Kingfisher (21 page)

The blood ran completely out of her face. It crumpled, shadows and lines appearing, underscoring the terror in her eyes, the sudden, overwhelming grief over something invisible between them, roused from memory by whatever she saw in Carrie's face. She dropped the phone from her ear to her shoulder, held it there like a lifeline.

As abruptly, the tide of color washed back into her face; the terror vanished under an upwelling of rage.

“No,” she said to Carrie, chopping words like vegetables. “Tell me. You are not. Working for Todd Stillwater.”

The voice on the phone rose in volume and jumped an octave, repeating the same word over and over, like an angry
songbird. Lilith didn't seem to hear; Carrie held all her attention.

Carrie said, “My father told me to give you something. A word. I don't know what it means. Miranda.”

For a moment, Lilith only stared at her as though she had no idea either. Her face seemed frozen, unable to shape a thought. Slowly, her eyes changed, grew large, flushed, glittering with what Carrie realized were unshed tears. She dropped the phone on the floor, beginning to tremble. Carrie, suddenly terrified, took a step toward her. But Lilith caught her balance and finally found her voice.

“Miranda,” she said, and again, “Miranda.” The name seemed to comfort her. The frozen, stricken face eased a little, expression melting through it. She seemed to look through Carrie, past her into an immeasurable distance.

Then her eyes quickened, saw Carrie again.

“He said her name.”

“Yes,” Carrie whispered.

“I haven't. Said her name. None of us has, not even Merle. Said her name. In all these years.”

“Who—who is she?”

“Was. She was our daughter. Hal's and mine. She fell in love with Todd Stillwater, when he cooked for the Kingfisher Inn, so long ago. His cooking—it made the inn famous. It was wonderful. Spellbinding. His spell bound my daughter. His spell bound us all. Me. He fed us all so well that we were always hungry, always happy, always wanting more. People came from all over Wyvernhold to tie up at our dock, stay at the inn, eat Stillwater's magic in that magnificent old
dining room that has never been used since—” She stopped, absolutely still again, looking inward, lost to the world.

“Since?”

“Miranda.” Her eyes filled again; she turned her head, looked out over the water. Like Carrie's voice, her own dwindled, burrowed. “Only Merle saw. Only Merle saw clearly. What we had all become. What Stillwater was. Is.

“He destroyed this place. Merle and Hal fought him, finally drove him out. But the terrible battle left Hal crippled, Merle lost in his own mind half the time. Stillwater sucked the magic out of this place, left it shattered, and us still spellbound. We couldn't—we couldn't speak. That's why he's still here in Chimera Bay. We could not speak. He's safe here.”

“From what?”

“From those who drove him out of his world into this one.” She raised her hand, brushed her eyes with her wrist. “They couldn't stand him, either.”

“You're speaking now.”

“You said her name. We could never—we could never say her name. After she died. She died wanting more, always wanting more of Stillwater. He left her here, went his way. He took her name away with him. I could never forgive myself.” She looked at Carrie again, her eyes dry now, the unnatural green of sky and sea mirroring dangerous weather. “I encouraged her. Even I was a little in love. I thought our love, our fortune, our beautiful, enchanted life would last forever.”

“That's why you always stay up here. Why you never come down.”

“There was no point. I couldn't forgive myself for not—for not seeing my own daughter in such horrible danger, not helping her— How could I expect Hal to forgive me?”

“What's changed? Now?”

“Merle said her name. He sent you up here, looking like you do, feeding on emptiness, wasting away without even noticing, even your hair thin and hungry for what's real, what's true. But somehow you learned to see like Merle sees. You are his daughter, and what he sees in you is hope.”

—

W
hen she left the Kingfisher Grill after lunch and went to Stillwater's to prep for dinner, she was not entirely surprised by the cracked and rain-darkened oak in the old bank door. She walked inside, saw the splintered, warped floorboards, the tattered tablecloths, the long-dead flowers in the vases. Sage Stillwater sat at the bar, taking notes. She turned her head, smiled at Carrie. Her hair was limp, her face wan, hollowed, fretted with tiny, worried lines, and so pale it might have been the color of her bones seeping too near the surface of her face. Her eyes seemed huge, hungry for something she no longer remembered. Stillwater, his back to Carrie, read labels of nearly empty bottles, some of them so dusty the writing was hardly visible. Sage jotted down what he needed: limes, olives, brandy, new glasses to replace the cracked. He glanced toward Carrie and smiled absently as she greeted him. He looked, she thought, like a sort of shriveled, pallid mushroom, his skin damp, grayish white, not enough hair on his head to bother leaving it there. One eyebrow had vanished completely. His eyes had
sunk so deeply into his furrowed face that he looked like something furtive peering out of a fallen tree trunk.

