“That’s what’s worrying me,” said Merlin quietly. He hefted the old sword in his left hand and pushed down the door handle with his right, easing the door open.
The hotel corridor looked no different from how it had on the way up, emanating a sad and faded grandeur with its oft-patched-up wallpaper of bluish lilies and pinkish crowns on beige, and a once royal-blue carpet faded to commoner status, so worn in the middle there was almost no pile left, with the warp beneath showing through. It was in the kind of perpetual twilight that is the default of a class of hotels that only ever replaces half the light bulbs in the public areas.
“It’s gone,” said Merlin.
“Where? Into a room?” asked Vivien. She sniffed the air. “The scent has almost faded.”
“Maybe it went back to the lifts,” said Merlin. “If it was dressed up properly it wouldn’t be too noticeable, at least to ordinary—”
A door suddenly opened three rooms along the corridor behind them, and the trio spun around, but it was only an elderly couple who shuffled out, shrugging on raincoats and hefting umbrellas.
Susan looked at the sword in her hand and held it close against her body. She glanced at Merlin, who didn’t bother, slanting his weapon back so the blade rested on his shoulder, making it very obvious indeed.
“Won’t they see the swords?” hissed Susan.
“That’s what Vivien’s for,” said Merlin. “She’ll cloud their minds.”
“Stand against the wall and be quiet,” instructed Vivien.
Merlin and Susan obeyed, backing up against the wall. The old couple were coming closer, weaving slightly and muttering to each other about the kettle in their room, which wasn’t big enough to fill a proper teapot. They had brought their own with them, and the last time they’d stayed, for the Queen’s coronation thirty years ago, the kettles had been bigger, the room cleaner and brighter, and everything had been better.
“Quiet,” whispered Vivien. She took in a deep breath and held it as the duo came up to them. They walked past without even glancing at Merlin and Susan or their swords. They got to the lifts and the man slowly and regularly pressed the call button three times, neither of them looking back along the corridor.
Vivien exhaled and shook her head, as if to clear it.
“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.”