Any Man So Daring (36 page)

He sagged within his bindings.

Quicksilver was asleep, or perhaps dead, though Will would assume asleep, since he’d heard the vile elf Proteus yesterday, expounding on the objective of all this plotting, his desire to kill Quicksilver.

If Quicksilver were already dead, Proteus would have felt it, and he’d have killed the elf princess and left, abandoning Will and Hamnet to their fate.

So, Quicksilver was alive yet, and Will must find a way to keep him so, and to thwart Proteus in his evil plans. Looking at Quicksilver, Will remembered how he’d hated and dreaded the elf.

He could not remember why.

 
Was it Quicksilver’s gracefulness he had hated? The capacity for moving like music made flesh? Or the glimmering moonlight hair? The gentle voice?

Faced with the likely death of all of those in that one being that embodied all, Will could but think how all of them were after all like a blessing on a harsh world.

Was the world not a better place for Quicksilver’s handsomeness? For Silver’s gentle seductiveness?

Hadn’t the world been better for having them in it? Wouldn’t it be a cold, barren place when they were dead?

Will looked at Quicksilver and felt a tear slide, warm and moist, down his cold face.

Had he truly, ever, been afraid of elves and magic — or afraid of not being afraid?

Had he been afraid of loving the Lady Silver too much, of loving the Lady who was also Quicksilver with his moonlight hair? Ah, but which of them scared him the more?

Two loves have I,
he thought
. Of comfort and despair, which like two spirits do suggest me still. The better angel is a man right fair, the worser spirit a woman colored ill.

Oh, it was not love like his love for Nan, but must he — a poet — not allow space in his heart for more fanciful love, more dream-like fantasy?

For all Will had — so often, so desperately — wished to hate Quicksilver, now, staring at the inanimate features of the king of fairyland, he could summon nothing but affection and sad, desperate fondness, like longing for a lost love, the glimmer of an extinguished dream.

Quicksilver still remained beautiful and composed, but Will couldn’t bring himself to envy him for it. For what was Quicksilver’s life but a constant wrestling between what he was — his fractured person — and the dark turmoil of his conniving relatives?

How could such a creature be happy? And what would almost eternal life mean to one such as Quicksilver? Oh, Quicksilver was safe from old age and disease, but treason slept at his feet and snarled at his ankles, and ate from his board every day of his life.

And yet he remained, beautiful and good. Good? How could an elf be good? The very thought surprised Will, raised on legends of the heathen, supernatural creatures. And yet, if an elf were good, it would be Quicksilver. Had he not restored Nan and Susannah to Will? Had he not come here for Hamnet?

“Will,” a voice said, a voice Will knew. “Will, you must help him or he
will
die and, with him, all the words die. You must free him. You must tell him to accept Silver back into himself.”

The voice was Marlowe’s, and it echoed, assured and clear, over the cool morning air, near as breath, real as a speeding heart.

No one else moved. Not Quicksilver, not Caliban, not even the centaurs who, their legs tucked under, their human torsos weirdly coiled, slept together in a large heap upon the forest floor.

Yet the voice was loud enough to wake the dead.

Marlowe’s laughter echoed in Will’s ears and now, by the side of the extinct fire, where the dinner had been cooked that Will had not been allowed to eat, Marlowe’s spirit took shape and form — an elegant form, an easy shape.
 

This was Marlowe at his best — a young man in a velvet suit and white lace shirt. His russet hair, tied back, framed his too-delicate features. Both his eyes looked intact, and Will asked himself why.

Was it the magic of the crux restoring Marlowe to what Marlowe once was?

“No,” Marlowe said, answering Will’s thought. “It is my son,” Marlowe said, and smiled. “Since I tried to save you and, thereby, paid my debt to exacting heaven, I can hear my son calling me heavenward. His voice makes me remember who I was, and what I could have been. But his voice is not enough to draw me away while yet my lot remains divided. So you must listen to me. I must save you. I must know that Quicksilver is saved and Silver with him. Silver would make an uncomfortable ghost, crawling between heaven and Earth. And without her, Quicksilver is less than half of himself. You must free him from this vile imprisonment. You must save him that she can return to him.”

Will raised his eyebrows. It was all he could do. Marlowe had ever been unmindful of human limitations, or for that matter of social limitations on his mad schemes. But this passed all. For couldn’t even Marlowe’s undead perception see that Will was tied up, that he was gagged, that he could not speak, much less perform magic?

Marlowe smiled. “Ah, but do you want to perform magic?” he asked. “For you see, Will, if you do, then all these binds are nothing. Magic is not words but intent. And, did you but wish it, that gag would fall, and you would be able to speak words that would reform the world.” The smile died down and Marlowe looked grave, serious, almost sad. “But you do not want it. You’ve ever been thus — a would-be poet, but at heart a burgher, attached to your own safety, unable to cross the line that divides your safe existence from danger unbound. Thus, you look at danger from the other side of a great river but stay, on your side of the river, watching the river of life run by you, while, on the bank, you remain dry and unaffected, thinking of nothing but your own safety.”

Marlowe sighed. “Perhaps you were right. My habit of jumping in and doing what the gods fear and the angels tremble to attempt got me early death and no more. And yet now, Will, now, if you remain as you’ve always been, you’ll lose all, while if you
dare
all can yet be saved. All. You, and Quicksilver and that son you claim to prize above yourself and, alas, also me.”

On those words the ghost vanished as if he’d never been.

Had Kit been there, or had Will dreamed him? And if he’d been there, had he told the truth? Was magic a matter of Will’s belief and not his words?

Had he told the truth? Was it a matter of Will’s believing and magic would be done? Was it a matter of his will power, not his knowledge, not his power?

