“That is a very dark art,” Nimue said. “Too dark even for Morgan, I suspect. And only a man can kill Merlin.”

  The sun broke through again, dappling the table with warm light through the hanging grapes.

  “Morgan,” Bedivere said, with an honest attempt at mastering himself, “you were there on that barge. I saw you. You heard what Arthur said. He will heal, and he will return.”

  “If that’s really his destiny, do you think a lowly creature like me could stand in his way?” Morgan said. “What you heard was a dying man’s fancy, nothing more. And don’t forget that I was the one who came for him, Bedivere. God would’ve let him die, but I didn’t.”

  “If you can’t wake him up then all you’ve done is keep him out of Heaven.”

  “Oh, is that what you think, you stupid lunk?! God couldn’t wait to get His fingers on Arthur! If He had His way Arthur would be burning in Hell right now with a red-hot pitchfork up his backside, like all the other incestuous fornicators! I hated the man, but he is all that I have left of a family and by all the gods God can’t have him. I won’t give Him the satisfaction.”

  Bedivere shoved back his chair and walked away.

  Collum wasn’t sure who to believe, but he knew that if Arthur had the strength to rise from his bed and go back to Britain and conquer it all over again, nothing would stop him. He would be doing it.

  “I did think I could heal him,” Morgan said quietly, mostly to herself. Palomides put a hand lightly on her arm. “I thought I could do it.

  “If Arthur doesn’t get better,” Collum said, “what will happen to him?”

  “Not much changes on Avalon. Things happen very slowly. He could stay like this for years. Centuries even. He would be like King Bran. But I don’t think he would want that, do you?”

  “I don’t know what Arthur would want.”

  “Well, Bedivere does,” Morgan said. “And that’s what makes him so angry.”

  * * *

  • • •

  After lunch Collum realized he barely knew what to do with himself. They’d been dragging themselves down Roman roads for so long, fighting for their lives, chasing the Holy Lance, racing the runaway disintegration of the world. But everything happened slowly on Avalon, Morgan had said, it was ruled by a great pause, and little time was passing back in Britain. It was like the land of the Lotus Eaters.

  So he walked down to the sea for a swim. Palomides and Dinadan went with him. As they walked, Palomides pointed out the Questing Beast watching them, poorly concealed among the apple trees.

  “The tables are turned,” Palomides said. “She stalks me constantly now. Won’t let me alone. I am beginning to understand how Isolde felt.”

  The first beach they went to was calm, and Collum wanted waves, so they crossed to the other side of the island—it wasn’t even half a mile wide—which was besieged by ranks of big, heavy rollers. He and Palomides stripped down, and for a change Dinadan joined them. Collum had never seen Dinadan naked before.

  Palomides looked at his face and then laughed so hard he had to sit down.

  “I didn’t know.” Collum wondered if he would ever stop being amazed at the things that escaped his notice.

  “There’s nothing to know.” Dinadan wasn’t joking now. He was letting Collum in on something, on purpose, but he was still wary. “You can stare at my tits all you want, Collum, but I’m as much of a man as you are.”

  “Right you are.”

  He was happy to leave it at that. Well, now he knew what Merlin was getting at before. The wonders, they still had not quite ceased.

  He let the first few waves smash right into him, then he picked one and dived under it and swam out past the break. Floating on his back, staring up at the gray sky, he slowly pedaled his legs while the swells lifted him up and dropped him down. The Fairy Sea felt pleasantly odd: not quite blood warm but close, and full of tiny bubbles like beer. A scattering of rain blew through, rinsing his face with fresh water.

  He duck-dived and swam down to touch the bottom, which was where he made another discovery: he didn’t need to come back up. He seemed to be able to hold his breath indefinitely. He thought it must be some magic of the Fairy Sea, but he made Dinadan and Palomides try and they both came up puffing and blowing.

  “Look at that,” Dinadan said, treading water. “It must be a gift from the well.”

