Any Man So Daring (4 page)

W
hen the knocking first sounded, Quicksilver wasn’t sure it was more than an echo of the hammering without the walls.

How much noise the servants made in building the execution block.

He flinched from the thought of the block and the purpose it would serve, from the execution to come and the inevitable spilling of noble elven blood.

“Am I a butcher?” Quicksilver asked his own image in the mirror. “A tyrant?”

His image stared back at him, bland and blond, looking as it had since Quicksilver had reached adult stature at twenty. It presented a fair prospect, slim and elegant, in the black velvet suit that molded Quicksilver’s long legs, and displayed to advantage his broad shoulders and his svelte body. Though Quicksilver neared sixty five years of age, yet he looked like a youth of twenty, his moss-green eyes full of sparkle, his perfect features unmarked by wrinkles, his pale blond hair shining like liquid moonlight, combed over his shoulder.

As his own people reckoned their life spans, Quicksilver had barely grown out of adolescence and was a very young elf indeed.

But looking at his own reflection, staring at his own dazed, tired eyes, Quicksilver felt old. The last three years he had spent commanding armies and putting down rebellion.

Had those three years of fire and blood, of fear and fighting, left no mark? No mark but the look in his eyes, and this tired, careworn feeling in his soul?

How strange nature. How strange that such resounding evil, such suffering, so much blood spilled, left the king of fairyland looking young and untouched.

Something sounded again — a knock that seemed different from the clamor of the hammer upon the wood of the block.

Quicksilver glanced away from the mirror, at the thick oak door of his room and called out, “Come in.”

The door opened to reveal the slim, pale loveliness of Ariel, Queen of Fairyland, Quicksilver’s wife.

She slid into the room furtively and cast a worried glance at Quicksilver, like a child afraid of scolding.

Quicksilver smoothed his lace collar.

His hands felt rough against the lace and his knuckles had thickened.

For three years, those hands had held charmed swords and thrown magic-spelled lances, and taken elven life, with no remorse -- or almost no remorse.

Could they now return to the smoothing of lace, the holding of game pieces, the signing of documents, the caressing of his wife, the quiet tasks of a king in peacetime?

They must
, Quicksilver thought. After this day, this awful final day of killing, his hands and he himself must learn to live in peace.

The civil war that had rent the fairyland in two was finished. Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, profaners of neighbor-stained steel were reformed, and their leaders dead, or soon would be.

Quicksilver had won, and today the main leader of those who had challenged his rule would meet his swift and merciless end upon the block.

Quicksilver tried not to think of it, even as hammer blows sounded from outside. The worst horror of civil war had been visited upon him.
 

His enemy, whom he had defeated, was his near relation, almost the last surviving branch of Quicksilver’s own blood.

Quicksilver’s own uncle Vargmar, elder brother of that Oberon who had sired Quicksilver, had led the rebel troops in their treasonous blood-shed.

Ariel’s reflection upon the mirror — half obscured by Quicksilver’s own — showed as an intent oval face, staring out at Quicksilver with light-blue eyes as though she could read Quicksilver’s grief and worry. Her expression wavered as Ariel took a deep breath.

“Milord,” the Queen of fairyland said. She came forward, closing the door behind her. Her hand, soft and small on Quicksilver’s arm, might have been a sparrow that, alighting timidly upon a branch, fears the snare that will snag him should he delay. “Milord.”

The Queen Ariel’s voice was a mere whisper. Yet Quicksilver remembered how his queen, small and slight and seemingly fragile as she was, had stood by him through the years of this awful war — how she’d nursed the wounded and -- being the seer of fairyland -- had endured troubling dreams of blood and upheaval, as she governed the hill in his absence.

He turned to her and gave her his attention with a respect he’d have thought impossible when he’d, blithely, unthinkingly, married her fourteen years ago.

“Milady,” he said, and attempted to smile.

“Milord, I dare speak only because I fear if I do not I shall lose you.” She looked at him, her blue eyes veiled, disturbed, as by a dream that refused to dissipate in the light of waking reality. She put her hand on Quicksilver’s sleeve, and spoke in a way made more grave for his knowing that she was the seer of this hill, endowed with the power to pierce the future and give warning of it.
 
