Any Man So Daring (40 page)

The centaurs buckled and fell backwards, whinnying and crying. Proteus alone stood, staring.

Madness burned in his eyes.
 

“Oh, I am betrayed,” he said. “I am undone. I, who loved the Lady Miranda well, and loved her true.”

Scene Forty Six

The scene from Miranda’s eyes, as she stares at Proteus.

H
ow pale he looked and yet still handsome.

Miranda felt the old accustomed softness towards him, as he turned his dark, dark eyes towards her.

“Oh, Miranda,” he said. “I loved you well. Yet, you betrayed me.”

The centaurs, behind him, in disarray, looked on, their faces full of terror, their eyes rolling, as magical flames licked their tall legs and singed the ringlets of their human hair.

Miranda could sense that the power of the alliance, hers, her — uncle’s? She looked at Lady Silver — and that of the two mortals, all of it did no more than keep the centaurs encircled in fire and neutralize Proteus's power so he could not attack them.

But they could not penetrate Proteus's defenses. The force of desperation strengthened his shields and put steel in his self-defense.

Unharmed, yet he looked ill and tired and miserable. “Miranda, you used to swear you loved me true. I know I’ve done you wrong.” Proteus opened his hands wide in a gesture of appeasement. “But think you on my many wrongs. I lost your father, my beloved cousin, who would have advanced me in his realm. And then I lost my father.

“I might have done wrong, but can you fault me? It was only my angered heart that led me astray.”

As he spoke, he approached her step by step, step on step closer. “You have the net, Miranda. Just throw it over Silver; she’s but Quicksilver’s female aspect. Stop her making magic. Then, together, we can be happy yet.”

Proteus's presence that near, as in the days of yore, was disturbing, but Miranda remembered what she’d heard him tell the centaurs when she’d hid herself in the forest.

Had that been naught, but his intemperate, angry tongue? Had he truly meant naught by it?

She couldn’t quite believe it, and yet his beautiful, stern face commanded belief, and his black eyes shimmered with held-back tears.

“Miranda, please,” he said.

“Mistress, don’t,” Caliban said, from the ground.

Looking down, Miranda saw that Caliban had crawled towards her till he lay at her feet, his hand on her ankle.

“Mistress, don’t, for he is but a villain, and he’ll kill you too. Those others — mistress, they might not be perfect. Indeed, the king has many crimes upon his tainted soul. But they’ll not hurt you. That villain Proteus will. Oh, Mistress, I care not what happens to me, just so you live.”

“Listen not to the vile creature,” Proteus screamed.

But Miranda looked down at Caliban’s sad eyes and bloodied fur.

She heard a scream form in her throat, and she leapt forward past the Lady Silver.

Miranda flung the net, and it flew wide — a golden cobweb sparkling in the cold light of the crux.

It opened as it flew, like a bird opening its wings.

Proteus stepped back, startled, but it was too late.

The net fell on him and stretched to envelop him.

He fell to the ground, wrapped in the coils of the very weapon he would have used.

The centaurs, too, their power worn out by the magical flame that encircled them, collapsed to the ground, one atop the other.

Miranda, staring at Proteus, who writhed in the coils of the net, felt a human hand upon her arm.

Turning, she looked into the golden falcon eyes of the creature who’d been the human child that she had kidnapped for the love of Proteus.

Now he was no child and his features, his demeanor looked like those of a prince of elvenland.

He smiled at her, and his gaze sparkled with something she didn’t quite understand.

“You’ve done well, milady,” he said.

Miranda’s breath caught upon her throat, and her hands trembled.

The odd sense of belonging together that she’d felt before at seeing him, upon the pond, was a hundred times magnified, and she realized suddenly she’d loved him since that first, magical glimpse.

Did I love before?
she thought, and, bewildered, glanced at Proteus who, writhing upon the sand, seemed insignificant, unimportant. A stranger for whom she cared not.
 

Heart, forswear its sight. For I ne’er saw true beauty till last night.

Scene Forty Seven

The scene through Will’s eyes. He looks amazed at Hamnet and Miranda, then gazes in wonder at Quicksilver, who has resumed his male aspect.

“L
ook you upon them,” Quicksilver said and smiled at Will. “Have you ever seen sweet love so fast birthed?”

Will shook his head.
 

He remembered his lust for Lady Silver, but it seemed to him here something else blossomed. In the way the young people embraced, the way their gazes met, he read something else than lust.

Prodigious birth of love, so quickly grown, and she no more than fourteen.

Imagine there, he thought, a tragedy, where a fourteen year old girl falls for an enemy — a man of another house, another realm almost.

He shook his head. This was not a play.

There could be no tragedy here. But what else could it be, when Miranda was an elf and Hamnet a mortal?

“How can this be contrived?” Will asked Quicksilver in amazement. “How can they live together?”

Quicksilver smiled, and his eyes were soft. “I fear me you’ll say I stole your son from you, to my shadowy realm of slippery magic. But only listen, Will, with thy consent....

