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indeed married Ygraine of Cornwall. And paid his druids to prophesy that their son was the promised one, he who would turn back the Saxon tide. I’m sorry for my brother Arthur, in a way. I had never seen him before last spring. I scarcely know him now. But I imagine it’s been a heavy load for a boy of thirteen to carry, to have been promised such a destiny from birth.”
    For a moment, the swirling blood and water in Gamma’s scrying bowl stood before my gaze. I shut my eyes to clear them. “Yet I think, from what I have seen of him, that he carries the burden well. So well, indeed, that the prophesies may even prove true. He may be Britain’s savior from the Saxon hordes. If”—a shiver danced across my skin—“if he lives through the battles he and my father now fight. Lives long enough to grow to a man.”
    I stopped again for breath, then said, still meeting the prisoner’s eyes, “A band of my father’s warriors has dug a tunnel, beneath this hill.” The owl called again as I gestured to the forested slope above and around. “Beneath Vortigern’s fortress. That is the true reason Vortigern’s walls will not stand. My father is, whatever else, a great warrior. He saw this place and knew he had no hope of mounting an open attack. Too many men would die before the summit of Dinas Ffareon could be gained. And so he set his builders to devising a tunnel, to carrying away the soil and bracing the tunnels walls. They have worked in secret these last weeks, night after night. Covering the mouth of the tunnel with branches and dry brush every morning at dawn. Though, truly, it has not been so hard to hide. Vortigern has not men enough to spare to send many out beyond the fortress on patrol. My part—my part and Bron’s—was to gain entrance in Bron’s guise of wandering druid, mine of his serving boy. To give Vortigern a false prophesy about the blood of a fatherless child, so that he would look no further for the reason his tower walls fell.”
    I drew another breath, then said to the prisoner, my voice quiet in the larger hush of night, “You forced my hand when you nearly made Vortigern doubt me, doubt Bron. I told the first lie I could think of to make you stop, and to win back Vortigern’s trust. But I could not have let you to pay for the lie with your life.”
    The prisoner ran a hand down his face. There was just light enough that I could read his expression: dazed confusion as he struggled to block out the visions long enough that he might take in the meaning of what I had told him. That, mixed with wary disbelief. Then both were gone, replaced by something hard and dully angry at the back of his gaze. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to die. That was all I wanted. Death. Is that so goddamned much to ask? For Vortigern to kill me and put an end to this—”
    He made a quick, angry gesture and I saw a shudder twist through him as his gaze traveled around the night-dark forest. The shudder was instantly controlled, though; whoever he was, the force of discipline was deep in him and strong.
    He stilled and looked back at me, the dead-eyed, stony look back in place. “I’m sorry if I hurt you, Morgan, Daughter of Uther. But you should go. Go to your father’s men and carry out your mission, if you will. But leave me here to finish mine.”
    “No.” I was sick, still, and filled with a chill shaking that felt as though my bones had been turned to ice. I spoke almost before I knew—but if I am honest, in that moment, I could not have said whether I refused because some larger purpose spoke through me or whether I simply could not face the thought of going off into the night alone.
    Above us, Vortigern’s fortress still loomed like a great, hulking beast ready to strike. But the woods here, the forest quiet, was at least a little like the forest of oaks where I had been raised. No walls, here, nor anything to keep the night breeze from stirring my hair, lifting the fear