Ill Met by Moonlight (13 page)

“Perhaps because you taste your ale too well.” The alewife had returned. She set her large white pitcher of foaming ale on the table next to Will and said, “Son, should you be here? You look scarcely old enough to be out of doors at sunset, and you’re not from these parts, are you?”

Will focused his eyes with an effort.

The woman placed a fat white hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “You’re the petty-schoolmaster, are you not? The one as comes from Stratford?”

Will nodded. “The sun . . . setting?” he managed, despite his thickened, unwieldy tongue.

“More than half set, already. You shouldn’t be here this late,” Marian Hacket said.

Will would have liked to explain that it had seemed a good idea to stop in and get some supper, since there would be none waiting him at home. But, because there would be no one at home, Will had, by a declension of his self-pity, ended up eating nothing and drinking far too much.

Marian Hacket struggled to get him up, pulling him by the strength of both arms. Her warmth enveloped him, her large breasts pressed against his side. Her fat doughy hands pressed into his arms as she held him. She succeeded in getting him to stand on his own, shaky legs.

The room spun around Will—tables, and long benches, dispirited drinkers and smoky atmosphere—but he stood, gritting his teeth and cursing his dizzy head. What had come over him, to drink himself into brutish stupor?

“There you go, son. You’re too young to sit near the likes of old Sly. You get yourself home, and who knows? Mayhap your wife will have come back.”

Will wanted to hope, but he couldn’t. He remembered Nan’s dancing, and the palace he couldn’t enter.

Marian escorted Will to the door, her breasts pressing against his shoulder, her body holding him upright.

As they reached the open front door, a draft of fresh air from outside, cold and untainted by either smoke or fumes of spirits, revived Will.

He found his feet and stood on them, leaning no more than a few degrees off the vertical.

“There you go,” Marian said, feeling the shift. “You’ll be all right now, won’t you?”

Will nodded, not sure of telling the truth.

Outside, two horses were tied beside a spacious, clean-looking horse trough.

Will bent down and dipped his head in the cold water. The cold braced him, like a hard slap will brace a crying woman or a sniveling boy. Standing again, some of the cobwebs clearing from his brain, he shook water from his dripping curls. Water trickled down his back, soaking his doublet and, insinuated itself beneath his collar, running down the middle of his back.

The cold discomfort helped him wake up.

He looked about him, regaining his wits. Marian had told the truth, and it was later than the time he would wish to cross Arden Forest alone. The sun had all but set and only a few, desultory rays lit up the narrow Wincot street.

Workers hurried home, and women called their children inside.

Will had better hurry home, also, to Henley Street, where at least he had a bed and a safe place to stay. And maybe, just maybe, there would be news of Nan. If the mad dream he’d walked in was true, and Nan, his Nan, had indeed been taken away by the people under the hill, then maybe the dark lady would really come to him and show him how to recover his lost wife, his infant daughter.

The thought of the dark lady made Will’s blood run faster and braced him with yet another kind of feeling, another form of surging energy.

If he believed every other part of his dream, he still found it hard to credit how beautiful the dark lady had looked.

“Friend Will, have you a weapon?” a voice asked from the tavern’s doorway.

It was old Sly, who’d somehow made his way from the smoky interior and now stood, or rather leaned, against the age-stained doorway. “Because if you don’t, I’ll be glad to help you. I was a peddler, and I—”

“I have a dagger,” Will said, and lifting it from its sheath at his waist, he showed it to Sly. An old dagger it was, very old, covered all over with cabalistic signs and odd incrustations. Will had found it in his father’s shop, when he’d gone in search of a weapon—thinking even a rounded glover’s knife might do—to keep him safe on the way through Arden Forest.

Footpads were few and far between there, and the last ones caught had been hanged when Will was a little boy; nevertheless he wanted to feel safe. And this knife he’d found, fallen behind his father’s workbench, looked functional enough despite its odd handle and odder triangular blade. Most likely it was either an inheritance from his grandfather, or something his father had taken in surety for payment and then forgotten.

