Ill Met by Moonlight (29 page)

Yet he longed for the palace, for its comforts, with a physical longing such as he’d never felt. Somewhere, within those walls, Quicksilver’s valet worked, perhaps tending the room from which his lord was now barred. Somewhere within those walls, Quicksilver’s bed was made, waiting his rest. Somewhere within, his marble and jade bathroom waited his good pleasure.

Outside, rain poured down the back of Quicksilver’s neck. Even his small comforts, his keeping himself dry in a rainstorm, his conjuring of food to feed himself, would demand too much magic. The power he had in him now was all he’d ever have and the hill would not be there to draw upon as a never-ending reservoir. Even the magic he’d used on Will, to draw food to the table, to send the boy back to sleep in the morning, even that had been hard spent and Quicksilver might well come to regret it.

The thought of Will brought such confusion of feelings to Quicksilver, such a tangled mess of mobbing emotions, that he forgot hunger, boredom, and the cold rain. Thoughts of Will covered Quicksilver in the warmth of their remembered love; the fear for the boy, who might go insane from that love; the shame that he’d allowed himself to fall so low as to care for this human; the dread of his own death that must now come, now that all hope of toppling Sylvanus was gone. And over all, over all, the certainty that sweet Titania and gentle Oberon were fading into nothingness, even as their unworthy offspring failed.

Quicksilver rubbed his face with his soaking velvet sleeve, wished he could dry himself, and cursed the weather. If it weren’t raining, Ariel might come out on some errand, or perhaps to wander the forest, to ease her heavy heart. If it weren’t raining, ladies-in-waiting or valets might walk about, speaking of the great dance tomorrow, and where it would be held . . . and he could take that intelligence back to Will, if nothing else.

Instead, the rain fell unrelenting, leaving the palace grounds deserted and giving Quicksilver little choice but to hover there, within sight of the white palace and its tempting golden power net, and to hope against hope that something, something would happen to give him a hint, a clue.

He couldn’t address his parents’ shades, and once more ask them for guidance. He felt too tainted, too low, too weak. And he’d given up on the vengeance they’d demanded. So, how could he ask for their help, now?

The chilly rain seemed to drain Quicksilver of even the little power he had, and he sat down, his back against a rough tree trunk, and closed his eyes.

“How now, milord? How now? Asleep?” Ariel’s soft voice intruded upon Quicksilver’s sleep, and for a while he didn’t know whether he dreamed or wakened.

Half opening his eyes, he saw the lady bending over him, and yet didn’t know if this vision was a product of his deranged brain or a real being, walking in the world of touchable things and knowable truths.

“Oh, alive,” Ariel said. “You’re alive, milord. For a moment, seeing you there, so piteously forlorn . . .” Her small oval face registered a startled awareness that he might not wish to be called “piteously forlorn,” and she smiled apologetically. “But there, you’re soaked, milord. Soaked through and through,” she said as her hands sought to grip his arms and slid on soaked velvet. “Wet and cold,” she said, as her hands moved from his arms to his face and, resting against the chilled flesh there, felt to Quicksilver like small beacons of warmth and comfort.

She did something he couldn’t so much see as feel, like the draping of a warm blanket over his cool flesh and, of a sudden, the rain no longer wet him, and his body regained a measure of warmth. He looked at Ariel with gratitude, as he opened his eyes fully and sat up.

Funny how, from his new view, outside the hill, Ariel looked like a goddess, a creature full of power and glory. And on the heels of that, he wondered whether that was how he, himself, had appeared to Will, whether Will had been dazzled not by Quicksilver’s female aspect but by this fatal glamoury of Quicksilver’s kind. Confused, worried about his obsession with Will, and what the boy might think or feel, Quicksilver blinked at Ariel, “You are speaking to me,” he said. “Have you . . . forgiven me, then?”

The lady didn’t answer. She inclined her head, in a half affirmative, but turned her face from Quicksilver and sighed. “You love the boy,” she said. “You love the mortal, Will.”

Blood rushed to Quicksilver’s chilled cheeks, making them glow with the heat of shame. He turned his head away, himself, to hide his red cheeks from her, but he couldn’t hide the awareness of them from himself.

Ariel smiled at him, an odd smile, as though he were a slow child, stuttering through his first words. “Love forgives a lot,” she said. “And I love you, milord. If I don’t comfort you, who will? Who will soothe your misery if not me?”

