He was sitting in near-darkness, the table before him strewn with papers and maps. It reminded me of the first time I’d seen him, in the darkness of King Arthur’s death ship, lit only by a single candle. In body, Mordred was as he had been. His unruly dark hair still curled around his head, his arms were strong, his form remained slender. He was dressed in dark colours that melted into the shadows. It was only when his face caught the light that I saw the difference in him. There was a strain in handsome jaw and around his black eyes that gave him more years than the eighteen properly belonging to him.
Mordred blinked, as if his eyes were hurt by the weak light of the rainy day. He smiled weakly. ‘Drift,’ he said quietly. ‘You came back.’ He stood. Like all the other boys he was two or three inches taller than when I had last seen him. He came around the table towards me. I wasn’t sure if I would accept his embrace if he offered it to me, not until we had settled the matter of what happened on his last night on Avalon.
‘Of course I came back,’ I said, then worried that I sounded spiteful. I looked for a way to mend the hurt my words might have done him. Before I knew what I was doing I was looking him full in the face. ‘You’re my general, and my friend,’ I said. ‘You call, and I come.’ I was shocked by the words that came out of my mouth. I hadn’t planned on saying anything of the kind, and no such thoughts had entered my head during the long lonely months on Avalon. But now that I was in his presence I remembered all he had done for me, for all of us. It wasn’t that my bitterness over what he had done simply disappeared – it was still lurking under the surface, and we would have to confront it – but I felt more fondly towards him now we were together. He stood awkwardly in front of me, and in the end it was me who offered him my embrace, which he accepted gladly.
‘You look well,’ he said, when I released him.
‘This isn’t me,’ I said, immediately feeling the tension within me ease as I told him the truth. ‘I learned to cast a glamour on the island, and a spell to hide my stutter. Underneath I’m the same hunchbacked idiot I always was.’
He nodded. I didn’t see any judgment in his eyes, he simply accepted what I said as fact.
‘Can we go for a walk?’ he said, going to the door. ‘It looks like the rain’s easing, and I’ve been in here on my own too long.’
‘Before we go, you should know that Palomina and I brought a prisoner back with us. We took Sir Dinadan at the tower on the loch.’
He smiled, and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Bloody hell, well done, mate. That’s excellent news.’
‘Do you want to question him first?’
He stepped past me through the door, and looked up the cut. I glimpsed Epicene and Norma on the higher path, going in the direction Piers had taken Sir Dinadan. ‘No, that’s fine,’ he said. ‘Epicene has it under control.’
‘You what?’ I said. ‘You’re going to let her burn him?’
He shook his head. ‘Drift, don’t worry about Dinadan – I know you have reservations about the use of your magic – that’s your choice and I respect it – but others don’t necessarily share your feelings. If it’s any consolation, Dinadan won’t be harmed. But even if he were to be: this is war, mate, and we’re badly outnumbered.’
He started to walk towards the complex rock system that rose steeply from the bottom of the path, but I didn’t move. ‘Torture is wrong, Mordred. There’s no excuse for it.’ I ran back up the path, determined to stop Epicene before she hurt the fat knight.
‘Hey,’ called Mordred, chasing me. Before I reached the other path he grabbed my arm and spun me round. ‘I promise you: there’ll be no torture.’ I looked defiantly into his black eyes, and tried to tear my arm from his strong grip. ‘Trust me, Drift. Just like you’ve been honest with me, I’m being honest with you.’
‘But –’ I wanted to argue against him, but felt the fight subside. I believed that he was telling me the truth, or at least believed he was.
‘Come on,’ he said. And he led me back down past his room, and then on a climb up the mossy rocks.
‘I know this doesn’t seem the most defensible place,’ he said as we climbed, ‘but the truth is that there aren’t enough of us to defend anything. This is a good place to escape from if they find us again. There are at least ten narrow ways out of the valley, and we have ten different hideaways to which we can retreat. We don’t think they know this place is even here yet; there were no habitable places down here until Epicene burned them out of the rocks.’
My mind flashed back to a vision I had seen in Epicene’s mind almost two years before: her father King Hermaunce on his throne, in his palace hollowed out of the fiery mountain thousands of leagues away. The hall I had found the others in reminded me of a miniature version of King Hermaunce’s throne room.
‘And we have Garnish now to make us comfortable,’ said Mordred. ‘I don’t fully understand his talents, but he seems to have learned a magic related to hospitality and other good things.’
‘He can make meat from herbs.’
‘Palomina told you of the siege at the loch?’
‘No, Alisander.’
‘Alisander’s talking to you already? Well done. He’s very withdrawn with most of us.’
‘He didn’t tell me; I saw it.’
Mordred stopped before he climbed up onto the next rock. His eyebrows were raised.
‘It’s a long story, but I saw his memories by accident.’
We reached the top of the rocky rise, and were now above the tree line. The wooded valley was below and behind us, above and before a series of grassy hills, each with a light dusting of sheep.
‘Shall we?’ said Mordred, pointing at the nearest hill, which rose first gently, and then steeply for a few hundred feet.
‘It is safe? Won’t we be seen?’
‘If we’re spotted they have no reason to think we’re anything other than a pair of shepherds. And the villagers by the coast have no love of the men looking for us. They won’t give us away.’
