He lay weary on her shoulder, his coarse fair hair tickling her breasts. He murmured, "I love you, Igraine. Whatever comes of this, I love you. And if Gorlois should come here, I will kill him before he can touch you again."

She did not want to think of Gorlois. She smoothed the light hair across his brow and murmured, "Sleep, my love. Sleep."

She did not want to sleep. Even after his breathing became heavy and slow, she lay wakeful, caressing him softly so as not to wake him. His chest was almost as smooth as her own, with only a little light, fair hair; she had somehow thought all men were heavy and hairy. The scent of his body was sweet, though heavy with sweat and the juices of love. She felt she could never have enough of touching him. At one and the same time she longed for him to waken and take her again in his arms, and jealously guarded his exhausted sleep. She felt no fear now, and no shame; what had been with Gorlois duty and acceptance had become delight almost unendurable, as if she had been reunited with some hidden part of her own body and soul.

At last she did sleep a little, fitfully, curled into the curve of his body. She had slept perhaps an hour when she was roused abruptly by commotion in the courtyard. She sat up, flinging her long hair back. Uther pulled her sleepily down.

"Lie still, dear love, dawn is still far away."

"No," she said, with sure instinct, "we dare not linger now." She flung on a gown and kirtle, twisting her hair up with shaking hands. The lamp had gone out and she could not find the pin in the darkness. At last she caught up a veil to throw over it, slid her feet into her shoes, and ran down the stairs. It was still far too dark to see clearly. In the great hall there was only a little glimmer of light from the banked fire. And then she came up sharp before a little stirring of the air, and stopped dead.

Gorlois stood there, a great sword cut on his face, looking upon her with unutterable grief and reproach and dismay. It was the Sending she had seen before, the fetch, the death-doom; he raised his hand, and she could see that the ring and three fingers had been cut away. His face bore a ghastly pallor, but he looked at her with grief and love, and his lips moved in what she knew was her name, although she could not hear in the frozen silence around them. And in that moment she knew that he, too, had loved her, in his own harsh way, and whatever he had done to hurt her had been done for love. Indeed, for her love he had quarreled with Uther, flung away honor and dukedom both. And she had returned his love with nothing but hatred and impatience; only now could she understand that even as she felt for Uther, so Gorlois had felt for her. Her throat cramped with anguish and she would have cried out his name, but the dead air moved and he was gone; had never been there at all. And at that moment the frozen silence around her was lifted and she heard men shouting in the courtyard.

"Make way!" they were crying. "Make way! Lights, here, lights!" Father Columba came into the hall, thrust a torch into the banked fire and set it ablaze. He hastened to fling the door wide. "What is this outcry-"

"Your duke is slain, men of Cornwall," someone shouted. "We bring the Duke's body! Make way! Gorlois of Cornwall lies dead and we bring his body for burying!"

Igraine felt Uther's arms holding her up from behind, else she would have fallen. Father Columba protested loudly, "No! This cannot be! Why, the Duke came home last night with a few of his men, he's asleep upstairs now in his lady's chamber-"

"No." It was the voice of the Merlin, quiet, but ringing to the farthest corners of the court. He took one of the torches and thrust it against Father Columba's torch, then gave it to one of the soldiers to hold. "The oath-breaker Duke came never to Tintagel as a living man. Your lady stands here with your overlord and your High King, Uther Pendragon. You shall marry them today, Father."

There were cries and mutterings among the men, and the servants who had come running stood numbly watching as the rough bier, animal skins sewn into a litter, was borne into the hall. Igraine shrank away from the covered face and body. Father Columba bent over, briefly uncovered the face, made the sign of the cross, then turned away again. His face was grieved and angry.

"This is sorcery, this is witchcraft." He spat, brandishing the cross between them. "This foul illusion was your doing, old wizard!"

Igraine said, "You will not speak so to my father, priest!"

Merlin lifted his hand. "I need no woman's protection-nor no man's, my lord Uther," he said. "And it was no sorcery. You saw what you willed to see-your lord come home. Only your lord was not the oathbreaker Gorlois, who had forfeited Tintagel, but the true High King and lord who came here to take what was his own. Keep you to your priestcraft, Father, there is need of a burying, and when that is done, of a nuptial mass for your king and for my lady whom he has chosen queen."

Igraine stood within the curve of Uther's arm. She met the resentful, contemptuous look in Father Columba's eyes; she knew that he would have turned on her, called her harlot and witch, but his fear of Uther kept him silent. The priest turned away from her and knelt beside Gorlois's body; he was praying. After a moment Uther knelt too, his fair hair gleaming in the torchlight. Igraine went to kneel at his side. Poor Gorlois. He was dead, he had met a traitor's death; he had richly deserved it, but he had loved her, and he had died.

A hand on her shoulder prevented her. The Merlin looked into her eyes for a moment, and said gently, "So it has come, Grainne. Your fate, as it was foretold. See that you meet it with such courage as you may."

Kneeling at Gorlois's side, she prayed-for Gorlois, and then, weeping, for herself; for the unknown fate that lay before them now. Had it indeed been ordained from the beginning of the world, or had it been brought about by the sorcery of the Merlin, and of Avalon, and by her own use of sorcery? Now Gorlois lay dead, and as she looked on Uther's face, already beloved and dear, she knew that soon others would come and he would take up the burdens of his kingdom, and that never again would he be wholly hers as he had been on this one night. Kneeling there between her dead husband and the man she would love all her life, she fought the temptation to play upon his love for her, to turn him, as she knew she could do, from thoughts of kingdom and state to think only of her. But the Merlin had not brought them together for her own joy. She knew that if she sought to keep it, she would rebel against the very fate that had brought them together, and thus destroy it. As Father Columba rose from the dead man's side and signalled to the soldiers to carry the body into the chapel, she touched his arm. He turned impatiently.

"My lady?"

"I have much to confess to you, Father, before my lord the Duke is laid to rest-and before I am married. Will you hear my confession?"

He looked at her, frowning, surprised. At last he said, "At daybreak, lady," and went away. The Merlin followed Igraine with his eyes as she came back to him. She looked into his face and said, "Here and now, my father, from this moment, be witness that I have done forever with sorcery. What God wills be done."

The Merlin looked tenderly into her ravaged face. His voice was gentler than she had ever heard it. "Do you think that all our sorcery could bring about anything other than God's will, my child?"

Catching at some small self-possession-if she did not, she knew, she would weep like a child before all these men-she said, "I will go and robe myself, Father, and make myself seemly."

"You must greet the day as befits a queen, my daughter."

Queen. The word sent shudders through her body. But it was for this | that she had done all that she had done, it was for this that she had been born. She went slowly up the stairs. She must waken Morgaine and tell her that her father was dead; fortunately the child was too young to remember him, or to grieve.