“That power is not all gone.”

“No. I can feel that. The blood dried and vanished in a mist, and most of the power here went—somewhere. I prayed, Paksenarrion, that it might never return.”

“What’s behind the door?”

“I saw an urn filled with blood; the blood dried and vanished in mist like the rest. A casket of carved wood inlaid with colored patterns. There might be more. I have left it as I found it, the door slightly open so I could watch for new blood.”

“Take it out,” Paks said. Dorrin glanced at her. Her clear paladin’s light filled the room, leaving no shadows. “Whatever it is, I know we must discover it.”

Whatever it was, if a paladin told her to stick her hand in a hole and bring something out—she would. Dorrin opened the vault door wider and light filled the chamber. Paks’s light, like her own magery, revealed the traps she had not seen before. Paks came nearer.

“Your ancestors trusted no one, did they?”

“I can’t speak for all,” Dorrin said, “but no one so steeped in evil as my uncle and his followers trusts.”

“Let me see if I can—” Paks pointed at the traps revealed, and one by one they withered. She turned to grin at Dorrin. “You’re right. It is fun to play with power—not something the gods grant often to paladins.”

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—”