Kingfisher

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  He shifted his way through knights down the aisle, then disappeared among them. Pierce slid down in his chair a few more inches and closed his eyes.

  They flew open again as a hand clamped onto his shoulder.

  “What are you doing in here?” a voice barked indignantly into his ear. The hand pulled him to his feet; by some miracle, he stayed on them. “You’re that kitchen knight. You were on the field. You had no business there; you have even less business here. Wearing black doesn’t make you a knight any more than climbing over a wall to wave a knife around on the practice field.”

  Pierce, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, gazed speechlessly at the knight who had dragged him out of his chair. He wore his sandy hair in a tightly shaped bristle that peaked down his forehead and along his ears like spearpoints. Even under his quilted jacket, Pierce could see muscle. His long, lean face was pinched with extreme irritation.

  “Why are you still in my eyesight?” he demanded. “Go. Get back to the kitchen where you belong.”

  Pierce, his brain dissolving into a nebulous cloud under the furious, hazelnut stare, found a salient point. “For one,” he heard his tongue say, “you’re still holding on to me.”

  The knight scowled. Pierce felt his fingers open, the weight finally lift. The knight jerked his head at the nearest doors.

  “For another,” Pierce said without moving, “I’ve been told to stay here.”

  The knight’s face flamed. He pushed it so closely into Pierce’s that the wrong word, Pierce felt, could spark and ignite them both. “If you were anyone at all in this palace, you would know me. I am Sir Kyle Steward, first cousin of the king and seneschal of this house. Whoever brought you in here will answer to me. Go. Now.”

  Pierce’s knees gave way; he sank back into his chair. In the gathering their squabble had begun to attract, someone loosed a faint gasp. Someone else chuckled.

  “Sorry,” Pierce gabbled with genuine regret to the fury looming over him. “I am so much more willing than you could imagine to get as far away from you as possible. But if I do that, I will never find my way back to this chair where I was told to stay so that for the first time in my life I can meet my father. I have come all the way from Cape Mistbegotten and through all the years of my life to get to this chair.”

  All expression flowed out of Sir Kyle’s face; his eyes emptied even of contempt. He pulled something out of his jacket, said into it, “House guards to the Hall of Wyverns. South doors. Now.”

  “Wait, Sir Kyle,” an unexpected voice said. A woman, half a head taller than most of the knights, broad-boned and graceful, eased toward them through the growing crowd. Her hair, shades of honeycomb and gold, was swirled into a severe knot; her eyes, a lovely, pale violet, seemed recklessly fearless in the face of the fuming seneschal. She said simply, “Sir Kyle, we are here for reasons most of us barely understand yet. As Lord Skelton pointed out, we can’t make assumptions. Nothing on this path the king has asked us to take may be as it seems. Not even a kitchen knight.”

  The seneschal seemed to struggle between various responses as he looked at her. “Dame Scotia,” he said lamely, “we haven’t started the quest yet.”

  “How do you know? We don’t even know what we’re looking at now. He has a name. You could ask him.”

  With reluctance, the seneschal looked away from her to Pierce. His face tightened again; he said brusquely, “Who are you?”

  Pierce pulled together some tatters of dignity under the young woman’s calm gaze; he stood up before he answered. “My name is Pierce Oliver.”

  He heard the whispering begin, ripple through the crowd, which had grown by then to fill a quarter of the hall and was still growing. His eyes followed the whispering and found, with vast relief, the wicked grin on his brother’s face.

  Then he saw the broad-shouldered, black-haired man beside his brother, staring at Pierce with complete astonishment.

  He jostled his way through the crowd, his eyes, a warmer blue than Val’s, never leaving Pierce’s face. He would have walked through the seneschal if Sir Kyle had not gotten out of his way. In front of Pierce, he finally stopped.

  “I had no idea,” he said. He put his hands on Pierce’s shoulders. “You look so much like her.”

