Any Man So Daring

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Why would an unknown spell maker interfere in the girl’s spell? Where would such a one have transported them all?

  A loud howling, as of unleashed wind, made him look above. The black vortex spun faster, its tendrils seeming to multiply as it spun, like a monstrous spider stretching its many arms.

  Where could the boy have gone?

  If the same spell had brought them both here, shouldn’t they have landed in the same place?

  Like a man still drowsy, retelling to himself the dream from which he’d just awakened, Quicksilver thought about the last second before he’d fallen into the magic vortex. He’d reached for the boy. Faith, reached for the boy and almost caught him.

  His fingers had as near as brushed the boy’s dark curls.

  He’d seen the child’s eyes -- so like Will’s that thinking on it disturbed Quicksilver -- so wide and so intent as they stared at Quicksilver in a silent appeal for help.

  Quicksilver had tried to respond to that appeal. He had tried.

  He’d been dropped here, and the boy had gone on. But gone on where?

  And where was Quicksilver?

  Clawing at the sand with his aching fingers, pushing against pressure as though he were submerged at a great depth, inch by inch and little by little, he managed to get up.

  The wind seemed to press against him more, filling his cloak like a ship’s sail. It pushed on his body, yes, but his mind and his soul also, till Quicksilver felt as though he stood--body, mind and soul battered and frozen — fighting with all his strength to remain standing.

  No ordinary wind could do this to the king of elvenland.

  Only magic. Magic.

  Quicksilver forced himself, step by step, to move upon the sand. Each of his movements multiplied the howling of the outraged wind.

  His mind took halting steps, as his body did, seeking to get its bearings in this land.

  There was only one place — only one — where magic was so rampant that the very wind, the very sand were full of it.

  And that was one place where no elf had ever stepped, a place that, until this moment, Quicksilver would have sworn didn’t exist.

  For this land was to him as fairyland to mortals, a story told by his nursemaid and learned very early, but too fantastical and full of nonsense to be real.

  Standing against the push of the wind, he shielded his eyes with his hand against the assault of the sand and tried to see past the wind that the sand made amber-colored and almost opaque.

  Around him, as far he could see, the sandy beach stretched, and it seemed to curve slowly, as though he were on a small island.

  Inland the beach wrapped around it, a wooded center stretched, woods so thick they looked like a single tree, immense and overgrown.

  The clump of trees writhed as if alive. Perhaps it just moved in the wind.

  On the other side, the beach ended in something that seemed like the sea, but yet was not.

  In that same space where, in a normal beach, the sea would be, something rose and fell, to rise and fall again in stormy gray waves.

  But the feeling of it was not that of water.

  The roar of water had never echoed thus in Quicksilver’s ears, nor had the nearness of water disturbed him thus.

  Quicksilver walked towards the sea, forcing his feet to move against the wind, against the sand, against a wave of fear that rose within him and set his hair on end.

  From that space came such a wave of force, like the feel of a lightning strike, very near.

  Only this was not the natural electric feel of thunder, but a force that insinuated itself into Quicksilver’s mind and made him feel the quickening of pulse, the loosening of tongue, the deceitful, dangerous euphoria of wine.

  It crept through his senses like a thief. Reaching the core within him that was his link to the magic of the hill, the power and souls of all his subjects, it slid in and it--

  “No,” Quicksilver screamed as he closed all his magical defenses and his shields around himself.

  All his shields barely held, feeling insufficient and flimsy, like a threadbare cloak around his soul.

  Through them, he still fell the pull and push of those waves so near. Those waves of magic.

  It was magic. The thought startled him, like a sudden blow dealt by a stranger. Raw magic. An ocean of it.

  Had it reached into Quicksilver, had it truly tapped his link to the hill, it would have ignited all of magic, all of the hill, till every elf in it were consumed and burned into nothing — magic and energy and nothing more, as everything had been at creation.

  It would be like setting a match to a taper of grease.

  Stepping away from the ocean of magic, step by step, Quicksilver felt hot and cold by degrees, as the reality of where he was, the magnitude of his problem sank in.

  I am in the crux of all magic, he thought, and struggled to contain his panic.

  He’d heard of this land first at great Titania’s knee. His nursemaid, she who’d given Quicksilver suckle, and who’d been a princess of fairyland, had told him of it too, as he grew older.

  Of the land like an egg, at the center of all the known worlds, where magic enveloped all and moved in all.

  That land, like a heart, kept magic centered and all magic alive in all other worlds. A change to that world and all magic— maybe all life -- might well be lost.

  No elf in living memory had ever told of being there, but Quicksilver remembered the tales he had been told, of the strange rules of this primeval place.

  Legends spoke of the magical rules that went withal. The rule of threes, for instance. Three sunsets in the crux and you’d never leave. Magic would so permeate your being and replace your substance, that you’d become a part of the world, like the magic ocean.

  Then there was the rule of paying for leaving the crux. A mortal could never leave the crux, once he entered it, unless he left something of himself behind.

  And any mortal who made magic in the crux would always and forever be a little magic, a little like the elves, living between worlds.

  Yet, if this were the crux — and Quicksilver’s mind recoiled from the thought, for it was impossible, it should be impossible — if it were the crux, then everything here would be magic.

  Everything. The sun, the wind, the sand, the least particle of air.

  And everything that happened here would affect all the magic in all the worlds.

  And the crux was not an island but an egg.

  He looked up at the sky above him and realized with a shiver that it was more magic, of the sort he’d almost touched in the “ocean” before. If he touched the sky, he would be burned as surely as if he swam in the sea.

  The wind, he realized, was no wind, but a pressing dislocation of magic, a magical storm.

  The storm, then, was the protest of magic at an invasion, the screams of magical power against the intrusion of creatures, mortal and almost immortal -- flesh and blood and weak cravings — into the world of eternal, incorruptible power.

  Where could the boy be?

  Forcing his eyes to remain open against the lashing of the sand, Quicksilver looked above the forest, where a tall peak rose above the green tops of the forest like a volcano from a frothy sea. This peak was white, glimmering white, and upon it a white castle sat, the exact, but white, twin of the Hunter’s castle in the outer world.

  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, d
espite 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.

  Will 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 fu
ry 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.”