After seeing Merle shaping everything under the moon, she wasn't afraid of the magic, just suddenly, profoundly curious about this ancient, nameless power who, in trapping those Carrie loved within all their memories, seemed to have trapped himself as well.

She passed them, headed into the kitchen, and saw something she hadn't noticed before. Or maybe her attention had just skittered over it before, since it was nothing much to look at, just a dented old pot gathering cobwebs on the floor in a corner. As she wondered idly what it was doing there, a lovely bronze light glided over it, barely visible beneath the dust and old grease clinging to it.

Something of Stillwater's, she guessed. Maybe one of his early, experimental machines. Being Stillwater's, it would most likely still contain a surprise or two.

She lifted it out of the shadows to see what it could do.

P
erdita and the queen received the news of Daimon's quest from the king himself, who summoned them out of a ritual midseason salute to the goddess by appearing at the top of the sanctum stairs and startling the guardian on duty to the point of incoherence.

“Your Majesty,” she whispered to the queen within the sanctum, as Mystes Halliwell led the acolytes in their chant. “His Majesty—he's—just outside. Inside the antechamber. He wants you and Princess Perdita.”

Perdita, watching the queen grow pale, thought instantly:
Daimon.
She turned, followed the queen easing through the crowd around the central pool with its feathery wisp of a fountain murmuring a musical counterpoint to the chant. For no reason, Perdita glanced back as they left the sanctum. She saw her aunt Morrig's face turned to watch them, her gray eyes looking oddly dark and birdlike.

Observing the sanctum's rules, the king waited courteously on the top of the antechamber stairs. The rare uncertainty on his face made Perdita swallow dryly. The queen quickened her pace.

“Please,” he said softly, as they reached him. “Can we talk?”

The queen's mouth tightened. As she had done many times through the years for her lover, she opened the chamber door for her husband.

“Arden, what is it?” She closed the door behind him, leaned against it. The king glanced around the small, cluttered room strewn with clothes, shoes, jewels, the open wardrobe door whose mirror reflected his presence. He picked up a sweater Perdita had tossed on the little couch, then stood holding it, hesitating. “Sit down,” Genevra said, and he did.

Perdita took the sweater from him and sat on the arm of the couch, gripping the soft wool tightly. “It's Daimon,” she said with that strange certainty, and the king nodded.

“What is it?” the queen said again, sharply. “What happened? Where is he?”

“He has gone questing, like half my other knights.” He paused, his eyes on his wife, narrowed slightly as against a dark and imminent tempest. “You asked me to tell him about his mother. I did. And now I think I should tell you.”

The queen stared at him. “She's dead. That's all I have ever wanted to know.”

“That's almost all I know of her,” Arden said heavily. “We were together one very short night. Nine months later, she was dead.”

“And now?”

“Now I'm not so sure of anything, even that.”

The queen pulled herself from the door, sank into a chair. The blood rose swiftly, brightly, into her face. “You think she might be still alive? Does Daimon know her?”

“He's been behaving very strangely. He comes and goes without a word; he is distant, preoccupied, and—most of the time—simply not there.”

“Not there where?”

“Behind his eyes. It's as though he sees us as strangers. He can't seem to remember who he is, why he's here in this family. He has spent entire days, and even nights, away. He won't say where. Sylvester thinks he's enchanted.”

“So it sounds,” the queen said, her frown easing a little. “So he's in love? Is that what you're worried about? That she's in some way inappropriate? So is he, for that matter. We all are, at one time or another—”

“Spellbound,” the king interrupted, and she was silent again, her eyes wide on his face. “As I might have been,” he added slowly, “so long ago.”

The queen gripped the hardwood arms of her chair. Perdita had never seen her eyes so cold. “Arden. What is the point of all this? He is in love the way you were in love?”

“No. It's not my word. It's Sylvester's,” the king said, with odd emphasis, and Perdita's lips parted.

“Yes,” she exclaimed. “Of course that's it. That's why Morrig— But who? Who is doing the enchanting?”

Her parents stared at her now.

“Morrig?” the queen echoed faintly.

