“You claim it did that by itself?”

“As it opened. Try tracing the pattern on the top, with your heart-hand finger, and then touching that blue stone in the center.” Dorrin stood back, giving him room.

Scowling, he traced the pattern as she directed; the box opened very slowly, but when he tried to touch the lining it snapped shut once more. “It doesn’t like me,” he said.

“Have you taken anything out of it?” High Marshal Seklis asked.

“No. I’ve touched the inside, though, and it never closed on me like that.” Once more Dorrin opened the box and stroked the blue velvet lining. The box did not move, until she touched the two ends, when it folded again.

“And the third thing?” Seklis asked.

“Ah. That’s two mysteries in one,” Dorrin said. She unfolded the cloth and spread it flat. “Paksenarrion says this design resembles one found on a cloth in Luap’s Stronghold, laid on a stone bench in a room otherwise empty.” She paused. They were all staring. “And then there’s the crown.”

As she spoke, the crown rose in the air and moved toward her. You are mine; I am yours. The voice in her head was so clear she thought the others must have heard it.

“How are you doing that?” All three were gripping their Girdish medallions as if for protection.

“I’m not,” Dorrin said. “It is. It is very old, and obviously magical—” Put me on. “—and you should also know that it speaks to me.”

“Speaks to you?”

Dorrin took the crown in her hands; light flashed from the jewels. She set it gently back in the center of the cloth and covered it. “Yes. I do not know when it came into our family, but I know it has lived surrounded by blood magery for a very long time and perhaps it—whatever it is—is confused at being at last free.”

“In the archives,” Duke Mahieran said, “the oldest records we have speak of the rituals attending the coronation of the old kings, the kings before we came over the mountains. What just happened—” He nodded at the three objects. “What just happened,” he repeated, “would fit those old rituals, or the stories told about them.”

“I brought these things to give you,” Dorrin said, turning to the prince. “You are the rightful heir of this kingdom; you will be our king; you should have them.”

“Not if they’re going to nip his fingers off,” Duke Mahieran said.

Seklis came closer. “Let me see that cloth again … if you can keep the crown from leaping to someone’s head.”

“Her head,” Duke Mahieran said. “That seems to be its chosen head. And the stones, you notice, are sapphire and diamond … Verrakai colors. Not ours.”

Dorrin unfolded the cloth again, and lifted the crown in her hands. It sang along her arms, commanding, pleading, for her to put it on. She did not, but waited while Seklis peered at the cloth.

“Sunlord,” Seklis said at last. “I think that’s the Sunlord’s symbol. Very old, that would make it. And it’s all embroidery, the entire surface. The cloth under it is white.”