Kingfisher (19 page)

Then the knight hastily pushed back her heavy, ornate chair, and Daimon said as quickly, “Dame Scotia. I didn't mean to startle you. Don't tell me you read as well?”

She subsided, showing him the enormous, gaudily illustrated work. “I'm researching my ancestor, Tavis Malory, to find out if he was truly as dreadful as his contemporaries said. I do intend to go questing. I keep intending to go. But I can't seem to find my way past all the books, these and Lord Skelton's.”

“Tavis—” Past surfaced unexpectedly; a title came to mind. “
The Life and Death
—of course.”

“Have you read it?”

“Hasn't everybody? That's what made me want to run around in armor swinging a broadsword at people. I remember now.” He glanced at her curiously, wondering what it was about her that seemed to clear his head, convince him, for just a moment, that he belonged back in the mundane world. “Where will you quest, when you do?”

“I haven't decided yet, Prince Daimon. It seems such a complex notion: finding a vessel belonging to a god, lost for
who knows how long except in tales. I'm at a loss trying to find a beginning point. If you don't mind my asking, how did you make the decision?”

“I didn't.”

“Oh.”

“Like you, I'm still here. But I have decided to look at a map. A very old map. Like this one.”

He crossed the room to study the map on the wall that had lured him in. It was large, studded with wyverns' nests, a realm with borders puffed and vague as clouds, mountains like inverted V's, forests of what looked like brown chimneys billowing green smoke, abounding with animals extinct, and imaginary, and occasionally, like the spouting whales frolicking off the coast, still existent. Wyvernhold, in huge gold-leaf letters, spanned the landmass. “Later than I thought,” he commented, studying it closely, and came nose to nose with a peculiar creature. It appeared so suddenly that it took his breath away. “And there it is. So that's what a chimera looks like . . .”

He heard the chair scrape stone again. “May I?”

“Of course.”

She came to stand beside him, silent for a moment, until she gave a sudden chuckle. “There.” She tapped the glass over the northeastern, mountainous portion of Wyvernhold. “The Triple-Horned Mountain Sheep. My family crest. Not lovely, but fearless and quite strong. They would even attack wyverns who were after their young.”

“Everyone fought the wyvern, once, it seems.”

“Where is the chimera?”

He pointed to the fire-breathing lion with the body of
a goat, and a writhing serpent for a tail, hovering over a bay in the northern coast of Wyvernhold. “Chimera Bay. That's where I would look. If I were questing.”

“Why there?” she murmured, studying the strange beast. “Is a chimera particularly dedicated to Severen?”

“I don't know.”

“The goat part looks female.”

“So it does,” he said, recognizing the very full udder. “I need an older map. A map older than Wyvernhold, to know.”

“To know what, Prince Daimon?”

“If the bay had other names. Older names. What early beings might still be living, forgotten, in the chimera's shadow.” He glanced at her; she still studied the map, fascinated, it seemed, by the variety of beasts.

“So you are?” she asked. “Questing? That's why you need the map?”

“Yes.” He turned away restively, full of sudden impatience, to go so that he could come back. “As soon as I can. Tomorrow. At dawn.”

She looked at him, gave him her quick, generous smile. “I hope you find your chimera, Prince Daimon. Wish me luck with mine.”

I
told you so,” Val said.

“You did not,” Pierce said. “You didn't say a word.”

“I told you with everything but words. You read my mind.”

“I heard your ‘no,'” Pierce conceded reluctantly. “But you didn't say why.”

“How could I? She was the basilisk.”

They were sitting in what looked like an old library in the basilisk's house. At least it was full of bookcases. A dusty volume lay here and there on the shelves, which mostly held an impressive collection of cobwebs. The books seemed discarded leftovers:
A Beginner's Guide to Butterflies
,
Do It Yourself Plumbing
,
A History of Irrigation Methods in South Wyvernhold
.

There was also their supper, which they had chanced upon by roaming around the countless rooms in the house above the sea. How long they had been there, Pierce had no
idea. After adroitly separating them from Leith, sending him off under the care of her attendants, the sorceress had stripped them of everything but their underwear and left them a pile of old shirts and assorted bottoms to pick from. Somehow, they could not move while she did this. They could not speak, not even when she pulled Val's Wyvern's Eye out of his jacket and examined it curiously.

“What is this?” she asked, waving it at them; they could not blink, let alone duck. “Oh, well.” She tossed it on the small pile of arms that included the kitchen knife. “You won't need it.”

Pierce wondered how he had ever imagined her beautiful. Her lips were too rosy, her teeth too white, her curly hair too golden, her eyes an unpleasant shade of cornflower blue. Her smile deepened slightly, offering him an absurdly placed dimple.

“It's called glamour,” she told him. “Works like a charm. Now. Here are the rules. You can go wherever you like. I'll feed you when you're hungry. After Sir Leith recovers from his unfortunate affliction—which he will do, I promise—I'm sure we will all become the best of friends. Any questions?” They stared at her. “Good. Then I will see you—when I see you.” She laughed lightly and disappeared, along with their weapons and uniforms, without bothering with the door.

