5

I shivered in the misty predawn beside a small lake, clad in polished tin fish scales and disbelief. It was May Day, and I was about to become a lake spirit and deliver Skalibur from the Otherworld, Annwyn, where supernatural beings dwelt. Lakes were doorways to Annwyn, and for centuries the Britons had thrown swords, horns, and gold into their depths in sacrifice to the denizens of that unknown land.

Maerlin had thought it fitting, then, that for once a sword should emerge from a lake. He couldn’t very well send Arthur slogging through the shallows, though, looking for it amid the weeds. It wasn’t dignified. There was no spectacle to it. So Maer­lin had, at first, devised a plan involving those colorful exploding powders from the distant east, and a trebuchet to shoot the sword from a hidden spot, intending that Arthur should catch it.

At my urging Terix had set aside his arms training to help, coming up with an idea with less chance of severed limbs and fleeing guests.

For guests, there were: Briton chieftains allied to Ambrosius; chieftains like Druce, who had not been friends, but made a concession in the spirit of peace; Horsa, with his bartered daughter Wynnetha pale at his side; and even two Saxon leaders who were allied to Horsa. All had been invited to the wedding of Arthur to Wynnetha.

Ambrosius moved among them with the quick steps of a younger man, his triumph lighting his face. While only a peaceful gathering of friends and foes, with no agreements yet reached, it was still the closest he’d come to achieving his dream of a united Britannia, where tribe fought beside tribe in the protection of their island. He was eager to draw Saxons into that fold, if it meant they would protect boundaries already drawn and lift their swords to fend off Pict raiders from the north, Irish from the west, or anyone from the mainland of Europe. The wedding of Briton Arthur to Saxon Wynnetha was a chance to show that unity was more than a mad dream.

Maerlin had persuaded Ambrosius that the bestowing of Skalibur upon Arthur was, if done with enough supernatural aplomb, a way of marking him as the war leader of the united tribes. Let rumors flow and a legend grow that Arthur was a supreme leader of men into battle; let them believe he was chosen by forces greater than mere mortals, and there would be a chance they would follow his banner. Men fought for their brothers in arms, the comrades who for years had ridden beside them in battle; it would take someone beyond extraordinary to make them willing to lay down their life under the command of someone not of their tribe.

The wedding was to be three days hence. The valley was filled with the tents of the visiting chieftains and their highest-ranking men and wives, and their bodyguards of soldiers. Ambrosius had opened his cellars as well as his purse, and drink and food flowed freely enough to soften the edge of tension between foes, and yet not so freely that more than a few drunken brawls rolled through the muddied fields.

And here was I, shivering in my fish scales made in haste by the same smith who had furnished Skalibur.

Terix wrapped his arms over my shoulders from behind, lifting his cloak along with them to envelop me in its warmth. “How is it that we’re forever players upon stages, Nimia?” he asked into my ear. “As far as we run from what we once were, we end up the same.”

I rested my hands upon his where they crossed on my chest, and leaned back against him. “It’s the only solution we know. Have a problem? Put on a mask and pretend to be someone else. Make people laugh, or cry, or lust. Then run for our lives while they’re not looking.”

“We’ll be running as soon as this cursed wedding is done with, yes?”

“You know I want to. But . . .”

“Oh gods. What?”

“I would have happily run even sooner, except for two reasons. First, it might mar the festivities and draw attention to us instead of leaving it on Arthur and Wynnetha, where it belongs. Better to smile and congratulate them, than to stir up a scene by leaving.”

He grunted a reluctant agreement. “Couldn’t leave before this sword business, anyway.”

“Second, the chalice. The vision Maerlin and I had shared, where Wynnetha stepped into a cauldron that could only be the Phanne chalice . . . I don’t want to leave without the chalice, but Maerlin will never let it go before it’s put to whatever fated use it was meant for.”

Terix groaned. “Wasn’t Wynnetha walking over bloody bones in that vision?”

“They could be the bones of past conflicts.”

He bounced his chin on the top of my head. “Right.”

“Other than that, there’s no reason to stay here any longer. I’ve learned what I could of my mother, and to find her I have to find the same labyrinth she seeks.”

“The one Naji told us about, on Crete,” Terix said.

I nodded. “It might not be the one she seeks, but it’s our only hint of where she might have gone.”

Terix hugged me closer. “Are you certain you want to leave Brenn?”

