Then the sheen went out of Gull’s eyes, and they turned blank and milky. She shuddered, then lay still.

I folded to the ground beside her, pounded the earth with my fist and wept.

I lifted her in my arms—her sturdy white body was still warm, but being touched did not hurt her, and I knew she was truly dead. Her head lolled and her eyes saw nothing. I held her against my chest, I, Mordred, a knight of the Round Table, weeping, and I did not care, I hugged her in my arms and cried. I sobbed until I felt sick and still I could not stop crying. When Gull’s body stiffened into the shape of my embrace and grew cold, I gently laid her down, and I struggled up and found my sword. I thought of killing myself for the villain that I was, wantwit, accursed, fate’s fool. It might be the only way I could defy fate, to kill myself. But instead of doing it, I used the sword to hack a hole in the ground near where Gull lay, within the circle of standing stones; they would mark the place. As if I were fighting the earth I smote it, weeping.

I hated everything, most of all myself. Fool. I had gotten her killed.

And . . .

I could not yet think of Nyneve. I had to do at least this one last thing right for Gull. I had to dig the grave deep. Deep enough so that nothing, sun’s heat or frost heave or the rooting of scavengers, nothing would disturb her.

I hacked earth with my clumsy broadsword for hours. It was the worst use to which I had ever put a weapon, or perhaps the best. When at last I felt certain that the grave was deep enough, I laid down the sword, and stood gathering breath and courage for a moment, then knelt and lifted her for the last time and placed her in the ground. She lay curled in the gritty darkness as if in my arms. I did not want to cover her, but I had to do it, and—that sound, the pattering sound of dirt falling down on dead love, like dry rain falling—it has to be the worst sound in the world. It made me half blind with tears, so that I saw only a blur, whiteness being buried in shadow.

I placed the earth on her handful by gentle handful—it took some time. When I had buried Gull, I mounded the earth atop her and sobbed for Nyneve.

Dead.

Fate has no heart.

I sat by Gull’s grave in that desolate place as day slouched on toward evening and the shadows lengthened. My weeping ceased, but I sat there bone weary, too weary to move, feeling an invisible serpent wind tight, tighter around my throat, watching without seeing as the shadows of the monoliths closed around me.