All Night Awake (14 page)

Not finding him, she grabbed the arm of Igneous, Malachite’s friend and also a changeling.

Igneous was as blond as Malachite was dark, but his features also showed that blurring of perfection, that inexactitude that denoted a human-born elf.

However, unlike Malachite, he looked unconcerned by the fairy blight, or no more concerned than the true-born elves to whom he spoke. Resplendent in a bloodred nightshirt, he talked and gossiped with the crowding lords, venting opinions about foreign attack, or friendly fire, or perhaps a civil war amid servant fairies.

Ariel grabbed his arm and said, “Milord Igneous.”

Sobriety and seriousness came ill to Igneous’s face, with its small nose and broad, mobile mouth, but he strived for it, facing her. “Milady.”

“Have you seen Milord Malachite?”

“Nay, milady. Or rather, even before you asked, er, ordered us out of your room, Malachite walked out and, I thought, as far as I could discern, back to his room.”

“Thank you, milord,” Ariel said, and though knowing that her manner had startled the elf, she knew he would resume his peacock-bright preening as soon as she turned her back.

“Ariel, what’s this? And where is Quicksilver?” An elf of imposing presence pushed in front of Ariel. He looked not like Quicksilver but much like Sylvanus used to look: dark hair and beard, dark eyes, oval face, small pulpy mouth.

This was Vargmar, older brother to the late Oberon, Quicksilver’s uncle.

“I don’t know what
this
is, milord,” Ariel said, all cold disdain. “But milord the king, I wager, is attempting to remedy it.”

“Bah, king!” Vargmar said. “The impudent brat. A bastard of Puck’s, a low shape changer. Too young to reign. Too unstable to control even himself, less this mighty kingdom.”

Ariel would not argue with Quicksilver’s uncle. She turned her back on him and, aware that—around him—a small group of malcontents had started to gather, she headed for Malachite’s room.

Malachite’s bedroom door was down the hallway from Quicksilver’s, where he could be ever ready to run errands at the whim of his inconstant lord.

She knocked on it once, twice, knowing that she was watched by the entire court of Elvenland and a sleep-befuddled centaur in a night cap.

Twice more, and a faint answer came. “Yes?”

“Lord Malachite, I would fain speak with you,” she yelled.

Malachite opened the door. His pale face looked draggled and tearstained, his eyes swollen, his lips thickened with prolonged crying. His hands trembled, and his lips, too.

Ariel heard questions fly through the crowd, and fictions, too, about Malachite having done magic that caused the servants’ death.

Malachite raised lachrymose eyes to her, “You wish to speak to me
here
?”

Ariel shook her head. “In your room,” she said.
“Milord.”

From his scared looks she imagined that he thought she believed the crowd. She pushed him into his room, where he went reluctantly, like a lamb to the slaughter.

The room was small and Spartanly furnished: a narrow oaken bed, covered in green silk, a narrow desk, a small trunk where Malachite, no doubt, kept his personal effects.

Only a large, whole-body mirror in a corner distinguished Malachite and the room as receivers of the king’s favor.

Yet, the view of green trees through the large, sparkling glass window, the warmth and cleanliness of the room, all these were what Malachite might never have aspired to, had the elves not kidnaped him from his cradle in Stratford so many years ago, leaving in his place a charmed piece of oak that to mortal eyes had looked like a sickly babe who had, presently, died.

“Milord, tell me why this is happening,” Ariel said.

He trembled worse, and gasped. “Lady, what is happening?”

“Do not mock me, milord, you know well. The servants are dying and a plague, a lack of power, clutches at the heart of Fairyland. Why, milord?”

Trembling and pale, Malachite shook his head. “I have done naught,” he said. “Naught with magic.”

Ariel felt her own lips press into a tight, tight line. “I never believed
you
had.”

And on those words Malachite paled yet more, when he should have been relieved. Ariel noted the change and sighed. “Milord, I cannot protect the hill as my lord ordered me if you do not tell me what’s causing this.”

“I promised not to tell you,” Malachite said.

“Promised? To whom could you have promised such?”

“The king,” Malachite said. “The king,” and his body trembled like a leaf in a storm.

Ariel stared at him, uncomprehending. “Why would the king exact such a promise?”

But he only threw himself on the floor and, pressing his face to the cool tiles, murmured, “Lady, I cannot tell you. Lady, the king made me swear . . . . I’m not to tell you.”

“Swear? Swear silence? What would you keep from me? What would
he
keep from me?”

But Malachite answered not, and in Ariel’s mind, a monstrous idea bloomed, like a poisonous flower upon an unsuspecting night.

“If your lord were here,” Ariel said, “would then magic be whole?”

Malachite gave her a sideways look, a small, surprised look, as if this thought had only now come to his own mind, as if he’d never thought it else.

“If he were here, then would all be well,” he said in a whisper.

Ariel took in breath. The air smelled still and dusty, as though the servant fairies, in dying, had tainted the very atmosphere with the mustiness of death, the dust of the tomb.

This was all caused by Quicksilver’s absence? But then why had Quicksilver gone to London? Why?

She remembered Malachite, pale and drawn, coming back from the confrontation at the boundary. How nervous he’d looked. How equivocal.

The menace had not been what they’d expected, he’d said. They’d taken care of it, he’d said.

But he looked like he lied, with his face tense and his eyes darting here and there, firefly afraid.

And Ariel had believed the expression and not the words. Fool Ariel.

Malachite, truthful Malachite, a changeling with hardly any power of his own, had told the truth while appearing to lie, and thus had he lied to his queen, while proclaiming verities.

