.

Within him, he felt Silver stirring, mourning her lover’s life, and her lost life too.

But it was too late. He didn’t know how to accept her. How he wished with all his mind, his power, his heart, that he could be Lady Silver again, and be one with her.

Oh, what a tangled web Quicksilver’s elven life had woven that fate found a way to kill his joys with love.

Scene Forty Two

Will stands next to Proteus, Proteus's left arm holding him up and his right hand holding a knife at his throat.

W
ill felt the knife at his throat and knew that this was the end — if not this way, then another, for the evil elf did not intend to let him go.

Will, and Hamnet also, would die here, in this cursed land beyond imagination.

Oh, how far Will had come only to die, and yet not so far at all. His ambition had ever been tempered with fear, he thought. Marlowe’s ghost had been too right.

For Will had wished to be a poet, but had borrowed his words from Marlowe and not dared to put down his own words, or bare his own soul upon the paper. He had never thought himself the like of those other poets who, with their university educations, had stormed the London stage. Will had but a grammar-school education.

How could he be their equal? Everyone knew that university men had learned all about theater, and the proper way to construct a play.

He knew himself a fool to even dream on it, and thus had stayed within the safe boundaries of the art form as Marlowe had created it, blazingly alive, from his fiery mind.

Will was nothing but an empty shell, a crow beautified with another’s swan feathers. And for his pretensions without support, for his ambition that he was not willing to fight for, he would now die. He and Hamnet, his only son. Hamnet, for whom he would gladly have given his own life -- or at least he’d said so, but in the end he’d been too timorous to attempt risking anything for Hamnet.Oh, if he had it all to do again, Will would be braver and save his son. Even if Hamnet were now different and changed, even if Will could not longer claim him as his legitimate son and integrate him seamlessly into the world of men.