We climbed again. As we went on Mordred’s conversation darkened.
‘I fear I’ve cursed myself, Drift,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that last night on Avalon for a long time.’ He didn’t look at me as he spoke, but I was glad that night weighed as heavily on his mind as it did mine. ‘When I killed the holy woman on Avalon – a woman of my own faith. Since that time nothing has gone as I planned: we lost Palomides; I allowed us to become too comfortable at the loch, leaving us open to attack; we’re no closer to taking Excalibur. Arthur’s more powerful than ever. He not only has Excalibur, but the Spear of Longius too, which they say is as powerful as the blade. When Elia tried to convince the boy and girl who should have claimed the spear to come to us, they died. I’ve let you down too, my friend. I tried to take Galahad –’
‘Christian,’ I said sharply, correcting the name of the child. ‘Palomina told me that Lancelot refused the bairn when Melwas found him out.’
‘And then I left you alone on that island for so long. With that creature. It took us six months to find the hermit Nacien and convince him to take your place.’
‘That’s alright,’ I said. ‘You did your best for me.’
‘Did I?’
We climbed on in silence for a while and it stopped raining completely. I marveled at the view. To the south the land stretched on and on through rolling hills and lochs, scattered with the occasional lone cottage or small village. To the north, the land flattened out, before it reached the sea four or five miles distant. Beyond a stretch of water was the dark mass of the Orkney isles.
‘Another of my failures,’ said Mordred, looking north. ‘King Lot was on the brink of declaring his support for us, but it seems Queen Morgawse hates me, and counseled him against it.’
‘Why does she hate you, Mordred? Agravaine said he doesn’t understand it.’
He shrugged, and went to the edge of the rocky escarpment. He sat, dangling his legs over the side. I joined him, breathing in the fresh, misty air.
‘I nearly did something terrible,’ I said. ‘You saved me from it. You and Palomina.’
He didn’t ask what it was, and I considered not telling him, or softening it with a half-truth. But I could not bring myself to lie to him. I wanted Palomina to see only the best of me, but Mordred and I had already shared such darkness that it was a simple thing to be truly honest with him.
‘The day Palomina and Nacien arrived to take me away from Avalon – the very same day... Goodness, only two days ago... I had planned to destroy the island, just as Merlin and Lady Bertilak were going to do when they first landed there with Hilda. And it wasn’t madness or loneliness that made me want to do it, not really; it was greed and selfishness and anger. I could have made myself the most powerful creature in the world; I could have made the whole of creation conform to my will; I could have been the next thing to a god. You saved me from that.’
He turned his head and looked at me from under his long lashes. He was wearing the first genuine, full-blooded smile I had seen on his face that day. ‘Having a god on our side would have been quite useful, mate,’ he said, his smile turning into a grin.
Mordred’s good humour was infectious, and I found myself giggling. ‘I would be a terrible god,’ I said through my laughter. ‘A tyrant.’ And with a sigh my giggles ended, and I knew that I spoke truly. Had I taken Avalon’s powers for my own I would have destroyed Arthur and Merlin in one moment, but I would not have stopped there. I would have known all, seen all, and revenged myself upon all. I would have started with my mother, and I would have been cruel. Poor Drift of the Lake would have been terrible to behold; I’d had a small taste of that in the ruthless way I’d used the monster in the loch.
‘What I’m trying to say is: with Hilda, you were in an impossible position. You could have sacrificed Hilda, or Christian, or me.’
‘You offered yourself,’ said Mordred.
‘I did.’ I took a deep breath. ‘But so did Hilda. I was there: I saw the look in her eyes. She was old, and tired, and willing to go. You gave her one last moment of joy by taking Christian – Galahad, as she thought him – to her. And in doing what you did, you saved us all from Lady Bertilak. You did what you had to. I see that now, even if you’ve forgotten it.’
He turned away from me, gazing out across the land.
‘Have you told anyone about what happened that night?’ I said.
He shook his head.
‘I think you should tell Melwas.’ There was a long pause. ‘You remember the speech you gave in the hull of the ship? The one about it not mattering where we came from, or what we’d done before we were thrown together? You said from that day we’d be known only by our first names, and by what we did from that moment. Well, we can only do that once. We can’t keep wiping our pasts away. We have to live with what we’ve done since. You have to, and I have to. I know I’ve only just come back, but perhaps that means I can see what’s been happening here as none of you can. So you should tell Melwas. She’ll understand. She loves you, no matter how hard you try to push her into Agravaine’s arms. That’s cruel to her, and it’s cruel to him too.’
His stood angrily. I stayed where I was.
‘Admit it to yourself,’ I said calmly. ‘That’s what you’ve been trying to do. You believe you’re cursed, and you believe you’re saving her by driving her away.’ I smiled, and looked back over the land. A black cloud rolled towards us from the west. ‘We both know she’s more than capable of saving herself if she has to.’
As I said those words I knew I was speaking as much of Palomina as Melwas. It had taken that amount of time for Elia’s song to sink in – masks had a terrible power to cause pain. I had to tell my captain the truth of what I’d done, just as I’d told my general; though I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation at all.