6

“It is you.”

I looked up from my fingers upon the cithara’s strings to see Wynnetha standing in the doorway to my small room, holding aside the curtain to stare in at me. Her beautiful face was twisted as if she were trying to work the gristle off a piece of meat in her mouth.

“So it is,” I said. I had tried to stay out of her sight for the two weeks she had been at the villa with her father, hoping that she was so immersed in the business of being the celebrated bride that I could escape her notice, but of course I knew it was impossible. Women can sense their enemies, like a hare sensing the fox. “Congratulations on your upcoming marriage.”

She put on the same bright mask of happiness I’d seen her using since she’d arrived. There was a brittle excitement to it that confused me, and I didn’t know if she was genuinely happy or only tense about all the attention and changes. “Thank you.”

“I was surprised to hear that Mordred did not win your hand. Was this marriage your father’s choice?”

Although it had only been six months, it felt like a lifetime ago that Wynnetha had helped me escape from Mordred only to deliver me into the hands of Fenwig, Clovis’s man-at-arms who had been sent to fetch me home to Gaul. Arthur and Maerlin had in turn snatched me from Fenwig, and gotten his word that he would not steal me again but would instead wait for me to say I wished to go back.

Wynnetha stepped into my room, letting fall the curtain over the doorway. “We both chose him. When he returned to us he was much more devoted than before, and I saw that he had charms I had overlooked. He’s quite . . . tall, for one thing.”

“A good thing in a husband, to be sure.”

She squinted at me, not certain if I was joking.

“And he has pretty eyes,” she added.

“Then you and your father chose well, indeed.” Was that all she could say about such a fine man? I could only think that Arthur had made a material offer that had turned her head. Gowns? Spoils of war? A promise to renovate one of those abandoned Roman houses in Calleva, so she might reign over it in the style she thought she deserved? I tried to shove aside my irritation with her; it wasn’t her fault that she was marrying the man I wanted. She didn’t even know she was doing so—and a good thing, too, as she might have savored that revenge more than I could bear.

She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. I noticed the crystal dangling from her girdle—it looked to be the same one that Mordred had given her. A poor choice to wear to her betrothed’s home, surely. “I thought you’d be back in Gaul by now,” she said.

“I had things to do here, first. I only ever meant to be your friend, Wynnetha. I never wanted Mordred for myself.” It was jealousy that had prompted Wynnetha’s rescue of me: for reasons I could not fathom, she had preferred Mordred to Arthur. When I had told her how Mordred had fondled me in front of his people, thinking to show her what a scoundrel he was, she saw only that I was a rival for his rancid heart.

Gods help her if she ever found out that I’d slept with Arthur. She might go mad with rage.

I couldn’t wish that for her. It was bad enough that she’d be marrying the man I wanted, and so I suffered; worse still if she and Arthur were both unhappy in the years ahead, unable to form a bond of trust and affection. What point in making a sacrifice if everyone involved ended up worse off for it?

Not that I was entirely noble in my feelings. I was pleased her happiness seemed more mask than truth at this point; I might not have been able to bear it if she glowed with the love I was denied. Let her joy come later, when I wasn’t here to see it.

“Are you leaving Britannia soon?” she asked.

“Does it matter anymore?”

She moved the imaginary gristle to the front of her teeth and held it there. “Arthur and I will be living in Corinium for the first year of our marriage; that was part of the marriage contract. I don’t want to see you here.”

“So you got your wish, to escape Calleva.”

She surprised me by coming to sit on the end of my narrow bed. “If you’re really the lover of the king of the Franks, and mother to his heir, why don’t you go back to him?”

“He can’t give me what I want.”

“He’s poor?”

“He’s impoverished in the only way that matters: he has no heart.”

“All men have hearts, if the woman is worthy. You mean he has no love for you,” Wynnetha said, looking smug.

“Doubtless you’re right.” I enjoyed a private vision of Wynnetha trying to wheedle her way with Clovis, and how swiftly, how coldly he’d cut down her worthy self. Mordred would have done the same to her, only more cruelly, and with greater pleasure in her humiliation. She still had no notion how fortunate she was that Arthur was to be her husband.

