But why not? The world was crazy. I, whom everyone loathed, I had done nothing, but King Arthur, whom everyone adored—King Arthur had tried to kill—

I shook my head, shaking the thoughts away. I said, “Pelleas acts as if he hates Gawain. Is that why?”

“No.”

A curt reply. Whatever lay wrong between Pelleas and Gawain, Nyneve did not wish to speak of it. Or perhaps she did not wish to be reminded of Pelleas. Perhaps she wished I would go away and let her alone. But I could not.

“Gawain says that you, also, are a murderer.”

“Some folk might see it that way.” She turned to me, her calm eyes dark with the suffering that had been in them since Pelleas rode away. “After that brute Sir Outelake, the next knight who seized me, I waited until he took off his mail and then I put my dagger in him. Then I cut off his head with his own sword. And then I rode his charger instead of my little palfrey, and yes, I hung his head at my knee until it stank. After that, the ruffians let me alone.” She watched me, her gaze like deep water, hiding her thoughts. “Was it murder, do you think?”

“I—I don’t know.” Most folk would not think a knight deserved to die just for trying to ravish a pretty maiden.

“I would not need to kill him now,” Nyneve said. “I would fell him with a touch of my hands. But I did not learn that power until Merlin taught me.” She turned back to staring at the water. “And he taught me only because he wanted something in return. He wanted me in just the same way as the others.”

But why had he not used his magic to overpower her, then? “Was he—was he not fated to love you?”

“Fate is a lie, Mordred.” Her stare turned as fierce as a falcon’s glare, fit to harden the water. “Fate is Merlin’s puffery. He was saving his pride. He knew I might best him; if he said it was his fate, then he could appear to go nobly to his doom. And if he escaped, he would seem all the more mighty.” Her glare softened. “As it turned out, I bested him.”

She had shut him in a cave in Cornwall, some of the tales said, with a great stone closing the entrance for all eternity. She had laid him alive in his tomb, others said. She had imprisoned him in a hill of glass, said yet others, or in the trunk of a great tree. I did not ask her which of the tales was true. I did not want to know.