Kingfisher(33)

“No. That was—”

“Me. I’ve worn a hundred faces so that I could see your face.”

He was staring again, stunned. The little whirlwind spun down the walk behind her, plucked at her hair. She raised a hand, pushed the whirl gently aside, and it went around them, then dwindled into nothing, dropping grit and a feather black as a raven’s eye. Vivien picked it up, tucked it into her own hair, and smiled at Daimon encouragingly. As though his mother’s hand had reached out to him as well, into his whirlwind heart, he felt the turmoil lose force, let go of some of its bewildering flurry of questions.

He asked the simplest, the most entangled: “Why?”

“I am Ana, your mother. And I am the descendant of the scattered realm of Ravenhold, which lived at peace within the human world for thousands of years until the wyvern king destroyed it. To him, the Ravenhold that he could see was simply one of many small kingdoms he wanted to put into his collection. This one was ruled by Berenicia, a woman, an aberration in the nature of things, so Arden thought, and all the easier to conquer. But he would have failed completely and for all time, except for the loss of our most precious possession.

“The fact that the Wyvernbourne kings have never used it, nor even their most powerful magi, indicates to us that they have never known where it is either, or even that it exists. Until now.”

“What is it?” he asked, even as he heard the echoes, the suggestions, of such power reverberating through the past days.

“You saw it. Child of the Wyvern and the Raven, you were born to see. That great cauldron beneath the tree, stirred by the raven-magus, has such powers that no Wyvernbourne king can begin to imagine. It was stolen from Ravenhold the day Arden Wyvernbourne overran our realm. The one who stole it tore the fabric of our realm, like waking tears apart a dream. He was the first and last king we ever had, and we had banished him from Ravenhold long before that for misusing our great cauldron and causing such distress across the realm that even the ravens helped us chase him out. At least we all thought he had gone; he had hidden himself among us so well. But when he finally fled with the cauldron, he opened the path into time, into the human world, that permitted Arden Wyvernbourne into our land. Left powerless, we could not fight back. Our warriors died like humans; we could not resurrect them.

“We want our realm back. We want our power back. Our cauldron. Whatever shape it has taken, you have the eyes, the heart to recognize it. Find it for Ravenhold. Find it for us.”

He felt his heart crumple a little, bruised, at her words. “That’s why you chose my father? That’s why you had me?”

She took a step toward him, her stern, beautiful face changing again, becoming human. “It’s not the first time, during our long defeat, that we have tried this. But none of the children we brought into the world were less loved for that.”

He was silent, imagining her hundred different faces as she had wandered in and out of his life. Then he looked at Vivien, watching him beside his mother.

“And you?” he asked, the whirlwind in his heart beginning to stir again, catching at any straw of understanding. “What do you want me for?”

“I am the direct, living descendant of Queen Berenicia, whom Arden Wyvernbourne killed,” she answered. “I hope you will be my consort when I am crowned Queen of Ravenhold.”





10


Some kind of pot,” Gareth told Princess Perdita. “Or a vessel. A lost thing belonging to Severen. That’s the rumor going around.”

“The king will ask you to go out looking for a flowerpot?”

“Surely not.”

“A fishing boat?”

He looked perplexed. “I can’t imagine.”

“There is an astounding array of pots in life,” she reminded him. “Including crock-pots. And vessels from sailboats to gravy boats.”

He caught her hand to make her stop, pressed it against his lips. “I won’t know until the Assembly opens, in three more days. And then, I promise I will tell you everything.”

She had joined the audience in the amphitheater seats on the first day of the tournament, to watch Gareth win a kickboxing match, then blow more flying objects than anybody else into a fine mist with the Wyvern’s Eye, then hit the center of a round, painted target more often than anyone else with an antique crossbow. He had clambered up into the seats to find her after that, relaxing after his victories. She wondered, as he sat beside her, if he had ever lost a contest in his life.

“Of course I have,” he said. “I’m sure of it.” He looked uncertain. “Everybody does.”

She smiled, then asked him what Mystes Halliwell had sent her there to find out: how much he knew about what the knights had been assembled for.

She repeated what little that was to her great-aunt Morrig, Mystes Halliwell, and the queen, who seemed to appear as three as often as Perdita saw them. Holly Halliwell knew best what she was upset about, but not even she could shed much light on the obscurity.

“How,” Perdita asked, “can anyone recognize something that has no name?”

“Go and ask Sylvester,” Mystes Halliwell told her. “See what you can find out from him. Be subtle.”

“Sometimes he has licorice,” Morrig said, and three faces turned to her, all mystified. “Slip a handful in your pocket for me?”