Facing her was worse than facing ten knights in full armor. My heart pounded with dread, my head pounded so painfully I could not think, and everything she had said hung on me like robes of lead. And all, all of it felt true, and what was the bloody use of trying to do good, to be something more than this villain Mordred? It took my deepest courage just to speak in a wavering whisper.

“I want to try to do what is right.” I took the wine she had given me and poured it onto the floor. “I want to fight my fate.”

She blinked at me as if she heard a fly buzzing, as if I were not even worth swatting. She said to me as indifferently as if we were talking about the weather, “Stay with me a few days and you will think otherwise.”

10

AFTER ONLY A FEW HOURS OF SLEEP IN MY SUMPTUOUS chamber, I groaned and awoke, as I had commanded myself to do. I would dress and arm myself, I planned, then go to the stable while it was still dark and no one would see me. I would saddle my horse. The gate would open at first light, and I would ride like a hawk on the wind; I would be miles away before Morgan le Fay called for me.

I had done well to face her, I told myself, and I had learned much. Now I knew what was her game.

Yet I struggled to buckle on my sword. Mere fear had never made me so weak. Yes, there had been some threat in her tone toward the end. But threats had never made me want to lie down and sleep forever.

It was hard even to set one foot in front of the other, to walk. But I had to do it. “Gull,” I whispered, and she padded over to me, and with her following like a white shadow at my heels I walked softly out of my chamber and down the tower stairs.

Down, down the dark spiral staircase, one hand on the damp stone, feeling my way. The walls were cold and smelled of moss. It seemed to take forever to reach the door at the bottom where I would let myself out and cross the courtyard to the stable.

Finally the stairs ended. There, at last, the door—

I opened it and looked in upon my own chamber.

But it was impossible.

But it was so. There stood the candle by which I had dressed. There was my bed as I had left it, with the linens thrown back. There on their perches stood the caged birds, their heads under their wings.

“Gull,” I whispered, “I am going insane.” I closed the chamber door and stood outside it, feeling earth under my feet; I was at the base of the tower, and stairs led only upward from here. “Very well,” I muttered, and I started to climb.