I, Mordred, fated to be his murderer. Perhaps I resembled him after all.

I had discovered why knights seldom rode so near to the sea: The damp air rusts armor within a few days. I was forever cleaning mine, trying to keep it shining new, the way King Arthur had given it to me.

That night in the fisherman’s hut, when the fire dwindled to embers, my fisherfather walked out to check his boat and the height of the tide, and I stayed by the hearth, polishing my helm. As I rubbed the gleaming steel I could not stop thinking of King Arthur—shining King, murderer of babies—and my heart was aching, aching, and the embers pulsed like glowing hearts, giving forth a dim light nearly as red as blood. I set my helm on the floor by the fire and on my knees I rubbed it fiercely. Then I lifted my hand away and looked. I had polished it so well that from the darkly red–shining surface a face looked back at me—

A face not my own.

I gasped, but I’d had enough experience of scrying by then that I did not blink or move. As if the surface of the metal might ripple with a breath, I held still, staring.

It was the face of my aunt. Morgan le Fay.

She wore the rich colors of royalty—crimson, Indy blue, edgings of gold. Something rich hung down behind her, a bed curtain or tapestry. She seemed artfully bestowed, as if she had been waiting for me. She smiled at me, a saucy smile on that white-powdered, apple-cheeked face of hers, and she lifted her hand, plump, white, cuffed with a long ruffle of lace, and beckoned to me: Come hither.

“Why?” I whispered.

She smiled more widely, coy, and beckoned again.

Then the door scraped open and Fisherfather entered, yawning, shuffling with weariness in his clumsy boots. I took the helm and hid it in a saddlebag. Morgan le Fay might smile at leather and canvas if she chose.

9

GULL,” I TOLD HER AS I RODE AWAY IN THE MORNING, “I have to do it.”

She frisked ahead of me, ears flapping, tail jaunty, as if it did not even matter that I was being summoned by Morgan le Fay. That I was venturing to the stronghold of a sorceress.

“She knows more of uncanny things than anyone, I think. Maybe even more than Nyneve.”

Gull halted with her nose seemingly glued to earth, sniffing for a mouse or something, paying no attention to me.

“I wonder what she wants with me,” I muttered. Going to see Morgan le Fay was reckless. Going to see her when I knew she wanted me for some purpose of her own was more than reckless; it was mad. “And they call me a coward,” I grumbled.