Ill Met by Moonlight (21 page)

Quicksilver’s hand stopped. He looked at the dogs. To be with the Hunter for eternity. What could that mean? The Hunter held no court. He had no companions save his dogs.

His dogs. Quicksilver stared at the whining pack, their glowing eyes. Their rotting-corpse miasma surrounded him.

As if with his mind’s eye, Quicksilver saw this was the answer to the riddle. If he took the Hunter’s power, then the price would be to serve as the Hunter’s dog for eternity, nosing out prey for this ancient evil.

“No,” he yelled.

Think,
the Hunter said.
Think. I’ve not lied to you. You’ll still have your vengeance. And living in another form has to be better than dwindling away to nothing.

Of a sudden
nothing
seemed like blessed, sacred rest. An unending sleep.

Quicksilver backed away from the outstretched hand, from the stench of the dogs, from the Hunter’s dubious offers.

Still he must force his legs away, step by step, drag his body away from the current of power, like an unwilling horse being pulled back from an overflowing trough. Evil it might be. It was evil. But yet it was power. Power to live again as a prince, not a beggared outcast.

Power for an elf’s long lifetime.

And slavery forever.

Taking a deep breath, Quicksilver shook his head, and shaking his head, he backed away amid the trees, afraid that his craving would betray him, afraid that, on its own, his thirst would reach for the river of cold, ancient power.

Instead, he stared at the dogs, who ceased snarling and growling, and sat down on their haunches, and began howling, like mortal dogs announcing death. The hairs on Quicksilver’s neck stood on end. Now he would be rent by these creatures. Having refused to become one of them, he would be given to them by the Hunter as their fodder. And yet, he thought he would rather have that. He marveled at this realization. He’d rather die than serve this creature through eternity.

Die, then,
the Hunter said, and, like that, he vanished, leaving nothing behind but the roll of thunder and slategrey clouds ahead.

Trembling, shaking, cringing, Quicksilver had trouble believing he lived still. He listened to his heartbeat, and felt his soaked velvet suit hug his body in an icy embrace. Rain dripped on him, steady and cold. The freezing wind that had announced the Hunter died down.

Quicksilver took a deep breath. He must go somewhere. He must leave this forest and find something to do, someone who would help him.

In the darkness, dainty footsteps sounded, and Ariel’s voice called out, “Milord.”

In pain and fear, Quicksilver turned, willingly, too, at the call of this familiar, friendly voice, and smiled at Ariel in what he hoped would be a soothing manner. By superhuman effort he extended both hands to her, or not to her, but to the reflection of hill power that she represented.

How strangely clean, how magnificently warm that power seemed after the Hunter’s icy, tainted offerings.

In Quicksilver’s cold world Ariel shone like a blazing fire to a traveler lost in a snowstorm. Paler than ever, she looked, and grave, like a statue carved in unforgiving marble, and her eyes shone like little points lost within wide bruised rings. Yet the power of the hill glowed all about her, and the current and glory of it flowed and pulsed through her. She had never looked so beautiful.

But she stopped and shied from his extended hands, and from his touch recoiled, as if it were a proffered sword or a coiled serpent ready to strike. Instead, she stretched out her hand till it almost touched his face, but not quite. She spoke, looking at him, her eyes large and wondering, as though not sure what she said or to whom. So might a blind woman speak and peer into the darkness that engulfs her sight for hints of that which she addresses. “Oh, serpent heart, hid with a flowering face,” she said. “Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? A damned saint, an honorable villain. Was ever book containing such vile matter so fairly bound? Oh, that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace. How could you slay my brother, Lord Treason?”

Quicksilver’s words caught in his throat, like so many briars in a thorny mass through which he must yet speak. “I did not kill your brother, fair Ariel, nor would I. He was killed by Sylvanus’s machinations, by his foul deeds, his setting against one another the races of men and elves.”

“But men and elves may war enough, milord, without you leading my brother to death.”

“I led him not to death, nor did I—”

“Hush, hush, did you cross swords with him?”

