Kingfisher (12 page)

He untied the apron; it whirled off like a runaway shadow. He continued down, his face burning at the cheers and whistles from the crowd.

He saw the announcer gesturing to him as he reached the field. He dodged around a whirling pair of kickboxers and nearly found himself one of a row of targets in a sports bow contest.

“Careful, Sir Kitchen Knight.”

Sir Kitchen Clown, more like, Pierce thought grimly.

“Watch out for— Oops.”

Pierce dove across the grass, out of range of a pair of knights in full antique armor flailing broadswords half-blindly at one another. He got to his feet, looked around wildly for the next attack.

“This is not a country fair, Sir Kitchen Knight,” the
announcer said reproachfully. “You can't just wander around among the exhibits. Sir Guy Morton is now the top contender in the Ribbon Dance style of street fighting. Challengers welcome. Dame Cynthia Barkley has so far scored highest in the Wyvern's Eye competition, obliterating eight out of ten targets.”

Pierce reached him finally, after coming unnervingly close to getting scrambled under the hooves of a charger finishing a gallop down the tilting list. The announcer was a burly blond knight with an easy, confident smile that Pierce guessed he had worn sliding out of the womb. He stood on a platform overlooking the field, with a microphone in one hand and an earpiece in one ear, receiving information from the enclosure high in the seats above him.

“Welcome, Sir Kitchen Knight,” he said cheerfully, then held the mike under Pierce's nose. “Do we have a name?” Pierce opened his mouth; the mike was suddenly no longer there. “No? Then Sir No Name it will be, since a knight without a name is a knight without a history, kitchen or otherwise, and who can say what feats and marvels you might perform on the field? Who can say, that is, but you?”

The mike was in front of Pierce again; the announcer cocked a brow, said briefly into it, “Anything?”

“What?”

“What,” the announcer asked more precisely “is your weapon of choice? Hands, feet, longbow, lance, pistol, Wyvern's Eye—”

“Kitchen knife?” Pierce said uncertainly, all he could think of. The mike swooped back to him; he said into it, “Knife?”

A cheer went up. “Knife it is. What style?”

“What?”

“Longshore Style, Double-Handed, Chained Blades, Eastern, Old Style—”

“Ah,” Pierce said, and got the mike's attention. “Deli Style?”

The announcer grunted with amusement. “Not familiar with that one. Do you have your weapon with you?”

“Yes,” Pierce sighed.

“A field squire will escort you to the Field of Knives. Wait there for your challengers. Let's hear it for Sir No Name, who will introduce us to the art of knife-fighting Deli Style.” He held up the mike to catch the raucous reaction. Pierce closed his eyes, wishing he had taken his chances with the tree.

He followed his escort to a square patch of grass with mysterious colored lines painted on it. He unpacked his knife and stood bleakly in the center where the lines converged, waiting. Around him, in other painted squares, men and women fought with unbelievable dexterity and grace, with and without weapons, their patterns of movement as varied as dance and likely as old. Surely, he thought, none of those skilled in such subtle and deadly moves would be interested in the knife-weavings of Slicing the Onion or Cubing the Tenderloin.

He was wrong.

A tall, lithe knight with long red hair in a knot on his head walked up the front of his opponent, did a backflip off his chin, and knocked the feet from under him on the way back up. The explosion from the nearby crowd obscured the announcement of the knight's victory. He held out his hand, helped his dazed opponent up, then he bounded into
Pierce's square and bowed gravely. Pierce, stunned, could only stare at him and hope one of them would disappear.

“Since you have no name to give,” the young man said briskly, “I won't bother you with mine. Anyway, I expect to lose to you since I've never heard of Deli Style fighting. Can you show me a few basic moves before we start?”

Pierce found his voice finally. “You just walked up that knight.”

“Yes, but that was a totally different style.”

“You don't even have a knife.”

“I'll get one,” the nameless knight said patiently. “If you could give me an example of the style, I'll know which knife to choose.” He waited, while Pierce's mind went blank at the idea. “Please? Just one simple move?”

