Holly Halliwell, a plump, pretty woman, was colorfully dressed in a blue
and green silk robe overlaid with a web of jade and turquoise beads. She wore
a crown of willow branches. Metal, which belonged to Severen, was never
permitted in Calluna’s sanctum. She carried the staff of her office: myrtle
wood topped with the goddess’s haunting face carved in pale green jade, inset
against a full moon of ivory.
The mystes looked, Perdita thought, as though she’d swallowed a wasp. She
gave the queen a formal bow before she raised the staff in her hand and let it
thump sharply on the floorboards. Genevra, whose many subtleties of expression
Perdita knew well, eyed her guardedly, as though she might peer under the
couch or fling open the wardrobe door in search of the queen’s hidden lover.
But it wasn’t that.
“Queen Genevra,” Holly said indignantly, “have you heard what Sylvester
Skelton is up to?”
“I heard,” the queen said, choosing words carefully, “he has asked the king
to send the knights out looking for something of Severen’s.”
“Ha!” Holly lifted the staff again, then caught herself. “I do beg your
pardon, Your Majesty. It’s just that I’m extremely upset. He has no right—I
mean Sylvester, of all people, should know better. He’s a scholar, for
Calluna’s sake! How can he have made such an idiotic mistake?”
The queen glanced down at her hands, looking perplexed. She wriggled off a
ring of gold and sapphire she had left inadvertently on one finger, dropped it
among her other jewels. “I’m sorry, Holly. I’m just not following—”
Morrig interrupted. Her voice, for one so aged, was unexpectedly clear and
sweet. “Lord Skelton and I are also having a difference of opinion. He’s not
listening very well. Hard of hearing, I suspect, from viewing a thing one way
for so long. Hardening of the earways.”
“What Sylvester wants the knights to find never belonged to Severen!” Holly
insisted, overriding her. “It belongs to Calluna.”
“I still don’t—”
“Oh, I know that story,” Morrig said with delight. “Calluna found the dying
god when they were young—back when the world itself was young. I was, too,
then, I remember. She revived him with water from her fountainhead.”
Holly eyed her askance, surprised, then found her voice again. “Yes. That’s
what the king will send his knights searching for: the cup or vessel of power
that returned life to the dying god.” Her mouth tightened; she refrained from
whacking the floor again. “All its power is Calluna’s. I’ve been arguing
for days with Lord Ruxley, ever since he came to tell me about the
mistranslation Sylvester had discovered in a very early text, and what Lord
Ruxley, as Severen’s Mystes, advised the king. But he won’t hear a word I
say.”
“Neither will Sylvester,” Morrig said. “He complains that I have no textual
proof. Textual proof. As though written words alone contain the truth about
anything.” She smiled at Perdita. “He lets me borrow his books, you know. He
trusts me with them.”
“Stubborn old men,” Holly fumed. “Both of them. You know the god Severen.
Everything his name inspires turns to wealth or war. If the king’s knights
find that vessel, no good will ever come out of it.”
Perdita, intrigued by the matter, said slowly, “Maybe it doesn’t exist to be
found. Maybe the artifact is just a detail of a very ancient story.”
Morrig’s misty gaze held her a moment, speculating, Perdita sensed, about
some completely different matter—new shoes or a bottle of aged brandy—for
which her great-niece might come in handy.
Holly’s busy mind had already shifted toward possibilities. “Well,” she
said, some of the annoyance melting from her face, “we have to assume it
exists, as long as Lord Skelton and Mystes Ruxley are going to shake up the
realm looking for it. There are at least a half dozen of Calluna’s former
acolytes among the knights. We’ll convince one of them—or bribe her if
nothing else works—to find the vessel and give it to us. And then we’ll hide
it here in Calluna’s sanctum, where not even Severen himself would bother
looking for it.”
Morrig opened her mouth; so did Perdita and the queen.
A bell rang, soft, sweet, from within the sanctum.
They closed their mouths, for the language of the sanctum was water, not
words, and even Mystes Halliwell would not speak again until the ritual began.
Perdita checked the bone buttons on her tunic. The queen set a circlet of
ivory and bone on her head. Perdita stepped to the door, opened it, and
followed the mystes, the queen, and Morrig toward the slowly opening doors of
the sanctum, where a young acolyte, surrounded by attendants and other
acolytes, waited in the warm, steaming, gently swirling waters, to give birth.
9