  Pierce was struck mute again, this time with wonder. He took in the strands of gray in his father’s hair, his deep voice, the expression in his eyes of tenderness and rue. His own hands rose, fingers closing on his father’s arms; he felt the muscle like stone. He dwindled, somehow, knee high to the knight, staring out of a child’s eyes at someone he should have known but never had, and wishing for a sixth sense that might have shown him all the missing years.

  He took a breath finally, sharply. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t— I’m sorry to surprise you like this. I didn’t know—any other way.”

  “Well,” his father said. “There it is. How many other ways are there to tell a man you are his son?” He paused, while some sort of chaos disturbed the back of the crowd, and it began to separate around a single moving figure. “How is your mother?” Leith asked.

  “She’s—she’s fine. She’s—at least she was before I left. She—” His voice stuck again, as he recognized the force approaching. His father glanced around, finally remembering their transfixed audience, and saw the magus.

  “I suppose,” he said reluctantly, “this must wait.”

  Pierce let go of his father. The slight, cob-haired Lord Skelton eased through the brawny crush of knights as if they were not there. Behind his circular lenses, his unblinking eyes seemed enormous. They caught at Pierce, held him; he could not look away. Leith said something; he scarcely heard it, so compelling was the magus’s focus on him.

  The magus reached them finally, stood silently, his gaze like a mist enfolding Pierce, separating him from time, past and present, giving him nothing to see except himself and the confusion of unknowns surrounding his next step.

  Lord Skelton blinked, set them both free in the world again, and smiled.

  “You,” he said, “have already begun.”

  The wyvern was not far behind the magus.

  The king had, it seemed, finally found a use for an expression. “Sir Leith,” he said, “is this yours?”

  “Yes, my lord. My son Pierce Oliver. His mother neglected to tell me. I’m sure she had her reasons.”

  The king studied Pierce, who bowed his head belatedly, not having a clue what else he should do.

  “That’s a kitchen uniform,” the king noted with interest. “What were you doing there?”

  “My mother taught me how to cook. Sir. My lord.” He gave up, flushing deeply, but his father was nodding. “I found my way to the kitchen by accident. I think.”

  “Which doesn’t begin to explain—” The king left it there, shaking his head. “We have an assembly to finish, a quest to consider. Welcome to my court, Pierce Oliver. From what I understand Lord Skelton to say, you have already begun the search for this ancient object of power, which may or may not, depending on magus or mystes, be seen or possessed, and which may resemble the sun or a stewpot. Join us at supper; you can explain then how you found your way into my kitchen.”

  He turned away. The knights began to drift toward their chairs. The seneschal lingered, regarding Pierce with mystification.

  “You can’t wear that at the king’s table,” he stated, then queried Leith silently.

  “He’ll stay with us,” Leith said, “of course.”

  “I have clothes in my pack,” Pierce said.

  “I doubt you brought much that would be suitable here.” He crooked a finger with distaste, slid the pack strap from the back of Pierce’s chair. “You’ll find this in Sir Leith’s rooms. Along with clothing more appropriate to your status.”

  He ended that with a curl of a question in his voice. Pierce considered the matter blankly, having
no idea either.

  Mystes Ruxley called the Assembly to order again, and Pierce sat with his father on one side of him, his brother on the other, and himself so full of astonishment at his sudden wealth of breathing, shifting family surrounding him that not a word from magus or mystes, knight or king penetrated.

  Later, he sat clothed in finer and more formal textures of black, again between his father and his brother, his eyes and throat powder-dry, his fork making ineffectual movements over his plate, never quite touching what the silent servers had placed upon it. The wyvern, the magus, and most of the wyvern’s children filled the rest of the circular dais table. All of them, even the king, assumed that Pierce’s path led back out of the palace door in quest of some mythical whatnot made by the sun or the moon, he couldn’t remember which or find a single reason under either why he should care.

  The magus, Lord Skelton, was not helping any by picking things at random out of Pierce’s head.

