“I’m going to call Armand. Warn him the Cauldron-Born might have gone back down in the lift.”
“We’d better go back and wait for Aunt Una’s team anyway,” said Merlin. He touched his upper lip. “And I think perhaps this moustache is a little too . . . too vigorous. It has to go.”
They retreated to Merlin’s room, where he immediately sidled into his bathroom, but he left that door partly open.
Susan did not relinquish the saber. She felt better with its heavy weight in her hand. Vivien picked up the phone and dialed the front desk.
“Armand? Merlin thinks it may have gone into the lift. No sign of anything? What about the wards being compromised? A side door, something like that?”
She listened to the response, then hung up. Merlin came out of the bathroom, minus the moustache.
“Armand hasn’t seen anything,” said Vivien, frowning. “And no one’s come down the stairs. Maybe it was someone binging on an unusual perfume.”
“I don’t think so,” said Merlin grimly. “I felt a presence. Something indefinably wrong.”
“Then how did it get past the wards?”
“Do the Cauldron-Born have to be invited in, like vampires?” asked Susan.
“There are no vampires,” said Merlin and Vivien together.
“Sippers don’t count,” added Merlin.
“This hotel . . . all our buildings . . . are warded against inimical creatures, and that would definitely include the Cauldron-Born. The boundaries are traced and the wards renewed twice a year, May Day and All Hallow’s Eve. I suppose one could have miscast, or even broken with fresh blood and mercury, but surely someone would have noticed—”
The phone rang. Vivien picked it up before it got to the second ring.
“Yes. It’s Vivien. Merlin felt it first, then I caught the scent. Definitely laurel and amaranth, over rot. We think it went into the lift. I’ve asked Armand to check the wards . . . yes . . . yes . . . the one taken by the Mayfair goblins . . . yes . . . she is . . . no, we’ll stay put.”
Vivien put the phone down.
“Aunt Una wants us to stay here. They’re going to quarter each floor. She’s called it in to Thurston but Merrihew is still on the train.”
“Do you think Una believes us?” asked Merlin.
Vivien thought for a moment, and shook her head. “No, but she’s a stickler for doing things right.”
Merlin sat down on his bed, rested his sword point-first on the floor, where it tore the already threadbare carpet, and rested his hands on the pommel and his chin on his hands.
“Maybe we shouldn’t wait around,” he said slowly.
“What?” asked Vivien. “Aunt Una was very specific. A direct order.”
Merlin frowned.
“There is that. But I’m thinking about the Cauldron-Born. If there is one, how was it made, and by whom?”
“Hmm,” said Vivien. She recited from memory: “The Stone Cauldron was broken by Corabec of the Folk of Ishur, the pieces given to the sea in the four quarters of Britain; the Copper Cauldron was lost, in the time of Antoninus Pius, and never seen again; the Bronze Cauldron was melted down as idolatrous in the first year of the Commonwealth of Cromwell; the Iron Cauldron is ours, and under the Grail-Keeper’s hand.”
She paused and added, “That’s what the standard history says, anyway.”
“The last Cauldron-Born came out of the Bronze Cauldron, in 1643, right?” asked Merlin.
“Yes,” agreed Vivien.
“But the Bronze Cauldron’s gone, melted down by Roundheads. The Stone Cauldron likewise gone. No one’s seen the Copper Cauldron since Hadrian built the wall. What does that leave?”
Vivien shook her head. “Ours. The Grail. But there’s no way—”
“Hang on!” interrupted Susan. “You have one of these cauldrons? You as in the booksellers?”
“Yes, the Iron Cauldron, but we call it a grail,” said Merlin. “Makes it sound more respectable.”
“And we don’t put dead people in it to reanimate them,” said Vivien.
“What do you do with it, then?” asked Susan.
Merlin and Vivien looked at each other.
“It’s a secret, of course,” said Merlin. “But you’d probably figure it out anyway.”
“The cauldrons aren’t simply for making monsters,” said Vivien. “In fact, that’s not what they were made for at all. It’s a perversion of their purpose. They are enormously powerful mythic relics that greatly amplify all kinds of magic, and they have many different uses. Each of the cauldrons has or had unique powers in addition to their usual properties—”
“Oh, tell her, Viv,” said Merlin impatiently.
“Our hands are dipped in it when we turn seven,” said Vivien. “It’s what makes us what we are, though no one can tell whether we’ll initially be left-handed or right-handed.”
“Why only your hands?”
“Because if a living person is entirely immersed in the cauldron, it will shatter, its power gone forever,” said Merlin. “Oh, and the person dies.”
“So someone could be using your cauldron, grail, or whatever you call it to make Cauldron-Born?”
“No,” said Vivien.
“It’s not impossible,” argued Merlin.
“It’s very, very unlikely,” said Vivien firmly. “The Grail-Keeper wouldn’t . . . no . . . it’s much more likely we’re mistaken and there is no Cauldron-Born. Some coincidence of scent; I mean you mentioned Aleppo soap, that has laurel oil in it, maybe I imagined the amaranth, someone’s bad BO—”
“I definitely felt a malign presence,” said Merlin. “It was like being hit by a sudden icy wind, deep inside. I had to stop myself shivering.”
“Maybe you’re getting a cold.”
“But what if there is one—” Susan started to say, but she stopped as there was a sharp knock at the door.
“Who is it?” called out Merlin.
“Room service bringing you a bloody bottle of champagne, who do you think!”
“Aunt Una,” said Merlin and Vivien together. Merlin opened the door.
A biker clad top to toe in black leather with a fluorescent vest emblazoned “Urgent Book Delivery” loosely worn over the jacket strode in like an avenging Valkyrie, shaking her long black hair loose, her helmet decorated with a fluoro skull and crossbones under her arm. She appeared to be in her thirties, was brown-skinned and very attractive. She looked like a West Indian model channeling Suzi Quatro in an advertisement for Harley-Davidson. Or very expensive rum. Or both. Except she wasn’t smiling; she looked quite cross.
She had biker’s gauntlets on both hands,
