Kingfisher

by Patricia A. Mckillip

News about the Assembly reached Calluna’s sanctum in piecemeal fashion. Short of listening through a keyhole, Perdita had to wait for Gareth to reappear, which he finally did late in the evening after the Assembly ended. They slipped out of the palace, away from knights and acolytes, to a quiet, discreet pub to talk. From Gareth, the princess heard the incredible tale of the secret son of Leith Duresse, whose wife Heloise had kept from him all those years.

  “We actually met him,” Gareth told her, looking amazed. “Prince Roarke and Bayley and I, when we got lost on Cape Mistbegotten, coming home from the north. The sorceress who cooked our lunch was Pierce’s mother. Now he is going off questing with his newfound father and brother.”

  “And you?” Perdita asked grimly, fascinated as well but refusing to be distracted. “Are you going off, too?”

  He gave her a rueful look that was overshadowed by a vision. She recognized that distancing between them, the feeling that part of him had already left her. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You just got back from the north!”

  “I know.”

  “That time it was for a falcon—”

  “The winter merlin.”

  “This time—for what? Exactly?”

  “Nobody seems to know, exactly. It’s hard to explain.”

  She took a cold swallow of beer and eyed him dourly. “Try.”

  He did, earnestly but not very coherently, through another beer, and most of what was left of the night. They parted company in the morning, he to pack, she to Calluna’s sanctum, where she had the first shift of the day keeping watch, among the pools and fountains and flickering candles, over the ancient peace of the goddess. She opened the chamber door to change into her robe and found herself face-to-face with Leith Duresse.

  She froze on the threshold; he blushed; the queen said quickly, “Close the door.”

  Perdita did so, a bit crossly, guessing that he had been telling the queen much the same thing she had listened to for half the night. “Good morning, Sir Leith. In a few minutes, it will be my duty as Calluna’s guardian to tell you to leave this holy place, where no one dedicated to the god Severen is permitted to cast a shadow or loose a breath in the goddess’s sanctum. I hear you are going off on this quest as well?”

  “Only reluctantly, Princess,” he said, and added with wry honesty, “I’m too old to go looking for such mystical powers. I would have to relive my life.”

  She nodded, hearing as well what he didn’t say. “The king wants you to go.”

  She looked beyond him at the queen, who was adrift beside the window, her hair disheveled, her expression unsettled.

  Genevra said, “I asked Leith to come here before he left, to give us details about the Assembly. It seems to have been confusing, well-intentioned, and entirely mystifying.”

  “Father didn’t tell you?”

  “It probably didn’t cross Arden’s mind that we might want to know.” She looked quickly at Leith, as though, far away, she had heard a footstep turn their way. “You should go.”

  “I will see you before we leave.”

  “Yes.”

  “Take the tower stairs,” Perdita advised. “Aunt Morrig hovers near the inner stairway to check on the acolytes. Just don’t breathe,” she reminded him dryly, as he slipped out across the goddess’s tranquil antechamber. Perdita closed the door behind him, met the queen’s eyes long enough to recognize her own expression in them, mingling love, exasperation, and the aftermath of a very short night.

  The queen opened the wardrobe, handed Perdita the long turquoise guardian’s robe, with its collar and cuffs of mossy green. “So Gareth is going as well,” she said.

  “Yes,” the princess sighed, drawing the robe over her clothes. She kicked off her shoes; the queen handed her sandals. Perdita sat down to put them on, and added tightly, “From his description of whatever it is he’s searching for, he’s very likely to find it, perfect, gentle knight stuffed full of rectitude as he is. There will be no room left for me.”

  “Don’t worry,” the queen said, a rare, cold glint in her eyes. “Nothing involving Severen ever had much to do with perfection.”

  Perdita finished tying her sandals, sat for a moment gazing at them. Memory pursued memory; she retraced them, shod in Calluna’s sandals, and remembered what had gotten misplaced in the past chaotic days.

