Ill Met by Moonlight (14 page)

And Pyrite thrust and Quicksilver parried.

Quicksilver found his voice. “Desist, Pyrite, desist. I would fain not hurt you.” Quicksilver felt the blows vibrate through his sword to shake his whole being. He must, somehow, quell Pyrite’s madness, and speak to him, again, as a friend, and tell him of Ariel’s vision and Quicksilver’s own just cause.

“You feign as you are and can’t help feigning,” Pyrite answered. His sword sought out a place to strike, like the serpent, well-nursed and taken to a warm bosom, will find the weak spot in which to lay its venom.

A twig snapped with a loud crack under Quicksilver’s foot.

Quicksilver parried, but barely, the tip of his sword withstanding the crashing clash of Pyrite’s charge.

Chill, chill sweat ran down Quicksilver’s forehead to sting his eyes. Lifting his arms felt like Herculean labor and lifting his sword to stop Pyrite’s blows was infinite hardship, terrible pain.

Pyrite had to be drawing on the power of the hill to sustain his fury, while Quicksilver dared not, could not, dip from that bright current. He could feel it run on past him, like a shimmering brook flowing just outside a parched traveler’s reach.

But if Quicksilver reached for that abundant power, that tempting flood, then his brother would know of his endeavor and all would be lost. Nor would Quicksilver survive.

Pyrite pressed close, each blow stronger, his dancing feet moving nearer and nearer, until the two of them were fighting, face to face, their bodies almost too close to maneuver against each other.

“Desist,” Quicksilver said again, desperate. “Desist. I am your friend.”

Pyrite said nothing, only pressed closer and closer, till Quicksilver could feel Pyrite’s hot breath on his face.

Quicksilver stepped back, step by step.

Above, thunder sounded like the hooves of horses in battle, and the bright sword of a forgotten god cleaved dark, roiling clouds in twain to illuminate the Earth in an unreal, glaring white, unforgiving light. Like the light of reason shining upon long-cherished delusions.

Fool that I am, fool
, Quicksilver thought, and stepped back step by step, back along the root-mined path, knowing that a stumble, a false step would bring him to his doom.

Will was forgotten, as were the other three elven lords, though in some corner of his mind, Quicksilver guessed them to still be there, still where he had seen them last.

Only Pyrite mattered, and this duel fought close, close, as their emotions had always been close and tenderly nursed, closer than in a love affair. From childhood, they’d known each other’s weaknesses and strengths, each other’s joys and sorrows.

And never, till now, had a sword come between them.

Pyrite’s pale face, lit up by the white light from the heavens, looked even whiter, with nostrils flared, like those of a purebred horse about to rear.

Could Quicksilver unsay what he had said, and somehow uncall the name of traitor that he had called his friend? No, that would not do. It would not stop Pyrite now, nor detain his charge. If, besides a traitor, he thought Quicksilver a coward, it would only serve to speed home the fatal blow.

Quicksilver’s only hope was to survive, and tire Pyrite until, his body spent, Pyrite’s mind engaged in thinking once more.

Quicksilver’s foot, stepping back, settled atop a rounded root, and his ankle turned, to find balance. The sharp pain shot up his leg to his hip. He faltered, but kept moving, kept standing, kept parrying. No time to be hurt. No time to stop. No time to fear.

The sweat that rolled into Quicksilver’s eyes stung and burned, blurring his vision. Breath panted out of his dry mouth. Harsh, broken breath like storm winds, blowing uneven destruction upon the landscape.

The temptation to reach for the power of the hill, the temptation to get strength and healing and new force from that accustomed source almost overpowered Quicksilver, but like a mortal saint faced with temptation, he withstood it and parried and backed up. He wished for words to explain to Pyrite that Sylvanus had murdered both king and queen, and that Quicksilver had it from good source, from Pyrite’s own sister. But his mouth was dry with anguish and tiredness, and he could not find words. He swallowed and summoned what saliva he could to his mouth, and swallowed again, tasting dust and mustiness, a foretaste of the grave itself. “Pyrite, stay. I must tell you about Ariel, what Ariel has—”

“My sister? You will hide behind her name, now? You, who always spurned her?” The words that should have calmed Pyrite, instead seemed to act upon him like spurs on a runaway mount, driving him to greater madness. He lifted his sword up over his head, and the lightning flashed on it, as Quicksilver tried to lift his own sword to parry the coming blow.

