Kingfisher(43)
“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.