  She looked up, found the queen watching her. “What is it?” Genevra asked. “What do you see?”

  She had long ago stopped being surprised at her mother’s unexpected leaps of perception. “I had a vision,” she answered thinly. “In Calluna’s cave when I searched it. Under the last images in the stones at the very end of the passage: the goddess’s face on one side, and her hands, across the river, letting water spill out of them. I saw Daimon’s face, reflected in the river, looking up at her.”

  The queen drew breath sharply, loosed an imprecation in the general direction of the river god. “My fault,” she said harshly. “I told Arden it was long past time to explain to Daimon who his mother was. Apparently—”

  “Do you—”

  “I don’t. I never wanted to know. She died; I never had to live my life wondering who, among those I might meet every day, was Arden’s lover and Daimon’s mother. Now I want to know.”

  “That’s not all,” Perdita said slowly. “Daimon seems to be in love. And very short-tempered about it, as well as secretive.”

  “Is she married?”

  “He said no. He also said—” She hesitated, frowning. “Something that made me realize he knows more about his mother’s family—and cares more—than seems likely. We used to tell each other everything. Now he barely talks to me. As if there are things he doesn’t want me to know. Or anyone. He leaves the palace through back ways. He seems troubled.”

  “Enough to draw the attention of the goddess,” Genevra said tightly. She stood silently a moment, arms folded, staring at the floor. “Who,” she said finally, drawing a solution out of a rumpled turquoise rug, “do we trust to follow him?”

  “Me,” Perdita said promptly.

  “No. I’m not sending another of my children into the wilds of Severluna. We have no idea where he goes. One of the knights, who can fight for him if need be.”

  “They’re going off questing.”

  “Well, somebody must be questing around Severluna. Is Daimon?”

  “I don’t know. I’d guess, by the mood he’s in, he wouldn’t want to tear his heart away from what it wants. What about Sylvester Skelton? He finds lost things. He could watch Daimon in water.”

  The queen mulled that over a moment, then shook her head. “The goddess has her eye on him; now so do we. Sylvester would tell the king; word would get out. I don’t want to intrude so far into Daimon’s life that I drive him away. Maybe he can work whatever this is out for himself. For now, I just want to know what it is. And I want him protected.”

  A figure formed in the princess’s memory, clad in antique shining armor, wheeling a huge broadsword in the air at Daimon, pinning him down, then smiling genially at him afterward.

  “Dame Scotia Malory.”

  “Who?”

  “I saw her fight, and I met her in Sylvester’s tower, reading a book. She’s very strong, competent, and she offered her services to the sanctum if we needed her.”

  “Really? What made her do that?”

  “Something I said. Something she heard that I didn’t say.”

  “Indeed,” the queen murmured, her tense face regaining some of its calm. There was a faint tap at the door then, followed by a cat scratch; Perdita stood abruptly.

  “That would be Aunt Morrig, wondering why I’m not at my post.”

  “Go, then,” the queen said softly. “I’ll send for Dame Scotia.” She opened the door, smiling at the aged, inquisitive face behind it, peering into the chamber for the missing
sanctum guardian.

  Perdita took the customary station in the antechamber, seated upon a great stone among the smaller, candle-bearing river rocks taken from Calluna’s cave. There, she could watch both the tower and the inner stairwells for intruders, the stones for guttering candles, and keep an eye out for glitches in the movement of waters gliding soundlessly down the walls. She could, as well, meditate upon the ancient, powerful face of the goddess on the sanctum wall. She could also, if so inclined, pay attention to the comings and goings in and out of the changing chambers along the far wall near the stairs. She did not see her mother leave. She did see the tall, graceful young woman in knightly black who came up the inner stairs to knock on the queen’s door.

  Perdita was waiting for her beyond a curve in the stairwell when Dame Scotia came down.

  She put a finger to her lips; Scotia closed her mouth, bowed her head silently, and waited.

  “I’m coming with you,” the princess whispered.

  “The queen warned me you would say that,” Dame Scotia said softly.