  “‘All-You-Can-Eat Friday Nite Fish Fry’?” he said abruptly, staring at Pierce, and putting conversation on hold around the table. “That’s where you got your kitchen knife?”

  Pierce felt Val’s silent tremble of laughter.

  “What’s a fish fry?” the king asked Pierce with interest. “And why do you, Lord Skelton, think that a knife has anything to do with finding Severen’s sacred artifact?”

  The magus, his foggy eyes enlarged and luminous behind his lenses, answered, “It is part of an ancient ritual. He recognized that. Wherever it was.”

  The wyvern’s eye caught at him then, transfixed him. “Where did you see the ritual?”

  “I didn’t—I—” he stammered, and felt his father’s light, reassuring touch above his elbow. “My lord, it was at a bar and grill. In Chimera Bay. A sort of diner. They served fish. All kinds of seafood.”

  “Deep-fried in Severen’s pot, I’ll bet,” the king’s second son, Prince Ingram, said irrepressibly. He shifted under the weight of the wyvern’s regard. “Sorry, sir.”

  “I take it,” the king said to him mildly, “you are not drawn to this quest?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I am. I wasn’t so much at first, until Niles Camden inspired me. He’s gathering a group of us he calls Knights of the Rising God. He used to be an acolyte in Severen’s sanctum, when he was young, and was very torn, he explained, between the two callings when he decided to become a knight. That’s why he takes this quest so seriously. His idea is to find the holy artifact and use it to proclaim Severen’s ultimate power over Wyvernhold.” He paused to cut a bite of meat, oblivious to his father’s sudden stillness. “He wants to separate us into various groups, some to search the headwaters of the Severen, others to the more important sanctums across the realm, maybe another to stay here and search Calluna’s cave. Anyway, after we find the artifact, the worship of Severen will be the dominant sacred force over this kingdom.” He raised the bite to his lips, then became aware of the silence around him. His eyes flickered from face to face; he put down his fork. “What? What did I say?”

  “Beyond threatening to offend every other ancient god and goddess in this land?” the king said dryly. “None of you seem to have listened at all to Lord Skelton.”

  “I tried,” Ingram said earnestly. “I really did.” He looked at Lord Skelton, who was tugging one mustache and gazing incredulously at him. “I didn’t really understand much of what you said. Niles put things much more simply.”

  “He won’t find it,” Lord Skelton predicted abruptly. “None of you will, with your hearts blinded with power.”

  Prince Ingram flushed, but said doggedly, “I’m sure you’re right, Lord Skelton. But there’s no reason we can’t look anyway.”

  The king’s eyes moved to Leith. “You’ll go, of course.” It sounded to Pierce like both a command and a plea. “And your sons?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Val answered eagerly, for them all. “We can travel together to this mysterious Friday Nite Fish Fry.”

  I just got here, Pierce protested silently.

  Leith opened his mouth, then closed it, and gave Val a quick, warm smile. “I yield to my son’s fervor and to your bidding, my lord. I doubt that I’d recognize such a complex object, but at least we can promise not to disturb even the slightest of the old powers in this land.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Lord Skelton warned. “Wandering around in the realm in search of its oldest power is liable to cause all kinds of disturbances and consequences. There were always unexpected dangers on those early quests.” He sipped wine and added more cheerfully, “Very colorful, sometimes deadly, often mysterious, random, occasionally verging on the ridiculous. No quest was ever safe. They exist to reveal.”

  “Reveal what, exactly?” Leith asked in his deep, sinewy voice that Pierce was coming to love. “Lord Skelton?”

  “The landscape of the heart.”

  There was a little silence that sounded, Pierce thought, bewilderingly like a comment. Then the king murmured, “Indeed an unpredictable place.” His eyes went to his daughter. “And you, Isolde? Are you joining Niles Camden’s expedition?”

  She shook her fair head, her face, unlike her father’s, expressing exactly what she thought. “I am so underwhelmed by Niles’s ambitions. I’ve made plans to travel with Maggie Leighton. We haven’t yet decided where to start looking.”

