Kingfisher(64)

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





19


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.”