“I don’t want to. But I can’t stay here after the wedding. You don’t have to come with me; I know there’s so much you can learn here, and you’ve made such advances under Brenn—”

“Leave you? Have your wits rotted in the damp?”

“It doesn’t seem fair, you following me when you have your own needs, your own life’s path to follow.”

“You are my path,” he said, so softly the words were little more than a breath of wind in my hair.

“You could have a full life here, Terix. A wife, a family, a home. Brenn would gladly take you on as a permanent part of Ambrosius’s army.”

Terix’s arms hardened. “Is that what you want, to have me stay?”

“No,” I whispered. “And I know it’s selfish of me, to not want to give you up. I’d be lost without you.”

He relaxed his hold, his breath releasing in a sigh that was half chuckle. “Then it’s a good thing you’re stuck with me, even when it means I get you into situations like this.”

I feigned a nonchalant shrug. “What do I mind drowning in a freezing, frog-clogged pond? It’s better than calling myself Nerthus and going topless while giving nonsense prophecies to a bunch of filthy Franks.”

“Or playing the cithara while predicting the death of their chief.”

“Or being named a Christian saint for having my head half chopped off, in the garden of a ruined Roman temple.”

“Saint Quitterie! Saint Quitterie! Please bless my baby, Saint Quitterie,” Terix begged in falsetto.

“It’s Kitharede,” I intoned in imitation of the offended Sidonius Apollinaris. “Why can they never get it right?”

“Do you suppose they’ve erected a statue in your name, in Tolosa?”

“If they have, I hope it’s not as moon-faced as the usual Christian art. Why they must make their women look bland as gruel, I’ll never know.”

“Wouldn’t do to think about fucking a saint,” Terix said.

“I don’t know why not. The Romans and Greeks had plenty going on between gods and mortals. What’s the use of a god who won’t come down for a bit of a romp with us humans? I’d rather my immortals be accessible. Touchable.”

“And they’ve probably got huge mentulas.”

“Exactly!”

Terix laughed and released me to the cold. “It’s almost time; the sun will soon be up. I have to go make sure those lousy musicians keep the beat. And the singers!” He shuddered with offended artistic sensibilities. “You’ll be all right?”

I shimmied my hips, making the scales tinkle and sway. “The costume’s heavy, but it’s only a short swim. As long as there aren’t horrendous beasts lurking in the depths, I’ll be fine.”

Terix nodded, and with a last grin he jogged away, around the side of the lake. Soon after, the sound of pipes and drums carried across the water, though the musicians and the audience were hidden from me behind the layer of morning mist. The thin yellow light of dawn combed its bony fingers across the landscape and touched my scales without a hint of warmth.

I heard Maerlin’s voice, deep and projecting as he set up the illusion they would all take for real; there was enough awe and danger in his tone to hint at what he said. Although I couldn’t make out his words, I knew them already. He was saying how Arthur had had a dream about a great sword, a sword that held the soul of Britannia. This sword had guided a legion of men and women to bring about its making, upon which the gods who guarded Britannia had demanded it be sent to them, and it had been flung into the lake. Now they had given it their blessing, and had sent Arthur a second dream: to retrieve the sword Skalibur here, upon the shores of the lake.

When Maerlin stopped talking and I heard the singing begin, I stepped into the lake, mud squishing up between my bare toes and the shock of the cold making me curse in three languages.

I was glad of the icy pain: it was a distraction. It was no longer a constant effort to keep my mind from Arthur, with whom I had not spoken privately since his return a month ago, and who didn’t know that he would shortly be in front of me. Though he knew this was a spectacle of Maerlin and Terix’s devising, they hadn’t shared the details with him. We’d thought it better that he be as astonished as the rest of them.

Maerlin had made me practice swimming in the lake, to be sure I wouldn’t balk at the frigid temperature. I’d learned two things from those miserable sessions: a woman’s cunny was just as shy of dipping into freezing water as a man’s balls; and it didn’t take long for the water to feel almost warm against your skin—which was deceptive, because when that happened it meant you hadn’t much time left before you lost all strength and feeling and sank like one of those ancient Briton’s sacrificed blades.

With both lessons in mind I waded as quickly as my gown of scales would allow, ignoring the cries of my skin to go slow. When I reached mid-thigh I quietly plunged under the water. My hair was braided tightly and hidden under the back of the gown, while a hood of scales covered my head and face. Terix thought it would spoil the illusion if anyone recognized me, and when I’d tried on the costume and seen myself in the mirror, I couldn’t fault his thinking. As a shimmering, humanlike creature without a face, I was terrifying. And completely unknowable.