That smile puzzled him as did the words that followed.
Love
. Ostensibly, she referred to her own love for him, but was that all? Something in her smile unnerved him, something in her idea of him made him uncomfortable. She behaved as if she knew something he couldn’t even guess at. As though she knew what he was feeling better than he himself knew.

Still, in the warmth of her affection, he found himself comforted, and her charms, which he’d disdained before, seemed now overwhelming. Her smile was a radiating sun, her body, clad in her white gown, a thing of marvelous shape, her features—small and neat as they were—appeared beautiful, a beauty on the verge of the supernatural. Her spun-light hair framed her face in a blaze of glory. And she gazed on him with kindness.

By the light of her kindness, he raised himself slowly. Slowly, he stood up. “You’ve forgiven me, then,” he said.

She shrugged with hypnotic grace. “Forgiven you, milord? What was there to forgive? My brother’s death . . .” Her voice caught, and a sob choked her. “My brother’s death and my brother’s decision to attack the mortal were both wrong. My brother did a vile thing and in committing it, died, as though the gods would not allow him to taint himself with such disgrace. Being killed with the same dagger as your parents”—she took in a deep, shuddering breath—“Killed by the same weapon, he went to join your parents, and with them he waits till the right order of things should be restored, and you can ascend the throne. Then shall he be released, to rejoin the wheel of creation, to be born again, to elvenkind.” She spoke with certainty and her eyes had that faraway-looking blankness of when she spoke out of her dreams and prophecies.

Quicksilver thought of Pyrite, Pyrite released anew, to be born a babe, innocent, in the world of elvenkind. And perhaps, Quicksilver thought, long as the lives of his kind were, perhaps Quicksilver would yet regain his friend in another form.

If he carried on his vengeance. But . . .

Something like a twinge of pain seized his heart. “I cannot do it,” he said. “Will . . .” How to tell her that Will was inexpressibly dear to his heart, that he could no more send the boy to his death than he could, unflinchingly, open his own veins and spill his magical blood upon the cold ground? “I can’t hurt Will. I thought . . . We must give him his wife back, send him his way unfettered.”

Ariel looked grave. “Aye, his wife, milord, his wife . . .”

Something in her tone made Quicksilver’s mind misgive itself. Could something have happened to Nan? Let her not be dead. Quicksilver felt his former chill renew itself, all the chill that Ariel had dispelled. Not dead. Let the wench that Will prized not be dead. Let him have her back, and regain his mortal happiness.

Quicksilver realized that, having given up on happiness of his own, Will’s happiness had become all that he put stock in and hoped for, as mortals hoped for salvation. “What happened? What happened to Will’s Nan?”

Ariel shook her head. “Why nothing yet,” she said. “Nothing yet, but she has agreed that tomorrow, on the stroke of midnight, she’ll eat the nectar, and become one of us, and marry Sylvanus.”

Quicksilver shook his head. “Not Sylvanus. Not . . .” It couldn’t be. She couldn’t desert Will. Didn’t she love Will? Besotted with the youth, Quicksilver couldn’t imagine anyone seeing Will and not falling into worship like a struck devotee before a god. “How so? How?”

Ariel blushed, and her blush made her so radiantly beautiful, so overwhelmingly enchanting, that Quicksilver’s knees buckled and trembled and he had to struggle to keep his mind steady.

“It was your night with him,” Ariel said. “The fairies captured it on charmed dew—none of my doing, this time—and brought it to Sylvanus, who displayed it before Nan and me and thus . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“The night just past?” Quicksilver asked. He let his hands fall from her shoulders. “How you must despise me.”

“Oh, I do not. Indeed, I do not.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Were it not for that, I might never have known. Your lips might lie, but your heart does not. It was love I saw, love. Love on your part, I don’t know if on his. The glamoury . . .”

“Oh, yes, the glamoury,” Quicksilver said, and said it bitterly, for he knew it true. “It was my glamoury he worshiped and not me. And even had it been me . . . it is not all of me and I could not . . .” He put his hands on her shoulders again. “Listen, milady, you must tell me where the midsummer dance will be held, and there I will have Will meet his wife, and there claim her back, by the ancient rites, before she commits the fatal folly of joining herself to Sylvanus.”

