He leaned down, listened for perhaps five heartbeats, then was on his feet and making for our horses. Men reacted quickly in those days to the sound of horsemen in the night.

I checked him. “It’s all right. Uther. How many horses do you reckon?”

“Twenty, perhaps thirty. Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. Now get the horses saddled and stay with them. I’m going in.”

It was the hour between night and morning when the air is still. They were coming at a gallop. It seemed that the whole of the frozen plain beat with the sound. The moon had gone. I waited beside the stone.

He left the troop some little way off, and rode forward with only one companion. I did not think they had yet seen me, though they must have seen the flicker of Cadal’s dying fire in the hollow. The night had been bright enough with starlight, so they had been riding without torches, and their night sight was good; the two of them came on at a fast canter straight for the outer circle of the Dance, and at first I thought they would ride straight in. But the horses pulled up short with a crunch and slither of frost, and the King swung from the saddle. I heard the jingle as he threw the reins to his companion. “Keep him moving,” I heard him say, and then he approached, a swift striding shadow through the enormous shadows of the Dance.

“Merlin?”

“My lord?”

“You choose your times strangely. Did it have to be the middle of the night?” he sounded wide awake and no more gracious than usual. But he had come.

I said: “You wanted to see what I have done here, and tonight is the night when I can show you. I am grateful that you came.”

“Show me what? A vision? Is this another of your dreams? I warn you—”

“No. There’s nothing of that here, not now. But there is something I wanted you to see which can only be seen tonight. For that, I’m afraid we shall have to wait a little while.”

“Long? It’s cold.”

“Not so long, my lord. Till dawn.”

He was standing the other side of the king-stone from me, and in the faint starlight I saw him looking down at it, with his head bent and a hand stroking his chin. “The first time you stood beside this stone in the night, men say you saw visions. Now they tell me in Winchester that as he lay dying he spoke to you as if you were there in his bedchamber, standing at the foot of the bed. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

His head came up sharply. “You say you knew on Killare that my brother was dying, yet you said nothing to me?”