She drew back the hair behind my left ear and looked at the mark there. Then she offered me her soft white hand to touch and she gave me fair greeting. “Well come, Mordred, my son.” But she did not smile.

A few moments later, in the great hall, Nyneve presented me to King Lothe. I knelt before him while he looked me over as if studying a new kind of dog, and I tried not to cringe; King Lothe was a hard gray man with battle scars on his face that showed even under his beard. I tried not to look at his left hand, for two fingers were lopped off. When he had finished scanning me, he said to Nyneve, hard and forthright as the castle stones, “Very well, we will shelter him here. And we will give him a nobleman’s upbringing, for he is of noble blood. But if King Arthur wants him killed, I will not go to war for his sake.”

My bare legs twitched. I began to shiver.

“It was Merlin who wanted him killed,” Nyneve said quietly. “Now that Merlin is gone, Arthur will let him be.”

I was in awe of Nyneve, as I have said, not even knowing that it was she who had besotted the great wizard Merlin and locked him in his tomb. And I was yet more in awe of her when I saw the anger on King Lothe’s warrior face, when I saw that there was much he wished to say to her, yet he reined his wrath and said little. He said only, “Does Arthur know he is alive?”

“I shall tell him. Cherish the child well.”

King Lothe, so I was later told, had been one of the five rebel kings defeated by King Arthur—and it was a hard thing to be defeated by a beardless boy-king of fifteen. But King Arthur had allowed King Lothe to keep his title and land in exchange for peace and fealty. At first Lothe had used peace only to plan for more war, but now he had reason for peace: Arthur had no son, so therefore King Lothe’s son Gawain, Arthur’s sister’s elder son, stood as heir to King Arthur’s throne. King Lothe must have wondered much, when Nyneve brought me to him, whether he would be better off to cherish me, as she told him to, or kill me. But I did not know these things then.