We walked until the white towers of Camelot rose far behind us and we could no longer see them in the darkness. It took perhaps an hour, because the blind harper walked slowly. On the farthest rise of the meadow, near the Forest Perilous, we stopped and faced each other. It was just the three of us: King Arthur and I and the blind harper with the raven riding on his shoulder, black and invisible in the moonless night.

“Mordred,” my sire asked me one more time, “are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“It is not too late to turn back.”

“I am certain, my liege.” My father. Because emotion was closing my throat, I sounded surly.

The harper had explained to me what I must do, and I did it quickly to prevent any more talk. I unlaced my tunic to bare myself. I stood facing the east, facing the forest, with my arms spread wide so as to unlock my chest—thin, I had grown so thin I felt my ribs ridging my skin. I stood with my hands straining back while the harper chalked the mystic circle around all three of us for protection from the spirits of the night. Night is perilous always, but we would be especially at its mercy while the spell made us vulnerable, while he opened me.

He anointed my face and my bared chest and outflung wrists with pungent oil, his blind hands fumbling at me so that I shuddered.

King Arthur stood facing me. “Mordred,” he whispered, the single word, my name.

I did not answer.

The blind harper took his place and struck his harp, chanting strange words in the druidic tongue.

King Arthur lifted his hands to his heart, cupping between them the casket, the small silk-lined coffer of pure gold in which he would receive whatever might fly from my chest.

If I had to take my soul out of my body and give it to someone for safekeeping . . .

It had to be someone whom I trusted.

He waited.

It did not take long. It was far easier than I expected, far easier than it would have been for anyone less worn and alone than I. Without even a need to say good-bye I felt it leave me, I felt it fly, I felt self take wing. Before, there had been the slow constant ache of my struggle with fate. As soul took flight, there was a sharper pang, as if my thin, taut body were a harp string, plucked. Then there was a simple, welcome nothingness, a soundless peace, and near my face I saw the white moth fluttering in the night.