Any Man So Daring (15 page)

If the boy were anywhere, Quicksilver thought, as the legends he’d drunk with his mother’s milk went around in his head, he would be in that castle upon that hill.

Quicksilver couldn’t feel his presence through the maelstrom of magic and loosened, irate power. But he knew the boy would be there.

For where else to keep a captive, by tradition and lore, but in the castle in the center of fairyland...or the crux?

Well, and if the boy was there, there must Quicksilver go.

Straightening against the power in the wind, Quicksilver tugged on his black doublet, trying to make it look severe and elegant once more, despite his tumble and the sand-laden wind.

He’d won a war. He could surely rescue a mere mortal boy from the center of the crux.

Yet if the crux truly gave power to humans....

Would the boy be a great mage? And how would he take Quicksilver’s intrusion?

Quicksilver shook his head. No matter. The only reason any elf could have kidnapped the boy would have been to inflict pain upon Will and, through Will, upon Quicksilver.

Quicksilver didn’t know why he still felt pain at the thought of Will’s being hurt. But he did feel pain and that foolish fondness from which he cringed had made Will’s son the target of this plot.

So the fault was Quicksilver’s and Quicksilver must pay the debt.

Having thus wrought Hamnet’s doom, he must retrieve him from it.

He’d never yet shirked responsibility. He’d fought for his hill, his people, his kingdom. He’d put almost his last relative to death for the sake of his responsibility.

As he thought of this, Quicksilver felt very tired and all but tottered upon his feet.
 

Yet he must go to the castle. It was his duty to Will.

Just as he walked towards the jungle, which seemed to sense his approach and grow thicker and greener and darker as he stepped towards it, someone fell in front of him, with a splash of sand and a renewed fretting of the disturbed magical winds.

 
Turning, through the haze of sand, Quicksilver beheld William Shakespeare.

Scene Thirteen

The same beach, as Will lands, and Quicksilver stands, amazed, staring at Will. Around them, the sand-laden wind howls, and the magic sea roars in their ears so loudly that Will’s scream on landing on the sand is lost amid the fury of wind and sea.

W
ill landed on his stomach on the fine, white sand.

Where was he?

He pushed himself up on his elbows.

His hair, shorter than it had been in the past, yet was too long for this wind. It whipped into his face and gave him but a broken view of Quicksilver, interrupted by strands of darkness, as though the darkness of Quicksilver’s own heart were thus translated to Will’s view of him.

“Where is my son?” Will asked, and his mouth filled with sand as he asked it.

Quicksilver looked bewildered, shaking his head, his eyes all wide and innocent.
 

He looked still, Will noted, as he had fourteen years ago, when Will had first met him, in Arden wood.

The elf looked young, like a mortal of twenty, no more. His blond hair, whipped by the wind, might be shining, molten silver. His features also, smooth and untelling of time, were perfect with that perfection that mortal man can’t reach.

Only his eyes looked different, older — perhaps wearier.

Moss green and wide open as if in surprise, they strained to make Will believe that Quicksilver knew nothing of Hamnet’s location, that Quicksilver had not kidnapped Will’s son, that Quicksilver was innocent as the newborn babe or the fawn taking his first steps upon the forest floor.

Will could not, would not believe it.

How could he believe Quicksilver innocent, when he knew the creature better than the creature — dual and deceiving as he was — knew himself?

Will pushed up on his arms, and unfolded himself to stand against air that seemed to weigh upon him like water.
 

“Where is my son?” he asked again. “What have you done with him?”

In what strange land did Quicksilver mean to imprison Hamnet? What did the king of Fairyland want with Will’s boy?

Or meant he to take the boy and, for his love, control the father whom Quicksilver had never managed to ensnare fully?

Quicksilver opened his hands as if to display his lack of weapons, the kind of weapons mankind must use.

But creatures such as this needed no weapons. They had treacherous magic at their call, and sudden wounding in the grasp of their unholy power.

Will clenched his fists tight and took a step towards the king of elves.

Either because of the expression on Will’s face, or because he knew his own guilt, Quicksilver stepped back.

Step on step, Will advanced on Quicksilver thus and step on step Quicksilver retreated.

Oh, the elf was guilty enough, Will would wager. Else, why would he retreat before Will’s advance?

Bold advance and foolhardy confidence -- force! -- befit Quicksilver better than such hasty retreat.

The first time he’d met Quicksilver, Quicksilver had worn his other aspect, that of dark, seductive Lady Silver.

In that aspect had he seduced Will, seduced him and led him like a babe through the forest of desire. The lust had been a blind, though, a mere deceit, and no love hid beneath the Lady’s blandishments.

Instead, she’d used her pale body, her dark hair and the delights of immortal love to lure Will to kill the king of fairies. Which, if Will had done it, would have proven fatal not just to Will but to his whole family.

Will had been only nineteen and, untried and gullible, had barely escaped the Lady’s coil.

How could he believe such a being innocent?

Quicksilver opened his hands wide, and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know where your son is, Will. I followed him here, true, but...”

He’d
followed
Hamnet here? Was Will to believe that Quicksilver, King of elves, sovereign of fairies, Lord of the Realms Above The Air and Beneath The Hills Of Avalon, didn’t know the boy had been kidnapped ? Didn’t know when a mortal had been pulled into fairyland?

Again Will stepped forward, and again Quicksilver stepped back, step on step each of them moving as though locked in the steps of an arcane dance.

The second time Will’s and Quicksilver’s paths had crossed, Quicksilver had callously allowed Kit Marlowe to go to his death to give back to Quicksilver the throne of fairyland.

Thus had the greatest poet in the world died. Thus, had Kit Marlowe’s flame of life and poetry been extinguished, to keep Quicksilver upon an immaterial throne, in a land most illusory.