Still wordless, too worried and disgusted to speak, they pulled on some faded, fraying clothes and went looking for Leith.

The house, which had seemed from the road a large, light-filled coastal mansion, full of windows and decks to watch the sea, bore no resemblance to itself inside. It rambled
interminably like an underground cave. Its hallways were shadowy, its ceilings low, its rooms moldy and overflowing with shabby furniture, or else, like the library, looking as though they had been hastily abandoned. There were no windows anywhere. There were no visible doors leading outside. There was no sign of Leith.

“Why did she do that to him?” Val demanded explosively, when, weary and strewn with cobwebs, they stumbled into the library and found their supper. “She turned into a basilisk, knocked him out with her breath, brought him here to cure him—for what? It makes no sense.”

“Did he break her heart, too?” Pierce asked.

Val blinked, made a visible effort to think.

“He never mentioned anyone but our mother. And the queen. He had to tell me about that before gossip did.” He paced, an incongruous knight in a torn pink T-shirt and fire-engine-red pajama bottoms. Then he paused over one of the supper trays, complete with a wineglass full of water and a plastic rose in a bud vase. “Do you think this is safe to eat?”

Pierce shrugged and speared a forkful of some kind of fish covered in green. His brows went up; he swallowed. “Olive sauce. Someone here can cook. I don't know if it's safe, but it's good.”

They ate, then continued the search. When they began to stumble over their feet, they came upon a room with two frightful iron beds, thin mattresses unrolled over bare springs, covered with rumpled, yellowing sheets and threadbare blankets. They fell into the lumpy, sagging embraces and slept.

The house looked exactly the same when they woke.

“There is no time,” Val breathed. “There is no day or night.”

“There are no toothbrushes,” Pierce said glumly from the stained, rusty bathroom.

“I think we're inside a spell.”

“No kidding.”

“Our father isn't in the house we're in,” Val said more coherently.

“Well, there's one. I think it was last used by something with mold on its fangs.”

“No matter how long we look, we won't find him. We're in some kind of magic bubble. A sort of alternate universe inside the real house. We could be in the same room our father is in, right at this moment, and never know it.”

Pierce, splashing water over his face, leaned back and peered out the door at Val. “Then how do we get to where he is?”

“I have no idea.”

They continued searching, and found their breakfast in a drab little room with an unplugged dishwasher in it, a box of laundry detergent on the bottom of a set of shelves, and an empty birdcage.

“Our mother,” Pierce said as they leaned over the dishwasher and ate scrambled eggs, peppered bacon, and cranberry muffins, “is a sorceress. One of us must have inherited something of her magic. We should be able to think our way around this.” He paused, looking expectantly at Val, who shook his head. “You recognized the basilisk when all I saw was what she wanted me to see. You recognized the Mistbegotten mist. You recognized me. You piece things together far better than I do.”

“That's not sorcery. That's perception. What you do with that knife—that's magical.”

“It's in the knife, not in me.”

“Is it?” Val waggled his fork at his brother. “What could you do with this, for instance?”

“Eat,” Pierce said flatly. He did, then added, “I still think we may have some of her powers. We've just never had to use them before. If you wanted to make all of this—”

“It's illusion,” Val pointed out.

“You mean it's all in our heads? We're imagining this house?”

“No. The sorceress is. It's in her head.”

“Well—” Pierce grappled a moment. “Can we—can we change it with our minds? Put a door in it that leads out?”

Val considered the question, then answered simply, “I'm a knight. I'm better at bashing things apart than imagining doors through them.”

They tried that for a while, swinging at scarred plaster and torn wallpaper with whatever they could find: removable shelving, a rolling pin with a missing handle, a mop. The sorceress appeared as they were battering at the walls around a chimney, raising clouds of soot but doing no discernible damage to her spell.

She sat down on a couch with a few springs sticking out of it, and said, “I need some help with your father.”

They gazed at her, still holding makeshift battering tools, which she ignored.

Val said, “Of course we'll help. Just take us to him. What's wrong with him?”

She brushed his words away. “Not that kind of help. He's fine. He just— Is he always so stubborn?”

Val took a step toward her, still wielding the mop handle. He asked tightly, “About what?”

She waved her hand again; the mop disappeared. “About— Well. His feelings? I've been doing everything for him. I put him in the loveliest room in my house. I removed the basilisk's spell. He has only a bit of a headache. My attendants bathed him, dressed him in clean clothes; I cooked for him myself. I would have fed him with my own hands. He refuses to be grateful. All he does is ask for you.”

“Why wouldn't he? He's our father. We were traveling together.”

“I explained that to him,” the sorceress said a trifle querulously. “More than once. That everyone around him was incapacitated by the monster, that I saw the incident from a distance and went to help, that he was alone when I found him, and in such distress that of course I did all that was possible to get him out of there, and quickly. The roads were blocked, so I brought him here. I saw nothing of a limo, a driver, or two young, red-haired men wearing uniforms. They must have driven on to search for him when the road cleared.”

“He doesn't know we're here?” Pierce said, appalled.

