Nimue whispered, "What will become of-of him?"

Morgaine held her tight. "Child, child, that need concern you not. You have done your part with strength and courage, it is enough."

Nimue caught her breath as if she would weep, but she did not. She looked at Kevin, but he did not meet her eyes, and at last, shivering so hard she could hardly walk, she let two of the priestesses lead her away. Morgaine said in a low voice to them, "Don't torment her with questions. Done is done. Let her be."

When Nimue was gone, Morgaine turned back to Kevin. She met his eyes, and pain struck at her. This man had been her lover, but he had been more; he had been the only man who had never sought to entangle her in any political maneuvers, never sought to use her birth or high position, never asked anything of her save love. He had called her alive out of hell in Tintagel, he had come to her as the God, he had been perhaps her only friend, man or woman, in her entire life.

She forced her words through the tremendous pain in her throat. "Well, Kevin Harper, false Merlin, forsworn Messenger, have you anything to say to her before you meet her judgment?"

Kevin shook his head. "Nothing that you would consider important, Lady of the Lake." She remembered, through a haze of pain, that he had been the first to yield to her this title.

"Be it so," she said, and felt her face like stone. "Take him forth to judgment."

He took a single faltering step between his captors, then turned back and faced her, his head thrown back in defiance. "No, wait," he said. "I find I have a thing to say to you after all, Morgaine of Avalon. I told you once that my life was a small thing to forfeit for the Goddess, and I want you to know it is for her that I have done this."

"Are you saying it is for the sake of the Goddess that you betrayed the Holy Regalia into the hands of the priests?" Niniane demanded, and her voice cut with scorn. "Why then, you are mad as well as forsworn! Take the traitor away!" she commanded, but Morgaine signalled to them to wait.

"Let him be heard."

"It is even so," said Kevin. "Lady, I said it once to you before this- the day of Avalon is ended. The Nazarene has conquered, and we must go into the mists further and further until we are no more than a legend and a dream. Would you then take the Holy Regalia with you into that darkness, preserving it carefully against the dawning of a new day that now shall never be? Even if Avalon must perish, I felt it right that the holy things should be sent forth into the world in the service of the Divine, by whatever name God or the Gods may be called. And because of what I have done, the Goddess has manifested herself at least once in the world yonder, in a way that shall never be forgotten. The passing of the Grail shall be remembered, my Morgaine, when you and I are only legends for the fireside and tales for children. I do not think that wasted, nor should you, who bore that chalice as her priestess. Now do with me what you will."

Morgaine bent her head. The memory of that moment of ecstasy and revelation, when she had borne the Grail in the form of the Goddess, would remain with her until her death; and of those who had experienced the vision, whatever they might have seen, none of their lives would ever be the same. But now she must face Kevin in the person of the avenging Goddess, the Death-crone, the ravening sow who will devour her own young, the Great Raven, the Destroyer ... .

Yet he had given the Goddess this much. She reached out her hand to him ... and stopped, for under her hand again she saw what once before she had seen, a skull beneath her fingers ... .

... now he is fey, he sees his own death, and I see it too ... . Yet he shall not suffer nor be tortured. He spoke truth; he has done what the Goddess has given him to do, and now must I do the same ... . She waited until her voice was steady before she spoke. In the distance she heard a soft thundering.

At last she said, "The Goddess is merciful. Take him to the oak grove, as is ordained, but there slay him swiftly with a single stroke. Bury him beneath the great oak, and let it henceforth be shunned now and forever by all men. Kevin, last of the Messengers of the Goddess, I curse you to forget all, to be reborn without priesthood and without enlightenment, that all you have done in your former lives be wiped away and your soul returned to the once-born. A hundred lifetimes shall you return, Kevin Harper, always seeking the Goddess and never finding her. Yet in the end, Kevin, once Merlin, I say to you-if she wants you, be very sure she will find you again."

Kevin looked straight at her. He smiled, that curious, sweet smile, and said, almost in a whisper, "Farewell, then, Lady of the Lake. Tell Nimue I loved her ... or it may be that I will tell her myself. For I think it will be a long, long time before you and I shall meet again, Morgaine." And again soft thunder punctuated his words.

Morgaine shivered as he limped away without looking back, supported on the arms of his captors.

Why do I feel so shamed? I showed mercy; I could have had him tortured. They will call me, too, traitor and weakling, that he was not taken to the oak grove and there made to scream and pray for death till the very trees shrank from the sound ... . Am I only a weakling, that I would not torture a man I once loved? Is his death to be so easy that the Goddess will then seek vengeance on me? So be it, even if I must meet the death I could not give him.

She flinched, looking into the grey storm clouds in the sky. Kevin has suffered all his life long. I will add nothing more than death to his fate. Lightning flared in the sky, and she thought, with a shiver-or was it only the cold wind that came with the sudden rush of the storm outside?-So passes the last of the great Merlins, into the storm that breaks now over Avalon.

She gestured to Niniane. "Go. See my sentence done to the letter, that they slay him with a single stroke, and leave not his body above ground for a single hour." She saw the younger woman's gaze rest on her face; was it known, then, to everyone, that once they had been lovers? But Niniane only asked, "And you?"

"I go now to Nimue. She will need me."

But Nimue was not in her room in the House of Maidens, nor anywhere in the house, nor, when Morgaine hurried across the rain-swept courts, was she in the secluded house where she had dwelt with Raven. She was not anywhere in the temple, and one of the attendant priestesses told Morgaine that Nimue had refused food or wine or even a bath. Morgaine, terrible apprehension growing in her with every flash of lightning as the storm grew and raged, called for all the servants of the temple to search for her; but before they could Niniane came, her face white, attended by the men she had sent to see Kevin's death done as Morgaine had decreed.

"What is it?" Morgaine demanded, her voice cold. "Why was my sentence not done?"

"He was slain with a single stroke, Lady of the Lake," Niniane whispered, "but with the very stroke came lightning from the sky and struck the great oak-cleft it in twain. There is a great rift in the sacred oak, from the sky to the ground ... ."

Morgaine felt steel clamp around her throat. Nothing so strange, that with the storm should come the lightning flash, and ever the lightning strikes at the highest point. But that it should come in the same hour wherein Kevin prophesied the end of Avalon ...

She shivered again, wrapping her arms about herself under her cloak so that those who looked on her should not see her trembling. How could she turn this omen, for omen it surely was, aside from the impending destruction of Avalon?

"The God has prepared a place for the traitor. Bury him, then, within the cleft in the oak ... ."

They bowed acquiescence and went away, through thunder and the sudden rattle of rain, and Morgaine, distraught, realized that she had forgotten Nimue. But a voice within her said, Now it is too late.