Inside the vault, the box gleamed in that light, its designs twisting, interlacing … moving? Behind it, Dorrin could just see something else, something wrapped in what looked like old gray leather. “I don’t remember that,” she said. “It may’ve been there, but hidden in the dark.”
“First the urn,” Paks said. “Filled with magical blood, you said?”
“Real blood, preserved by magery. I don’t know whose.” Dorrin touched it and felt a tingle up her arm. She jerked it back.
“Magery?” Paks said.
“Something.”
Paks reached past her and took out the urn. Once clear of the vault, it changed in her hands to a goblet, jewel-encrusted.
“Holy Falk,” Dorrin said. “Ward this house.”
“Gird’s grace,” Paks said. “It has writing on it, but I can’t read it—”
Around the rim, a script Dorrin had never seen before squirmed and reformed into something she could read. Who drinks from me without a right shall live for aye in endless night; the true king’s draught shall hold him hale until the day his magery fail. Dorrin recited this aloud to Paks.
“What is it?” Paks asked. “What does that mean?”
Dorrin felt cold all over. “It is—it must be—a coronation goblet for some king. From very long ago, and from whence I have no idea. Why it was a blood-filled urn I do not know either. Unless drinking blood was part of the coronation rite.”
“Here,” Paks said. “You hold it.”
“Just put it down on the table,” Dorrin said.
“But if it made you feel something, maybe it has more to teach. Tammarion’s sword, that was the king’s—”
“I can hold it later.” Dorrin fought her magery, that wanted to hold it now, fill it with wine now, drink from it now. “There’s more—we should get it all out, and somewhere safe.”
Paks set the goblet on the table. “Do you want me to take the things out?”
She did, but it was her own heritage. “I will,” Dorrin said. The box, when she touched it, sent the same thrill up her arm, but this time she did not flinch and the box did not change shape when she took it from the vault. It was heavier than it looked; she carried it to the table and set it down. She and Paks stared down at the designs on the upper surface.
“It reminds me of the designs in Luap’s Stronghold, in Kolobia,” Paks said after a long moment. “Not just beautiful, but powerful.”
“Yes,” Dorrin said. Her finger wanted to follow the lines, her thumb wanted to press there. She did not realize she had done so until the box opened, not like an ordinary box but like an intricately folded paper, flowerlike.
Glittering in the clear light Paks gave were jewels—sapphires and diamonds—fashioned into pieces Dorrin instantly recognized as someone’s crown jewels … a ring like a ducal ring, only larger, a pair of earrings, broad bracelets large enough for a man’s wrists, a pin such as might hold a cloak to a shoulder, a belt clasp as large as her hand.
Yours. The voice in her mind was clear as her own. At last. A tendril of light rose from the goblet, arced over, and touched a sapphire on the ring, big as a grape.
“I didn’t do that,” Paks said mildly. “Did you?”
“Not intentionally,” Dorrin said. “What—what have we found?”
“What have your family kept hidden is the better question. A coronation goblet, jewels like these, whatever else is in there—have they been thieves or—or what?”
“The stories—family stories—say we were once kings. I never believed them.”
“When, in Gird’s day?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to know, Paks. I wanted to get away and never come back.”
“The box opened to your touch. The urn changed—”
“In your hands, not mine.” But it would have, she knew. “If it is true—if these are crown jewels from Old Aare—that doesn’t mean Verrakaien are royal. We might be thieves only. That would explain hiding them, wouldn’t it?” Dorrin looked at Paks, then at the open vault. “I begin to think I was foolish to start this in darkness, without a troop of Marshals, Captains, and another paladin or two.”
Paks shook her head. “The gods sent me; they must think we can do it. Whatever it is.”
Dorrin touched her ruby for luck and reached into the vault once more. The bundle that had been hidden behind the box felt stiff to the touch like old dried leather. She shuddered at the thought that it was also human skin, but as she drew it out, it changed into a cloth embroidered in brilliant blue, gold, and silver, soft and unworn, wrapped around something heavy—she knew without unwrapping what it must be.
On the table, she unfolded the cloth. Centered on the cloth’s design, a many-pointed star, alternating gold and silver points against the blue, was an obvious crown, itself glittering with sapphires and diamonds but for one blank spot.
Joy burst over Dorrin like a wave; the light in the room shimmered, and without her intent, the crown rose off the table and hung in the air before her.
You are the one. At last I am free.
“Not now,” Dorrin said aloud. Magery ran like fire through her veins; she could scarcely see Paks, though the silver circle on her brow burned brightly. Dorrin reached out, nonetheless, and took the crown in her hands, setting it back in its wrappings.
“Was that what I—what was that?” Paks said. She did not sound alarmed, just interested. Her calmness steadied Dorrin.
“It talked to me,” Dorrin said. “Did you hear it?”
“No. What was it saying?”
“From the first—the goblet—” Dorrin nodded at the goblet. “It said it was mine. And so did the crown.” She drew a long breath. “If—if my family heard such voices, and believed them, it would explain—”
Nothing. The voice was implacable. They bound us with blood we did not want. You are different. We are yours. Dorrin shivered.
“It said something else?” Paks said.
“Yes. It said they—my family—bound these things with blood—blood it did not want. That I am different, and these things belong to me.”
“There was more,” Paks said, looking at the jewels in the unfolded box. “See this space here?” She pointed to an empty space with the slight impression of something in the velvet lining. She looked at Dorrin, brow wrinkled around the circle. “I’ve seen something—somewhere—that’s like these. A necklace. I know—” She looked excited now. “Brewersbridge, when I was there before I went to Fin Panir. Arvid—that thief—gave it to me. I gave it to the Girdish treasury when they chose me for paladin’s training.”
Dorrin smoothed the cloth that had been around the crown. Not a worn stitch, not a frayed edge. “I wish I knew what this meant.” She touched the star-figure inside the arc of the crown. “It must be symbolic, but—”
“I saw it in Luap’s Stronghold,” Paks said. “A cloth something like this, but I don’t know what it means. It was in a small chamber, empty but for the cloth laid on the sleeping shelf. I wasn’t thinking about that, then. I was already falling into Achrya’s spell.”
“Do you think these things are evil?” Dorrin’s own magery insisted NO but she did not trust it. “The voices from an evil spirit, tempting me?”
Paks touched them one by one. “No. Whatever evil has been here has not corrupted them, not that I can tell. I felt evil in the room—the remnants of that picture and its frame among them—but not these things. Yet they have a power—”
“That I do not understand,” Dorrin said. “Falk and the High Lord give us wisdom to understand what this means.”
“And what we should do,” Paks said. She touched the jewels again. “I wonder why such jewels would be in Gird’s colors.”