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Scene 2




Arden Woods, near Stratford-upon-Avon. These ancient trees are all that remain of the primeval forest that once covered all of the British Isles. As befits their antiquity, the woods are the run of fairy kind and the abode of elf. On a clearing, amid the trees, a tall translucent palace rises, more graceful and perfect than any built by mankind. And in the gold-and-white-marble throne room, the King and Queen of Elvenland sit on their gilded thrones, and receive a centaur ambassador from the far-off reaches of their realm. Tall, regal-looking, Quicksilver sits on the throne, his long blond hair combed over his shoulder. He wears a magnificent suit of dark blue velvet and pale blue silk stockings. Queen Ariel, smaller than her husband, and paler, sits next to him, wearing a white dress that makes her look at once too innocent and too young for the heavy crown that rests upon her head.


Running steps approached the throne room of Fairyland.

“Lord,” a breathless voice called. “Lord, our boundary is breached.”

Quicksilver looked away from the ambassador of the centaurs.

The centaur ambassador shrugged his broad human shoulders, while the glossy black legs of his horse half tip-tapped uneasily on the marble floor.

The ambassador had been in the midst of one of the long speeches beloved of his people, mingling Greek and English with artless effusion.

Now he, like all of the court, turned his attention to the broad-arched entrance to the palace, from which a breathless voice called, “Milord, milord, a breach. A breach in our defense.”

An elf careened through the marble archway that opened to the outside of the palace.

His eyes wide with fear, his breath ragged, a tall, dark elf male stumbled into the room to collapse, prostrating himself in a panting heap on the red velvet carpet in front of the throne.

The centaur ambassador cantered away from the newcomer, closer to the magnificent lords, the bejeweled ladies of Fairyland that, in two sparkling aisles, lined the room.

The ladies’ fans moved nonstop, their lips whispering fast behind those fans, of the shocking alarm and what it might betide.

Quicksilver rose to his feet, recognizing the elf, whose sturdy body betrayed human origins, but who wore the green velvet of Quicksilver’s own private guard, and whose black hair sported the golden coronet of a prince of Fairyland. “Malachite?”

This was Lord Malachite, Quicksilver’s childhood friend, his milk-brother, raised with the king at the feet of the late fairy queen, Titania. A trusted friend, a keen advisor.

Quicksilver’s pulse sped in alarm. Brave Malachite thus alarmed? What could this bode? Decorous Malachite disrupting a royal audience? It could mean nothing good.

As the whole court recognized Malachite, the elven ladies’ fans moved faster. Whispers rose from amid the elven gentlemen. Queen Ariel gasped and leaned forward. Her small, rosebud mouth opened in startled alarm.

Malachite knelt, gasping for breath, and half raised his face, his mouth working, trying to say something for which he had no breath. His great jade-green eyes were full of that speaking force which eyes have when lips lack the strength to utter.

Ariel stood and rested her arm on Quicksilver’s. Together, the sovereigns of Elvenland descended the ten marble steps from the platform on which their throne sat. They flanked Malachite, who, still kneeling, managed to draw in full breath that whistled through his words as he spoke.

“If your majesty pleases,” he said, turning wide eyes to Quicksilver. “If your majesty pleases.” He looked at Ariel. “Our defenses have been breached.”

Quicksilver knit his brows. If your majesty pleases. What a phrase. He pleased no such thing. Not sure what Malachite meant, yet he was sure it betokened no good. “The defenses?” he said. “What defenses, man? Speak.”

For they were not at war, nor were there defenses around the realm that another realm might break through. No. Nor such realm as might wish to do it.

“The defenses to Avalon, milord. The defenses set around this palace, around this forest.” Malachite gulped in air like a starving man will devour food. “The living defenses that ever protected our kind from evil beings abroad.”

Still kneeling, he straightened so that his knees supported his weight, the rest of him upright. His earnest face, with its too-sharp nose, its jade-green eyes, faced Quicksilver.

“While we were on patrol, we sensed it, Igneous, and I, and Birch and Laurel. And then we ran to the place where right away we saw the breach blooming in our magical defenses, evil resounding through it.”

The muttering of the court stopped, every breath suspended.

Quicksilver shook his head. He could not doubt Malachite. Yet the defenses could not be broken.

These magical wards and spells and dread enchantments of which Malachite spoke had been placed around the capital of the magical kingdom, time out of mind, by Quicksilver’s ancestors.

They protected the source of the hill’s magic, the collective strength of hill power, the core and Soul of elvenkind.

Humans and other natural creatures could wander through the defenses, in and out of the forest, and disturb nothing. Most humans, blind, ephemeral creatures that they were, couldn’t even see the fairy palace and that great, gilded land that coexisted along the human world like two pages of a book, touching but never mingling.

But any enemy with ill intentions would be kept out by these defenses, unable to come near the ancient, sacred palace of elvenkind, unable to touch the living force of their magic, the fountain of elf power.

There was no record, ever—either in Quicksilver’s memory, or in the collective memory of his race which, as a king, Quicksilver held—of the defenses being disturbed, much less broken.

This elven kingdom had fought and won and lost wars against other magical kingdoms. It had suffered encroachment by humanity and dissension within its ranks, and yet those defenses that protected the core of the kingdom had remained inviolate.

Until now.

“You must be wrong,” Quicksilver whispered. Yet he trembled with fear that they might not be. For if they were right, then Elvenland met a threat such as it had never encountered.

Malachite shook his head, pale lips compressed into a straight line.

Quicksilver’s court fell mute. The ladies blanched so that their cosmetics stood out in vivid relief. The horror-stricken faces of the lords looked like wax above their vivid, colorful garments.

