“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.