She rode westward also, on a roan palfrey, and I overtook her on the trail. As I turned to greet her, I knew her. It was the damsel who had appealed to me over the body of her dead brother.

I reined in my charger to ride beside her, for only if a woman were a sorceress like Nyneve could she safely ride forth by herself. “Maiden, why do you travel alone?”

“You!” She turned on me, eyes like blue fire. But as I raised my visor, her eyes widened; she remembered my face, and it was not the face she expected in that helm. “You?” I saw her glance at my shield—Sir Dalbert’s device still showed faintly through the whitewash—and at Gull. Then she regarded me gravely. “Is that a sword cut on your cheekbone? It seems you have avenged my brother after all.”

“I—I am sorry.” About her brother, I meant. And sorry that I had ridden past her and left her sorrowing over his body.

“Do not be sorry. You wear the armor of that ruffian Sir Dalbert; you have killed him, have you not?”

“Yes.”

“Then do not be sorry for anything. What is your name?”

“What is yours?”

“Lynette. But I asked first.”

I smiled. Some serene lilt in her voice made me wish to be mysterious. “Call me the Knight of the White Brachet.” I was flirting, though I barely knew how.

She laughed, a sweet sound; I was happy to have made her laugh. “The Knight of the White Brachet! That’s an odd sort of title for a warrior.”

“I am an odd sort of warrior.”

We rode together and talked. She told me that her brother and three retainers had ridden with her when she left home, but the retainers had deserted her after her brother was killed. Once she had seen him buried, she had thought of turning back—her home was in Caer Sarsen, far to the east—but her pride made her go on. She was journeying to Tintagel, she told me, to be a lady companion for Queen Morgause.

“For—for Queen Morgause?” The Knight of the White Brachet, of course, could not reveal himself by saying that Queen Morgause was his mother. Moreover, I found myself still dismayed by what Morgan le Fay had told me—my mother, dallying?—and my troubled feelings kept me silent. I said only, “I thought Queen Morgause lived in Lothian.”

“Yes, but she has traveled to Tintagel to be with Sir Lamorak. He is a knight of the Round Table. Do you know him?” Lynette asked, all innocence. The minx, she was trying to find out who I was.

“Do you know him?”

“I asked first.”

“And what if I do not answer?”

“Then you must perform a task for me.” Her smile, coy, told me that it would be no ordinary knightly task.