She picked at the embroidery on her gown, then looked up at me, her eyes wide with not-so-innocent worry. She wasn’t a very good actress. “I thought I should warn you that Mordred is here. Did you know that? He arrived this morning.”

“It’s why I’m in my room, instead of out there,” I said, gesturing with my head in the general direction of the festivities.

“He was furious when he found out you’d escaped from that storage room.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t relieved? I don’t think he wanted to keep me.” Not after what I’d done to him.

“Oh no, he was as angry as I’ve ever seen a man. If he saw you here, he’d feel honor-bound to recapture you. You’d be safest if you left.”

“It’s kind of you to be so concerned for me. I feel quite secure under Ambrosius’s protection, however. Mordred wouldn’t dare try to snatch me from his host’s house.”

“Angry men don’t think clearly. If he sees you, he’ll go after you.”

“Surely it’s no longer any of your concern,” I said, puzzled at her insistence. Was she still so jealous?

“But it will make a scene. It will be a distraction. This wedding is about me, and Arthur, and hundreds of people have come to see it. It’s going to be the most important event in all of Britannia for years to come. It’s going to be spoiled if Mordred snatches you and Ambrosius gets upset, and then there might be fighting to get you back, and what then will become of all these plans to unify Britons and Saxons and all the squabbling tribes? People will be choosing sides and spilling blood, and all because of you.”

“Again, Wynnetha, that’s why I’m hidden away here, instead of out there. I have no wish for Mordred to see me.”

She leaned forward, put her hand on my thigh, and did her best impression of a two-year-old who thinks herself a clever, irresistibly adorable beggar. “For me, Nimia? Will you do it as a favor to the bride? You said you wanted to be my friend. Be my friend by leaving.”

I held tight to the reins on my temper. “I will leave as soon as I am able, after you are wed. To do so beforehand would be a distraction for Ambrosius and his household, and would deprive several men-at-arms of the pleasure of the wedding, as they would be forced to escort me to the coast.”

“Fenwig’s still here. He could escort you.”

“Wynnetha! Stop it. Your insistence is unseemly. I begin to suspect you want me gone so you can have Mordred’s attention all to yourself.”

She jumped to her feet and flared her pretty little nostrils at me. “I am to be married.”

“I’m glad to hear you remember that!”

“It’s more than you’ll ever be offered, whore that you are. No man will pledge his sword to you.”

As she quivered in rage, her shoulders back and chin high, I felt all my own anger drain out of me, replaced by pity for her. The only value she could imagine for herself came from men. All her rank, all the respect others gave her, all her wealth and safety; she knew no other path to them than through marriage. Behind her defiance, behind her self-absorbed need to have all males’ eyes upon her, was the fear that she was nothing without male regard. And in this world, she was right to think so. Precious few women got to choose their own path.

“Go along, Wynnetha,” I said softly. “Don’t waste your time on me.”

She worked the piece of gristle between front teeth for a moment, doubtless trying to decide whether it would be an admission of defeat to leave as I suggested. “Whore,” she said again, shoved aside the curtain with enough force to tear it from one of its rings, and flounced out.

Her mood and words stuck with me, much as I wished I could brush them off with as little care as they warranted. I found myself churning over her insults, my blood bubbling with an echo of her agitation. Sleep seemed far distant, and yet with Mordred here I didn’t dare wander through the villa, seeking the distraction of company and entertainment.

I grabbed my cloak and slipped outside. The spring night had a wavering chill to it, touched with a hint of the coming summer. Or maybe I’d been cold for so long that even this barest hint of warmth seemed balmy to me. I found the path, and guided by the light of a half-moon, half-risen and half-hidden by clouds, I wended my way to Maerlin’s workshop.

A dim orange light seeping through the shuttered windows told me he was there, and I gave the merest scratch on the door before pushing it open. We’d grown informal while planning the sword presentation with Terix, and this workshop had begun to feel a place of comfort and friendship.

