King Arthur awaited it with a pale face but steady hands to cherish it for my sake. Though to tell the truth, once I was rid of the troublesome thing I no longer cared whether he cherished it or not. I let my arms fall to my sides. The stillness within me welled deep, so deep I could float on it, as if on the lake of Avalon. All was peaceful and silent and floating, like water lilies. Nothing mattered to me. Nothing.

Dancing on the dark air went my soul, no larger than a dandelion puff, hardly as substantial as cloud wisp.

With relief as vast as the sea, I watched it go. But then—before it reached my liege, I heard a harsh noise I did not at first recognize, and a clacking sound. And it was gone.

My white wisp of soul. Gone.

The raven!

I had given the bird no thought until it sounded its triumphant croak and lunged, black and unseen in the moonless night, and snapped up the tiny white thing in its doomster bill. I heard its wings rustle like black storm wind rising as it flew away. And I heard its throaty laughter, and the hoarse words it flung back at me: “Mordred! More dread, more dead, murderer, Mordred!”

King Arthur let the golden casket clatter to the ground as he leaped toward the harper, roaring, “Is this your doing, villain?” He reached for his sword.

But the harper was gone like a puff of black smoke in the night, as if he were a—I do not like to say it. Perhaps he was merely a prudent man fleeing the King’s wrath, a blind man moving more quickly than we sighted ones in the dark. I do not know what he was, for I never saw him or heard news of him again.

In silence the King and I found our way back to Camelot.

When we reached the white ramparts, King Arthur led me through the gatehouse and across outer ward and inner ward to the keep, where we entered the great hall. No folk were about, for it was the hour when even the owls are silent. The Round Table stood great and shadowy like an odd sort of monument, a circle hewn of stone, in the night.

King Arthur took a candle from a sconce on the wall and crouched to light it from an ember in the hearth. When it wavered into yellow flame he arose, lifted it, and looked at me.

“Mordred?” he asked, very low.

“I am grateful,” I told him, and those were the last sincere words I spoke to him. Already I felt the old, childish hatred stirring in my marrow—now unopposed. No longer would the struggle between fate and soul disturb my sleep. “The pain is gone.”

“Yes,” he said, grim, “and so is the light in your eyes.”

“It was never of any use to me.”