Any Man So Daring (30 page)

How could Miranda, who’d been raised in solitude, and knew naught of the world but through stories and legends, know what to do, what to think?

“Beshrew the stories I heard,” Miranda said. “Beshrew my soul and my heart, for I am lost.”

“What do you mean?” the mortal asked. He looked solicitous, concerned. His expression reminded Miranda of the Hunter when he bent anxiously over her, worrying about a skinned knee, a childhood tear.

Shocking. Strange. How could this weak mortal resemble the eternal Hunter?

Yet it was true. She saw in the man’s gentle eye, in his softened features, the look of her adopted father. His gaze had the same kindness and concern.

And how could she doubt the one thing she’d always known for love?

Feeling tears wet her face, the pressure of her confusion and her anger wearing away at her composure, Miranda tried to act as a princess should. “How I may thank you for my rescue?”

Will hesitated. “You may tell me your name, milady.”

Miranda sniffled, dangerously close to losing all her poise. “Miranda.”

And that was as far as her composure held. Looking on him, seeing his expression of mingled pity and affection, she threw herself in the mortal’s arms. Unlike the Hunter, he smelled warm and dusty, of leaves and decayed moss, where her nose pressed against his doublet.

He hesitated too. It was moments before he embraced her.

But his arms were comforting as they surrounded her, and his hand soft as it patted her hair. And his voice, though nothing like the thunderous sounds of the immortal Hunter's, echoed with the same reassurance, “There, lady, there,” he said. “There, fair Miranda. Nothing for you to lament. They are gone and your virtue is saved. Cry no more.”

Only then did Miranda realize that she was sobbing, small, afflicted sobs. Her flood of tears soaked through Will’s jacket.

Why was she crying? What foolishness was this? Had the mortal not rescued her, then there would have been reason enough to cry. But now, why did tears fall, hot, down her cheeks?

Oh, stop, foolish tears,
she thought. She dried her face with the back of her hand, and smiling up at Will through her tears, she stepped out of his embrace and put her hands on his shoulders.
 

She’d been walking through this dreadful land of shadow and deception. Oh, not alone, for she had Proteus. But even Proteus seemed to have become shifting and deceiving. She’d been alone a day and a half in the crux, knowing not whom to trust nor from whence to expect kindness or sudden violence.

Like a ship, rudderless in a storm, she’d been buffeted and swayed by inconstant winds.

Now in this mortal she finally found an anchor. In his unassuming being, reflected, she saw the love and kindness of the Hunter -- her father, her protector.

Therefore, why should she cry? Why did her tears, like a river bursting a dam that long has held it at bay, flow unstoppable down her shamed face?

If she could trust the mortal — and she had to believe she could — then mayhap this tangled knot could yet be undone.

“Tell me, mortal,” she said. “Tell me true — is my uncle, truly, the rightful king of fairyland? And did my father commit such dark crimes as you claimed?

“Or did your partiality for my uncle lead you to paint him in rosier tints than truth deserved?”

The mortal’s ruddy face became redder — a dark blush peeking at his cheeks. “I have no partiality for your uncle, Lady,” he said. “Rather I owe him, having thrown into my life many times such grief as other men know not. He claims to love me, or at least half of him claims to love me.” Will looked up at the dark sky of the crux, now swirling in lighter rays of blue as morning approached. “But his love is a curse, without which I’d never have known this desolate place and I would not now be in fear for my son.

“Had his love not, again and again, pulled me from my ordered existence, would I, like other mortal men, be blissfully unaware of this shadow kingdom that twines our land and makes all men dance to tune most can’t hear.” He shook his head. “Say not I love your uncle. Did you not see us fighting on the beach?”

Miranda nodded, remembering. But the memory seemed odd to her, because — she realized, thinking of it now — there had been more fear than hatred in the mortal’s anger. And even now, speaking of that fighting, she thought that his brow furrowed and his eyes squinted as though the brawling memory brought him only pain.

She blinked as a further shocking understanding pierced the order of her education.

