Ill Met by Moonlight (35 page)

Quicksilver held the compulsion over Sylvanus, and Sylvanus, unable to overcome it, unwilling to talk, clamped both hands over his mouth and, concentrating hard on not speaking, fell to the invisible floor of the glen and writhed about on it, like a wounded thing.

A voice Quicksilver recognized as his servant, Malachite’s, said, “Milord Quicksilver spoke truth. Faith, in the past I’ve been disloyal to him, but now he is my king and has my power.”

More power, smaller power, the lower lords and bastard sons of Fairyland trickled into Quicksilver’s mounting arsenal. Connected to the hill again and this time from the top, he felt and knew his fellow elves as he never had and, at the back of his mind, gently tried to send to each of them mind-messages that would soothe their fears and promise that his would not be a wild rule. He let them see his heart, with its determination to serve the hill above all things, and they responded, opening their powers more fully to his use.

Sylvanus held less than the fealty of one in ten lords. Sylvanus was defeated.

Connected to the hill again, Quicksilver felt powerful and strong, and sane as never before. “You leave, Sylvanus,” he said. “You leave, traitor.” He pushed compulsion upon his dethroned brother. The other lords of the hill who had not yet sworn to him would, in time, when they saw his wise rule. No one could expect Sylvanus to rule now, with such a small following. “You are a murderer and a traitor, but I’ll not taint my hands with your blood. Go and never again come near this hill.”

Just then, at Quicksilver’s moment of gloating, relieved triumph, a hunting horn sounded in the distance, a call that made Quicksilver’s breath stop, mid-drawing.

The Hunter? It couldn’t be the Hunter. Yet, who else would be hunting this late at night and in the pouring rain?

Quicksilver felt chill sweat run down the middle of his back.

Had the Hunter come for Quicksilver? Did the relish Quicksilver had taken in his vengeance incite the Hunter’s dogs to his pursuit? Now he would indeed be worthy prey, connected as he was to the hill.

He looked at Sylvanus, who still writhed on the floor of the ballroom. Sylvanus’s hands covered his mouth and, on his side, he patently tried not to obey the compulsion to leave the hill. The result of it was that he crawled, like an abject animal, around and around in the center of the floor, inching ever so slowly toward the edge of the clearing, surrounded by a ring of astonished courtiers.

From above, came the noise of a horse at full gallop and the baying and whining of hunting dogs.

Quicksilver shook. It was the Hunter. Come for him. By an effort, he softened his voice and his heart and tried to absent any sign of gloating from his speech as he stood over Sylvanus and said, “Go for now. Should you prove worthy, perhaps we will have you back, sometime. Perhaps even your crimes can be redeemed.”

But Sylvanus shook his head, even as the bugle sounded again.

On the storm-dark sky, a shadow formed, of a hunter at full gallop, surrounded by dark, ferocious dogs.

Quicksilver gagged on his own panic and looked around, frantically for a place to hide, and then noticed that Sylvanus was transforming, and stopped, staring at the deposed king, in astonishment.

Sylvanus’s form changed and became distorted, and elongated, and on the forest floor, on all fours, baying to the cloudy sky scarred by thunderbolts, stood a male wolf, as tall and as large as Sylvanus had been. A silver-bright wolf, his maw open, his sharp teeth glittering.

Quicksilver had only time to scream and take a step back. “The Hunter,” he said. “He’s allied with the Hunter. He’s sworn fealty to the devourer of our race.” Even in saying it, he had trouble believing it, yet Sylvanus’s transformation was undeniable and it wasn’t Quicksilver’s doing, but the inevitable call of the Hunter. Quicksilver remembered the Hunter talking of having nowhere else to go and being called.

Besides, all around the changed Sylvanus, Quicksilver could see a dark grey cloud of blood-red power, power rooted in pain and suffering and on blood and sacrifice. A lot of power but defeated by the power of love and hill conjoined, that Quicksilver commanded.

What lords still held with Sylvanus now deserted him, and their power surged into Quicksilver’s hold. Lords screamed and ladies shrilled, and, amid it all, Nan and Will stood, amazed, while Will’s falcon eyes took in these sights that no mortal eyes should watch.

