All Night Awake
Page 33
“Milord, you will have peace, if you give us our own land,” Hylas, the chief of the centaur delegation said.
Ariel thought he looked too bold for a pleader, his black curls done up in elaborate braids, from amid which golden chains sparkled, a muscular human torso gleaming with oil, and his well-brushed horse’s body white dappled with grey.
He spoke boldly and held his head up, as if owing no fealty to anyone. Facing the royalty of faerieland: fair haired young elven King Quicksilver, and Ariel, Quicksilver’s wife, Hylas acted as if he were a victor, come to claim spoils.
The Queen Ariel could admire the centaur’s muscles at the same time that she felt the impact of his words and heard the shocked gasps of her husband’s courtiers.
The centaur’s attitude caused titters and whispers to run up and down the vast salon, amid the splendidly dressed elf Lords and Ladies and, at a distance, the smaller, but no less splendid pixies, the sorcerers, the shape changers, the tree spirits of faerieland. Lords chuckled, and ladies laughed behind their fans. The servant fairies -- tiny, winged, perfectly proportioned human beings -- flew hither and thither flashing bright lights in their version of a chuckle.
Beside the centaur delegation stood the elf who’d brought them here, Quicksilver’s particular servant and confidant, Malachite. He put his hand on the pommel of his sword.
Ariel remembered that Malachite had wanted to subdue the proud centaurs and for the last seven years; he had pleaded in vain with Quicksilver to allow him to make war on the creatures. But Quicksilver had allowed no more than a small, woefully inadequate negotiating force, of which three elves had been killed before the centaurs had agreed to come to Arden and parlay.
Trouble had started right away.
But instead of private talks, the centaur had demanded -- and got from the too compliant King Quicksilver -- open audience in the throne chamber.
Obviously intending to humiliate Quicksilver.
Ariel, Queen of faerieland, wife of King Quicksilver, wished, very much wished she could take the matter in her own hands. She wished she could make the creature shut up. She wished he’d unsay his insulting words. Or else, she wished Quicksilver would have the strength to retaliate, to put the creature in his place, to remind the centaur of the might of the elven kingdom, which could subdue his people in a moment.
Though the ten years of her marriage to Quicksilver had taught her better, yet Ariel hoped against hope that her gentle, preoccupied king would find again the rash fire he’d displayed in his youth, when he’d fought for the throne and subdued his enemies, mercilessly. She wished he’d risk such fight now, without measuring the benefit of winning against the expense of magic, the distress in the cycle of seasons, the loss of elven lives.
But Quicksilver said nothing, and the minutes lengthened.
Ariel dared not turn her head to look at her husband’s expression, but she prayed to the any gods who might listen that he wouldn’t be simpering or, worse, looking scared.
Oh, Ariel wished that she could be the king, the lord of this land for just an hour, one brief moment.
Come, you spirits that tend on immortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty! she thought, clenching her hands into tiny, hard fists, just as her heart clenched within her chest, at her lord’s humiliation. Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, and pall you in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry 'Hold, hold!'
The centaurs had always wanted independence for the marshy land of the south of Avalon that they’d occupied ever since their ancestors had come over aboard Roman galleys. And, like the discontented, warlike race they were, they warred and harassed, rained destruction on their neighbors, quarreled with the native fairies and pixies, who were -- alas -- not able to defend themselves from such a strange foe.
Time and again Quicksilver’s father, Oberon of blessed memory, had sent expeditionary forces to put down the rebels. Time and time again such expeditions had bought peace with blood and the severed heads of centaurs had graced the front of the faerie palace.
But centaurs rebelled again and again, and again and again they fought, this time with impunity, as Quicksilver’s tender heart shrank from the thought of war.
Ariel clenched her hands tight, wishing she could use this force against the centaurs, or else to give Quicksilver some of her own daring.