  “Then I’ll go alone.”

  “Prince Daimon hardly knows me, Princess Perdita,” the knight answered, her brows crooked doubtfully. “If he sees you, he may take us in circles.”

  “And you hardly know Daimon. How will you recognize what’s important to him? Calluna showed his face to me, in her waters.” The princess added, at the knight’s silence, “Maybe she knows I can help.”

  “I may be dedicated to Severen by my status,” Scotia said finally, “but I’m not about to argue with the goddess. If Prince Daimon sees us, we can tell him we are questing together: both looking for the same thing for very different reasons.”

  Perdita heard the sanctum door open and close softly above them. “Lady Seabrook,” she breathed. “She’s on the prowl this morning. I’ll see if Daimon is still in the palace. Meet me at the road nearest the sanctum tower in half an hour.”

  Dame Scotia went down; the princess went up, rounding the curve just as Morrig appeared at the top.

  “I’m here,” she said to the elderly, darkly clad figure staring confusedly down at her. “I thought I heard forbidden voices on the stairs.”

  “That’s odd,” her great-aunt commented. “So did I.”

  Instead of her well-known Greenwing, Perdita took one of the fast black sedans out of the garage that the knights donned like a second uniform when they drove. She picked up Dame Scotia and parked on the quiet, tree-lined side roads behind the palace. There they sat, arguing amicably about who should drive, and almost ignoring the sudden streak of black that curved around them, and away. Perdita started the engine hastily.

  “He’s in uniform,” Dame Scotia commented. “I wonder if he’s questing.”

  “He’s after something,” Perdita agreed. “And he’s liable to get stopped for speeding before he finds it. I wonder if he knows we’re behind him . . .”

  He led them on a long, winding chase through the city, once they left the palace grounds, by way of the truck routes, alleyways, and side streets of Severluna, thoroughly snarling the pathways that Perdita thought she knew so well, and revealing, after she thought she had seen everything at least twice, portions of the city she did not know existed. Some had been frozen in time, streets still cobbled, buildings low, thick-walled, and unfashionably ornate; the cars and buses on them seemed to have wandered in from the future and were involved in a rambling, futile search for the way back. Perdita stubbornly tracked the helmeted figure on the electric bike ahead of her, no matter how frequently he made his turns or how abruptly he sped up and left behind only the memory of where they had seen him last.

  She always found him again.

  “He’s playing us,” Scotia said finally, calmly. “I’ve done that to fish.”

  “Then why doesn’t he just disappear? We must have driven through most of Severluna. If we are still in Severluna. I have no idea where we are. I wonder if even he knows. Now where did he go?”

  Finally, the streets grew broader, less congested; the knight on the bike stopped his sudden veering, held a steadier path, as though finally he could see in the distance the object of his search. Intent on him, Perdita scarcely noticed the wealthier neighborhood she drove through, the parklike setting of stately trees, the gently curving streets that held no traffic now, only the strange little hut that appeared in the middle of the road as though it had dropped there from some tale.

  “Ah—” Dame Scotia said; Perdita heard the astonishment in her voice.

  She braked abruptly. They watched the figure in black speed past the guardhouse without generating any interest whatsoever from the guards chatting outside it.

  “Either he’s that familiar to them,” Perdita said incredulously, “or he’s invisible.”

  The sedan was not; the guards gestured it forward, looking into the tinted windows as the princess neared. They straightened quickly, waved her past. She drove on, her mouth tight, looking for the black-clad cyclist down footpaths, hiding in bushes, though without a thread of hope.

  She yielded finally with a sigh, and said to the tactfully silent knight beside her, “All right. He may not know you, but he knows me far too well.”

  “It seemed a very good idea,” Dame Scotia said fairly.