Pierce stirred finally, an underwater slowness in his bones. Feeling ridiculous, he tossed an invisible fruit in the air with one hand; with the other he sent the knife flashing after it, describing a little circle in the air, before he caught the falling fruit. “Coring the Apple,” he said, and tossed it again, cutting the air with five vertical, precisely parallel turns of the blade. “Wedging the Apple.” He caught the wedges, which usually fell on the cutting board, and stood awkwardly, his empty hand cupped, wondering what to do with the nonexistent pieces.

The knight's eyes had narrowed. He gazed at Pierce out of eyes the pale blue of a winter sky; his lean, comely face, with its red brows and lashes, was without expression. “Can you do another,” he suggested finally. “I'm not quite getting this.”

Pierce drew breath, held it. It seemed easier to acquiesce than to try to explain, which would probably result in his
getting walked up and knocked down, then jumped on a few times. The explanation was inevitable.

“Look—”

“Just show me.”

Pierce closed his eyes briefly, then, in rapid succession, showed him Scalloping the Potato, Fine-shaving the Ham, and Butterflying the Flying Prawn. The knife had warmed to his grip by the time he finished; he was vaguely aware of the flashes that came from it as metal caught the sun. When he stopped, the knight was regarding him with a peculiar, skewed stare, blinking rapidly as though light from the sun's reflection had streaked across his eyes.

He said finally, very softly, “Who are you?”

“My name is Pierce Oliver,” Pierce answered, relieved that the knight had asked before he attacked. “And I'm not a knight. I was just in the kitchen accidentally—”

“Yes. You made me remember something. My mother used to chop like that. That same magical blinding tangle of knife moves. I loved to watch that when I was little. She was—is still, I think—a sorceress.”

Pierce swallowed. His heart seemed to shift and glide in his chest like a fish easing from shadow into underwater light. His eyes stung, blurred. “On Cape Mistbegotten?”

There was silence. When he could see again, the knight had crossed the battle lines to stand in front of him. His pale, intent eyes were very wide.

“Heloise Duresse. She is my mother.”

“Heloise Oliver.” Pierce heard his voice shake. “She took her maiden name when—after she left you here in Severluna. She is my mother.”

The knight, still holding his eyes, gave a short nod, as though in recognition. “You look like her. I remember that, now, too. And your father?”

“My father—” He paused to swallow again. “She didn't tell my father about me when he returned to Severluna after he saw her for the last time at Cape Mistbegotten.”

“So.” The knight's hands rose, clamped above Pierce's elbows. “So you are my brother.” He smiled then, the astonishment and pleasure in his face making Pierce's eyes burn again. “This is amazing. I always felt I lacked a brother and finally here you are. My name is Val Duresse. Our father is—” He stopped. His eyes flicked away from Pierce, then back again, an odd, wry expression in them. “Well, he's not on the field. I'm not sure where he is now. He's not good at keeping his cell turned on. We'll find him later, at the Assembly.”

Pierce's heart pounded suddenly at the thought, which had been, until that second, only a marvelous possibility. “Will he—I mean, he doesn't even know I exist. And I'm not a knight; I can't just—”

“Yes, you can. You walked onto this field in a kitchen uniform and challenged every knight here. I accepted your challenge, and you won before we even began to fight.”

“I haven't got a clue—”

“There is that,” Val agreed, with his quick, charming smile. “We live in enlightened times. Not every knight chooses to fight or carries a weapon. There are other ways to serve. Come and choose a knife for me. I want to learn more of your Deli Style. And if that's all you know about fighting, so should you.”

O
n another part of the field, Daimon faced an unknown knight.

Like a shadow, the knight matched Daimon's height and reach. He wore black from head to foot; his head was rendered invisible by an acorn-shaped helm with a finger's breadth of a slit across it for sight. Nothing on the mantle flowing from his shoulders indicated, by ancient beast or heraldic device, who he might be. Daimon was similarly hidden in red, his body sheathed in metal, his helm densely padded against the mighty heave and thrust of the black knight's broadsword. The helm smelled of oil, copper, and old sweat; the air he breathed was thick and hot and merciless.