“A good toad sticker,” old Sly said. “Yet, if you want a sword . . . there are strange things in Arden, made all the stranger at night. If you ever tangle with the people under the hill, remember, the one thing they can’t stand is cold iron, forged and honestly worked for humankind. Use chains or knives, or closures and they’ll all work, so long as they’re iron. . . .”

But Will shook his head and, his hand on the handle of the strange old knife, which he didn’t expect to need, he walked out of Wincot and onto the path across Arden Forest.

Scene 7

A path through Arden Forest—a poor kind of path, of the sort beaten over centuries by peasants making their way between neighboring towns. Shrubs and great trees grow hard on either side, leaving but meager passage open to travelers. Where the path winds about a large oak tree, a group of fairy lords—dressed as though for a party—block the narrow trail. Will stops in front of them, gazing in disbelief. From behind Will, running sure-footed amid shrubs and the roots of trees, Quicksilver comes, his sword out and ready.

H
e shouldn’t have stopped to dally with Ariel, Quicksilver thought, as he ran, his breath caught in his throat, coming in short bursts of remorse and fear.

The sight of the four fairy lords, Pyrite and his three friends, facing the hapless mortal turned Quicksilver’s blood to ice.

So now the traitor would thus prostitute his vassals, and make them ambush mortals and interfere in a kingdom of which they had no ken. Bad enough that Sylvanus had the nursemaid kidnapped, and left no stock behind, or none that could deceive her husband, a Sunday child. Bad enough. But this was lunacy, a trespass into the realm of mortals which the rules of the universe would never tolerate.

Sylvanus would bring disaster to realms both human and fairy and, conjoined, plunge them into the abyss.

Quicksilver ran, his legs pumping hard. Ariel had been sweet, her love freely bestowed and more eager than any he’d ever experienced. Her caresses had almost succeeded in making him forget Will’s kiss, and they had, certainly, succeeded in making him forget the passing time.

He saw the elves advance toward Will.

Pyrite walked amid them, beautifully dressed, as always, this time all in checks—doublet and breeches both fashioned of priceless silk, in colors so bright they dazzled the mind and stung the heart.

Oh, what a poor assassin, what a shoddy highwayman Pyrite made, that even in treason he must remain bright, even in dishonor shine like a new polished kettle.

Pyrite’s sword, like Quicksilver’s, had been fashioned in one day by an elven smith, of the purest crystal, solid as a diamond, bright as ice, sharp as the scythe of death. It glittered as Pyrite drew it out of its sheath. Pyrite’s fair features contorted in a smile half-gloating and half-embarrassed as he advanced on Will.

Just then, Quicksilver ran around the elven lords, in a burst of speed, reached Will, and stopped by his side.

Pyrite’s eyes widened in shock and disbelief.

“To me, to me, milords,” Quicksilver yelled as he grabbed Will by the rough wool of his doublet. “Or can you only duel with nurselings, mere miserly mortals, creatures that start dying in their cradle, and before they ever learn the ways of life, go back to the dust whence they’re fashioned?” Quicksilver pushed Will behind him, shielding the mortal’s slim body with his own. “To me, Pyrite.” Quicksilver bared his teeth to his lifelong friend and tried to shock him into renouncing his treason. “Pyrite, whom I’ve called my friend and with whom I played in my cradle, like that Greek god it was who played with serpents.”

Pyrite blinked. He had enormous eyes, blue like the periwinkle and innocent as an infant’s. For a moment, he was confused, Quicksilver’s words meeting their mark and making him think about the wisdom of his actions. Then he shrugged, and bared his teeth to Quicksilver, in return. “Serpents, milord? Was that not Hermes, god of thieves and traitors? And was he your milk-brother, nursed from the same tit of treason?”

“Treason, I? Treason? I do not seek to murder mortals and set the realms at war.”

Pyrite raised his eyebrows at that. He opened his mouth, closed it, only to open it again. “How come you here?” he asked. His sword, which he had raised for the mortal, never flagged, but was held halfway up while his expression rearranged itself into confused worry.

