He turned his head to me just for a moment, then turned back to gazing on the gray, endless washing of the sea. “Mordred,” he said quietly, “it is your birthday. My very best wishes. Long life and much happiness to you.”

As happened so often when I was with him, his goodness surprised me so that I could not speak. I watched a chalk-gray sea hawk fly and said nothing. Likely he thought I was sullen.

“Seventeen years,” said King Arthur, his voice very low.

Seventeen years of May Days he had been coming here. Last year, for my sixteenth birthday, where had I been? Questing for a way to save us both.

The quest had failed.

“Sire,” I said, “I would beg an audience with you.”

My formality amused him, for I had given him not so much as a bow until now, and there we sat side by side on rocks splashed with gull dung; even in his bleak mood the King kept a sense of the droll. He turned to me with merriment in his eyes. “You have my whole attention, Mordred.”

I hated to take that silver glint of laughter from his eyes. I looked at my own hands, not at him, as I spoke.

“Sire,” I said, “I am seventeen now, and I will be twenty-seven when I die.” It was a knowledge so cold that I felt as if I had dreamed it, but I knew it was no dream; the hawk had told me. “I have ten years left to live before—before the day Merlin prophesied.”

I think I took his breath away. He knew his own doom, but he did not know the time of it, and he did not know mine. “You . . . you speak of—”

“The final battle. I will die also.” This came perilously close to saying what was never to be uttered. Or not by me. But he did not flinch.

“How do you know this?”

“I have spoken with Merlin.”

He stood up to study me, but I stayed sitting where I was. His gaze upon me forced me to look at him, and I peered up, blinking, like a child; he could see that I did not threaten him. He said slowly, “If this is so—”

“If, Sire? But you know Merlin speaks true.” I was worn down with the wretchedness of hating what I was destined to do, and I let him see my misery. I rose to stand facing him; I lifted my hands to him, pleading. “Why have you not killed me already? Why do you not do it now, this very moment? One sword thrust, and it would be over.”