  “Good.”

  “I want to go,” Prince Roarke said, taking his knife to the small bird on his plate. “There’s something compelling about this quest, even if, as Lord Skelton says, you may not know what you’re looking for until you see it, and if you look for its power, you may miss it entirely. It’s like taking the wyvern in the north. Maybe you glimpse the ancient memory of it, maybe not. But you bring home its shadow in your heart and the feeling that you have been seen.”

  The king’s face loosened toward a smile. “I do remember that. It’s something you never forget. But no. You’ve been away from court long enough. I want you here with me.”

  Prince Roarke looked at him silently, surprised. The king regarded his youngest son, who had scarcely said a word after greeting Pierce. Prince Daimon, busily deboning his bird with a culinary precision and eating very little of it, laid down his fork and met his father’s eyes.

  “Yes,” he said. “I will go. I’m not yet sure where. Or with whom.”

  Expression flowed through the king’s eyes, surfaced on his face, complex and fleeting; he studied Daimon with a stranger’s scrutiny, as though, in that moment, he did not recognize his son.

  Daimon’s eyes dropped, hid from the wyvern’s gaze, and from the magus, who, frowning vaguely, seemed to be trying to remember something else lost in the mists of time and history, and whether or not it might in any way be important.

  “Well,” he breathed finally, “what will come will come. We shall see in the end what shape, what face it takes.” His tangled brows knotted suddenly; he shifted the glasses on his nose, looking pained. “You need,” he said to Pierce, “to call your mother.”

  —

  The next afternoon, Pierce stood between his father and his brother among hundreds of knights in the sanctum of the god Severen. Like Val, he wore the dark uniform and the quilted jacket embroidered with the sign of Leith’s family: a black swan floating on a silver-blue lake, silhouetted against a full moon edged with a circle of stars. The sanctum was a huge, diamond-shaped structure whose great colored windows were so rich with coiling seams of silver and gold that light reflecting off them burned Pierce’s eyes and inspired the tears that were his first gift to the god. Through centuries, its lofty walls had acquired a crust of wealth that astonished the eye in every possible shape and from every possible cranny. In the center a great fountain shot sacred water upward through a lavishly decorated pipe, imitating the perpetual, vigorous power of the Severen River.

  Mystes Ruxley, high above the gathering on an ornate,
gilded pulpit, also endlessly imitated that flow.

  “You will at all times uphold the laws of Wyvernhold. You will use all weapons in the name of the god Severen, and lead your quest in a manner that reflects the ancient traditions of this land and its king. You will . . .”

  Pierce’s thoughts strayed to the small town on Chimera Bay that, no matter how far he traveled, would not let him go. Random memories surfaced: the strange ritual in the ghost of the old hotel; the past that clung there, a collection of fractured relics and small mysteries; the young woman with her smiling green eyes, her flowing golden hair and generous smile, those eyes reddened, heavy with unshed tears. Trapped in a fairy tale, she seemed to him, by the chef who refused to show his face. Again Pierce felt the pull of her, even across the distance, and his impulse to step once more onto that convoluted, obsessive path to her door.

  “Go in peace, return safely with what you find, for every one of you, searching for such a prize will, according to the magus Lord Skelton, bring back what you need most. In the name of the god Severen, and with King Arden’s sufferance, go into the world with courage, humility, and the worthiest of intentions. As Lord Skelton might say, and probably did: Follow your heart, and you will always know where you are. This Assembly is ended. Praise Severen.”

  The knights did so with such enthusiasm that the phrase bounced from wall to wall and even overwhelmed, for an instance, the incessant voice of the river god. Pierce felt a hand grip his shoulder; he turned his head, met Leith’s smiling eyes. He followed his father and his brother out of the sanctum into the long shadows and bright, sun-streaked late afternoon of Severluna, and he wondered what he could possibly find of value on this quest that he did not already, amazingly, possess.

  Late that night, he finally called his mother.

  14