“What do you know about this, Perdita?” the king asked with bewilderment.

“He as much as told me he had glimpsed his other heritage—his other half.”

The queen's voice ratcheted up a notch. “So who was his mother?” she demanded of Arden. “And what,” she asked Perdita, “does Lady Seabrook have to do with any of this?”

“I think,” Perdita said, keeping her voice low in case Morrig was hovering around the keyhole, “that Great-aunt Morrig is anything but dotty. I believe she—or someone who does her bidding—led Scotia Malory and me on a wild-goose chase over most of Severluna when we tried to follow Daimon to see where he goes.”

The king held up his hand, patted the air between them. “Please. Let me say what I came to say. Sylvester put the pieces together, taught me the words for it. There was a realm once named Ravenhold. It existed along with many other small kingdoms before Arden Wyvernbourne conquered it. At least the human realm of Ravenhold disappeared within Wyvernbourne. The hidden realm, the invisible realm, whose boundaries once stretched across the whole of Wyvernbourne and beyond, never entirely disappeared. Neither did its powerful, magical people, who, Sylvester guesses, still live among us. He also guesses that, after all this time, they want their realm back.

“And that realm is Daimon's other heritage. Where his mother came from. Where she still might be, for all I know. He is half-Wyvernbourne. His other—”

“You didn't know?” the queen interrupted incredulously. “You did not know her well enough to know that?”

“I was enchanted,” the king said simply. “All that the word means. All.”

“And Daimon—”

“Spellbound as well, by the powers we have all forgotten, until they transform our hearts. My ancestor overran their realm, called himself their king. My son, half-wyvern, has been enchanted by the raven. I can't guess what will come of it.”

“Why should anything come of a broken realm? How powerful can it be?”

“Lord Skelton has found evidence, in old myths and poetry,” the king answered steadily, “that they were powerful enough to make a great cauldron that brought their dead warriors back to life.”

“A cauldron,” Perdita said blankly. Then her eyes widened, riveted on her father. “A bowl. A pot. A vessel of enormous power—”

“Yes.” The wyvern's eyes, holding hers, seemed dimmed, diminished by the idea of it. “And I have sent the knights of Wyvernhold out looking for it. Including my youngest son, who is under the raven's spell.”

The queen rose abruptly, pacing the small room in six long strides. “It's a tale,” she said harshly. “A scrap of myth.” She whirled, paced back. “Anyway, if it's real, and your knights find it, they will bring it to you. Not that such a thing could possibly exist. Could it?” She came to a halt in front of Arden. “What does Sylvester think?”

“Sylvester himself sent the knights out questing for it. He is convinced it is real. But he isn't certain, any longer, that it ever had anything to do with Severen.”

Perdita saw the look in her mother's eye of a woman on the verge of kindling lightning with her hair. “And this has exactly what to do with Daimon?”

A dark flame wavering in the air near her made her whirl. A figure seemed to push its way into being, shaping and pulling itself free from the mist and vagueness clinging to it. Perdita, fascinated, expected Lord Skelton to emerge from the nebulousness. The thin, sharp angles suggested his spare figure, his pointed elbows. But the face coming clear was not his.

“Lady Seabrook,” the queen exclaimed.

“Morrig,” the king echoed, rising, and responding, in Perdita's view, to the least significant aspect of her great-aunt's appearance out of thin air. “In ordinary circumstances, I would come nowhere near this sanctum. I know your rules. But—”

“Don't worry,” Morrig said sweetly. The gray eyes still carried the suggestion of shadow, like aged silver. “That's why I came: to tell you not to worry.”

“About—” the queen said faintly.

“About Daimon, of course. Everything will go as planned. We will keep him safe.”

“We.”

“The three of us.”

“Three,” Perdita whispered. The word came alive in her head, busily making connection after connection through time, across poetry, familiar images turning unfamiliar faces toward her, linking themselves across the whole of Wyvernhold history and farther back, so far back that they became themselves, words so old they were new, and they meant only what they were: Moon. Raven. Death. Night. Life. Morrig's eyes flicked at her, and Perdita saw in them every ancient word.

“Three,” the king echoed, sounding mystified.

“Daimon's mother, his sweet friend Vivien Ravensley, and his great-auntie Morrig. I know you must be fretting. You have always been so kind to him.”

The king's face flamed; the wyvern glowered back at her. “He is my son,” Arden said explosively. “What have you done to him? Are you setting him against me?”