But Quicksilver’s sword weighed too much and his arms felt bruised and half-torn from their sockets and he could not, he could not . . .

Lightning flashed and, from the darkness, the dark-clad Will shot out, holding something in his hand. The something flashed, and Will shouted, “To me, milord. To me, who was your first intended victim. I am ready for you.”

Pyrite turned, struck, surprised, and then an unholy smile shone on his perfect features, and his sword rose even more eagerly.

The human dove beneath the lifted sword, and his weapon which, at close quarters, Quicksilver saw to be a short dark dagger,—buried itself into Pyrite’s shoulder.

Pyrite drew startled breath, and made a sound not quite a scream. His hands opened, dropping his sword, that fell straight down to the hard soil of the path, its blade penetrating the dirt, its hilt vibrating in midair.

Will withdrew his dagger and stared at it. It glowed bright red, and shone with its own light, as its good forged iron tasted the blood of fairykind.

And Quicksilver, torn between the mortal who had saved him and his own elven friend, who had betrayed him or whom he had betrayed—he couldn’t tell which—yelled, “What have you done?” to Will, and whispered, “Are you hurt?” to Pyrite.

Pyrite, pale-faced, shimmering with a strange milky light, his lips gleaming even whiter than his face, clutched his shoulder and backed up, eyes wide open, glaring, but still looking dark, dark like the absence of all light. “Hurt. Aye, I am hurt. I am done for. Oh, it burns. May the Hunter devour you, Quicksilver, you and Sylvanus both. A plague on both your houses.”

“Come, come, it can’t be much,” Quicksilver said, trying to smile, while Pyrite’s white, chalky face gave his words the lie. “It can’t be much. A mortal dagger and in the shoulder, only. It is the shock of cold iron that you feel, but it will soon be gone and you’ll feel better. It’s only a scratch to one like us. Nothing. It can’t even be very deep.”

Pyrite smiled, a ghastly smile. Glowing drops of blood dripped from his shoulder, staining his bright garment, mingling with the rain on the forest floor. “No, it is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as the palace door.” His voice had a blank, brittle quality—odd, like a glass that breaks, far off, in another room, and can only be guessed at. He looked in mute horror down at his shoulder, where his wound showed as a darkness with blurred edges. Across those blurred edges bright magical blood flowed and dripped. “Not at all that deep. But it is enough. It will serve. Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.” He smiled again, and his smile, his whole being, flickered, like something only half glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, before becoming solid again. His hands clutched his shoulder convulsively and he drew in a breath as if in pain. “A plague on both your houses. All your houses. Yours and Sylvanus’s and this creature’s . . . This mortal creature. Harmless, you said he is. Defenseless. Fine defense, this. To scratch a man to death.”

His eyes, shining with a strange white light, turned to Will, who stood, transfixed, in that glare. “A braggart, a rogue, a villain. Why the devil did you come between us? A plague on both your houses.” Again he flickered. “You have made worm’s meat of me. Of me, who am an elven lord and to whom death should be a far-off mockery, a scare for mortals, a harmless bogeyman.”

He flickered again and changed form, somehow, as though a strong wind blew out of the trees, speeding him to darkness. “A plague,” he said again, his voice sounding as if it came from a long distance off, like a ghost heard in dreams and ill-remembered. “A plague on both your houses. Your houses, remember. You are both cursed.” Wind that Quicksilver couldn’t feel blew Pyrite away, as though he were no more than a pile of rustlings forgotten from the late harvest, a worthless pile of oak leaves, fallen and dried. It drove him—a mere shimmer of colors, a glimpse of his bright suit and his staring eyes, in a whirlwind, across the tops of the centenary trees, dispersing him, till he was no more.

Yet his voice resounded still, more like a remembered echo than a real voice: “Cursed by Pyrite. You, Quicksilver. And you, wretch. Both you, my prince, and the mortal, for whom I’m killed.”

