Scene 18
The fairy palace. Ariel leans over an elf lord who lies in a bed in a small—if still sumptuous by mortal standards—room. She looks worried, worn out, and her white dress for once seems to leech color out of her drained cheeks. The elf lord looks near death. In the doorway, an ill-looking Malachite gazes in.
“How bad is it, milady?” Malachite asked.
Ariel heard the words, and knew their meaning, but she could no more than shake her head in response.
She felt her patient’s cool forehead, bathed in chilly sweat.
The small, confined room smelled of this sweat. The smell of death.
The elf was a changeling, Lord Geode, but he’d been high in Quicksilver’s favor and powerful enough. Now, his power burned around him as it left him, with the waning flame of Fairyland’s spreading blight.
How to cure such an ill? How to prevent this stalking death that, day by day, moment by moment, robbed Fairyland of its bright lords, its fair ladies?
Two more days, and would the blight stalk higher in the ranks, to Ariel? Or to Quicksilver’s uncle, noble Vargmar?
And what could Ariel do to stop it?
Despair burnt within her, high like a well-fed lamp.
“He was the eldest changeling in the hill,” Malachite said. “Placed the highest of all changelings when I was a child, and he looked after us and made sure we were happy.”
Malachite’s voice, hesitating and small, dipped and wavered as his strength failed him and emotion overcame him. “Faith. I’ll be next.”
Ariel took Geode’s pulse to find it faded and light, a whisper of life against encroaching death.
The waning of magic hurt all. Ariel could sense it, like a damping of power, like a dimming of light and life, coursing throughout the hill like an illness. But it did not affect the elves born to the hill so much as it did the changelings.
Natural-born elves had stronger power.
Would the killer blight stalk them thus, through the ranks, up the power scale of Fairyland?
And how to stop it? Would Quicksilver’s return stop it?
Ariel couldn’t tell. She’d cast her net and scried upon water and upon pure crystal mined from within the deepest mountain.
She’d found nothing.
Less than nothing—a black and forbidding nothingness, as if a great wall barred her way, a great will, stronger than her own.
And she feared, with a dread she dared not fully face, that this will was the will of Quicksilver, her errant lord.
Was he taking his joy in London, as Silver or Quicksilver, or both? Was that what brought this blight to his people?
Oh, cared he not if they lived or died?
She reached for his mind, as she held the dead-seeming hand of Geode.
Nothingness answered her call. Nothing.
“Oh,” she said. “It seems to be that my lord cares not for me.” She spoke in a whisper, and felt tears tremble beneath her voice. “It seems my lord cares nothing for the hill, nothing for any of us. How can he be lost to all this, Malachite? He is your milk-brother. He is my husband. Yet because of a disagreement will he forget all this, the multivaried bonds that tie him to this hill? Oh, he’ll forget crown and shame and all, for the sake of that human whom he’ll pursue.”
“Lady—” Malachite started.
On the bed, Geode’s power flared in a little explosion as magic left the body no longer able to contain it.
Geode’s body changed.
It shrank, shriveled. The long, blond hair turned whiter than the sheets upon which it lay, then fell, all in a breath, leaving the scalp beneath bare like wintry earth. The perfect face, with its small nose, its mobile lips, wrinkled and crinkled and seemed to collapse in on itself.
Ariel let go of the arm that, still living, still warm in her hand, had turned skeleton thin, its skin like paper.
She said, “Oh,” as she watched this rapid semblance of human aging.
She could say no more.
Malachite sobbed.
Where Lord Geode had lain, the shriveled yellow creature took a breath that looked as though it would blow away what remained of him, and shuddered as life left him.
On the bed remained nothing but a pile of earth—that dust from which mortals were fashioned, as elves were from fire—that dust to which men returned upon death.
“Oh,” Ariel said, and rubbed her palms upon her white dress.
Malachite drew in a deep, sobbing breath. “Oh, lady. Oh. He was a hundred, and now is reverted to what he would be had the essence of Elvenland never infused him. He was a hundred and now he’s dust.”
Ariel turned around in time to see Malachite sink to his knees. “And I am sixty, the Lord Quicksilver’s very age, born the same day.
“If my magic vanishes, where will I be? In second childishness, and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
While Ariel stared at him, her lips bereft of any consolation, Malachite approached her, on his knees, arms raised as if to the highest worship. “Oh, lady. Lady, marry me.” He crept closer.
She stood, amazed, unable to respond.
“Only you leave him, and marry me. Make me king of the hill and thus possessor of everyone’s magic with that great honor. And in that honor will my honor bask, and that power will protect mine.”
The lean face, the intent green eyes, turned up to Ariel with an intensity not to be vouchsafed. “Only do that, milady, and the two of us, King and Queen of Fairyland, and for once whole, will lend the mending hand to this affliction. Then won’t the lord’s absence matter.”
Looking at Malachite’s face, remembering the horror of the thing on the bed and knowing that half of Malachite’s treason hailed from desperation, yet Ariel bridled at it, and felt a shiver climb along her spine. “You would do that?” she asked. “You would do that and thus dispossess and kill your lord?”
“Oh, not kill him. Not kill him.” Reaching for the hem of her gown, he held it in his hands like a holy relic, and looking up at her with panic fear, he said, “Oh, lady, he’s elf born. His life is not at stake. It is our lives he risks with his folly. Not his.”
Ariel’s mind chided and complained that Malachite was right, that it was Quicksilver’s base lust that undid them all.
But in her heart, in her faithful heart, Ariel loved Quicksilver still and she couldn’t believe that ill of him, her lord.
Hadn’t she loved Quicksilver ever since they were elven children, growing up in the palace? Hadn’t she trusted him through his wild youth and come to fruition of their love as maturity molded Quicksilver into a man at last?
And how could she betray him now, even if . . .
No, Quicksilver couldn’t have betrayed her. She suspected it yet couldn’t fully believe it.
Something else must have taken him away . . . . Something.
She shook her head.
She stepped back away from Malachite. “I have no proof that my lord plays me false,” she said. “I have no proof and I am his true wife.”
Mad despair burned in Malachite’s pale features and a madness was called to battle in his gaze.
Malachite got up. He stared at her with fever-bright green eyes. He swallowed.
“Oh, I’m sure he plays you false now and then, and always has. I remember his father.” He met Ariel’s shocked look with sudden sobriety. “Wish you for proof?”
“Proof of what?” she asked, all amazed. “Of what accuse you my lord?”
Malachite’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “If it’s proof you want, then proof you shall have. Would you actually wish to see him topped?” He shook his head. “No, it matters not. Some proof you shall have before the night is through. And then will you marry me and we shall cleanse this hill.”
Malachite was mad, burned insane by his fear. Tears that shone in his eyes, but did not fall, made his gaze hard and cutting like a blade.
He walked down the hallway and Ariel was left alone with her doubts. She wouldn’t think that Quicksilver had left her to satisfy his base lust. But then, why would Quicksilver have left else?
And oh, what damned hours told she over, who doted yet doubted, feared yet strongly loved.