  “Do not tell Bedivere,” Palomides said. “He is in a bad enough mood as it is.”

  That evening they drank wine in the hall at Avalon Castle while a smoky applewood fire snapped and spat in the grate. Collum asked Palomides about the moon and received a lecture on basic cosmology. Palomides also taught everybody to play gwyddbwyll, which was a little like chess; you played it on a wooden board with pieces made of gold and iron. Collum wasn’t bad at it, but he wasn’t good enough to beat Palomides. Dinadan was.

  Nimue retired early, pleading exhaustion, and Bedivere kept to his room. Outside a great wind came up, hurrying the mists through the ranks of apple trees.

  Collum sat up alone listening to the gale slamming shutters in distant parts of the castle. He pictured the lonely tent on the hilltop where Arthur lay, its silk flapping, its ropes and pegs straining against the wind in the darkness. He hoped there was someone there with him, to keep him company through the storm. He hoped they’d spread a blanket over him against the chill. He wasn’t tired. He decided to make sure.

  Outside the wind was like a dense black liquid flowing over him. He leaned into it as he tramped stubbornly through the trees toward the hill where Arthur’s tent stood. He would sit a vigil by the king’s side. That was the right thing. He could do no less for Arthur. Nothing was far away on Avalon, and it wasn’t long before he spotted the tent up ahead on its hilltop, lit up from within like a lantern, the silk walls glowing blue and gold. The last light in the darkness.

  But there was something odd about the light. It wasn’t candlelight or lamplight, it moved and flashed and pulsed in weird rhythms. Someone or something was in there with Arthur. Collum broke into a trot, up the slope of cold grass. The king was helpless, there was no one there to defend him. If some old enemy had found him, Merlin even—

  But it wasn’t Merlin. The tent was warm and full of white sweet-smelling smoke. A gout of white flame flared above Arthur’s motionless body in the shape of a complex sigil and then vanished again, so bright Collum had to look away. A woman was kneeling on the floor by Arthur’s bed, naked to the waist and slick with sweat, a half-dozen books spread out around her on the tent floor along with bowls full of liquids and powders, plus one with a dead bird in it. She was singing in a shaky voice, her arms were spread wide and her whole body was shuddering. Another flame-sigil half-formed over the sleeping king then collapsed and flickered out before it could properly take shape—a salamander trying and failing to be born. The next one faded even more quickly.

  “God’s bloody bones,” Collum whispered. For a heartbeat he froze there in the doorway, afraid to interrupt the spellcasting—but then the woman’s arms dropped and she slumped forward, bonelessly, her bare back heaving.

  He went to one knee.

  “I’m here, Nimue.”

  He put his hands on her shaking shoulders. She was panting almost too hard to speak.

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Do what?!”

  “I thought I could heal him. Your hands are cold.” Her skin was burning under his fingers.

  “Just tell me you’re all right.”

  “I thought Morgan was wrong but it’s too bad. His skull’s shattered. I can’t fix it.”

  “You did everything you could, I know you did.”

  He hoped she hadn’t done too much. Nimue shivered convulsively in spite of the heat, and her teeth were chattering. Collum shrugged out of his cloak and wrapped her in it. She was as starkly pale and beautiful as she had been that day on the battlefield. He gathered her up in his arms—she was worrisomely light, as if she’d given up some vital part of herself to the magic, but maybe that was just all she weighed. Her hands were stained bright blue from something she’d used in the spellcasting.

  Arthur hadn’t moved through all this. Collum wondered if any part of him felt Nimue trying to reach him, and knew they were trying to rescue him. The smoke was dissipating, and the tent was dark again except for a single candle.

  “I called Brighid.” She swallowed. “And Belenus. Probably shouldn’t have. It didn’t matter.”

  “Let’s get you back to the castle. We’re not losing you too.”

  She closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “I might be sick. I’m just warning you.”