He was battling, it seemed, something maddeningly unnameable, as old as time and as elusive as mist. This dark, faceless knight was a manifestation of the idea he had been struggling with since the moment his mother had appeared
out of nowhere and offered him a realm of enchantment and a consort's place beside the young woman who already ruled him. That offer was weighted with implications heavier than the shield he raised against the dark knight's sword hammering away at it. He could not decide which was more incredible: the intriguing, compelling, and even justifiable offer itself, or the faceless, nameless stranger Daimon saw in himself who might accept it.

He got tired of the endlessly battering blade and shifted his bulky, ponderous weight out from under his shield. He let the shield drop. The knight's sword met air instead of metal and kept going, dragging the dark knight after it. He drove his blade into earth and clung to it, maintaining a perilous balance.

Sun leaped off Daimon's blade and into his eyes as he lifted it. Somehow, the black knight pulled his own sword out of the ground and angled it upward to block the fall of Daimon's. Metal sheared against metal. The two knights pushed against one another's weight, lumbering around the crossed blades. The muscles in Daimon's arms and back, wrung to the utmost, could only maintain their thrust against the dark knight's strength; the knight seemed equally unable to change the equilibrium of their power.

Then the black knight let his own blade shift, yield, just enough, as he twisted to one side, that the weight of Daimon's body armor pulled him off-balance. The step he tried to take to catch himself was blocked by the knight's blade, run into ground against Daimon's foot.

He fell facedown with a grunt of breath. The black knight rolled him onto his back, not without some difficulty. The
tip of his blade found a delicate, defenseless line of skin between helm and breastplate. Daimon gazed at the hard, expressionless, inhuman head looming over him. The knight's shadow fell into his eyes; he heard the harsh, weary rasp of his breath within his helm. Who are you? he demanded silently, urgently of the shadow-knight, of himself. Who are you?

“I yield,” he said to the exasperating uncertainty, and the cold metal left his throat. He heard the thud of the massive hilt hitting the ground. The black knight raised both hands, wrestled off the helm, and Daimon saw the elegant, broad-boned, smiling face beneath it.

His breath stopped. Field squires swarmed around them both. Hands hoisted him upright, drew off his helm. The distant whistling and cheers from the onlookers grew suddenly loud; he sucked in fresh, sweet air, and heard Jeremy Barleycorn's amused voice from the announcer's stand.

“Dame Scotia Malory has defeated Prince Daimon Wyvernbourne in knightly combat with armor and broadsword. Beware, House Wyvernbourne, the powers of the north.”

He looked for her as the squires helped him rise. But he only saw the back of her head, the severe braid of honey-colored hair suddenly fall out of its coil and down the black mantle, as she was escorted off the field.

Later, Daimon sat among the wyverns in the huge, ancient hall named after them. The great, winged, long-necked, barb-tailed beasts swarmed across the stone walls and the ceiling, shadowy with age, memories of themselves. The throne built for the first Wyvernbourne king stood on
a simple dais against a backdrop of the great stone caves and peaks where the wyverns lived. When the king arrived, he would sit there, as his ancestors had done, surrounded by wyverns' faces rearing out of the black wood of the back and the armrests, their wild, staring eyes golden lumps of amber forged long before Wyvernhold existed. A podium with a microphone, looking bizarre among the wyverns, had been placed on each side of the dais.

Knights who had spent the earlier hours on the practice field crowded into the rows of black-and-gilt chairs. Their faces were sunburned; they smelled of soap and shampoo. Daimon, adrift in his thoughts, barely heard their greetings. A lovely scent of lavender beguiled him out of himself as someone took a seat near him. He straightened, glancing around for the source of the lavender, and saw his half siblings, the two princes Roarke and Ingram, and the sister born between them, Princess Isolde. They scattered themselves around Daimon; as knights shifted to let them pass, he caught again the faint, elusive fragrance.

