He grabbed at the stern post as the boat pitched off a steep wave. Water sprayed back from the bows and spattered on the bundles that held our armour. Taliesin made sure his harp was well protected under his robe, then touched the silver fillet that circled his tonsured head to make certain it was still in place. ‘I think, Lord, that you travel into danger,’ he said calmly.

‘Is that Merlin’s message,’ I asked, touching the iron of Hywel-bane’s hilt, ‘or one of your visions?’

‘Only a vision,’ he confessed, ‘and as I once told you, Lord, it is better to see the present clearly than to try and discern a shape in the visions of the future.’ He paused, evidently considering his next words carefully. ‘You have not, I think, heard definite news of Mordred’s death?’

‘No.’

‘If my vision was right,’ he said, ‘then your King is not sick at all, but has recovered. I could be wrong, indeed I pray I am wrong, but have you had any omens?’

‘About Mordred’s death?’ I asked.

‘About your own future, Lord,’ he said.

I thought for a second. There had been the small augury of the salmon-fisher’s net, but that I ascribed to my own superstitious fears rather than to the Gods. More worryingly, the small blue-green agate in the ring that Aelle had given to Ceinwyn had fallen out, and one of my old cloaks had been stolen, and though both events could have been construed as bad omens, they could equally well be mere mishaps. It was hard to tell, and neither loss seemed portentous enough to mention to Taliesin. ‘Nothing has worried me lately,’ I told him instead.

‘Good,’ he said, rocking to the boat’s motion. His long black hair flapped in the wind that was stretching the belly of our sail taut and streaming its frayed edges. The wind was also skimming the tops from the white-crested waves and driving the spray inboard, though I think more water came into the boat through its gaping seams than across its gunwales. My spearmen bailed lustily. ‘But I think Mordred lives still,’ Taliesin went on, ignoring the frantic activity in the boat’s centre, ‘and that the news of his imminent death is a ruse. But I could not swear to that. Sometimes we mistake our fears for prophecy. But I did not imagine Merlin, Lord, nor any of his words in my dream.’

Again I touched Hywelbane’s hilt. I had always thought that any mention of Merlin would be reassuring, but Taliesin’s calm words were chilling.

‘I dreamed that Merlin was in a thick wood,’ Taliesin went on in his precise voice, ‘and could not find his way out; indeed, whenever a path opened before him, a tree would groan and move as though it were a great beast shifting to block his way. Merlin, the dream tells me, is in trouble. I talked to him in the dream, but he could not hear me. What that tells me, I think, is that he cannot be reached. If we sent men to find him, they would fail and they might even die. But he wants help, that I do know, for he sent me the dream.’