  “But how did he know? And why, of all things, did he bother leading us on a wild-goose chase all over the city?” She slowed at another checkpoint, guards standing rigidly as she passed, and wound her way toward the palace garage. “He could have stopped and asked us not to follow. And he could have lost us easily enough a dozen times. What possessed him?” She watched another bike pass them, this one traveling at a more sedate speed. The rider, wearing jeans and boots, and a helmet with a familiar crest on it, did not glance at them as he passed, so intent was he on his own pursuits.

  She braked again, sharply. They both turned to stare at his back as he followed a curve out of sight.

  “That was Daimon,” Perdita said. Her voice shook. “That was the Wyvernbourne crest on his helmet and bike. That was his pale hair.”

  “Then who—” Dame Scotia exclaimed. The princess turned to meet her amazed eyes. “Who else knew we were going to follow him?”

  “No one. No one but you, and I, and the queen.”

  “Then who did we follow through that tangle of streets? Someone must have known—”

  “No one,” Perdita whispered. And then she was silent, looking back at the face of her aged, charmingly scattered great-aunt as she watched the princess from the top of the sanctum stairs.

  Morrig.

  PART THREE

  KINGFISHER

  15

  Pierce floated out of Severluna with his father and his brother in a black limo the size of a small yacht. It bore them effortlessly northward, surrounding them in a cocoon of soft leather, perfect air, small luxuries of every kind to while away the hours. Beyond its tinted windows, Pierce watched the highway he had driven down in the Metro scant days before. It looked completely different now, as though he saw it through the eyes of someone he barely knew. This strange Pierce unreeled a past to his new family that seemed, compared to theirs, scant of detail, monotonous, inexplicable.

  “It took courage,” Leith said, “to leave the only place you ever lived. Even more to brave the complexities of Severluna and the court, where you knew no one and neither of us knew you existed.”

  “It’s magical,” Val said, sprawled easily along most of a seat and picking out the almonds from a can of roasted nuts. “If you hadn’t done this thing or that, if you had been two fighting squares away from me instead of next to me, if you hadn’t announced a style of fighting I’d never heard of—”

  Pierce’s face burned. “Deli Style fighting. I can’t believe I invented that. Lucky for me it was you. Anyone else would have just smeared me into the grass and left me there to be dumped back into the kitchen.”

/>   His brother’s pale blue eyes flicked at him. “It was perfect. The way you used that knife—”

  “You asked me to show you. You spoke to me.”

  “You used it the way our mother did. You unburied memories.”

  “You asked my name.”

  “It was your mother in you,” Leith said. “Both of you. You recognized her magic in each other.” He reached out, took the can from Val. He shook his head, gazing at his sons as he chewed. “I can’t believe the pair of you. I thought I had done only one good thing in my life. Now I find I have done two.” He passed the can to Pierce. “Did you talk to Heloise?”

  Pierce nodded. Leith waited while he stirred the mix, located a cashew, and ate it. He said finally, “She isn’t very happy with me. I think she didn’t really expect me to find you. She thought Severluna would terrify me, and I’d run back home. And it did. But I didn’t.” He paused, added wryly, “I didn’t have time to run.”

  “Does she know that you’re with us? Heading north toward the coast highway? Does she expect to see you?”

  Pierce shook the can, peered into it, looking for words. “I told her we were traveling north together. I couldn’t explain the quest—I wasn’t listening very well at the Assembly. She didn’t say much. She didn’t ask if we would be going as far as Cape Mistbegotten.”

  Leith shifted. “She wouldn’t want to see me, but I’m sure she’d want to see you and Val. Maybe you could—”

  “She’s a sorceress,” Val reminded his father. “We’re here with you. We’re on a quest, not a vacation. If she wants to, I think she could find us. Though she hasn’t exactly made the effort so far.” He took the can from Pierce, rattled it, his eyes wide as he gazed into it. “She left me with you and never looked back.”

  “Maybe that’s why she let me go,” Pierce said abruptly. “So that I would find you both. She couldn’t come looking for you. She is too proud. And too—and too hurt. But now she knows that we are all together. Val is right, I think. She has her ways. If she wants to, she’ll use them.”