"No, madam. You told me not to."
Searching that schooled face, those dark eyes, she was convinced. She was used to the guileless stare of the liar—the twins lied frequently for the sheer pleasure of doing it — and was sure this was the truth. Was sure, too, that Mordred was still too much in awe of her to disobey.
She made certain. "That is as well for you." She saw the flicker in the boy's eyes, and was satisfied. "But has anyone questioned you? Anyone at all? Think carefully. Has anyone seemed to know, or to guess about it?"
He shook his head. "I can't remember anything like that. People do say things like "You're from the palace, aren't you? Five sons, then, the queen has? A fortunate lady!" And I tell them that I am the king's son, but not the queen's. But usually," he added, "they ask someone else about me. Not me."
The words were ingenuous, the tone was not. It meant: "They would not dare question me, me, but they are curious, so they ask. I am not interested in what is said."
He caught, against the moonlight, the shadow of a smile. Her eyes were blank and dark, gaps of nothingness. Even her jewels were quenched. She seemed to grow taller. Her shadow, thrown by the moon, grew monstrous, engulfing him. The air felt cold. In spite of himself, he began to shiver.
She watched him, still smiling, as she put out the first dark feelers of her magic. She had made her decision. She would tell him nothing; the long journey south should not be clouded and made difficult by her own sons' reaction to the news of Mordred's real status as son of the High King. Or by the knowledge that must go with it, of their mother's incest with her half-brother. It might be common talk on the mainland, but no one in the islands would have dared repeat it. Her four sons had heard nothing. Even to herself Morgause would not admit how the fact might be received.
For all her powers she had no idea why the King had sent for them. It was possible that he had sent for Mordred only to kill him. In which case, thought Morgause, coolly eyeing her eldest son, there would be no need for him to know anything — or her other sons either. If not, what was needed now was to shackle this boy to her, to ensure his obedience, and for this she had a well-tried pattern. Fear and then gratitude, complicity and then devotion; with these she had proved and held her lovers, and would now hold her son. She said: "You have been loyal. I am glad. I knew it, but I wanted to hear it from you. I need not have asked you, you realize that, don't you?"
"Yes, madam." He was puzzled by the weight she seemed to be putting on the question, but he answered simply. "Everyone knows that you know everything, because you are—" he had been going to say "a witch" but swallowed the word and said instead, "—t you have powers of magic. That you can see what is hidden from other men by distance and by time."
Now it was certain that she was smiling. "A witch, Mordred. Indeed, yes, I am a witch. I have powers. Go on, say it."
He repeated it obediently. "You are a witch, madam, and you have powers."
She inclined her head, and her shadow dipped and grew again. The cold air eddied past him. "And you do well to be afraid of them. Remember them always. And when men come to question you, as they will do, in Camelot, remember the duty you owe to me, as my subject and my — stepson."
"I will. But what will they — why should they—?" He stopped, confused.
"What is going to happen when we reach Camelot? Is that it? Well, Mordred, I will be frank with you; I have had visions, but all is not clear. Something clouds the crystal. We can guess what will come to my sons, his nephews, but to you? Are you wondering what will come to such as you?"
He nodded merely, not trusting his voice. It would have taken a stronger spirit than the island-bred boy's to outface a witch by moonlight. She seemed to gather magic round her, like the moonlight growing on the folds of velvet and in the streaming silk of her hair.
"Listen to me. If you do as I bid you, now and always, you will come to no harm. There is power in the stars, Mordred, and some of it is for you. That much I have seen. Ah, I see that you like that?"
"Madam?" Had she guessed, with her witch's powers, at his dreams, at his ignorant plotting? He held himself in, quivering. She saw his head go up and his fists clench again on the belt at his waist. Watching out of her enveloping darkness, she felt interest and a kind of perverted pride. He had courage. He was her son, after all.… The thought brought another in its wake.
"Mordred."
His eyes sought her in the shadows. She held them for a few moments, letting the silence draw out. He was her son, yes, and who knew what fragment of her power had gone down to him while she held him in her body? None of Lot's sons, those sturdy earthmen, had inherited so much as a flicker of it; but Mordred could be heir not only to the powers she had drawn from her Breton mother, but to some sidelong glimmer of the greater power of the arch-mage, Merlin. The dark eyes raised to hers and held steady there were Arthur's, but they were, too, like the enchanter's hated eyes that had held her own and beaten them down not once but many times before the last.
She asked suddenly: "Have you never wondered who your own mother was?"
"Why, yes. Yes, of course. But—"
"I ask only because there were, in Dunpeldyr, many women who boasted of having the Sight. Was your dam, I wonder, one of those? Do you have dreams, Mordred?"
He was shivering. Through his brain went all the dreams, dreams of power and nightmares of the past: the burned cottage, the whispers in the gloom, fear, suspicion, ambition. He tried to close his mind against her probing magic.
"Madam, lady, I have never — that is—"
"Never known the Sight? Never had a dream of foreknowledge?" Her voice changed. "When the news came before of Merlin's death, with the Meridaun, you knew it was not yet true. You were heard to say so. And events proved you right. How did you know?"
"I — I didn't know, madam. I — that is—" He bit his lip, thinking back confusedly to the wharfside crowd, the shouting, the jostling. Had Gawain told her? No, Gabran must have overheard him. He licked his lips and tried again, patently struggling for the truth. "I didn't even know I had spoken aloud. It meant nothing. It's not the Sight, or — or what you said. It might have been a dream, but I think it was something I'd heard a long time ago, and it turned out then that it wasn't true, either. It makes me think of darkness, and someone whispering, and—" He stopped.
"And?" she demanded sharply. "Well? Answer me?"
"And a smell of fish," Mordred muttered, to the floor. He was not looking at her, or he would have seen the flash of relief, rather than mockery, in her face. She drew a long breath. So, no prevision there; merely a cradle memory, a half-dream from babyhood when those stupid peasants discussed the news that came from Rheged. But it would be better to make sure.
"A strange dream, indeed," she said, smiling. "And certainly this time the messengers are right. Well, let us make sure. Come with me." Then, when he did not move, with a touch of impatience: "Come when I bid you. We shall look into the crystal together now, and maybe we shall find what the future holds for you."
She left the moonlit window and went by him with a brush of velvet on his bare arm, and a faint disbreath of scent like night-flowers. The boy drew an unsteady breath and followed her, like someone drugged. Outside the doorway the guards stood motionless. At the queen's gesture Mordred lifted a lamp down from the wall, then followed her as she led the way through the silent rooms and into the antechamber, where she paused before the sealed doorway.
During his years at the palace the boy had heard many tales about what lay beyond the ancient door. It was a dungeon, a torture chamber, a place where spells were woven, the shrine where the witch-queen spoke with the Goddess herself. No one knew for sure. If anyone but the queen had ever passed through that doorway, it was certain that only the queen had ever come out again. He began to tremble again, and the flame shook in the lamp.