Sylvanus’s voice came from the darkness, distorted into an animal growl but still, somehow, Sylvanus’s voice with his accents and his proud tone. “Foolish brother. You would rule, you, by the power of your foolish love. Pitiful creature. Long ago, in the mountains of the north land, my mind in despair over being displaced by you in birth order and our parents’ affections, I found the Hunter. He offered me power and I took it. Since I joined with him, I can drink humans’ pain, like a nectar, and feed on their tears and suffering like a sweet wine, and power spent is only power recovered. Thus I engineered the murder of those foolish, pleasure-loving sovereigns, silly Titania, lecherous Oberon, and covered my tracks so well that the despicable human I used as an instrument neither died nor dared talk of my deed, and went unsuspected. And I almost won. I would have won, were it not for your cursed cunning, Quicksilver.” The wolf’s eyes glittered with a red light as it looked on Quicksilver. Its half-open mouth slobbered iridescent green drool that went on glowing after it had fallen, past the illusory floor, to the mud. “And now I must go, but you will come with me, and be fodder for my pack brothers.”

Quicksilver readied his new power for the jump he knew would come. Awkwardly, he fashioned his unaccustomed power into a shield. As the wolf jumped, Quicksilver held all this power in front of himself like a shield, felt the animal’s impact, and heard a sound, as if the creature had hit hard crystal. The creature’s face twisted sideways, as it hit the invisible barrier, and left a trail of slobber behind that seemed to drip from the clear air, at Quicksilver’s eye level.

But the creature landed on its feet and, turning with malevolent ire, dove at Quicksilver’s ankles. Quicksilver realized that his clumsy handling of power had left his legs unprotected, but realized it too late as the creature’s icy cold yet burning teeth clamped onto his left ankle. Green saliva mingled with the shimmering red blood of elvenkind.

Quicksilver screamed and dropped his shield, and the wolf pulled at Quicksilver with all its might, throwing him off balance, making him go down on one knee, the other leg painfully extended in front of him as the wolf pulled on it.

This was how the teeth of the Hunter’s dogs would feel, Quicksilver thought, rending him and tearing him and devouring him. His mind clouded by pain, he felt terror such as he’d never felt before.

Above him, in the storm-dark sky, the Hunter laughed.

Reaching into all his power, all his strength, Quicksilver wished to throw power at the wolf, in one of those punching attacks that he had so often felt from the other end. Not sure how to do it, he wished the power of the hill through his arm. It sparkled down his arm, feeling somewhere between a tingle and pain and, before Quicksilver even realized what he was doing, power flew from his extended fingers. Catching the wolf in the face, it made the animal unclench its jaws.

Quicksilver wished yet more power down his arm, and sent it flying, tingling, to hit the creature and send it sprawling. At the same time, Quicksilver stood, though his ankle felt as though immersed in live coals.

An animal whine escaped Sylvanus’s wolf-form, but it scrambled to its feet and, glaring with unflagging hatred, made for Nan.

Quicksilver, still burning with the pain in his ankle, took long enough to realize what was happening, that the creature had fastened its teeth on Nan’s gown.

Will put his arms around her. Nan, her mouth open, shrieked in terror.

Quicksilver set his power like a shield in front of the woman and around her and Will both, this time taking care that the shield met the ground of the glen. If he couldn’t have Will—and he couldn’t—then at least he would ensure that Will was happy, so that his happiness could feed Quicksilver’s joy.

The wolf pulled at the hem of Nan’s dress with its fangs, but the fabric tore in its teeth and the woman stayed put in Will’s arms, within Quicksilver’s shielding.

The beast, at bay, turned this way and that, all around the circle.

And Quicksilver, sparing barely a thought and a trickle of his now-immense power to healing his ankle that he might concentrate better without the pain, responded with fast-moving wit, protecting now this, now that lord and high lady from the intended attack of the creature.

The wolf snarled, a low complaint that sounded like a blasphemy. The hunting horn sounded again, and the wolflike dogs bayed.

Come
, the Hunter’s voice sounded, commanding.

The wolf-Sylvanus turned yet again, and unexpectedly, cowered, belly to the ground, and ran between the legs of the massed courtiers.

A flash of lightning crossed the sky and laughter sounded.

Quicksilver’s ankle still felt a little sore and he moved too slowly. He turned just in time to see the dark wolf-shape plunge into the lace-bedecked double cradle, and snatch one of the swaddled babes, who screamed and cried at being thus maltreated.

