Any Man So Daring Read Online Free PDF Page A

trunk, a well-worn golden suit of armor in the corner and -- on the wall -- a portrait of himself which, when viewed from a different angle, shows a dark-haired woman -- Quicksilver’s other aspect. Quicksilver looks only at his mirror, never at his portrait, as he raises his hand to adjust the lace collar that shows over his jacket.

    W hen the knocking first sounded, Quicksilver wasn’t sure it was more than an echo of the hammering without the walls.
    How much noise the servants made in building the execution block.
    He flinched from the thought of the block and the purpose it would serve, from the execution to come and the inevitable spilling of noble elven blood.
    “Am I a butcher?” Quicksilver asked his own image in the mirror. “A tyrant?”
    His image stared back at him, bland and blond, looking as it had since Quicksilver had reached adult stature at twenty. It presented a fair prospect, slim and elegant, in the black velvet suit that molded Quicksilver’s long legs, and displayed to advantage his broad shoulders and his svelte body. Though Quicksilver neared sixty five years of age, yet he looked like a youth of twenty, his moss-green eyes full of sparkle, his perfect features unmarked by wrinkles, his pale blond hair shining like liquid moonlight, combed over his shoulder.
    As his own people reckoned their life spans, Quicksilver had barely grown out of adolescence and was a very young elf indeed.
    But looking at his own reflection, staring at his own dazed, tired eyes, Quicksilver felt old. The last three years he had spent commanding armies and putting down rebellion.
    Had those three years of fire and blood, of fear and fighting, left no mark? No mark but the look in his eyes, and this tired, careworn feeling in his soul?
    How strange nature. How strange that such resounding evil, such suffering, so much blood spilled, left the king of fairyland looking young and untouched.
    Something sounded again — a knock that seemed different from the clamor of the hammer upon the wood of the block.
    Quicksilver glanced away from the mirror, at the thick oak door of his room and called out, “Come in.”
    The door opened to reveal the slim, pale loveliness of Ariel, Queen of Fairyland, Quicksilver’s wife.
    She slid into the room furtively and cast a worried glance at Quicksilver, like a child afraid of scolding.
    Quicksilver smoothed his lace collar.
    His hands felt rough against the lace and his knuckles had thickened.
    For three years, those hands had held charmed swords and thrown magic-spelled lances, and taken elven life, with no remorse -- or almost no remorse.
    Could they now return to the smoothing of lace, the holding of game pieces, the signing of documents, the caressing of his wife, the quiet tasks of a king in peacetime?
    They must , Quicksilver thought. After this day, this awful final day of killing, his hands and he himself must learn to live in peace.
    The civil war that had rent the fairyland in two was finished. Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, profaners of neighbor-stained steel were reformed, and their leaders dead, or soon would be.
    Quicksilver had won, and today the main leader of those who had challenged his rule would meet his swift and merciless end upon the block.
    Quicksilver tried not to think of it, even as hammer blows sounded from outside. The worst horror of civil war had been visited upon him.  
    His enemy, whom he had defeated, was his near relation, almost the last surviving branch of Quicksilver’s own blood.
    Quicksilver’s own uncle Vargmar, elder brother of that Oberon who had sired Quicksilver, had led the rebel troops in their treasonous blood-shed.
    Ariel’s reflection upon the mirror — half obscured by Quicksilver’s own — showed as an intent oval face, staring out at Quicksilver with light-blue eyes as though she could read Quicksilver’s grief and worry. Her expression wavered as Ariel took a deep breath.
    “Milord,” the Queen of fairyland said. She