She understood of a sudden that creatures, even good and noble creatures as this mortal was, sometimes lied, not only to others but to themselves also, about their feelings, their deeds and their memories.

For, where Will’s mouth blamed Quicksilver, his features spoke of diffident tenderness.

Oh, how could the stories not lie, if men lied to themselves in their thoughts?

What insane world was this for which she found herself so ill prepared?

Yet, she told herself, the facts about her birth father could not be so changed by the creature’s affections as to be reversed. If her father had never been captured by the Hunter, then it would take more than hatred or love for the mortal to imagine it.

And of one thing Miranda was sure, as she looked at those golden eyes. Will would never lie deliberately, and -- even to himself — if he lied it was unknowingly.

“Aye,” she said, speaking slowly. “I saw you fight. But what you said of my father... The late king of elvenland? Was that true? Was he so evil that the Hunter seized him? And did you see it with your own eyes, or were you told about it?”

“Aye. Aye, I saw it, and he was so seized, as I live and breathe,” the mortal said. He stepped back and looked scared. Miranda swallowed. It was true then. And then, perforce, Proteus had lied. But she thought of Proteus's features and his gentle words, she thought of how she loved him at first sight. Could her own heart be so wrong in flying to him on winged feelings?

Perhaps Proteus himself was deceived as she thought the mortal had been. Perhaps he knew few facts, and his father had lied to him.

Yet, someone had tried to cast a sleep-spell on her, this very night. Either Proteus had cast it, or else Proteus too had been under the same spell — which her spell had only reinforced.

She thought of the centaurs speaking of someone else, someone who was a coward.

“Would you call my uncle a coward?” Miranda asked Will.

Will looked startled. His eyes and mouth both opened wide at once. Then he closed his mouth and frowned. “No. Not ever. Rather hot-tempered and often led astray by that temper of his. But never a coward.”

Then of whom did the centaurs speak? Who could have deceived both her and Proteus? If what Will said about Miranda’s birth father was true -- and how could she doubt his word on this? — then her uncle was brave and had never done aught wrong. He’d done only what he needed to do, defending his rights against all usurpers.

Would such a man resort to sleep spells and alliances with such vile creatures as those centaurs?

She thought not.

Who else was on the island, who might have commanded this evil? There was Caliban, poor Caliban, who couldn’t keep even himself safe. And there were the centaurs — their evil an unreasoning one, born of drink, and therefore unsuited to plotting and strategy.

And there were Will and Quicksilver, herself and the child.

None among these could be a powerful and magical manipulator of old setting Proteus's mind against his king, and laying sleep spells on Miranda.

Yet something or someone resided in the crux. That much was clear from the magical castle and from the way Miranda’s transport spell had fallen apart into many branches when they’d landed here.

Another magical power reigned here.

The mortal, looking concerned, patted her shoulder. “Lady, I told you true, your father was a villain. But evil is seldom inherited. You need not concern yourself. You’re not a villain.”

“No,” Miranda said, and such had never occurred to her. “And yet there’s something more in this,” she said. “I was wrong. The stories were wrong. At least they were wrong about mortals, who can be ugly and still be good and generous as you are,” she said, smiling at him. It seemed to her that the creature flinched at her statement, but, occupied with her own thoughts, pursuing the thread of her own reason, she ignored it.
 

Surely he knew he was ugly. The truth could never offend.
 

She took a deep breath. “But among elves, I still think the rule applies, that the beautiful must be virtuous. Else, why would all the stories insist on it? Why would all who tell stories make them lies? No. It must be that elven stories tell the truth as it is in elvenland and that, therefore, both must have solid virtue and right between them.”

The mortal opened his mouth, as though to speak, but she raised her hand, commanding silence.

“And, since you say that my uncle is innocent and I know that my love must be, that means that someone else has been playing upon Proteus's mind and making him imagine what isn’t so.

“Perhaps his father didn’t really die, but brought us here and here keeps your son captive, and here plays with our thoughts like a child with marbles.”