“Nimia!” Maerlin said, looking up from yet another sheet of endless calculations; I thought sometimes he meant to discover the geometry of life itself in his numbers and diagrams. “I thought you’d be enjoying the banquet.”

“Mordred steals my appetite.”

“The press of bodies takes mine. I’d rather a cold bowl of leeks alone, than boar in cherry sauce while wedged between yet another pair of chattering women.”

I paused in taking off my cloak. “Would you rather I go?”

“I don’t count you as a woman.”

I raised a brow. “Last time I checked, I had the parts.”

“And I can vouch for their authenticity. No, you know what I mean. You’re not a chatterer. Apollo save me from women who mistake blithering for wit. Listening to them makes my head go numb.”

I took off my cloak and hung it on a peg, then sat across from him at the worktable, plopped my elbows down amid the scrolls and paraphernalia of his studies, and sank my chin into my hands.

“Has Mordred seen you?” he asked.

“Not as far as I know. He can’t have missed Terix, though, so he’s likely wondering.”

“You should stay here, then, where there’s no chance of his spotting you,” he said.

“Mordred wouldn’t try something in such a gathering, surely?”

“Better to not find out. The man’s clever as a weasel at getting what he wants.”

“Only with less regard for civility,” I said. “It could be safer if I left altogether. Wynnetha came to tell me how it would be the very best wedding gift if I could leave before she takes up residence here.”

“Here? No, they’re to have a house inside the walls of Corinium. They won’t be at the villa; a new wife needs her own home to run, or so I’m told. Though I can’t see why she’d want the work of ordering and arranging things, myself. Hiring servants. Choosing furniture. Tiresome.” He shuddered. “Now you’re smiling. Why?”

I shook my head, unwilling to explain. Terix could make me laugh on purpose, but Maerlin did it by being completely, utterly sincere. “Still, she has a point. Now that it’s spring it will be easier to travel, and there’s no reason for me to stay. I think Terix and I should go.”

Maerlin dropped his quill. “Leave? You can’t leave! What—what about the vision with the chalice?” He flung a hand toward where the pink crystal chalice sat on a shelf, wrapped in fleece and leather. “It’s unfulfilled.”

“I was thinking about that on the walk over here. I’ve done my part, haven’t I? I brought it to you, ‘that which you sought’ for so many years. Much as I don’t want to give the chalice up, it’s not really mine—or yours—any more than the moon or stars are. It has its own fate.”

“I need you for the incantation,” he said.

“I don’t know it.”

“It comes to you when you need it.”

“As it may well do for you. Maerlin, I don’t want to stay here any longer. There’s no place for me here, and I can’t watch Arthur and Wynnetha set up house together; it will kill me. I can’t do it. I can’t,” I said, and the tears that had been churning inside me ever since I looked from the oak tree and saw Arthur’s anguished face gurgled up from my chest and overflowed my eyes and my throat. My weeping was a high-pitched, nearly soundless keening like a flute blown by a novice, punctuated by ugly gulping gasps.

For all his other faults and ignorance, the man did at least know what to do with a weeping woman. He came around the table and scooped me up, carrying me to the narrow cot against one wall where he sometimes napped. He lay down with me and I clung to his chest, burrowing my face into it as his hands stroked down my back.

“You remember what happened the last time I consoled you,” he said.

On Mona. Yes, I remembered. That cool, languid desire that had a power and a life all its own, and came to us whether we wished it or no—it had swept away all remnants of sorrow and left passion in its place. “Don’t touch my bare skin,” I snuffled, “and it won’t happen.”

His palm skimmed down over my side and hip, a gentle caress that gradually soothed me. The tears died away and I sighed, closing my eyes and relaxing in his embrace, my head resting in the dip of his shoulder. I laid my hand on his chest and felt the warmth and firmness of his body through the cloth; I rested one leg over his long one and wiggled closer, feeling safe.

Safe. A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. Six months ago I would never have thought to put that word together with being pressed up against Maerlin.

