Kingfisher(75)

There were stray movements among the knights, but Leith had his weapon out, aiming at the young men rather than their transportation. The woman smiled suddenly, and Pierce recognized the very tall, broad-boned, amber-haired knight who had rescued him, in the Hall of Wyverns, from the wrath of the king’s seneschal.

“Sir Leith. Where on earth did you come from?”

Leith nodded, his taut face loosening almost enough to smile back. “Dame Scotia. I’m very happy to see you here.”

“Sir Leith,” one of the young men called across the clearing. “Can you get her to stop pointing that at our bikes? She has us at a disadvantage. We are Knights of the Rising God. We don’t fight women.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” Pierce exclaimed indignantly. “Last I saw of you, you were harassing a girl at the mountain shrine.”

“I’m sure that wasn’t us.”

“I’m counting,” Val said, “what? Twenty-three of you? And you need my father to rescue you? I have an idea. Why don’t you just do whatever Dame Scotia wants you to do?”

“We haven’t done anything yet! We just came to look around, and she started shooting.”

“I’ve been on the road long enough to see what happens when you just stop to look around,” Dame Scotia said tartly. “Things get stolen and broken. Sacred shrines to gods other than Severen get totally trashed.”

“We seek only what belongs to Severen—”

“You seek to destroy any hint of power other than Severen’s. You’re a rude, wicked lot, and I should just make you walk back across that bridge without your bikes.”

“How about we slash their tires?” Pierce suggested.

“Let’s toss their boots into the slough,” Val said with enthusiasm. “After they tell us exactly what they hoped to find here.”

There was a brief silence, during which the knights, without moving, seemed to shift closer together, and the partially hidden faces calculated the changed odds.

“You wouldn’t understand,” another indistinguishable face said slowly. “We are searching for something holy, precious, powerful. We move in Severen’s name; his name moves our hearts. You, Sir Leith, might think yourself worthy of this quest. But Lord Skelton and Mystes Ruxley both spoke of the need to see with your heart, and how can you, blinded by the king’s unfaithful wife wherever you look, and by your two sons at your side whose mother you abandoned for the queen? How can you possibly understand what we seek?”

Pierce, standing very still beside Val, could not hear him breathe. When he breathed again, Pierce knew, in that split second, the tiny, peaceful island would no longer be the same. Birds would die, maybe trees; stones would go flying; bikes would roar into flame. New ghosts would inhabit the place in Severen’s name; they would roam without peace among the ghosts who still worshipped the moon.

Val drew breath. He turned his head to look at his father, and said mildly, “He’s got a point. What do you think? Are they holier than thou?”

“Damned if I know,” Leith said. “I do know that I don’t want to litter the mudflats with their boots.”

“If we slash their tires, we could find someone to haul the bikes off the island,” Val suggested. “That way, we wouldn’t offend the moon.”

“Just try,” another of the company dared them. “There are twenty-three of us and three—”

“Four,” Dame Scotia said dryly.

“Actually, I wasn’t counting the kitchen knight, Dame Scotia. That’s five to one. At least.”

“Ah,” Val said. “That would be seven to one. Three times seven—”

“I knew that.”

“Actually almost eight to one, Prince Ingram.”

There was another brief silence. “How did you—”

“Don’t,” someone hissed between teeth. “He’s just baiting you.”

“Well, I can’t go home and tell my father we attacked Sir Leith—”

“Why not? Would he care?”

“I have the strangest feeling that yes, he would care. More than I have the feeling that there’s anything in this place we need to dig up. It’s only a bit of tangled wood that everyone has already forgotten.”

“That’s not the point!”

“The point of this quest is to find something sacred and powerful,” the prince said doggedly. “Not go around killing people. Especially people you just had dinner with a few nights ago.”

“Oh, for—”

“He might be right about one thing,” someone else said reasonably. “I don’t see anything here worth fighting for.”

“Prospectors came here. There might be gold that belongs by right to Severen, not the moon.”

“This place has been well picked over for decades. A few fieldstones aren’t worth the argument. Anyway, the sun is about to set. I’d not like to ride across that bridge in the dark. Nothing but bed slats and toothpicks.”

“Well,” their leader said disgustedly, “we can always come back. And we will, Sir Leith, Dame Scotia, if this is the direction the compass of Severen draws our hearts.” He turned his back on them, strode to the toppled pile of bikes. “Let’s untangle these and get out of this pathetic backwater.”