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?”