For this, had Will been saddled with Marlowe’s ghost, Will’s words forever tainted with Marlowe’s immortal whisperings upon Will’s mortal ear.

Will’s rage pounded in his mind, blinded him to all but the need to hurt this creature who looked yet young while Will had started aging and declining onto his inevitable grave.

This heartless creature, this cold being, who would remain young and unchanged centuries after Will had become dust amid the dust of his ancestors.

Quicksilver’s youth as much as his deceit tempted Will to raging fury. With raging fury, Will leapt. He found his hands wrapped around the smooth flesh, the pale neck of the sovereign of fairyland.

“Where is my son, you cursed thing?” Will screamed, as his hands squeezed Quicksilver’s neck. “Where is my son, you spawn of darkness, you being of deceit, you tormenter of mortals?”

His hands around Quicksilver’s neck made as if to squeeze the magical life from the creature’s body.

But Quicksilver’s hands came up, endowed with the greater strength of his estate. His hands, though slim and delicate-looking, had the strength of iron binds as they pried at Will’s fingers, loosening them from his throat.

Yet, Quicksilver’s voice flowed hoarsely through his lips as he said, “Cease this madness. You gain nothing by killing me. I do not know where your son is, and it was to save him that I came from my throne and safe court in fairyland to this, the magical crux, the most dangerous part of all the magical world.”

“Liar!” Will screamed, his rage still streaming through him as a swollen river will stream through its bed, ravaging the banks. “Liar.”

For who would have kidnapped Hamnet but with Quicksilver’s consent, nay, by his order?

In Will’s mind, filled with rage and tormented by the continuous howling of the magical wind, Quicksilver was guilty.

Yet, Quicksilver opened his hands, and opening his hands, showed them void of weapons and clean of that magic sparkle that could, unawares, throw such fury into the world of mortals. “Will, forebear,” he said. He spoke slowly, like a man who contains his anger beneath a net of propriety and, thus containing it, like a man who for a moment has fought a raging lion to a standstill keeps for a second at bay the disaster that is sure to follow. “Will, forebear. For the sake of the love I once bore you, for the sake the of the love you once said--”

“Love?” Will looked around, as though somewhere, mid the howling wind, the rising waves, someone might lurk who knew what the elf spoke of. Who guessed in Quicksilver’s words their true meaning. Someone who knew that, in Lady Silver’s form, Quicksilver had ensnared Will in the thrall of lust and come close to ensnaring him in the thrall of love.
 

Knowing the truth of that almost-love, the soft vulnerability of such feelings that he had, once, allowed to trap his heart, Will spat out the word as though it were foul, a venom absorbed into his body and only escaped by divine grace. “Love! You talk of love? Know this, then, that the love I bear you can afford no better term than this: Thou art a villain.”

Quicksilver blinked at the insult, his face reflecting something like true surprise.
 

But what was true, and what lies, with these creatures of illusion?

Will blinked at the hurt in the moss-green eyes of his foe, at his foe’s sudden paling, at his injured look, like that of a child punished for no reason.

He blinked in surprise and, feeling the first softening of sympathy, willed himself to see Quicksilver as he was, all poison and self-interest, all darkness and conniving.

Yet Quicksilver resisted Will’s desires and stood there — untouched, beautiful, just as he had been in that long-ago youth that, to Will, seemed like something long ago, a dream had by someone else, in which Will had been but a supporting character, an imperfect actor upon the stage.

Quicksilver looked like what he had been — hair of spun silver, pale skin like marble, now coloring on the high cheekbones after the paleness that had followed Will’s insult.

Quicksilver’s lips yet remained pale, but when they opened, the voice that came from them was controlled, exact. In its controlled, exact measure, neither low nor loud, it yet obscured the voice of the wind, the howling of the sand-laden storm. “Will, the reason that I have to love you, the very great gift loving you was to me once, doth much excuse the appertaining rage to such an insult. Villain I’m not. Therefore fare you well. I see thou knowest me not. Get you out of here. You belong not in the crux. Go. I’ll bring your son to you.”

Thus speaking, Quicksilver raised his hands, moving them through the air in precise movements that Will had long ago learned meant invoking magic. Fairykind magic, invoked at need and with almost no price, save a small depletion of the whole of magic in the hill.

Normally, when Quicksilver did this, sparks of magic flew between his fingers, the fatuous-fire of magic and of power that foretold the effect that magic would have on the natural world.

Now Will saw the magic, but did not feel it. How could that be?

Quicksilver was the king of the hill and had at his disposal such strength and force, such power and might, that all he had to do was express a desire and it would come true.

Thinking this, knowing that what Quicksilver wished was Will out of here, out of his sight, out of this magical place where yet the elves planned to ensnare Hamnet, he jumped.

Jumping, he landed on Quicksilver, and to his surprise Quicksilver fell beneath his weight, and thumped to the hard sand with a most human noise of injured flesh. A most human grunt escaped from between his immortal lips.

Will again felt confused. What he expected to happen turned out very different from his expectation. Yet was that not the nature of these creatures? Did they not cast their veil of illusion around hapless mortals and make a mockery and a shadowland of what had been rational expectation and reasoned reality?

“Oh, villain, this shall not excuse the injuries that thou hast done me.” Will raised his fist above Quicksilver’s still, pale face as if to strike it. Why did the king of elvenland look so cold, so dispirited — nay, so scared, like a child lost in the night who knows not what to do?

Were those tears that trembled on those moss-green eyes, giving them the look of forest lakes, or yet of a forest submerged, an Atlantis lost?

Will brought his fist down and, instead, took his hands to Quicksilver’s doublet, grabbed him by the padded shoulders, and shook him, now hitting him against the hard, packed sand, now lifting him from it.