Kingfisher(73)

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.”

Perdita felt the blood leave her face. “You have that power over him?”

“If that’s what Daimon wants, we will get it for him. My own preference for the return of our realm would be under far happier and easier circumstances. The king could simply offer it to the new queen and her consort as a wedding gift.”

“Who are you?” Her voice shook. “You three?”

“We are different faces of the raven. We have survived in many bodies, behind many faces, for time beyond measure.” She smiled again, a cold moon’s smile; Perdita glimpsed the raven’s eye within hers. “We hope for all the best. But we will spread our wings and bring on the night if we are challenged.” She paused again, looking at once inward and into the distance. “I must go. I am attracting Lord Skelton’s attention.”

“Wait,” Perdita pleaded, and the blurring lines stilled. “Does my father know all this?”

“In his heart he knows. It is what he fears most.”

She was gone, drained out of the air like the candle flame on a river stone, dwindling into the memory of fire.

Perdita, her wyvern’s eyes narrowed, gold reflecting fire, left the goddess to her own devices and went to call the questing Scotia Malory.





22


At the waning end of the endless day on the road that had begun at dawn in the sorceress’s driveway, Pierce recognized the snapped sapling, the gashed tree trunk, and the mangled milepost he had damaged in passing during his previous existence. He realized that they were nearly at Chimera Bay.

He opened his mouth to say so, groggy with travel and full of wonder that here he was again, in such unpredictable circumstances, and for far different reasons. He was with family; his life had purpose, destiny, if only, at the moment, to return what he had stolen from the kindly owners of the Kingfisher Inn. It had, he thought dazedly, fulfilled its own unlikely purpose. Val, listening to music and lightly snoozing across from him, opened one eye blearily, as though he had sensed the languid tremor of mental activity. Leith, texting someone as his sons sprawled in weary stupor around him, glanced at them, thumbed a brief end to his message.

Pierce said, “We’re here.”

A dark tide roared up behind the limo on the quiet stretch of highway, washed around it in a fragmented whirl of faces, emblems painted on helmets, black leather gloves trailing colorful windswept leather ties raised in greeting, or maybe just signaling, bulky baggage tied to every possible space on the noisy bikes, all of which bore familiar crests. They forced the limo to slow, then abruptly turned in one long dark stream around it and onto a side road whose modest sign proclaimed it: Proffit Slough Lane.

“Follow them,” Leith told the driver abruptly as the fellowship swarmed around a curve and out of sight. The limo veered like a bus, rattling the last shreds of lethargy from Pierce’s brain. Val pulled his lax limbs together; straightening, he twisted to get the driver’s view of the winding road ahead.

“What’s a slough?” he wondered. “Slow? Slog? Did you recognize them?” he asked his father.

“Several of the crests. Niles Camden’s among them. Their leader. They seemed to know exactly where they wanted to go.”

Pierce pulled a memory, a pointed sliver, out of the past days. “Knights of the Rising God?”

“And up to no good,” Leith answered grimly, “in Severen’s name.”