“I don’t want you to go,” Maerlin said, his voice so soft I barely heard it.

“That’s kind of you to say.”

His hand stopped on my hip. “It’s not kind to tell the truth.”

I lifted up on one elbow so I could see his face. He was glaring at me. “Your pardon,” I said. “I had no idea a small nicety could enrage you so, oh mighty wizard. Will it appease you if I say, ‘How truthful of you,’ or will you smite me with your fearsome powers anyway, for my insolence?”

His lips tightened further. “Are you teasing me again?”

I blinked prettily at him.

His glare turned to a scowl. “Why do you do that? Why don’t you take me seriously?” He scrambled off the bed, leaving me to flop onto my stomach. “Why am I such a source of fun for you?”

He seemed truly distressed standing there panting down at me, and it upset me that I might have been the cause of it. I sat up, leaning on one arm, my legs folded to the side. “Maerlin, I’m sorry. What’s wrong? I never meant anything; I was being playful, as friends often are.”

“Friends.” He spat the word.

“I do consider you my friend,” I said in confusion.

“Yet you would leave me. Is that what friends do? Abandon each other?”

“My leaving is about going toward something else. It has nothing to do with you.”

“You would have stayed for Arthur.”

“Because I was in love with him.” I got to my feet and stabbed a finger at his sternum. “Love makes people do stupid things, against their own best interest. So yes, I would have stayed for Arthur. But since that’s not an option, I’m doing what’s best for me and leaving.”

“You said ‘was.’ ”

“What?”

“Are you still in love with him?”

“I’m doing all in my power not to be.” I’d had a month to come to terms with Arthur never being mine. All that had saved my sanity during that time was the intense preparation for presenting Skalibur. All that had saved my heart from utter desolation was that Arthur had been so careful for us to keep our distance, and so I had not grown accustomed to him. I had never expected him in my bed at night, or to be greeted by him in the morning. He had not sat beside me while we dined, or walked with me in the evenings. The longing had been terrible, and I had thought him foolish, but I understood his wisdom now.

“He wasn’t right for you, you know. You wouldn’t have been happy.”

I snorted. “Suddenly you are an expert on affairs of the heart.”

“Even someone as hopeless as me could see that he would never understand you. You’d have had to shrink yourself down to fit within the limits of his morals, and you’d live your life according to his sense of duty. Pursuing his goals, which aren’t his to begin with, but those of Ambrosius.”

“I thought you loved your brother,” I said in surprise. “Where does all this bitterness come from? This sneering at a good man?”

“It’s truth, neither kind nor bitter. And never sneering. Arthur is all that is good in this world, here. Britannia. He is the Britons’ best hope for a better future. But you are not of this place, Nimia. You are not a Briton, and your life is not limited to this damp, distant corner of the world. Sooner or later you would have seen it, and love would have become a chafing harness.”

“Or it would have transformed me into something better than I am.”

He grabbed my shoulders and gave me a shake. “ ‘Better’ can never mean being other than you what are meant to be.”

“Who’s to say what that is? The more I learn about the Phanne, the more I question if they are such a good thing to be a part of. You, Tanwen, Akantha, even poor Una, and me; there’s not a one of us who is half as good a person as Arthur. This quest of mine, to develop my powers and find my mother and, now, the labyrinth . . . The more I pursue my ends, the worse I feel. What’s the point of it all?” I cried, my voice rising. “I’m chasing shadows, and each time I catch one I feel the darkness grow greater inside me. So, yes, I liked the idea of being with someone I knew was good, who had honorable goals. Someone who made me feel that if I devoted myself to him, I could be good, too. And you’ve done exactly the same.”

His eyes lit with triumph. “You weren’t in love with Arthur. You were in love with the idea of who you’d be with him.”

I took a step back. “Love should make you into a better person.”

“Not a different person,” he countered, moving forward. “Nor can you take the easy path of clinging to the hem of Arthur’s tunic and letting him pull you along. You have darkness in you? So do I. So does everyone. It’s up to you to wage your own battle with it. Don’t make a man do it for you, and then call it love instead of cowardice.”