“Aye, me,” she said. “I have an ill-divining soul.” Her eyes opened wide, unnaturally wide the way they did when she gazed upon her inner visions. “Methinks I see you, now thou art so low, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or you look pale.” She looked at him in enquiry.
 

He sighed, and touched her face with his fingers, gently. “And trust me, love, in my eye so do you. Dry sorrow drinks our blood.”

Her large, blue eyes shone unnaturally, as though washed by tears, and her skin looked almost as pale as the white lace upon her black dress.
 

“Forgive my daring,” she said. “I know you’ve won a great war, and that upon you and you alone weighs this decision and this thought. So forgive your foolish wife for speaking.”

Quicksilver managed a smile, though it seemed to him his lips would crack with it. “Ariel is not foolish,” he said. “And my Queen may dare what she well wishes.” He put his hand out to cover hers.

The hammering went on, like mad music.

Quicksilver grit his teeth. He ran a finger down his wife’s cheek and cursed the rebels who had put fear and horror in Ariel’s gaze and etched Quicksilver’s soul with the acid of war. Curse them.
 

Today their leader would die. Was justice not served?

What else could menace Quicksilver? What else could put such fear in Ariel’s eyes, such pained discourse in her tongue?

“Milord,” Ariel said, her voice trembling. “You are not well. Your spirit like mine fears something that the mouth knows not how to utter and has no sense how to understand. Yesternight you urgently stole from my bed. And yesternight at supper, you suddenly arose and walked about, musing and sighing with your arms across and when I asked you what the matter was, you stared upon me with ungentle looks: I urged you further, then you scratched your head and impatiently stamped your foot. Yet I insisted. Yet you answered not, but with an angry wave of your hand gave sign for me to leave you: so I did. This humor will not let you eat, or talk, or sleep, and it could work so much upon your shape as it has much prevailed on your condition. Quicksilver, is it Vargmar’s execution that so weighs on you? And if so, is it really needed?” With her free hand, she waved towards the front of the palace, where the block was being built. “Might mercy not serve here?”

Mercy? Quicksilver frowned, as he felt his features harden and his eyes widen in horror.

Vargmar, who’d die today, had blighted fairyland for all too many years.

The revolt that today would end in blood and ordered pomp upon the block, had started with the murder of Quicksilver’s own guards upon a silent midnight.

These murders had served the greater plan of murdering Quicksilver himself, as he innocently slept by fair Ariel’s side.

Quicksilver shuddered, remembering his guards’ bloodied corpses, crumpled in a heap outside his door.

Only the guards' valor in that final test had saved Quicksilver. They’d stayed alive long enough and called for help loudly enough to rouse the household -- against the greater numbers of magically powerful foes.

Their blood had purchased Quicksilver’s own life.

Only then had Vargmar and his accomplices, caught at their attempt, called to them the malcontents and dregs of fairyland and with them taken to the hinterlands of the realm.

Those dregs had scourged the hills long enough.

Quicksilver let Vargmar live? What for? That he might call to himself another such coalition and think of new ways to amaze the cowering world?

Quicksilver stared at his wife’s face, uncomprehending.

Mercy?

Quicksilver sighed. “I’ve won the war, milady, and this much I know. I cannot have lasting peace if I show mercy. I showed mercy to my brother once, showed him mercy despite his evil acts and that was only the beginning of a worse strife.”

“But your brother--” Ariel started.

Quicksilver patted her hand, and let it go. “Milady, you were not there when, on the fields of Mars, I stood surrounded by enemies and must slash my way out or die. Nor were you there, on that awful night when I woke to feel a blade at my throat and see an enemy crouched beside my bed. Malachite saved my life then, by killing my foe. Think of all the valiant elves who died as I would have, by stealth and dishonorable attack. The fine flower of this hill was squandered upon the hills and marshes. The harsh, wild ground drank up their blood. Now you would that I show mercy to the man whose ambition murdered them. Arrest such thought, my Queen. Mercy would not serve. It is unworthy.”

