I said nothing, because for the first time the matter of the forty babies was making sense to me, in a hideous way: Maybe Merlin knew that one would survive and that it would be I, Mordred. Maybe that was why he told Arthur to do this evil thing, to send forty babes out to sea. Maybe it was not because fate could be defied, as Nyneve thought. Rather, it was only to show fate’s awful power.

Maybe things were working out exactly as Merlin intended.

I said, “But suppose that the unnatural son decides he does not want to kill his father?” My voice did not come out as strongly as I would have liked.

“Ah,” said Morgan le Fay, “fate would find a way. But as it happens, the son hates the father.” My body clenched, and I would not let her look into my eyes. “By trying to kill him when he was a helpless baby, his father has given him reason to hate him,” she went on. “Also, his father, the King, is so noble—” Somehow she made being noble sound like a dirty thing. “His father, the True King, is so noble that he is determined to accept his punishment. He will do nothing to prevent it.”

Yes, he was noble, King Arthur. I wished I were half as noble. Anytime in the past nine years that he knew I was alive he could have killed me. Thinking of my sire, of his goodliness, gave me the courage to lift my gaze to meet Morgan’s, and the bitterness in her dark, glittering eyes frightened me.

“He is your brother,” I whispered. “Why do you wish him ill?”

“Like you, I have reason.” She looked at me levelly, like a comrade. “Mordred, you are not alone.”

My heart lurched, for of all things about being who I was, that was the one I found hardest to bear: feeling so much alone.

She poured me more wine. She said, “I will help you. Let us lay plans; let us take the throne together. By right it is doubly yours: You are the son, and you are the sister-son more truly than Gawain is.”

True. I had thought so myself sometimes. And hated myself for the thought.

My aunt Morgan was watching me steadily. “We are much alike,” she said. “I think we could share a throne. I think we would get along, Mordred, my young sorcerer.”

But she barely knew me.

Yet she knew me all too well. She knew things she could not know merely by spying on me with her scrying mirror, the way she spied on her sister, Morgause. She seemed to know my soul.