The Book of Mordred by Vivian Vande Velde Page B

over the window, making the room ... not dark, but darker.
    Toland didn't need darkness for his spells
, Alayna thought. Then she remonstrated with herself. It was unfair to criticize beforehand. Wait and see what would happen.
    Halbert took a candle off the nightstand and placed it on the chest at the foot of the bed, in front of the crystal. He touched his finger to the wick of the candle and it burst into flame.
    Toland could do that,
Alayna thought.
    "Do you have anything of your daughters?" Halbert asked Alayna. "Preferably a lock of hair, but anything that was hers will do,"—Alayna was shaking her head—"or that she had contact with?"
    "Nothing," she told him. "Everything was destroyed in a fire."
    Halbert looked disapproving, but he said, "Then put your hands about the crystal, and call her name." He gestured, indicating for her to surround the crystal with her hands.
    Alayna knelt before the chest and—reaching around the candle—wrapped her hands around the crystal.
    "Call her name," the wizard repeated.
    "Kiera," she said. She watched Halbert, expecting him to tell her she was doing it all wrong. Was she supposed to shout the name, as though summoning Kiera from a distance?
    But he seemed satisfied with a normal tone of voice. He said, "Picture her in your mind."
    Alayna did, fervently.
    "Move your hands." Once again Halbert gestured, this time his hands separating and moving down, forming a ring with his fingers.
    Alayna did as he indicated, her hands encircling the rough, sparkled base from which the clear crystal jutted.
    "Concentrate on the shadow the candles flame casts on the crystal. See your daughter in that. Picture her."
    The picture that her mind formed was from that last morning in the barn: Kiera turning, looking up, her face covered with tears and filled with pain and sorrow.
    It was better than no image at all. After only a year, Alayna missed Toland, dreamt of him almost every night, but could only rarely and fleetingly picture him in her waking thoughts.
    "Kiera," the wizard said, as though sensing the momentary shifting of her concentration.
    Kiera. Alayna pictured her, in the barn. She stared at the facet of the crystal where the candle flame threw its shadow. Kiera was within that shadow, Alayna told herself. She tried to get her eyes to pick out Kiera's features, caught a glimpse of her wild, ginger-colored hair in the flickering movement of the flame, saw a glint that might have been Kiera's eye reflecting the light of the candle, followed a curve that might have been either an angle of the crystal, or a cheek. Like staring into a dark corner. Like forcing sense out of something half seen in the night. Kiera. Alayna drew Kiera's face out of the shadow. Saw the hair, the eye, the cheek.
    Someone in the room took in a breath, shifted, but Halbert's voice, steady and calm, said, "Kiera."
    "Kiera," Alayna repeated, and the image of her daughter solidified, appeared captured within the crystal, caught constantly in the act of turning, looking up, waiting expectantly for her mother to make things right. Or chastise her. Or disregard her.
    "Kiera," Halbert said, louder this time, more commanding, and now he was the one who was moving, who was stepping not quite in front of Alayna—but up to the crystal.
    The image of Kiera shifted again. She was no longer in the barn. The wall behind her was stone: Kiera was sitting on a bed, her arms folded defiantly in front of her. Alayna recognized that stubborn look. A woman—a servant? Alayna assumed she was a servant by the way her hair was tied up in a kerchief, and by the way her sleeves were rolled back and her apron smudged with food stains—a woman sat on the bed next to Kiera, holding a bowl, offering a spoonful of something. Kiera wouldn't look at the woman, the bowl, or the spoon. The woman moved the spoon closer, Kiera turned her head, and the spoon ended up in Kiera's hair. Kiera jumped up, unsettling the bowl so that it