He laughed in open delight. "It would be the greatest honor of my life, dear heart."

She kissed him, then led the way quickly across the stepping stones. She had already poured wine into two silver goblets. A full wineskin stood nearby. "A toast," she smiled, lifting them and handing the drugged goblet to Myrddin. "To victory."

He touched rims with hers, then drank deeply. "Show me what to do."

She sipped, then demonstrated how to operate the bellows. "Yes, that's perfect," she nodded as the coals hissed and flared brilliantly gold in the center.

She lifted a nearly finished dagger, which needed only a final touchup with the hammer before tempering the blade. She used heavy tongs to slide it into the coals, watching the color of the metal with a critical, practiced eye. The moment it was ready, she slid it out, laid it against the anvil, and snatched up the hammer, striking sparks and quickly working up a sweat.

"More wine?" Myrddin asked, gulping the last of his as he pumped the bellows. That was hard work in itself.

She shook her head. "No, I'll not pause a moment until it's done. Pour another for yourself, you can leave the bellows a moment while I hammer."

He drank, then worked the bellows again at her direction, sending gusts of air across the coals. He made a hefty dent in the wineskin as she evened out the blade along its length, working more for show than because the knife needed more shaping. She was nearing the point of completion when the drugged wine began to tell on her victim. He was blinking more often and he lifted his arms with increasing difficulty when directed to operate the bellows. When he started to stagger, nearly going to his knees, Covianna flashed him a bright smile. " 'Tis hard work, operating the bellows. Even young apprentices find it exhausting."

He muttered something into his beard and made an effort to hold onto the big wooden handles. She smiled to herself and waited a bit longer, putting the finishing touches on the weapon of his destruction. It didn't take long. He slid to the ground, blinking in confusion.

"Almost done," she said cheerfully. "All it needs now is the quenching."

Lifting the glowing dagger in her tongs, gripping with the strength she had gained over many years at the forge, Covianna turned and knelt. She smiled down into Myrddin's eyes—and slid the blade deep into the old man's belly.

He screamed, eyes flying wide in shock and pain.

She ruffled his hair. "Poor old fool. Don't you remember the secret of Damascus? You taught it to me, yourself."

The blade hissed and steamed in his wine-laden belly while blood poured across the haft and dripped off the end of the tongs. His mouth worked. One hand came up to grip her arm weakly.

"Why?"

She brushed his cheek with her fingertips. "You should never," she murmured, kissing his mouth softly, "have urged Artorius to murder Marguase. She was my first mentor and a far better alchemist than you could ever hope to be. My poor, gullible little fool." She pulled the blade out and blood gushed from the wound. He collapsed backwards, ashen from blood loss and shock.

"Don't worry, love. You won't be long in dying. Even if you managed to stop the bleeding, the water is rising."

As she spoke, she bound his wrists and ankles, tying him firmly to the base of the nearest flowstone column, dragging him across the stone floor in a long smear of blood. He cried out weakly in pain, unable to do more than shudder. She bound him with his head down, toward the water lapping at the rim of the island, less than six inches below his face.

"It'll be over your head soon," she smiled. "If you're still alive when it reaches your mouth and nose. Oh, before I forget—and just in case you're wondering—this is precisely how I forged Caliburn. Artorius' young cousin was as great a fool as you. Don't worry, darling. Once you're nicely dead, I'll come cut up the pieces and let the Goddess sweep them away, as I did with that little idiot. You deserve no less than he, after all. And who knows? Perhaps I'll give birth to your brat and send it to the afterlife to join you."

She gave him a last kiss, piled her tools and newly forged weapon into her satchel, and left him to die, laughing gaily all the way home.

Morgana and Brenna McEgan were roused from sleep perhaps an hour short of dawn by an urgent pounding on the door of the cottage where they, along with Riona Damhnait, had arranged to spend the night. The fisherman who owned the cottage, the same man who had captained the sloop which had ferried Medraut and Lailoken to Dalriada, answered the summons with alacrity, while Morgana and Riona both stumbled out of bed to see what the alarm might be.

"A thousand pardons," a young voice gasped from beyond the open door, "but I must see Queen Morgana immediately!"

It was Cleary, the young cleric who had recorded the marriage and treaty arrangements.

Morgana exchanged a worried look with the Irish Druidess before stepping into the light of the fisherman's oil lamp.

"What is it, Cleary?" she asked quietly, images of multitudinous possible disasters running through her mind.

"Father Auliffe sent me," the lad explained, voice shaking. "There's trouble, Queen Morgana, perhaps very bad trouble. I was to room with Lailoken, your new minstrel, and I thought it peculiar when he slipped away in the middle of the night. Saddled his horse, put his belongings on a packhorse, and left very fast indeed, down the coast road toward Caerleul. I might not have thought anything amiss, but a rider has come from across the border with Strathclyde, bringing dreadful news from Dalriada. Oh, Queen Morgana, I can hardly bear to tell you what's happened." The boy's eyes swam with tears and his hands shook.

She rested a hand on his arm. "Tell me."

"It was a boy, Queen Morgana, a young Briton taken into slavery across the border between Strathclyde and Dalriada. He and his whole family were taken, sold to a farmhold just outside Fortress Dunadd. He said they woke this morning to the sight of carrion crows, thousands of them, and the wind carried a sickly stench. His master rode into Dunadd and found..." Cleary gulped, voice trembling. "The whole town was dying, everyone. People in convulsions, vomiting, paralyzed, a terrible plague or... or..." he cast a mortified glance at Riona Damhnait, who had gone ashen in the lamplight, "or perhaps some terrible poison. Everyone, Queen Morgana, from the royal household at the fortress to the lowest fisherman's hovel.

"The boy's master promised him not only his freedom but the freedom of his whole family if he could ride overland through Briton territory and carry a message in time to King Dallan mac Dalriada." Cleary was openly weeping, now. "The abbot, Father Auliffe, fears treachery, Saxon treachery. And none of us know Lailoken so very well. Why should he ride away so quickly in the middle of the night, just before news of this disaster at Dunadd could reach us? The abbot sent me to fetch you and Riona Damhnait, while he brings King Medraut and Queen Keelin."

Morgana felt faint with shock, compounded infinitely by Brenna McEgan's utter horror. The look in Riona's eyes was one Brenna had seen only too often, a look of sanity strained by news so dreadful, by betrayal so deep, the mind could not properly take in the scope of disaster.

"Has King Dallan already sailed?" Morgana whispered, praying that he had not.

"He has. I ran to the shore first, hoping to stop him and deliver the warning. He had already said his good-byes to Queen Keelin, saying he did not want to wait longer and miss the tide."

Brenna's memory flashed to a sharp image, of Lailoken handing a wine cask to the Irish king, of the look in the minstrel's eyes when Father Auliffe had insisted they share the communion wine, instead. The wine had been poisoned, she could see it clearly, now, when it was too late. Lailoken must be hosting Cedric Banning, there could be no other explanation for his swift departure—or the mass destruction of the entire Dalriadan capital. How had he accomplished it? Weapons of mass destruction were a terrorist's stock in trade—Brenna knew that only too well—but what weapon could Banning have concocted in the sixth century? Nerve agents or even something as ordinary as mustard gas required chemistry far beyond the reach of anything Banning could possibly have access to, here and now. She tried to focus on the symptoms, to deduce what kind of poison he might have used. Morgana, at least, knew something of poisons.