“Of course,” she said. “If you’ll bide and listen. But the boy must come early and forewarned, because all is in readiness for this wedding. Even now I should be tending to Nan’s gown and the presents arriving from every elven kingdom. The party, the wedding, and the rites of summer are all to the take place down the rushy glen, down where the water pools by the riverside and reeds grow. The humans fear the site, because of the sucking mud, and there we can disport in peace. Or so Sylvanus has judged, and he means to disport long and well, since it’s to be his wedding night.”

Quicksilver nodded. “I’ll hie to him, then,” Quicksilver said. “And I’ll tell him. And you, milady, try to keep his lady from doing something too rash too soon.”

Ariel nodded, but her big, questing eyes still stared at him. “What about Sylvanus? What about the traitor, and the vengeance you owe your parents and my brother?”

Quicksilver sighed. “I can’t do it, milady. I’m not strong enough, never was, to face Sylvanus and the power of the hill. Not even when I had the power of the hill in me, much less now. Much less now. I am, myself, a dwindling power, a fast-vanishing strength. Forget me, my lady. Be happy without me. I am nothing and no one and the world will be better without me.”

Ariel stood sternly, like a judge, a queen, a stern, terrible power. “Fie, milord. You are as extreme in your modesty as in your pride, and both modesty and pride in such immoderate quantities are crimes still. Fie. You have strength and you have power, mightier and greater than hill power. It is the power of right that moves through you and makes you stronger than yourself.”

Quicksilver arched his eyebrows. Beautiful words, and he wished he could believe them, but he couldn’t. Having tasted his own fallibility, and the evil that tainted him, he now feared to work more mischief by any attempts at righting wrongs. Before, he’d caused Pyrite to die, and now what? By threatening Sylvanus, who might he kill? Sweet Will? Or Ariel herself?

He smiled, a sad smile and, reaching over, touched his lips to Ariel’s warm lips. “Farewell, milady, farewell. If we had time, I might have loved you yet as well as you could hope. But I must go to Will and tell him how to recover his good wife.”

Ariel looked at him, and appeared sad and wondering and desperate, all in one. In a hot breath of urgency, she said, “Think what I said, think. Justice has its own sword, and right its own strength. Now, go. Go to your love, but forget not that my love shall always be waiting for you.”

Her voice was so assured that for a moment, for just a moment, he almost believed her, almost believed that he could take revenge on Sylvanus himself, and survive it and claim her love.

But as she stepped back, he felt her power go with her, leaving him. He felt the rain start to wet his just-dried velvet.

She paused, an angel arrested on the verge of flight, and turned her concerned, pale face to look at him. For a moment she hesitated as though not sure that he was worthy of her mercy, that he was worthy of her confidence. “Remember, milord, on the glen by the riverside,” she said. “Where the rushes grow thick and the bullfrog calls nightlong. There shall we dance tomorrow night. There, Will may find his wife and you may reclaim your crown.”

Like that, she turned and ran, back to the white palace. She ran with unreal grace, skipping over the roots of ancient trees and avoiding obstacles, while seeming to dance across the forest floor.

Quicksilver stayed, looking at her run. The rain fell hard, driven, seeping through soggy velvet and thin silk, and chilling his weak body through.

Ariel—a supernatural creature with fantastic powers—disappeared into the world he’d lost, and he was left alone with his cowardice.

He loved, he loved he didn’t know whom, but, just at that moment, he loved Will and Ariel both, and though he knew it impossible, he wanted for Will to have his wife back and to be happy that his happiness would feed Quicksilver’s joy, and for Quicksilver to win back his kingdom, that he might lay it at fair Ariel’s feet.

Quicksilver’s heart swung like a pendulum between Will and Ariel, suspended, helpless, from Quicksilver’s own dual nature. And no matter how the pendulum swung or how hard, if he carried on his vengeance, he would lose the only two people who mattered in his life.

And if he didn’t carry on his vengeance, he would lose them still and he would die, a poor, powerless thing, by the wayside. And the world would melt in the wake of his death, the elven sphere and the mortal sphere, and perhaps even the divine sphere thrown out of temperance, destroyed by this wrenching rearranging of the order of things.

Quicksilver took a deep breath of cold, wet air. When nothing can be done, something must yet be done. He must make a choice and live to rue it, bitter as any choice must be.