Feeling his hair stand on end, Quicksilver bent down, grasped Malachite’s shoulder, and pulled up, forcing his lieutenant to stand. “What force is it, Malachite? What force?”

“Oh, milord, it looks . . .” Malachite swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down on his long neck. “It looks like the force of the Hunter, milord, like the Hunter’s magical power has borne upon this your kingdom with unsheathed malice and, overcoming these ancient wards with his greater might, affixed his cannon against our hill.”

The silence of the court broke on a collective gasp from many throats. Looking up, Quicksilver saw alarm, surprise.

But most of all, he saw fear, fear of the Hunter, a dread creature of elven legend, said to punish the wrongdoers and collect the souls of criminals.

The Hunter was older and more magical than elves, a creature of primeval darkness and unbound might. In the old days, elves and humans both had worshiped him as a god. Whether he was such, Quicksilver couldn’t hazard.

But Quicksilver had met with the Hunter face to face, and knew the creature’s power to avenge, the creature’s strength to do justice upon evildoers.

The Hunter had visited this hill only once in living memory, and that for dread purpose.

Compared to the Hunter’s power, all of Quicksilver’s might and power and kingdom were as a child’s wooden dagger to a man’s sword.

Quicksilver pushed his features into a smile and straightened up. “Come, come, you must be mistaken.” He forced hearty heat into his voice and looked doubtingly at Malachite. “The Hunter? What would the Hunter, that great lord of justice, want with us?”

His voice fell—hollow—upon the still room.

Quicksilver’s father, Oberon, had once said that a quiet court was a sign of danger, that the flutter and gossip of Fairyland were a sign of health as telling in absence as the silencing of a beating heart.

Around the vast hall, nothing moved, and Quicksilver felt the gazes of his subjects resting on him like so many drawn daggers pointed at his chest.

Even the servant fairies—the tiny, winged beings who did all the hard work of Fairyland—seemed to have stopped midflight, the iridescent pattern of light they used for speech stilled.

Malachite shook his head. “I know not, milord. I know not what he wants with us.”

He looked away from Quicksilver as if he suspected his king of some crime so foul that only the supernatural vengeance of the Hunter could expiate it. “Not in fulfillment of his natural fate since that would not demand his breeching our defenses. They gave him entrance easily enough when he had business among us.”

Malachite spoke business with a heavy tongue.

Only ten years ago, the business of the Hunter in Fairyland had been the collecting of the king, Sylvanus, Quicksilver’s brother. Sylvanus had committed parricide, and thus enslaved himself to the Hunter. In forfeit and payment for his many crimes, he’d been condemned to becoming one of the Hunter’s dogs, enslaved for eternity to the dread lord of justice and slaying.

Quicksilver shivered. He was Sylvanus’s brother. Could the taint extend to him? But he had committed no crime.

“I must see this breach,” Quicksilver said, drawing himself up with regal might he did not feel and drawing a hearty breath.

“Milord, I will go,” Ariel said hastily, nervously. Small, slight, she stood beside her lord like a page boy who showed the meaning of courage to mature royalty. “I’ll go see what the Hunter seeks.”

Quicksilver flinched. Why would she think he needed protection from the Hunter? He spun around, looking at his court, and in every eye he read horrified suspicion which Ariel’s gallantry had only encouraged.

Of what crime did they suspect him? Why feared his lady for him?

Quicksilver said, “You dare too much, milady. You dare too much and you’re too bold. I am the king, and I need no protection. Not from the Hunter.”

And though he shivered, thinking of the dark being and unfathomable power he’d encountered before, he tried to look brave.

In an indecent display of magical power—what he hoped was a reassuring flaunting of his might—Quicksilver frowned down at his clothes, which changed, in that look, from silk to well-cured leather, and from tailored doublet and exquisite hose to crimson leather armor over well-padded tunic and breeches.

Pulling his hair back and knotting it behind his head, he bowed to his alarmed wife, as suede gloves materialized upon his long-fingered hands. “Milady,” he said. “You must do the honors of my court. I, the king, will defend my kingdom.”

But Ariel stepped close to him and laid her hand on his leather-gloved arm. “At least let me go with you, milord. At least let me help—”

Quicksilver drew himself up and away from her. “Milady, indeed, I need no help.” He shook her hand from his sleeve and turned to Malachite, giving his back to his queen. “Igneous and Laurel and Birch?”

“Waiting outside the palace, milord. But should you . . .” Malachite shot a glance at Ariel, who stood behind Quicksilver, and swallowed. “Is it wise to risk your majesty?”

Was it Quicksilver’s fate today to suffer fools? Did every one of his vassals believe Quicksilver a secret criminal?

He exhaled noisily. “My majesty was made for risk and to brave danger that my people might be safe,” he said. With a quick eye he spied the incredulous looks of his courtiers, and this tempted him on. “Come, Malachite. We’ll go and heal the breach that would undo the peace of this kingdom.”

Quicksilver kept one step ahead of Malachite as they jogged out of the broad throne room, and through the arched door of the elven palace to the imposing entrance staircase outside.

On the broad white marble steps, three guards—Igneous, a languid blond, and Birch and Laurel, dark-haired twins—looked awfully young and painfully eager.

They bowed to Quicksilver, their flushed faces and impatient breath like that of a maiden at her first ball. They longed for danger and thought to court her as a fiery and fulfilling mistress.

They knew not the Hunter, Quicksilver thought. They knew nothing of that eternal, immortal darkness nor the danger it engendered.

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