“Though I’d know you anywhere,” Terix had said. “I know your shape, your posture, the set of your head on your shoulders. I know your walk. I’d know you even if you were bound up in a sack, stuffed in a box, and hidden in the hold of a ship.”

“I do hope you never have cause to test that.”

“With our luck?”

I’d groaned.

No one else knew me that well, though, so as an ethereal spirit of the lake I should do nicely. Perhaps Arthur would be too bound up in thoughts of his new lady love to question the small, wet silver figure and think it could be me. He had barely known me at all.

Stop it, I scolded myself. Bitterness is no emotion worthy of Skalibur.

It was easier to think of the sword than of Arthur.

I started to swim, a silent sidestroke with my arms that kept my head barely above the water, while my feet kicked just enough to keep my legs up without splashing. The metal gown tried to pull me down and it was hard work to move—surely no fish was ever so challenged by its scales—but I consoled myself that the water was shallow enough that I could sink to the bottom and still thrust myself back up. Maerlin had made me practice that, so I wouldn’t panic.

With the rising of the sun, the mist was beginning to burn away. Almost time to make my dramatic entrance.

I paddled straight out to the center of the small lake, to where a suspiciously quiet raft of ducks bobbed. They were decoys, made of wood, and all tied together and anchored to an inflated pig’s bladder just beneath the surface of the water. The bladder in turn was tied to a structure that had been sunk beneath the water. For a few mad moments I couldn’t find which duck was attached to the bladder, and I listened with growing alarm to the singers’ song, which was near ending—truly, it was atrocious singing, though it was an eerie piece I’d composed and their lack of tunefulness added to the unsettling effect—and knew I was in danger of missing my entrance cue. The mist thinned yet more, and I could begin to see the shapes of people gathered along the shore.

Then there it was, the duck atop the bladder. I reached under it to the taut rope and held tight, waiting, hoping that the people I could see could not see me.

There. The end of the song, a dramatic rat-a-tat-tat on the drums, and then silence. I counted to twenty, letting tension build, then took a deep breath and sank. Hand over hand I pulled myself down the rope to the sunken ladder anchored horizontally above the lake bed. It provided handholds and guidance as rung by rung I moved forward, from it to a second ladder, my breath beginning to ache in my chest until at last I felt the end of the ladders and the beginning of the ramp, its wood slimy from its week in the water.

The secret to a good illusion was in all the props and preparation the audience couldn’t see. I found my footing on the end of the ramp and stood, the top of my head breaking the surface. I had to fan my hands in the water to keep my balance as my numbing toes sought the thin wood slats that had been nailed to the ramp to prevent me from slipping.

One step. Two. My forehead emerged and then my eyes, blinking madly to clear the dripping water behind the scales. My breath burned, my lungs tight and urging me to tilt my head up and gasp for fresh air, but what water spirit would do such a thing? Three steps, and my nose was out. I blew out stale air and took in fresh, as quickly and fiercely as I dared.

A sigh and a gasp went through the gathered crowd. One of my eyes was still water-smeared, but through the other I could see them, their faces pale, their eyes and mouths shadowed hollows. Long blond hair and a light blue gown: Wynnetha, clinging to her father Horsa’s arm, her mouth wide. Brenn, his good hand over his mouth to hide his expression; he knew our secrets. Una beside him, bouncing on the balls of her feet; she knew, too. There was no way to keep anything from Una.

The tall one in the center, there. Arthur, square-shouldered and rigid, his head tilted slightly back in surprise. Did he recognize me from the top of my covered head, as Terix would have? I thought not.

I dropped my gaze and concentrated on emerging.

It is not as easy as one might think, to walk up a ramp through water without looking like a frozen, half-drowned, lurching woman who sends great splashes of water out of her way. It was slow control I was after, and no hint of human feet plodding onward. I’d practiced until both Terix and Maerlin agreed that I looked as if I were being lifted from beneath and carried forward, my body perfectly still and upright, arms straight at my sides with droplets falling from the tips of my scaly, pointed sleeves. I took tiny steps on my toes, bending at the ankle instead of the knee. One slip or momentary, flailing loss of balance would destroy the illusion.

The reaction of the gathered people was palpable, buffeting me like a breeze: I felt their astonishment, their awe, the racing tingle upon their skin that said they were in the presence of something not of this world. I drank it in, enjoying being a performer in total control of her audience. Their reaction fed me, and in return I gave them all I had, to make this an event they would remember for the rest of their lives.