Ariel gasped and her face hardened. Determination erased the normal gentle cast of her features. “You wrong me, Milord. If I went not to war it is that you left me behind to rule your kingdom against your return. And if I speak now, if I speak, oh, Lord, it is that I fear for you. For I’ve had dreams such as never before, dreams that stain my nights with blood and make my sleep rank.

“I dreamed tonight that I saw you as a statue which like a fountain with a hundred spouts did run pure blood; and many lusty elves came smiling and did bathe their hands in it.

“Do not go on with this, milord. For I fear for your life if you should.”

Quicksilver narrowed his eyes.

Ariel’s dreams were normally true, but this one smelt not of truth. Rather, the dream, like a frighted, wild thing, knocked its teeth and ran wild with terror. The war that had, for so long, held fear over all of their heads now, being ended, allowed Ariel to give voice to that fear.

Knowing she was affrighted, he spoke softly. “From whom should I fear?” he asked. “Who would harm me, once Vargmar is dead? For his own son has deserted his cause, and those centaurs whom he, with great pride, accounted his closest allies, have sworn fealty to me.” Again he raised his hand, pulling back strands of Ariel’s disarrayed pale blonde hair. “Be of good cheer, my dear, for once Vargmar is dead you’ll have nothing to fear.”

Ariel held her hand over her heart. “And yet I misgive me. Can this not be delayed?”

“What? And I shall ask the executioner to stay his ax till Quicksilver’s wife shall meet with better dreams?

“Your fears are foolish, wife, and if I stay my hand because of them I will all the more encourage that violence you fear against my person.”

Ariel blushed. Red splashes stained both cheeks and the bridge of her nose. “Woe is me. For once were my dreams accounted of service to my Lord."

She drew herself up to her full height, which, yet, came no higher than Quicksilver’s chest.
 

Her face strained and white, she looked like the miniature of a warrior Queen, as endearing as disconcerting.
 

He wanted to hold her and knew he mustn’t. He must stand firm.

This time her hand gripped his arm tightly. “The violence of the last three years has wounded you, milord, maybe more so than it wounded your enemies. Now you have won, and maybe it’s time to exert kind mercy and with it balance the scales of retribution that threaten to crush your joy and peace. I do not know what my dreams divine, but I do much fear that in killing the traitors, milord, you’ll kill part of yourself also.”

Quicksilver shook his head. If any part of him there was which harshness could kill, then it was dead already. “Trouble you not, my lady,” he said, offering her his arm. “Trouble you not. The villain will die, and I shall be none the worse for it.”

Speaking thus, he led her to the door and out of it, to the broad, marble paved corridor outside the bedroom.

There, courtiers waited for their sovereign to lead his court out of the palace, to where the traitor would die.

Amid the courtiers, Quicksilver marked Proteus, Vargmar’s only son, a pale, golden-haired youth in a dark blue velvet suit that made him appear even paler and more frail. Looking on him, Quicksilver wished Proteus strength.

Quicksilver, himself, had been little older than Proteus -- in his twenties and a child in elvenland -- when Oberon had died, leaving Quicksilver orphaned. And, oh, with what heat had Quicksilver sought vengeance for his father’s spirit.

Would Proteus?

Quicksilver took a deep breath and looked away from the youth who bowed to him while attempting to smile with bloodless, ghastly pale lips.
 

It was not the same situation at all.

Oberon had been cut down stealthily by an assassin’s knife, while Vargmar would be executed after inciting half of elvenland into a war against its rightful sovereign -- after killing half the youth of elvenland.

How many elves, fairies--how many trolls and centaurs, even, had died in those three years in which Vargmar had rained blood and destruction on those outposts that had remained loyal to Quicksilver and by stealth and dishonor killed all those whom he dared not face upon the open field?

And for what? For what but Vargmar’s ambition and his desire to be king?

Vargmar’s peasant troops -- servant fairies, changelings, small elf Lords, ignorant trolls, the small band of transplanted centaurs who’d come with the legions to the south of Avalon and, ever since, been torment and strife to fairyland -- all those had been forgiven. They’d been allowed to say they’d been Vargmar’s dupes and had believed that Quicksilver meant to destroy fairyland.

But Vargmar had knowingly betrayed his sovereign.