Chapter 20: The Sparrow in the Glass

Six servants of the Water Court wheeled the Mirror into the hall on its stand.

They pulled the cloth, and the whole assembly saw its own faces in the glass, every one of them tired.

My father stood to one side with his circlet in his hand.

He had taken it off while they waited.

"Stand before it," he said to Perrin.

"Gladly, my lord."

Perrin walked to the glass without hurry, with the cloud of sparrows drifting after him across the roof.

He stopped an arm's length from it, and he turned his bound hands palm up.

In the Mirror, there was a small brown bird.

It stood on the stone where he stood, no bigger than a fist, with its feathers a little ruffled and its beak a little open.

Nobody among the wardens moved.

The old warden of the Deep took a step toward the glass, then another.

"A sparrow," he said.

"I never said otherwise," said Perrin.

Behind me, I heard my sisters make a low sound.

Wynne's fingers closed around my sleeve.

"They see it," she whispered. "They can all see it."

"They saw it at the feast too."

"That wasn't the same. Look at their faces. Look at Thessaly's face..."

She stopped.

Thessaly had come in at the hall door in her stable clothes, with straw on her hem and her hands raw from the curry comb.

She stood quite still, and she stared into the glass at the bird.

"I knew," she said, so quietly I barely heard. "I saw it at the feast. I let Father cover it, and I knew."

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