Any Man So Daring (35 page)

She was sure that was what he meant to do tonight — avenge the insult they’d offered Miranda.

Her heart beating so hard that she fancied Proteus would hear it and turn around to look at her, she followed him with cautious feet, careful not to step on the brittle twig or the rustling leaf.

There.

The centaurs were within her view — surely also within Proteus's view — and his stride acquired a greater confidence. He would now lay waste their treasons and their dark plans. He would avenge his lady’s honor. Watch how he tilted his head up in angered pride. Watch how he lengthened his stride. Watch how confidently he called forth, “Hola!”

She almost called to him. Almost. Almost offered to fight by his side.

But in the glimmering beacon of the lantern, she saw in the clearing not only the three centaurs but someone else whose presence so surprised her, she all but lost her power of speech.

For amid the centaurs, Caliban sat. A sullen and bedraggled Caliban, to be sure — a Caliban hunched upon the ground in the pose he assumed when he’d been denied some treat that he craved.

But it was Caliban nonetheless, and how could Caliban thus consort with his mortal enemies?
 

With those who, but yesterday, had sought to eat him?

Oh, Miranda would go insane. She felt as though the whole world spun around her in drunken revelry, doing the improbable and glorying in the impossible.

Oh, she understood neither mortal, nor elf, nor troll. Was all the world but herself mad?

And on the ground, near Caliban, two bundles lay trussed and immobile. One of them — her heart leapt in shock at the sight — was her uncle, covered in the net that she’d taken from Proteus. The magical net she’d thrown away the first day at the crux. The magical net she thought was well lost.

And the other... The other was Will, the mortal who but yesterday had saved Miranda from harm. He was tied, hands and feet, together, and his mouth covered with a cloth. No doubt to keep Will from invoking that devastating magic with which, just yesterday, he’d laid waste to more magical creatures.

Oh, the centaurs had truly overreached, mistaken their power, and now Proteus would --

Proteus stepped into the clearing, into the light of the lantern.

The dark centaur, Hylas, turned towards him and smiled broadly. “Ah, now comes our laggard friend to us, who yesterday left us to do all work by ourselves.” He gestured a broad hand, glimmering with brass bracelets, towards the trussed-up figures and Caliban. “And what thinks noble Proteus of our work?”

Proteus smiled. How different his smile was from the kind ones Miranda had seen before. This smile was sharp as a drawn knife and just as cruel.
 

“You did well,” Proteus said. He said it like a king, like a commander, rewarding his troops’ most bloody deeds. “I’d all set to come yesternight, but the Hunter’s hag felt it and somehow deflected it, somehow, put upon
me
a spell of sleep.”

The hag? Could he be referring to her? He could not, could he? Miranda blinked in shock.

The world swam before Miranda’s eyes, and she put out a hand to the nearest tree trunk, to keep herself from falling, faint with distress.

And yet Proteus remained fair and limber. Oh, the stories had lied indeed.

“But today put I a cunning potion in her ale, and with it I lulled her to angel sleep, that I might walk abroad unfettered and do my work.” Proteus grinned.

Oh, had a fair grin in Proteus's handsome face ever been so foul?

“And now I find that you have done my work for me, or almost done it, for something remains to be accomplished and that needs my direction and the shrew’s subduing. Therefore, brave friends, hear you me.

“We’ll towards the castle tonight, as we should — it’s easy enough for me to get the shrew there, as she thinks we’re going to rescue the mortal cub. Thus fooled, she will go willingly where I wish. For knew she the truth, she might make my life difficult — being of greater power and more royal blood than my own.

“Once we approach the castle shall I, with my more schooled power, ever so subtly set a spell upon her that will make her more willingly obey me than does that foolish love that I’ve implanted upon her maiden heart and that she — being a fool — is fooled into believing.” He grinned wider. His eyes glimmered with hard-set pride. “Then shall I command her to use her magic — for she is a princess of fairyland — to remove from her uncle the great protections of hill-power.”

“I thought,” Hylas said, "that you were going to break her maiden knot and get control of her power thereby.”

Proteus blushed and pouted. “I thought I would, but alas, for power to be transferred through lovemaking, the lovemaking must be willing, and she’ll have none.”

Eurytion laughed. “Poor Proteus. Even the one he loves will not give him love.”

Proteus gave Eurytion a cold, cutting look. “I’d still have tried again, except that some centaurs, while drunk, soured her on all physical expression of love.”

The centaurs quieted, looking at Proteus, as though knowing that beyond this controlled anger there was another, stronger and more deadly one.

But Proteus shrugged.

“It matters not,” Proteus said. “For she’s untrained, though she be very magical. Chances are I can blind her with love and magic and make her willingly interpose her body and her power between me and the punishment of the hill. Thus acting as a shield, she can save us from the deadly retribution that awaits those who attack the ruler of fairyland. But if not, I can control her, and make her protect me, anyway. And then I can kill him impunely.” Proteus smiled towards the elf with blond hair who, tied up and lying on the forest floor, writhed at the words, as if by writhing he could escape the net’s magical prison. “And then, if she be still alive before we leave for fairyland shall we take her, the princess, and kill her also. For my kingdom shall have only one master, and no mistress.”

He grinned.

“But won’t death, in the crux, bring about such a storm of magic, that the crux shall be laid waste and, exploding, set the worlds of elves and men — and indeed, all possible worlds and all spheres — clashing like inharmonious cymbals till all be destroyed?” Hylas asked.

Proteus's smile faltered only for a moment. Then it returned to full luminescence, and he shrugged. “Oh, my kind cos, Quicksilver, would tell you so. But then, what lies would he not tell, to avoid death?” He turned a gloating gaze on the writhing king of fairyland. “For we all know he’s but a cowardly wretch without his armies.”