Quicksilver swallowed the denial he wished to speak, and spoke instead the strangled truth. “Yes, but—”

“No, no
buts
, then. Was it while you crossed swords with him that death came, stealthy like a thief in the night?” Ariel looked as never before, white as a marble statue and just as noble, dignified in all parts, drawn up into herself: a woman-statue of merciless judgment. And in judgment she looked upon Quicksilver. “Did death come to him while thus distracted, while crossing swords with the one he called his best friend?”

“While we dueled did his death come. The wretched mortal . . .” Quicksilver’s voice dipped and drowned itself, like a man overwhelmed by waves. Even in this extremity it hurt him to call Will wretched. The boy had only been defending his defender and for the love of this protector that he knew not, had he slain the friend of that protector. The friend who’d been trying to kill Quicksilver and who, had Will not slain him, would have tinged his hands as deep with Quicksilver’s life as Quicksilver had been splattered with Pyrite’s own. This tangled web spun itself in Quicksilver’s mind, leaving him as sick and sore in mind as he was in body and power. “But the boy was trying to defend me, milady. Your lord brother, he sought my life with hot breath and eager sword.”

“Did he raise his sword to you first?” Ariel asked, still cold and remote and remorseless, a judge on the bench, admitting no heat of human passion, no warmth of grief, not even a passing look of love like those lovesick looks she had bestowed upon Quicksilver, unrequited, so many years long.

“No. I raised my sword, I did, to protect the mortal on whom my vengeance depends.” The mortal he had kissed. The memory of Will’s lips on his still made his blood burn. Oh, forget the circumstances and the sure death that Will was fated to meet. Forget the pain of Quicksilver’s banishment from the hill and his humbling encounter with the Hunter and that Quicksilver existed, now, as nothing more than a dwindling force, an elf cut off, mortal but not of mortal stock, capable of feeling the feebleness of nature without being, in himself, natural, yet if all this hadn’t happened, would Quicksilver not be singing at the memory of Will’s touch, the raw force in the half-grown body, the strength of the boy made man? Would he not be sighing over the boy who would walk with a man’s steps in the unsure world, parting all curtains and opening all doors?

“Oh, even now. Even now, milord, vengeance is the only tune your heart knows, and the mortal means no more to you than my brother did, than anyone did . . . than I did.”

Quicksilver frowned in puzzled wonder. Did Ariel want him to say he loved the mortal? No, it couldn’t be. “My parents,” he said. “You told me they must be avenged, and for their sake I must get someone to kill—”

“Speak not of your parents or their sake,” Ariel said. “Yes, for their sake you should avenge them. You, yourself, not the poor boy and not my brother, and none other. You, milord, you. But you, Lord Egotism, will walk abroad thinking only of yourself and for your own sake send others to their doom. You want vengeance because Sylvanus humiliated you. Even before you knew of your parents’ true death, wasn’t your heart full of bitterness? Did you not dress in mourning and parade your vengeful judgment in front of your brother’s court? Did you not seek to go to Tyr-Nan-Og, that from there you could harass and torment your brother?”

“Faith, I did not, I only wanted—”

“Oh, do not lie to me.” Ariel, this strange Ariel, all righteousness and judgment, drew herself up, stern and harsh. “Do not lie to me, Lord Hypocrisy. I’ve long since seen through your lies and your embraces, and I should have . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. For just a moment, tears sparkled in her eyes as she swallowed and the old, soft-hearted Ariel showed through.

But before Quicksilver could get a pleading word into the narrow opening of her heart, Ariel’s expression closed again.

In her ice-cold eyes, Quicksilver saw himself reflected, small and greedy and cold. He saw himself parading his offense, his righteous injury before the court, even after the court, by its own vote, had accepted Sylvanus for its king. In that clear mirror of memory he saw the tired expressions, the annoyance on the courtiers’ faces. He’d made himself a buffoon as certainly as if he’d dressed in pied-piper colors and gone about telling jests and making puns. No wonder no one had raised a voice in outrage when he’d been so unjustly expelled from the hill. No wonder. Had he not acted in such a sour, self-proud way, there should have been indignation, protests, at a prince of the blood being thus cast out, dismissed, with so little cause.

But now, in the sparkling clarity of his mind, Quicksilver saw the faces of the courtiers at his brother’s final audience with him. Those faces that had been veiled to him during the argument now appeared clear, each individual and detailed, and perfect, and each one reflecting the same scornful judgment as Ariel’s beautiful countenance.