Quicksilver and force were antithetical words. The brawling prince he’d once been, upon ascending the throne, as if remorseful of past error that had been no error, had laid by his weapons, and relied on kind words and soft wishes to keep order in his domain. As such, were things all disordered, and the realm broke out in a rash of brawls.
And Ariel, who loved Quicksilver well, felt her love cool before his endless retreat, his immutable submission.
Quicksilver didn’t answer Hylas, not even to put down the proud words of this most insolent creature that should have been his subject, and a meek one.
Ariel waited, and the seconds lengthened between the insult offered and the revenge that did not come.
Hylas smirked ever more broadly, as the courtiers tittered or sighed, or grumbled behind raised hands and fast-waving fans.
Ariel felt anger boil along her veins.
One could not rule without offending, and Quicksilver either feared offending too much or -- and Ariel shied away from this thought -- cared not for his kingdom and his people.
Ariel waited. And waited. And yet Quicksilver spoke not. Oh, calm, dishonorable, vile submission.
Hylas took note of this and advanced a sure-footed hoof upon the marble of the throne room floor. “You know, Quicksilver, that you can’t dispute it. Even amid our people it is known you art soft as a maid and a maid indeed in your other aspect. Consent to our demand and give us our land. Let the vermin, the mine-dwelling pixies, the gold-hoarding green men find their own place elsewhere. The broad marches of the south are ours and too fine for them.”
Ariel drew in breath. Quicksilver couldn’t be so insane that, even in his peace-loving heart he didn’t see the danger of these words.
The pixies and leprechauns might well go to war on the simple provocation of such a request, even without the support of the elves and the sovereign of faerieland. And, once engaged in a war, they’d not give out till the last of them fell bleeding beneath the centaur hooves.
Such a war between species, such a clashing of the spheres, hadn’t been seen on this sorry orb since man was but an unwashed simian in a cavern.
It would cause untold evil both in the faerie sphere and for human kind. And if humans should become aware of it, what grief would not befall? Men had picks and shovels and swords and axes, and greater number than ever faerie land creatures had waxed to. Humans would fight back. They’d fight both sides. They might very well win.
Quicksilver must put an end to this madness now.
Afraid of Quicksilver’s fatal lack of decision, Ariel reached for his hand, touched it, thinking only to encourage him to speak, hoping that her gesture would be interpreted as a wife’s affection, nothing more.
She reached for Quicksilver’s ring-covered fingers, where they sat on the arm of his throne, long and immobile and far too burdened with gold and glittering jewels.
Just before touching them, she thought how waxy they looked, how pale. Touching them, she found them rigid, cold.
A word caught in her throat, the thought, the disastrous thought that her lord had died, died on the throne while listening to the delegation, while --
Like the jolt of a thunderbolt, something -- a fire a flash -- shot from Quicksilver’s hand to her own.
&nbs
p; Ariel tried to let go, tried to stand, but could not. In her mind, like images revealed by a sudden flash of lightning upon a dark, dark night, she saw Sylvanus -- her husband’s brother, who’d reigned in faerieland for ten years before his crimes had led to his deposition. She saw him first as king of faerieland, as he had been, fair of face, dark of hair and beard, an elf proper and perfect in every part.
The traitor thought flashed through her mind that for all his crimes, for the proven fact that he had committed parricide to inherit the throne, Sylvanus had made a better king than Quicksilver, a stronger one, who brooked no disorder, allowed no confusion amid the various races of faerieland.
Ariel fought the thought too late.
Something like Sylvanus’ own laughter answered that half-formed feeling, and then the image of Sylvanus as Ariel had last seen him, came out of the darkness -- rank and gross, a creature of the night, and blood, and suffering.
Sylvanus had made a pact with the dark Hunter, to obtain from the Hunter power to kill Titania and Oberon, his parents, sovereigns of faerieland, that he might inherit the throne. But his crimes had come back upon his head.
