Page 101 of The Mirror of Beasts

It was the cry of the Children of the Night.

“Who is the Goddess’s daughter?”

Viviane straightened, taking a moment to compose her expression before she turned to greet the small elfin standing in her doorway.

“Mari,” she said gently. “We are all daughters of the Goddess.”

But there was a flicker of worry in Viviane’s ancient eyes.

“Come, dear one,” the High Priestess said, moving to one of the chairs placed before the fire. “Sit with me awhile.”

Mari stepped inside the room, pulling the door shut behind her. The firelight adored her leaf-green skin, caressing it as she lifted her small form onto the other seat. Her eyes were eager as she opened the leather-bound book clutched in her hands.

“I found Morgan’s diary stored in a chest, in the room beside the Sanctuary,” Mari said, still bright with the excitement of her discovery. “In it, she writes of a girl named Creiddylad—the Goddess’s true child, born directly of her being, not just her power, as the rest of us are.”

Viviane’s lips compressed. She took a moment before answering. “Morgan always did love fanciful tales.”

Some of Mari’s hopefulness dimmed. “Is it not true? If we could find her—her soul reborn—Morgan believes that the child would radiate the Goddess’s magic. Her light. Could she not use that purifying light to heal the isle?”

Viviane reached out and gently shut the diary. Her thin fingers wrapped around its spine, and Mari allowed her to take it without a sign of protest.

“Even if this daughter—Creiddylad, did you say? Even if she existed, her soul would reside in the mortal world,” Viviane said. “And we cannot lift the barriers.”

“Could a soul truly be hidden, as Morgan wrote?” Mari asked. “To such a degree that it would evade the man seeking her?”

The chair creaked as Viviane leaned back. “If the caster of such a spell was powerful enough, yes, but the soul would possess magic difficult to suppress.”

“What of Seren’s suggestion to find Excalibur?” Mari pressed. “It can still break enchantments, can’t it?”

“It is lost to us,” Viviane said firmly. “As I told you all, Sir Bedivere confessed that the sword he returned to the lake was not Excalibur—that Arthur gave it to another knight, to continue to protect the mortal world.”

“Maybe that knight’s—Sir Percival’s—descendants still possess it?” Mari suggested.

“Merely finding the sword would not be enough,” Viviane said. “You know this.”

Mari nodded, all her eagerness deflated.

“Rest, my heart,” Viviane said, stroking her head. “We will begin our search again in the morning.”

Mari slid off her chair. “May the Goddess bless your dreams.”

The older woman smiled. “And yours.”

She waited until Mari had shut the door before looking down at the small volume resting in her lap. Running a hand over its weathered cover, she opened it, flipping through the pages, her eyes devouring the sight of Morgan’s bold letters.

She snapped the diary shut again, her face twisting with unexpressed feeling. Closing her pale eyes, she lifted the diary and inhaled the scent of it.

Then, rising, she pressed the small book to her chest, to her heart, one last time—and cast it into the hearth’s fire.

My eyes snapped open, the world swaying around me as I reoriented myself to the present, to the living world. Caitriona had gone deathly pale beneath her freckles; I understood only a fraction of what she was feeling, how difficult it was to see her loved ones alive in the past, only to wake from it like a dream and find she’d lost them all over again.

“So Percival had it,” Neve said. “We just need to find where he’s buried, or what remains of his family, right?”

But the Bonecutter was watching me still, as if waiting.

That cold, prickling dread I’d felt upstairs had returned. She had shown us this memory to confirm my suspicion that the sword was likely in Lyonesse, where Percival was thought by some to have died, yes. But just as a word could have many meanings, choosing that meaning depended on the context of the words around us.

We’d gotten the answer to what Lord Death was searching for, but that answer had been a distraction from the bigger question that surrounded it all.

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