She made me dismount from my tall charger and pluck her a bouquet of buttercups. Over the next five days, traveling with her, I performed many such tasks for her because I would not tell her my name or whom I served. She made me gather strawberries for her to eat, find her a four-leafed clover, capture a butterfly for her to wear in her hair—and I did it all gladly. Being with her made me more lighthearted than I had been since I was a child. I would have done far more than chase butterflies for her—and I did; twice I had to fight for her, jousting with knights who challenged me for her as offhandedly as if she were a horse they fancied. Each time I met the challenger even though he was more heavily armed and armored than I. Each time I took a lance on my breastplate but managed somehow to keep my feet in the stirrups, and each time on the second challenge I unhorsed the challenger. Feeling Lynette’s gaze upon me made me able to do this, and to fight on with the sword, and to bear the blows and the pain, compelling my opponent to yield.

I escorted Lynette safely to the gates of Tintagel, and there I took my leave of her.

“But will you not come within?” Her sky-blue gaze—I could barely withstand it. “Come, my bold knight, your wounds need time to heal. Come in, rest for a few days.”

“I cannot.” It had been almost two years since I had seen my lady mother, but after the news I had heard of her, I wished to make it more years, many more. I did not think I could courteously give her greeting. “I must go,” I told Lynette. “I have a quest I must fulfill.” This was true, but I made it sound mysterious, as befitted the Knight of the White Brachet.

Lynette studied me, her blue eyes misty with pity. “You are a knight-errant, are you not? Have you no family, no comrades? You ride all alone.”

“I have Gull.”

“But you said you have no one to avenge you if you were killed.”

She remembered. Even though she had been grieving for her brother the moment we first met, she remembered what I had said. My heart bounded, so that I could barely speak. “I must go,” I murmured, and I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed it.

Then I rode away. My heart ached, yet at the same time swelled with joy to feel her looking after me.

Avalon.

It was not a castle. There was no castle anywhere, not even a tower keep. How this could be, when I had seen Nyneve and Pelleas sitting in a solarium there, I did not understand, but perhaps scrying showed things differently.