Imprisoned by that creature of ancient times and uncertain origins -- and in Ariel’s mind flashed the image of the Hunter, a gigantic man, astride a gigantic horse, galloping through the storm clouds -- Sylvanus had been turned into a creature half dog, half wolf, a creature of primeval fur and heavy jaws, with eyes the color of blood and lethal, sharp teeth. As such Sylvanus had been taken by the Hunter, to serve the Hunter throughout eternity.
But Sylvanus’s laughter echoed in Ariel’s mind once more, and now she saw the wolf, bare teeth, bared fangs, running free. The Hunter’s pack pursued him, but could not subdue him.
The other images were more confused, as if they were wishes rather than reality. They came to her mind superimposing -- the image of the young man, Will Shakespeare, who had rescued his wife, Nan, from faerieland ten years ago, and then other images, darker, more disturbing, each one piling horror on horror, till Ariel’s own mind collapsed, like a building beneath the weight of centuries uncounted.
Darkness and cold closed in and Ariel felt herself fall as though down an endless well.
She heard the sound of hooves. The Centaurs? The sound of elven feet, shuffling with quick grace, echoed. Hands, many hands reached her, touched her, lifted her.
“Milady?”
Was that Quicksilver’s voice? Was he, then, not dead?
Relief -- or regret? -- flooded Ariel and she cursed herself she could not tell which.
Ariel tried to open her eyes but they did no more than flutter, allowing some light, and snatches of images -- velvet, jewels, fine ladies, one hairy centaur tail -- into her fevered brain, diluting the horrible images that she felt must have come, could only have come, from Sylvanus.
“Milady Ariel?”
Yes, it was Quicksilver’s voice. Her heart calming, she sighed, and willed her feelings to be relief that Quicksilver was alive and well.
She loved him, did she not?
It was her love that made her impatient with his softness and smarting at his submission.
Quicksilver’s hand held hers, clenched upon it. “How cold she is, my lady,” he said, as if from a long distance off. “Moves breath there, between those marble lips? Give her space, give her space,” he commanded.
And, as bodies moved away and fresh air rushed in, Ariel was gently deposited on a cold surface. The floor?
She laid her hands flat upon it, feeling the cool, hard smoothness of marble tiles. The floor.
From this coolness, she drew strength, pulling to her the cold gentleness of the earth, the truth of what was solid and strong and didn’t shift beneath the fingers or change, like the images in her mind or like her mutable lord’s changeable nature.
She felt Quicksilver’s hand, too, strong, hot, almost fevered, grasping hers with bone-crushing strength.
Did her lord then, truly, have strength? Why hide it, then? Why hide it?
She wanted to ask just that, but could not command her lips.
Her mind clear, maybe too clear, ran through thoughts and feelings like knife through air.
Quicksilver was a dual creature, unusual even for an elf. Though his true form was male and to it he always returned, he could assume at will -- and sometimes even when he didn’t will it, didn’t wish it, and fought against it in vain -- the form of a dark lady.
In Ariel’s state, between sleep and wakening, between the land of the living and the shadowy realm of her own thoughts and visions, Ariel thought that Quicksilver’s weakness proceeded from that unsoundness in his being, that separation of him into two creatures who strived -- sometimes together, often against each other.
“Milady, stay with me,” Quicksilver said, his hand gripping hers with hard, feverish despair.
Holding onto that warmth, onto the coolness of the floor beneath her, Ariel fumbled her way towards life.
Walking like a blind woman who follows a rope stretched between her origin and her destination, she groped in her mind towards the lit salon, the murmur of so many voices, the hand that held hers and through which she could feel the too-fast beat of Quicksilver’s own heart.
She’d loved Quicksilver all her life, ever since they’d been mewling babes in the care of twin nursemaids. He might have proven a weak king and an uncertain ruler, but she could not desert him now.
No, this weakness of his must, perforce, be passing folly. She must change him, mold him, make him stronger from her own strength.