As the last echoes of the last word faded, rain fell, hard and driving, blinding, scouring Quicksilver’s face, his panting chest, like a whip. He looked at Pyrite’s sword, on the ground, and at Will, who stood beside him, soaked all through by the sudden downpour, and shivering as water dripped from his hair and ran down his face.

“I don’t know who you are, but you, you tried to defend me, and I don’t know who you are.” Will looked terrified.

Quicksilver nodded. Will didn’t know who Quicksilver was? Oh, yes, he’d never seen him in this aspect, had he? From somewhere, Quicksilver found assurance, a voice that showed a calm that he didn’t feel. “You did well.” His heart mourned for Pyrite, but his vengeance clamored even harder for satisfaction. “Do not worry. It will be well. It will all be well.” He knew he lied. A glance at where the three eleven courtiers had stood discovered them gone, and Quicksilver felt his knees go weak under him, like ties that become loosened with wear.

Sylvanus would hear. Sylvanus was hearing, even now, of his brother’s treason, of Pyrite’s death. Pyrite’s unholy death. Quicksilver stifled a sob.

And yet, Quicksilver must go to the hill, the hill to which he belonged and whence his power came. He must go back, try to justify himself.

Quicksilver had a vision of Sylvanus on the throne, hearing from Pyrite’s rogues. And Ariel standing nearby? Meek, harmless Ariel—what would she feel about this? Would Quicksilver lose his last friend?

Quicksilver shook with fatigue, and nausea clutched his middle.

From that other, colorless, in-between world, he could feel his parents’ shades reach toward him for vengeance.

He hoped Ariel would know this was the only way to avenge the dead king and queen, the only way to restore order to the universe.

He’d promised Ariel to keep her brother safe, and her brother had been killed for Quicksilver’s sake. For the sake of Quicksilver’s vengeance.

Quicksilver drew a deep breath and felt as though it burned his throat in taking it.

His friend had died for the sake of Quicksilver’s vengeance, and now Quicksilver must speed vengeance, before retribution caught up with him.

Scene 8

The same forest glen. Quicksilver kneels, looking dazed, his hands stretched out, barely touching the hilt of Pyrite’s sword. Next to him stands Will, looking confused.

I
t must all be a dream
, Will thought, all over again, as—dazed—he looked from his dagger to the place where the ruffian who’d attacked him had vanished. It must all be a mad dream, and he the dreamer, pixie-led and forlorn in a land of nightmare, without his Nan.

These ruffians looked like the same kind of people as the courtiers who’d joined in that mad dance. And they’d attacked Will.

All of it came together, all in a rush: the dance, Nan’s sister-in-law whispering of the hill people, the Wincot tavern, the shadowy enemy that vanished in a whirl of wind-blown and scattered color.

Will took a step back, as cold replaced his hot rush of emotion, and freezing fear navigated through his veins like a captain possessed of a good map, claiming the headland of his heart. “You are of them, too,” he said, backing away from the man in black, who knelt by the path and held the strange sword, and wept, shameless, like a woman or a boy. “You are of them—of the hill people.”

The fair-haired man—creature—nodded. His hair, bright as moonlight, seemed to shine with its own light in the dark and the storm.

Rain poured down—cold, hard rain. Will lifted his hand to his forehead to brush aside the wet hair that had got pasted there, and wiped water from his face in a futile gesture, as more water came rushing down, drenching him like a strange baptism, an unhallowed blessing. Will had killed. With this hand he had stifled a thinking brain, with his dagger put an end to a speaking voice.

The creature wept, water from his eyes mingling with the water pouring down on him. He looked up at Will, eyes all red, rimmed with grief and shrouded with pain. “Yes, I am of them, and he was my friend whom you have . . . killed.”

“But if he’s of you . . . Was he not immortal?”

The creature laughed, a hard, bitter laugh, like broken ice, its shards pointing all outward, to impale and cut. “No. Not immortal. We live long, but we are not immortal, and cold metal poisons us, if kept in us long. However, it shouldn’t have killed him that easily.” The blond courtier stood up and brushed with the tip of his gloved fingers at the smear of reddish mud on his knees. His eyes shimmered like lakes where a good spring rain has collected. “May I see your dagger, goodman, may I see it?” He asked it politely, too composedly for one so emotional.