“What do you know of love?” I shouted at him, backing up as he pursued me. “Who have you ever given up everything for? If you’ve never wanted to, it’s because you’ve never been in love! Don’t lecture me on how I should feel, when you don’t feel at all. You’re as cold as one of Ambrosius’s marble statues.”

“I wish to all the gods that I still was. At least then it was quiet in my own mind. I could think. I could spend weeks working on a question of astrology, or the blending of metals, and not even a full hunt with baying hounds riding past my door could distract me. Now look at me,” he said, flinging his hands out to encompass his workshop, which looked no different to me than it always had. He, however, seemed to be coming undone, his hair disheveled, his clothes hanging crookedly. “I can’t string together the simplest thread of logic because every time I try, all I can think of—” He cut himself off.

“Thinking,” I said. “It’s always thinking with you.”

“All I can feel,” he said, glaring at me, “is how much richer my life has become since you came. I don’t want you to leave, Nimia, because—yes—you are my friend, and because you understand me.”

“Not half as well as you apparently think I do.”

“I don’t want you to leave because for the first time, I can imagine having a woman at my side with whom to go through the years. With whom to share ideas, and even with whom to travel and explore beyond the shores of Britannia.”

“You don’t need a woman for that. You’ve gotten along quite nicely with Brenn, up until now.”

His skin turned red and his neck muscles tightened. “Why are you making this so difficult?”

“Tell me what this is, and maybe I can answer!” Although I had a suspicion what he was trying to say, I couldn’t believe it. I had to hear it from his own lips, and even then I didn’t know if it would be credible. I could only think he’d worked himself into an irrational, uncharacteristic state: Arthur’s marriage was giving him strange thoughts about his own life. He had felt so little for so long, even a boyish infatuation would feel overwhelming to him.

“I’m trying to say that I want you to stay with me. I don’t want to be alone again.”

“Find yourself a basket full of cats, if you don’t want to be lonely.”

“Nimia! I—”

I put my hands on my hips and stared at him, waiting.

“I—”

“You must not feel strongly about it, if you can’t muster the energy to say it.”

He gave me a dirty, angry look. “I think I might be in love with you.”

“Then you think wrongly. No one who uses ‘think’ and ‘might’ in a declaration of love truly feels it.”

“You scared me into saying it that way. I meant to say ‘I love you,’ and to say it with great force.”

“Scared you? Me?”

“You’re not reacting how you’re supposed to,” he grumbled.

I flung out a hand in invitation. “Please, do instruct me.”

True to himself, he took me at my word. “You were supposed to be quiet, and blush, and look meek and hopeful. Then, maybe, cry. Just a little.”

I burst into laughter.

He turned his back to me and stomped to the worktable, where he made a show of tidying up and ignoring me.

“Maerlin.”

He flinched, and kept tidying.

“Maerlin,” I repeated, and came up behind him. I laid my hand on the small of his back and softened my voice. “I’m sorry I laughed. It wasn’t at you; it was at the image of me as meek and quiet.”

“It was a very pleasant picture I had drawn in my mind,” he mumbled.

“You would never have thought you wanted me, if I were meek and quiet.”

He spun around and grabbed my forearms, his face alive with emotion as I had never seen it before. The glowing green of his eyes stood out against the flush of his skin, and his mouth was pulled in a tortured grimace as if the passions of his heart were too great and too unfamiliar to be spoken through the rough messaging of his expression. “I don’t think I want you. I know I do. I’ve wanted you since I first heard of you, from Fenwig.”

“Impossible.” I pulled against his grip, and found myself unable to escape. Held so easily in his hands, without any visible effort on his part, I was reminded of how very strong he was despite his lithe appearance and light-footed grace of movement. Held this close, I felt his height and the broadness of his shoulders, and knew the slender, almost androgynous impression he sometimes gave for the illusion it was.