“Too bad you bothered to fight in full armor,” Ingram said, taking a seat behind Daimon and prodding his shoulder. “You missed the sight of Isolde smacking the head off the joust dummy with her lance. It went flying. Nearly took out Jeremy Barleycorn in the announcer's stand. He ducked just in time, or it would have been his head flying after it. What's this all about? Anybody know?”

“Not a clue,” Daimon answered shortly.

“Something Lord Skelton found,” Isolde said, settling her ivory braid over one broad shoulder as she sat. She and Ingram had their mother's hair, and the only blue eyes in
the family for several generations. “Something in a book, I think.”

“A book,” Ingram marveled. “Our father gathers an assembly of knights from all over the realm because of a book? A real one, do you think? Or one of those floating around in the cloud?”

“Parchment, I would guess,” Roarke said. He added, at his younger brother's silence, “That's paper made of goatskin.”

“You're joking.”

“No, but I am stunned that you actually know what a book is.” Roarke leaned over the empty chair beside Daimon. “I could have used you this morning on my street-fighting team. We were overwhelmed by Graham Beamish's team, who had both Leith and Val Duresse on his. Machines, both of them. Even at Leith's age.” He paused, glanced around cautiously, as though the elder of the fighting machines might be listening. “You had lunch alone with our father earlier this week. Did he say anything to explain this?”

Daimon shook his head mutely, then made an effort. “Some artifact of the god Severen's, I think he said Sylvester found.”

“Our father invited you to lunch with him alone?” Ingram exclaimed. “What for? What?” he demanded, as Isolde smacked him upside the head.

“Thank you,” Daimon said gravely.

“You're welcome.”

“I don't see—” Ingram said indignantly, then saw. “Oh, that. Well, nobody cares about that. Do they?” he asked, as Daimon, shifting abruptly in his chair, felt the blood rise in his face. He sensed Roarke's intense, speculative gaze on the
back of his head and quelled his own impatience, turning to meet his siblings' eyes, as well of those of others around them listening without compunction for royal gossip.

“The king told me, for the first time in my life, about the woman who was my mother,” he said carefully, and his siblings were suddenly motionless, entranced.

“Who was she?” Ingram demanded. “Did he love her? Were you an accident?” He dodged his sister's hand that time. “Sorry. Stupid.”

“And then he talked about this Assembly. Nothing that I understood.” He paused; they waited expectantly, as did those in the island of silence around them. “He said she was the descendant of a very old realm that no longer exists. She vanished after a night, and”—he lifted a shoulder—“somehow he found me.”

“How?” the listeners demanded at once.

“Ask him,” Daimon answered pithily, and with great relief saw their father come in at last.

The Assembly rose. The king, followed by Lord Skelton and Lord Ruxley, stepped onto the dais and seated himself among the wyverns. The magus and the mystes moved toward the podiums. Lord Skelton wore a suit of scholarly black and carried an armload of books and papers, one of which he promptly dropped and pursued across the dais before he reached the podium. Mystes Ruxley, magnificently robed in gold embroidered with jewel-toned threads, had already set a single, thin screen upon his podium. He gripped the podium with both hands, summoning patience while the magus dithered with his books and papers, sorting through them, changing their order, mislaying one or the other, and
searching through them again. The king watched him expressionlessly, while the gathering settled again into their chairs.

Finally, the hall and the magus grew quiet, and the king rose.

“Knights of Wyvernhold, I have summoned you here from all over this realm at the request of the court magus Lord Skelton and of Lord Ruxley in his aspect of Mystes of Severen's sanctum. This concerns a matter of Wyvernhold history. It is a matter of enormous power, lost for millennia and brought to light through the painstaking scholarship of Lord Skelton. He will present the matter to you within the framework of his studies. Mystes Ruxley will explain the matter within the context of the sacred powers of the god Severen. What I will ask is that you consider this matter within the context of knightly endeavor along the lines of the court history of the first king of Wyvernhold. I will ask those of you who are willing to undertake a modern version of the old-style quest.”