Before Quicksilver or anyone else could react, the hunting horn sounded again and the wolf ran up an invisible stairway, with the baby in its jaws, and plunged into the pack of grey dogs who followed the Hunter.

The Hunter laughed again, and spurred his horse, and his shadow form galloped across the sky, followed by his dogs. The sound of hooves retreated into the distance, and the infant’s cries with it.

“My daughter!” Nan wailed. “My daughter.”

“It was not your daughter that he took,” Quicksilver said.

Nan, detaching herself from Will, ran to the cradle and lifted the babe who was not so blond and not so round and not so pink as the fairy princess had been.

“It is not your daughter but his own that he’s taken with him in damnation. I felt her power leaving. They’re both gone from the hill.” Quicksilver felt different, strong, as if the mantle of kingship, having fallen on his shoulders metaphorically if not yet in fact, had given him strength and dignity he’d never hoped to possess. He knew things he’d never before known, secrets and certainties and facts long forgotten by all living elves, but still stored in the collective memory of the hill.

How could Sylvanus have known this much and yet acted so foolishly? Had the evil that consumed him blinded him to the folly of his actions? Or had the pact with the Hunter, once sealed, been unbreakable?

Quicksilver thought how close he’d come to sealing such a pact and shivered.

“Is she dead? Will he give her as fodder to the wolves?” Will asked, his eyes filled with horror. He’d crossed the clearing to stand beside Nan, his arm around her shoulders, while she hugged their baby.

“No.” Quicksilver shook his head. “No. I can feel her alive but cut off from the hill. I think he means to keep her alive, with him, in the realm of the Hunter. There she’ll remain, imprisoned, and grow up to be one of the Hunter’s dogs.”

“But she was a good babe,” Nan said. Tears filled her eyes and brimmed over. “She doesn’t deserve such a fate.”

Quicksilver sighed. “She has not sealed a pact with the Hunter, nor can she, till she be full-grown. And maybe some young mortal, or some elf, will undertake to save her before then. But Sylvanus sealed his pact knowingly and Sylvanus will never be free.” On saying this, Quicksilver felt his eyes well up, and looked down to hide the sparkle of tears from his courtiers. From now on, all his emotions would be much too public. And yet he, himself, had been so close to being thus lost into darkness and greed and his need for vengeance. “But we have nothing to fear from him. He can’t overcome the protections of this hill,” Quicksilver said and added, as much to the frightened courtiers as to Will, who looked tired and scared and sad. “He shall plague us no more.”

The rain stopped. As though a giant hand passed across the sky sweeping the clouds away with a gesture, the sky showed deep blue and starry, as it should this time of year. And the moon glowed, bright and full, within a halo of reflected light.

“Pardon me, milord.” One of the servants bowed to Quicksilver. “But we had everything prepared for a royal wedding, the sacred nectar, the charmed ambrosia. What shall we do with it all?”

Quicksilver smiled. “Why, have a royal wedding, of course. If milady Ariel will have me.”

Ariel turned to him, her eyes shining with joy and her mouth half opened in a smile, long before she said, “I will have you, milord. If you can like of me.”

“I look to like,” Quicksilver said. “And looking moves my liking.” He extended his gloved hand toward her. “Here is my hand, lady, before the whole noble company. And as for you. . .” With his other hand, Quicksilver pointed at Will and Nan, who still stood by the cradle, holding their daughter and talking to each other in the urgent tones of lovers long separated. A fat black-and-white cat had come out of nowhere and wove a path between their ankles, purring loudly.

“As for you two, you shall go, and, for your pains, you shall have the good will of elvenkind as long as you both shall live. And your father, Will, your father, is hereby forgiven his crime. Sweet Titania and gentle Oberon are avenged and will return to be born among elvenkind. You may go.” As he dismissed them, Quicksilver wished he had a sign of his parents’ return, of Pyrite’s liberation.

He looked over his shoulder at Ariel, to see if she had any intimation of their fate—and saw them. Pyrite, ghostly and transparent, bent over his sister to kiss her. Titania and Oberon stood one on either side of Ariel and put the elf maiden’s hand in Quicksilver’s.

Then, all three shades smiled at Quicksilver, a smile of blessing, and disappeared, in a twinkling of lights, leaving behind the feeling that they’d embarked on a journey that must be undertaken. A journey of return.

Tears shone in most courtiers’ eyes. Ariel cried, though her lips smiled.