I lay stark awake—it was no mere dream, but a vision. The memory shines like a great jewel, brighter than most waking days of my life. I saw Pelleas riding in a strange country, under a yellow sky, but I did not see the white falcon with him. He rode a white mule, and he rode wearily, and the mule’s head hung. He rode into such a garden as I have never seen. The trees wept like fountains, and great birds with trailing tails flew over, making strange cries. In the middle of the garden stood a pleasure pavilion with a roof tiled in gold; Pelleas rode there. And on a bed in the pavilion, Gawain lay sleeping with a maiden in his arms. Pelleas looked for a long moment at Gawain and the maiden, but he did not awaken them. He laid his naked sword across their necks, then turned away.

But everything changed. The pleasure pavilion turned to gray stone tower with four doors; at each door stood a gilded woman. The yellow sky turned indigo; it was night. Pelleas’s mule became a great white stag with antlers that formed a golden crown. And where Gawain and the lady had lain, there stood a silver cauldron brimming with some liquid that glimmered darkly, like ladywater.

I drew nearer, gazing at the silver cauldron, and saw that it was filled with blood.

Yet in the vision I was not afraid. This blood was not ugly, but beautiful. I gazed as if scrying in a liquid ruby. And in the pool of blood I saw a simple vision, yet a great mystery, as if a serpent nested with a dove. It made me tremble, for it was a seeing not of this world. I saw King Arthur embracing me as a son.

And in that moment I knew what I must do. I knew what my worthiness must be.

And my quest.

And my grail.

BOOK THREE

The White Falcon

8

I RODE AWAY FROM CAMELOT IN THE EARLIEST SPRING, WITH no companion but Gull.

I said nothing to anyone until the days grew warm enough for me to leave, and then only to King Arthur. I was lucky to find him alone, sitting in his chamber, a leather-bound Plutarch on his knee—it was more study than bedchamber, his room, vellum charts pegged to the walls, a cot no wider or softer than mine. There I was able to speak to him privately, formally, bowing on one knee before him.

“Arise, Sir Mordred.” It was an echo of the night of my dubbing, when the Round Table watched and King Arthur lifted the sword from my shoulder and called me for the first time by my knightly name.

I rose. “I beg leave to pursue a quest, Sire.”

“A quest, Sir Mordred? What quest?”

Keeping my voice very low, I said, “A quest to save us both, my King.”

To save his life.

And my soul.