“I knew it from the first words he spoke: ‘My king’s lady is of a strange beauty, with long black hair and spiral tattoos, and she plays the cithara as if her hands were guided by the gods. She was most grieved by being parted from her infant son, and in her desolation has fled from my king and gone in search of her family.’ ”

“You could know nothing from that.”

“I knew you were Phanne; I knew you had intelligence and patience if you had mastered the cithara; I knew you had a loving heart. I knew at long last that here was the woman who was meant for me.”

“These ‘knowings’ mean nothing, Maerlin. I felt that Clovis would be of great importance to me when I first saw him, and what did it get me except heartache? Arthur felt something similar about me, and what did that bring him? Again, nothing but heartache.”

He gave me a little shake. “All you do is prove I’m right. You have been ‘of great importance’ to both of them. Without you, Clovis would not have all the power he does, nor would he have a son. Without you, Skalibur would not exist. Knowing someone will be ‘of great importance’ is a different feeling from knowing when you’ve met the only person you could ever love.”

“But . . .” I realized he meant it, and that he knew what he was saying, what he was feeling. I stood there gape-mouthed as a fish on land, trying to understand how the marble statue had come to life and chosen me. “But you treated me so terribly, for so long.”

“I did not!”

“You acted like you didn’t care what happened to me. You let Mordred have me. I thought all that mattered to you was that you got the chalice.”

“This will come as a great shock to you, Nimia, but—I’m not comfortable showing people how I feel.”

I lowered my brows at him. “See that I am not fainting at this stunning news.”

“Are you teasing me? You’re teasing me again, aren’t you?”

“Do you feel teased?”

He squinted one eye and looked off up into the corner. “I don’t know. Maybe. That’s the other problem, of course. I don’t often know what I feel, until my actions reveal it to me.”

“And what actions revealed to you your feelings for me?”

“I went to the Isle of Mona for you—though I didn’t understand at the time that that’s why I did it.”

“You went because I wouldn’t help with calling the wind, otherwise.”

He slid his hands up to the top of my arms, his thumbs stroking the sensitive place where arm joined body. “I could have persuaded you to help; I could have found something else you wanted. No, I must have gone to Mona because it meant so much to you, and it meant we would be alone together on the journey. I must have taught you to swim and spent so much unnecessary time on the presentation of Skalibur because, again, I wanted to spend time with you. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“You still don’t sound like you’re sure of your own heart.”

“Because I’ve only just now realized what my own choices meant. When you said you were going to leave Britannia . . . I felt like someone had slashed my belly and my guts were falling out. That’s what love feels like, isn’t it?”

“I wish I could say no,” I whispered, the immensity of what he was saying sweeping over me. This was no boyish infatuation. He was a grown man experiencing love for the first time, with all its promise of pain. And I was the object of his devotion.

I had been so busy wallowing in my heartbreak over Arthur, I hadn’t paid attention to signs that his interest in me went beyond friendship. I would have sworn there hadn’t been any.

“Is there any chance that you could feel the same way about me?” he asked, and never had I seen such vulnerability as was now on his face.

“I . . . I don’t know. My heart has been elsewhere; I never thought . . .”

“In time, might it happen? Or are you repulsed by me? Does it seem impossible?”

“Not impossible, no. There have been moments . . . But it’s too soon, Maerlin. I’m not ready to love again.”

The thin shred of hope I offered him was all he needed: his eyes flared green. In that instant I feared I had made a dreadful mistake in not closing off all possibility of romance between us. I had not lied, though: there had been moments when I’d wondered what it would be like to have him as my lover, my mate. The imagining had gone no further than a brief fantasy of sharing Phanne talents with an equal, and never having to explain what they made me do. And I couldn’t dismiss the heady prospect of lying with him, our minds linked even more deeply than our bodies, giving and taking pleasure with me in a way that no normal man could.

He bent down and kissed me, gently. In that brief touch I felt the bond that had formed already between us, and the promise it offered of so much more.

“I’ll wait,” he said.

And within me I felt the fluttering possibility that he might not wait in vain.