Will thought on this as the centaurs awakened. He thought on it as, still bound, he was thrown over the back of the dappled stallion and Quicksilver over the back of the brown one. With Caliban trotting behind, they set off down the true path to the castle.

Could Will make his gag fall by wishing it?

He looked at Quicksilver, who appeared half dead, and tried to wish his gag away with all his mind.

He visualized his gag untying, falling off. He thought that he felt the cloth give, loosen upon his face.

Then Will thought of Quicksilver telling Will that if Will performed magic in the crux, then he would — forever — be magic even in the world of men.

Was that true?
Will thought, and the fear of that, the fear of that unwanted magic tainting his everyday existence, like a cold blade upon his neck, like a strangled fear at his throat, stopped his ability to concentrate.

He tried to move his lips, but the cloth was tight as ever over them.

Was he a coward?

Faith, he didn’t know, but he feared that he and Quicksilver and Hamnet and all would be lost, and Will would never test the limits of his courage, the bounds of his ability.

Oh he wished that Quicksilver could hear his thoughts, as Marlowe’s ghost could.

And in wishing so, in screaming
Quicksilver
, within his mind, he found that something happened.

It was as if the thought pushed on a barrier that, turning into a door, swung inward.

Quicksilver raised his head, looked at Will. Quicksilver’s eyes opened fully, their moss green depths trained on Will.

And his pale lips shaped, “Will?”

Scene Thirty Seven

Quicksilver, slung over the back of the brown centaur, jarred and jostled by the pace of the creature, as it trots down the true path.

Q
uicksilver heard Will call out to him and, opening his eyes, found Will’s gaze trained on him, those odd golden eyes that looked still as in Will’s youth, but now filled with such shock that it made Quicksilver want to laugh despite it all.

You heard me,
Will’s mind-voice echoed in Quicksilver’s mind.

Quicksilver smiled, nodded. How odd it felt — Will’s voice in his mind. How far he’d come that Will’s small attention, Will’s agreement to speak to him, even to mind-speak, made him so grateful that his eyes tingled with tears.

Oh, Silver had loved this mortal desperately.
 

But then, why did
Quicksilver
still feel this gentle enchantment towards the mortal with the falcon eyes, the receding hair, the fear of all things magical?

Marlowe says you must accept Silver, or you’ll both die,
Will said.

Marlowe?
Quicksilver thought, raising his eyebrows in surprise. What did Will mean?

He didn’t know if Will heard his thought, or just read his expression.

Will’s golden eyes became intent, fixed, and Will’s mind-voice, hesitant and unpracticed, whispered in Quicksilver’s thoughts,
Marlowe’s ghost. I’ve been seeing him for days now. He says he gave me his poetry and, with such a bequest or the good thereof, came his inability to go on towards heaven or hell. Now he wants to save us that he might be freed and join his son in heaven.

Will frowned, and his eyes showed doubt of what he, himself, said.
At least,
he thought,
that’s what he claims, but, faith, I believe that he still loves...you.

Quicksilver laughed at this, for here was the wonder.

In her life, Silver had loved no one but Will. In his life, even Quicksilver’s love for his wife paled in comparison to this affection he’d caught from Silver like a catching sickness. And yet, Will spoke of love for either aspect of Quicksilver as a strange thing, incomprehensible, to be pondered and thought of and not fully believed.
 

Will--staid, sane Will--could never love an elf, much less a divided elf, and half of it a male.

And Marlowe, whom Silver had used for her pleasure, whom Quicksilver had used for his plaything, had loved Quicksilver so truly that, having died for that love, he still did not consider it enough.

He says,
Will said
. That unless you can become Silver again, become one with her, you will die. This seems to pain him.

“Die,” Quicksilver whispered. “Die? What can I do but die?”
For Proteus will kill me today. He will kill all of us.

Lifting his head at an awkward angle, he saw the white castle at the center of the crux moving ever closer as the centaurs trotted towards it.

Its white, tall towers defied even the best elf architecture.

Quicksilver had heard the conversation between Proteus and the centaurs yesterday. He knew what would happen when they got there, when they joined Proteus and Miranda there.

Proteus would use Miranda to protect himself from the vengeance of the hill and with one murder rid himself of all rival claimants to the throne of fairyland. And there was nothing Quicksilver could do to stop him.

After a night of writhing and trying to think his way out of this cunning trap, Quicksilver had found that perfect despair that was like calm at the eye of a storm.

Miranda was powerful enough, faith, to shield Proteus from the results of killing a king of the hill. Though chances were she would die from it.

And if not... if not, Proteus intended to kill her, that he could reign alone.

Oh, the poor besotted girl. Quicksilver pitied her most heartily, for he knew what it was like to love in vain. But he knew not what he could do about it. Not while he was wrapped in this net that suppressed all his magical powers.

He watched the centaurs talk to each other, even as they galloped on the smooth road, ignoring the captives on their backs.

He thought they would not ignore Silver thus, and felt a momentary relief that Silver had not fallen to their crude mercies, for hot-blooded centaurs always craved human or elf female flesh.

But on the heels of that very relief, a contrary thought crept. For Silver would get them to remove the net. Quicksilver would wager on it.

Centaurs had ever had an eye for elven beauty. If only Quicksilver could change into Silver—perhaps confuse the centaurs with the change...did they know he could change? He hadn’t changed in the last ten years, never in public...perhaps he could convince them that Quicksilver had escaped and left a beautiful girl elf in his place.

Then, perhaps, the centaurs would be stupid enough to free Silver. Oh, they would free her only to rape her, or so the legends said, although they all spoke of inebriated centaurs and these were sober.

But if they freed Silver, Quicksilver’s magic would be enough to oppose them.