“I’m here to protect the mortal from the designs of the traitor. Where else should I be?”

Pyrite spared a look behind Quicksilver, at Will, and leered, an unhallowed grin. Pyrite, more than the rest of the court, was privy to Quicksilver’s tastes, Quicksilver’s follies, Quicksilver’s false steps. “Oh, the mortal, is it? Is this one yours? Have you claimed him? Very fond of mortals, are you not, my friend?”

“It must be a family affliction,” Quicksilver answered. “As my lord brother, the traitor, the usurper himself, likes mortal flesh well enough. At least I do not command others to taint their honor and kill the rivals who stand in my way.” He looked aside, in a calculated expression of disgust, and spat on the forest floor.

From above came a rumble of thunder, and the light of the more than half gone sun disappeared faster and faster, veiled, like a candle covered by a snuffer.

“You call him traitor, you?” Pyrite asked. His voice acquired a tone of justified outrage. His bright eyes opened in startled wonder, and his sword rose, now almost fully up. He braced his legs apart, balancing solidly on the uneven ground, in the position of a swordsman ready to parry.

Quicksilver raised his own sword, prepared to meet the thrust should it come. He had been so resolute, so ready to face dishonor and kill for the sake of his vengeance, if kill he must. But now his desire for vengeance flagged. True, he still needed the mortal alive to avenge his parents. But Pyrite did not back down, as Quicksilver had hoped. Must Will’s life be purchased at the cost of Pyrite’s death?

The sudden glare of a thunderbolt revealed Pyrite’s amazed face and, behind him, the three lords, his accomplices, standing in amazement, frozen like some tableau painted long ago and enshrined in the solidity of wood.

A passing glance over his shoulder showed Will to Quicksilver. Will, who stood behind Quicksilver, appeared frozen or transmuted into some inanimate object.

None of them looked capable of movement.

None but Pyrite, whose eyes burned, whose cheeks flared in offended color. “You can’t speak thus of Lord Sylvanus. He is our king, the king of our kind. You’d betray him for a mortal? O monstrous traitor! I arrest you, of capital treason against the king and crown. Obey, audacious traitor; kneel for grace.” Pyrite’s eyes filled with madness, with the eager fire of the devoted courtier who sees a chance to score points in his lord’s estimation.

Would this fire be quenched? Could Pyrite be brought back to his senses? He must be mad, driven mad by being fed the power of the hill directly through Sylvanus. Sylvanus, the fool, the base traitor, would be giving too much of that power to Pyrite, who wouldn’t know how to control it. And the power would make Pyrite mad. Drunk.

“I’m not doing this for a mortal,” Quicksilver said. If only he could convince Pyrite, and win him to his cause. If only Pyrite knew his reasons, if only there were time to explain them. Oh, why hadn’t Ariel confided in her own brother?

Ariel and Pyrite, had there ever been two such, hatched from the same womb? She, timorous and meek, asking for love; he hot and brave, and foolhardy daring.

“And who am I betraying?” Quicksilver said. “I should have been king, and in attacking me, it is you, false friend, who are the traitor.”

As the words passed his lips, and he could no longer call them back, Quicksilver knew he had erred. These words, rather than damping the fire of Pyrite’s anger, like oil poured onto a raging fire made it blaze anew.

Where friendship and offense had warred in Pyrite’s eyes, now offense won the match, overcoming much-weakened friendship, which hadn’t fed in years uncounted, and bringing him to earth with a quick stab. Just as quickly did Pyrite’s sword lift and Pyrite surge forward, dancing on light cat’s feet. By the glint of lightning, his teeth flashed, very white and clamped together, as though to prevent the eruption of some fatal word. And yet, despite the clenching of his teeth, words emerged: “Aye, Quicksilver, aye, I’ll be a traitor then, when you are king.”

Not even thinking, not daring to speak, Quicksilver lifted his sword and parried a blow aimed with all of Pyrite’s considerable force.