Quicksilver moaned and hugged himself against the cold, the freezing rain seeming ever more frigid to him, as if it leeched at his vital warmth and threatened to embalm him forever in ice.

He’d been on this path, the path to be cut off from the hill, ever since his parents had died. Perhaps even before that. He remembered his wild childhood, his haughty, prideful demeanor, the way he’d always assumed he was the center of everything, and must be obeyed.

Had he not, perhaps, by his own ways, driven Sylvanus to feel he must do murder so that he could inherit, rather than let carousing, unfeeling Quicksilver control the destinies of a whole people? Would not Sylvanus feel righteous and justified?

But, even while his heart stood amazed, Quicksilver’s mind rebounded in recovery, and he heard his own facile voice, trying to explain away things. “You accuse me of all crimes because I’d use a human for my revenge? What would you expect of me, then, milady? That I would love the boy? I, love a human, milady? A human? They’re but vile creatures and short-lived and . . . you said yourself, loving us brings them madness, drives them to mad twirling in a dance for which they know not the tune. If I loved that boy I would not love him, and not loving him I love him that he might hate my enemy and strike for me. That is all, milady, milady, nothing more.” He gazed intently into Ariel’s reddened eyes and wished her to believe him, wished her to be appeased.

Oh, let it all be jealousy on her part, and let her ire abate on realizing that she now had no rival to his heart. Let her embrace him, and call him sweet milord. Let her share with him the warmth and the power of the hill, even if at a remove. He wished it so hard, he almost believed it, but he saw her face marble-white and granite unmoved, and knew not what else to do. Oh, so many years he’d been indifferent to her, and now this.

“Even if it were so, milord, even were that human something unimportant, and not a thinking creature with his own love, his own wife, and his own dreams, if you don’t love the boy, why did you allow my brother to be killed? Oh, that I should live to see this and that, having lived, I see yet. I could have forgiven your transgression, milord, came it from love. Love is such a many folded folly that within it even the most sane of men might be a lunatic, even a sage might commit imprudence. But you did it out of your cold heart, milord, out of your conceited mind. You are ice, milord, and will never warm up. All my love was vain. Milord, I want you to know, from the hill you are barred, from the hill gone, and from me—I loved you well.”

Quicksilver felt tears come to his eyes at the confession of that love, once bestowed upon him, if not ever received as willingly as it was given. For that love, now, that uncomplicated craving, he would have wished away his right arm, his right leg, his useless heart. “So I believed it,” he said.

“You should not have believed it, for it was false. I loved you not.”

This on the tail of the other, made Quicksilver stand and rear, a bear surprised by a low-charging dog, a wild animal at bay in the world of hunters. Must he, then, to his sins add casting the fair lady into madness? “More the fool I,” he said. “More the fool I, who was deceived.”

“Oh, yes, you were deceived, milord, thinking I loved you and I, too, a deceived fool believing that I loved you. I looked upon you and saw all qualities and joys of our race, the glass of fashion, the mold of form, the expectancy and rose of fair state, and I thought I loved you well and that one day, one day you would love me. And I had the long life of elvenkind to wait out your good graces. I sat, thus, like patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was that not love?”

Quicksilver opened his mouth, but dared not speak for fear of inciting her to greater madness. Her reddened eyes, dry and burning like coals in an ill-extinguished fire, seemed to him to light up something in his cold elven soul, something he’d never known was there. Had he loved her, thus, unbeknownst to himself? Or just loved her love, the knowledge of it, the comfort and joy of knowing himself dear to her?

She shook her head, to his lack of answer. “I tell you, lord, I tell you, it was love, but love for a vain object, a delusion, something like what a human maiden might glimpse in her fantasies when she wishes to see the future and prophesy her marriage night. You are not who I thought and I have not loved. Now you are parted from the hill and I from you. To think that for this I denounced you to your brother, betrayed your plans to him. To keep you near.”

“My plans?” Quicksilver asked, confused, lost in her words and her imagery, wondering what she could mean. Had she told Sylvanus of his intended vengeance, then?