“Of course we don't want it to come to that. And I can't—”

“Daimon's mother is alive?” The queen's voice hit a note so high that her voice cracked.

“Very much so, yes. And I can't stay to explain. Just be patient.” Her head cocked suddenly, as at an undercurrent of sound. “I think I'll take the stairs. The airways are congested.”

She went out the door without bothering to open it. The queen, white as spun sugar, glared incredulously at the wood, asked without sound, “Who is she? And who,” she demanded, her voice swooping up several notches again, “is Vivien?”

The king, his face still fiery, drew a breath as though to bellow himself. The air, taking on density in front of them again, checked his impulse. They watched breathlessly. This time the face sculpting itself out of airy streaks and disturbances wore two long mustaches and circular spectacles.

“Your Majesty,” he said without a mouth, then achieved himself and settled his glasses. “I heard you call.”

“Did you find Daimon?”

“I did. He is on the coast road, heading north, as are any number of questing knights.”

“How?” the queen demanded. “Did he call you and tell you that?”

“I found him in water, Queen Genevra,” Sylvester said. “It's really the simplest way, especially since he left his cell phone in the royal garage's garbage bin. At a projection of thought or memory onto the reflection of water, the surface will mirror the—”

“Where is he going? Will it mirror that?”

“Not yet, my lord. But as I watch his path unfold, I can see where he is, where he stops, and eventually, I hope, why.” He was silent, his eyes moving from face to fraught face. His hands rose, gripped his mustaches. “Now what?”

Later that day, as she sat in the soothing calm of the goddess's antechamber, guarding its peace a bit belatedly, she felt, and trying to imagine the state of her half sibling's mind, Perdita saw yet another vision emerge from the crosshatch of candlelight and shadow.

This one was no longer young but beautiful despite her years, like the queen. Gazing at her, surprised, Perdita felt her heartbeat suddenly. This apparition she recognized. This apparition had given Daimon her pale hair, her light eyes, the shape of her face. Perdita found herself on her feet, wondering if she were seeing a ghost, or a vision, or what she actually thought she might be seeing.

“Yes,” the woman said, reading her mind. “Daimon is my son.”

“Has he— Does he know—”

“Oh, yes. He and I have met.” Perdita saw another thing the woman had given Daimon: that friendly but closely guarded smile. “My name is Ana. Daimon and I have met many times through the years. So, a time or two, have you and I.”

Perdita glanced around her, wanting her father, Lord Skelton, even the queen to prove she was not dreaming. “No. I don't remember.”

“You wouldn't. I had to wear many faces, many disguises, to watch my son grow up. Morrig helped me on every occasion, with every changing face. It was the only way I could see him.”

Perdita backed up a little, felt the stone on which she had been sitting reassuringly solid against her. “What is it you want? My father? My mother? Daimon isn't here.”

“You are, Princess Perdita. Morrig sent me to answer questions; she said she left you in a mist—”

“Totally blank,” Perdita agreed with feeling. “Who are you?”

“We are remnants of an ancient realm. We have all our hope in Daimon to help us recover our lost land. And we are all very grateful for the queen's care for him, for your love—”

“You—you sound as though you're taking him away from us. You, and Aunt Morrig, and that Vivien—”

“Vivien Ravensley. She is heir, by a very long bloodline, to both the human and the not-so-human thrones of Ravenhold. The realm had a king once, in its early days. He grew so terrible we had to drive him out. Since then, only daughters rule. When they marry, the child of both the wyvern and the raven will unite the wyvern's power as well to Ravenhold, in the daughter who will be their heir.”

Perdita felt her knees give way; she sat down abruptly on the hard granite. “Marry? Exactly how far away from us are you taking him? Does he know? Or is he too spellbound—”

“He knows, of course. How far he goes is up to him.”

“Is it? Are they in love? Or is it an enchantment of convenience?”

Ana paused before she answered. “I think,” she said with surprising honesty, “that, beyond the enchantment, they are in love enough. Certainly attracted. And not, so far as I know, in love with anyone else. Vivien is extremely ambitious. And Daimon is—”

“Like his father,” Perdita finished tightly. “Susceptible.”

Ana was silent again, gazing at the princess. “We have made our decision. How simple or difficult the matter will be will depend on the king. If he chooses the wyvern over the raven, then Daimon will make his own choices. One of which may well be the Wyvernhold throne.”