Any Man So Daring (37 page)

Oh, if only Quicksilver could change into Silver....

He reached inside him for the memories of Silver, for Silver’s warm affections, and tried to shape her from the effluvium she’d left behind.

Scene Thirty Eight

Proteus and Miranda walking down the true road, towards the white castle at the center of the crux.

A
s Miranda and Proteus walked the true road, drawing nearer the castle, Miranda tried to discern her father’s standard upon the towers, but the flagpole over the castle was empty.
 
And, try as she might, she could not see -- upon the ramparts -- even a trace of brown curls, or the glimmer of those broad shoulders:
 
of the mortal raised as prince of elfland, as the Hunter’s own pupil.

Had she imagined it? Had she imagined all?

Her dread, her grief, her anger, beat within her like warring tides, and made her wonder about her sanity.

Still she smiled, and kept her voice even and low.

And tried to slow Proteus down.

For though she was sure of being prepared, though she was sure of her power, she feared that her death was waiting by those white ramparts.

“Wait a while, love,” she said to Proteus as he strode ahead of her. “Wait a while. For my feet hurt and I’m all out of breath.”

“Miranda, there is not time to wait,” Proteus said. As he spoke, he pressed on in broad strides, at an almost-canter. “Miranda, we must press on, for the day is short and after this day will we forever be part of the crux, bonded to it by magic and unable to live as ourselves. If you prize me and our future happiness, we must press on.”

Miranda sighed and pressed on, for what could she do? What could she say that would justify her dread and not give away what she knew of him?

Yet as the castle drew near she felt something falling over her — a heaviness, like a blanket that muffled her thoughts and sensations and made her feel as though she were walking, asleep, through a dreary, sleeping world.

Had she not heard the conversation the night before, she’d have thought she was tired.

But as it was, she knew her disease for its symptoms -- a compulsion upon her. She pushed at it with her will and held it at bay with her anger.

She wondered if Proteus could feel her resistance.

It seemed to Miranda that -- now and then -- he stared at her doubtfully, out of the corner of his eye.

She would gladly have told him what she thought of him and ended this deadly charade.

She was tired, she was hungry, she was scared. The world in which she’d longed to live, the world that had seemed so enticing in her solitude had proven bewildering and passing strange. It was but an unknowable land, populated by people that belied all tales.

How could anyone, human or elf, find her way amid these beings that deceived with their very appearance and lied even to themselves?

But she was all that stood between Proteus and sure death for all his captives, sure death for the unending worlds.

She had to stay free. She had to muster all her strength for the duel that she would have to fight.

For now that her uncle was captive, of all of Proteus's intended victims, only she had the power to oppose him.

Scene Thirty Nine

Quicksilver, bouncing on the back of the centaur.

Q
uicksilver abstracted himself from surrounding reality, from the approaching castle where he’d meet his death, from the centaurs and their stink of hot, sweaty horse.

He thought of Silver as he never had, as a part of himself as inextricable, as true as Quicksilver.

Had he ever wished himself rid of Quicksilver? No, for that would have been madness.

Then why had he thought he could be rid of Silver? How had he thought he could survive without her?

Yet, from his first conscious thought, from his first moment of realizing that he was not like his brother, his parents or the other elves around him, he’d wanted to be just Quicksilver --and no Silver.

And how strange it was — Quicksilver thought now — that Silver had never wished to be rid of Quicksilver. The thought had never crossed her mind.

How strange,
Quicksilver thought.

He thought of Silver. He looked at Will and remembered Silver’s love for Will and how, even now, Silver couldn’t help but think Will attractive. For Silver loved more than Will’s body.

In the timorous mortal, she loved the glimmer of unbound genius, the hope of a soul too large to be contained in any time or place. It wasn’t yet true. Will was now small and self-contained, keeping himself within narrow, safe boundaries. But to elf sight it was obvious how large the soul loomed within — how brightly it could shine if it were allowed.

He thought of Silver, naked, crying by the pool of magic.

All he could think, all he could feel of her, he imagined in his mind in exquisite detail.

Then he attempted to slip into the memory as though it were a dress, a favorite suit.

The net that, upon him, prevented any magic, could not prevent his change. He knew that. Silver was not some magical transformation, but another side of him, and it should be as easy to become her, as it was to breathe or smile or talk. Even when, before, he’d been deprived of his magic, he’d always been able to change.

Though he’d wished not to. Oh, what a fool he’d been.

But now Silver’s aspect felt unaccustomed, like a tight dress that no longer fits.

It was as though — in a featureless plane — Quicksilver pursued the fleeing Silver, calling after her, while she, a beloved phantom, ran ahead of him — ever ahead, ever out of his reach.

She’d not listen to him.

He thought back on Vargmar’s execution, when she’d severed herself from him. It seemed to her that on remembering it, he heard her voice in his mind, calling, “Wait, wait. Don’t give the defeated a martyr around whom they might hatch fresh plots. Exile him, rather, disgrace him, and then shall he be nobody.”