  A savage wind tore at his back as he made his way down the hill through the trees. The darkness seemed deeper than ordinary darkness, like they’d been dropped into a sack of velvet. He could smell the sweet smoke in her hair.

  “Should I get Morgan?”

  “No Morgan,” she whispered. “Just tired.”

  “You’ve done all you can. More than any of us. Time for somebody to take care of you for a change.”

  She didn’t stir in his arms, and he was terrified that she might die before he could get her inside and warm. He kept whispering encouraging words to her, willing her to stay awake with him. When he laid her on her bed in her chamber and lit a candle there was some color in her cheeks again. He covered her with a blanket, averting his eyes as best he could.

  “Always so gallant,” Nimue said with a weak smile, still shivering.

  “Merely defending your modesty, my lady.”

  “At least I’m not copulating with a goat.”

  He could feel himself turning red for the second time that day. Eternally the country bumpkin. He busied himself with lighting a fire. There was wood already stacked in the fireplace.

  “I wish you’d told me,” he said. “I would’ve gone with you.” The shavings started smoldering on the third try—he was doing better than at Dubh Hall anyway. He blew on them carefully.

  “It wouldn’t have made a difference. And you would’ve tried to stop me. I offered the gods my life for his.”

  Now he looked round at her. Nimue’s straight brown hair was down. He’d seen her in battle, he’d seen her angry and frightened and desperate, but he’d never once seen her with her hair down before. She was so lovely he couldn’t look away.

  “I’m glad they didn’t take it,” he said. The fire was spreading through the kindling. It would catch on its own now. “And you know Arthur wouldn’t have wanted to come back like that.”

  “And I would’ve said it’s not about what he wants.”

  “Except you would’ve been dead.” Collum stood up. “I’ll get you some wine.”

  “I don’t want wine.”

  Nimue propped herself up on her elbows, letting the blanket slip down again.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m all out of sleeping draughts.”

  It was a joke, but neither of them laughed. Somehow Collum returned her steady gaze even though his heart was fluttering wildly around the room like a trapped seagull. She smiled, and he was intensely conscious of being alone with her in a bedchamber, in a castle, on a magic island lost somewhere in the vast Fairy Sea. By all possible standards of decorum and chivalry he shouldn’t have been here, it wasn’t proper at all, but decorum and chivalry seemed to have gotten lost in the Fairy Sea too.

  “I should go,” he said. “But I don’t want to.”

  “Then don’t.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Sometime later they were lying side by side in her bed.

  The gale had blown itself out, and the sky had cleared enough that they could see a half-moon in the sky. Pale, heavy banks of fog lay on the sea like snowdrifts in the moonlight. The only light came from the low fire.

  “You’ve got scars,” she said. “More than I thought.”

  It was true, life at Mull had left its marks on him. Long welts on his back. Burn marks on his chest.

  “I thought you’d have more tattoos,” he said.

  He touched the slight bump on Nimue’s freckled nose where Lancelot broke it.

  “Morgan fixed it,” she said. “I asked her to leave the bump, to remind me.”

  “Remind you of what?”

  “To duck, I guess.”

  “Well, I like it.”

  She propped herself up on one elbow.

  “You won’t get to do miracles anymore, you know,” she said. “Now that you’re not a virgin knight. Not the first-class miracles anyway.”

  “I would settle for a second-class miracle. Anyway, who says I was a virgin before?”

  “You were the most virginal knight I have ever seen. And I knew Galahad.”

  “Were you? A virgin?”

  She answered that with a snort.

  “If you were looking for a convent girl you should’ve knocked on Guinevere’s door. Or Morgan’s. Though I suspect her bed is already occupied.”

  Collum hadn’t thought of that. In the moment it was hard to pay attention to anything other than the smoothness of Nimue’s warm ribbed side against his under the thin sheet. Collum had never been this close to a naked woman before. Most of what he knew about female anatomy came from the sheela stone in the chimney at Dubh Hall. He wasn’t much used to being touched either, except by other men who were trying to kill him. It was good, but the intensity of it was almost too much to bear, and he started shaking.