The mortal looked doubtful and opened his mouth again but then closed it. What meant he to say? And what did it matter? He was only a mortal. What could he truly understand of the affairs of elves?

“Be still,” Miranda said, "for I must think through this. This is matter for elf, not for mortals. Give me leave to reason.”

The mortal frowned at her words, then smiled, and his lips formed the word,
children.

She ignored him. There was a greater riddle that she must solve. But how?

She thought of her father. How would the Hunter solve this riddle?

In her mind, it seemed to Miranda she heard the Hunter encouraging her to practice the art of scrying — both the art of looking into the future for that which would almost surely happen and the art of looking far away with eyes not of the body.

From a very young age, Miranda had been able to scry, an ability the Hunter had taught her to cultivate, saying that such scrying, such reaching into the future, was a gift of the gods and not to be disdained.

To scry she’d need a pool of water, but those seemed abundant enough in the clearings around this strange forest.

“Come,” she said to the mortal and, reaching for his sleeve, pulled him unceremoniously. “Come, we’ll get to the bottom of this, yet, and find the reason for all.”

“But--” the human said.

“No. No. Mark what I do. We’ll find the truth.”

The human sighed, but walked after her, obediently.

Following gurgling water, she came to a pond fed by a small fountain and yet calm and reflective enough for her to see her face in the still surface.

She raised her hands and desired to see the interior of the castle.

The pool sparkled and shone beneath her hands, and Miranda jumped back scared.

What she’d believed was water was truly magic. Liquid magic. That which was but thought and invisible emanation on earth was here concentrated, made liquid, a physical form of a power more often guessed at than understood even by those that wielded it.

Scared she gaped at the water.

The pool seemed to move, agitate, like a whirlpool forming. Then it stopped and fogged over, like a summer morning, early, before the sun burned off the low vapors of the riverside.

Upon the fog a face formed, and for a moment Miranda frowned at it, for it seemed to her to be the reflection of Will’s face.

But then the face defined itself and she saw — her breath arrested upon her throat.

A very young man appeared upon the surface of the lake. He looked like Will and yet different.

He had the same golden falcon eyes, the same dark curls.

But, where Will’s dark curls had receded from his forehead, this youth’s framed a pale face in perfect proportion. And his skin was white and as smooth as Miranda’s own.

His shoulders were broader than Will’s. He wore a velvet suit of good cut — of elven cut, more exacting than any mortals’.

There was more to it, though Miranda could not articulate it. It danced in her thoughts, in images and feelings, suspended just beyond the reach of encompassing words.

There was pride in the golden eyes, certainty, and joy. It was, she thought, the look of a king gazing over his domain.

The young man stood at the white ramparts and looked out over the crux.

Miranda’s heart jumped within her, fluttering like a bird first longing to take wing, and her mind, foolishly, stopped being able to think at all, much less think clearly.

If this was her villain, oh, then, let her die steeped in his plots.

“Who is he?” she asked, but didn’t wait for a reply.

The scene upon the pond was coming into sharper focus, the surroundings of the young man becoming more defined.

Upon the ramparts of the castle the young man leaned over the white stone and looked out, his eyes clear and dreamy, as though he could see Miranda through all the fogs and fens, through all the greenery and dense forest intervening.

But Miranda gasped and blanched. Fear and surprise, joy and anguish commingled in her mind and heart, and gave her the sudden sense of being dropped head-first into an abyss. The standard that flew from the ramparts at the youth’s right hand--on the ramparts, a dark red flag fluttered, and upon it, delineated in midnight black stood the figure of a horse-mounted hunter, lifting up a horn to his lips.

Miranda knew this standard as she knew herself, as she knew the home of her raising, as she knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west.

“Father,” she said, feeling surprise and almost joy. But in saying it she froze.

For what being could have laid the trap upon the crux and taken over her magic, and done it all better than the all-powerful Hunter could? Who, better than the Hunter could deceive Proteus about the history of elvenkind? Who better could make Proteus hate his cousin?