There was an insect-chirp of chairs creaking all over the room at the unexpected notion.

“Lord Skelton and Mystes Ruxley will explain what that means,” the king said, and returned to the wyvern throne.

Both nobles silently queried one another, then the impassive king. Dourly, Mystes Ruxley flipped a palm at the magus.

“Since you brought it to light, Lord Skelton,” he said grudgingly, and the entire pile on the magus's podium slid onto the floor. “Well, then,” the mystes said with more complacency, as Lord Skelton disappeared abruptly after it, “since you're busy, I will begin.”

He touched the screen in front of him and began to read.

“‘The young god felt the year dying within him. Frost whitened his bones, his brows, his lashes. The dying leaves in their journey floated through his veins, blocking light, blocking warmth from his heart's blood. The voices of the birds cried of the coming end. They sang cold; they warned cold; they flew away and left the god to die. The old moon, the withering crone, showed no mercy, only cold. Animals fled from her, buried themselves in the earth. The pale webs of spiders, their tales, turned to ice and shattered.

“‘The god began to turn to ice, began to die.

“‘In his despair, he called to the vanished sun. He summoned its warmth, its fires into himself. With his power, a great mountain burst into flame in the snow. Ice melted from the cliffs carved by the footsteps of the river god. Stone itself melted. Stars of fire blazed like jewels and fell into the icy waters, warming them. The river ran gold with molten light. The wild, swirling waters, freeing themselves from the prison of ice, spun and spun. They shaped and fashioned. They made a vessel of pure gold, brought it into light. The pale moon, now the full and barren queen, reached down with her fingers of icy light to snatch the vessel, to steal its warmth and beauty as it whirled in the flow of the god to the sea.

“‘The moon caught it, held it in her fingers of mist. But the river god pulled it down into its rapid, foaming waters, pushed it down deep, hiding the brilliance from her. Weighed with the god's great power, the vessel sank, warming the waters as it drifted down, turning over and over in the flow, filling and emptying, gold warming god, gold burning water as the great river flowed to meet the sea.

“‘The new moon, maiden now, made one last attempt to steal the god's treasure. Her face looked down; she saw herself reflected in the river god's face. She snatched the vessel his power had made, hid it there in her secret place, her pool buried under the earth. But the god found it and took it back. And he took her, for she was rightfully his, part of his great and powerful godhead.

“‘He bore her with him to the sea.

“‘There in the fountain of the world, the great cauldron of life, the vessel floats and falls, filling and emptying. The moon still searches, walking the path she weaves in the dark across the sea. The sacred vessel is now lost, now found, full and empty, carrying sun and moon, the power of water, of gold and god. It waits to be found. It is never lost. It waits.'”

“Little of that,” the magus said, his gray head with its furry brows and long mustaches rising unexpectedly like a wayward moon from behind his podium, “makes any sense whatsoever.”

“I am aware of that,” Mystes Ruxley answered acidly, looking a trifle unsettled by the apparition. “But, confused as it may be, it is the first written reference to the sacred vessel holding the god's power. It is the tale most learn first.”

“For most, the only version they know.” Lord Skelton brought up his collection from the floor and dropped it onto the podium with a thud that made the microphone ring. “The dying and reviving god is certainly the central symbol of the tale. But it would be ridiculous for the king to send his knights out in boats searching for a floating bowl of gold. For one thing, that much gold would sink like a stone.”

“It is also light,” Mystes Ruxley reminded him, restored
to equanimity by his pun. “Granted the tale is already muddled by antiquity, but it is a place to begin the discussion. The vessel has been, from very early times, an astonishing source of power. And you have come to the conclusion that it exists. Today. In this world. It can be found. We could argue that it must be, before the evil represented by the moon finds it first. If it is not in water, then where should the knights look?”