  It was embarrassing but he couldn’t stop it, and the more he tried the worse it got. There were things he remembered from Dubh Hall, things he never thought about, that didn’t leave scars.

  “Shh.” Nimue put a hand on his chest; it was still blue from the spellcasting. “It’s all right.”

  “I know it’s all right!”

  “There’s no shame. It’s their shame, not yours. When I first saw you—shh—don’t say anything, I’m trying to calm you down.” She put her arms around him and squeezed; she was surprisingly strong. “When I first saw you at Camelot I thought you were handsome, but you looked so innocent that I figured you had to be either an idiot or a con man. Then when you volunteered to fight the Green Knight I ruled out con man.”

  “I was a c-con man though,” Collum managed to say. “I lied.”

  “You only thought you were lying.” She smiled in the darkness and put her forehead against his. “That’s what I’ve figured out about you, Collum. You were so sure you were a false knight. Everybody always told you you were. You told yourself that. But you were wrong, you were a true knight all along. You just didn’t know it yet.”

  Collum started to relax. The shudders came slower. It was a sin what they’d done together, of course it was, but at the moment he did not find himself much troubled by regret. Maybe it wasn’t good but surely it wasn’t evil. Maybe it was some third thing entirely. At any rate as sins went he much preferred it to acedia.

  “You used to think I was King Arthur’s son.”

  “I still wonder about it. It’s too bad Arthur can’t tell us. What are we going to do, Collum?”

  “You mean—besides this?”

  “God’s gone, the spear is broken, the Table’s down to four knights, and that’s counting Palomides, who doesn’t seem to know what side he’s on anymore. Lancelot holds Camelot and now he’s got fucking Merlin on his side! All we have is Arthur, and we probably don’t even have him, and without him we’re lost. I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t just stay here and let Britain fend for itself.”

  Collum didn’t think she meant it, but he couldn’t deny that at this moment he was very glad to be far, far away from Britain and its many troubles. He would never give up, he knew that, but he couldn’t say he was looking forward much to throwing himself back into the glorious struggle. They’d be outlaws in Lancelot’s Britain, hiding in the woods, or in smoky caves in the winter, washing in freezing streams, standing watches by night, always listening for footsteps. There would be no more battles, or not for a long time. Instead they would have to sneak into towns in disguise, by night, like criminals, to drum up allies, treat with skeptical lords, stir up resentment against the Crown.

  And most of the people who hated Lancelot would hate them too. There would be so much arguing, so much politics, so much talk, talk, talk, and he would be so terrible at it. It made him tired just thinking about it. And then even if they won, what kind of new Britain would they build? What would it look like?

  “Have you talked to Guinevere?” he asked. “Maybe her family could help. Maybe she could rally Cameliard.”

  “Maybe.” She took his large hand in her small ones, rubbed his thick fingers with her thumbs. “But it was her family that drove her here. Did you know they tried to marry her to Rience? And then Lancelot? Finally she went to Morgan and offered herself as a more politically palatable choice for queen.”

  “She could hardly be less politically palatable than Morgan.”

  “It’s moot anyway, because Morgan lost her army at the Battle of the Spear. And Merlin will be busy turning every bush spirit and river sprite in Britain against me…I’m not giving up, Collum, but I don’t know how we’re going to win. I never thought God would let us lose. I never would’ve believed it. Maybe He really does like Lancelot better. Maybe we’re the villains after all.”

  It was the closest he’d ever seen her to despair.

  “God must think we’re strong enough to take it. Though a wise woman told me once that God is a great optimist when it comes to how much people can endure.” He kissed her. “We should get some sleep, it’ll be dawn soon.”

  “Sayest thou so? But hold, gentle knight.” Nimue took his hand and showed him where to put it. “Thy quest is not yet at an end.”

  * * *