If her voice had thus been in his mind, he’d ignored her.

And what a fool he’d been. Her solution, unorthodox and against the cannon of the kings of fairyland, might have worked. His had surely failed.

How he wished he’d listened to her.

As he thought this, it seemed to him that Silver’s phantom in his mind turned and stopped running, and smiled at him.

He remembered all the times that Silver had led him astray, every time Silver had played him false and dashed Quicksilver’s planning on the shores of her uncontrollable behavior.

Yet, if Silver was himself — as she must be — it was Quicksilver who’d gone astray himself.

And just as many times, she’d served him well.

Why, did a man whose hand dropped a coin blame the hand and forthwith punish it? Nay, he knew his hand was but part of himself. It was madness to think of it as separate.

And so it was with Quicksilver and the Lady Silver. For Silver was himself.

But he must change. He must.

Thus thinking, he forced himself into the shape of his memories of Silver.

For a while nothing happened, and then it seemed to Quicksilver that something ripped, some resistance broke.

He felt his form change within the net.

Taking a deep breath, Silver let her voice erupt, high and melodious, from her lips. “Oh, help. Help me.”

The centaurs stopped.

Will, laid across the centaur next to Silver’s, opened his eyes almost to splitting.

Silver smiled at him. How beautiful Will’s eyes were, and how scared he looked.

She would swear that beneath the kerchief that bound his mouth, Will attempted to grin.

A dreadful longing for Will filled her. Oh, what she’d not give to touch his face and kiss his lips one more time. One last time?

“Lady, who are you?” the centaur over whose back Silver was lain asked, turning back his broad, barbaric face.

Silver smiled at him. She made her voice small, shaky and as full of fear as it wished to be. “I don’t know. I am but a common elf, and of a sudden snatched, from my palace of delights, I found myself here. I don’t know how this happened, how this came to be.”

“It’s a trick,” said the dappled centaur. “He’s changed his aspect.”

But the brown centaur looked back, derision in his voice, “How could he, when he has the net of Circe upon him?”

His fellow shook his head. “And yet he did.”

“He did not.”

Silver felt Quicksilver’s anxious fear climbing within her.

The centaurs are suspicious,
Quicksilver thought.
This won’t go well.

Hush,
she thought, and she tried to calm him, while she said aloud, “I know not of whom you talk, not what this awful device is, on which I find myself imprisoned. Oh, free me that I might go in peace.”

The dappled centaur turned around and reached with eager hands for the lady. His fingers felt rough, hot, and eager on Silver’s shoulders, clawing at the net.

But his friend moved out of the way, pulling Silver from him. “No. Do not. How could he transport himself and substitute another with Circe’s net upon him? Think. Do not do what he wishes you to, do not. Or all will be lost.”

“Please, let me go,” Silver screamed.

Inside her mind, Quicksilver whispered,
They never will; we’ll all die here. How ineffective you are. Why did I want you back? Oh, that I’d been a single being.

“Please free me,” Silver said, her desperation betraying itself in her voice.

“Do not,” the centaur said. “I don’t know why, but I know it’s him, the old tyrant who has kept our people pining and rotting under his dark rule. If we free her, we free him, and then we shall all die -- stallion and mare and tender foal. His vengeance will fall upon our people and make no distinction between guilty and innocent.”

It is not my fault,
Quicksilver protested.
Why are they attacking me for this? Oppressed? Why, they are foreigners, and they live as they ever have. They must have someone civilized keeping them under control for they are, themselves, brutish and unruly.

“And for this he will kill us if he gets free. Be not a fool, Chiron.”

“Please, let me go,” Silver said, and cried now. The centaurs' words and Quicksilver’s foolish prattle all filled her with fear and despondence.

But the centaurs looked at her tears and were not moved, and Quicksilver’s anger fought within her, and she felt herself being pushed away, pushed, while Quicksilver shoved in to take her place.

Quicksilver lay, exhausted, atop the horse, the net enclosing him in its lethal embrace. Sweat ran down his back in freezing rivulets. He’d accomplished nothing.

Chiron laughed. “See? I told you it was the old tyrant?”

Why did they call him a tyrant? He’d done nothing other sovereigns of the hill hadn’t. He’d been no more, no less, than the king of the hill.

Tears sprang to his eyes at the centaurs’ coarse laughter.

Had this role of king, into which he’d fitted himself, like water into an empty, been unworthy?

Would he have done better with his flawed, double nature, than in the diamond perfection of the king’s role?

How could that be?

It could not, he told himself, closing his tear-stung eyes. It could no be true that Quicksilver’s ancestors were unworthy and that flawed Quicksilver and Silver, conjoined, would have made a better king.

Else, all the legends of elf were false. Else, all history was a lie. How could he doubt all that he’d been taught? How could he dare start afresh, as though all his ancestors had been as — or more — unworthy than he knew himself to be?

Scene Forty