“You cannot take your son back to the mortal world. He was raised by the Hunter, and he is magical. He’ll never fit amid mortal men. Give your consent and he’ll a changeling be, a prince among the elves, Miranda’s betrothed, their union confirmed when she first shall reach the age of reason, and to be together, they’ll be my heirs when I the world depart, or am too tired to carry the burden of state.” He looked at Will with soft, pleasing gaze. “Thus shall our blood joined be. Say you’ll allow it, and with that one word, secure so many people’s happiness.”

Will did not know what to say. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t find the words to say it. So long he’d been afraid of magic. So hard he’d fought to keep magic from stealing part of his family.

And now, he’d let the dearest part of him go to elvenland?

He looked on Hamnet and Miranda and would swear they’d not heard any of the conversation, their gazes lost in each other.

“Aye me,” Miranda said, and glanced at Will and Quicksilver. “My only love sprang from my only hate.”

Hamnet, his gaze on her, replied. “Prodigious birth of love, this is to me,that I must love whom I thought my enemy.”

Will remembered his Nan and how he’d loved her in the first blush of love, how neither her age ten years more than his nor her reputation as a shrew could divide them.

Truth, he loved Nan still so well he would not part with her forever. Not willingly. How could he ask Hamnet to do that, and reduce himself to a smaller world than he could attain?

Will forced a laugh and heard it echo, brittle, at the edge of tears. “You have my consent, friend.” And in saying so, for the first time, he named Quicksilver thus. “I never thought for all my ambition that I’d sired a king.”

Now, this the young people
had
heard, and turning stared at Quicksilver, who smiled kindly on them.
 

“Then as my gift, and thine own acquisition, worthily purchased take my niece. Sit and talk with her. Soon, we shall to the hill and there shall both of you be happy.”

“Not so fast, sir,” Miranda spoke. “My father’s leave I crave, the Hunter’s dispensation. And then there are these creatures.” With her gesture she encompassed Caliban who had sat up looking dazzled, and the centaurs, who, looking scared, were regaining their senses. “They rightly fall to my father’s justice.”

Scene Forty Eight

In front of the castle steps, the centaurs start to revive, and Proteus writhes upon the ground. Miranda and Hamnet gaze adoringly at each other. Will and Quicksilver look on the couple with bittersweet tenderness. They all start as the rumble of thunder echoes.

Q
uicksilver started. Thunder? In the crux? Could that be, when there was neither rain nor true sun here?

Then he saw the gigantic shadow leaving the white castle and forming into almost human aspect as it approached. It was a hunter on a giant horse, who rode down the front steps followed by snarling, dark dogs.

Miranda cried out and held Hamnet tight in her embrace, as tears ran down her face at her adopted father’s approach.

Still on horseback, the Hunter stood a few paces from the group.

The centaurs attempted to rise but could only fall again and whimper in fear.

Will jumped to stand in front of Miranda and Hamnet, his arms open wide as if to protect them.

And Quicksilver, feeling less than innocent here, feared the blood would drain from his heart as he faced the immortal lord of Justice.
 

“How, now?” the Hunter asked, his voice rumbling with the thunder of all the storms absent from the crux. “What have we here?” He looked at them, a smile of amusement in his inhumanely perfect features.

“It seems to me that all of you are guilty of crime, or action, or absent thought.” He grinned. “So make confession and, mind, make it true. Some will be pardoned, the others punished. For never was there tale of greater woe than this you have enacted.”

Quicksilver, rousing himself, looked at the perfect immortal face, then glanced back at his scared companions who lay upon the sand. He stepped forward.

He must take his punishment and protect everyone else. He could feel Silver’s agreement within him.

Naked and vulnerable, his silvery blond hair his only covering, leaving bare the scars with which war had marked his flesh, he stepped forward and bowed to the hunter.

“Lord of Night, and Justice and Eternal Law, leave my companions and adversaries in peace, for I alone am guilty.

“By my own reasoning and upon my own head, I decided to suppress what I was and make myself only into a king of fairyland.

“Thus became I inflexible and harsh and, with my stern rule, tempted my kinsmen to revolt.” He waved towards Proteus. “By my ill thought did I also allow crimes against centaurs and trolls to continue, till those races erupted in fresh mutiny. Thus did I, my crown and power abuse, till the reels ensnared in their plots my friend, his son, your daughter.

“All here are innocent, save myself. I alone am guilty and you may punish me.”

He knelt and waited, and the Hunter looked on him.

Quicksilver’s heart beat fast, fast. Would the Hunter kill him? Or make him one of the cursed dog that, even now, slavered and strained towards Quicksilver’s flesh, lacking only the Hunter’s word to let fly?

The Hunter’s loud, rumbling laugh erupted, and Quicksilver looked up, terrified.

“O king, you are guilty indeed,” the Hunter said, "of folly and love. But if those were the crimes that I punished, there would scarce be a living being, human or elf, still alive on Earth. Trust that Lady Silver who shares your soul, and mend your ways. You’re not so guilty that you can, upon your shoulders, carry the burden of guilt of all these here.”