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and— 
    Before I could See any more, he jerked away from me, gasping, his eyes wide and leeched of all color in the pale moonlight. Though there was, for the first time that night, a flicker of true awareness in their gaze.
    “Gods, you’re the one”—the words came out in short bursts of air—“who told Vortigern I was the fatherless child he wanted. Uther’s girl-child.”
    Compassion or no, I was not fool enough to think him no longer a threat. I held my muscles tensed, ready to spring back in an instant if he made a move towards me. And yet despite the lean warrior’s build, the muscles that bunched and tightened under his bruised skin, there was something lost about the look in his eyes, a kind of utter, weary fearlessness in the face of despair. It took little effort to make my voice gentle, soft as before.
    “Morgan, yes.”
     I saw a muscle jump into relief in the side of his jaw. “And what is Uther’s daughter and high seeress doing in Vortigern’s pay? Did your father send you here? Or have you decided to turn your allegiance and support Vortigern’s claim to the throne?”
    My fingers twitched, but I forced my hands not to clench. This man, whoever he was, had a body that bespoke a lifetime of battle, fear and pain. And now he had spent days in a cramped and airless cell, lashed and burned by Vortigern.
    “My father knows I am here, though he didn’t send me, not quite.” I heard my voice harden as I spoke the words. “Snow will fall on the midsummer fires of Beltaine before Uther Pendragon believes any but my brother Arthur can aid in Vortigern’s fall. But when a mission arises, he is still perfectly willing for his unwanted girl-child to take the part that promises almost inevitable death.”
    This was, all of it, the story I never told. But I could see some tiny measure of tension ease out of the prisoner’s frame as I spoke. And I could feel, still, that humming presence from somewhere in the earth itself. A chiming cadence like the most ancient of tales, whispering that I must give this man before me the truth, that there could be no half measures here.
    “My father Uther loved my mother, I think. Or he did once. But he wanted a son—a son she had not given him, not in ten years of marriage. And, once he had seen her, he wanted Ygraine of Cornwall. And what my father wants, he takes. I do not think he even intends to be cruel. Though whether that makes him a worse man or a better one, I don’t know. But he wanted a son, and he wanted Ygraine. So he accused my mother of lying with his guardsmen when he was away on campaign. Mayhap he even believed the charge. He wanted the charge to be true—and in his mind, so it was.”
    I felt my hands tighten. “She was burned at the stake, when I was four years old. I was taken in by a wise woman, guardian of the nemetons at Llyn y Fan Fach. Gamma. She told my father she had dreamed my coming to her.” From somewhere deep in the forest, and owl called, a single low, mournful cry, and I swallowed. “And my father scarcely cared where I went, or with whom. Though he did send Bron with me, as bodyguard. Bron taught me to shoot a bow and arrow and throw a knife. And Gamma taught me the healer’s craft. She was a healer, as well as a seer. She died this past spring.”
    For all the grief was months old, I felt my eyes stinging as I spoke the words. “I wanted to stay there, in the forest where she raised me. But she made me swear to return to my father’s court when she was gone.”
    Uther my father had professed himself more than glad to see me. And I even thought he spoke true. For the half-moment or two he looked at me before he was away with his warriors, planning their next campaign. But he had not even tried to barter me away in marriage for the sake of some strategic alliance, as many fathers would have done. I must—did, I suppose—grant him that much.
    Still, I felt my mouth twist again. “I found, when I returned, that my father had