The gray horse walked through the silver night, and every stride took me farther from my home. I did not weep—already I wanted to be strong, a man, I had decided I would not cry—but I began to understand: I was never to see my fishermother again.

2

FOR FIVE YEARS I BELIEVED THAT I WAS THE SON OF KING Lothe of Lothian. Even though folk gave me sidelong looks and snickered, I did not know what else to believe.

Nyneve took me there to Lothian, a cold northern kingdom where the trees grew few and low and twisted, where goats grazed around the castle—not a castle, really, but a hill fortress, a stronghold of rough-hewn rock. On the blunt towers squatted ravens looking for dead sheep. It was a rude place, but at the time I thought it was a castle, and I did not know what I was doing there, for my awe of Nyneve kept me silent; I had not asked her.

When we came to Lothian, she did not take me to King Lothe—not at first. Instead, she led me to the chamber of the lady of the castle, Queen Morgause in a white linen wimple that hid her neck and her hair, sitting at the window with her needlework. Nyneve stood straight before her but bowed her head for a moment. Nyneve wore a peacock feather in her hawk-red hair, and her long plaits swung free. “Greetings, daughter of Igraine,” Nyneve said in her wild-rose voice.

Queen Morgause looked up at her without speaking. She had a pale, smooth face that seemed to close like a soundless white door.

“My lady, surely you have not forgotten the usages of a scrying mirror,” Nyneve said gently. “Do you not know why I am here?”

The Queen’s dark, unblinking eyes turned to me. She did not nod or speak.

“Mordred.” Nyneve beckoned me forward. “Come, give greeting. This is your lady mother.”

Nyneve had left me in my rough fisherlad’s garment. At the time I wondered why, feeling the chill of the stony castle on my bare legs, seeing even the serving lads garbed more grandly than I was, knowing that Nyneve could have clothed me in princely raiment with a touch of her magical hands. But now I think she was wise, for she meant my mother to take pity on me.

I trotted up and dropped to one knee, as Nyneve had instructed me to do, and I knelt very still. My mother was a great lady, Nyneve had told me; my mother was Queen Morgause, daughter of Igraine, half sister of King Arthur himself. I gazed up at her, for if such a great lady, my mother, smiled upon me, then I would stand up strong and golden and I would truly be a prince and I would forget my fishermother.