The centaurs hooted.

Miranda felt dizzy. That smile seemed to her the baring of teeth of a hungry tiger, or a lion’s glittering ivory menace, and he’d willingly kill her also. He’d kill them for his own sake, and he cared not if with it he destroyed the crux, and the world of humans and elves. His ambition, voracious, would gladly devour all life. Oh, what a fool she’d been.

“And the mortal?” Hylas asked. “And the mortal’s son?”

“Oh, we’ll take the mortal to the castle with us, lest he can think up something to do that would undo us. Even fools and children can, by luck, wreck the best laid of plans.

“But he is unimportant. When we kill Quicksilver and Miranda, we’ll leave the mortal trussed up as he is. As for his son — who knows what has become of him? For all we know, he is already dead, of hunger and thirst or magical fire, within the castle walls.

“If alive, both of them can remain in the crux and be consumed by the crux magic that devours all.”

Miranda bit her tongue to keep from crying out. She’d been in love with an illusion and now, like a widow, would bewail the loss of the elf she’d loved.

But he’d never existed, and the reality beneath Proteus's protests of love, his kind smiles, was as cruel as the grave, as sharp as the serpent’s tooth.

She would swoon from fear and heartbreak and the loss of what had, after all, never been hers — that fair dream she had but imagined.

But she must not swoon, she thought, as her vision seemed to darken.

Others--her uncle, and Will and that human youth she had but glimpsed once--needed her help to get out of the crux alive.

Oh, that she could die here. Now. Oh, that she could end, cease her breathing and with it her griefs. Oh, that all rushing thought would end and with it sad Miranda’s sorrows.

Oh, that she’d not live to serve this traitor’s plans. Oh, but for a dagger to still her heart and bid breath return to her body no more.

For she, a princess of fairyland, the adopted daughter of the Hunter, had as surely been deceived as a peasant lass, a girl with neither sense, nor wit, who follows the first fair-faced knave to come a-courting.

But her deceiving had graver consequences than the loss of her maidenhead had for a village maiden.

For her foolish love, Miranda had allowed all these others to be ensnared into a lethal trap.

Mortals whom she’d never before met would now die in the crux because of her.

She thought of kind Will and of his son who, in the castle, had grown to resemble a prince of fairyland, and she felt as if a band of iron constricted her heart.

Therefore, even as her despair whispered in her ear of the sweetness of ending all strife, something rose in her — something deep and angry and as swirling-dark as the night above, painting the sky of the crux tomb-black.

How dared Proteus deceive her? How dared he toy with her feelings? How dared he cross the daughter of the justicer, the daughter of the Lord of Night and Justice and Punishment?

Her anger swirled within her like strands of darkness.

Looking on Proteus, hearing him ask Hylas, “And the beast, how got you him to follow our scheme?” she felt her anger plunge sharp fangs into her heart.

And hearing Hylas reply, “Oh, he only wants but to have the shrew once, for he has craved her since they grew up together,” Miranda’s blood rose with impetuous anger.

They would, craven cowards, give her as reward to her servant troll. And Caliban, whom she’d always thought was hers to protect, had harbored such thoughts about her?Her anger beat a mad rhythm on her temples and put a red veil upon her sight.

She was the Hunter’s daughter, he her true father — regardless of whose spawn she’d been before the Lord of Night had taken her to his dreary, cold, loving, comforting heart. The Hunter had raised her in his dark castle. He had molded into her a nature as steely as his own. In her anger and pride, she would not stand this.

She would free the king of fairyland — who was so humble as to love a mortal — and the mortal too, that the king loved and who had proved, in his righteous gentleness to be worthy of all love. She would free them; she would avenge herself. The centaurs, Caliban, dreadful Proteus — them she would deliver to her father’s kind mercies.

And then would she ask the Hunter’s pardon and, a dutiful daughter, live in nun-like seclusion in his palace, caring on nothing but making her father happy and looking after his house exactingly. Thus would she spend her remaining days, singing vestal hymns to the fruitless moon.

Not for her the love of elf and mortal. For they were all mad, and she could never love a creature that was out of his right mind.

But first, she must go back to the clearing and pretend to remain asleep. She must go back and pretend to be the simpleton that Proteus believed her to be. And she must deceive him tomorrow and still pretend love while protecting herself against the compulsion he wished to lay upon her.

It wouldn’t be easy, but she could do it.

For in her anger, she had found a cool, clean place within herself -- an acceptance of her own guilt, a hope for forgiveness. It was like the dark forest and the pursuing Hunter, the moon shining overhead and the smell of pine and cold. She knew right from wrong again, and her mind, logically arrayed, allowed no phantoms of love, no shadows of care to deceive her.

No doubt remained, for
a man may smile, and smile and be a villain.

Faith, so could an elf. The stories had led her astray and storytellers lied. Proteus was a villain as were the centaurs and even — in his small, nasty way — Caliban.

Their enemies would therefore be her rightful allies.

This decision so soothed her mind that it was like balm upon her torn heart. It was like being in her father’s arms and comforted and reassured it would all turn out well.

Scene Thirty Six

It is the dawn of the third day in the crux. The clearing where the centaurs, Caliban, Will, and Quicksilver spent the night. Day breaks above, and all is still. Quicksilver himself looks asleep. But Will is awake and frowns at a moving shadow by the fire, a moving shadow that slowly takes human form.

W
ill had awakened and been surprised that he’d slept thus, lying upon the hard ground, his hands tied together behind his back, his feet tied together, his mouth bound with a kerchief.

But he must have, for now he wakened from a sleep barren of all dreams, but nonetheless leaving within Will a sense of sadness and calm hopelessness. The sense that all was lost, the world already destroyed, and there was nothing he could do to change it.