“No. He has no idea where you've gone.” She brooded a moment. “I suspect that—in some tiny way—he doesn't entirely believe me. I don't know why.” She stood up restively, paced a moment across a rumpled, faded hearthrug. They watched her in complete bewilderment.

“What is it you want from him?” Pierce pleaded. “Maybe we can help? Is it something he did to you? Are you that angry with him?”

“Of course not. He has never met me before in his life.
But I've known about him all of mine.” She paused, studying them, nibbling on a fingernail. “It may be that you'll both—no, maybe just one of you, to be on the safe side—will have to appear at my door asking if I've seen him. He will be so grateful to me when he sees at least one of his sons. But we'll need some convincing story of where the other one has gone.”

“How about this?” Val said sharply. “That one of us was kidnapped by the incredibly stupid and selfish sorceress who turned herself into a basilisk and attacked our father.”

The sorceress took her finger from between her teeth and pointed it at him. “You,” she said coldly, “can stay here. I'll take your brother with me to see your father.”

“I'm not going to lie to him for you,” Pierce said adamantly.

“Fine. Decide for yourselves who stays and who goes free to see Sir Leith. But if I glimpse the faintest falseness in your eyes, in your face, hear it in your words when you speak to him, the brother you left behind will share stale bread and moldy cheese rinds with the rats.”

Val gazed at her, his eyes narrowed and so intent on her that Pierce wondered uneasily what, by word or action, he might trigger in her. He only asked, with unexpected gentleness, “What is it? If you want our help, tell us what you need.”

Her face crumpled suddenly; she dabbed at the corner of one eye with her forefinger. “I need him to understand how deeply I am in love with him. That he holds my heart in his. I need to move him as he moves me. Can you help me with that? He finds it so difficult to be grateful despite all I've done for him. Can you persuade him? I want to rule his heart, to make it tack and turn toward me, always toward
me, until all the world understands the poetry that he feels for me. I want him to forget the queen. I want to be known, from this time on, as his legendary love. Can you help me?” She flicked a finger at her other eye, then gave them both a dark, tearless stare. “If you can't, then stay out of my way. Now. Choose. Which of you remains here, which of you sees your father. Be ready to tell me when I return.”

Val said quickly, after she vanished, “I am older than you, far more experienced with fighting whatever she might conjure up, and I've been with him my entire life. Please. Let me go.”

“I can lie better than you,” Pierce said.

“How do you know?”

Pierce gazed at him helplessly. “Because there's so much I don't know about either of you. I could invent all kinds of things and believe them at the same time. And I've been around a sorceress all my life. Look at your face. Have you ever told a single lie?”

“Of course I have.”

“That must be the first. You can't even lie convincingly about lying. Your eyes don't know how.”

Val said nothing, just looked at him with such burning, pleading urgency that Pierce yielded and stayed behind to await the cheese rinds and the rats that, he expected, would be inevitable.

It did not take Val long to get into trouble. After some roaming and futile banging at walls, during which time stood around and watched, judging from the lack of even a hairbreadth of movement from light or shadow, Pierce found a plate on a cracked and blistered wooden chest. As promised, it held some furry cheese whittled to the rind, and a couple
of rock-hard heels of bread. He looked at it glumly, wondering how his father and brother were faring. Also as promised, a rat popped up from behind the chest, eyed Pierce warily.

“Help yourself,” Pierce told it, and turned away to find another wall, another weapon.

He dumped the dead plant out of a cast-iron pot, and was trying to put a dent in a windowless wall inset with an incongruous window seat, when the rat leaped up onto the seat and stood staring at him.

“Sorry,” Pierce sighed. “You'll have to wait for the next meal after whatever that one was.” He whacked at the wall with force, determined to fight his way back into the world by whatever worked. The rat did not move. Pierce glanced at it again. Something in its dark, fixed gaze, its complete lack of instinct or common rat sense, made Pierce's skin prickle.

He lowered the pot, whispered, “Mom?”

The wall around the window seat blew into fragments. The rat, squealing, leaped one way, Pierce another. When the shards of lath and plaster finished falling, and the dust settled, he felt light and heard the distant roar of the sea.

A series of muffled explosions thundered methodically around him, followed by some furious shouting just before the floor collapsed under his feet. He thudded down an inch or two, and walls around him collapsed, dissolved, like the long spiral of chambers within a shell fraying apart, opening up to reveal its outer structure. He stood in the lovely mansion he had seen from the road, with its airy rooms overlooking the highway and the sea, its windows stained the mist and pearl of what he finally realized was dawn.

Across the road, down a long, empty beach, a crow chased
a seagull. Their cries were audible even above the waves. Pierce, watching the crow gain air and peck at the gull's feathers, shivered suddenly, amazed at the power that his mother possessed to have torn apart the sorceress's spell like a squall hitting a haystack. He watched for a time, wondering if she would turn and fly back to him. Both birds vanished behind a jut of headland. He waited, as the sun revealed its waking eye between two layers of cloud, then closed it again and carried on unseen. Pierce opened a sliding deck door, stepped outside, taking deep breaths of the briny, chilly air. He heard voices, and went to look over the side of the deck.