Page 131 of Silver in the Bone

“Yes,” Caitriona said. “We’ve kept them because they hold important memories of both the isle and your world.”

“But Viviane’s is the only vessel belonging to a priestess,” Emrys clarified.

“Yes,” Olwen said, her eyes soft as she looked to it. “It is not as elaborate as the other vessels, because I feared preserving more of her bones might be enough to transform this—her mortal remains—into one of the Children.”

Neve leaned over the vessel, her shadow intruding on the flickering lights. “How does a vessel work?”

Olwen answered with another question. “What would you like to ask Viviane about her lifetime?”

“I don’t know ... how she became High Priestess?” Neve said.

“Close your eyes,” Olwen instructed. “All of you.”

As we did, a deep humming emerged from her, becoming a language I’d never heard before. It was a low, guttural tone that seemed to emerge from deep in the ancient earth, rather than one girl’s throat. A shiver passed through me as an image painted itself in my mind.

A young girl, as fair as moonlight, woke from her bed as if in a trance, singing a song of her own. The image of her shimmered with milky brightness as she passed her sleeping parents and moved toward the waiting door. Outside, an emerald forest waited, the trees bowing to her—

My eyes snapped open as I gasped. Emrys and Neve stayed in the memory a moment longer before joining me in the present moment.

“We refer to witnessing a memory as echoing,” Olwen explained. “And though many of our rites are recorded in the written word, we sometimes consult the past through memory.”

“I’m guessing you’ve already asked the vessel to show memories of a possible curse on the land?” Neve said.

“I have examined all of her memories around the time of the Forsaking,” Olwen said. “I have also searched her memories of Morgan to no avail. She was the one who led the rising against the druids, and I thought she might have shared something about the druids’ magic with Viviane.”

“Anything Morgan might have known died with her,” Caitriona snorted. “She truly turned her back on the Goddess and her sisters.”

“She’s a hero for stopping the druids from taking over Avalon,” Neve shot back. “She should be remembered for that.”

“Please,” Olwen interrupted, holding up her hands between them. “Let me finish.”

Caitriona and Neve looked to opposite ends of the infirmary, mirrors of each other.

“After she nearly destroyed Merlin, Morgan was killed by another druid in the final battle,” Olwen said. “She died in the arms of Viviane. Our High Priestess never truly recovered from that terrible day—she and Morgan were lovers, you see.”

I nodded. Dark magic had been born from lesser horrors.

“Our problem now,” Olwen continued, “is that the vessel is missing several years of memories, including the battle between the sorceresses and druids. The last memory we have before it is an argument she had with Morgan.”

Olwen stopped the spinning pedestal with her hand and blew out the candle inside. After removing it and setting it aside, she carefully turned the vessel upside down. There was a jagged hole at the bottom of the skull that had been partly plugged by the candle’s wax.

“When did this happen?” Neve asked.

“Impossible to say, really,” Olwen said. “I only know it’s been like this since our first attempts at echoing with it.”

“Just as it would be impossible to say if it was damaged accidentally by the now-dead person who created it, or on purpose by someone who didn’t want those memories revisited,” I said.

The others looked at me with varying degrees of alarm.

“Please don’t tell me I’m the only one who had that thought,” I said. “Merlin mentioned a she who tried to master death, which feels like a riddle-me-this way of saying someone tried to learn the death magic of the druids. Caitriona may not be the one controlling the Children—”

The priestess’s entire being seemed to swell with outrage. “You thought I was controlling them?”

“We did,” I confirmed.

“Sorry,” Emrys added.

“I didn’t,” Neve offered.

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