At just above knee-deep the ramp ended at a level platform. My toes wiggled into place, finding the metal lever. I stood motionless for a ten count and then slowly raised my arm and pointed at Arthur. He stepped forward, and I turned my palm over and curled my finger just once, beckoning. Commanding.

The crowd leaned back as Arthur stepped forward. Ignoring the damage to his boots and leggings, he waded into the water, the strain of uncertainty beginning to show around his eyes and mouth as I kept my arm in its raised position and he went deeper and yet deeper. His nostrils flared as the water hit his balls, but still he came. When he was ten feet in front of me and up to his waist, I turned my hand and held out my palm, stopping him.

A twitch of his eyelids; a flicking of his gaze over my figure. Recognition in those blue eyes?

His lips set in a hard line.

Yes.

I told myself it didn’t matter. I wasn’t Nimia at this moment; I was the water spirit, the messenger from Annwyn. The Lady of the Lake.

I was not the woman he had thought to love, until she’d let his brother have her.

I shoved the thought from my mind. There was no place for it now; this moment was so much more important. Sordid personal histories should not touch upon Skalibur.

Terix, Maerlin, and I had spent night after night after night debating what the water spirit should say when she presented the sword. What could be grand enough? Mystical enough? Worthy enough of a sword that had been to Annwyn? And how could we be sure that no one would recognize my voice or notice my accent?

It had taken us weeks to decide what seemed obvious now: the spirit would say nothing. She would sing a wordless song of the Otherworld, instead.

I lowered my arm and began to sing without words, clear notes rising and falling in a melody I improvised as I went, guided by the vision in my mind of Skalibur. The song went beyond language, drawing on that universal essence within us all that called out for something more real and enduring than this solid earth and our too-solid flesh. I sang softly at first, letting free a mere whisper of sound, then gradually growing louder as I lost myself in the musical spell I wove.

And here, at the edges of my vision, came the golden swarm. Their hum fell in tune with the vibrations of my throat and head, amplifying the sound, changing it to something not of this world. Through my mask of scales I saw Arthur’s expression open, the tight line of his mouth relaxing, his brow smoothing as my song wrapped around him.

My toes pushed upon the lever, releasing the counterbalance to raise Skalibur from the water. I began to lift my hands, expecting to see the tip of the blade rise from the water.

I waited.

And waited.

I dug at the lever with my toes, making sure it had released.

Had it taken this long for the counterbalance to fall, when we’d practiced?

I kept singing. Arthur’s gaze was upon the water, where my hands were pointing—where I expected the tip to show at any moment. Onshore, people craned to see what was happening. A whispering murmur ran through them: What’s happening? Can you see? I don’t see anything.

The tension grew. My toes waggled the lever, hoping to shake something loose. In desperation, I sought out Maerlin’s mind.

What’s happening? Why doesn’t she release the lever? I heard him saying in his head. And then he felt me there, listening. Nimia, release the lever!

I tried to speak to his mind, tried to say I had, but he couldn’t hear me.

I’d have to get the sword up some other way. I could have Arthur dive for it . . . but that would be so undignified. There was no magic to that; that’s what we’d wanted to avoid from the beginning.

I closed my eyes and drew my swarm inward. I felt the water against my legs and reached out through it to Skalibur, and to the green stone. Lift it, I urged the water. Bring it to the air.

In my mind’s eye the dawn’s light shone down through the water and into the stone, the lake water and stone united in their color. I felt it then: a certainty that they were of the same substance. They were the lifeblood of this island, the water and the stone. They gave life, they renewed, they brought the spring growth to the land. They were the gateway to Annwyn, or whatever name one wished to call that realm beyond the visible, where greater spirits dwelt, and they had chosen for Skalibur to be born from this lake and into Arthur’s hand.

My swarm flowed out into the water, touching the stone, and moving onward to swirl around Arthur. The stone hummed, its message carried through the water to its new master. I felt the glow of the stone’s power traveling to Arthur, racing up his body to his heart.

An ahhh went through the crowd.

I opened my eyes and saw that the water around Skalibur was glowing as if a brilliant flame were caught beneath the surface. I stopped singing as the glow grew, spreading outward toward the shore as the heart of it intensified and went from green to gold to white. Bubbles boiled to the surface, and then all at once there came a great eruption of water and steel and light, and Skalibur flew from the lake, high into the air.

Catch it, you must catch it, I urged Arthur through the water.