They’d taken care of the menace indeed, which meant that Quicksilver must have gone to London upon his own pursuit. But what pursuit of his could cause this blight?

Malachite had lied with his hands and his eyes, and his sharp, timorous glances.

Quicksilver, irked at Ariel’s resistence, smarting from her offer to help him, which had insulted his insecure pride, Quicksilver had rushed to London, like a fool to soothe his offended love with . . . what?

Ariel was not such an innocent nor did she live as retired from the gossip of the hill as Quicksilver thought. She knew well enough who was in London. Will Shakespeare. Will. Shakespeare. Will on whom Silver had doted and for whom Quicksilver, himself, had borne quite an unseemly love.

That explained the blight and the crops withering in the fields, and this strange, humid heat that seemed to suffocate even as it warmed.

Ariel remembered well enough, from her childhood, the epic fights that had shaken the palace.

Unlike herself and Quicksilver, Quicksilver’s parents, Queen Titania and the great Oberon, had made no vow of fidelity to each other, nor would they have kept it if they had.

Yet, their jealousy was as furnace-hot as their mutual love was fierce, and their separate affairs and joint raging had shaken the foundations of the palace, the roots of Arden Woods.

And when they argued thus, ever, the disturbed magic had put a chill in the air, brought unseasonable warmth or cold upon the nearby humans, threw the spheres into inharmonious clashing.

Nothing like the blight had happened, but then Oberon and Titania had never separated. He’d never stopped loving her, nor she him till death had overtaken them together one night, in a sacred glade.

Ariel remembered the cold glare of Quicksilver’s moss green eyes, and his quick, impatient step as he left her that night.

Not there, any longer, the soft touch of their honeymoon. Not there, any longer, his eye pliant to love and quick to find favor.

No.

Quicksilver had
left
her. He cared no more. His love was dead and would not return.

And from the death of that love—from the divided powers of the hill—there came the blight that killed the weaker members of the elven realm.

“It is Will Shakespeare, is it not?” Ariel asked. “My lord has gone to him, has he not?”

Malachite scrambled up from the floor, and stared at her with uncomprehending eyes. “He homed in on the thought pattern of Will Shakespeare, sure,” Malachite said. “But only as a beacon to be found in a stormy sea.”

Or as a light of love, a taper, to light his way bedward. “This is a blight of unlove, a cursed blight. My lord has left us, has he not?” Ariel asked.

Malachite looked scared, but it was an odd fear, filled with a quickening of understanding behind the bold green eyes.

Something like hope? Or simply understanding?

Perhaps Malachite, himself, hadn’t understood what happened till now.

“My lord loves only you. Sure, he might stray but—” Malachite said, his voice low. “But I’m sure my lady . . .” He hesitated, and his voice broke.

Truthful Malachite, Ariel thought, who could tell no untruth, found lies coming oily and evasive to his mouth. He looked away from his queen, and like a child who knows he’s lying and doesn’t expect to convince, he said, “He loves you only, mistress. Beware, oh, beware jealousy, milady, for it is the green-eyed monster that mocks the meat upon which it feeds.”

Too late came his warning, too late his halfhearted assurance, for—already imagining Quicksilver changing to Lady Silver, imagining Silver or Quicksilver himself cavorting with a human in some shady London purlieu—Ariel could feel jealousy tearing at her heart like a hungry beast.

Outside, in the hallway, the centaur waited, tapping his hooves nervously upon the marble floor. He leaned in close to Ariel as she left Malachite’s room.

His hair smelled of olive oil and strange perfumes.

“It is a curse, is it not?” he asked. “This kingdom is cursed.”

Ariel nodded, not knowing what she did.

Scene 12

A street in Shoreditch, dark and narrow, hemmed by old buildings in dire need of painting. The street is deserted in the early morning hours, before sunrise. Many of the houses are boarded and bear the plague seal. Quicksilver walks in front of the sign for a hostelry: The Golden Lion. His light blue cloak billows in the early morning breeze, but his hair falls limp from the unnatural warmth and humidity of this unhealthy summer.

Q
uicksilver followed Sylvanus’s magical pattern here. The pattern and marks of Sylvanus’s dark power, which were to an elf’s souls like a signature to men: indelible and unmistakable.

He’d followed it through the dark night of men—the day of elves, feeling and sensing his way, darkly, amid the confusion of human souls and human minds, some vile enough to rival Sylvanus’s.

But he had it now. It was here.

Sylvanus lodged here, or hid here, in the upper floor of this ramshackle building.

Quicksilver pounded on the door. “Holla,” he called. “Awake within.”

For a while nothing answered him, then there was the rumble and knocking of furniture being pushed out of the way, and a low voice that approached while muttering.

“Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you’ll sweat for’t.”

Quicksilver knocked again, impatient.

“Knock, knock! Who’s there, in the other devil’s name?” The voice on the other side of the door neared very slowly, as if the speaker walked erratically. “Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator,” the voice within muttered.

Quicksilver knocked in earnest.

“Knock, knock; never at quiet!” The voice was now right on the other side of the door, and Quicksilver could hear, with it, the sliding and thumping of locks and deadbolts.

The voice muttered still, “What are you? But this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.”

The door started to open, but before it could, a voice called, “Quicksilver.”

Quicksilver looked up at a face that appeared on the window, in the second floor.

It was a face Quicksilver knew and had seen, at Arden revels in the green forest. It was the man from Stratford, the mortal who courted Peaseblossom and often came to join the fairy dance.

He looked like a man of Stratford, and open enough, with a round face and round, pale blue eyes.

But now, superimposed on those familiar features, another face moved, another set of features held sway: sharp, features, lupine in hunger and elongated with ill desire.