On that thought she opened her eyes and saw Quicksilver looking down on her, his normally white face gone the waxy pallor of old candles; his moss-green eyes looking darker, as if a shadow had interposed between them and the world.
Beneath the silk ruffle around Quicksilver’s neck, his neck quivered with hasty swallowing. She could smell his fear, sharp upon her nostrils.
All that fear because she was ill? She stared at Quicksilver, her eyes wide, and saw his lips tremble and attempt a smile.
“Oh, you are well,” he said. “You come back to us.” Tears of relief trembled in his eyes, and yet he looked still scared, still pale. He squeezed her hand in both of his.
He did not ask her what had happened, what had made her convulse and lose her senses. Had he, perhaps, before her undergone the same hell, the same assault?
Ariel remembered his wax-pale hands, cold to the touch and rigid like the hand of the dead.
It was upon touching him that those visions had come to her, like an attack upon her unprotected mind. And what of him? What had he suffered?
Ariel was the seer of this palace, born upon summer solstice night and thus endowed with vision of past and future and all the veiled ages. She had visions as other elves breathed. But Quicksilver? Why would he have visions?
Ariel drew herself to sitting with an effort, and found Quicksilver’s arms wrapped around her, supporting her, with a tenderness he hardly ever displayed to her in public.
His warm arms surrounded her and he spoke, soothingly to the courtiers who crowded around and demanded the cause of this illness, and its cure.
“Milady is a seer,” he said. “Of late have her visions been mild and controlled. But it is not always so, and when her visions come upon her, she does, perchance, fall. It means nothing. She will be well.”
His arm around her waist pulled her up; his other arm held hers and supported her. “Come, milady, let us retire. Come.”
And, leaving the chattering courtiers, the anxious delegations behind, Ariel felt herself led by her lord down the spacious corridors of their palace, to a thick oak door that opened and pivoted noiselessly inward at Quicksilver’s touch, to reveal the royal chamber -- not hers, but his own, such his confusion.
Though their chambers were next to each other, communicating with each other through a door, it had been long since Ariel had come into Quicksilver’s. He visited her in hers, sometimes, but even that of late only rarely.
He led her to his magnificent bed, a high, dark bed, curtained in dark green velvet. Around the room, male appointments -- Quicksilver’s as yet untried golden armor, heavy armchairs, massive wooden trunks.
Only a portrait on the wall that, now looked at this way showed Quicksilver in his male aspect, now looked at another way the magical canvas showed a beautiful lady with black hair and silver-colored eyes, hinted at Quicksilver’s other aspect, as the dark lady.
Ariel looked away from the portrait, which she’d never liked to see so plainly displayed, but which she had no right to ask be removed. It had been given to Quicksilver by his mother, Titania, on Quicksilver’s twentieth birthday.
Quicksilver drew back the curtains of his bed, with a hasty touch, and laid Ariel down upon the cool, smooth comfort of his green coverlets. “There milady. And now that we’re alone, tell me, was it the three women in the glade? And did they tell of doom and of... Sylvanus?”
Ariel stared. “Three women?” The chamber was silent, all courtiers, all servants having been left behind by Quicksilver’s for once masterful countenance. “Of what do you speak?”
He shook his head, impatient, and narrowed his eyes doubtfully. Despite his tenderness to her, Ariel could see that something fought within Quicksilver, some consuming dread attempted to surface.
“At least,” he said, averting his eyes, as if scrutiny of her had bothered him. “They were no more women than the Hunter is a man, creatures probably of the same vintage, all of them older than even our race. They stood in a forest glade and spun and measured thread of which they talked as it were the very fate and life of each man. Each man and elf.”
“The Fates,” Ariel said, as her brain and mouth, together, drew this conclusion. She drew deep breath and wished Quicksilver would look at her. “No. I dreamed not of them, but of Sylvanus, yes. I saw.... I saw him free of the Hunter and the Hunter’s dogs and searching for a human who will give him asylum.