He needed no such urging; his arm was already outstretched, his eyes upon the turning blade that flashed in the sunlight, spinning drops of water out over the glowing lake.

Skalibur held for a moment at the peak of its flight, then fell, somersaulting, to land its grip with a smack of perfection in Arthur’s palm. His strong fingers closed upon it, and the light gleaming in the stone faded away—it had been drawn inward, I somehow knew. Not just into itself, but into Arthur.

He looked up at me then, his mouth soft with wonder and a nascent understanding that there was something here that went far beyond our small human successes and failures.

This is why I did it, I said, hoping the message would reach him, though the hum of my swarm was almost gone. Skalibur is greater than I. No greater than you, though.

Maybe I imagined the flicker in his expression that hinted he’d heard me, or the dip of his chin that could have been acknowledgment. Or maybe it was real.

He turned around and raised the sword above his head, and the stunned crowd, who had unexpectedly witnessed something truly otherworldly, broke into cheering. He waded back toward dry ground, and I took my chance to flee.

Making an exit was a trickier business than making an entrance. An entrance was a surprise: they audience didn’t know how you’d appear (or even if), and so you could spring forth from anywhere. An exit, though . . . there were eyes on you, watching you go.

I turned my back to the shore and crept down the ramp. The water felt warm after I had stood for so long in the open air in wet skin and metal. Should I be worried it feels so welcoming? I wondered, but there was no choice but to proceed.

I fanned my hands again to stay upright as I sank up to my chin, then took a big breath and hurried the last few steps until I could sink all the way under and dive down to the ladders. I opened my eyes, everything blurring and green-brown in the depths, but I saw the rungs and pulled myself to the end, then followed the rope up nearly to the top. Partway there I reached out through the water and found the long hollow reed attached to one of the ducks. I pulled the scaled mask from my face, brought the tube to my mouth, and did as I had practiced, blowing the water out of it and then taking deep gulps of air tainted with the flavor of damp reed. I wrapped my foot in the rope to hold myself steady as I unhooked the costume and shimmied out of it. I let it fall, and it undulated like an enormous, magical fish, the light catching its scales as it sank.

Free of that weight, and of any risk of the bright tin catching someone’s eye when I emerged on the far bank, I unanchored the raft of ducks, let my head emerge in their midst, and began my slow, careful swim to shore.

As soon as I was in the reeds and out of sight of the far shore, Terix splashed into the water and started to help me to the bank, talking all the while. “We’d agreed not to have the sword flung! I can’t believe Maerlin changed that on his own. Jupiter’s balls, you or Arthur could have been impaled by the thing!”

Out of the water, my body felt as heavy as stone and I stumbled, my weight too great for my exhausted, chilled muscles. Terix swept me up into his arms and carried me the last few steps, then dumped me on a pile of waiting furs and wrapped me tight in a wool blanket.

“That green light wasn’t part of the plan, either, though it was awfully effective,” Terix said as he rubbed my shivering body dry with the blanket. “Maerlin didn’t tell me he had stuff that could burn underwater.”

“H-h-h-e doesn’t,” I said between chattering teeth.

The blanket rubbing ceased. “Then what was it?”

“Ska-a-a-libur-ur. The stone. It did it itself.”

Terix sat back on his heels and whistled between his teeth. “Fuck a donkey and call her Venus. Really?”

“No-no-not warm yet,” I complained.

Terix whisked the damp blanket away and pulled a dry gown over my head, moving my arms for me to get me into it. “Nothing against what you and Maerlin can do, Nimia, but that sword . . . That’s something real.” The gown on, he wrapped me in a fur and hoisted me up in his arms. With a grunt and a wobble he got his feet under him and started carrying me back a long, less-trafficked way to the villa.

“It was a good show, wasn’t it?” I asked, needing a little praise for my soggy self.

Terix knew what I was asking for. “It was like nothing this lot has ever seen, or will see again, Nimia. When you started to come out of the water, I swear I caught the hot stench of urine dribbling down a leg or two. Made chills go up my neck, and I’d seen it before. When you started singing, one fair young thing fainted dead away—although close enough to a good-looking man-at-arms to be caught.”

I chuckled. “No one suspected it was me?”

“No. A good thing, too. A late guest arrived for the performance, who would be very interested to know that you’re here, and not back in Gaul.”

A sinking feeling went through me, much colder than the waters of the lake. “Who . . .” I whispered.

Terix made a sour face. “Mordred.”