Free A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson

once we dwelt—an isle where was a mighty mortal wizard not many years agone—”
    “High Prospero?” barked Rupert.
    “Then thou hast read the chronicle thyself.” Oberon trembled, like moonglow on a lake when the breeze passes over. “I think ’twas he. I could not learn for sure. Nor could my spells and sendings search it out. Belike he left the place invisible, that none might find and use his tools for ill, without foreseeing good would someday need them. Its friendly sprite knows nothing of our woe. If thou couldst fetch those things—”
    “Where you have failed,” Rupert asked, “how shall unmagic I discover them?”
    Queen Titania flowed forward. Rupert dropped to one knee. “I bow to beauty,” he exclaimed.
    She smiled and touched his head. “Nay, to weakness,Prince,” she answered softly. “Thou must have read how I was made a fool.” Casting a mischievous glance at Oberon: “Though if, instead of Bottom, it’d been thee—” (Puck snickered.) She gestured the man to rise. Quickly as had the king, she grew solemn.
    “Ye mortals do have powers, do know things, which are for aye denied the Faerie race,” she said. “Among them is the strength of mortal love.” Wistfulness tinged her speech: “Mine ageless, flighty kind knows love … of sorts … but simply pleasantly, like songs or sweets. True human love is not a comedy; time makes it tragic. In those heights and deeps rise dawns and storms beyond our understanding, the awe and the abidingness of death.”
    She raised her hands. Abruptly in the fingers of each was a ring. One was larger than its mate, but otherwise they were alike: circlets of silver in the form of an asp which bit its own tail, its head the bezel crowned by a many-faceted jewel.
    “These rings which I uphold before thy gaze were forged in Egypt centuries away, by the last sorcerer of that old land, to aid a lordly pair who were in love. So long as each stayed true to plighted troth, the glowing of the stones would guide them on tow’rd where the means of fortune for them lay: the closer aim, the brighter was the light.” Titania sighed. “He proved too weak, too politic for it. The flames went out for both, who failed and died.
    “By twists and turns, the treasure came to us, who lack that strength and purity of love which kindles it.” Like a stooping hawk: “But thou art mortal, Prince! With this for compass, thou canst seek the isle, and on the way know where is help or refuge. Thy right hand wilt thou need for reins and sword. Wear this upon the left.”
    Jennifer clutched her breast. Rupert was as shaken. He took a backward step and stammered, “I have no one—”
    She leaned near. Her hair floated cloud-wan, bearing odors of thyme and roses. “Not Mary Villiers?” she whispered.
    He made as if to fend her off. “She was never mine.”
    Jennifer broke from her companions, sped through the dew-bright grass. “Leave off thy gramaries on him, thou witch!” she yelled.
    Titania smiled as she withdrew to Oberon’s side. “Here’s one to make exchange of vows with thee,” she said.
    Rupert caught the maiden’s wrist. “Be calm, they mean us well,” he began. She halted, but faced the queen and challenged:
    “What dost thou mean?”
    “Thou heardst us speak, my child,” Titania responded gently. “Take each a ring and give it to the other, pledging faith, that he may have a torch to show his way, and thou thyself what safety thine bestows.”
    Jennifer stood awhile, staring first at her, then at Rupert, there in whiteness and shadow. The moon was lowering and a thin cold ripple went through the air. At last the girl said, “I cannot give him what he owns already.”
    Beneath the oak, Puck remarked to Will, “If he’ll not take the maiden’s ring she proffers, he is a fool, unless his softness lies elsewhere than in the brain.”
    “A liavely wench,” the man agreed. “How spendthrift be’t, to risk thic slender waist.”
    Rupert looked long